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.
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