First attempts at distant healing

I had been hoping to go on my Reiki II course this week, but I’ve obviously still got a bit to learn about manifesting because timing-wise things just didn’t stack up financially.  This left me in a bit of a quandary as back in England many of my close family have been falling ill and people keep cropping up asking for help who are just that bit far away to make it feasible.

Thank goodness for this diary, because a couple of my lovely new Twitter friends who visit this site told me that they are only Reiki I but have nevertheless been distance healing successfully for years.  Well, if that wasn’t a sign! Don’t get me wrong, I still very much intend to go and do my Reiki ll and Pranic healing course, as soon as possible; there is so much I can learn from Laura and there are so many things I want to discuss. But in the meantime what was there to lose? If it didn’t work because I hadn’t had the necessary attunements then we wouldn’t worse off, but if it did then a thousand new opportunities for helping others when I’m so far away would open to me.  ‘Try it’ my instincts screamed. I find it hard to believe in a higher power that would only help those who put up front financially, and I felt sure that I would be gently guided to do the right thing.

Clearly, the use of the Reiki symbols help focus the intentions enormously, so I first set about finding out what they were and learning about the meaning of the three most commonly used symbols, the power symbol, the distance symbol and the mental/emotional symbol. I won’t describe them here as I respect the fact that many Reiki masters consider them to be sacred and that they should only be passed on during the Reiki ll initiation. Indeed, perhaps they only take on their full significance after such an initiation. However, I reasoned with myself that these days they are easily available online and in books, and the alternative was to leave people I love suffering needlessly when I could potentially be of assistance to them.  I practised them over and over so that I could bring them to mind effortlessly when required, and burned the papers on which I’d drawn them as a mark of respect.

First of all I tried it in the kitchen on my husband while he was sat in the lounge, a session punctuated at intervals by me yelling ‘Can you feel anything’? Nope, he didn’t feel anything in particular, although I could feel the familiar tingling in my hands. That night I took myself up to our bedroom and gave it a try. Many people on the Internet advised using teddies as stand-ins but that felt a bit too off-the-wall for me, so I set about giving a normal Reiki session to an imaginary person. I felt the energy pulse through me as if in a Reiki session, if perhaps a little fainter.  I’d also read that distance healing generally takes less time, well this wasn’t going to be the case if I worked in this way.  Whilst I am only too happy to spend my time helping people to heal, we’re mid-renovation, there is no heating in our bedroom and it’s not particularly conducive to a healing environment.

I also wonder who it was that says that ‘a Reiki session lasts between 1-1½ hours, and feel that it’s probably something created by man.  Knowing from past experience that Reiki can even work through me when I’m asleep as long as I go to sleep with the best of intentions (as it did on my husband), the next night I decided to try a distance healing whilst tucked up snug in bed. Ah, but what to do with my hands? ‘What the heck, it’s freezing, keep your hands under the covers and just visualise it’ my instincts said.  So that’s what I did. Much more at ease, I felt the Reiki energy surge through me much more freely when I simply lay down, relaxed and thought about the person who was receiving it.

My next question was whether I could treat more than one person at a time.  Although I had intended to focus on one person for fifteen minutes or half an hour and then focus on the next person, of course my chattering brain thought otherwise and my mind flit back and forwards between the people I was hoping to help treat. However, the energy flowed strongly and I decided that the universe is more than capable of doing one thing at a time so why not just do what comes naturally.  For the last two mornings I have woken in the wee small hours with the energy pulsing through me, with the first thought in my head of the people I went to bed thinking about.  In fact, this morning at 3 am I lay there for a couple of hours drifting in and out of sleep, my thoughts flitting between no less than 9 different people and a couple of horses and the energy was really strong throughout my entire body.  At one point my feet felt incredibly hot, and from time to time I had a dull ache in various part of my body. I wondered fleetingly whose pain or illness I was picking up on, and if the illnesses might be transferred with the negative energy. Immediately I had the innate knowledge that this was a very human thought and was reminded that the universe manages to effortlessly coordinate millions of things at once. So I just got out of the way and let the energy do its thing.   I suspect that this may be the way forward for me. Obviously I have yet to see the results, but I could hear one of the horses in question stamping his leg in his stable outside when I was thinking about him in much the same way he did when I had given a hands-on treatment (he got kicked in the field and had a cut and swelling on his back leg). These days I am able to suspend doubt far more easily, and I believe the energy was working every bit as effectively as if I had been physically present.

