aronaya wrote:I'm not saying that animals would initiate us humans to Reiki. I think their approach is more direct and less tangled up in the confusions and delusions of language.

Hmmmmm... maybe there is a connection there with Shinto???

Buck wrote:

Lambs-Wool wrote:hi Aronaya

i have no doubts over several superb abilities of animals that sometimes surpass the corresponding abilities of human beings... But the idea of 'reiki master cat' just hovered above my head without entering it when we use term 'master', we normally refer as someone who can initiate others into reiki...and that in turn requires certain ingredients so that the reiki ability may pass to the initiate... Can a cat, or some other animal, be supposed to do this??

Perhaps being a Reiki Master does not have as much to do with the comprehension of Reiki Symbols and esoteric initiatory rites but rather the ability to allow one's heart to be open and simply feel unconditional love.

hi Buck

again today, i m posting the second time as the earlier post was eaten up by an 'http error 401'

i m trying to understand what you've said.. if we see at initiations, what is at the core ? is there love/compassion, sacredness/esotericity, ability/empowerment ?
we find it difficult to pick one pair and leave the rest... all things 'constitute' the process we can call a reiki initiation... thus the esoteric flavour is also an ingredient, as is love and compassion....

technical debate aside, i feel i have to resort to the emotional tone of the passage by Aronaya more deeply, thus :

Aronaya wrote:
I have experienced great healing from a Reiki Master cat, attuned by the cat's human.

Ask for an initiation from a wild animal sometime -- you may end up questioning the idea that we understand the workings of Spirit any more deeply than they do. In fact, the wild beings have much to teach us.

if i get the real bent of his passage, i feel have a spoken from a differnt angle here... what he speaks is the accessibility of a living being to what is innate in it... animals are, no doubt' having more access to the innate ability within them, as compared to us humans... while we need something called "reiki" to invigorate / access our innate ability, animals can naturally do that... and perhaps, thats why, he said that if an animal wants, given its un-tainted love, un-associated natural flow, it can 'attune' someone as more effectively (or at least can transfer healing), as a highly trained reiki practitioner would ??

having that said, it is important to distinguish that every healing is not reiki, and reiki is not just healing... while things have a common semblance, their specie can differ very widely...

what i have observed about reiki so far, is that it operates througha spiritual mandate, that is, in a way, carried forward through symbols, as and eddict of Usui Sensei.. if we do what we are taught to do within reiki, we are practicing reiki... if we add things, or if we ignore things, we are doing something different than reiki, although it might be apparently more effective than reiki....

within esoteric cultures, it is sometimes a long-lived tradition, that a student feels it un-respectful to change something what his master had taught, unless the master gives a consent to change

thus, by all means, i agree with Aronaya as he said about animals, but i don't agree that would be Reiki :baseball:




take care

salman

Good point that an animal's love/affection is
un-conditional. They do have a nuturing/innate
healing abilities.

good points guys, . an attunement is only one part of an initiation. initiaiton being the attunement, teaching, watching the development of student in-course, assessing, depending on level. i mean, not everyone should be taught Reiki. for various reasons. we can see from Usui meorial this was indicated. there's lots of erm, aspects to consider.

in conferring an attunement, it's one thing the person giving it, though yet another thing the recipient understanding the significance of it.

warmest wishes
Wayne

This turned out to be great thread with a lot to digest..and since I have been struggling finding answer to some of the above questions I hope you'll not mind if I share some of it. So, let's start by
looking into why somebody shouldn't be thought Reiki vs. Why Somebody Should. How we reconcile this?

How RMT is to decide who is to get blessings that reiki process brings? It has been suggested by many that learning reiki doesn't depend on one's intellectual ability and now unless I have misunderstood, it is implied that if somebody is mentally challenged shouldn't be taught reiki. Now, point is taken that it will be next to impossible for RMT to teach somebody who is not able to understand but the question is for those sane among us :-) can Reiki really be understood and explained intellectually or does it take a “heart” to understand reiki?

How many among us can really claim to understand all aspects of reiki? In addition many teach and practice reiki by simply laying on the hands and let the reiki intelligence do the rest. Just as we do not “heal” many claim that we do not do the initiation. I have difficulties to believe that mentally challenged people would not benefit from ULFE.

