Waking up is not necessarily pleasant:
John de Ruiter
you get to see
why all this time,
you chose to sleep…
Waking up can be much more painful
than the agony of your dream,
but waking up is real…
And there will be integration:
a merging of reality with you.
You and reality will become one
in a world that does not
accept nor want one,
but two.
You will become a beloved servant
instead of a controlling master…
There are two ways of looking at spiritual protection. The mundane level is the one that says “I felt fine before this healing and now I feel bad. I need to find a way to stop this.”
The deeper level, which knows all and loves all, has no fear whatsoever.
When you have finished reading this article you will understand how protection works on the mundane level, but will be inspired to leave it all behind and go deep.
Protection in Reiki
When you become initiated into the system of Reiki you are given a type of energetic protection. This works in two ways. First, you (and the client) are protected from your personal ki flowing into the client. It is not your own energy that brings healing, but an inexhaustible source of universal energy. This prevents you from becoming depleted, and protects the client from picking up non-harmonious energies from you.
The second way this protection works is to prevent you from becoming unwell as a result of doing Reiki treatment. In the example of a client who is full of anger, you should not expect that his anger will flow into you and make you angry too. The same is true of physical or spiritual disturbances: the client’s problems do not become your problems. This doesn’t mean that you will experience none of the client’s pain, however. As you get more sensitive to energy you will be able to feel what issues a client is facing, and what areas need Reiki. But they do not become your issues. It’s a bit like seeing a grizzly image in a film: you may feel sick, but it passes soon enough.
The protection from giving away your own energy or taking on the problems of the client is not absolute. Many Reiki practitioners are heavily invested in the identity of the giver. Part of this identity says that they should suffer as part of the giving. If the practitioner wants (consciously or otherwise) to transmit her own energy in addition to the Reiki energy, or wants to feel bad even days after the healing, Reiki will not prevent this. It will not control or restrict the things that the practitioner chooses to manifest.
Letting Go of What You Pick Up
If you feel pain in your left knee during a treatment, and you’re sure that this pain isn’t your own, then it’s a signal that your client needs help in this area. When the treatment is finished, mentally disconnect from the client, give thanks in gasshô, and ask the earth to accept any lower vibrations you have picked up during the treatment. You can shake your hands off towards the ground if they feel heavy or clogged. It’s always a good idea to wash your hands thoroughly with water. This helps you let go, disconnect, and come back into yourself.
If you cannot let go of the negativity or pain that you have picked-up during a healing, ask yourself: What is it inside of me that wants to hold on to this? Sometimes the issues you feel most strongly in others are the very same issues that you carry yourself. You may realise that the pain you were feeling was the clanging of an old bell within you; the client just came along and struck it for you. Using Reiki you can now find a way to deeper healing for yourself.
Two Techniques for Energetic Protection
You can use these techniques in any situation, and they may just save you from getting swept up in tumultuous energies around you. The only warning to keep in mind is that the more barriers you put up to defend yourself, the more you affirm your separateness, and the further you get from realising the truth of universal unity.
Seal Your Chakras
Starting with your crown, imagine the chakra as a flower in bloom. Gently close the petals inwards and then seal it with a cross (+). Mentally draw the horizontal arm of the cross, which is love, and then draw the vertical arm, which is light. Take a moment to feel that the chakra is balanced and protected. Repeat this visualisation for all of the chakras.
You will probably feel noticeably more centred, grounded and balanced, and less affected by energies outside you.
Aura Shield
This technique is fast and simple. Just imagine that you are surrounded by bright white or golden light. The light envelopes you for a few feet in every direction, forming a protective egg around you. You can say “aura shield”, confirming your intention to close down the exchange of energies between you and your surroundings.
Going Deeper: the Essence of it all
In Reiki we discover that we are all connected, and that at the most fundamental level, we are one. We are one with nature and one with each other; the night is one with the day, and we are one with both. With this knowledge in mind, we lose our need to fear. With this knowledge in heart, body and soul, we finally find our true home.
The way of the world is to reject what is unpleasant and to accept only what feels nice. This is conditional openness. Healers move into a different way of being: unconditional openness. It no-longer makes sense to accept only one side of life, and it makes no more sense to accept only one side of the client. You do not need to flinch away or fear any darkness in the client, because you are one.
Reiki allows us to overcome the walls that normally separate us and to merge with the client. Sometimes that feels nice, and sometimes it hurts, but it always represents what is most true, and it is therefore never something to fear.
John de Ruiter describes what it feels like to be open to both the good and the bad:
“We all know what it is like to be okay within.
When you slip into a hot tub and your whole body opens up, then your awareness does the same – it matches the body, and everything is just so okay.
When this opening up of awareness takes place, that everything is actually okay, then let it remain now in what it knows.
So when such an awareness, through the body and through the mind, gets up out of the tub and goes into the other room where someone starts screaming at it, that it remains in what it knows, that it remains just as open and soft within, without any tightening, without contraction, as it was in the hot tub.
Only now, there is the introduction of something that doesn’t feel so good, but it will still let it in just as much as the awesomeness of being in the hot tub.”
The key to remaining open during healing is the ability to let go. Once you have given-up holding onto pain and the energies people call negative, nothing the treatment throws at you could possibly be a problem. In my own journey towards this point, the book Loving What Is (best listened to as an audio-book) provides a powerful technique of letting go of judgements and of welcoming all that is.
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