AMAZING GRACE FLOWS through the universe and all of creation. It is present here on Earth and expresses itself with stunning beauty. The sun shining through the clouds sending golden rays of light from the heavens to the earth is aweinspiring grace. The sight of it can make us catch our breath and awaken for a moment to the extraordinary world around us. Grace can shine through humanity from the smile of a baby, a touch on the shoulder, and it can come from others we don’t even know.

Grace is present all around us, always available to those who notice its presence. Grace gives to the world the promise of divine assistance for all those who invite it and who are willing to receive grace. Whether a person sees the divine as God or calls it the beauty of the sunset, through grace, the divine is available to everyone. All we have to do for grace to operate powerfully in our lives is to ask. It is part of our divine selves, our spirit.

Invite the power of amazing grace into your life. Just ask it and it will come. Reiki gives grace a pathway to your life force. It strengthens you and brightens your spirit. Grace brings ease into life; Reiki heals with ease.

Through grace, “Ask and you shall receive” is real, and we can allow that truth to bless our lives. Reiki is a miraculous example of this. Reiki works with divine grace. When we invite Reiki to heal and empower us, it comes because we have asked. There is nothing else we have to do for Reiki to work. It makes itself avail-able to us through a simple attunement regardless of our experience, spirituality, beliefs, or skills. It has no religious dogma, and it requires no suffering to receive or give it. It is a gift given through grace to humanity to help us care for our mind, body, and spirit. It is easy to receive and easy to use. It works purely because we have invited it.

Reiki has been teaching me about grace and grace has been teaching me about Reiki. Reiki and grace flow together, they compliment each other. My guides tell me that Reiki heals using the vibration of grace to reach deeply within us and find the part of us willing to ask for healing and wholeness, the part of us that wants to surrender our burdens and remember our divine presence on earth. Reiki helps us find the part of us that remembers the power of grace within and remembers that we are beautiful beings of light and love living in the density of the physical world; living, loving, laughing, crying, feeling, touching, creating, and expressing our spirit as human beings. Grace is so beautiful that when it touches us, we remember the beauty of our spirit, and we can live in the world with a new perspective. It is the same kind of perspective we have when we are inspired by the golden rays of sunlight beaming through the clouds from above as we watch the sun setting in the west.

The healing power of grace has shown up in my Reiki sessions for the past year. I began to find that the vibration of grace was depleted in many of my client’s life force. Reiki showed me how people were missing vital parts of their essence and had a difficult time experiencing their divine presence. They couldn’t find their spirit or hold a vision of their own light. They had very critical opinions of themselves. We are beings of pure light, pure joy, pure truth and beauty, pure grace, and pure gratitude. We carry these vibrations in the light of our life force and spirit. When these vibrations are diminished within us we can feel weak and tired. When grace is depleted within us, it often expresses itself as the inability to ask for help or to receive it. We are often exhausted from giving all the time and feeling as if we have to do everything ourselves, not realizing that these feelings and even realities, can be a symptom of the lack of the power of grace in our bodies. People can feel out of balance as if their lives were out of control. Diminished grace can also show up as the feeling that the only way to get anything in life is to work really hard for it because nothing is ever given for free and life always brings pain and challenge. From my perspective as a practitioner, the symptoms of a lack of grace are rampant in our culture today. Many people suffer from the effects of the lack of grace, often feeling isolated and as if the world of ease, success in relationships and work, and self-confidence belongs to others but not to them.

I also see depleted grace in people who have an innate belief that they have to suffer and sacrifice in order to be a practitioner. This showed up in a client who wanted to be a full-time, professional Reiki practitioner and teacher, but believed that she shouldn’t prosper from it because Reiki was only a volunteer service. She was ready to dedicate her life to healing others, but she also had to work full time in order to support herself. She was exhausted from working so hard, and it was affecting all areas of her life. She was tremendously relieved to receive healing that released her old belief that practitioners are supposed to be impoverished and constantly work on behalf of others. Many of us can see our own beliefs in her story. However, Reiki is a respectable, mainstream profession. A practitioner is worthy of support from the community in which she or he works. We are still always in service and working for the betterment of others. Grace can provide ease in the ability to receive a comfortable living while being in service. Grace teaches that suffering is not a requirement of healing.

I first learned about grace through Reiki sessions and meditation. I found that some of my clients were born as portals of divine grace. Grace pours through them just because they are here. They may or may not know they are portals of grace, and they may not look or act like divine portals, but when they find out this is who they are, they always say, “Oh!…That explains so much.” They have always known that something was slight-ly different about them. During their Reiki sessions, it looked as if the angels and goddesses were beaming grace to them: filling their life force, filling their spirit with the power of grace. The goddesses said grace pours through them whether or not they know it, and that it was their time to experience the blessings of grace in their lives.