While it seems that understanding all aspects of reiki might be “out of reach” for many (if not all) practicing it certainly doesn't seem to be “rocket science”

Regards,

Resko

hiya Resko!

rzukic wrote:
looking into why somebody shouldn't be thought Reiki vs. Why Somebody Should. How we reconcile this?

everyone's entitled to have a spiritual experience. this is the experience of 'Reiki' spoke about.

the issue, if it's even that, is the responsibility that comes with it. or is meant to come with it. folks that learn the path but then teach for all the wrong reasons. cheapen the system. others fly in the face of spiritual precidents on what is appropriate and what isn't (permission is one). just who, or even what lifeform should be trained, (if i can even call it that also). i'm in a rush, so this is 40 seconds of reasons. i can give more in a few hours if needed, .

rzukic wrote:
How RMT is to decide who is to get blessings that reiki process brings?

the teacher has the spiritual permission, by being a master, to decide whom they train. they've to use their own judgment.

rzukic wrote:
It has been suggested by many that learning reiki doesn't depend on one's intellectual ability and now unless I have misunderstood, it is implied that if somebody is mentally challenged shouldn't be taught reiki.

i think i've mentioned something to do with this before. there's two reasons care should be took.

first is that mentally ill folks (depending on the person) might have an uneasy reaction, and for certainly, might carry out inappropriate behaviour re: Reiki.

the second is if a RMT wants to teach, and they do teach, then they're teaching something. what this somethin is can vary sure, but it's common sense they'd like to pass full initiations (which is teachings) onto the student. if teh student hasn't the mental capacity to grasp what's being conveyed, it;s something to think about.

rzukic wrote:
Now, point is taken that it will be next to impossible for RMT to teach somebody who is not able to understand but the question is for those sane among us :-) can Reiki really be understood and explained intellectually or does it take a “heart” to understand reiki?

are you aksing can even someone of low intelligence recieve an attunement then place their hands on themselves. of course. Reiki training is much more than this. i've taught folks like this, last one being a martial arts friend 7 weeks ago, it's not as easy as it seems. and we gotta take on board, if we were able to only do attunement, teach principles, show them how to place hands on themselves, then that's all we would ever do. but we don't. And if it's all was needed, Usui senei wouldn't have had levels, in a progressive system, going deeper & deeper.

rzukic wrote:
How many among us can really claim to understand all aspects of reiki? In addition many teach and practice reiki by simply laying on the hands and let the reiki intelligence do the rest. Just as we do not “heal” many claim that we do not do the initiation. I have difficulties to believe that mentally challenged people would not benefit from ULFE.

of course mentally challenged folks would benefit from Reiki, . All humans who want it would benefit. this is different form the many aspects of a responsible teacher. in which there is much, much more, than laying on of hands, and letting Reiki do the rest. that in itself is a most basic teaching, which isn't entirely accurate. then, no-one would know unless they were able to either study, or listen to others. or have the capacity to think for themselves, against many peers, .

rzukic wrote:
While it seems that understanding all aspects of reiki might be “out of reach” for many (if not all) practicing it certainly doesn't seem to be “rocket science”

practicing Reiki is more than laying our hands on ourselves and experiencing a feeling. the principles must be used for all things. it starts with the principles, then the experience of Reiki compliments it. the principles need to be memorised, understood, at least logically, and integrated emotionally, mentally & spiritually. it's a constant practice. we gotta remember the practice of Reiki is two-fold. not just attunement & laying of hands, .

if we keep in perspective, mentally challenged folks cna at times not even have the motor skills physically we have, or be able to communicate effecitvely. makes me wonder is such situations who woudl even give permission for the teaching.

warmest wishes
Wayne

Hi Resko

combining post of Wayne, and then what you said as a general note, i feel that of course it needs to be assessed whether a person has a 'heart' to learn and then apply reiki

personally, i too will not teach reiki to a person who i feel will not apply and practice it... we come across many people who are sorta in a habit of collecting tags and reiki is just another tag for them... you can personally look into your experiences Resko that you must have come across several people in your life about whom you got an instant gut-feeling that even if you initiate them for free, they will not worth what you have done for them... isn't that a waste of a valuable thing like reiki and initiations ?

