Reiki tsm (2025)

25/02/2025

One of the facets of this practice that daily holds my attention is its essential simplicity. Simplicity does not imply a lack of depth. The depths are revealed by a daily and disciplined practice. One discipline is taking the practice as received without needing to add novelty to it. Another is simply doing the practice and allowing the practice to bring about developments in the way of being of the practitioner.

In the movie ‘The last Samurai’, the main character Nathan Algren is in a wooden sword bout and unable to best his Japanese opponent using his cavalry sword fighting skills. A young Samurai Nobutada intervenes.
Nobatada: Please forgive, too many mind.
Nathan Algren: Too many mind?
Nobatada: Mind the sword, mind the people watch, mind the enemy, too many mind... No mind.

This ‘no mind’ story is a way of viewing what happens in this practice called reiki. Mind of healing. Mind of doing. Mind of needing answers. Too many mind. Hawayo Takata had this way of simplicity honed to a fine art. She said it all in ‘Practise, Practise Practise’, and ‘Let Reiki teach you’. She meant let the practice teach you. That is the key.

Allow the practice to teach you. Allow it to teach you the nature of healing, how the complex interaction of mind, body and spirit naturally reconfigures itself. Allow it to teach you the way of presence, of being present, that can become your moment to moment experience. Allow it to lead you to the knowing of who and what you truly are. Nothing to do, nowhere to go. Simply allow the knowing of these things to find you.

30/11/2023

This is the path to Knowing.

06/11/2023

A year or two ago I first came across the information that Mikao Usui used a system of six ranks with his students. A student began at Rank 6, with the first three ranks, Rank 6, Rank 5, and Rank 4, corresponding to what is called “First Degree” or Shoden. A student progressed through these ranks by demonstrating proficiency and diligence in their practice.

Rank 3 was Okuden (corresponding to “Second Degree”) and was split into two parts, a first half (zenki) and a second half (kōki).

Rank 2 was the level of shinpiden, (Teaching level) in which was taught how to perform the ceremony of reiju. Usui placed himself in Rank 2 with Rank 1 being left vacant. One explanation offered for this is that Usui’s placement of himself in Rank 2 was out of a very Japanese sense of modesty, and that may have an element of being so.

If however, the ranking system is viewed as a horizontal spread and not a vertical hierarchy, some interesting perspectives appear. There is no ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ level, all are at the same level. The progression through the ‘ranks’ was by invitation, a recognition of a students development and application to the practice.

If the System of practice is perceived to be a ‘spiritual development’ system with awakening as the potential outcome, then this potential exists at every rank, even at Rank 6. I am reminded at this point of the advice in my own form of practice that ‘first degree is complete in itself, there is no need to take further levels’. The rank is just a number, that may be formally assigned, and not necessarily the absolute indicator of where the student is on the development path.

In this way Rank 2 is the designator of a teacher only. Which leaves the question of what is Rank 1. Is this possibly a designator for an as yet unrealized developmental state that is not that of an enlightenment experience (which Usui is stated to have experienced)? This leads me to a perception that Usui was being totally real in his assessment that Rank 2 was ‘where he was’.

I will further suggest that Rank 1 is where Reikitsm (the secret method) is pointing, the realm of Mystic Order as Phyllis Furumoto phrased it. My experience of the practice and the path that the symbol practice has opened up would indicate that this may indeed be so.

13/10/2023

I once held a pilots' licence, literally experienced the world from a 10,000ft viewpoint. One can see a long distance, know that going from point A to point B can be a straight line. When looking down the details often are a blur; only the significant features remain visible. From the perspective of looking down from a great height, many of the questions and talking points of the world of Reiki practice blur into the background with one point prominent in all forms. The practice began with one man on a mountain who had an enlightenment experience.

We can only imagine what ‘enlightenment’ is, as it is most likely not in our experience. We are told he felt ‘a great Reiki over his head’. The rest is left to our interpretation. My interpretation is that he used a Japanese word to give a name to a very real presence, a consciousness that is present in every aspect of the universe. It has been given different names through the ages. IT (uppercase is intentional) doesn’t care what we name it, and I don't actually know what IT IS, but I have the awareness that IT has been part of my experience every moment of my life. This practice that we call Reiki has been a mechanism to bring into consciousness, a moment-to-moment awareness of IT. My further interpretation is that the experience is a very normal human one.

