hi Wayne
something again about issues of post-initian support !
The Reiki initiation, although cheapened by many is actually a major event, and a big deal in a persons spirituality. To enter into this process with another, with no support prior or even after (unless one pays) is wrong. The teacher won't support the student unless they pay for the manual, so why attune them then if we aren't prepared to give the support also for free.
that may invite some associated questions also... there are many people who have come to reiki just to experience 'how does it feels to have reiki experience'..... a person who is entering the field has yet to experience the gifts, and moreso, has to place a value on the experience he has just received through reiki attunement.... it might shut down the entry of many new incomers into the field if we raise the entry fee, since if somebody does not know what he is going to acquire through reiki initiation, how we would convince him to pay hefty sum before initiation, and for initiation...
for me, its even okay to attune people just for level one for free... maybe if i attune 100 such people, 5 or ten of them might then feel 'stuck' to reiki onwards... and if some of those guys come to me for post-attunement support, i have a right to charge them some money, since now they have made an 'informed' decision that they are going forward in their pursuit of reiki...
for the rest 90, who had taken the experience for experience sake, i would have not charged them anything, thats fine for them, but this should must then be fine for me also, since this approach has given me 10 confirmed attunees, and some of whom might develop themselves into high level masters in future...
so attuning for free is to let people know about reiki, let the people experience about reiki... isnt this a common practice in our lives, that when we come to purchase a new product, we have a trial period with fully money back guarantee... in reiki, since the product cannot be reversed (de-attunement), what about people who want their money back since they dont like reiki after expereincing it... the best approach in that would be to attune them, without charging.. so that if they stick to the reiki, offer them support for a charge, if they dont, they haven't paid anything already!
from my post:
the rapport between a teacher and student is a very important pillar in learning process, quite agreed, but when we come to the point that whether attunements of the nature like this DO or DO NOT actually work, we have to come straight to the question in either YES or NO, without referring to iffs and butts, and without discussing the surrounding conditionalities...
From your reply :
The initiations via distance do work. As to how long-lsating they are, or the quality of the connection, that's another question.
Wayne, in denju initiations, they are spposed to last for ever, and if they sorta 'fade out' they are supposed to NOT have been ever made... and this was the point i raised... as far as i know about reiki initiations, i hold belief that either they are done, or they are not.... the longitivity, the effects, etc. are something that is more associated with the attunee, than the teacher's ability...
so we have to come straight to our earlier question "whether attunements of Steve Murray through DVD are possible or not, leaving the side issues of post-attunement support, the onwards reiki experiences, etc etc.
From my post :
i've to pose a question here that when a master acquires an ability/permission to attune others, does he acquire open permission, means that anywhere written in the reiki literature or in memoirs of reiki peers that a master ought to know the names or the specific identities among a list of persons, of people he is going to attune??
From your reply :
This goes to what a Reiki initiaton is. The initiations are from esoteric buddhist practices, and are passed down in person, transfering consciousness/ability that way. The cornerstone of the Reiki path is mindfullness, in ways HSZSN is most important. We simply can't have the spiritual focus required is we can't know whom the person is. sure, if i know a name, age, etc, i can pass on some consciousness. If i got a photo it's better still. If though, i can do it in person, i can focus so, so much easier on the person, i'm much more mindful in the process, i actually couldn't get anymore mindful/focussed.
This ties in with my point two paragraphs up. I suspect, if a survey was done that folks whom had distance training first, then in-person training, noticed a big difference with the in-person training. I was one of them. Looking at any one aspect of both types of training isn't enough, in general is more useful for each individual.
The point being, i suspect the more focussed/mindful we are during initiation th emore easily consciousness is trasnferred.