being choosy about whom to initiate and whom to refuse might be having nexus to our ego too, and for this we have to be too much careful... but generally speaking, in life, we come across countless situations when we do 'prefer' one thing over the other... we make choices at each step of life : which toothpaste, shampoo, etc. to pick from a shopping rack, which brand of mobile fone will suit us, which person we can introduce as family acquaintance, etc. etc. we don't apply one size fits all rule all around! and when it comes to reiki, if we do make a choice whom to accept as student and whom not, i think we have a personal freedom of choice reserved for that however, the way you put it, that mentally challanged buddies can have excellent reiki performance, i m totally agreed with you.. infact, the 'criterium' for selecting people as student has more to do with our 'intuition' than the objectively-set outward standards ! we are judge what appeals to our heart more

that was another dimension to what you said, i m waiting, what Wayne says in response to you though!


take care

salman

PS. while i posted this one, Wayne's appeared already, so mine should be taken as earlier to post no. 21 of Wayne.

I have not been faced with a mentally
impaired client/student.It is my under
-standing that when teaching mentally
impaired students they are taught the
basic survival skills.If they can handle
the basics they can be taught Reiki.
What a wonderful gift they would have
to survive life's up's and down's

the first post was about:

milarepa wrote:
Would you initiate someone who couldn't understand the things as most of the rest of us could? Would you initiate someone who was clearly sub-intelligent, thereby making it next to impossible to convey what the initiations entail, what they might do, what is & isn't acceptable in Reiki practice, how they might change their life. Possible healing crisis, etc, etc, etc.

quite a bit different from someone, anyone, being able to understand things. before the topic progresses in this direction further, it was never once said mentally impaired folks shouldn't be taught Reiki, or even experience Reiki. the term is to general. my opinion is in the first post,

Milarepa wrote:the first post was about:

milarepa wrote:
Would you initiate someone who couldn't understand the things as most of the rest of us could? Would you initiate someone who was clearly sub-intelligent, thereby making it next to impossible to convey what the initiations entail, what they might do, what is & isn't acceptable in Reiki practice, how they might change their life. Possible healing crisis, etc, etc, etc.

quite a bit different from someone, anyone, being able to understand things. before the topic progresses in this direction further, it was never once said mentally impaired folks shouldn't be taught Reiki, or even experience Reiki. the term is to general. my opinion is in the first post,

point understood.
it would be helpful if you could
create a scenerio of the kind of
person you have in mind.

Sub-intelligence imo is mentally
challenged. Then there is brain dead.
That is different than sub-intelligence
There is a natural innate healing that
the Reiki System promotes. You do not
have to belong to "formal" Reiki to
benefit from innate healing. To become
a Reiki practitioner you do need to
understand and comprehend the history,
rituals and symbols.

chi_solas wrote:

Milarepa wrote:the first post was about:

milarepa wrote:
Would you initiate someone who couldn't understand the things as most of the rest of us could? Would you initiate someone who was clearly sub-intelligent, thereby making it next to impossible to convey what the initiations entail, what they might do, what is & isn't acceptable in Reiki practice, how they might change their life. Possible healing crisis, etc, etc, etc.

quite a bit different from someone, anyone, being able to understand things. before the topic progresses in this direction further, it was never once said mentally impaired folks shouldn't be taught Reiki, or even experience Reiki. the term is to general. my opinion is in the first post,

point understood.
it would be helpful if you could
create a scenerio of the kind of
person you have in mind.

i created it the very first post, lol. perhaps it woudl help if you would read the topic? and see what i have, and havn't said.

milarepa wrote:]
I was thinking yesterday.. (surprised me that, hehe!)

It's about initiations.

Would you initiate someone who couldn't understand the things as most of the rest of us could? Would you initiate someone who was clearly sub-intelligent, thereby making it next to impossible to convey what the initiations entail, what they might do, what is & isn't acceptable in Reiki practice, how they might change their life. Possible healing crisis, etc, etc, etc.

If you'd decline to initiate another person because of any, or all of the above, how come it's fine to forgo all those issues and attempt to initiate animals?

