Guest post by Susan Downing

It sometimes surprises me how much my way of practicing Reiki has changed since I began a number of years ago.  As my Buddhist and Reiki practices gradually and simultaneously deepened, I found that they became inseparable for me, and that I was both consciously and unconsciously bringing my Buddhist training and study to bear as I practiced Reiki.  I shifted away from a novice’s enthusiastic desire to fix every condition a client brings with him, to offering Reiki with no goal or outcome in mind, aside from that of offering the recipient a loving presence and connection.  Teaching my students the value of approaching Reiki this way has been easy, except when it came to teaching the Reiki symbols in Level II.  But in my Reiki II class last month, I suddenly came to see a way to teach these symbols that’s consistent with my overall approach to Reiki.

Let me start by explaining what the Reiki II symbols are.  These are supposedly images that Mikao Usui, Reiki’s founder, received during meditation and passed on to his students. When I received Reiki II training, my teacher taught that we can use these three images during our sessions to give recipients strength, or to promote emotional balancing or release or to help alleviate distress from the past and facilitate spiritual development. We are told that we can imagine or trace the symbols in the air with our hands while reciting the words that identify them, to help effect certain changes in the recipients.

I didn’t question this when I was first starting out with Reiki, but as my way of practicing Reiki changed, I found that I was uncomfortable with this explanation.  I didn’t want to pass it on to my students, because it seemed so at odds with the way I was teaching them: how can you take such care to help people practice Reiki without focusing on getting results and then give them these symbols that are presented as a powerful way to facilitate a specific outcome?

Then I recalled what I know about how Usui Sensei seems to have used the symbols.  We’re told that he didn’t teach them to all of his students. He taught them only when he felt a student needed help establishing a connection with the recipient.  Sometimes he would teach the student one or more of the actual symbols.  Other times he would teach them the mantra associated with a symbol and have them repeat it in their minds.  Now, I was taught that these were the symbols’ names, but if Usui Sensei gave them to students to help their focus, then it makes much more sense that they would be mantras, which are a common method within Buddhist practice of helping practitioners distract their busy minds and enter a meditative state. And this is exactly the state most suitable for practicing Reiki, assuming you’re practicing without trying to make something happen in the recipient.  So, concentrating on tracing a symbol with your finger in the air, or visualizing it in your mind, or repeating one of the symbols’ mantras silently can help clear away the distractions we may experience when we’re doing a Reiki session, so that we can be more fully connected with the recipient.

Thinking of the symbols that way was a start for me, but it didn’t totally solve my dilemma. After all, I teach three symbols in Reiki II.  If they’re intended just to help the practitioner concentrate, why do we need three? The traditional explanation is that as we give Reiki to someone, we are open to gaining awareness of the recipient’s physical and mental state.  When we sense physical weakness and want to send power, we use the first symbol; when we sense emotional or psychological disturbance and want to promote balance and release, we use the second symbol, and when we pick up that the recipient is striving for spiritual development and want to provide a boost in that area, we use the third symbol. But that seems impossibly results-oriented. That’s what’s been bothering me.

But then, one day, it clicked into place for me.  Here’s the way I explained using the symbols to my most recent Reiki II students.  Most Reiki practitioners enjoy it when they pick up some intuitive information about the recipients when they’re giving Reiki.  Maybe they sense sadness or anger or weakness, etc.  There’s no problem with becoming aware of the recipient’s physical or emotional state.  The problem comes — and this is totally my view; some practitioners might disagree with me — when you take that awareness and based on it, you try to make the feeling release or shift energy away from or into a certain area of the body.  It’s analogous to if your best friend showed up on your doorstep terribly upset and instead of hugging her and listening to everything and just being there with her, you immediately started trying to fix everything without even hearing her out.

But there’s another way to respond to her.  You can sit and just be with her in her distress, hold her hand, let her know you love her and are there with her and for her.  That’s a cliché, but it doesn’t make the approach any less valuable. Be with her and let her know you care.  She will probably feel very comforted and soothed. Then if she wants to ask for help, she will.  But most of the time, the help she wants most is your focused, loving presence and attention.

This is just the way I encouraged my students to think of the Reiki symbols.  If you’re giving someone Reiki and sense distress when you have your hand on her heart, feel free to imagine the second symbol or repeat its mantra. As you do that, you are giving your full attention to having a strong connection with her, to simply being with her and letting her know you are supporting her with your loving presence. Without trying to fix anything.  It’s as if you’re saying, “I can tell you’re upset.  I’m going to sit here with you for a bit and be with you in your sadness. ”  Or weakness, or vulnerability, or anger, or desire for spiritual clarity.  Approach it this way, and each time you use a symbol, it can be a sacred affirmation of your commitment to just being right there with the recipient in that moment in time, giving him or her your full, loving attention. As if you’re saying, I sense your suffering, and I’m right here with you.  That’s what the Reiki symbols can help you say, if you’ll let them.