ReikiDharma Newsletter, Volume 5, December 30, 2001

Dear friends!

Welcome to the fifth Reiki Dharma Newsletter. I would like to take the opportunity to wish you all a wonder- filled, happy and healthy New Year. May you enjoy each precious moment of life in the year 2002 and beyond, whatever it may offer you. Last year I very often found myself overwhelmed by the preciousness of life. By a beautiful smile, a ray of sun- light or a tear cried for the living as well as for the dead.

Winter has surprised us earlier than usual this year; rocks and creeks are wearing their winter coats and so do we. The air is crisp and clear. The cold outside makes the inner home all the more evident and cozy. Winter- time is such an opportunity to go inside, to look at who you are. You may not like this or that about your self, you may want to adjust or grow into someone better, but... After all, there is nothing like being your self! No matter what you do, no matter where you go, you are your self. There is no other way!

Reiki is essentially a path to self- realization. To me, self- realization is not growth, it is rather the opposite of growth. To be able to look at the self you must let go of concepts, notions, philosophies and opinions. You must peel away layer after layer, until no- thing is left...

This time I would like to talk about wholeness, about nurturing a view of the world that includes in it everything it actually contains. We tend to divide our surroundings into two groups: the pleasurable lot and the un-pleasurable lot. When you divide life according to your own standards, you are bound to suffer. Life does not care much about your concepts and philosophies no matter how smart and complex they may be.

The world- wide Reiki family is made up of countless members who come from differing social, cultural as well as religious backgrounds. What is acceptable in one country may be out of the question in another. What fits the esoteric background of Christianity may not be in harmony with Buddhism, or vise versa. The same is true for the different Reiki schools that have built their systems around certain belief systems.

A big part of my efforts in the last five years has been bringing people from many different backgrounds together, and helping to fuse the gaps that tear us apart. Most of those gaps are self- created, and they can be avoided by walking slowly and consciously.

Reiki as an organism

Everything in this universe pulsates with life. The apple on the tree, the heart in your chest as well as the eagle soaring in the sky. Take a moment to rise up above the Earth, in your imagination, and look at what you see below. You see one blue planet, you see mountains and oceans, but you don't see them as separate. You see them as one being. Now change your vision and imagine the world- wide Reiki- Family. Look at it as one living organism. This organism has a brain, hands, legs and inner organs. It has a heart, it has a mind of its own, it has convictions, ethics and dreams. And each one of us is a cell of this great organism. Just like any other living being this organism needs all of its parts to function efficiently.

Dr. Usui

Since a lot of the Reiki practice pivots around the central figure of its founder, Dr. Usui, I would like to invite you to consider him in his wholeness. We still don't know much about him as a person, but a few facts are established. He grew up in a rural village called Taniei in Gifu prefecture, near present day Nagoya. He never did go to University and had a keen interest in anything of a spiritual and philosophical nature. He was married and had two children, failed with his business and spent several years as the secretary of a well- known Japanese politician. All the while he continued on his spiritual search which took him from embracing Shintoism and Buddhism, palm reading, astrology and the esoteric sciences. In the early 1920's his work culminated in what we know by the word Reiki. This culmination is the result of his life long work and this includes in it all of its parts.

He was a many facetted man, and, what I would like to point out to you is this: Imagine someone met Dr. Usui during the time he was a village boy. He may call him either the sweetest boy that ever walked the face of the earth or a rogue. Now take someone who was a business partner of Dr. Usui. In the memory of this person, Dr. Usui would remain a business- man forever. Someone who met him during his involvement in politics would think of him in such terms. Yet for someone who practiced Shinto purification rites with him, Dr. Usui would be a fervent devotee of Amaterasu, the ultimate deity of Shintoism. And on and on it goes.

On Dr. Usui's memorial at the Saihoji Temple in Tokyo it is stated that he had two thousand students. So who is to say who Dr. Usui really was? Was he the person who began his journey, or the person who ended it? I suppose that he was all of it, an organic unity from the first to the last breath. So, we will have to be very careful when we are tempted to put him into a box, whether that box may be Shinto or Buddhist, esoteric or exoteric. As more information about his personal life becomes available, we will have to keep in mind to view him in his complexity. Those who knew him in the beginning must look at his final days and those who knew him in the end, must look at his first steps to understand the whole man.

We wish you all the best, may the flowers keep showering upon you, with love and gratitude from Japan,

Frank Arjava Petter

Copyright © 2001, by Frank Arjava Petter

Frank Arjava Petter
Henri- Dunant Str. 32
40474 Düsseldorf
Germany
Phone +49-211 50 73 810

Email : Arjava@ReikiDharma.com

Copyright ©2000- 2008 by Frank Arjava Petter