Reiki Help Blog :: Oasis Reiki Dojo

It’s not certain if we’re at 2.0 or 3.0. What’s certain is that we need an update and upgrade. Our brain and neurology needs an upgrade, our mind too and our heart. In Buddhism there’s the concept of heart-mind. Ayya Khema tells us, “In Pali, heart and mind are one word (citta), but in English we have to differentiate between the two to make the meaning clear.” Pali is the language of many of the earliest Buddhist scriptures.

This teaching is a central one in Buddhism known as Bodhicitta, an awake heart-mind, or the heart-mind of enlightenment. In Tibetan psychology, the heart is synonymous with the mind. Tibetan worldviews are highly influenced by Buddhism, and consciousness, mental clarity, and the sense of self is known to rest in the heart. To put it simply, heart-mind points to a balance of wisdom and compassion, engaging both and giving both fair say in how we choose to live.

Today there are hopeful signs and utter chaos all at the same time. In the previous post I wrote: “At this very juncture, Earth’s and humanity’s narrative within it is being radically rewritten.” And: “We must participate in the emergent story of the Earth and humanity without the mistakes and limitations of the old one.” This observation is being made widely, and any thinking-feeling person can see the themes without trying too hard.

Robert Atkinson, Professor of Human Development and Religious Studies at the University of Southern Maine, writes:

Our collective story is lagging behind, resisting the flow of evolutionary change. The pre-twentieth-century story we have carried with us into the twenty-first century – built on the assumptions of duality, separation, and boundaries – has lost much of its meaning, power, and, most alarmingly, hope for the future. It faces crisis after crisis without offering any lasting resolution. The once well-understood principle of continual progress toward a collectively desired and beneficial goal is missing.

Soon after last month’s earthquake in Japan, Thich Nhat Hanh sent this message:

Dear friends in Japan,

As we contemplate the great number of people who have died in this tragedy, we may feel very strongly that we ourselves, in some part or manner, also have died.

The pain of one part of humankind is the pain of the whole of humankind. And the human species and the planet Earth are one body. What happens to one part of the body happens to the whole body.

An event such as this reminds us of the impermanent nature of our lives. It helps us remember that what’s most important is to love each other, to be there for each other, and to treasure each moment we have that we are alive. This is the best that we can do for those who have died: we can live in such a way that they continue, beautifully, in us…

This is a perfect example of balanced wisdom and compassion. The Japanese people give all of us hope. They have shown model behavior in the face of an ongoing triple disaster; earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear fallout. They are resilient, sharing resources and services, not being tempted to commit crime, and exercising neighborliness, altruism and hospitality. Make sure you watch this beautiful video (4/12/2011) to participate in healing for Japan.

The last sentence of Thich Nhat Hanh’s statement is deeply inspirational. Referring to those who’ve perished he says, “we can live in such a way that they continue, beautifully, in us…” For there to be any kind of continuation, we and the Earth first has to survive. “Beautifully” stands for so many things, but today let’s focus on the preservation of Nature and the Earth. Dr. Atkinson, again:

We need a new chapter in our evolving story that will restore hope, infuse new meaning into the wondrous process of creation, and unify our consciousness with a vision we intuitively trust. We need a story that keeps renewing itself.

2011 has so far shown that new narratives source in the most unlikely places. Adding to the surprise is the South American nation of Bolivia. According to The Guardian online, “Bolivia is set to pass the world’s first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country’s rich mineral deposits as ‘blessings…’”

Let’s not be naïve enough to believe industry and politics is going to change overnight to bring about the New Earth. This is still a huge step in the right direction, one that leader nations are strongly resisting. Here’s the depth and breath of Bolivia’s The Law of Mother Earth.

In the Andean worldview there’s a central Earth deity known as Pachamama. The environment and Pachamama are considered central to all life, with humans being equal to all beings, not higher, but equal. The Guardian writes:

In the indigenous philosophy, the Pachamama is a living being.

