Reiki Help Blog :: Oasis Reiki Dojo

Love in a most wonderful way transforms and spiritualizes wherever it appears.

— Paramahansa Yogananda

As promised, more poetry. First some Rumi. It’s so very difficult to select which of his delicious verses to quote. As a true mystic, ecstatic verses poured out of him like a great, surging river. His work is prodigious, and it may surprise you to know he’s America’s best-selling poet, this realized soul who was born in the 13th century!

To help you know him there’s one video embedded here, an excerpt from the PBS film on his life and work (email/rss readers need to click back to the original post to view video), and a link to another one of an interview with the film’s producer/director Haydn Reiss.

The essence of Rumi is pure divine love. He exemplifies poetry as spiritual vehicle and expression. Get to know his work. You’ll never be disappointed and will always leave enriched.

You are Joy!

Oh my God, our intoxicated eyes
Have blurred our vision
Our burdens have been made heavy,
Forgive us.

You are hidden and yet
From east to west you have filled the world with Your radiance
Your Light is more magnificent
Than sunrise or sunset
And you are the inmost ground of consciousness
Revealing the secrets we hold.

You are an explosive force
causing our dammed up rivers to burst forth.

You whose essence is hidden
While Your gifts are manifest
You are like water
and we are like millstones
You are like wind and we are like dust;
The wind is hidden while the dust is plainly seen.
You are the invisible spring
and we are your lush garden
You are the spirit of life,
And we are like hand and foot;
Spirit causes the hand to close and open.

You are intelligence,
And we are your voice
Your intelligence causes this tongue to speak.
You are joy and we are laughter,
For we are the result
of the blessing of Your joy
All our movement is really
A continual profession of faith
Bearing witness to Your eternal power
Just as the powerful turning of the millstone
professes faith in the rivers existence.

Dust settles upon my head and upon my metaphors
For You are beyond anything we could ever think or say
And yet this servant cannot stop trying
to express Your beauty in every moment,
let my soul be Your carpet.

Mathnawi V: 3307-3319

Translated by Kabir and Camille Helminski

Phil Cousineau speaks with filmmaker Haydn Reiss about his award-winning film “Rumi, Poet of the Heart.”

Each post for the Reiki Help Blog can take anywhere from 1-5 days to write/research, proofread/edit, and post with an appropriate image and formatting. If you leave this space with any value, knowledge, joy or understanding, please consider making a donation of your choice.

Donate to this blog. Thank you!

Love exists naturally. We don’t need to have any instructions. It arises all by itself and we feel it. Love is woven intricately into the fabric of life. At the same time, love requires our attention and thoughtfulness. Love’s deepening is a moment to moment cultivation. To truly feel and understand love we have to be willing, and spend time with it.

While love is inborn and pervasive, to really know and share love is a constant learning. Love is a skillful means. For instance, hate requires no skills, but love is a continuous mastering; it elicits and requires our best all at the same time.

Being willing to love is probably the most important piece. Love silently waits for us, the chooser. In every situation, no matter how impossible, love can be chosen at least in some manner. And choosing it in a greater way is the task we have with love.

In fact, to go all the way with love, instead of only feeling and knowing it, we have to become love. Then every choice includes love. Love IS, but merely leaving it there is a waste. It’s useless as a mere wave, a possibility; it brings no value to the world. We must be a particle of love in physicality so that society can be modeled on all love is, instead of fear or hate.

To fear is so easy. Like hate, it requires no skill or special capacity. To love requires tons of courage. Loving is an act of courage because at first it leaves us vulnerable. With more loving, we realize vulnerability is a false weakness, a cultural overlay. Opening to love is scary because we have to admit to things and feel exposed. It takes us to a place where we have to commit to inner and outer work, sometimes tough, very tough work. Deep in that work we realize that that very transparency is the gift.

Love overcomes fear if we’re willing to show up. In the end love asks, “Where’s your fear or anger now?” Because love liberates the truth within, it can pervade experience at any time.  And the truth has nothing to hate or fear.

We must love with increasing depth and breadth to allow its natural expression. Being love is where we find its truest meaning.

Each post for the Reiki Help Blog can take anywhere from 1-5 days to write/research, proofread/edit, and post with an appropriate image and formatting. If you leave this space with any value, knowledge, joy or understanding, please consider making a donation of your choice.

Donate to this blog. Thank you!

Exactly one week ago, Oasis Reiki (yours truly) and several practitioners I’ve trained shared Reiki at Barry University’s Health Fair, in Miami Shores Florida. The fair was put on by the Division of Nursing.

Our booth was very popular with a constant stream of people all day. Demand was so high that at times it felt like having a few more hands would’ve been extremely helpful. There were five of us there and most of the day we had to seamlessly continue with the next person.

The only real break we got was when the whole fair had lunch. Even then we talked about Reiki and I answered some questions that puzzled practitioners.

