Day 17: Words

"Don't get stuck on the level of words. A word is no more than a means to an end. It's an abstraction. Not unlike a signpost, it points beyond itself."

Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle

Day 16: Delicious silence

I've always fantasized about being one of those mysterious, veiled lady who speaks with her eyes, demanding subservience with the flicker of her mile-long lashes.

Alas, quiet and mysterious I am not.

So what an intriguing concept Noble Silence is -- a period of deep silence, a technique used by Buddhists and nuns in which a person refrains from speaking as a way to help quiet the mind. Not communicating, sometimes for days, monks who practice this have believed that words are poor instruments to examine truth.

Intriguing, indeed. But I am not there yet.

To me, silence is the stillness that I feel listening to the haunt of a Native American flute, soothing the heat of rage present only seconds ago. It's the faint breathing of my dog on my couch as she waits patiently for me to catch all the words spilling onto my journal late in the night. It is the hum of contentment I hear from the house at night, when everyone is easing into the fold of sleep.

Not quite so noble, I think. Just simply delicious.

Day 15: Practice makes present

It's been two weeks since I started this challenge -- not only to do Reiki everyday but to capture my thoughts and observations as I do this. And, in posting these thoughts, I am letting go of all I take much too seriously -- my writing and the mind-ful thoughts that fuel it.

Many things seem different now --whereas I missed the distractions of the tv in the first week, I seem to crave the silence even more in the second. While I still fall prey to those enticing moments of anger, I'm finding that I don't stay there as long.

But some things, I've observed, seem more the same than I've ever noticed before. Reiki and writing, for instance, seem to run on parallel paths -- even more than I could have contrived. For instance, doing either one of them on a regular schedule takes nothing short of discipline. There's no ideal time, place, pen or topic that makes for the perfect session. Once the inertia of that first sentence is underway, the carving out of mental time to start the first hand placement, the rest seem to follow just a little easier. You just have to do it.

But there was something I hadn't realize until I read Pamela Miles' 8/29 entry in her blog where she wrote: 'In Reikiville, instead of practice makes perfect, practice makes present.' Reiki should be approached as a practice, she wrote, where the one goal is simply to do it. And, on days when your experience doesn’t match expectations, instead of blaming it on yourself, just recognize it as just that -- expectations. Be content to just observe what it feels to be in that situation.

Be present.

How true is this for my writing, too? I approach the craft too much as a technique, and, one in which I need to perfect. I worry about not doing it correctly or perfectly. And, the times that the writing doesn't meet my expectations (can you say 'all the time'), when my monkey mind goes amuck and tramples on any and all of my delicate creative ideas, when that voice whispers 'if you're good enough to be a writer, you would have been one by now' -- that I'm missing the big picture: that I am doing it. Writing. Putting one word infront of another word infront of another word. That I'm unraveling the sentences I spin in my head and weaving them into paragraphs, then pages, then chapters.

And when the words do not flow as summoned, or gush out in a perfect stream, I need to quieten the monkey mind, and just observe the moment. Yield to the present.

And simply be.

Day 14: Just be

I'm giving myself the permission to be still, be quiet, and to just be today. After all, 'retreat' means to treat myself and then to treat myself -- again. Yes?

Today, I will do just that.

Day 13: Yielding

Everyday, on my drive home from work, I eat an apple. A crisp, sweet Fuji apple that has earned its 100-calorie toll. There is something about that first three minutes of my drive -- this unpretensious fruit serves as an unlikely tactile bridge into my world outside of work.

Today, the apple took me to a conversation I had with someone who, on more than one occasion, has mentioned that I am a very guarded person. Today, he mentioned the words 'tightly managed.' I've been mulling those words in my mind, rolling them over my tongue (in between chunks of apple) wondering what is it about them that my mind is not yet ready to let go.

I see visions of prison communities, deadly strains of viruses, a crime scene -- an environment that screams CONTROL (yes, in caps and bold). Tightly managed. Like the cultivation of some kind of super special apple variety that needs to be heavily monitored. Guarded. So the species stays in tact and contained. And pristine.