The draft of the new law states: “She is sacred, fertile and the source of life that feeds and cares for all living beings in her womb. She is in permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos. She is comprised of all ecosystems and living beings, and their self-organisation.”

This law reads like poetry! Bolivia’s Foreign Minister has also said:

Our grandparents taught us that we belong to a big family of plants and animals. We believe that everything in the planet forms part of a big family. We indigenous people can contribute to solving the energy, climate, food and financial crises with our values.

You can catch the full story here, including video about the impacts of climate change on Bolivia.

Bolivia gives us hope.

Joseph Campbell who was a master of myth and story isn’t alive today. He would have been a fascinating source for the meaningful interpretation of our times. Yet, with some prescience, the following is his contribution to us today:

We’re in a free fall into future. We don’t know where we’re going. Things are changing so fast. And always when you’re going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. But all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It’s a very interesting shift of perspective… Joyfully participate in the sorrows of the world and everything changes.

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It was Thanksgiving in the United States last week. Since there hasn’t been much posted here recently about environmental and healthy living concerns here are some points made in 2010.

From Greenpeace:

• The Obama Administration kept its promise to save whales at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) talks. As a result, the IWC was unable to lift the ban on commercial whaling;
• Nestle, Burger King and HSBC all agreed to drop palm oil products from notorious forest destroyer Sinar Mas;
• Greenpeace spent three months in the Gulf of Mexico uncovering the truth about the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill;
• Trader Joe’s agreed to “green-up their stores” by implementing sustainable seafood policies;
• Target announced that all their stores will stop selling farmed salmon products;
• The Vermont Senate voted to retire the old, leaky nuclear reactor, Vermont Yankee; and
• Steller sea lions received some protection from overfishing in the western Aleutian Islands.

From Food & Water Watch:

• Over the past two months, with your help we’ve delivered over 70,000 letters to the FDA asking them to halt their approval of GE salmon. We’ve also put pressure on members of Congress, and just last week we held press events across the country to stop GE salmon. Within 24 hours of our California event, Senator Barbara Boxer wrote a strong letter to the FDA asking them to halt their approval of this frankenfish, and a bill was introduced in the US Senate that would ban GE fish.
• This year, with states and cities facing budget deficits, water corporations tried to privatize local water systems. With your help we defeated privatization in Trenton, NJ, Kansas City, MO, Temple, GA, Marion, IN, Citrus County, FL, and Slippery Rock and Hazelton, PA.
• You helped deliver over 15,000 letters to the U.S. Ambassador in support of global water justice, and for the first time, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution recognizing the “Human Right to Water.”
• You’ve been fighting all year to help break up the monopolies in the food system. Next month, we’ll deliver tens of thousands of postcards and petition signatures from every state to the Department of Justice in D.C., demanding that they take action to make our food system fair and healthy for farmers, farmworkers, and consumers.

These are by no means the only “victories” for the environment, and there’s still plenty of drastic action that must be taken. However, despite the business as usual approach, greenwashing and flat out denial of climate change in some quarters, a greening trend is definitely getting stronger. For example, PETA has ranked the most vegetarian- and green-friendly NFL stadiums. Today, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced that in the new five-year drilling plan, no new offshore drilling will be allowed off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts or in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. The L.A. Auto Show earlier in November was very green, offering these new cars to the market.

We are a planet in conflict. Conflict creates friction.

Friction creates heat.

Heat=Climate change. Here’s the latest in the state of affairs.

After my last post which was somewhat hopeful about climate change, the news has been less so, with a lot of equivocating. Not all is lost, yet, but certainly the big commitments that are needed from governments and businesses aren’t materializing.

The New York Times reported on Oct 20 that, “With the clock running out and deep differences unresolved, it now appears that there is little chance that international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December will produce a comprehensive and binding new treaty on global warming.”

