Reiki Level II Manual

SECTION SIX - Mental/Emotional Symbol Sei Hei Ki The second symbol is called Sei Hei Ki. It is pronounced "say hay key". This symbol is known as the mental/emotional symbol, but also as the harmony symbol. It is used to heal mental and emotional habits that no longer work for you, and emotional and mental distress. It is also used to bring up and heal the emotional issues underneath physical problems. It helps reinforce and support positive behavior changes. It is also used to help release negative conditioning from past experiences by changing reacting to responding. Buddhists believe that ego is conditioning. The Zen sages knew that to be free of suffering was to end desire. It was only by removing the conditionings of life (ego), that one could be free and experience harmony and oneness. This symbol is for healing and releasing those feelings, desires and conditionings. It is also known as the Harmony Symbol. Healing with the Sei Hei Ki can be as simple as using the symbol while doing a healing using the regular hand positions. It can also be used as part of an emotional meditation to help release and heal these conditionings and patterns that underlie problems. REIKI EMOTIONAL HEALING MEDITATION There are many ways to use the Mental/Emotional Symbol for emotional healing. This meditation works on the issues behind physical problems. It can help bring into conscious awareness so they can be dealt with and healed. Below is a method that I use as an emotional healing meditation. Feel free to experiment with this and to tailor it to your specific needs, or the needs of your reiki clients. To begin get comfortable, sit in a comfortable chair, and relax. Do some form of systematic muscular relaxation to increase relaxation. One that I use is: Allow the relaxation to come into the soles of both of your feet at the same time. Feel your feet relax. Let the relaxing sensation move up the legs into the ankles, letting the muscles and bones relax. The relaxing energy moves up the legs into the calves, relaxing them, and then up through the knees into the thighs. Allow the legs to totally relax, and then let the energy move up into the hips, relaxing the hips. And your legs and hips are totally relaxed. Now let the relaxing power move up the spine, and a warm feeling of energy moves up the spine as it relaxes the muscles of the back. The energy moves into the shoulders, and you allow your shoulders to relax. The energy now moves down the arms, and into the hands, relaxing your upper arms, fore arms, and hands. Now the energy moves up the neck, relaxing the muscles in the neck and up the head, into the scalp and the head and scalp are relaxed. The energy moves down over the forehead, and into the jaw, and you are totally relaxed and now ready to start the emotional program. (The symbols used are Cho Ku Rei, Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen, and Sei Hei Ki. If you have not yet memorized them, have a picture of the three of them together.) Try to bring the emotional issues to be worked on into awareness. If you cannot get a good handle on the issue, then concentrate on the feelings that you have regarding this matter. Draw the ChoKuRei in front of you and on your palms, and above the crown. Then do the same with the Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen. Draw the Sei Hei Ki in front of you. Again connect with the issue, either the feelings of it or create a visual picture of it in your mind. Draw the Sei Hei Ki and visualize it over the problem. Meditate on the symbol, and feel it bring healing into you. Know that it is working for your highest good bringing healing to your emotions. Next draw again the ChoKuRei, Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen, and again the Sei Hei Ki and connect to the issue. Concentrate on sending emotional healing to yourself at the point that this problem occurred, healing within you the past that continues to hold on and create the issue in you. Use an affirmation. "I am healed and whole", "I release this for my highest good", or anything that you think of that will help the healing process. Repeat the affirmation three times. Meditate on the harmony and universal love that the Sei Hei Ki is a representation of. Allow the symbol to be part of your consciousness and let it flow over you. When done, draw the ChoKuRei in front of you. Do this every day for a week and pay close attention for the changes that will occur in your life. Alternative Emotional Healing Method This above method is one method that can be used. Another is to do a treatment using all the hand positions, and draw the Sei Hei Ki symbol at each position, asking that whatever patterns and conditionings are being held are released. Again be creative and use your intuition and experiment! SECTION SEVEN - Distance Healing Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen Absentee, or Distance Healing is another aspect of Reiki II. There are as many ways to do distance healing as there are healers. Reiki is unique in healing systems because it does not use the healers energy, and the symbols are a unique connection to the source of all. The Reiki Distance Healing symbol is called the Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen. This symbol enables us to send healing energies to others at a distance. This can be used to send Reiki across the street or to other parts of the world. It can be used when doing hands on Reiki healing would be inappropriate (with a burn patient or someone with sexual abuse issues). In these cases Reiki can be sent distantly from across the room. Such line of sight uses of the distant symbol are called "Beaming". This symbol is also a symbol of karmic release. It allows us to send reiki outside of time and space. The Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen is made up of five distinct elements. One possible meaning can be "no past, no