He may be right. He may be wrong. All I know is this: part of what I set out to do with this challenge is to learn how to yield and to let go. So I will let down my guard and sit in my vulnerability. See how it feels.

For today.

Day 12: Birds flying high

There's something very comforting about being on the ground: Barefeet toes on dirt, heels sunk comfortably into the solid yet accomodating earth. Unchanged for millions of years, this was how we were -- earthbound. Until the crawling reptilians took on a feather here and a couple of wings there and turned themselves into birds. I'm done with this gravity thing holding me down -- they must have said. I'm defying it and flying away.

Watch me.

I love what this means metaphorically. It works for the process of enlightenment, for empowerment, for stepping beyond boundaries and transitioning through windows that take you to a higher state of existence.

Physically, though, I still need to have my feet squarely on Mother Earth. I am a child of the Earth and I just don't know how to make room for flying.

I've tried learning the science -- about Bernoulli’s principle and how an 870,000-pound 747 can lift itself into 7,000 nautical miles into the air. I've also approached it from the inside, heaving deep breathes into my body in hopes of duping it into a self-induced stage of oxygen coma.

But, to no avail. I was on a plane today -- three actually -- and every shiver, quiver and tremble from the plane was mine to manage. The higher I go, the more I appreciate the obstinance of the uncompromising Earth -- it's that hard stop when you fall. The solid mantle that defies penetration.

But, it's also the firm support that holds you up when you're ready to get back up, making room for your feet to once again find its print in the gravel.

Now, there's just something very comforting about that.

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Reiki Update:
Maybe it was because I Reiki-ed the heck out of my hands while I was flying, or maybe it was a kiss-the-ground-because-I've-landed reaction, but I felt really good when I was back home after all that flying. I was tired but strangely energized at the same time; it was as if I had an appetite beyond the Micky D's Angus burger I can't believe I had. Almost like a ... drive. I did, afterall, post two blog entries when I got home that night. It was good. I felt good.

Day 11: Chocolate curls

Someone noticed. I was three days behind and someone noticed.

What a thrill!

I started this blog for two reasons: 1) to document my Reiki practice during the 21-day Usui Retreat and 2) to give me the structure (can you say ... 'force me'?) to put my words on paper, give it wings and let it fly.

To have others actual read the writing is icing on the cake. And, the fact that someone noticed there should be more ... well, that's like the chocolate curls on the icing. Delicious.

Thank you -- you know who you are -- and here's hoping you come back to check on me. I could use all the help in making it through to Day 21.

Day 10: Empirical truths

I had to take a test today and I failed.

I've lived with carpel tunnel syndrome for years, watching it grow from a dull, vague ache in my wrists to a burning tingling numbness when I hold the phone too long, or ride a bike or, even write -- you know, the old-fashioned pen and paper thing. Now, it's causing pain in several of the Reiki hand placements. The only tingling I want to feel is from energy flowing though my hands, not from the swelling of my tendons. So I scheduled the electro diagnostic test.

It was time.

The physiatrist, the rehabilitation medicine doctor, was a very nice man but his big personality did not nearly make up for what he puts people through to earn his living (sorry, I'm still sore).

I knew I was in for the electrical shocks, so I laughed politely at his jokes and let him tape wire electrodes to my arms. So this was how I thought it would go -- he'd send electric currents through my nerve pathway, the electrodes would capture how fast the signal is traveling (or slow in my case), then he'd write this all down and I'll look for the exit door with the huge Angel Fish wall hanging on it.

Except there was more.

Apparently there were two parts to this test and the second involved needles. Okay, so they're small and thin but please don't tell me, Mr. Physiatrist, that people preferred this test to the first. We're talking multiple pin pricks to only the most sensitive areas on my arms, hands and the nape of my neck. On top of it all, he had me tense my muscles -- with the needle inserted casually in me like a sewing pin in a roly poly pin cushion -- so he could listen to the electrical signals from my muscles. The volume dial on his electro monitor was turned up, so I literally heard my muscles reta-ta-ta-ta-taliating in protest (and pain).