It was interesting that before lunch things were a little chaotic insofar as organizing recipients, sticking to first come first served, and crowd patience wasn’t always available.

After lunch, the wait became self-organized! People signed in of their own accord and waited in proper order by the table given us.

This was the influence of the divine energy of Reiki, building up through the morning and really filling our corner, spreading out from there with its balance and harmony.

When I got there first thing in the morning, the thought that appeared independently was: Reiki is the way of gentleness. It is a corner of peace in your life.

This proved to be true all day, starting with the first two practitioners to arrive thanking me for Reiki on their traffic-less morning commute. One also reported: “the night before, during and after I was filled with an overwhelming sense of peace, love, happiness, sweetness, and eternal gratefulness.”

One highlight moment for me was when I felt the movement of an expectant mother’s baby. We helped people who were seeking relief from:

• knee pain
• shoulder and neck tension
• high blood pressure
• digestive disorders
• high cholesterol, headaches
• cataracts
• all over pain
• cervical concerns
• getting ready for surgery
• lower back pain–”amazing how it can work right through a chair”
• rapid heartbeat
• sciatic nerve pain
• low energy and so many more

One practitioner shared this:

One of the last receivers sat on the chair looking a little nervous and incredulous about Reiki. He stated he had lower back pain and high intraocular pressure. I left it in God’s hands…when I stood in from of him to focus on his eyes, a cold, practically tactile and almost painful sensation went through my hands. It was so physical that my eyes opened and I saw how his expression changed to a surprised and excited one (his eyes were closed). The sensations decreased in intensity and when they stopped completely I finished the session. When it ended, he was excited to know how Reiki works.

We also saw a high amount of:

• life, work and school stress
• worry
• mental confusion
• family tensions
• grief
• relationship anxiety

One practitioner shared this:

I intuited some sadness, loss, and even scattered energy. Those who were emotionally hurting made me feel more awareness of LOVE flowing through me. I knew they needed healing and wanted it to be powerful for them.

What else can we learn about life, being human and Reiki from this day? Well there’s nothing quite like a good Reiki story. Let me tell you some more, for Reiki’s benefits are far-reaching. One of my practitioners is in nursing school. She’s overworked and her time isn’t her own. Yet:

Later my mom and I spent some time together and she commented how she had been stressed and worried, sad, with a migraine the whole day but suddenly realized she’d changed to a calmed, more positive state with no more headache. She insisted it was my presence. She told me that this state had lasted the rest of the day. Maybe I just felt so blessed with the Reiki experience that I could still transmit healing without conscious intent. I not only felt calmed for the rest of the day but very “awake” too. It’s so easy to “fall asleep” and become connected to this world, that trying to remember to be conscious is very hard and “work” for me. Today, after all that Reiki, I was very awake.

When the fair was over and all other booths had packed and left, we still had a waiting line. Slowly chairs became empty and we starting folding up our stuff too. None of us disagreed that it was an intense day.

I felt great at the end of the day, with a lot of energy and very peaceful. I prayed and gave thanks for this blessing. Since this was my first time giving Reiki intensively, to so many people, I was worried about having enough energy to do this. How little did I know…the more I gave, the more energy I felt!

All in all we gave Reiki to about 125 people, maybe more. Like I said it was intense. Yet so worth it:

Yes, it was rather intense. I did indeed feel peaceful and honored to give Reiki. I felt like time flew! I felt joyful while doing it, and since.

And:

All I want to do, all I ask the universe is the opportunity to help others through love. My dream, my purpose, what I want to do the most, was realized today. I felt this the entire time to the degree that I was almost euphorically happy!

This is the efficient beauty of Reiki. The giver and receiver are both enriched. I wish there was more to report directly from those that sat under our hands. Mostly it was nonverbal, but faces all expressed the mysterious wonder of each brief encounter.

There was the physician who wants to integrate healing with allopathic medicine. There was the woman who waited patiently for me to finish with someone else to find out how we know which areas are troubling the person. There was the young student who simply said, “I really liked it!” but it was her face that I can’t convey here: those words came from a sincerity of soul. There were multiple thanks from the organizers. Then there were moments like this:

One of the ladies I gave Reiki to spoke no English. She was so sweet and spiritual. She communicated with me the whole time using her eyes (this communication occurred with several of the receivers). After the session, she desperately wanted to tell me something. I tried and tried to understand what she meant until I got it…”You prayed for me but I also prayed for you” meaning she knew somehow I was praying for her inside and that she will pray for me too.

What else can be said? It took me a week to distill this experience and I feel so much has been left out. May silence now convey the rest.

“When you help you see life as weak, when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. From the perspective of service, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this way of seeing.”

–Rachel Naomi Remen

Related:
Anatomy of a Reiki Training

Update 7/31/08:
This Reiki outreach has been mentioned in The Reiki Digest, a regular roundup of news about Reiki from around the world.