All of the constructs of the system of practice evolved from this one man's experience. His enlightened eyes saw the world differently to our own eyes, and he drew on forms of practice with which he was familiar - ones that had the capacity to create the environment for this process we call enlightenment to emerge. My understanding is that the enlightened mind already exists within each one of us; the enlightenment process is a ‘mind shift’ (healing the heart-mind) to allow its expression in our lives. Many of the common questions about the practice disappear when it is viewed through ‘enlightened eyes’.

As in many spiritual practices, there are different levels of understanding and focus. At one level there is the ordinary, every day personal practice on self and on others. Some have identified and structured this practice in terms of a modality, and even that focus also serves a purpose. My experience is that every aspect of the system of which I am aware has another invisible overlay, what I call ’the system thread’ which appears to also apply to other Usui Reiki forms.

The clear thread of the NOW is woven into the Reiki precepts: each one an instruction for being 'in the now’. It appears again in the hands-on treatments when the energy healing connotations are let go, and instead, treatments become a practice of meditative stillness and presence, of being present with oneself and the presence that is the receiver of the treatment. This embodied presence is key: nothing to do, nowhere to go. In short, the simple practice that Hawayo Takata is renowned for.

The thread of the NOW is woven through the symbol practice. Hawayo Takata used the words 'secret and sacred’, which are generally greatly misunderstood. The symbols absolutely carry secrets, and the nature of what they have to reveal is in the realm of what may be consider sacred - something one holds close to one’s heart. The symbol practice is initially a minded relationship with the symbol itself, and at some later point connecting with the nature of what the symbol actually represents. Treating them as tools or training wheels is 'fatal’ in this process.

This system thread also points to an as yet unrealised vision and direction for the future of Reiki practice. Phyllis Furumoto first expressed her description of the ‘Aspects and Elements of the Form’ in 1993. The one aspect Phyllis spoke of as little known, but that would find expression in time, was Mystic Order. She wrote of it in terms of a community ‘awakening to the experience of a much greater reality beyond what is commonly known’.

For some years, my relationship with what the symbols represent has been unwaveringly pointing toward this greater reality. This is a vision of the practice that is calling from a deeper place, beyond ‘modality’, and ‘energy healing’. Perhaps we will arrive there some NOW moment. There is a choice to make, a path to take.

19/05/2023

What we see is most often what we expect to see or what we are conditioned to see. What we believe that we ‘know’ can blind us to a reality in front of our eyes.

So it is with the Reiki practice. Traditions and teachings from different sources hold equal possibilities of knowing and unknowing. What follows is a personal perspective.

Starting with the account of Mikao Usui’s awakening experience on the mountain, my mind goes to others who have had similar experiences, and founded a practice afterward. These practices were intended to facilitate others who chose to follow that system of practice to have the experience of awakening. The Usui System is such a system in my personal experience.

One part of Usui’s system is the precepts which is the focus of this post. The precepts are recorded on Usui’s memorial stone in a Japanese script. As an English language speaker I am reliant of the translation skills of someone who can read the original Japanese source.

The art of the translator is to change the words from one language form to another while retaining the original meaning. Some translators are more skilled at this than others, and a professional translator may produce a translation with word specific differences from a lay person who can read Japanese script. What is important is that the words of the translation carry the meaning of the original work.

In my form of practice (Usui Shiki Ryoho) the form of the precepts is not exactly the same as the direct translation from the memorial stone, having been interpreted and uniquely expressed by Hawayo Takata in her teachings in the early days of Reiki practice in the western world. The memorial stone and its translations however, did not come to prominence for quite some years after Takata died.

It is very easy to get fixated on the ‘right’ words, the ‘right’ sequence of words. Which is where I was some ten years and more ago until an inspiration came. What if the exact words and sequence didn’t actually matter beyond the definition of a standardised form in a specific practice …if the meaning remained intact? This question changed many things for me.

The memorial stone refers to the precepts as ‘the secret method’. What is the secret they hold? This question was the trigger to an insight that the sages of old (also mentioned in the text of the memorial stone), the enlightened ones, have all spoken in terms of ’now’ and being ‘present to the now moment’. Usui was said to have experienced an enlightenment so it would be no surprise to find this same thread woven into the system he founded …and it is.

The precepts are instructions in how to be present to the now moment, how to make ‘the now moment’ ones lived experience, without worry, without anger, living in gratitude and mindful of all that life holds.

The ‘secret method’ is in plain sight for those with eyes to see it.

25/04/2023

The Reiki story in brief is that Mikao Usui went in search of the nature of healing. That search led inevitably into the nature of mind. The language of the mind is a language of symbols which have multiple levels of meaning, and are only fully known when their true nature is revealed to a mind able to release identifications formed out of academic learning processes, present to ‘what is”.

