This
article
is one
of a series
where I give my ideas on aspects of Reiki and/or energy work. The pages
are intended to give some "food for thought" and some are only my
viewpoint. While a number of facts may be included, you should decide
for yourself how much (if any) of the content feels right to you.
 As I mentioned in Part 1, when
most students come to me for master level training, especially if they
are new to my Reiki classes, they usually are very keen on anything to
do with the Reiki attunement. In the distant class most will jump
right away past the class checklist to the section on attunements,
especially the sample videos I have (even though they are
pretty old productions from 2001.) So this particular topic includes some thoughts I have shared on this very important part of the
class.
Part 1 - topics on 1 – the attunement intention; and 2 – the student's potential
energy experience
Part 2 - topics on 3 – the integration process; and 4 – the teacher's experience
Part 3 - topics on 5 – attunements without training; and 6 – frequent re-attunements
- One day when I was attending a Reiki
share that I and one of my master students had organised, I heard my
student mention giving what were called "temporary attunements" to
some of the participants of the share. These were to people who
had not yet taken a Reiki class. The teacher meant of course that the
attunements they received would wear off shortly after the Reiki
share. I had heard someone else use
this idea before, and a few years later I discovered that Hyakuten
Inamoto
claimed the reiju he would give at his Reiki shares were also
temporary.
I found this an interesting notion, yet I knew it was a false statement.
While energy work does work a lot as a result of your intention, to
think that imparting an empowerment on another person can be temporary
just because you think it so, seems to be very false indeed. You
are trying to force your beliefs and intentinos over what i might call
"Natural Law," our normal ability to exhibit natural skills.
As
an analogy, imagine going to a music teacher for a singing lesson.
The teacher sings a song, something you can easily learn and repeat
during the class, but she intends that you only know it just for that
class. After you leave the class, do you think you will have forgotten the song? Most likely you will not only recall it but have difficulty getting it out of your thoughts. 
I knew that the reason for my student saying this at the Reiki share,
and of course Inamoto's reasoning as well, was to encourage the new
people attending to afterwards come and take a class with
the teacher, and in the process get a "permanent" attunement.
After all, for some people, teaching Reiki is more of a weekend hobby,
it is their livelihood.
So I asked my student if this idea of temporary attunements had been,
tested; did the participants indeed lose their ability to flow Reiki
shortly after the class? Of course
it hadn't been tested, just assumed. I think that the teacher felt
that since a reiju ceremony was being used and not a westernized
attunement ceremony for this, that this made
the empowerment temporary. But I pointed out that a small group
of Japanese ladies I recognized as attending the monthly shares
frequently, had never taken a Reiki class, and simply learned ideas and
techniques just from the Reiki shares. Their Reiki energy was
always very good, whether a reiju was shared at the share or not.
When asked, they told me they met with each other during the month to
practice Reiki on each other. Obviously their Reiki was still flowing
throughout the month in between each share.
When people talk about these reiju being temporary attunements, I point out that when Mr. Hiroshi Doi first shared
his own version of a reiju (Gendai Reiju) at the 1999 URRI conference
in Vancouver, it was the first that most of us had heard of the
concept. He said that the use of reiju (originally called "denju"
or "initiation" by Usui's student, Eguchi) was equal to what the West
was using as an attunement. In fact a reiju ceremony is the
original and ongoing ceremony used by the Gakkai for
empowerments. It only has one form, one version, regardless
of the Reiki level or when used in a meeting, and does not include
symbols. It is a very short ceremony given from the front of the
recipient, and takes less than a minute to give.
- However, it was only several years later at the 2002 URRI conference in Toronto when Mr.
Doi began suggesting that you could also intend reiju as a blessing
instead. I think he was concerned how some people thought they were now certified Gendai Reiki Ho students after
receiving just his reiju and attending his lectures, but they had not taken any of his classes.
In fact Mr. Doi has two longer and different attunement ceremonies
he uses for
that purpose in his classes, plus a 4th level of his system (called
Gokuikaiden or highest level) with a lot of information not shared at
the conferences.
Mainly, his own Gendai Reiju was originally
his method, as in the URR Gakkai, to have a quick and simple way to
re-inforce or re-attune students at his own monthly Reiki
meetings. He
was copying the idea from what is done monthly for everyone attending
the URR Gakkai Reiki meetings in Japan.
So in that case it seems that what you intend with any Reiki ceremony
(e.g. empowerment or blessing) plus what the recipient expects to
receive, is a factor to be taken into account. But in the case of
some concepts like temporary attunements, "Natural Law" may step in and
override what your intentions are. I often suggest that
when we hear of dubious or seemingly exaggerated claims about what
Reiki limitations may be, what it can do or what it should not be used
for, that one should test these ideas or at least ask other Reiki
practitioners and teachers their own experiences.
I recall in the
1990s one Reiki author proclaiming that Reiki should not be used on a
patient given an anesthetic, since it can negate the effects of
it. However, on the Reiki list alt.healing.reiki, several masters
and I began sharing how we had indeed sent Reiki to people undergoing
operations, with no ill effects at all. In fact some years ago one of
my master level students who runs a hospice in Maryland shared an
article in a medical magazine with me about a surgeon who always brings
a Reiki Master into his operating room to assist with healing as he
finds he gets very good results with this idea.
To be continued .....
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