A few weeks ago a student asked: "I pick up psychic information when practising Reiki. Where is it coming from? ...And how is it being sensed?"
I almost jumped up and down. I LOVE getting questions like this! Not because I love discussions with a high "woo-woo" factor, but because it means that people are practising! We talk about this stuff in Reiki courses and training, but we only really understand with experience. I'm basically doing the Snoopy dance.
Drumroll Please! It's Coming from...
Your Guidance! You knew I'd say that didn't you? We learn that once we are attuned to Reiki, we are connected with healing guidance from and for the highest of good. This guidance intelligently knows what's required for healing, and focuses its attention accordingly. We practitioners are simply the conduit or channel.Sometimes students are skeptical. That's okay. I was too. Yet soon I started knowing things I couldn't have known - important things that pointed to the root cause of the issue or helped me direct healing energy to best address the issue, whether physical, emotional or spiritual. There's nothing like direct experience.
The more we practise, the better we get at understanding how our Reiki guidance is communicating with - and working through - us. Doubt will rear it's ugly head! But if we block out our guidance, we may be limiting healing potential. The more open, patient and unassuming we are, the more easily and accurately we will understand the guidance we are getting and the more healing will be possible. So that's half the answer...
How do we Know Without Knowing How we Know?
If we pay attention (or in this case if we practice mindfulness) we may wonder how this psychic information is being sensed. Guidance comes in many forms. We could see colours or pictures, hear words, feel emotions, or feel prompted to speak, make sound, dance or move. We could just know something without knowing how we know it.
So we can perform studies and look at outcomes, but how do we explain how this works scientifically?
We don't. Simply put, science can't explain everything you experience. Over the last ten thousand years we have relied on science to understand our experience of reality. And while it's given us so much, it can't explain what lies beyond the common five senses because it bases our whole understanding of reality as perceived only through them. Understandably so: science must be measurable. But there are things we just can't measure.
We all have the ability to sense beyond the standard five senses, but this ability has been violently squashed over the last ten thousand years. "Witches" and "charlatans" suspected of having extra sensory perception or psychic abilities were publicly burned or drowned. No wonder we haven't recognized or cultivated these abilities. We've been well trained not to!
Buddha and the Bigger Picture
If we turn to Buddha, the original teacher of mindfulness and one of the sharpest minds ever known, we get a fuller and clearer picture of reality. This is because the Buddha discovered and taught that we have a sixth sense with which to perceive reality: the mind.
In fact, your mind is sensing information into reality from your guidance in the same way as your eyes are sensing the realness of these squiggles I've typed out on the screen right at this very moment. The eyes see, the ears hear, the body moves and feels, the nose smells, the tongue tastes and the mind knows. And yes thanks to science we know the mind isn't restricted to the brain. Neuropeptides, the molecules that know emotions, are scattered throughout the brain and the entire body. A human being is a brilliantly interconnected communication network thanks to our trillions of space-filled cells.
It's fascinating how it works. During Reiki, the mind senses impressions made by your Reiki guidance, and depending on your guidance and your individual makeup, your mind processes the impressions into one or more recognizable "formats". You may know in pictures (clairvoyance), in sound (clairaudience), in smell (clairalience), in feeling (clairsentience), in tasting (clairgustance) or in perhaps the most direct way, in thought or knowing (claircognizance). And although not necessary, once you understand what you're sensing from your guidance, you can then be a conscious partner in the Reiki treatment.
Just know
So next time you are giving a Reiki treatment and "just know" that your hands need to stay at a certain spot longer, that you need to say something, or even that the person had cold pizza for breakfast, know that your mind is sensing this information from your Reiki guidance, from the highest of good. And that you're receiving it for the best possible healing outcome.Okay, so now that that's done, any more questions? I wanna do the Snoopy dance again!