As an aside, I did a very treatment yesterday morning on a friend who had had a major stroke two and a half years earlier.  Although he has regained movement he has not been able to feel his right foot and has lost a lot of sensation in his right arm.  Throughout the session I could see a very distinct pulse in his left hand (strangely enough) and when I laid my hands below his ribcage his right foot moved back and forth very markedly. His face also visibly twitched throughout the treatment.  At the end of the treatment, which only lasted half an hour due to time constraints, I saw a golden colour in his right foot, which I felt prompted to hold in both hands. As soon as he got off the massage table he looked at me in amazement and said that he could feel his right toe. He said that during the session he had noticed tears running from his right eye, not in an emotional way but as a physical reaction. When I saw him a couple of hours later he felt some changes in his right arm, and some of the feeling that had started coming back was numb again.  I explained that sometimes things will feel worse for a short period of time before they improve, but that it is a sign that healing is taking place.  He was over the moon. It was very moving, what a beautiful thing to be able to do for people.  Every day I find myself in awe of the power of Reiki.

Our emotions really do affect us physically

This has been the most fascinating couple of days and I feel I have learnt so much. A recent, recurring and continuing prayer and meditation of mine is that I grow closer to source and learn, really learn, to help others to heal.  I have a deep desire to gain a much better understanding of what is the most effective and what I can do to help others and myself. So I had a wry chuckle to myself when I was driving home in the car yesterday listening to Dr Wayne Dyer on YouTube when he said ‘When you are ready the teacher will appear’.  Well thank you Wayne Dyer because you are teaching me a whole lot at the moment!

I keep finding that the Tao keeps popping up in my life right now so I decided that, as I know nothing about the Tao Te Ching and that the little I have read strikes a great many chords with me, I would try to find out more.  What better place to start than with Wayne Dyer’s book on the Tao ‘Change your thoughts, change your life’, particularly as I find his work truly inspirational (in every sense).

In the book he gives his interpretation of this ancient book of spiritual wisdom, and encourages you to read a chapter and then put it into practice, or to ‘Do the Dao now’ as he puts it.  In the first chapter Wayne suggested that the next time you feel irritation about something that you don’t do anything to remove that irritation, but that you step aside from yourself and put yourself in a place where you can observe that thought, notice how it feels, track it through your body and sense where it goes. The timing was perfect, my husband was asleep in bed next to me and he turned over and threw his arm over me. Bear in mind that I’m a menopausal woman in her mid-forties; believe me at night there is nothing more irritating than such an action, which is guaranteed to provoke a hot flush! So I lay there and took notice of my irritation and I was completely shocked to realise that I could feel it physically (as I had physically felt love in the Reiki session with my friend) and, as an observer, I could sense it snake its way through my body. I caved in with a big ‘humph’ before I could follow it to its natural conclusion and had to throw the offending arm off my body.

This morning I was woken by a dream that I don’t remember (if indeed there was one), but my immediate feeling was one of fear. ‘Step back from yourself and track the feeling’ I ‘thought’ (because again, I don’t think it was my own thought). I was astounded to physically feel that fear snake its way from my thoughts and down into the pit of my stomach. Wow. What would it feel like if I were really angry? What an incredibly profound way to discover that your emotions really do have a physical effect on your body.  No wonder that Mikao Usui’s Reiki prayer starts:

            ‘Just for today I won’t be angry’

            ‘Just for today I won’t worry’

As if to emphasise the point, my own healing has been continuing and I seem to be shedding layer after layer of old emotion and negativity. The day before yesterday I was walking in the woods and found myself absorbed by something that had deeply affected me when I was in my early twenties, a very uncomfortable memory which I have pushed to one side and effectively buried in my thoughts for very many years.  I found myself thinking it over and over whilst I was walking, and realised I was walking with tears streaming down my face. The walk gave me the time to acknowledge my feelings and to start to make peace with myself. When I woke yesterday morning I had a huge and very painful knot in my shoulder and chest, like a trapped nerve, but mentally I felt completely energised. I believe it was the toxic emotion that I had released the day before making its exit.

Now that I am looking the lessons seem to come continuously. I was over the moon to wake up yesterday to an email from my friend thanking me for helping both her dog and her horse. I shot over to her house for a look and the dog’s cut was definitely on the mend and the filling in her horse’s leg had virtually disappeared. Before I left I felt the need to Google hind-gut infections in horses (of which I know nothing), and sure enough the search threw up plenty of texts associating hind gut infections with filled legs. I had wondered whether the treatment on her dog would work, as I hadn’t ‘felt’ very much when I gave the treatment.  Another big lesson for me, that I just need to step out of the way and let the source handle everything; what I feel has nothing to do with whether a healing works or not. Duly noted.  I find the thoughts that popped into my head ‘You are not the healer, you are merely the vessel through which the healing passes’ particularly intriguing. Vessel is certainly not a word that would ordinarily form part of my vocabulary, it’s as if I’m receiving guidance from an ancient wisdom. In fact, guidance and wisdom from a variety of sources, which seems to adapt itself perfectly to whatever quandary or situation I happen to find myself in.

