by Colleen Benelli
First Published – Reiki News Magazine, Winter 2012.
Artwork by Gaia Orion.
WHEN OUR SPIRIT INCARNATES on earth, most of us begin a process of forgetting our spirit consciousness as we turn our attention to our physical senses and what we need to learn in order to function in the material world. It seems intentional to me, and it is one of the great mysteries I wonder about. My spirit guides call Earth “the planet of the great forgetting.” It is part of our journey here. They also say that when we are in our spirit bodies determining whether we want to incarnate here, we are unaware of how much we won’t remember of our spiritual existence when we are on earth. It is hard to comprehend the reality of the “great forgetting” when we are in our spirit lives. It is often shocking to us when we arrive here, our great big spirit, in a little body so dependent and innocent.
Reiki helps us remember and establish our divine presence here on earth. It seems that when we remember our true self, we are happier, more confident, we feel part of the world and have higher perspectives about our lives. To remember your spirit with Reiki, begin with your intention…
I am fortunate to have a lot of babies and small children in my life. My kids and all of their friends are having children now, so I get to watch the babies’ transformation from awareness of heaven to the beginning of the forgetting. People, places, situations, events, peer pressure and culture can influence how much a child forgets and how quickly and deeply it happens. Of course, many children remember who they are regardless of their earthly experiences. And many who do grow up forgetting because of their life experiences find themselves by becoming natural seekers of God and the light.
Reiki is able to heal “the great forgetting” within us by helping us remember our spirit. Our spirit is made of light, love, joy, truth, beauty, grace and gratitude. Reiki is the same essence as our spirit, and the same energy as our life force, but it is still completely in its divine form. Reiki is an external source of our divine energy, created by God to give us a way to heal our life force and spirit when we arrive here. It is well known in the spiritual realms that we need divine help to live here in the world.
When Usui Sensei prayed and meditated for twenty-one days on Mt. Kurama, he asked to become enlightened. It was a powerful invitation to the divine asking for help, and Reiki is what was given to him. Usui Sensei asked for help and received enlightenment, “the great remembering,” and through his asking, brought a powerful and divine source to the planet that empowers us to remember our spirit.
When we activate and receive Reiki, we are activating the qualities of our divine spirit within us. These qualities are always there, but they are often covered by veils of forgetting, and we can’t see our divine qualities anymore. In my Reiki sessions, the veils covering people’s light can look like many different things.
I have seen things like layers of heavy, dark, wet, soggy blankets and metal armor. I have seen words of abuse covering people, people locked in sarcophaguses, wrapped in rope all veils that hide the light and love of a person’s spirit underneath them, making it invisible to the person. Underneath the veils, their spirit is just as bright and brilliant as when they were born, and they just need to have the veils uncovered so they can see their radiance again. Reiki naturally lifts the veils, then shines more light into their light, and they awaken to the presence of their spirit that has been alive and well inside all along. It has always been there, just hidden from their own view.
I find that underneath all of the various ailments in my Reiki sessions is the loneliness people feel when they have forgotten their divine presence. We miss our spirit when we can’t find it. It is often hidden from us because of external life experiences, and many of us are called to find it again. It sets us on a path of personal discovery until we awaken to it again.
After all of these years of receiving Reiki, I now know that it was my spirit self that I was looking for when I found Reiki I just didn’t know it then. I missed my spiritual self, and although I knew it was there, I just couldn’t figure out how to find it. At the time I was in advanced training for shamanism and between that and the Reiki, I had many healing experiences of removing the veils that had covered my divine essence. I remember the day that I was looking on William Rand’s web-site and saw the words “Helping you to accomplish your divine purpose on earth.” It caught my attention. I remember thinking that I really liked the words and the concept, but at the time, I surely didn’t know what they meant. Those words ended up guiding me on a whole journey that has taught me what those words mean and how to establish my divine presence here on earth in a way that is true for me.
What was most unexpected is the “on earth” part. I had the misconception that when I remembered my spirit, I would have to be perfectly spiritual. My version of my ‘divine presence established on earth’ was that all my actions and daily life would look a certain way. It was part of my resistance to my spiritual practices. I wasn’t sure I wanted to live the kind of life I thought was required if I had to be my version of spiritual awareness. I instinctively set up limitations for myself that prevented me from finding what I was seeking just in case the requirements were too stiff. I didn’t want to live differently than I was already living. I liked my life and wasn’t up for dramatic changes of lifestyle. I was keeping the forgetting in place.
