Reiki: My Way In

Keith Beasley - Reiki Master Teacher, Bristol

Before Reiki found me I was very much still an engineer: my world was one of facts and theories, of logical deductions and things that could be measured. Like pretty much all of Western society, mine was an outer world.

When a friend, newly qualified as a Reiki practitioner, asked if I would be willing to let her practise on me, I was intrigued and could think of no good reason why not, so laid down and allowed the ‘treatment’ to take effect. I haven’t been the same since!

At the time I couldn’t describe what I had felt. I just knew that something was different. So much so that within a few months I had taken my own First Degree Reiki training. And I haven’t looked back!

Well, that’s not true. I have looked back…if only to see where I’ve come from and to help me to understand my journey. It’s a journey that I would now describe as an ‘inner’ journey: a personal discovery of my inner self. A ‘me’ beyond who I had been and who I was expected to be. One altogether different in the sort of thoughts and sensations that I was now allowing myself to feel.

Being of the age I am (my 68th birthday is next week, as I write) I was brought up with “boys don’t cry” and expected to be “seen and not heard”. Feelings? What were they!

Particularly after I had taken Reiki 2 and started using the symbols, I began to realise that yes I did have feelings and, actually, they were very important to me! And as a world of emotions, particularly repressed and suppressed ones, began to emerge, so Reiki slowly but surely reconnected me to myself. To what it means to be not just a thinking human being, but a thinking, feeling, human being. A far cry from the conditioned over-thinker my upbringing had turned me into.

But, my inner self, was far more than just a bag of emotions. Within a few years I’d taken my Reiki Master Teacher course and was now teaching Reiki myself – one of the first in the country to do so within Lifelong Learning; adult education as it was known then. There is nothing like teaching something to learn it better oneself, and students for providing new learning opportunities and insights. Regularly giving attunements and explaining the potential of universal life force energy within our lives was helping my own mind to loosen up, to let go … and to ‘allow’.

So much so that some years later I found myself doing a PhD on ‘Consciousness Beyond the Rational’. As a Reiki person you are likely to have experienced this on many occasions: whilst in Reiki mode or engaged in some creative pursuit or whilst at one with nature. A state of flow. Being present.

This is where, when and how our inner being comes into its own – with the rational mind stilled and our here-and-now self realigned to our higher self, to our true nature, so a deeper purpose in life often emerges. The outer focus on possessions and power and wealth begin to lose their appeal and we may well see the materialistic world for what it is: merely an outer perspective. Not the only thing that matters at all!

When teaching the symbols at Second Degree, I describe how they connect us to every thought and every feeling that ever was, is, or might be.

Our inner self is not constrained by linear time or physical distances. The inner world is transcendent: Reiki can help us reconnect to the past…so that we can see it in new light. It can help us to explore possible futures, so we can see and know which one is right for us.

Healing, I realised fairly early on in my own Reiki journey, happens at all levels: mind, body and soul. Indeed, I would say the biggest healing I’ve done is to reconnect to my inner self, to put my outer perspective into perspective…to better balance the spiritual and emotional with the often harsh physical world in which we live.

To become whole, to live more holistically, my Reiki journey has demonstrated oh so clearly to me, means allowing myself to be drawn in. For only the best and deepest inner connections will illuminate our lives and provide the strength, wisdom and support that we all need in navigating the lessons that life throws at us.

With Reiki, I have found, we can access our inner wisdom and inner knowing. It was through Reiki itself that I knew I had to give up my job in the electronics industry to take up Reiki. It was the inner knowing provided by ongoing Reiki practice that got me started on and through the many trials of my PhD.

It was Reiki inspired inner courage and wisdom which guided my physical journey from the South Midlands to the South coast and then on to run retreats in Portugal and then to do my PhD in Wales and, more recently, move to Bristol. My rational mind, my thinking self, has had no idea of where I’ve been heading but my inner self throughout has seen the bigger picture and guided me to where I need to be, at just the
right moments.

Thank you inner me! Thank you, Reiki.