Reiki Restores Our Authentic Self

by Colleen Benelli 

First Published – Reiki News Magazine, Summer 2016

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DO YOU EVER FEEL as if there were two different people
living inside of you—one who looks to the outside for
direction and approval and another who beckons you to
follow a path that is more self-directed? Who or what can you
rely on to help you discover which one is the real you? Through
my personal experiences and those of my Reiki clients, I have
found that Reiki can help us identify these two very different
parts of ourselves and then help us choose the one that helps us
live our lives with truth and authenticity. This is our authentic
self, the core and the source of who we were born to be.

When we live through our authentic self, we are thriving, feel
fulfilled, inventive, satisfied, content and able to manifest our
daily life in the way that we want. When we live through the fictional
self, the one that has us seeking outward approval of our
actions, we run into many roadblocks. Let’s look at these two
“selves” more closely to see how they differ and why living from
the authentic self can change your life for the better.

Through my Reiki clients, I have observed that when we
sustain spiritual, emotional and mental injuries to our authentic
self, we often express parts of our lives in the fictional self,
living the life the world tells us to live. Some symptoms of this
are misdirection, unhealthy choices and behaviors, dissatisfaction
and depression. In my clients, these states of being affect
their authentic identity, intellect, authority, personality, imagination,
spirituality, inspiration, creativity, passion, talent,
curiosity, interests, desires, choices, discernment and judgments.
Reiki brings back these qualities in my sessions so often
that I have come to realize that my clients are part of a collective
healing on the planet.

This is especially noticeable with Holy Fire III Reiki energy. It
seems to focus on restoring the authentic self in the individual
and in the collective. The authentic self resides in the spirit.
Holy Fire brings in the glory of God and merges the fragments of
our soul in the wholeness of our spirit. The glory merges into our
soul, and we remember the glory within us in our daily life and
perceptions. It is important to understand that Reiki does this
work spontaneously. As practitioners, our job is to simply activate
Reiki and invite it in to heal without directing it toward any particular
healing goal or expectation of observing one.

External and Internal Factors
We can fragment from our authentic self as a result of both
external and internal factors. The external factors can change our
belief system about ourselves so that we no longer know who we
were meant to be. They are sourced in circumstances mostly out of
our control and may include childhood training, ancestral belief,
peer pressure, cultural beliefs, negative spirit attachments, past
lives, well-meaning people, trauma, etc. They create the stories we
tell ourselves about who we are. And out of these stories comes our
fictional self, who begins to make our daily life decisions based on
someone else’s story. Our beliefs shape who we become; if we
believe we are happy and thriving we will experience that story or
if we believe that we are sad and tragic that will be our story.

When we have been injured we may lose touch with our
authentic self. If the injuries are great, it can be exceedingly difficult
to resist living according to someone else’s version of us—
the fear of rejection by those who want to control us can over
power our need for authenticity, choice and freedom.

Internal factors are usually within our control and arise from
the perceptions we have of the circumstances that we face. We
base our choices and actions on these perceptions. But while it
may seem that we have the power to change our reaction, it may
be difficult to identify the authentic choice because we are still
reacting from the mind of the fictional self.

Psychologist Phillip McGraw (Dr. Phil) has a helpful blog on
this subject 1 that defines the authentic self, offering tips and solutions
from an intellectual view. However, as a Reiki practitioner
I often see that while people can intellectually know they need
to change and want to change, the fictional self’s stories are based
in injuries so ingrained that the life skills needed to make that
change seem impossible to achieve.

This is why Reiki is so practical and where it can help. It heals
at the level of the original injury by unifying the fragments of our
soul with our spirit and with God. Now our internal self is based
in the authentic part of us and has real influence over our external
reality, making it easier to utilize the life skills outlined by
professionals like Dr. Phil.

Once Reiki has released the trapped fictional self and restored
the qualities of our authentic self to our soul it also helps us align
our authentic self and inner guidance with divine guidance, giving
us a greater ability to follow our true path. Amazingly, it can
often do this automatically.

