I recently ran into someone who told me how they had just completed their Reiki Master program. I was a bit taken aback because they had just taken their Reiki I and II in the previous months. I thought that was odd that any Reiki Master would allow someone to go through the Master program after just having completed their first two levels. For me, when I teach a Reiki Master class, I want to make sure the students enrolling have truly worked with the energy, understand the energy and have a personal practice with the energy. It got me to thinking, what makes you a Master?
Back in the days of Dr. Usui, there were no levels of Reiki. I would guess that in order to be a practitioner of the art, one would have had to study and practice for years. Nowadays, we can get through our basic skill levels in an 8-hour day, maybe less. Since Reiki was brought to the Western World, we have bastardized it into becoming a healing modality. We’ve done the same with Yoga. These practices in the Eastern culture are part of a lifestyle. Reiki is what we would call a preventive healthcare system. We have made Yoga an exercise program to make you more flexible and to quiet your mind for one hour.
If you follow the practice of Reiki, you will know the principles:
If you truly have “Mastered” Reiki, you will be living these principles on a daily basis. In today’s world, it’s not so easy to be a master of these principles. How many of us don’t ever worry? I’m sure we never get angry either. It’s in the effort that we succeed. For me, being a Reiki Master means that I am continuously learning and growing in the energy. I am understanding all points of views and all the new information that people are channeling through Reiki sessions. I am constantly learning about energy and how emotionally it plays out in people’s lives.
The word Master, as a noun, comes from Old English and means “one having control or authority”. As a verb, it means “to acquire complete knowledge”. Are we, as Reiki Masters, really doing justice to our students if we move them through a system that even we don’t fully understand?
Just a thought for the day. What do you think about this?