The symbol practice has long been practised and expressed in terms of the symbols as 'healing tools' and perhaps even as 'training wheels' that can be discarded. These concepts have served a purpose, and at the same time limited discovery of the greater dimension of experience of what the practice of the symbols holds.

Reiki tsm translates the practice using symbols into the keys to, and the experience of, the wisdom teachings of the system that they have always been, with their application squarely in what Phyllis Furumoto termed the aspect of Mystic Order (an order sourced out of Mystery).

The symbol practice, in this manner, is moved to a place beyond the concepts of 'healing tools', and into the realms of the 'secret and sacred' as was expressed by Hawayo Takata.

The relationship with the symbols becomes not with the symbol itself, but with the nature of that which the symbol represents.

Extracted from www.reikitsm.com

19/04/2023

The image attached to this post is the Japanese Kanji character for the spoken word ‘Reiki’. Reiki is the word used by Mikao Usui to describe what he felt during what is said to be an enlightenment experience on a mountain top. He said he felt ‘a great Reiki over his head’.

The image shows various strokes of the kanji character labelled with a meaning. The overall meaning of the character however, is only pointed to by the meaning of the strokes, and there are different meanings for the character depending on the kanji characters before and after it

The most common understanding of the meaning of the Reiki kanji is ‘universal energy’. However, the kanji script is a picture script which ‘paints’ an image that requires interpretation. The creative interpretation that follows is of the kind that inspired and enlivened the path of Reiki tsm.

The first level picture that it presents to me can be worded as the gift of heaven, the rain falling on the earth bringing life, invoked by the dancing shamans. Entering into that image and allowing the feeling tone behind the image to emerge, leads to a next level understanding.

The next level is that the shamans are us, the people, not only invoking the gift but celebrating and dancing in joy and gratitude at its receipt, graced in relationship with the source of the gift, which in my experience is a very real Presence (a great reiki overhead).

The word ‘Reiki’ thus describes the very nature of our human experience, graced by, and with life breathed into it by a Presence beyond our human comprehension. No words or language are adequate, so ‘Reiki’ is as good as any for this universal Presence, present everywhere, and at all times.

02/01/2023

Just so. Love it!

27/12/2022

A reminder to self.

18/12/2022

The Future of Reiki

Various sources have in recent times expressed views on the future of Reiki as a practice. Essentially these opinions are based on the identification of Reiki as a healing modality and how it can be a presence and a moderating influence in the world. Nothing wrong with that, it’s a natural projection of how the practice has been viewed and presented for many long years. It’s a natural for those whose livelihoods are based in the practice as a healing modality. There is however, another vision that is inclusive of everyone no matter their involvement in the practice.

The Four Aspects is the terminology created by Phyllis Furumoto to describe the experience of the practice of Usui Shiki Ryoho. My focus in this moment is on Mystic Order. The image below may even be said to be a ‘mystic order production’ as it was presented to me during self treatment a number of years ago. Four light circles formed and came together as in the image.

The image has stood the test of time. I can place myself in any of the circles, be in all of them at the same time in the very centre. The interesting insight from this image is that I am always standing in mystic order, which is also true of life itself. The circle of Mystic Order is the container for the other circles, is the space from which our total experience arises. It is the essentially mysterious way that the universe comes into being, the basis (perhaps) of the experience of union with a greater reality that has been reported by mystics and sages in all places and times.

Phyllis Furumoto’s definition of Mystic Order (from the website) is a ‘group of people who share a common practice that brings them, through experience, to a reality beyond the realm of the five senses. Though the practice of Reiki employs the sense of touch, the quality of that touch can take us into the realm of union and communion with self, others, and the essence of life. Students experience directly through practice the interconnectedness of being and awaken to the experience of a much greater reality beyond what is commonly known’.

That description is rich in meanings, and holds true on many levels in my direct personal experience. We each hold the potential of manifesting this ‘greater reality’. The future of the Reiki practice is not so much what we do in the world ‘out there’, but what we who engage in the system do to heal/change/ transform our own lives, and have that change in us move the world around us. That is the only future with real potential that is worth creating. That is what the concept of ‘being the change’ is about.

It begins with self, self treatment every day. It begins with sharing treatment regularly (weekly at a minimum) with others, a continuum of giving and receiving. Through our personal practice being truly present with our own self and with another, entering into the stillness and presence of our practice until it becomes a way of being in every aspect of life. Now is a good time to begin.

Now is where the future of Reiki begins …with me, with you.

Reiki tsm

25/02/2025

30/11/2023

06/11/2023

13/10/2023

19/05/2023

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