Identity: The most common injury I see to the authentic self is the
alteration of our authentic identity through life experiences, choices
and the expectations of others. Reiki often shows that the original
cause of the injury occurs around 14–16 years of age. This is
the time when we decide who we are as individuals separate from
our parents. We question authority and adopt self-determination.
Parents, peers, teachers and the present day culture can influence
us at this impressionable age when we want to fit in, so we
become who the world expects us to be, rather than who we are.
However, as we get older, we may suffer from discontent and try
to find our true identity.

Authority: Our authentic authority is often lost in very early
childhood, particularly with extremely domineering parents,
teachers or religions that have authority over a child and it can
also be influenced by unhealthy experiences from past lives and
ancestral history. When the authentic authority is lost, people
may look for it outside of themselves, not knowing how to access
or speak their own truth.

Intellect: Our authentic intellect is more than just intelligence,
although that is an important part of our intellect. It includes our
beliefs, talents, curiosities, interests, desires, etc. The loss of
authentic intellect affects our belief about our possibilities and
how we express ourselves through our lifestyle.

Imagination: This is where I first observed the injury to the
authentic self in my clients. Over and again, Reiki healed my
client’s authentic imagination. I questioned this with Reiki and
was shown that almost everyone in our culture has challenges
with their imagination. Its value has been deminished and
assigned to that “place where we make things up.” But it is much
more than that. As Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more
important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now
know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire
world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”2

Sovereignty: Authentic sovereignty is the “moral or natural right of
a person to have bodily integrity, and be the exclusive controller of
his own body and life.”3 Not only do we have the legal right on earth
to our body, we have the legal right of creation to be the only one in
control of our body and our soul. Our sovereignty can be violated in
our body and our soul, sometimes from life trauma and abuse and
sometimes because of possession by negative spirits. Restoring the
spiritual right of sovereignty to a person has one of the most profound
healing effects of all. It can be life changing in dramatic ways.

Spirituality: Like our authentic authority, our authentic spirituality
is commonly diminished when a person is dominated or influenced
by a particular belief system based on an outside authority such as
well-meaning parents, teachers, cultures and religions. Reiki teaches
us to access God directly and have our own personal relationship
with the divine by giving us access to our inner guidance and aligning
it with divine guidance to find our authentic spirituality.

Self-Worth: Our authentic self-worth is affected by the loss of
any of the authentic qualities of our spirit. It is one of the most
damaging of all of the losses to our authentic self. In my Reiki sessions,
God always says, “How could you be anything less than
worthy? You are so beautiful.” As the glory of God fills the spirit
and the spirit remembers its glory, the client sees herself through
this light inside and outside and her self-worth becomes divineworth.
I watch as people are restored to trust in life and a new and
greater sense of belonging on the earth.

Restoring the authentic self can be profound and life changing.
At first, it can even be a little disorienting. It affects a person’s
daily life and choices, offering new paths and changes. I
watch how Reiki provides this healing gently and at the pace a
person is able to thrive in.

Conclusion
Reiki heals and empowers the authentic self. I have seen this
deep level of healing in my Reiki work since receiving Holy Fire.
However, it is an aspect of all of Reiki to return us to our true self.
Reiki is a tool that helps us actualize this. It gives us assistance
from God to heal the fictional self-created by the external and
internal influences of life. Reiki empowers us to live as our
authentic self, our spirit, who still remembers the beautiful light
of God within us, and to act from this inner truth.

1 Defining Your Authentic Self, www.drphil.com/articles/article/73

2 www.goodreads.com/quotes.

3 G. A. Cohen, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-ownership.

© Reiki News Magazine • Summer 2016 • www.reiki.org
Restoring the Qualities of the Authentic Self

Colleen is the founder of Reiki Lifestyle and a Senior Licensed Reiki Master Teacher for the ICRT. She teaches all levels of Usui/Holy Fire Reiki including Holy Fire Karuna Reiki®. She is also an Associate Teacher for the LightSong School of Shamanic Studies. Colleen lives in Portland, Oregon. Join her on ReikiChat™, a free, monthly Q & A teleconference call, by going to www.ReikiChat.com. For all other information, Colleen can be reached by email at colleen@reikilifestyle.com, through her website at www.reikilifestyle.wpengine.com or by phone at  (503) 912-0664.

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