Part of the same.

I feel so blessed to have Reiki in my life.  What an amazing, wonderful, uplifting day I spent yesterday.  Yesterday morning I gave a treatment to a close friend whose dad had passed away a couple of years earlier and who had buried her mum last week after many years struggling with dementia.  Around 18 months ago she had had an operation on a non-malignant tumour behind her ear that was nevertheless pressing on her brain and would have been life-threatening if not removed, and which had left her face partially paralysed in the same way that a stroke would have done.

I first did a quick Reiki session on her dog who had cut his paw open several days earlier.  I felt very few of the sensations I’ve come to associate with Reiki and will be interested to see if she recovers more quickly or not, as my mind and the energy were really guiding me towards doing a full treatment on my friend.  I wasn’t truly ‘present’ when treating the dog, although I did have the best of intentions.

The treatment on my friend was very powerful, and I sensed a huge amount of energy throughout the session.  I felt guided to put my hands in positions that I have not used before, particularly around her mouth, chin, brow and one side of her face.  I saw many different colours, blues, violets, orange and gold, but I was also aware of a very intense white light throughout much of the treatment.  Afterwards, without my having mentioned it, my friend said that she had felt as if she was had the sensation of being bathed in white light, and a sensation almost as if water was being pumped gently through her body. 

From early on in the treatment I had a recurring thought that, although in my usual ‘inner voice’, seemed somehow disconnected from my ‘own’ thoughts.  Over and over I heard “Tell her, tell her.  We are not apart. We can never be separate as we are part of the same.”  I cannot for the life of me find the words to explain how but I knew it was a message from her parents.  As the treatment was drawing to an end I felt the most overwhelming feeling of intense love, so powerful that I felt it physically, and it left me with tears rolling down my cheeks as the session drew to a close.  I feel truly honoured to have been in the presence of such raw and deep-felt emotion.

I finished the morning by treating her horse who had had a bout of colic a week or so earlier and who had since had filled (swollen) legs.  Even a non-believer would have been convinced that something was working on some unseen level by her expressions during treatment.  She kept chewing and yawning and turning round looking at her stomach.  I found that my hands were drawn to a blockage just in front of her hindquarters (behind her saddle) and I felt I needed to keep them there longer than usual.  As I did so her stomach started growling and rumbling, and when I put my hands on her filled legs her stomach rumbled in the same place.  I can’t wait to see if the swelling goes down.

I can’t believe how my own family life has changed since I started working with Reiki.  My husband, who I can see now was deeply, deeply miserable, has a spring in his step and is interested in his work.  We laugh together so much more as a family now, and my husband and I seem to have found the love and affection that was present when we first met, and which has been absent for many, many years now.  My life, quite frankly, was a mess before, but now I seem to be much more focused and am finally getting some semblance of order back into my life.  Another of those thoughts that don’t seem like any of the thoughts I’ve previously had is that we are ‘Like trees who must shed their dead leaves before generating new growth’.  I feel that as a family we have been shedding much of the old, negative energy, thoughts and actions and they are slowly but surely being replaced with something more positive and profound.  I feel much more driven by kindness and compassion and a recurring thought is ‘How can I serve?’ as opposed to ‘What’s in it for me?’.  It’s taken me a long time, but I finally realise that my life is so much more satisfying now that it is driven by love than it was when I was motivated by material things, by what I own, or what I do. I feel an incredible sense of peace because I don’t just believe, I know that this body is just a container for the eternal spirit and love of something that is too big or incredible to name.

Strange new world

As I write this post I’m conscious that it is not particularly linked to Reiki, other than in as much as everything seems to be linked these days. Reiki seems to be just one aspect of a whole new world that is gradually (or not so gradually as it happens) opening up to me, just one of several aspects that are turning my way of looking at life upside down. Or more precisely outside in.