There’s a sense of overwhelm because as usual we started too late in taking measures to mitigate climate change. Vested interests want to only do the minimum, which is how we got here in the first place. According to NPR, “President Barack Obama’s visit to China next month is not likely to yield a separate accord on countering global warming…”

There’s quite a bit of talk about investing in clean energy, its technology and potential for job creation and revenue. Where this talk leads is up in the air. Bloomberg reported recently that, “Billionaire George Soros, looking to address the “political problem” of climate change, said he will invest $1 billion in clean-energy technology and donate $100 million to an environmental advisory group to aid policymakers.”

Developed and developing nations are squabbling over who must pay for measures to mitigate this threat we’re all facing. The New York Times is posting such headlines as Biggest Obstacle to Global Climate Deal May Be How to Pay for It, and NPR reports EU can’t agree on how much climate aid to give.

Fortunately, this isn’t the only news in climate change. Blog Action Day which took place on Oct 15 generated 31,000 trackable blog posts in 155 countries. The Reiki Help Blog was one of 13,000 participating blogs, and news of the event even made CNN.

There’s also similar people-based action on climate change featured below. Why is this important?

Two reasons:

1) There has to be a groundswell of citizen voices, demands and actions, for leaders aren’t stepping up.

2) Behavior, psychology and the mindset can only be changed by massive commitments to mitigating this monster.

A disturbing story on NPR had this to say: “…a new poll by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press shows a big jump in the number of people who doubt the reality, the cause and the risks of global warming. Last year, for example, 71 percent of those polled believed the Earth was getting warmer, regardless of the cause. This year, 57 percent believe that – still a sizable majority but a 14 percent drop over the course of one year.”

This, despite a recent study linking climate change to worsening of diseases.

Adam Corner has an insightful reason why this is so. In an astute piece he writes, “But until now, a key piece has been missing from the puzzle – psychology. The study of human behaviour has been conspicuous by its absence from the climate change debate.”

Apparently even in the good old United Kingdom people “don’t feel personally threatened by climate change because it is vague, abstract and difficult to visualise.”

That’s why an organization I’m recently enamored of, 350.org, is one with which I strongly encourage you to become involved.

350.org is an international campaign dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis–the solutions that science and justice demand. Our mission is to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis—to create a new sense of urgency and of possibility for our planet.

Our focus is on the number 350–as in parts per million, the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. But 350 is more than a number–it’s a symbol of where we need to head as a planet.

To tackle climate change we need to move quickly, and we need to act in unison—and 2009 will be an absolutely crucial year.  This December, world leaders will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark to craft a new global treaty on cutting emissions. The problem is, the treaty currently on the table doesn’t meet the severity of the climate crisis—it doesn’t pass the 350 test.

In order to unite the public, media, and our political leaders behind the 350 goal, we’re harnessing the power of the internet to coordinate a planetary day of action on October 24, 2009.  We hope to have actions at hundreds of iconic places around the world – from the Taj Mahal to the Great Barrier Reef to your community – and clear message to world leaders: the solutions to climate change must be equitable, they must be grounded in science, and they must meet the scale of the crisis.

If an international grassroots movement holds our leaders accountable to the latest climate science, we can start the global transformation we so desperately need.

Here’s a video of that Oct 24 global event The 350 Movement: October 24, 2009 – The Day the World Came Together (for email subscribers.)

Climate Change. Will it be our undoing or our rebirth?

COP15 starts on December 7, 2009. That’s my son’s birthday. He will be eleven.

He has always wanted to be a scientist. Climate change will have to have been long handled by the time he gets to be one, but I know his contributions will be great, wherever they are.

Lately he’s been into mystery novels and told a career person at school he wants to be a PI. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear! Maybe he can out climate-deniers’ real agenda or out dirty energy users (hopefully neither will exist by then).

COP stands for Conference of Parties, and it will be occurring for the 15th time. To put it into context, COP8 took place in Kyoto, Japan in 1992.

COP15 will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark. It’s in fact the United Nations Climate Change Conference to renegotiate Kyoto’s replacement, as it expires  in 2012 and has always been too lenient.

Back to my son for a minute. In 2050 he will be 52.

