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The Saga of Reiki
It was a dark and stormy night, darker now than it seems, in a place that perhaps we've seen in our dreams. Or maybe it was a sunny day. Anyway in the mid 1800's, in Kyoto, Japan lived a schoolteacher by the name of Dr. Mikao Usui. As the story goes one of Usui's students asked how Jesus and the Buddha healed the sick with their hands. Dumbfounded, Usui began his search for the answer to his pupil's question. Usui's quest took him all over the world, but he still had no answers. Eventually he ended up in Tibet. With knowledge of the language of Sanskrit, Usui studied the ancient texts. It was here that he found some of his answers; a text, written by one of the Buddha's students, containing a code for using healing energy. Not knowing how to activate this energy, Usui went to Mt. Koryama in Japan where he fasted and meditated for three weeks. On the last day Dr. Usui saw an intense light coming towards him. With his acceptance of the light, Usui saw symbols. Along with information about how to useeach of them, he also discovered how to activate and pass on the energy. As Dr. Usui descended the mountain he had, what are known as, 'the four miracles.' The first happened when he stubbed his toe. He put his hands on the wound as it gushed blood and immediately the cut was healed. Usui then reached a house where he ate a full meal and even after three weeks of fasting he felt no discomfort. A woman at the house had a toothache. After placing his hands on the sides of her mouth the ache disappeared. When he finally reached the monastery where he was staying, he healed a monk who had suffered an arthritic attack. Dr. Usui called this healing energy, Reiki; Rei meaning 'spiritual intelligence' and Ki meaning 'life force energy'. When put together Reiki means 'universal life force energy'. Dr. Usui traveled throughout Japan sharing Reiki with those who needed it. He attuned around sixteen Reiki masters including Chujiro Hayashi. Chujiro Hayashi continued to pass Reiki on after the death of Dr. Usui in 1930. Hayashi opened a Reiki clinic in Tokyo where he and others shared Reiki with the sick. In 1935, a woman named Hawayo Takata came from Hawaii to the Reiki clinic in Tokyo. She was hoping Reiki would help her with, what doctors had diagnosed as, gall bladder disease. After three months at the clinic she was healed and her life was saved. Takata too became attuned to reiki and began to work in the clinic. Takata moved back to Hawaii, where she opened up her own clinic. In 1938 Hayashi made Mrs. Takata a reiki master for he had a fear that all reiki would soon disappear in Japan. Hayashi's fears were right, world war two broke out and the reiki clinic was shut down. It was through Mrs. Takata that reiki survived and was brought to the west. Mrs. Takata attuned many reiki masters in her lifetime, charging as much as $10,000 for the master level. Her thought was that people in the west associate worth with money, and that reiki would only be respected and appreciated by charging a high price. Today it is rare to find someone charging $10,000 for attunements. People today feel that no one should be excluded from reiki and even a little of the healing, no matter how much or how little it is appreciated, helps. So through Mrs. Takata reiki was spread throughout the west, the world, and now to you. A note on the saga of reiki: For the most part reiki and its story have been passed down from master to student orally and have just recently been put into text. Therefore this story might not be the entire truth. Every time someone tells me the story or every time I have read the story in books, it is always slightly different. My story is made up of ideas that seem to be consistent in all the stories I have heard. Some truths might be left out and some false information might be presented. My suggestion is to do what I did. Read different accounts and ask different reiki people to tell you the story. Eventually you will get to the truth. Actually this relates not only to the reiki story, but also to almost everything about reiki. How it is taught, the attunements, the symbols have all been slightly altered or 'improved' due to the nature of Reiki's mostly oral tradition. The energy, the Ki, however, is the same. The energy and the intent to use it for healing is what makes reiki still reiki. It’s what makes different versions of the same symbol work and it's what makes different ways of passing attunements work. There is a higher source working with us in reiki. Trust that source, and it will literally lead you to the light. |