I appreciate that we all have different relationships with the symbols.. I'd just like to try a little question out....

if you could never use any of the symbols again during a self healing or treatment offered to someone else, how would this impact your life??

symbols obviously have their place within reiki...but when does a symbol go from being a 'tool' to becoming a 'crutch' ?

Hi Sharon

If I could no longer use any symbols during self and other healing sessions then I guess I would be ok about it. As long as I had received the Attunements I would still be practicing reiki. After all, most Reiki 1 practitioners do not know or use any Reiki symbols.

Knowing the symbols and their specific uses is very helpful and can expand you practice because they are useful tools. They become a crutch when they are overused and the practitioner comes to rely on them. We can do an awful lot of Reiki without using any symbols. It may be best to use the symbols only when really necessary.

I've been using the long distance symbol a lot lately. I use it because in all honesty, I can't seem to trust that the energy I want to send will end up where it's supposed to go. However, I sometimes find it tiresome to draw and say the mantra at the same time, I would like to just say it and see what happens but as I said, at the moment I'm not taking any chances.

there may be a difference between using the symbols consciously, and sub-consciously. quite a few folks with psychic abilities have commented on how they see the sysmbols within one on an on-going.

just cause we cant see something, doesn't mean it's not there.

interesting question Sharon re : symbols as 'tools' or as 'crutches' !

just to enjoy every reiki session, i tend to let them run 'uniquely' without any mental assertion on my side that i want this and this to happen... sometimes i draw symbols, and sometimes i don't... the thought and urge to draw a symbol usually comes as of a specific moment, and in my case, it is generally not preplanned... several times, my session ends without using any symbol... should i make myself accountable that why i haven't used a symbol as a 'necessary protocol' ? i think this will gradually lead me to think that reiki happens since i use symbols, and it no longer will happen, if i abandon the use of symbols... this would make me feel that symbols are crutches which i need to walk on my reiki session... but there's another face to this tendency.... Will this not 'limit' the scope of symbols by continuously making myself believe that symbols are 'necessary tools/crutches' to bring about a reiki experience, when, however, they are much more...


if our reiki experience starts with symbols (i.e. initiations) how can we afford to think that we can 'dispense with' them ever after ? oh, you see, again i m making the same mistake... using the words 'dispense with', i m making myself believe that symbols are something extra to the system... contrary to that, now, what if symbols are themselves the system ???


when we start a reiki treatment session, we start with our intent.... we intent that reiki should 'flow' (or whatever)... what 'qualifies' us in holding that intent ? the answer is : "our initiation" and what is our initiation, it is the manifestation of our 'master's intent that his/her student should be initiated, and ad infinitum, what this chain ends ? it is the intent of Usui Sensei himself when he empowered the symbols to 'hold' his intent so that the system may be communicated/carried down to others...

it would be more 'comfortable' if we assume that symbols are mataphorical manifestation of something 'conditioned' into symbols by the founder of the system... i think the real value lies in Usui's choosing to program a certain something (symbol) with 'his commands'... otherwise we all know that at least CKR was prevailing in Japan even before him... and HSZSN is not symbol per se, rather kanji presentation of hon-sho-zeh-sho-nen......

would be interesting to see that there is 'nothing' in the symbols if we choose to minus Usui's command from them, and there is 'everything' in symbols we don't... its just how we look at them


take care

salman

interesing points from everyone...there's much I need to respond to, but I'll come back another day....