Reiki and Responsibility (part I) by Light
Published in the July
1999 issue of "The Messenger"
Are Reiki practitioners as "
care-givers" responsible to anyone? Do Reiki teachers have any
responsibility to their students? Are we as individuals responsible to
humanity as a whole? Are we responsible for anyone but ourselves?
What is our responsibility to the infirmed who seek "healing"? These
are timeless questions, asked by each person at important spiritual
junctures in their lives. So what are the answers to these and other
questions that face each "bodyworker" and/or "care-giver"? Where and
from whom do these answers come?
We will try to supply a reasonable
answer to these and perhaps a few other questions that we have been
asked in our long career as a "caregivers". Our answers are not to be
taken as your truth, however… rather as a springboard to the
examination of your own values and beliefs as to how you perform in
the "healing" arena. We have combined experience as "care-givers" for
over 30 years, and these questions have been posed to us many times,
as well as in our own personal self-examination of our beliefs. With
our continuing spiritual unfoldment, we have seen our answers change
and take on new understanding. We want to share these with you… not
because we want to be considered experts, but because each of us has a
need to express what is in our hearts and minds; to share and help
others to be more responsible care-givers. It is in sharing our truths
that each of us learns who we are, individually and collectively.
We
have closely examined the word "responsibility"... dictionary
definitions of the word include "a duty, an obligation; care/cure of
souls; accountability". Webster defines it as "the quality or state of
being responsible". Personally, we lean toward "the ability to
respond". To us, this means that one has the wherewithal to choose a
response to any and every stimuli/action presented to them. This can
only come through knowledge, experience, thought and caring.
Responsibility is different from a reaction. A reaction is "resistance
or opposition to a force, influence, or movement, especially a
tendency toward a former and usually outmoded political, social order
or policy". By comparing these two definitions, one can conclude that
a reaction is a repeated, learned habit/trait/behavior, and a response
is a fresh, new choice, based on availability of details and the
weighing of options at any/every given moment in time. So let us look
at our responsibility as "care-givers".
First off, we have come to
know that we are "Spirit"… a spark of God/Creator, expressing the
Divinity within us to the "All That Is". I believe that we are
responsible in co-authoring our "reality", as a reflection of
Creation. We choose to demonstrate our individual Divine ‘potential’
within the human vehicle/body, and to help others to feel free enough
to do the same. We don’t believe we are responsible for anyone else,
but we do believe we are responsible to everyone that exists as a part
of our "soul family". We further believe that we are responsible for
the kind of experiences we have on this planet, individually and
collectively. We can neglect our co-creative nature and accept the
status of ‘victims’… allowing the randomness of life to determine our
experiences. Or we can choose to be conscious/aware co-creators,
working within the Divine Plan of Creation to be fully present,
enjoying our ‘roles’ and experiences on this unique ‘stage’.
We
believe we choose our careers and positions in life; we determine our
responses to every experience according to our thoughts, mindsets, and
patterns of belief. We believe we have chosen our roles as
care-givers and that we have responsibility to all we come in contact
with in our daily work/service. We believe we have a responsibility to
continue to learn about our trade/service; to learn new techniques
and methods, to change and adjust to people’s needs in these
‘quickening times’. We believe that as care-givers, it is our duty to
be knowledgeable and informed, enabling us to talk intelligently with
other care-givers, with our clients, and even with members of the
professional medical community. We desire to offer professional,
alternative support to a client’s chosen course-of-action in
confronting their imbalances/conditions/dis-eases. We feel care-givers
need to be self-educating, well read, and inquisitive, seeking out
ever-changing information about dis-eases they will encounter in their
work. I also believe that as teachers, we need to continuously
upgrade our teaching skills, to tutor students to be self-policing,
self-caring about their profession, so they can continue to train
others in a similar manner.
We believe that when working with
clients, especially those with life-threatening diseases, we need to
discuss their dis-ease(s), to explore possible reason(s) for the
imbalance in their lives. We think that we should discuss a client’s
‘responsibility’ in creating their reality, including the creation of
dis-ease and the possible benefits of holding on to it. If they can
come to the understanding that they called forth a condition(s) for
the lessons contained within, they might come to understand that they
can also create health and balance as easily. In order to do that, we
care-givers must understand and demonstrate this principle, so we can
help the client take control of their healing process, to make
intelligent decisions about their treatment of choice, whether
medical, complementary or both.
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