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REIKI Just The Facts (part three)
by Don Brennan

In 1919, Mikao Usui, the eventual founder of Reiki, began his spiritual quest to
obtain An Jin Ryu Mei, which is the Zen Buddhist term for permanent, complete
enlightenment and peace. After 3 years of hard work at a Zen Buddhist monastery, he
did not find what he was looking for. Deeply disappointed, he sought the counsel of
the abbot of the temple.

The abbot then told him that perhaps he needed to die. By this, he did not mean the
death of the ego, but the actual death of the body.

According to Zen Buddhist beliefs, there are certain age windows when enlightenment is more likely to occur than others: 18-21; 27-29; 33-36 and 41-44. Usui, at thisvpoint in his life, had already passed these age thresholds, so the path to enlightenment became more difficult.

In Japanese Buddhism there are three pathways to enlightenment. There's the temple experience, which is hard work, discipline and ego destruction. He tried this for three years and it didn't work for him. Then there's the extreme trauma of physically, emotionally, or mentally challenging life experiences.

The third way is through death. The Buddhist belief is that if someone works hard on his inner self and spiritual development, when the physical body is dying and the etheric body begins to disintegrate, he may come to understand his true nature and then die enlightened.

So he went to Mount Kurama to die and hopefully become enlightened. He didn't go there to fast or meditate. He went there to end his life, to prepare for death. He sat in front of a small hut on Mount Kurama and waited for death to approach him. After about 20 days he had the soul transforming experience of something hitting him in the forehead like a lightening bolt, and he became unconscious.
When he finally came to, he felt at complete peace, within and without. He wondered if this was the enlightenment that the abbot had told him about. As tradition suggests, Usui went to his teacher to confirm this. The abbot said yes, and now you must go out and teach others.

The abbot then asked him what else he had experienced. Usui told him that after he had his experience, he began his descent down the mountain, tripped and ripped up one of his toenails. He put his hand on his toe and it stopped bleeding and stopped hurting. He thought this was rather peculiar.

When he got down the mountain, he went to the next village to get some water. In a tea shop, he saw a girl who had a dental infection. He wondered if he could help her. He put his hand on her cheek and soon the swelling went down and she didn't feel pain anymore.

Upon hearing this, the abbot felt that these two episodes were significant and was convinced that Usui should include in his teaching, the teaching of healing.

Usui then went home and began practicing this healing on his family and friends. His experience on the mountain took place in March of 1922. One month later, in April of 1922, he started the association called the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai.

Many of his first students were officers from the army and the navy, because he knew them from his former career in political service. At this time, the government was persecuting many healing groups for healing without a medical license, and their leaders were put in jail. Because of his military connections, Usui was left alone and his Reiki association flourished.

On September 1, 1923, about a year and a half after Usui started his Reiki association, the worst earthquake in Japanese history hit Tokyo, at least until that point in time. 140,000 people died, 700,000 houses were destroyed and 2,500,000 people were made homeless within a half an hour.

The horrible part of this was that the earthquake struck 2 minutes before noon when thousands of homes and restaurants had lit firesfor noontime meal preparation. What the earthquake didn't destroy, the fires finished off. Flammable materials in industrial plants and explosions at a munitions factory fed the flames. And then the oil tanks in the city began to leak and burning oil was flowing through the streets. People tried to escape to the sea, but even the sea was burning.

This was a terrible tragedy that continued its devastation of life in Tokyo for a long time to come. With several hundred thousand people in need of healing, Usui realized that there was no way he could help all these people by himself. And so the
earthquake changed Reiki history completely.

Next issue:
Usui's mission to bring healing to the earthquake victims and the growth of Reiki


from
Metaphysical Times
Volume VII Number 4
Fall 2012


 

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