The Future Of Reiki In Japan

Reiki, yes what a wonderful thing it is. Its founder, Mikao Usui said that Reiki permeates the whole cosmos. It is the pulsating force behind all of life: without it no life exists. It is in you and me, in your cat and in your house plants, even in the trees across the street or the rocks in the mountains. Now if Reiki is inherent in everyone and everything, why do we need to be initiated into it? The answer is: we have simply forgotten what makes our motors tick, and we need a gentle reminder to be able to feel again what is inherently ours.

We do have ten fingers and ten toes, but most of the time we are unaware of them. Let’s try a little experiment right now, please close your eyes and feel the tip of your left pinky. When you feel it, feel the tip of your right pinky as well, and after that is done, feel every finger in both of your hands. You will now be aware of all your ten fingers, and, even though they have been with you ever since your birth, you are never conscious of them.

The same thing holds true with the Reiki energy. Even though we are bathed into a twenty four hour light-shower of energy wherever we are and whatever we do, we are simply not aware of it. The Reiki initiation brings awareness, brings light into a dark corner of our consciousness.

And becoming conscious facilitates many changes in our lives. Becoming a Reiki channel is like a new birth: in becoming aware of the energy we are for the first time able to use it effectively. Think of two people walking across the same street. One of them just walks along dreaming of yesterday and tomorrow. The other one walks consciously and sees a flower that inspires him to write a poem that will give joy and pleasure to many others. The flower was there for both of them, but only the conscious one was able to use it.

Reiki energy can be used in countless ways, not only for the healing of physical or psychological disorders, but also for helping the practitioner discover his/her creative powers, to learn delve into oneself, or to become better at what one already does. A cook will become a better cook, an artist a better artist, a business man a better business man. It may also be possible that the physician now decides that he always wanted to be a farmer and starts a new life.

Reiki always adjusts itself to the practitioner, the situation and to exactly what is needed in any given situation. Basically energy is simply energy. It is neither good nor bad, neither this nor that. All the attributes we give to Reiki are given by us. A Reiki practitioner who is interested in healing is likely to call Reiki a healing method. Someone interested in meditation will call it a meditation technique. Another interested in Buddhism will call it a Buddhist technique. Reiki fits into all the boxes that we create for it!

And that is , in a way also one of its downfalls. Since Reiki is so water-like it can in a way be abused by the practitioner who has not learned to watch out for the tricks of his own ego. In the words of my friend and fellow Reiki teacher Ginny Bydder" Reiki does not flow through you because of you, but in spite of you"!

Many misunderstandings have crept into the public’s idea of Reiki, because of the shortcomings of its practitioners. Well, we all have our weak points and I just want to make one point here: the misunderstandings that I will talk about in the following article have nothing to do with Reiki as such, they are fabrications of the ego of certain individuals- through which all of us have the chance to see something that might also be inside of us. Let’s learn from each others mistakes!

When I re-imported Western Reiki to Japan in the beginning of 1993, it was thought abroad that there was only one kind of Reiki- the kind taught by Westerners in North and South America, Australia and Europe. My friend Walter Lübeck, one of the most prominent Reiki Teachers worldwide, was told by the head of the Reiki Alliance that " All Japanese Reiki practitioners got killed in the second world war". Had they been victims of an air raid or were they practicing in Hiroshima or Nagasaki when the US government made the unforgivable decision to set off nuclear bombs in theses flowering cities?

Well, Walter and many others who had been fed fairy tales had no other choice but to believe them. After all, it could have been possible.

But true it was not. Just as untrue was the story that Dr. C. Hayashi had been made the successor of Mikao Usui, or Usui Sensei, the founder of the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai. Dr. Hayashi was a well respected student of Usui Sensei, but had had no further responsibilities.After Usui's death he founded his own association called the "Hayashi Shiki Reiki Kenkyukai" which his wife, Mrs. Chie Hayashi took over after her husbands death.

When Dr. Hayashi took Reiki abroad to Hawaii, the Western Reiki movement was born. Without him, reiki would have stayed in Japan.
From here onwards East and West went their own separate ways.

In Hawaii Mrs. Hawayo Takata took over the responsibilities after Dr. Hayashi’s death in the beginning of the second world war. Somewhere along the line, the title of Reiki Grand Master appeared, but it is not quite clear where this phantom title came from. No such title had existed here in Japan, and it was certainly not Dr. Hayashi, who invented it.

After the death of Mrs. Takata in 1980, the Reiki Alliance was founded and it was decided that her granddaughter. P.Furumoto was to be the leader of this group. Another student of Mrs. Takata, Mrs. B.Ray started her own association known as the Radiance Technique. The Western Reiki movement broke into two pieces, two hands that started to fight one another, each one stating that only they taught the real, the authentic and the complete Reiki system. The fact is that neither of them does...

In the late eighties the Reiki Alliance who had barred their teachers from passing on the teachers degree to their own students, relaxed their regulations.

Within the next few years an army of new Reiki teachers came to life. A new business opportunity was born.

Out of the Reiki Alliance a new Reiki stream was born, the independent Reiki teachers. And this was the system I brought back to Japan just about six years ago.

While all this was happening, the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai, founded by Usui Sensei himself kept the succession of presidents of their organization alive.