During my waking hours I have become very conscious of energy, both in my surroundings, but also within myself.  I frequently have pulsing sensations around various chakra – or at least I’m assuming it’s around chakra, I am new to all this & don’t know much about them - particularly my root chakra.  My hands tingle and vibrate regularly throughout the day, even when I’m not doing Reiki. For example, I had my hands on my knees as I was being honest with friends about a subject I felt somewhat uncomfortable about, and my hands and knees pulsed as if in a Reiki session.  They start tingling when I feel compassion for someone in a checkout queue. They throb when my teenage daughter has an angry outburst, and sometimes for no apparent reason at all. Sometimes it’s not my hands at all, but my feet that tingle, or a strong sensation in the pit of my stomach or my chest.  I feel almost as if I have developed some sort of 24 access to all the healing benefits of Reiki, even when I haven’t tried to summon it.  I don’t have to meditate for ages to see the flowing indigo colour that now frequently accompanies the Reiki sessions or my early morning musings; it just appears within seconds of me shutting my eyes.  Although it sits a bit uncomfortably with the more cynical and analytical side of me that is challenging the logic of it all I’m coming to the conclusion that the colours are my spirit guide and, like a toddler learning to talk, I’m taking the first steps towards learning to communicate.  And I keep having the nagging thought, totally out of place in my current life, that I’m here to help heal and as a messenger.  I’ve also been having a recurring dream of riding a much-loved pony who is no longer with us, cantering forward as if into battle, both of us bathed in an extremely bright white light; what the heck is that all about?

Last night I found it extremely difficult to get off to sleep, I felt incredibly restless.  I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t concentrate to read, I couldn’t focus to meditate.  I was wearing my super seven necklace and had some hematite and shungite by the bed so I took the necklace off and moved the crystals further away.  At this point the sensations became even stronger, leaving me feeling almost as if I was underwater and was struggling to breathe, so after ten minutes or so I put the necklace back on and for some reason felt it would help to put one of the rocks on my stomach and the other on my pubic bone. The overwhelming sensations immediately started to subside and I was able to sleep.  When I woke in the early hours I was holding the two crystals one firmly in either hand.

At around 5 am I became aware that I was hearing a new sort of sound. Sort of like a ringing in the ears but much finer, not a nuisance as tinitus must be. When I listened more closely I heard there was more than one layer to it, there was one constant tone and then, another, much higher, an octave or so above it. As if I had tuned in to a radio frequency I had previously been unable to hear.  Out came the trusty iPhone and yet another Google search made me wonder if it was not the beginnings of the opening of a channel of communication.  I read there were exercises you can do to help the process along, so, listening hard, using my mind rather than my ears, I asked my spirit guide what I should call them.  Nothing.  I tried again. No reply.  Again I asked. Instead of the voice or name I had been expecting an image of a bright orange flame flashed very briefly but clearly into my mind and then just as quickly went away.  Eventually, I gave up asking for the name, resolving to come back to it on another occasion.  I padded downstairs and finding it was frosty outside set about lighting the wood burner.  As it lit, the flame rose up in exactly the same shape that had flashed into my mind only half an hour or so before. Whoa. I won’t lie, that freaked me out a bit. I mean, I’ve always known that there was some sort of higher power; I can even believe that it is possible to have lived past lives. But that experience suddenly lent some credibility to all those wacky fortunetellers I’ve always dismissed as just out to profit from the gullible, and has made me rethink the possibility of multiple dimensions of time.

Only a few minutes after I got up, I’m still nursing my first cup of coffee, and I can hear my husband outside trying to start the car ready to go out with clients. Normally a quick starter this morning’s frost had obviously given her other ideas and it sounded as if the battery was just about to run out. I could imagine his worry that he was going to be late for a very important meeting and sense his frustration. Remembering I’d read that many people had asked their angels or higher powers for help with mechanical problems and been given assistance I thought ‘Why not give it a go?’ and in my mind I formed the words ‘I’m not sure who I’m supposed to ask, whether it’s a particular angel or whether I just ask God, but could whoever it is give my husband a hand starting this car because this meeting is really, really important to the financial security of our family’. Immediately the car kicked into life. Okay, so it may have happened on its own anyway (I think not, I think the likelihood is that the battery was heading well towards needing a jump start), but there have just been too many coincidences, too many signs, in too short a space of time. And as I am typing this that lovely, almost sensual, tingling has flushed all over my body, starting in my feet, right up to my chin, and I can still hear the humming vibration I heard this morning.

Reading back through this blog it all seems insane, so ridiculously far removed from who I am. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to stay open to all this, that it’s just too big for me to try to analyse, and that if I’m going to go along for the ride then I’ve got to take it as it comes, I can’t pick and choose the bits that suit me.  It’s almost as if I’ve suddenly been given access to a whole package of new senses that have lain dormant within me. I can’t help feeling that this is all linked to the energetic changes I keep reading about, this evolution of mankind. I’m not losing my mind, I’m still as clear-thinking and rational as I always have been (and just as blonde) but I can’t be the only one feeling this can I? Surely? Who else is experiencing these profound changes? What are you feeling and sensing? I’d really love to hear your experiences and share with you.