For about an hour, they made me go through this modern-day torture session -- just so the surgeon would have empirical data that the pain I had been feeling for years is real. Really?

I drove home from the medical center, bloated with righteousness and moral superiority toward the entire medical profession. They could have just listened and I would have told them that, for years, I haven't been able to hold a book up to read for any length of time. That, the last time I was preparing to accompany my daughter on the piano as she performed her flute, I consciously limited the use of my hands to only necessary activities, so that I can lengthen my practice sessions on the piano. That I almost did not want to continue with Reiki because my hands couldn't take the hour-long treatments.

And then, it hit me -- like a mental pin prick through the surface of my conscience -- how many times do I make myself go through a similar torture test, just so I could get proof that something is what it says it is. That Reiki truly works, for instance, or, if my choices will get me what I want, or if the right thing to do, is in fact, the right thing to do.

So much of my consciousness it spent on this rigorous exercise of finding facts to verify and substantiate. To attest to some empirical proof that exists outside of me.

Maybe I should stop.

Be silent. Listen.

Maybe I might even learn something.

_____________________.

Reiki update:

The mornings seem to be more of a rush these days. I am only managing a 15-minute session but I've started to do a 'make-up' session at night before I go to bed. Note to self: Some Reiki is better than no Reiki : )

Day 9: Just another day (color)

This morning started -- if you can even call it that -- slow and sluggish. Just an expected dipping of the spirits, I suppose, after the consecutive days of high activity. Perhaps some might call it the 'anti-climatic' lull after celebrating a milestone birthday with my daughter. I've been able to keep the Reiki self-treatments going and the practice I did this morning may have prevented any further dragging. Still, there was just a dearth of energy to be had.

Until this afternoon.

One of the sycronicities that has fallen on my lap since the onset of Reiki is a chance meeting with an old high school friend of my husband's. And this friend, imagine that, is a Reiki Master.

She is a wonderful aura of energy and kindness. She helped me understand and accept the skeptic in me -- be patient and give it time because it took me a while, she said. A piece of information she shared with me helped me make a crucial connection: By reminding me that in a Reiki treatment, the hand positions correspond with the body’s endocrine glandular system and the seven main chakras, something in me clicked -- and I had the structure and context I needed to begin the process of understanding Reiki scientifically and energetically.

But, there's more.

Today, she performed a Level 1 attunement for my husband so he can take on the healing work in his own hands -- literally. And, she let me be a part of that, even if it meant I was to be attuned again. In all of the eloquence I can muster at this moment ... all I can say is "how cool is that?"

Oh, and by the way, just in case my purple phone, watch, shawl, glassess etc. don't give it away, I happen to enjoy the color purple. Even more so today. No special reason except maybe today, it was a deep purple shade I saw when my eyes were closed -- morphing and dancing and swirling in a sea of familiar black -- all while I received a Level I attunement (see Day 1: Initiations -- a beginning).

Really -- how cool is that??

Day 8: Noise

There's been much activity around the house. The birthday celebration with my daughter's friends has continued into the first and second day of her 16th year.

I love hearing her voice among the teenage cacophony. It is very reassuring. At least for that moment in time, there is happiness, lightness and a sense of freedom -- all things not always in full force in a teenage's life. I actually find it quite heartwarming.

Except when it goes on for hours. And hours. Yes, and even more hours.

But you know, I noticed that somehow, as draining as I eventually realized it was to me, I found myself quite calm and tolerant through it all. There wasn't the impatience and irritation. Instead, I was able still to focus on what I had to do. I was centered. I felt grounded.

Hmmm, I wonder what that was about?

Day 7: But which way is North?

Adult loggerhead sea turtles head their way back to the beach they were hatched when they're ready to lay their eggs.

Bats use a magnetic substance in their body called magnetite to help them navigate.

It's the concept of an internal compass, a kind of mechanism that allows organisms to orient themselves so they can stay on track during long distance travel, like migration.

Like a bird, with wings, I am not. When the sun is just rising or setting in the day, I can maybe academically deduce where North is but the rest of the time, I need a 'left by the red brick building and past the gas station' kind of direction to help me get to somewhere I've never been to before.