present, no future". In distance healing, Reiki energy can be sent thousands of miles away, or across a room. With distance healing there is "no past, no present, no future", there is only the now. There is only the present moment. Some people have seized on the "no past, no present, no future" definition as a justification that you can send Reiki into the past or future and change its outcome. I believe this is a mistaken understanding of the meaning of this symbol. Sometimes it is useful to look at something in its cultural and linguistic context to understand what it meant to those that developed it. Reading history backwards using present western ideas or a western cultural mindset creates misunderstandings and confusion. Likewise looking at this using our western new age beliefs also create confusion. An example that might illustrate how we take for granted how our cultural conditionings and mindset influences our thinking might be found in looking at how we use words to represent actions and ideas that might not translate easily to others in another culture. As Americans we can communicate some concepts easily to other Americans with no explanation. When i say I am going to make a "Xerox", people understand that I mean to make a copy, when I say i need a kleenex, people understand that i need a tissue. Kleenex and Xerox are companies whose names are synonymous with the items that they represent generically. When I talk of the "American Dream", it is a cultural idea that refers to having a good job, getting ahead, having a house, a car, luxury items, etc. It is something that has a cultural basis that may not easily translate to those whose mindset and language have developed in another place and time. In the same way, HSZSN must be understood in the context, culture and language that it came from. Many people have seized on the "no "past, no present, no future" translation that has become so prevalent. "No past, no present, no future", is a useful definition to explain that the energy can move and be sent anywhere to heal others at a distance. It is a less useful definition to discuss ideas regarding changing the past, sending to the past and future. Let us part from this definition for a moment and look where this symbol came from. I have had several discussions regarding the Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen with people who were native Chinese and Japanese speakers. I decided on exploring this avenue after reading Gabriel Shiver's web site where he did exactly that. Like Gabriel, I was told that it would be difficult to explain to someone who was not a Buddhist. What followed was a discussion of Buddhist thought that I was familiar with but not necessarily understood. The meaning is not "no past, no present, no future", but something more like "Right consciousness is the root of everything", or "A righteous man may correct all thoughts". The two thematic elements the same here are Right consciousness and root thoughts or correcting them. Usui growing up was a Tendai Buddhist. Tendai teaches meditation, mindfulness, repentance, the Lotus Sutra, and Mikkyo (esoteric Buddhism) . Living in the moment with attention and awareness is essential. Usui was said to have attained a Satori or enlightenment on Mt. Kurama and afterward discovered that he could heal. If you are unfamiliar with Tendai, or some of its underlying ideas and what they followers work towards, try visiting Reiki Ryoho Plain and Simple and visit the various links on the left side of the page. In buddhism, Right Consciousness or Right thinking are embodied in the eight fold path. I could not possibly do justice to trying to explain that in this short discussion and it would be a disservice to do so, however, a Book like "Buddhism Plain and Simple" by Steven Hagen would be an excellent place to start. The whole purpose of all this is to be so focused on the now, the actual experience that we are in our immediate experience moment by moment. In this we see the root of thought coming and going and have become so aware of our conditionings and discarded them that we experience right consciousness and see the actual experience of reality. Usui's system was a secular enlightenment system that allowed you to heal self and others. To a zen buddhist, the past does not exist. It has happened. It cannot be undone. A zen buddhist would see your clinging to the past and holding onto it tightly as your mind grasping a conditioning, and that attachment would bind you to dukkha or suffering. When you hold onto these conditionings and not stay in the present, you deprive yourself of fully experiencing this present moment. When you hold onto the past you recreate it, not as it was, but as you presently need it to be based onto all the conditionings that you have. If you anger yourself at something that happened in the past you do not relive anger but recreate it for yourself in the present. In the same way, we can create the future, indeed a multitude of them with imagination and longing and desire. We can invest energy into that future and even feel emotional responses to that future. We invest our ego, our desires and wants into this possible future and in so doing we condition ourselves and our reactions and limit our ability to be in this "now" and be spontaneous and genuine. We also prevent ourselves from responding in the moment when we arrive in that future. So when we are sending to the "past" and "future" we are sending to ourselves in the Now, healing that which we carry with us. By holding onto the past or future, we not only do not heal, but perpetuate our suffering in the present. By holding onto the past or future, we do not heal and we create more suffering for ourselves by not fully being in the present. When we read HSZSN, "A righteous man may correct all thoughts", it can be seen that it is by healing these that we do not anger, do not worry, and thus truly heal.