More on Reiki

Friday morning, I was thinking in the shower. As you do. I think great things in the shower. Especially when its something positive and not a silly nagging worry to set the tone of the day. I did yoga that morning at 6am, so I was feeling pumped and also excited because it was my Mum's 70th birthday.

Anyway, I was thinking about how I've always felt divided. Split in two. Like there are two sides to me, one being the good girl, the angel on my shoulder. The other, I'm sure you can guess, is the bad girl, the devil incarnate. Ok, so it's kind of an extreme view, and really I'm not usually so black and white, instead I revel in the grey areas of life. But when it comes to myself, I'm highly critical.


Scrolling through my phone the other day, I found some shit poetry I wrote a while ago. As mentioned, it is shit but it kind of encapsulates they way I have always felt about myself. And how I have always tried to keep my shadow side just that, in the shadows so no-one can see.


Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,

Split personality,

Whatever you want to call it,

I have two sides to me.


But I'm not torn;

Each side works in isolation.

Each side gets airtime.


I have a hunger.

It starts with a tired lethargy,

Then moves into a twisting knot in my belly. 

It becomes unbearable - well almost,

Don't think I've ever really tried to resist.


Yoga, beer, running, cigarettes, vegetables, 

Talking to strange men,

In the wee hours of the morning.

I've always had this.


I wrote this on 7th September 2009 at 11.32pm. Exactly 1329 days ago. No, I'm not autistic but my iPhone is. It tells me this kind of stuff ;)


I guess you're wondering what the relevance of this is to the title of this post. Well folks, in the shower the other morning, I was thinking about how lately, I no longer feel divided and that is thanks to, you guessed it, Reiki.


During the Reiki I course, I had a bit of an epiphany or maybe it was simply a merging of myself, my separate halves. On the second day, Sara from The Space in Between, gave the group several attunements as a kind of initiation into Reiki.


Attunements, for those that don't know, are a spiritual ritual performed by a Reiki master to open up the student to the Universal Reiki Energy. The student goes into a meditative state whilst the master performs the ritual. Once a student is attuned, they have the Reiki energy for life. For more info on Reiki, click here.


So during the last attunement of the course, actually it was during the last moments before we came out of the meditation, I experienced a powerful merging of my halves. At first I saw a vision of two people making love, one black, one white. At first, I thought to myself, bloody hell I shouldn't be thinking of sex right now! Haha. But then I realised that it wasn't a titillating experience, it was more like watching a dance, the bodies swirling around in space and fading into each other. The more I watched, the more I realised that this was a metaphor, the black and the white was my good and my bad self merging, I was becoming whole again. My soul was returning home.


The attunement has proved to be a kind of healing episode that has allowed me to make changes in my life. I no longer have to hide my 'bad parts' from people. I am a normal human being with good and bad traits. By shining the light on my darker half, I have been able to accept the negative parts of me and through dong so, I have the power and the will to change them. How crazy it is that we fight ourselves so much, that we would rather live in denial, than approach our failings with the same love and compassion we would give to our family and friends.


All of a sudden, I feel like I am back to where I left off in my early teenage years. The years when I was beginning to work out who I was and what I wanted from life. When I had so much creative energy and the world amazed me. When I felt like I was a massive sponge, wanting to absorb as much information as I could and experience everything I could. When I had an amazing memory for facts and languages and schoolwork was a breeze.


The time right before I started drinking, doing drugs, partying and basically trying to wash it all away. Wash myself away...into the shadows.


But now...I'm back baby! Sober and loving life!