I suppose the theory is that our hunting ancestors (aka cavemen) relied on tracking the position of the sun to hunt and to find the most direct way home. That seems to make men stereotypically the one that speaks in cardinal points, e.g., do you not know the difference between North and South?

Women, aka me, on the other hand, relate to a more personal sense of direction. It's all about how the external world relates to me, e.g., go until you see the house with the beautiful yellow flowers and immaculate yard (because that's the yard I want).

Both ways, though, gets us where we need to go.

Until when a woman (aka me) would foolishly step over the sacred line and ask my husband (aka proverbial caveman) which way to turn when I get off the freeway to get to the car service shop.

It's like the meeting of worlds -- that should not.

Perhaps Reiki has a place in this. But I think I'd rather have it help me with the journey toward my dharma, my life's purpose and healing. Leave the shorter trips for me to decipher. For example, I just have to figure out if I can find enough iron for the tip of my nose so I can be like the homing pigeons and turn toward the magnetic North Pole -- at will.

Until then, I'll rely on a modern-day cardinal finder -- my TomTom -- to help me find my way. And, my good sense to stay grounded and internally calibrated as I navigate toward the discovery of my life's full potential.
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Reiki update:
I got to practice on a volunteer today -- yay for husbands! My hands activated the minute I placed it on his crown and subsequent head placements. It was very humbling and exciting all at once.

Day 6: In celebration

I remember the moment clearly.

I had my infant baby girl in my arms that first night she spent her life outside of me. The 18 hours of back labor pains, the bustling of antiseptic maternity nurses in and out of my body, the animation of well-intentioned relatives, the C-section and the pain seeping through the weakening periphery of epidural -- the funneling of all things had brought me to that one moment -- the stillness of time where she and I were alone, for the very first time.

She had been crying, upset at how her once comfortable world had been literally ruptured beyond her infant understanding. I was terrified, scared that I had done that to her without knowing exactly how I plan to make it up to her. But, somehow -- call it intuition, the energy of our skin touching -- she and I connected.

I tried to turn theory into practice but all knowledge I picked up from books and Lamaze class had disintegrated. I already know this, my intuition told me, as I brought her body up against mine. She reciprocated and drew in to me. We reunited. That moment sealed for us the beginning of an evolving symbiotic relationship that has nourished us for the past 16 years.

That moment, 16 years ago today, the mother in me was born.

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Reiki update:

I was able to do a 45-minute self treatment in the morning before I got out of bed. My centering and grounding is getting a little better. I think.

Day 5: A game

It's amazing why we do the things we do.

It's 10 p.m., and all I want to do is to go to bed but I feel compelled to post an entry. Can't mess up so early in the game. About a week ago, I would be watching tv about now until I hit comatose, get to bed and then wake up the next day, week, month wondering why I never have time to write. I would be woefully longing but superficially content and that, of course, wasn't quite good enough. I had to set up a structure -- a game -- to force myself to write. Like I didn't have enough guilt.

So now, I am cranky and tired, but hey, I'm writing. (Boy, do I need a Reiki treatment). Is it really worth the effort? Is the discipline to keep practicing the craft worth the while? If words exist only in the mindscape of an author, written in virtual space, would they still have meaning?

Perhaps not. But I'm hopeful that at the end of the 21 days, my accomplishment would not so much be the number of people who've read my posts but that I have written and practiced Reiki for three weeks straight. That I might shed the weight of perfectionism my mind is putting on my writing, for the lightness of 'this is good enough.' Why, I might even crave the comfort of a routine.

Until then, count on a good fight from Ms. Resistance.

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Reiki update:

Half hour in the morning. Going strong ...

Day 4: Going light

"Beware another practice pitfall: perfectionism" ~Pamela Miles

Don't let perfectionism keep you from practicing, she says. If a full treatment seems too much, start small. When you're ready, add another placement -- one at a time.

