Varieties of Reiki

Q: Are there different kinds of Reiki sessions for different needs, like one for night to relax if you have trouble sleeping or one for morning if you need more energy?

A: Surprisingly no. It isn’t guided or prescriptive like that. The energy is like a raw material that the body uses where ever and however it is most needed. On of my teachers told the story of a gentleman with tennis elbow. He was very skeptical of Reiki, didn’t think it would help at all, but came to the session to placate his wife. He would’t let the Reiki master touch him anywhere except his left elbow. After a couple of sessions it didn’t do anything for his elbow….but it greatly improved his blood pressure. Nothing else in his life had changed to explain the improvement…no change in his medication or diet or activity or anything else that they could think of except the Reiki sessions. The body puts the energy where it needs it the most. Timing isn’t an issue, either. Reiki can be sent with the intent that it activate at a time when it is most needed as well. Like gravity, Ki is everywhere, all the time, and Reiki simply helps you draw from that energy in a time and a place and a way that is for your best health. For example, if problems sleeping is the main concern, a morning Reiki session might help the underlying reason for the insomnia, and in turn help the sleeping problem when bedtime comes around.  Like the tennis elbow, the blood pressure was a more important issue. We trust the body (in its physical, mental and emotional aspects) to put the energy where it is most needed. Like the morning session that helps bedtime insomnia, the body guides when the effects of the energy are felt. Thanks for the question!

NEW! second edition of PeaceTarot featuring updated cover art

Remember that new cover art I showed you and the updated second edition of PeaceTarot I mentioned a couple of weeks ago? It’s alive! Now available for affordable, instant download from TaoCraftTarot.shop

was first published in 2013 as a reponse to the Newtown tragedy. The book teaches you to do daily #meditations. The card meanings are all original material written with a calming, peaceful intent in mind. They are a product of my own daily meditation practice over the years prior to the 2013 edition. Sadly, tragedies continue and even came to touch touched our #hometown in October of 2018 at the Tree of Life Synagog in . If this small booklet inspires even a single moment of peacefullness for anyone anywhere, then it has served its purpose. It is my hope that, moment by moment, the thoughts and actions of peace we each bring into the world will be hung on the arc of history to slowly bend it toward justice after all.

Blue Dress With Pink Shoes

Carl Jung called it synchronicity.

I call it something worth a little attention.

Intuition, “psychic gifts” in many ways is simply letting yourself see connections and coincidences. Synchronicity is defined as a meaningful coincidence. Even if there is no plausible connection, if something seems meaningful to YOU – it IS. To you. Not every attention-getter is a profound announcement to the world. It might just be a message just for you. A reminder to water the plants, or something. It doesn’t have to change the destiny of the world to be real, to have a meaning impact impact on your way of thinking. A meaningful coincidence isn’t mystical destiny knocking at your door. Well, yeah, it might be….but it doesn’t always have to be.

Listening to coincidences, following such modern day omens, is how we live in a balance between intuition and logic, magic and mundane. We should pay attention when intuition grabs our attention. We shouldn’t go wild with it when logic and common sense urge caution.

In short, let love lead attention, let logic have a hand in deciding action.

Here is an example. A few days ago, I was reading a book when my husband showed me an internet picture of a pink and white sneakers, and asked me what color they are. When he said they looked teal and grey, I had to resist the urge to wrestle him to the ground and administer a colorblindness test. I mean, Teal? Seriously? It is, of course,  the same trick of light that sparked the great blue/black vs white/gold dress controversy of twenty ought fifteen. But, not having any Ishihara plates on hand, we both just shrugged and went back to what we were doing.

A few minutes and a few pages later Christopher Penzak in the Magick of Reiki describes taking an aura reading class and doing an exercise where several people would read a person’s aura and then compare notes afterward. (We did the same thing in an aura reading class I took back in the 90s, so I can verify this is both a good way to learn auras AND the way this exercise always seems to go) He saw bright yellow, another person saw electric blue, another person saw no colors at all but a zigzaggy lightning shape. Just the same, all of them interpreted what they saw as representing “stress” as I recall the story. On the surface, they each saw vastly different things, but at the core, the important message still was still communicated. Just exactly like the internet picture thing a few minutes before. He saw teal, I saw pink, but we both saw shoes. If everyone gets caught up in arguing over the color, we all would have miss the real message: “This person is feeling stressed right now” or “That is a pair of shoes.

Neither of these things are particularly unusual. Neither of these things are the slightest bit supernatural. We show each other internet pictures all the time. That’s the way aura classes go, it seems. BUT when the two very similar things coincidentally happen within a few minutes of each other, it is worth a moment of hmmmm….

Different colors lead to the same shoes. Different colors lead to the same aura energy. What do these two little attention grabbers lead to?

First and foremost, trust your intuition. You might intuitively get “pink” while someone else gets “teal” but as long as you ultimately wind up at the important part of “shoes” both colors are fine. As long as you (or the person you are reading for) gets to the important core message, all the different colors and paths that take you there are valid.

Second, trust your intuition. We all do this differently. Honor your path (no matter what color it may be) Honor your process. Do things so that you feel good and right about it at the end of the day. Do what gets you to the most honest message you can give. It doesn’t matter if you get there by seeing zigzags, blue or yellow, as long as you get to energy of it.

Third, trust your intuition. Your intuition might scream SHOES while you have pink shoes clearly in mind. If your client says nah, they are TEAL, then don’t sweat it. The symbolism of intuition is intensely personal. It might have taken the pink to get you to say the important “shoes” part. If  shoes makes them think teal, that’s perfectly fine. The right message got through. It just took a few daisy-chained steps to get from pink to teal, but as long as your client gets to “teal” it’s ok. It is just part of the process to go from pink to shoes to teal.

Fourth, trust your intuition. It’s an imprecise process. We all have intuition, but communicating it well is a skill and an art. We can all read Tarot and follow our own intuition. Reading for other people is a whole other level of thing. But don’t let that stop you from…did I mention?….trusting your own intuition for you.

Here is a photo of the pink shoes next to ….the pink shoes.

pinkshoes

One Card Handwritten InkMagick Sigil Tarot Example

Welcome to the last one of these I’ll be doing in colored ink. From now on These will have a whiter background and black, more precise lines. I’ll post some of the shorter “Today’s Tarot” posts with the new app….but this will give you a better idea of how much more in depth a personalized one card reading is compared to a generic blog post.

It’s all magick now….except for Zombie Cat’s yes/no readings and seasonal / specials like the “Seasons of the Year” layout, all of my readings follow this basic format….your card, interpretation, intuitive symbol /doodle / sigil element and an affirmation that sums up the main advice of the reading. The structure is the same. The intuitive content is as good as ever, it is just a matter of polishing up how I get it to you. I’m still finding balance between the personal, personalized feel of handwriting and the professional look and legibility of an actual font. The best mix so far has been all handwriting for one-cards, type for the longer ones (now that I have a way to insert the hand drawn sigil part into a typewritten page. I’m sure there are technically easier ways to do this, but intuitive feel plays a part too. What do you think? Any thoughts about black vs color, handwriting vs print (I do like fun fonts. Architect’s Daughter is my favorite for readings – for no particular reason.

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