Protection

Yesterday my beautiful Super Seven pendant necklace arrived in the post from http://www.leonielynne.com/.  She had sent me a variety of photos of different crystal pendants but this one somehow ‘chose itself’ as it stood out so much from all the others.

As I was driving home from the supermarket, having been wearing the pendant for less than an hour, I suddenly had a really loud buzzing in my ears like the buzzing I hear in the early hours when I see the colours I’ve described but much, much stronger.  It was so sudden that I braked sharply, only to see a fox trot across the road in front of my car, which I would undoubtedly have hit had I not braked. 

Yesterday evening I listened back to Jennifer Hough’s Wide Awakening Show http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thewideawakening .  If you haven’t already heard it and are interested in awakening and cellular activation I thoroughly recommend listening in.  She did an exercise in cellular activation towards the end of the show which was really quite something and gave me tingling sensations all over my body and seeing bright light when I shut my eyes. Very intense, fascinating stuff.

Comparisons

This posting is more of a ‘note to self’; a collection of ramblings and musings that I feel the need to investigate further. 

I was woken in the early hours, as has been usual recently, by a compulsion to go downstairs and meditate in the peace of the night.  I followed my instincts, but found it very difficult to focus and let go, so took myself back to bed a short time later.  Ordinarily when I wake I meditate and pray, but this morning I was feeling a bit jaded so reached for my iPhone and checked my Twitter account.  There I saw a posting from @Bhava_Jim, ‘Enlightenment and Meditation: A new vision of Christ Jesus’.  I clicked on the link and saw the text made reference to Paramahansa Yogananda.  Knowing nothing about him, other than the fact that at a guess he had something to do with the yoga of today, I Googled him and was immediately struck by how much the photo of him in Wikipedia looked like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, both of whom had that enigmatic expression of inner peace and somehow transcend gender. It's almost as if da Vinci was inspired to look into the future. Aware that I know as little about da Vinci as I do about Yogananda I felt compelled to learn more, so started reading through the Wikipedia entries about him.  My hands were tingling with energy as I did so.

 

I was struck by so many similarities between the two men and was fascinated and intrigued by their respective lives many centuries apart. It is clear from his work that Leonardo da Vinci was very deeply connected to God but I can’t help wondering if not only was he a talented artist, philosopher and engineer but also one of the ‘seers’ who had an understanding beyond mere religion. An understanding of consciousness and the God within each of us that reaches through time and across many eras.

Yogananda taught ‘Self-realisation is the knowing in all parts of body, mind, and soul that you are now in possession of the kingdom of god, that you do not have to pray that it come to you, that god’s omnipresence is your omnipresence; and that all you need to do is improve your knowing’ , which resonates deep within me as the truth.  I see he practiced Kriya Yoga, and Wikipedia shows me he gave an explanation of it in his Autobiography:

‘The Kriya Yogi mentally directs his life energy to revolve, upward and downward, around the six spinal centres (medullary, cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral and coccygeal plexuses) which correspond to the twelve astral signs of the zodiac, the symbolic Cosmic Man.’

This immediately made me think of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and to wonder if there was any link to the zodiac (remember, I am uneducated in spiritual and artistic matters).  Sure enough a Google search ‘Vitruvian Man zodiac’ immediately throws up a wealth of speculation on the subject.  I read also that da Vinci was intrigued throughout his life by mathematics, ratios and proportions and again, I can’t help but wonder how spirit, religion, numerology, astrology, clairvoyancy and the like are linked. 

This hasn’t led me to any great insight or conclusions, but it has prompted me to learn more about both men, and to try to find out more about Kriya Yoga.

Why I love Reiki (not for the squeamish...)

This is why I love Reiki. What a mixture of emotions. Excitement, of course, but more than anything I feel honoured that I have access to this wonderful gift, totally humbled and in awe of the divine power at work and overwhelming relief for the poor horse.

These photos are of a friend’s broodmare (in foal) who badly injured her leg in an argument with a fence over 2 months ago. Despite extensive (ongoing) veterinary care she  has been taking a long time to heal so the day before yesterday I suggested that they let me do a few Reiki sessions with her. The owners had taken the dressings off around eight days before I did the first treatment, so the wound had already been exposed to the air but was still failing to heal.

This is how the wound looked when I first saw it 2 days ago:

This photo was taken on my phone mid-way through the first treatment:

1 hour after treatment:

2 1/2 hours after the first treatment:

After 36 hours:

After 36 hours and the second treatment:

After 48 hours & 3 treatments:

Reiki is for everyone

I can’t help wondering whether this gift I’ve been given (and still others I’m just starting to access) was always meant to be passed on to everyone.  That the egos of those who were originally introduced to this extra layer of senses labelled their abilities as ‘secret’.  It wasn’t mainstream enough for most publishing houses, and there was a ‘weirdness’ and stigma about it so the word was only passed on amongst a select few.