Go light, I think is what she means. Well, tonight, I'm going 'light' -- not with Reiki but with the practice of writing. Tonight, I'm letting these (small) words go -- go easy, go light -- despite how imperfect they are to me (the words are not mine, I didn't add enough, the entry is not creative ...), they will have to do.

Afterall, some Reiki/writing is better than none. And just for now, it's good enough.

Pam will be proud.

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Reiki update:

I managed some random practiced moments today: I placed my hands on the solar plexis and was surprised to feel my hands 'activated.' They were heating up from the inside like the other time I was at the Center practicing with a volunteer. I always thought it was the Center, being abundant with Reiki energy that caused the activation. But at work? Maybe it was became I was having an extra challenging day and my solar plexis needed a good flush of fresh energy. Who knows?

Day 3: The real test

The week starts -- and my (personal) life ends. At least for about 10 hours during the day.

I’m working into my weekday routine -- 5 a.m. alarm, get up and shower, half hour of Reiki, then it’s getting ready for work.

I've kept my date with the session today but I haven't been very focused or centered as I remember having been. At 5:30 a.m., my mind is already identifying with the incessant flow of chatter; some so timid I have to wait around for at least the fifth or sixth time they reappear before I know what's been on my mind.

Then there's those that foghorn their story over and above the others, the kind you want to shout back and say 'alright already – I get it’ but your voice just gets smothered by the fog and the only way out is, ironically, to listen for that familiar siren.

Two things I'd like to add to my list -- other than the daily practice of Reiki and writing for the next 18 days -- to practice the 'Just for Now-ness' (you know, the whole 'eternity is simply the eternal present' thing) that I've been reading about, and, to find bodies -- willing bodies -- for me to practice my Reiki.

Reiki, anyone?

Day 2: A Reiki thing

My day started with seemingly better promise -- I got out of bed and decided before I could come up with reasons why not to do Reiki, I would just start. When I was done, it was 45-minutes later. (It did help that our newspaper boy/man was even later today with the Sunday paper -- getting the Dispatch by 7 a.m. on a Sunday appears to be no more a luxury we can enjoy.)

Forty-five minutes is longer than I usually can manage. Maybe it was because I was lying down instead of sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor. Maybe because, instead of an 8:30 a.m. meeting at work, the only appointment I had today was a back-to-school shopping spree with my daughter and another mother-daughter pair. But I felt like I gave it justice and time, and, it felt good. I felt good -- I don't know if it's just because I was going into the day having accomplished one of the big things I set out to do today, or, if it's the balancing effect of the Reiki session.

Since I've started practicing Reiki -- not right away, I have to add though -- I've been experiencing a difference. It's almost like how someone would feel if they were in a state of holistic well being. Not an entire smorgasbord of 'wellbeingness' but little appetizer portions served in little delicious, tempting platters.

Is it a Reiki thing?

I want to know. I need to know -- categorically, irrefutably and conclusively -- if this is because of the Reiki. And, more important, would it mean it is something within my control? That with the macro balancing and rebalancing within each one of us, a larger scale balancing is taking place: I think of huge swirls of energy moving around slipstreams of positive outcomes, of delightful synchronicities, of I-don't-know-why-but-I-just-feel-good bubbles that rise into the universal biofield. Is it a Reiki thing?

About a month after my Reiki I class, I ran down my list of questions to my sister.

"Do you think it was because of Reiki this happened, that I acted that way ?" I asked. "How about when that happened? Why did she do that? What do you think? Do you know?"

"And then when ... how am I supposed to know if any of this self-treatment is doing anything? Is it working? How will I know when it does? Has it?"

A Reiki Master for many years now (ah! I bet that has something to do with why she is studying Reiki, you say), my sister laughed. What does it matter if it is or not a 'Reiki thing'? No mind games, I said, long distance calls are expensive, even though I think she called me that time.

"Okay, what if I just said 'it is'," she said. "Now, move on."

Well, I'm trying, O Reiki Master, elder-sister-who-always-thinks-she-knows-it-all. She might as well have said -- it's the trust thing.

I hate it when she makes sense.

Day 1: Initiations -- a beginning

Already my routine is broken.