Warmest wishes
Wayne

chi_solas wrote:
Sub-intelligence imo is mentally
challenged. Then there is brain dead.
That is different than sub-intelligence
There is a natural innate healing that
the Reiki System promotes.

if the post is read, i wasn't talking about a healing response. i was talking about whether folks would try to teach a human Reiki, when that human clearly couldn't understand what was being conveyed. and to relate that same understanding to an animal, whom prob won't even know , say, english fully. even a dog only responds up to 200 words.

chi_solas wrote:
To become
a Reiki practitioner you do need to
understand and comprehend the history,
rituals and symbols.

i've indicated this in earlier posts here today also. recap my post to resko re: principles & Reiki experience. even this at it's most basic, the be a Reiki practitioner carries certain responsibilities, both to oneself, and others.

the topic is about, well, was about, animals, humans was an example we can relate to mentally to compare. so, folks, should we teach Reiki to animals? can we teach Reiki to animals? is there any point in teaching Reiki to animals? does the animal know enough to make an informed decision? my dog will sit happily & like his butt all day. does he know the significance of Reiki teacher/student relationship?

warmest wishes
Wayne

Milarepa wrote:
the topic is about, well, was about, animals, humans was an example we can relate to mentally to compare. so, folks, should we teach Reiki to animals? can we teach Reiki to animals? is there any point in teaching Reiki to animals? does the animal know enough to make an informed decision? my dog will sit happily & like his butt all day. does he know the significance of Reiki teacher/student relationship? sure
why not.

Animals are good at intuitive, non-verbal
communication. Animal whisperers may be
able to give you insight to
.. can animals learn Reiki..
I take it you mean the Reiki system

I'm sure their are people who have trained
their pet animals to talk. It considered
amusing. I know that many folks do believe
that their pet has a higher level of under
standing than we give them credit for.

if we change reiki rituals, procedures, and steps since the next person is an animal, instead of a human being, or lets say mother earth, i m wondering whether this would be termed reiki or another healing ritual ?

Doing experiments is fine, and indeed necessary, but mixing up what we learn through experiments, with what had been passed on to us by our teachers, is something we need to think twice....


As teachers, there is a huge responsibility for us to categorically make it clear that what is the difference among the terms healing, spirituality and reiki..... After having doing some work in QT, i m of the view that interaction within a reiki session and that within a QT session, are different, although both are healing session...

Healing and spirituality are sub-sets of reiki, but the converse is not that true... And also that the domains intercept somewhere, overlap somewhere and go independently somewhere....

What has been generally said above, is mostly about healing taking place through reiki... But reiki is not just healing, it is transformation of personalities... I have witnessed the miracles of reiki in curing the autistic children, in making people quit smoking.... What we miss easily is that a reiki process is subtle and progressively more refined than general clinical alleviation of symptoms....

My kid brother is a down's syndrome... In my early days of reiki experiences, i tried sessions with him... And i felt that his mind becomes alaramingly calm and frightening at peace, that he seems to be losing the day to day motor skills like going toilet, taking food, changing clothes, etc. So i can say that we may give a second thought to general belief that reiki is intelligent... Nah, it is the innate divinity and spirituality of the receipient that dictates what outcome(s) a reiki session will fetch. On these notes, i m bit reluctant to use reiki for uses other than prescribed by founders... Being in a reiki session is, like i talked to Buck, is a continuous internal gassho, where we are in an interaction with much bigger universe than we can possibly fathom or comprehend

Take care

Salman

Hi Folks,

I have come to wonder if Reiki itself decides the outcome of the one to be initiated. We hear about many masters(poor choice of words) attuning many others, and everybody has a different experience even if the attunement processes are identical. This makes me think that the spiritual aspect of Reiki decides who gets what, based on anything from past lives to ones ability to adapt to, or absorb, the changes that spirit deems as the correct ones for the individual. I guess it wouold explain and simplify the whole situation in regard to why attunements vary and why the experiences vary so much for the one being initiated.

Someone mentioned something about animals, and us not giving animals enough credit for their connection to their surroundings, or spirit for that matter.

Animals do not have to be reminded of the natural order of things....they live the natural order of things....they cannot do other wise.

Our animal friends may also not be aware of, or understand their own mortality..How would life differ for us if we were not aware of the ticking clock?

Alot of us talk spiritual, but we walk mortal.The animals with little sense of self, may be the only ones of this planet that truly live as they were intended to.

We always say that animals rely on instinct more than thought...What if instinct is a higher form of thought, that, like so many other things, we do not fully understand?

Jim

Reikijim it sounds like you are
in tune with the animal kingdom.

We do refer to animal's instinct
and we refer to our instinct as
intuition.

I know when my dogs wanted to get my
attention they would draw my attention
by making a talking sound over a bark
& then when they got my attention they
would make direct eye contact holding
intense eye contact like a powerful
energy transmitter in place of words.