Reiki began teaching me gently as it always does, (I always ask it to be gentle!) and combined with my shamanic practices, I began to actively heal the beliefs and fears I had about waking up to my true self. To summarize a long process of coming to this understanding, I found that I am spirit no matter what. The Zen proverb “Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water, after enlightenment chop wood, carry water,” makes sense to me now. I can be my spiritual self in my daily life. I can do everything I already do, have all my relationships, be just the way I am and I can know my spirit at the same time. My spirit is not different than me, or only present when I act a certain way. My spirit is always me, no matter how I act or how I feel, or what I am doing. I can only be my divine presence on earth. It is who I am.
“If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are,” says another Zen saying.
The Reiki symbols are all unique aspects of divine essence. When we are attuned to them, they naturally begin the healing process of the great forgetting by awakening our true divine life force. The Reiki symbols awaken the power of love, the divine mind and the divine heart. They connect us to the earth and to the Great Being of the Universe who shines on us and is our friend, and they connect us to the place of purity, where every-thing is pure light, pure love, pure joy, truth, beauty, grace, gratitude and wholeness, the place of our heart, the place of our spirit. The light of the earth and of God shines through our heart, and we remember that we are a treasure house of this great beaming light.
What I love about Reiki is that it will awaken all of this with-in us just by inviting it. It will do this if we are chopping wood, carrying water, doing dishes, watching tv, feeling sad or angry or happy and playing whether we are praying and listening, or working hard and in our full busyness. Our divine presence is in our daily lives. It is not somewhere else. It is in everything we are doing, in every moment. The difference is in the experience of ourselves. Mostly we would rather be feeling happy and joyful so we do the practices that help us be in that state of mind, but not always. Sometimes life doesn’t feel happy and joyful, and what I have learned from Reiki is that even in those times, we are all still divine spiritual beings.
HSZSN is a wonderful symbol to help. It means the origin of all is pure consciousness. It is the power of the divine heart. When you activate it, it turns on your heart light so that it shines in front of you, behind you, one each side, above you and below you. This symbol helps your heart shine so brightly that you can see it through the veils. Then the veils begin to dissolve because you can see the divine spirit in yourself. When you can see the divine spirit in yourself, you can see it in everything else. When you see the divine light in everything else, then it exists in the physical world. The more divine light there is in the world, the more harmony and peace. Pure consciousness wakes up in our spirit when we activate this symbol.
SHK is the power of the divine mind. When we activate it we are activating the divine mind within our own life force. It will move to every chakra and wake up the divine mind in our whole body. Higher thought and higher consciousness wake up, the field of all possibilities opens; innovation, inventiveness, creativity and manifestation all wake up. Intuition, inner guidance, inspiration and imagination all wake up within when this symbol is called.
In our divine mind, we remember the light and the love of our spirit, and we give it voice. In the place of the divine mind, communication with other spiritual beings is possible. We are all on the same level of consciousness and are able to talk with one another. When we meet our spiritual friends, family, teachers and guides, we find the light in our heart, our divine presence, is the same as theirs and we realize that we are the same as they are, just in a different form. Our spirit is awake and remembers who we really are and other divine possibilities. This is the place of pure invention where the ideas are born that we create and manifest in the physical world.
CKR is the power of universal love by every name it is called. It will heal our injuries and remove the veils they created. It will fill the injuries with the power of love that is the true nature of our spirit. CKR heals the reasons the veils were created and the injuries they caused as it removes them, returning them to the loving universe. Everything wants to return to the original state of love, and the CKR makes sure that is what happens. Then this symbol wakes up the power of love in our spirit so that we remember its presence. When we remember our love and our light, we respond to our lives from a truer perspective. “What does love do now?” becomes the easier question to ask. The power of love is awake and thriving within. It is guiding the way. We are awake to our spirit.
The Usui and Tibetan master symbols lift our minds to high-er thoughts and perspectives. They add another level of healing the forgetting and empowering the remembering. They move us into thinking about bigger questions, and we receive more universal truths and understanding about our spirit. They heal our separation from our spirit by helping us remember our connections to the earth, God and our own purity. When we remember that our spirit is living in our body to have this earthly experience, it establishes our divine presence in our heart so that we can experience ourselves this way.
