Book Quote from “Reiki, The Legacy of Dr. Usui” and words by Josslyn Streett, Reiki Master of Rain Shadow Reiki
This morning I picked up one of my favorite ‘go to’ Reiki books, “Reiki, the Legacy of Dr. Usui” by Frank Arjava Petter and I read this passage. It spoke to me, so I’m sharing it here praying it helps others as well. I read this book over and over again and still find new passages that I wonder if I’ve ever read them before. I know I have, and I got out of them what I needed then. But, apparently, I needed them again.
Many people are ‘waking up’ from their denial dreamland for the first time. People are experiencing feelings they haven’t felt before. Knowing that these feelings are not good or bad is important. They have a purpose. That purpose is to communicate that there is an imbalance in their system, their life, their body. It is time to LISTEN to this communication and not push it down or label it as BAD. I’m all about the HOW. HOW do we do this new thing, listening to our emotions, that we have not done before. I felt this passage from the book explained it well.
Expressing Feelings from “Reiki, the Legacy of Dr. Usui.” page 56
“I often heard my master Osho say that feelings must be brought to light in order for their purpose to become clear to us. The purpose of so-called negative feelings should be brought to light so that they can heal and the so-called positive feelings so that their light can spread even further.
Expressing our feelings is a balancing act at the start. Like tightrope-walkers on the circus rope, one tiny wrong movement to the left, right, upward, or downward is identical with falling into the depths. It isn’t easy to share our feelings with someone close to us without pouring them over him and burying him beneath them.
The only way to learn how to gracefully express our own feelings is to practice doing so. Because it is often more difficult to express our feelings to people close to us, it is best to start with ourselves. Simply go for a walk or sit down alone in a quiet place and tell yourself how you feel about yourself. Then tell yourself how you feel about a person close to you without passing any kind of judgment on your feelings. There actually isn’t any difference between the so-called “good” and “bad” feelings. The person who feels them is always the same!
When you have done this a few times, choose someone in whom you have total trust. Ask her or him to simply listen to you and then unconditionally pour our your heart. In a relationship, it often isn’t easy to be honest because we say that we don’t want to hurt the other person. I think this is true only to a limited extent. The rest of the truth is that we are afraid the other person would no longer love us if we express our feelings in their entirety. I recommend that you enter into a pact with your partner that allows both parties to be unconditionally open and honest.
The simplest way is certainly just plain openness. By constantly being honest, we disassociate increasingly from our feelings. At the beginning, we may possibly swing from one extreme to the other like a pendulum and somewhat exaggerate the expression of emotions. It will become increasingly easy to share the ‘negative’ feelings with time. After a while, it then becomes possible to speak about our feelings as if they were someone else’s feelings.”
I have found this to be true. The more I practice at this process, the more my feelings are not as extreme, I’m not as attached to them. It’s like I’m looking at them as someone on a movie screen like I used to have my clients do in hypnotherapy, to gain distance from them. Of course it’s harder at first and that is why it is helpful to have someone like me or a therapist or a very close friend to help you and guide you though it. But after some practice and experience, believe me, it gets much easier. Good luck, may Love and Light be with you during this process. The most important part is to DO it and to PERSEVERE. Stick with it no matter what.
“Reiki, The Legacy of Dr. Usui” is available for check out in the Rain Shadow Reiki lending library. Come and ‘check it out.”
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined! As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler, solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness, weakness.”
Henry David Thoreau