Today, all sorts of stuff that would never have made it into print is readily available over the Internet.  I am no more extraordinary that the next person.  I am a very ordinary person with a very ordinary job living a very ordinary life. The difference is that today if I am curious and keep an open mind I can communicate with people all around the globe, share and validate my experiences, contact others and learn from them; we can cooperate with and help each other.  I don’t need (although I love) to be in a deep meditative state in order to access this universal energy.  The thoughts inside my head, accompanied by the ringing in my ears and sensations that I am coming to realise let me know they are not my own, tell me that it was always meant to be this way. And that the time has come.

Signs

Wherever I look at the moment I seem to see things which give me strength or which provide answers to the many questions I’m asking right now.  As well as meditation I have found myself starting to pray regularly and my prayers are being answered on a basis that is too regular to be mere coincidence.

‘We cannot create a new, extraordinary life on top of a past that is riddled with incomplete projects, broken agreements and unresolved issues’ someone in California posts on Twitter.  To which someone adds wisely ‘Like trying to build on sand in a Tsunami zone’.

This made me understand better than anything the healing process that I, together with the rest of my close family, are going through at the moment. I keep having the recurring thought that I woke to a few weeks back ‘Healer heal thyself’ and instinctively know I need to get my own house in order to be best able to serve others.  I am sure that the healing is well under way but it has been a pretty turbulent week while we start shedding the layers of negative energy caused by years of pain, disappointment, anger, fear and judgement of others.

‘Come to the edge’, he said.  They said, ‘We are afraid.’ ‘Come to the edge’, he said. They came. He pushed them… And they flew – Peter McWilliams’ an enlightened soul in Canada posts.

This for me completely summed up how my life has been so totally transformed in such a short space of time; why Alcoholics Anonymous works so well for desperate people seeing a way out from their addictions; why people who have had a near death experience radiate peace and see the world with new eyes; where the phrase ‘Born again’ comes from. The past fifteen years have been pretty bloody awful, heavily marked by periods of deep depression, cancer, long-term financial worries and deepening marital problems. I ask myself every day how our family have survived this far intact. But the moment I finally reached the point when I felt so totally, utterly desperate that I got down on my knees and asked for Divine help an abundance of the right guidance and people and were immediately moved into my life so I could begin this amazing spiritual journey.

Whilst there is still much work ahead of me, I am very much starting to ‘get it’. However, my husband has really been struggling, still locked in the same cycle of fear and worry. This is an honest account of my experiences, so I won’t lie. I have wondered many times whether I would be better off just walking away from all his negativity and starting over in a more positive environment. But, as my Reiki teacher Laura pointed out, there was surely love there once, otherwise why get married, and if issues are left unresolved the likelihood is that they will come back to bite me in another setting. And I do love my husband; I’ve just been incredibly frustrated, judgemental and lacking in compassion. So, yet again, I prayed. But for the first time in my life I prayed for him; I prayed for someone else.

Over recent nights, sensing overwhelming amounts of negative energy, I have asked for protection from Archangel Michael, for him to help my husband release his fears and allow him to find his own way forward in life. Every night I have seen bright blue/indigo sparks, as if to reassure me that he is there, and every night I have had a slight ringing in my ears like they are slightly blocked which I have read is often associated with angels.  Night after night, without either of us prompting it, I have felt healing energy surging through my own body to that of my husband and during the day I have felt as if I’ve been on a roller coaster ride in a washing machine on the spin setting.  But this is nothing compared to what my husband has been feeling.  The morning after I first prayed for angel intervention my husband woke up and immediately violently threw up. No one else in our family has been ill, nor have we been in contact with anyone who has been poorly or eaten anything vaguely suspicious. He said he felt like his eyeballs were spinning round and round ‘inside his head and he had a blinding headache and had to return to bed for the rest of the day. ‘Take your hex off me’ he joked, so it was obvious to me he thought it was the Reiki causing his discomfort.  The following day he slunk into a depression as deep as I have ever seen in the 27 years we have been together; he parked himself in front of the telly staring into space and the only words he uttered all day were insults. I was quick to reassure my girls that I believed it was part of the healing process and that the best thing they could do was to shrug off his appalling behaviour and show him as much love as they could muster.

More prayers from me yesterday, ‘Please help him to snap out of this and restore some positive energy to our household’.  Within seconds there was a knock at the door and he had to get off the sofa and help me entertain unexpected visitors. Putting a cheerful face on life for others instantly lifted him to a happier place when they left.

