Reiki III times 3

Getting and giving Reiki attunements starts a twenty-one day transformation anew each time. The more of them you give, over time the less intense the cleansing experience may become, but there's always something new. It's the power of growth, of change and transformation. Can we admit that it is addictive? A wonderful design feature of the human being to help us evolve.

This past Saturday I was hit with a desire to tune up my Reiki healing energy. It started with a morning Reiki self-treatment to relieve a little stress I'd let build up over the rior week. After a few minutes of hand positions, I reached over and picked-up a spectacular green citrine point I purchased last New Year's Eve's Eve and placed it on my heart while I sent myself Reiki to calm and balance my energy.

Out of the blue, I started thinking about my experiences with Angel Reiki. I'd wanted to take this course from the same instructor who'd given me my Reiki Master attunements four years ago. The occasional energetic tune-up via giving or receiving an attunement always deepens the ongoing healing--a power burst. Knowing she gives the Reiki series a couple times a year through the local college I was curious to see when the next might be scheduled. Probably weeks or months away. I went online. She was holding a Reiki Master course the following day.

I signed up and sent off an email letting her know I'd be in her Reiki Master class a third time and that I wanted to take her Angel Reiki course. I didn't just want to take it, I was clear I would take it and we just need to work out the details! That strong an intention.

Yesterday's review of the Reiki Master course was phenomenal. The energy in the room, dynamic! We've got an Angel Reiki course scheduled for May 22nd and June 5th!

But the blessings from the course have already begun. I love the intense twenty-one days that follow. Already, I have experienced an incredible burst of healing for the planet. I sat in a crystal grid with my Shaman stones and a citrine point during nightly prayer/meditation. I was suddenly moved to draw the cho-ku-rei three times on my third-eye with the citrine's point. A new symbol that has come to me several times in the last few weeks then appeared in my mind's eye and I saw it go into the earth, wrap around and through it, and then I felt an intense healing energy surround the planet. New and powerful! And this is just the first day.

Oh, and one other note.

Reiki and religious practice. As noted in my last blog entry, my prayer life has become a daily practice. I was praying, but I wasn't moved to read The Word, The Bible. Tonight, there was a natural shift. Before my prayer time, I was enjoyed several passages of Luke and John. Folks sometimes wonder if Reiki takes away from religious or other spiritual practices. Truthfully, I sometimes ask myself the same. My experience however is always the same. It only deepens the religious context of the spirituality you already practice.

Fabulous!

Daily prayer.
Daily Reiki.
A life that works.

An Anniversary

One month ago, I realized that my world needs to work for everyone in it. I'm not first to notice the truth in this. The idea isn't news. Yet, something shifted a month ago.

The recent experiences with a family member passing, two--now three--members of my family hospitalized within a few months time and the general stress that exists for friends, family and neighbors as the world transitions into a new economy overwhelmed me. I'm so grateful it did.

It renewed my commitment to prayer.

New View

So different now. It started with my Aunt passing away in October. Then my 87-year-old grandmother was hospitalized, followed by a brief stay in a nursing home to recuperate before being allowed to return home. Then, just a couple weeks back, my mother was hospitalized for a week. Through the reflection of my aging elders, my own "aging" is sharply in focus.

Lately, hearing an old song brings on a different kind of nostalgia. In the past, I'd hear some old rhythm and blues or pop tune from my youth and fondly remember where I was or what I was doing decades back. I might remember being in the park for a huge family gathering with BBQ, volleyball, bikes and lots of running. Other times a first date, a kiss, a party, a walk with friends or just sitting around my room listing to 45s or 33s without a care in the world would come to mind.

Lately, though, when I hear some old beloved tune, I am struck by the fact that an old world is gone. It is as if there has been some permanent break I haven't experienced before. Before the break, I experienced myself as this continuity of an always-getting-older me that was just a few days, weeks or years away from a younger, care-free, can-get-back-my-high-school-figure-if-I-wanted-to me.

Over these last few months the reality of being mid-forty, headed-to-fifty has sunk in like bricks dropped in a sauna. Or maybe like bombs hitting an island or planes hitting skyscrapers. There's the life before and then the new, different life after. You can't go back. You can't pretend that things haven't changed. An entirely different point of view colors everything.

