Day 21: Three weeks

21 days ago, I started something.

In a way, it wasn't as much about what it was and why but that I did it. I started something. I cracked open a door, I ventured out and I stayed out long enough to take a stand about a passion, to share with virtual strangers (and not quite strangers), to think seriously about something that weighed on me -- then toss it away cavalierly with the simple click of the 'Publish' button.

And, know what? I survived to tell the tale. Twenty one tales to be exact. So here's what I've learned:

Discipline
I need structure to keep writing. It doesn't feel like I'm letting myself down when I don't make time to write. But somehow the thought that someone might stumble onto Grounding Words and notice that it's not been updated feels like I'm letting someone else -- you -- down. And I won't have that.

This regiment -- and sometimes it has felt like that -- worked because it made me write. It's like the love/hate relationship I have with deadlines. There's a personal affront I feel with each deadline I've met but, if it weren't for them, I would never have any writing to call my own. Let's face it -- I have dreams bigger than what the lackadaisical writer in me can fuel on her own. I need the whip-lashing, nail-biting, heart-pumping, bed-tossing tyranny of a Structure.

Taking risks

It is obvious that the Universe wants me to know this because I ran into at least three chance encounters within the week of this, well, truth. A fellow writer noted in Bum Glue, her blog: All you have to do is to write one true sentence -- Ernest Hemingway said in Moveable Feast, a set of memoirs he wrote about his years in Paris as part of the American expatriate circle of writers in the 1920s.

One true sentence. For the past week, I feel like I have worn my heart out on my sleeve, pointed an arrow to it with a sign that said: Delicate matter abounds: Trample away! One true sentence. That tightly managed, guarded self in me is stifling and editing a comment right at this minute. But, it would suffice to say that as much as I respect and probably agree with Hemingway, it is definitely much easier said than done. For me. It is hard enough to zero in on the truth, let alone share it. Much work in this area, I'd say.

Higher consciousness

Okay, so I'm not walking on water or seeing people in technicolor auras. Yet. Just kidding -- but here's a truth: I think I'm on to something. You know the saying: You are drawn to those who have the most to teach you? Well, I seem to be drawn to the amazing experiences, encounters and people, Reiki included, that's helping me with this inner journey.

So, three weeks ago, I started something.

Some people call it a blog -- you write down your thoughts, you set it free into blog space, people read it and maybe they come back to read some more.

I call it a Practice. And, 21 days is nowhere near what I could call a complete experience. There is much yet to be done.

See you tomorrow.

Day 19: Remembering

I saw the tree today. You can tell it's a recent addition to the park -- the single young tree on the grassy clearing, half way into the park. The heady scent from the roses, the clearest of blue skies, the summer heat -- warming up just the way she'd like it. It was a perfectly, beautiful moment.

It wasn't sadness I felt; more a fondness for her presence when she was still alive. I picked at the grass around the plaque at the foot of the tree, trimming the stray blade or two that covered the words we had left for her. As I knelt down, a strange flashback of having done the same thing crossed through my mind -- me bending over my mother's grave, picking up dried leaves off the ground above her.

I had gifted a Reiki session with a master that week for my friend, in hopes that she would find even an hour's worth of relief. Maybe she did. An hour of peace and stillness within. But, it just wasn't soon enough for her.

Three years ago this month, I lost a friend whose life ended unexpectedly and needlessly. I still misplace minutes, thinking about the choices that led to her final decision. She was a spirit so strong and so respectful of life. She shared much about herself and what she was going through but gave no momentous indications of giving in, of giving up, of letting go.

And then, she left.

You are missed, my friend.

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 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.

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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 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 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.

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.