Reiki is a vehicle that can deliver the power of grace to a per-son’s life force. In my Reiki sessions, I invite the power of grace to heal and empower my clients and their ability to receive. I use many of the Usui symbols and some Karuna Reiki® symbols. I use HSZSN to open a Reiki Bridge of Light that creates a pathway for the power of grace to access a person’s life force. It can then fill his/her spirit with amazing grace, pure from the divine realms. I also use the Reiki Bridge of Light to give SHK the ability to travel to the original spiritual injury that caused the person to believe she/he was not worthy to ask for or receive help. The original cause of this injury can be in this life or a past life, and it can also be passed down through the person’s ancestors. SHK can reach back into time and heal the belief that causes the inability to receive in this time. Through grace, because the person has asked, she receives the healing she/he needs in order to let go of those limiting beliefs. The Power Symbol, CKR, calls the power of the loving universe to the person. It empowers the external source of help that is available. It can make it easier for the person to choose assistance because it is easier for his/her to notice that help is all around her/him. CKR empowers his/her belief that all anyone needs to do to receive is to ask. It surrounds her/him with the power of grace so she can see the world through that light. I then send these symbols forward through time and ask them to help orient the person to the new experience of receiving from life.

Reiki Session to Receive Amazing Grace

This session is the same for Self-Reiki and Reiki for others. Use the Reiki session as outlined below or let Reiki guide you with the right symbols for each Reiki session. If you are Reiki I, activate Reiki and let it guide you.

• Activate the Reiki symbols you are attuned to
• Draw CKR on all the walls, ceiling, and floor. Draw CKR, SHK, HSZSN in the center
• Set the intention and ask Reiki to heal with the full power of amazing grace
• Activate HSZSN and the Reiki Bridge of Light
• Activate SHK and ask the power of grace to fill the mind and spirit of your client
• Activate CKR and let it empower and strengthen their power of grace
• Use the first and second Karuna Reiki® symbols if you have them and ask that any cellular denial of their grace be healed
• Focus your hand positions on the heart, throat, and abdomen
• Ask the power of Grace to fill your client
• Give a full Reiki session using all hand positions with this intention
• Close and seal the Reiki session with CKR

In my personal and spiritual development, grace has supported me through my doubts and resistances to Reiki and my own healing. A woman emailed me this morning and talked about how she didn’t know if she believed in long distance Reiki. It reminded me of my journey with Reiki. I was so skeptical about it, and waited for Reiki to prove its existence and effectiveness. It was outside of my belief system that Reiki would work and provide healing just because I asked and received an attunement. I think I needed Reiki to prove itself to me. In addition, I was okay with my skepticism. I thought it was healthy. Not all healing modalities are a match for all people. I now recognize the vibration of grace supporting me through my journey all along. Grace taught me about Reiki in just the right way for me. I really needed and loved tangible proof. Finally, after several years, so many serendipitous events have occurred with Reiki that I received the validation of Reiki’s effectiveness that I had been seeking. It worked every time. All I had to do was invite it.

For the past two years I have been asking to heal my beliefs around miracles and in Reiki’s ability to manifest miraculous healing. Usui Sensei said that Reiki is the miraculous medicine of all diseases. Dr. Hayashi’s Healing Guide gives us hand positions to heal what we think of as incurable diseases. They believed completely in its miraculous healing abilities. I believe in Reiki miracles too; I have experienced so many. However, I know that I underestimate the power of Reiki to manifest miracles. I want to heal that disbelief in myself. Reiki miracles happen often. I have been asking the power of grace to help me focus on them and be aware of them. With Reiki, I can observe how grace answers this intention. The first lesson it is teaching me is that Reiki provides the healing and the miracles whether I believe in them or not. My limitations do not block the healing my clients or I receive. We receive exactly what our body and spirit are asking for too. This is the power of grace.

Another example of grace and Reiki working together, is how Reiki heals without requiring a person to relive the event they need healing for. Reiki can go directly to the original cause of a trauma and heal the injury in that time and place and bring the healing forward to heal one’s life force as if the wound never took place. We may remember the event, but Reiki can help us release the emotional charge when we think of the event. There is an infusion of forgiveness, love, and wholeness without having to work for it simply because we have asked. Grace offers this blessing in Reiki. I find it miraculous every time. The power of grace flows through Reiki as a gift from the divine with no exceptions. It will always come when we call, and it will always assist us.

Grace guides serendipity. I love the stories my Reiki students tell when they speak of the serendipitous events that lead them to their Reiki attunements. Often, something has touched them they may not even know what it is and they find them-selves following a path, being guided by an unknown source. When we investigate further, somewhere in their prayers, intentions, or desires, they have asked for more meaning in their lives or for healing or that they be more conscious and awake to the power within them. Because they have asked, grace provides the opportunity to find whatever they are seeking. They come to my class, ready to receive, not always knowing what they are receiving or remembering what they have asked for.

Over and over I find that the groups of students who attend a class on a particular day have come together on that day because they are meant to be there. The circle is always divinely ordered. It seems as if by grace they are guided to receive. They receive an attunement from Reiki, and it works just because they have asked.

Invite the power of amazing grace into your life. Just ask it and it will come. Reiki gives grace a pathway to your life force. It strengthens you and brightens your spirit. Grace brings ease into life; Reiki heals with ease. Think about grace, intend it, invite it, learn from it, and increase its presence in your life. Use Self-Reiki and invite grace into your body, into your physical and daily life. Infuse your work with grace. Heal your clients with it, and invite grace into your home. Let the loving universe give to you. Invite Reiki to heal you and bring the power of grace into your life. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound.

Colleen Benelli can be reached by email at colleen@reikilifestyle.com, by phone at 503.912.0664, on her website at www.reikilifestyle.wpengine.com, or on her Facebook page, Reiki Lifestyle-Colleen Benelli. Join Colleen’s monthly ReikiChat™ conversation, www.reikichat.com.