The group [Climate Action Initiative] took the upper-range targets of nearly 200 nations’ climate policies–including U.S. cuts that would reduce domestic emissions 73 percent from 2005 levels by 2050, along with the European Union’s pledge to reduce its emissions 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 — and found that even under that optimistic scenario, the average global temperature is likely to warm by 6.3 degrees. (Washington Post.)

Recently I watched a 60 Minutes piece on the last great migration of large animals, the wildebeest. I don’t know that my son is going to be able to live in a world where he can witness such a natural phenomenon. My first feeling was to put us on plane to Africa to see it for ourselves.

Today, October 15, 2009 is Blog Action Day once again. The Reiki Help Blog is participating for the third year. Previous themes were Poverty and the Environment. This year the focus is Climate Change, a subject that’s very much part of the past content of this blog.

There has never been any really good arguments or evidence disproving global warming which is now already happening and heading toward critical levels.

When the IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, the report it issued really silenced all other voices. Well, there are a few still. Leo Hickman of the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper recently reported about a TV ad paid for by an oil industry lobbyist telling Americans “more CO2 results in a greener earth.” Video of ad (for email subscribers).

This kind of unconscionable lobbying is part of the fray, as infuriating and puzzling as it may be. The fact of the matter is, “…recent scientific assessments have outstripped the predictions issued by the Nobel Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007″ as reported in the Washington Post article linked above.

These figures can be seen on ClimateInteractive.org.

We have yet to appreciably mitigate climate change, but the bogeyman has morphed. What’s different is that it’s now topical in a highlighted, urgent manner, with focused international attention on it. If that will be enough is anyone’s guess. Is it too late to take action? Perhaps. One thing is for sure. We can’t not take action. That would be collective suicide, and we’ll have grossly failed in the substantial stewardship that has been bestowed on us as the most “evolved” species.

In September, secretary general Ban Ki-moon organized the UN climate summit meeting at which Obama spoke clearly and assertively “to make the United States a leader in the global arena on global warming” (New York Times). It’s well worth reading his entire presentation, even just to see how much has happened in the U.S. response to this challenge (finally). There’s movement, much more precise, frequent and targeted movement than before.

Our generation’s response to this challenge will be judged by history, for if we fail to meet it – boldly, swiftly and together – we risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe. No nation, however large or small, wealthy or poor, can escape the impact of climate change. Rising sea levels threaten every coastline. More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent. More frequent drought and crop failures breed hunger and conflict in places where hunger and conflict already thrive. On shrinking islands, families are already being forced to flee their homes as climate refugees. The security and stability of each nation and all peoples – our prosperity, our health, our safety – are in jeopardy. And the time we have to reverse this tide is running out. -President Obama, New York, Sept. 22, 2009

And with December’s COP15 summit in Copenhagen occurring around the same time and region as the Dec. 10 Nobel festivities in Oslo, environmentalists have even greater hope: “Now that we know President Obama will be in Scandinavia in December,” says the WWF’s U.S. climate-change director, “expectations are even higher that he will attend the Copenhagen climate summit in person to usher in a fair, ambitious and binding climate agreement.”

Following his speech, Obama also greenlighted the EPA’s “new rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from hundreds of power plants and large industrial facilities” (New York Times).

September’s New York summit also gave “a strong boost to the negotiations over a major international treaty” (The Guardian). According to The Guardian’s online reporting:

Although the political leaders must devise and implement the right policies to guide national and global emissions trajectories, it is the private sector that will be the main engine in the transition to a low-carbon global economy.

In that respect it was very encouraging that 181 investors, collectively responsible for the management of more than $13 trillion in assets globally, launched a statement in New York last week to support a global agreement on climate change. The Leadership Forum for business leaders, which ran alongside the summit, also highlighted a tremendous variety of innovative ideas from within the private sector for the low-carbon transition.

Also in the private sector, Apple became “the latest company to resign from the United States Chamber of Commerce over climate policy” (New York Times), precisely because the chamber opposes EPA rules above. Encouragingly, three large utilities have also resigned from the chamber — Pacific Gas & Electric, PNM Resources and Exelon.

