How would you respond if you were told that you were in this life to learn to love, and that when you did you would change the world?

Even if you were not told this, both of those things are true.

The Buddha’s question “How well did you love?” is the key to the answers to the other questions.

In my experience, nothing else determined so fully how much life was in my living, or how real was the letting go, as did Love.

I don’t mean, pink fluffy love, or “need you” love, or “you complete me” love. I mean love that fills your being to overflowing, that feels like it’s opening your heart wide because it’s so big you can’t even begin to hold it in.

I mean love that is full of joy and delight at existence itself, as much for your own self as for everything else, and ultimately there is no difference.

Every thing, and every one, that I have loved, I have had to be willing to let go. The depth and clarity of that love has been the measure of how deeply I needed to let go, for love of my own self.

It didn’t mean that there was never pain or uncertainty over the possible outcomes. Lives end, lives go on. The paradox is that the more clearly and lovingly I let go, the more love flowed in: the more real relationships became, even when I was not physically in them any more.

That’s not an impossible dream. You can know that experience, because it is yours to have, the essence of your being.

The Buddha was asking the questions to plant a seed, to lead those willing to hear the question behind the question, into the possibility of going for it.

Believe, be willing to take a risk, and keep on being willing no matter what. You can do it.

To the mind everything is a symbol, an icon, a set of meanings and experiences, to the point that we often no longer truly see an object, and respond instantly to the minds identifications. Symbols are the power tools of the mind.

I am always curious about how my mind works. My mind thinks it is me, that my body is who I am (for example). The mind’s language is symbolic and it processes and makes “knowns” from all the inputs received from the external world.

If I pick a familiar item like a car, with a known function,  a “set of wheels”, a form of transport, is that what I see? Or do I see a status symbol, a symbol of freedom,  an expression of identity, or memory flashes of experiences with a particular vehicle. A car is perceived in all these ways and more. So too is life itself.

The mind’s identifications, and the response are part of our survival mechanisms, the fight or flight system when reaction is a life and death matter, no time to think on it. However this mechanism can work against us in other circumstances. Being mindful of the mind’s illusions is a path to healing our places of creating separation. 

Our “thought illusions” become a place of disconnect from real life and real people. Do I truly see and respond to the person in front of me, or do I create a separation, see “the enemy”, the stereotype, perhaps even a symbol of what I reject in myself. These are every moment opportunities for healing, for awakening to what is real.

Practices of mindfulness serve to put the brakes on unconscious living, allows different choices, allows us to become real. Being real is healing the illusory thoughts about who we are.

The Reiki practice is my way of doing this, a way to self healing, to living and growing in mindfulness, to being in the now moment.

You will have read many places statements about “how Reiki works”. The absolute honest answer is no one knows. No amount of magical or wishful thinking changes that simple fact.

The critics are able to say that the different explanations offered for how Reiki works are invariably contrary to the accepted science of a hundred years of physics, chemistry and biology. That’s not in dispute, and it serves no useful purpose to make statements that are not clearly framed as a statement of a belief, or a theory. However, it is really OK to not know an answer to “how it works”.

Not knowing doesn’t alter the experience that healing occurs. It doesn’t take away from the experience of those who have derived a benefit from the hands-on practice. It simply means that we don’t actually have a proof for how this happens. That’s true for many things in life, even in the field of science.

For 26 very powerful symbols go no further than the english alphabet. Ask anyone who is unable to read or write to know the truth of that. Numbers are powerful symbols. Our civilisations and their histories are built on words and numbers.

The crown and the cross are two powerful symbols that need no explanation, their multi level meanings are perceived without need of language. National flags are powerful political symbols which is why they are so often burned. So too are the symbols of military and economic power, the dollar sign, trademarks, uniforms, etc. Symbols are everyday universal language and communication devices.

However, when it’s something religious or esoteric, perhaps a Reiki symbol, its different, magical, special. Or is it?

In one sense these symbols are special, because the mind makes them so. Symbols are devices that impress the mind. It is the mind that interprets and assigns meaning and significance, it is belief that imbues a symbol with power.

That is one of the teachings inherent in symbols, give your power away to something outside yourself and learn that lesson. Realize that the power lies within yourself, and it’s a very different lesson.

Story telling is an integral part of oral tradition. Note that it is “story”, and not “history”.

In times gone our tribes used story to tell the story of origin, how “we the people” of this tribe came to be. More than who we are, its also the story of how we aspire to be, a glue that bonds the tribe to a purpose.

Story holds a mythical quality, its role models are the best vision of ourselves. We are able to recognise ourselves in the story, and the story becomes about us here now. We become part of the story, it lives on in each one of us.

The reiki story as told in a class, in the way of oral tradition, is all of these things. The story is a linking, a creation of relationship with the main players of the story, relayed through the story teller who is the bridge to the now. So the story was never history, not facts that you need to know.

This is  the real art and the heart of story, and it is all held in the space of being there, in the lived experience.

Reiki, The Usui System of Natural Healing, was introduced into the western world in the form of an oral tradition. Many people have mis-understood this, have taken it to mean that nothing gets written down.

Oral tradition refers to the way the system is taught, with a teacher and a student being together in the same physical space. What the student receives is more than what is communicated in words.

We all have tried unsuccessfully to describe an experience to someone who was not part of the experience, and ended up using the words “…well you just had to be there”.

That is what oral tradition is about. You have to be there.

From time to time friends ask whether they should meditate. There are no “shoulds” of course, but in my experience its beneficial to do so.

There are many different ways to engage in the meditative experience. Meditation takes many  forms, active or passive, still or moving, alone or in groups. There are no right ways and no wrong ways, only ways.

Meditation is a state of mindfulness, entering into the space of stillness and being present. Simply being present wherever you are, experiencing being there with every sense, as if for the first time, is a meditative state. 

Reiki treatment is itself a meditation form, its mindfully entering into mental stillness and being present, “doing without doing”. Doesn’t get simpler than that.

This year of 2012 and the December 21 date are a source of major interest. Something great or something life changing is expected, and maybe it will be so. Quite definitely something will happen. Its guaranteed. That’s true of life a minute from now, or months from now.

Some believe that magically everything will be different, a new age of enlightenment will be upon us, there will be heaven on earth. It will just happen. That could be true also, but you don’t have to wait for December 21. Start now, this very minute.

“Fake it til you make it” is an old saying, but its not being fake to imagine the best you that is possible, and to begin to live that way no matter what. The magic moment is now, it always has been.

Do that every day, be the best you can be, be in the now moment as far as its possible for you to be, don’t give up, and no matter what transpires this year you will be living in an enlightened way, maybe discover that heaven is actually here right now.