It's maybe interesting that Willie Rand got some psychics to look at distant attunements. He's said on his site that the farther away a person is, the more 'weaker' it looks.
if you would allow me to post some additional thoughts here... initiations are, by all means, from esoteric buddhist practices, but the way we do initiations, are rather an offshoot from the japanese culture and traditions... if Reiki had stuck to those traditions, all we would be having, would be reiju empowerments... the process of initiations, it seems, has been devised to transfer the ability in a speedy and direct (not necessarily in an 'as effective') way.... from whatever we find from literature we all know that symbols (and hence denju initiations) were of a later import... seems plausible to assume that Usui Sensei, when felt the need to transfer the healing art to Imperial Navy Officers, empowered symbols for that purpose... symbols were primarily meant for people, it seems, who were not under the direct spiritual guidance and training of Usui or of his trained masters...
having that being set as an objective, why would Usui had left the initiations to be dependent on the quality/mindfulness/spiritual status of the master ? i feel he didnt include the conditions like 'mindfulness', 'spiritual attention' of the master while 'devising' his package... all these things were taken/assumed by him to be 'add-ons', the more the better, but not necessarily as 'conditions precedent' for an attunement to take place...
Well, William rand might have good reasons for the belief, saved this, but i feel this primarily goes against the very notion of HSZSN... if we allow for the remoteness or closeness between the master and the attunee, to have any effect on the 'quality' of attunement, then what we are actually doing? we are introducing 'time and space' into the concept... one which owes its very existence in a freedom from the concepts of time and space...
summing up, as far as the factual occurrence of an attunement being or not being done, is concerned, i have to say that this has litle nexus with the mindfulness of the master... if the master had intended to attune the student, and he had the right lineage, the student would invaribly be attuned, no matter to how much degree he or his student were mindful...
but here, i have to input another thought... i feel when a master attunes/initiates a student, he he hands down not only the spirituality/consciousness/ability of Usui Sensei, he also hands down the the sum total of the spirituality all the ancestral members of his lineage (inlcuding his own) to the student, and this might account for the fact that initiations by different masters have a different flavour
the beauty of reiki, as i have felt it in comparison with other systems, is that it does not call for a long list of conditions in order to be effective, unless our ego, our knowledge, our mastery tone dictates something to be necessarily added to the list...
wouldnt be a wild idea if you could attune me for mastership so that i myself experience the things fist hand instead of making fanciful assumptions all the time
The concept of in-person spiritual empowerment has been handed down for centuries right down to the Master students of Takata sensei. I suspect it's the students of Takata sensei's students that began the distanct initiations.
From my post :
suppose i m a very profound, effective, elevated (....so on ) reiki master... one day when i wake up i m stricken by a novel idea... what i do, is to construct an arch outside my house, and sorta 'program' it that anybody who will pass through that arch from 7.00 am to 9.00 am in the morning, he will get attunements to level one... and who passes through 11.00 am to 12.00 noon, he will get attunements to level 2, provided he had level 1 attunements already....
does anyone of the peers has such 'permission' to 'initiate' events, surrounding, conditions, time spans, places, etc. with a mind that such things (per initiation) will pass on initiations to human beings getting in touch with them under 'specified' circumstances ?
From your reply :
I'm glad you made this point, . It shouldn't be done, imo. that simple. We've got no earthly or spiritual mandate to initiate another into a spiritual experience without their knowledge. This is kinda like the crusades. christianity forced onto muslims whether they liked it or not. It's the same concept, only by stealth.
Even if they do know what it represents, there's the issue of focus/mindfullness which a student is entitled to recieve from a teacher during initiation.
this aspect is one on which i m bit unclear as i have discussed in the preceding paragraph.
One last thing, . There's an idea (which may or may not be true) that a persons lifepan can be shortened by the more folks they initiate in spiritual ways such as this. This could be cause we're transfering some of our divine consciousness, but cause it's divine doesn't means we've got an unlimited amount. It's our small allocated part fo divinity.
well, our 'quota' of divinity is something already dynamic ( i believe so )
there might be imbalances of energies/spiritual evolvement that sometimes has detrimental effects on the the people who have attained a certain spiritual height....
it happens with many people, and in our eastern thoughts, here is when we speicifically require the help of a guru, so that we could attain a meaningful balance....
always we have to keep in mind that we human beings were 'programmed' to do a lot of things at the same time, and threfore, we have to face the music whenever we tilt totally towards one side of the balance, whether it be spirituality or materiality
balance is beautiful, and to keep balance is sometimes so simple too !
take care
salman