Over the past twenty years it has become increasingly clear to me that rituals involved with any healing process are not necessary, because it is only your intention that matters, and I’d like to share some examples of how and why I believe this is so.
First, let’s look at the concept of a ritual and why they were important. Any ritual places you in a mode where your focus is captured while also creating a circumstance to help you believe a certain result may happen. They exist solely to help us get past the perception that we cannot do something on our own.
For example, many ancient rituals included the concept of a blood sacrifice in order to be granted forgiveness or favor in their god’s eyes. Likewise, many modern beliefs still have a system of orderly tasks that must be performed in order to gain Gods’ favor or attention.
For any type of ritual, no matter how old or new, the act of performing specific tasks, in a specific order while saying specific things, leads to qualify the act as a something worthy of God’s attention, and then the specific request could then be granted by God.
So why am I now saying this is no longer necessary? I am not saying that. I am saying it was never necessary, but we didn’t believe enough in our true connection with our creator, so it was an inevitable path we had to take that would eventually lead us to understand it was never necessary.
About four years ago while attending a Reiki class, this confusion between the perceived need of ritual and the true power of intention became clear to me.
During the class, two things I was taught stood out to me to be in direct conflict with each other and it surprised me that nobody else was seeing this. The concept and associated ritual were:
- Concept: When performing Reiki, learn to let go and release your idea of what needs to be healed. Spirit knows what needs attention or healing, and it will direct the energy where it is most useful. Reiki practitioners are a conduit for the energy, not the creators or directors of it.
- Ritual: While performing Reiki, there is a system of hand placements where you spend approx 3 minutes at each location being a conduit of energy for that location. You would place your hands, above the head, then behind the head, along side the head, over the third eye chakra, over the throat chakra, over the heart chakra, over the naval chakra, over the sacral chakra, over the root chakra, over the knees and legs and finish over the feet.
- Ritual: There are symbols you can use overall or at each location to provide deeper healing. These are Japanese writing symbols created by Mikao Usui, the founder of Reiki. To use these symbols, you must memorize them and then write or draw them in the air at the time of use. Some symbols are:
- Cho Ku Ray (bring the power of the universe here)
- Sei Hei Ki (Emotional healing and calming)
- Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen (The higher self in me connects with the higher self in you)
Maybe it’s obvious to you as well, but I know my first thought was that if spirit knows what needs to be healed, why is it necessary to go through this process of placing attention at all these specific points around the body?
Likewise, having to memorize and re-write the the various symbols in order for them to work also seemed to be unnecessary since spirit is not physical, so there should be no required physical gestures in order to communicate a thought.
At first I questioned whether I was just being lazy or maybe I just wasn’t serious enough to see the necessity of all the required steps to perform a successful Reiki session on myself or somebody else, so I actually set aside the idea for several years.
Recently I came to a knowing that the only thing that matters is your intention, so again, using Reiki as my example, you would approach your healing or the healing of another with whatever approach is comfortable for you.
You could visualize that experience in any way you desire, provided your intentions are true that you are a conduit for healing and that healing energy will simply go where most helpful. You could then perform the entire session with your hand placed only on the persons head, or from any distance with them not being there at all. It doesn’t matter.
There is no wrong way to extend healing. The results may vary depending upon what you believe or allow, but if you keep yourself open for spirit to direct and guide you, you will be given ideas of what allows better energy flow and then you simply let go of ideas that are not as helpful as you originally thought.
NOBODY here has coined the end-all, be-all system for healing, because if they did, I think they would immediately transcend, so while you pursue being a healer or just including healing in your meditations and prayers, accept the thought that spirit welcomes your attempts, no matter what the form, ritual or not. I’m just saying that ritual isn’t necessary, so don’t let it hang you up. Allow yourself to expand into what feels right for you, and you will be a wonderful conduit for healing.
Namaste