After Usui Sensei’s death the presidency was given to a Mr. Ushida, then to a Mr. Taketomi, a Mr. Watanabe, a Mr. Wanami, a Mrs. Koyama and the present president is a Mr. Kondo.

In the first year of teaching Reiki in Sapporo we found out that Reiki was still being practiced in Japan. I was in deep shock, feeling cheated and lied to. Soon we "discovered" Usui sensei’s grave and learned about the true history of Reiki in Japan. A couple of years later, I published my first book on my research in Germany. Within a matter of a few month it was translated into several languages and in the first year I received well over a thousand of letters from all over the globe.

One of those letters included a copy of a trademark document by the German patent authorities, that someone in Germany had on the words "Reiki", "Usui" and "Usui Shiki Ryoho". I was completely taken aback. This trademark was later on transferred to someone affiliated with the Reiki Alliance. After the transferal of the trademark, many attempts of the same kind were made in countries all over the world. The idea was to trademark the above words for the use of this one group only and to send summons to people who used these words. This was actually executed.

To me this sounded like a joke at first- but unfortunately it wasn’t. Many Reiki practitioners got scared and began calling Reiki by other words in the fear of being sued.

This unfortunate step that was instigated by the leaders of the Reiki Alliance made me feel ashamed, ashamed on behalf of the Western Reiki practioner's, ashamed towards Usui sensei and his organization, ashamed in front of all of you who are living the legacy of one of your countrymen.

I was not alone in my disgust: many Reiki teachers worldwide, protested to the trademark offices and many old Reiki Alliance members, dropped out of the organization. One of these, Carol Ann Farmer, wrote an open letter to her fellow Reiki teachers. In this letter she talks about how the Reiki Alliance began and she tells us of conversations she had with its leaders.

Another subject in Carol’s letter was equally surprising to me: she states that the first time the Reiki Alliance Teachers met in 1981, the teachers started to share their knowledge of how to initiate others, how to write the Reiki symbols etc. To their consternation many had been given different techniques, and, different symbols!

I had originally received the Reiki teachers degree from my brother, Raj M. Petter who claims to have been taught by an American by the name of Serge Goldberg.

A short while after I had read Carol a. Farmer’s letter, I returned to Germany and in the course of the visit met with many well known Reiki teachers from all lineages to exchange initiations. Just as Carol had written, I found that there were many different techniques.

I liked one technique in particular and decided to use that one from now onwards, because I felt it to be much more powerful than the one we had used so far.That does not mean that the method I learned and taught earlier was "wrong" or "invalid". It is simply different.The lineage in this "new" Reiki stream is very short, leading back to Mrs. Takata in four steps, and the teacher was my old friend Agehanand Popat. My wife, Chetna and some of our Reiki teacher friends whom we tested the "new" method with, shared the same feeling and from the beginning of 1998 we have been teaching this technique instead.

Thanks to the combined efforts of many Reiki teachers worldwide, applications of this kind have been turned down by the patent offices in the USA and England. Germany and some other countries are likely to follow suit. Of course trademarking the word "Reiki" in Japan would be an impossible thing, and we do not have to worry that someone will even attempt it. Imagine someone to try and trademark the word "milk" in America! My reason for sharing all this with you is to drive home one important point: We are all this boat together, we are ONE Reiki community, using ONE energy.

As far as I am concerned, Reiki belongs to the universe and we- the little people- only borrow it here and there. Being a Reiki channel should be a humbling experience: It is actually not that WE use the Reiki energy, but the energy uses us...The less we are in the way, the more freely and unobstructedly it flows.

One other thing also became clear to me last year: the way Western Reiki is evolving in Japan requires a little organization, a little discipline and a lot of hands joining together. A lot of Reiki teachers see other Reiki teachers as their competition, and are fighting each other tooth and nail just to keep the upper hand, to attract more students to their classes and more yen into their bank accounts. We are just about to make the same mistakes that were already committed in the West. When you read a Western New Age magazine, Reiki appears to be some kind of spiritual K1 !!! Do we really want to go on the same course and beat the living daylights out of one another?

In America and in Europe you can now be initiated into Reiki by simply slipping a video into your video recorder, or reading a book that contains all the Reiki symbols and the initiation process. You can "learn" each degree in an hour or two and after you have learned you still don’t know how to use this wonderful tool.

Having been the first foreign Reiki teacher to introduce the teachers degree to Japan, with all the major players in the Reiki game having either learned directly from us or from one of our students, I feel responsible for the way that Reiki evolves and grows in this country to some extent. Knowing what happened to Reiki in the West, I first thought of startin a Reiki Association, but decided against it for organizations tend to make their members foillow too many rules. They tend to build philosophies, do's and don'ts and in the end what was to free us makes us contract inside...

Instead of organizing ourselves, I suggest that you do your best, and that together we go beyond the politics of groups and their ideas.

I hope that all of you will consider to start to work with one another. As far as I see that is the only way in the future. I trust that you will follow your heart...

Wishing you love and light on your path, from Sapporo, F. A. Petter

© Frank Arjava Petter 1998

Frank Arjava Petter
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Germany
Phone +49-211 50 73 810

Email : Arjava@ReikiDharma.com

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