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 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.

_____________________.

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 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 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.