It isn't that nothing good lies ahead. I've enjoyed a great life and don't imagine that I am less incapable of creating fun, joy, success, love and beauty in my coming-quickly fifties as was done in my twenty and thirties. What is clear, though, is that it will not be an older version of the past. The break is realizing, internalizing that I'm not an older twenty or an older version of me at thirty.

It's a different life.
It's a different me.
Different rules.
Different goals.
Different mind.
Different body.

Shortly, I'll be all excited again about the possibilities and options I get to create for this maturer Robin. Some new impassioned life that invigorates. Right now, I'm appreciating this opportunity to mourn. Maybe even enjoying it a little. A little.

A different mood.
I feel like mourning a while.

Sunrises

Sunrises seem to take forever when you're waiting for one. In the space of time it took the eastern skyline to go from gray to magenta to a hint of pink, I realized how much I've always hated to start my day without the sun greeting me first.

I just might try something new beginning now! Get the day warmed up for the sun's entrance. Instead of letting the sun make the day worth my time, I'm gonna try out having each of my days worth the sun showing up to witness it! I'll get the day going for it's entrance. Now that would be something different!!

Poem for Patricia

Patricia’s Perfection

“Real as they seem, speak out your pains,
I’ll carry them straight to God’s ear.”
The wind whispered.

Eyes weary, parts swollen,
with lungs that loathe lonesome air,
she began

“Like her and like him, I had dreams.
Fragmented, imperfect.
They mattered. They did!

“Just that my body didn’t work well enough.
I could never do enough, try hard enough.
I lost a few things along the way.

“But there were times.
Times I lived fearlessly, Loved tirelessly.
Times I laughed heartily.
Times I knew myself as God’s own."


Sweeping up care and concerns,
pain and regrets,
Wind carried her words to His lap.
* * *

The Sun shone brilliantly,
beaming warmth along with reply.
“You perfect creation, my perfect expression.
Your love was enough, your body sufficient,
You planted the seeds as I asked.
My Love.
You were perfect for the tasks I assigned.
It’s I, not you
who grows seeds sown,
and blooms beauty from beneath dirt and dust.”

She sighed. Redefined
Free, clear, light.
Perfect.

Jammin with Aunt Pat

Editing the poem.

My eyes were drawn to a Cameo CD. I remembered the times we'd dance
and sing and jam together.

I've never been loved by a ghost like this.

I've been communing with her all evening. She walked w/ me and
Chocolate. Insisted on a movie and them used it to show me that I
gotta be 100% me--still the message of perfection.

Then the editing, the music.

Then laying on the floor arms outstretched experiencing what no one
ever talks about. The experience of love being poured onto, over and
through you by a deceased love one like sitting under a waterfall.

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make
it true.
You may have to work for it, however. --Richard Bach, Illusions

Patricia Ingram

My aunt Pat passed away a few days ago.
Phenomenal. Death is such a magical experience for those of us left behind. An opportunity to reflect, to grow, to appreciate and to connect in ways we previously lacked incentive to try.

I volunteered to write a poem for the final service. I've written a few here and there, published a couple here on this blog in the past. They mean a lot to me. However, I am no poet laureate. I hesitate even to say poet. Though I am that. I write a poem or two every year. Enough, right?

I won't publish it here till after the funeral. Partly because it seems appropriate. Partly because I don't want to share my mediocrity. My ego prefers not to look too bad.

And yet, the best part of writing and publishing and reading this poem I wrote for Pat is how it affirms the great blessing she was in my life. She was unconditional support. If I said I was going to do something, go somewhere, be somebody she'd listen and encourage. If a suggestion came from her lips it was a way to do it bigger, shoot higher.

She had three children. Don't know if they'd say she was the same for them. Maybe yes, maybe no. For me, though, she was unwavering support.

As I got a little nervous about reading the poem that for sake of printing deadlines is unfinished but necessarily "completed", I imagined what she'd say if she were here. She'd say, "Well, I like it. You could probably do more with it with more time. Just do it. Get it in there." And then she'd smile, laugh or make some joke. Then she'd tell me about poetry she used to write or books she dreamed (literally, she dreamed epic novels).

We might say little else to each other for a long while. But I'd know she thought what I wrote was just fine. Perfect. Good enough!!!

God bless your soul Aunt Pat.
Truly I failed to appreciate how much you were my Champion!!