The Tibetan master symbol FS is the connection to the earth. When you activate it, you feel your body and remember that it is made of the earth and that your body houses your beautiful spirit. Your body gives your pure consciousness the ability to live here in the world. This symbol helps you feel your spirit here in this life, in this moment in time, in this body. It awakens and aligns your chakras with the rhythms and cycles of the earth. It helps you listen so you can hear the heartbeat of the earth and remember that it beats in the same rhythm as your own heart. The FS symbol invites the light from the heart of the earth, and it rises and shines through the light of your heart. As it activates the divine presence in you, you can see that the two lights are the same. The FS helps you recognize that your body is made of color and the earth rises and fills every chakra with its color. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet rise with the earth balancing you. Then your heart light shines through your colors and reflects rainbows all around you. When you activate the FS, the world becomes vibrant and you feel your vitality. You remember that you are a beautiful being of the light, living in the world now. You accomplish your divine purpose here on earth, in this body, living your life, right now in this moment.
When you activate the Usui DKM you are inviting the Great Being of the Universe to shine on you, and to be your friend. It calls on a beautiful light from above that shines through the light of your heart. It helps you recognize that the two lights are the same and the same as the light in the earth. The colors of creation will flow down through the light and fill your spirit with brilliant color and light. The symbol merges the colors of your spirit with the colors of your body and more of your divine presence enters your body. Your chakras and rhythms align and balance with the earth and creation. Divine light shines through your heart, and you remember that you are a “treasure house of the great beaming light.” Your spirit shines through you, and you remember it now.
When you activate the Tibetan DKM, it lifts you above the density of the earth to the place of purity, the place of spirit. In this place you remember that you are pure light, pure love, pure joy, truth, beauty, grace and gratitude and wholeness. This is the place of your heart. You are all of those divine qualities whether or not you remember yourself that way. This master symbol holds the perfect blend of the divine masculine and divine feminine within you. It creates the manifest form of spirit, bringing it all the way into your body. And you remember now.
Whenever I ask for help from Reiki with big subjects like this one, remembering my divine spirit, I simply activate the Reiki symbols and ask the questions. Then I listen for answers from all sources. I am sure that establishing my divine purpose on earth is a lifelong subject I will study. In a case like this, I don’t necessarily do one kind of Reiki session on myself or on others. I just activate the Reiki symbols and experience the eagling in whatever form it takes.
Self Reiki is one of the most important activities you can do that will help you remember your spirit. I give myself Reiki all the time even in the middle of my busyness, I just activate Reiki and invite its presence in whatever position I am in. Sometimes I get to be in hour long meditation with Reiki and other times it is Reiki on the fly. Either way, Reiki activates my divine presence and helps me live my life from that perspective.
When I am giving Reiki to others, I ask for the person to heal the forgetting so they can remember their spirit. Remembering their spirit fulfills a longing within that they often didn’t know they were looking for. I ask for the veils that have been covering their vision of their spirit to dissolve in the light of Reiki so they can see the light in their own heart again. This is helpful in every kind of Reiki session, and it can simply be an intention. It is a foundational intention in my work to help others and myself to establish our divine presence on earth.
I believe in the quote by Anais Nin, “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” When we remember our divine purpose in our daily lives, we see the world from that perspective. Even in the hardships and even when we don’t feel divine, and even when we don’t act divine. I found in my personal experience and in the experiences of many of my Reiki clients and students, that we are lonely in this life when we have forgotten our spirit. A piece always seems to be missing, and we aren’t sure what it is that we are longing for.
Reiki helps us remember and establish our divine presence here on earth. It seems that when we remember our true self, we are happier, more confident, we feel part of the world and have higher perspectives about our lives. To remember your spirit with Reiki, begin with your intention, invite the Reiki symbols and ask them to lift the veils of forgetting, then ask them to show you who you really are inside. It is really that simple. Reiki will high-light your divine presence so you can see it again. It will help you establish your spirit here on earth.
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.
Colleen offers Reiki training and Reiki sessions. She is a compassionate, conscious healer who has clients around the world. Her healing methods include decades of discovery into the world of Reiki, including the new and powerful Holy Fire III Reiki. Learn more >