It's Saturday and instead of waking up at 5 to do my half-hour Reiki self-treatments, I woke up at 8 a.m. and feel like I've already missed the perfect window of meditative opportunity. The house is no longer sleep-still, my bird chorus timer doesn't seem to quite go with the sunlight and my mind's already racing to get its 60,000 thoughts into the hopper.

So many reasons why it just isn't the perfect time.

It's the same with writing -- you have to find the perfect time/place/pen/topic to write. How can anything less than perfect lend itself to the piece de resistance I need to blaze my literary trail? I am only doing myself a favor by trying to identify that One Perfect Moment. Or, that perfect paragraph, or title or eight-point arc.

When I was receiving the first of four attunements during my Level I Reiki class, I was the only one in the group of 10 who did not enjoy the same experience as the others. It was as if I was in a different class all together. During my attunement, I felt clammy hands on mine and a reminiscent whiff of the Master's lunch when she blew on me to complete the ritual. The music in the background sounded soothing at first but then just got plain repetitive toward the end. As much as I tried to visualize a spot two inches down from my navel and then back toward the tail bone, all I could think about was whether I had an a pair of clean, matching socks in my trunk for my cold, bare feet.

It was far from Perfect.

I wanted so much from this session and already in the first half hour, I was crushed. The urge to get up and out of that circle of energy-feeling, light-seeing people to 'get the socks from the car' (and then putting them on in the comfort of my home) -- was strong. I wanted to leave. It was not right to start with, why keep going? But, I came clean and told the Master about the experience I wasn't having, and, under my breathe said: your attunement must not have worked, give me my money back.

"Be easy with it,'' she said. "Some people might see colors as they do this more and more, but some never will. I never have."

Be easy with it. Is that like ... letting go? In a split Tibetan chime second, I saw my path to Reiki. I always try too hard, hope too hard, work too hard, want too hard. My life is clenched between the end of one second to the start of another, and then another, and another. It's almost as if I loosened my hold, something might fall through the cracks between my fingers.

But, it might also let something new come in.

I invited in the energy to play at the next attunement that day. I loosened up (as best I knew how). And something found its way in. At first I thought I was dozing off -- rocking in my seat from the (still) repetitive drone of the Sanskrit chant. But then my body started spiraling anticlockwise, like it had caught on to some kind of energy slipstream, spinning around my center with a force that wasn't mine. I tried to spiral in the opposite direction and I immediately lost the flow, my movement became contrived -- directed by the kinetics of my own body, not the free flowing motion of being in the wake of something fluid, something bigger. Something outside of me.

I stopped, felt for the slipstream of energy and jumped back in. It felt like home.

And so, a beginning. Nothing sublime or colorful but it was a start and it was for me to call my own.

It's time to do a Reiki session. I have four more hours before Day 2 of the retreat. One of the hours will be perfect enough for me.

A retreat. Here. Now.

And so -- here I am, inspite of myself.

So far, I've changed my URL and title more than five times now -- and it's back to what it was when I created the blog.

And, I've rewritten the intro paragraphs enough times I could have started at least 10 -- no 20 -- different blogs by now.

You get the point.

Really, I am the last person who should be studying Reiki, a healing practice where the results are far from tangible -- at least to a beginner like me. Where proof comes less from what I see but what I am open to feel. It's that trust thing.

Here's where the retreat comes in. August 15 is Dr. Usui's (the person who started it all) 144th birthday and, in his honor, a 21-day virtual retreat will be held on that day -- the day I was supposed to start my Level II Reiki attunements but didn't because there were only two of us who were continuing the study. In exchange, the Universe has offered me this chance to deepen my relationship with Reiki not by attending classes but by (wait for it) -- practicing it.

So for the next 21 days, I will dip my curious but skeptical toes into an ocean of healing, positive biofield and play with it. Be open with it.

Feel it.

And I will write about it, too, because perhaps if I were more open with my words -- if I played with it and observed it a little more -- I might deepen my relationship with it, too. I might even learn to let go.

It's that trust thing. But I'm up for it.