For my part I feel as if layers and layers of negativity are gradually being stripped away. Giving Reiki to my alcoholic stepfather, the reason why I left home at 16 and why I felt incredibly rejected by my mum for many years, was incredibly cathartic for both of us. Forgiving my mum for this rejection (which of course, was never a rejection) and understanding that she simply needed another adult to share her life was another momentous release for me.  Yesterday when I came out of my meditation I found I had tears rolling down my cheeks and I immediately thought of a much-loved pony who I have been missing deeply.  Physically I find myself having stopped drinking alcohol altogether and eating far less meat than usual, instead increasing my vegetables.  I’m exercising more and taking time out for myself to go for long walks with the dog. When I wake from sleep it is almost always to some sort of constructive thought that has ‘popped into my head’ which offers another step out of our current unhealthy situation. ‘Do this’ or ‘Contact this person’.  Perhaps most significantly of all, for the first time in my life I feel more concerned about doing good for others than being wrapped up in my own misery.  We are moving forward quickly, and in a pure and wonderful way.

Sorcery

Since I started using Reiki I have already seen too many ‘coincidental’ healings to know that it is the truth and the way forward for me. However, it’s none too surprising that there have been many a jokey comment about witchery from close family, tinged with a slight element of fear of the unknown.  Particularly from my husband, who I know has been feeling the energy passing between us night after night.  ‘A few years ago they’d’ve burned you at the stake’ they laugh.  Their comments about the 'spookiness' of it all made me slightly sad because I know it is a wonderful gift from the Divine, but I couldn’t find the words to reassure them and to convey this to them, because it defies understanding.

This morning one of my daughters was listening to the car radio on the school run and she said ‘Isn’t it amazing how Ed Sheeran can record that song in a studio hundreds of miles away and that we can listen to it on the radio all around the world? I bet a hundred and fifty years ago no one would have thought it possible’.  My tongue in cheek reply? ‘A hundred and fifty years ago they’d’ve thought it was witchcraft’. She got the point.

2012

2012; the year that I shed my old self and became alive to the true potential that has lain dormant within me.

Someone sent me this beautiful poem by Jacques Brel this morning and it couldn't be a more perfect New Year's wish:


Je vous souhaite des rêves à n'en plus finir et l'envie furieuse d'en réaliser quelqu'uns
Je vous souhaite d'aimer ce qu'il faut aimer et d'oublier ce qu'il faut oublier
Je vous souhaite des passions
Je vous souhaite des silences ...
Je vous souhaite surtout d'être vous


which translates as:


I hope that you have dreams without end and a passionate desire to make some of them come true
I hope that you love what you need to love and can forget what you need to forget
I hope you know passion
I hope you find silence
Above all I hope you are yourself

Grounded

I feel much calmer and more grounded today. Yesterday I couldn’t concentrate on anything and the energy was almost overwhelming, so I walked in the rain and the wind with my dog. I popped into the ambulance station and saw one of the ladies who had driven me to Rennes every day for my chemotherapy and asked her to bear my Reiki in mind for anyone she felt I might be able to help – she was over the moon to see me in good health. Then I spent an hour or so just standing quietly in the field amongst my horses and when I came back to the house I sang and danced around my kitchen to the music of my youth. Some of the songs resonated with feelings I’d had during a very difficult period when I was younger, and I was able to just let those feelings go and move on.

I had asked a friend who does Reiki whether she was feeling the same amount of energy as I was. I wanted to know if it was the energy of the times that I was feeling, or if it was just something I needed to work through.  Her wise response was ‘Energy is always there, it’s your ability to feel and channel it that changes’.

This morning I was woken by those beautiful swirling indigo colours again, almost as if they were saying ‘You didn’t quite get it, did you? You’re only doing part of it’, so inspired by Wayne Dyer quoting Rumi ‘Don’t go back to sleep’ I staggered out of bed and wrote down the plethora of stuff that intuitively came into my mind.  I found the whole process very cathartic; my hands pulsed while I was typing in the same way they do when I do Reiki and at one point I saw an indigo cloud sweep briefly across my computer keyboard.

Anticipation

For the third or fourth night on the trot I’ve been unable to sleep, energy pulsing through me all night. Meditation usually calms me, but right now I’m finding it difficult to let go.  During the day I’m finding it hard to concentrate on anything, I feel restless with anticipation, as if I’m waiting at the top of a roller coaster ride.  There is a buzzing, bubbling, fizzing feeling deep inside me; it runs from the centre of my chest to my root chakra, and sometimes in my fingers, toes & legs.  My heart is racing, sometimes I feel like someone is sitting on my chest and it's hard to breathe, I have a cold sore in a place where I haven’t had them for years, and sometimes I have a sensation in my ears as if I've just got out of the swimming pool and have water in them.  I don’t feel scared, but I do feel excited, and sense that there is something I need to know which is just outside my grasp that I’m not quite getting hold of.   I’m finding it impossible to settle down to my day job.

