Attunement Variations
Published in the July 2000 issue of "The
Messenger"
Why are there so many variations of the attunements? If
Usui passed on his attunement procedures to his students, then why
aren't we doing them as he instructed? How similar are the westernized
attunements from those that are taught in Japan, the country where
Reiki was received as a result of the enlightenment of Usui Sensei?
And how many variations are there? And are some better than others?
What is truly necessary to pass on the empowerment to students? And
which is the 'right' attunement?
In order to answer these and other
questions, it is necessary to explore some ideas of how Usui may have
come to create the attunement process. As we now know, Usui had been
trying to receive enlightenment for most of his life. Having failed to
reach it through the practices of various religions, he finally
turned to Zen Buddhism. And having experienced frustrating results
from his Zen practice, Usui consulted his Zen Master, who told him".
to die one time". What we understand of this is that Usui Sensei was
to give up trying to reach Satori, that he was to go into the quiet
space within and die. figuratively speaking.. And Satori came to him.
and he "felt one big Reiki over his head". This means that he
understood everything about this energy, that it was the answer to his
prayers and desires, and that it could benefit others as well as
himself. He went home, and excitedly convinced his family members to
let him experiment on them with this newly tapped energy source. He
saw amazing results; in fact, his wife's health improved because of
his hands-on transference of energy that he called "Reiki". And when
he saw what Reiki could do, he wanted to share it with others, not
desiring to keep it within his family, as was the tradition. He began
a society of Reiki practitioners called the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai
and it is still going strong today. Teachers are keeping Usui's
teachings intact without changes, as much as humanly possible.
Now to
get to the meat of the story... attunements. It is known that Usui
would sit with a student knee-to-knee and intend the student to feel
the Reiki energy, and once experienced, it could be recalled by the
student with will/intent alone. As time went on, Usui Sensei
experimented with a kind of ritual; he would actually perform
energetic motions and movement over a student's head and hands, and
this worked also. And a few of his students experimented with some
slight variations to Usui's process and they seemed to work as well.
The secret it seems was in the 'intent'. A teacher who worked with the
energy in a disciplined manner, practiced connecting to the flow of
Reiki energy could intend a student to be similarly opened to this
flow, thereafter recalling it whenever desired. After a while, Usui
Sensei realized that not everyone could detect energy with the same
sensitivity that he could, so he borrowed some symbols from Buddhist
and Taoist teachings and from the Kanji form of writing of his
language. These symbols represented the energies that he experienced
when he performed his Reiki empowerments. And soon, the symbols found
their way into the attunement procedure. Well, to shorten this story,
Usui never intended the symbols to continue to be utilized in the
attunements and treatments, but to be discarded once a student could
sense the various subtleties contained within the Reiki frequency. As
the teachers taught students their versions of the attunements, the
students would carry on the tradition of passing the same empowerment
procedures without changes. But consider that there were many lineages
of Reiki teachings with their corresponding empowerments. So this is
one of the reasons there are so many variations today.
There is no
exact number of known empowerments, but suffice it to say there are
many. So which is the 'right' one? It would seem that all empowerments
work to some degree of efficiency, but the ability to connect one to
the flow of Universal energy is not in the techniques, but rather in
the strength of intent, as well as the amount of energy
sustained/called forth by a teacher. Is one attunement better, more
strongly experienced than another? Which is the 'right' one? I can
only say that the simplicity of Usui Sensei's empowerment method makes
it my empowerment of choice. Adonea and I have chosen to follow his
simple, yet powerful techniques as well.
There are a great many
differences between Reiki as Usui Sensei taught it, and the
westernized variations with their eclectic techniques me from other
philosophies/religions/energy practices. Reiki seems to me to be
getting more complicated, with more and more symbols, longer
empowerment procedures, and ever-increasing 'branches' that have very
little to do with Reiki as it was and is still taught in Japan. Reiki
is simple when not complicated by loads of added techniques and
procedural steps. I entreat you the reader to learn the original Reiki
techniques of Usui, and maybe you too will gain the enlightened
knowledge tapped by Usui Sensei. Blessings on your Reiki path.
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