And one of the most encouraging displays of political will has come from Norway, which “said it may reduce greenhouse- gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, the most ambitious target proposed by a developed nation” according to Bloomberg.

The pledge puts Norway ahead of the 27-nation European Union and Switzerland, which have said they’ll cut emissions by as much as 30 percent by 2020 if a new United Nations treaty to fight global warming is brokered in Copenhagen in December. -Bloomberg

Everything is looking toward Copenhagen in December, which is fraught with considerable challenges. To list all of them would require a scholarly work. Being informed is critical and vital, especially about climate change.

I strongly encourage you to spend concentrated time with the following resources:

1. Keep track of the COP15 treaty at 350.org.
2. Find out who’s representing your country at COP15 and what they think at AdoptANegotiator.org.
3. Petition your representative to support a climate treaty that will reduce carbon emissions at WeCanSolveIt.org.

On the same 60 Minutes broadcast that brought the story of the threatened migration of the wildebeest, another eye-opening story was exposed about coal ash. You probably have never heard of coal ash and may believe electricity is clean. Well, watch the segment.

I physically became depressed after watching those two segments. It was a whole-body sinking. I was depressed for my son, the Earth and humanity.

In matters of such scale we can no longer expect leaders of any stripe to do all the work or even do the right thing. Truth has been concealed, spun and ignored again and again.

We must be personally involved!

In the weeks leading up to December, climate change will be regularly featured on this blog and starting with this post I urge all of you to become engaged in this call to action here with your comments and ideas, in your own lives, and by becoming educated, clicking through to the many resources that will be linked.

If you are new here or haven’t subscribed yet, please subscribe via email. You can also friend me on Twitter.

I will be on Mind of the Magi show by Dr. Michael Holt on Wednesday, September 30, at 2 pm EST.

You can call in or listen online. You can even listen via iTunes. Visit this page to learn more:

Here’s the description of this particular show:

Weekly show on Natural Medicine, Hypnotherapy, NLP, Nutrition, Fitness with Dr. Michael Holt the founder of the Magi Institute of Natural Medicine and his special guests Pamir Kiciman to discuss Reiki.

Pamir Kiciman is a Soul Whisperer and Life Enrichment educator, and founder of Oasis Reiki. He specializes in Original/Classical Japanese Usui Reiki Training. He has worked in a variety of environments in 15 years of teaching, including time spent at Imperial Point Medical Center in South Florida. Pamir has also conducted Reiki Training at Florida Atlantic University’s College of Nursing. Recently, he was selected as a Featured Voice on Intent.com. Pamir has spent the last 15 years training himself and others in subtle energy, intentional healing, holistic health, meditation, spiritual psychology, nonduality, and world wisdom traditions.

Above all else, Pamir is dedicated to being a catalyst for a transformation by bringing soul and the teachings of Oneness to the forefront in individuals and in society at large. Pamir educates people through various channels, including his own Reiki Help Blog.

Reiki is most popularly known as a hands-on healing art, which it is in one of its applications. Hands-on Reiki is in fact rooted in spiritual discipline, the basis of which is meditation. Usui Sensei taught specific meditations. Similarly, Reiki is known as energy healing, which it does facilitate. What’s often missed, however, is that before energy can exist there first has to be consciousness. It is by participating in this primordial consciousness that Reiki fulfills its true purpose for practitioner and recipient alike.

And, October 15, 2009 is Blog Action Day once again: An annual nonprofit event, it aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. The aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.

This year’s topic is focused on Climate Change, by unanimous voting.

The Reiki Help Blog has participated for the last two years. In 2008 the topic was poverty and I posted about the availability of clean, potable water to all populations of the world.

In 2007 the topic was the environment and as one of the earlier posts on this blog, I’m quite proud of this entry.

Climate change is not new to this blog. As stewards of our environment and spiritual practitioners, we are the only ones who can really do something about it!