I was recently looking through some notes I had done during my Reiki 2 training back in 2008. Comments about things I didnt understand, or questions I had, and it made me interested to know everyone elses thoughts.
Although many seem to use the symbols little or not at all after Reiki 2, I think it is natural for a lot of people to be very eager to use the symbols when they are first attuned. And after our Reiki 2 attunement myself and another student couldn't wait to do some work wth the symbols.
So my friend and I went to our separate homes to do a self treatment, drawing the symbols on ourselves at each hand position. Maybe we had been overthinking, but when we started to draw the power symbol on ourselves we realised that if you are drawing on yourself, with your finger pointing towards yourself, the symbol would be the right way round from your eyesight point of view if you watched it being drawn, but from the point of view of your finger pointing towards you and drawing it on you, the symbol would in fact be back to front.
So if you were watching your own finger pointing at you drawing an anti-clockwise power symbol, if someone were to be standing in front of you and moving their finger over you in the same way, they would in fact be drawing a clockwise symbol on you.
When we met up we found out that we both were having the same thoughts about this. We brought this up at our next class with our Reki Master. We wanted to know if this mattered. She had some trouble grasping what we were saying. Maybe we weren't very good explaining it, but rather than giving us any sort of answer we got a shake of the head and "don't focus too much on the symbols."
Well that was rather disappointing from our point of view in that we didnt get any sort of answer or opinion, and also that we had very much looked forward to working with the symbols after our level 2 attunement.
After several attempts to clear this up over a couple of days and getting the same answer she eventually said to draw the symbol in front of us and imagine it coming back onto us. I protested that it would still be backwards. The only difference would be that the symbol was drawn in front of us instead of on us, and our fingers would be pointing away from us rather than towards us. We got a final "don't focus so much on the symbols."
Looking back maybe she was right and we got ourselves too caught up in doing it 'right' and complicated things for ouselves. I went on to draw symbols on my hands and just to visualise symbols throughout self treatments from then on. When I began drawing the symbols on others during treatments I realised that while doing the first lot of hand positions I was seated behind the persons head as they lay on the massage couch, and was therefore drawing or visualising symbols that would be upside down to them, so came to conclusion that it probably wasn't important as long as my intentions and association with the symbols was correct. But it would have been nice to have some sort of input from the Reiki Master.
I guess what I was wondering from all of this is:
What are your views?
Did anybody else have this question about the symbols when they first started to use them?
And if you were to teach level 2, what would your response have been to a student with this question?
I know my fellow student ended up feeling like she needed to train again as she felt questions we had were being evaded.
Although many seem to use the symbols little or not at all after Reiki 2, I think it is natural for a lot of people to be very eager to use the symbols when they are first attuned. And after our Reiki 2 attunement myself and another student couldn't wait to do some work wth the symbols.
So my friend and I went to our separate homes to do a self treatment, drawing the symbols on ourselves at each hand position. Maybe we had been overthinking, but when we started to draw the power symbol on ourselves we realised that if you are drawing on yourself, with your finger pointing towards yourself, the symbol would be the right way round from your eyesight point of view if you watched it being drawn, but from the point of view of your finger pointing towards you and drawing it on you, the symbol would in fact be back to front.
So if you were watching your own finger pointing at you drawing an anti-clockwise power symbol, if someone were to be standing in front of you and moving their finger over you in the same way, they would in fact be drawing a clockwise symbol on you.
When we met up we found out that we both were having the same thoughts about this. We brought this up at our next class with our Reki Master. We wanted to know if this mattered. She had some trouble grasping what we were saying. Maybe we weren't very good explaining it, but rather than giving us any sort of answer we got a shake of the head and "don't focus too much on the symbols."
Well that was rather disappointing from our point of view in that we didnt get any sort of answer or opinion, and also that we had very much looked forward to working with the symbols after our level 2 attunement.
After several attempts to clear this up over a couple of days and getting the same answer she eventually said to draw the symbol in front of us and imagine it coming back onto us. I protested that it would still be backwards. The only difference would be that the symbol was drawn in front of us instead of on us, and our fingers would be pointing away from us rather than towards us. We got a final "don't focus so much on the symbols."
Looking back maybe she was right and we got ourselves too caught up in doing it 'right' and complicated things for ouselves. I went on to draw symbols on my hands and just to visualise symbols throughout self treatments from then on. When I began drawing the symbols on others during treatments I realised that while doing the first lot of hand positions I was seated behind the persons head as they lay on the massage couch, and was therefore drawing or visualising symbols that would be upside down to them, so came to conclusion that it probably wasn't important as long as my intentions and association with the symbols was correct. But it would have been nice to have some sort of input from the Reiki Master.
I guess what I was wondering from all of this is:
What are your views?
Did anybody else have this question about the symbols when they first started to use them?
And if you were to teach level 2, what would your response have been to a student with this question?
I know my fellow student ended up feeling like she needed to train again as she felt questions we had were being evaded.