My husband was reading with the light on last night and I was struggling to drop off to sleep, so I decided to climb into my daughter’s bed, only to find my other daughter already snuggled up to her.  At gone midnight on a school night the two of them were still chatting to each other, despite numerous requests for them to go to sleep.  In my mind I said ‘Please make them go to sleep, they’ll be so tired in the morning otherwise’. Within seconds of this thought the two of them independently twitched in various parts of their bodies, like you often see dogs do when they are dreaming. And I swear that they were both snoring gently within a minute or so.

Interesting when I did an Internet search whilst lying awake in the wee small hours to see how many other people are awoken between the hours of 3 and 4 in the morning, when the world is at its quietest.

This morning I was kneeling down to light the fire when I had an overwhelming sensation that my great aunt, who passed away a decade or so ago but who worked as a spiritual healer and medium for many years, was with me – I felt a great flush of comforting warmth, kindness and compassion throughout my body.  It was almost as if someone, more than one person, was saying ‘Don’t worry, we’re with you. All will be well’.

I seem to be drawn to or to attract people who have been blessed with similar gifts.  Only this lunchtime I was at an impromptu get-together with neighbours to wish everyone happy New Year and our next door neighbour of 10 years confided that he is able to divine for water.

I can’t help wondering with gratitude why my materialistic ego was so cleverly drawn to all those books with names like ‘How to become a money magnet’, ‘Think and grow rich’, ‘Ask and it is given’ and ‘The science of getting rich’. Because the reality is that once you start reading you realise that there is a far deeper and more profound truth running through every one of those books in which financial abundance and security plays just a very tiny part.

Guidance

2012, the year I finally understood the meaning of the word synchronicity and realised the awesome connectedness of everything. When I look back at the ‘coincidences’ in my life, I can now see that every experience I’ve lived has led me to this point and has been valid and constructive. Each time I’ve dropped to my knees in despair, or searched my mind for the solution to a problem somehow I have been provided with the guidance I have needed. Each and every time, even if at first glance it is not obvious. It might have been in the form of a person who is introduced into my life, a book that has fallen open at a particular page, instinctively knowing the right words to use for a Google search despite searching for topics that I’ve never before encountered, lines of a song on the radio, a poem, a video on YouTube by someone who inspires me.

I am also starting to realise that this blog can never be just about Reiki, it has to be about something far bigger than just healing, that everything links back to the infinite Divine.

Events keep unfolding, over and over again, to show me the way and I realise beyond all shadow of a doubt that my life has changed completely. I can never go back.

I think about little else than Spirit, I see God’s beauty in everything around me. I lay awake reading until the early hours of the morning, and have an avid desire to learn more, to draw closer to my true purpose.  I want to everyone to know what I have learned (although interestingly last night I was drawn to a text which warned me against ramming my newfound passion zealously down people’s throats, they have to find it for themselves).

Physically, so much is changing, and of course it is scary, of course I seek answers.  I looked for solutions to curb my fear, because I know I must not be afraid. Instead a kind stranger on Twitter, an experienced Reiki practitioner, guided me towards a beautiful book about Angels - Sea of Miracles by Amy Oscar which explained so much and reassured me. I wonder why I see the colour Indigo so often in my healing and my meditation and come across the link: http://www.starchild.co.za/what.html,  I was wondering at the physical sensations I’m experiencing, particularly the throb of energy in what I now know to be my heart Chakra that feels something akin to being permanently on a wild fairground ride; wondering at the energy that courses through my hands and seems to keep sending my (new) computer on the link, at the huge wave of energy that swept through my entire body when I walked in the forest in the rain yesterday, at the fact that after years of being a meat-eater I seem to have an aversion to meat. How on earth would I have known to search for ‘physical symptoms awakening’ before? But I did, and I immediately stumbled upon http://www.sunfell.com/symptoms.htm which summarised so completely what I am experiencing at the moment.  All this happened in one day, yesterday, the same day I turned on the radio and immediately heard the line ‘tête à tête avec un ange, en apesenteur’ (French for ‘head to head with an angel, weightless’)

I know this all sounds far-fetched. I am not someone who has previously been involved in any of the religions or New Age stuff (not in this life at any rate), I don’t dress in ethnic clothing or have wild hair – I am a businesswoman. But what I write on this blog is the simple truth, and I feel compelled to share it.