Hi Colin
a beautiful stich to the disucssion i was having through the other thread...
the title "master" is a shap, dual edged thing! while (like Wayne says) it gives the titleholder a greater responsibility, a sense of deeper attachment to reiki system, a compulsion that 'you should know more and more and more, since you are a master', etc., but on the same time, it has some negative effects like Daniel has pointed out, and everyone here knows of them without doubt...
While Daniel has pointed out a very sensitive issue, i must give a reference to other systems... Daniel says that in many systems the Founder of the School gives title of "Mastership" to people who have attained that height(or depth)... while this might be easy to believe once a system was budding in its infancy (like in the times of Usui himself), it may hold increasingly reduced value as the time passes.... Given this principle, reiki might have died out even so very earlier immediately after the times of Usui, and, even we take the chain some longer, the 23 Masters who were trained by himself, could have been the last drop of this path... if it were so, had it been reached here to us ??
in spiritual systems in a variety of systems prevailing in world, the Founder of the School allots the title... even if the founder is dead, systems are there as to how to approach his soul and to request confirmation of such title.. this may appear weird to some on-board here, but this is what i have learnt about various systems...
so had reiki been curtaild in a closed group within a closed country or a cultural boundary, it could have been possible that a person was ascended to mastership only when a 'confirmation' came from Usui, who is in soul's universe, as everybody else is...
but i think, here is where symbols come in... symbols contain Usui's Mandate, in the same way that he could have given, had he been alive at present... this is little esoteric or may be dogmatic, but this is how we find the spiritual systems working...
it is sure not necessary to have a tag if we have to discover and learn more, and but is also not necessary that by removing the tag, or that by not opting to have a tag, we will learn better or more... this is highly personalized and varies from person to person... if i have a tag of a student, i m respectful, i m geared up to deepen my understanding, blah, blah, blah, but if i m having the tag of a 'master' all these sentiments reinforce and amplify... i m now 'answerable' for a greater responsibility... i have now to deepen the knowledge more than before since now i m the 'representative' or the 'spokesman' of the system....
the title of a "master" is sometimes the only bond that helps us from astraying away from reiki system amid certain ebbs and flows of our spiritual development... it is akin to a higer, better, and stronger covenant... !!
finally, the thing that the word 'master' imports the art of mastery, this is again a cultural confusion, i suppose... a master, in spiritual systems is also somebody who is a devout, who has taken upon himself to be committed and dedicated to the cause of what he is holding the title...
instead of doing a service to enhance the awareness in the western world that a master in reiki does not mean a person who has 'mastered' it, we are, on the other hand, constantly trying to dump the very word ?
being a master, is not only a title for a lot of person.. it is a representation of or rather an acknowledgement of their time and efforts they have heartily given to the cause of reiki, just for the sake of it.... so the word 'master' has great emotional attachment to the system too
like reiki percepts, there might also been somewhat like 'percepts of mastership', which we could recite daily, so that our innate ego, vanity, our "your holyness", does not astray us from the beauty of holding the title of being a "master"
take care
salman