Sometimes I surprise myself . . .

Over the span of years, I've studied a great many things. Eastern arts have been high on the list of things I gravitate towards. Meditation is part of my daily life, as is Reiki. Reiki is an Eastern healing art/science that can and does provide serious, measurable results. Which is probably why more and more doctors and hospitals are retaining, and even training, Reiki practitioners. Reiki is also a wonderful course of study to be undertaken for anyone on their own healing journey.

I am a Reiki practitioner, and credit it in part with my survival and growth after unspeakable, horrific trauma and abuse.

Used regularly both Reiki and Meditation can become as natural and expected as breathing, and provide surprising benefits. It has been known for sometime that advanced meditation can connect one with their higher self, and even with other planes of existence. This is long documented fact and I shall not endeavor to reproduce the wealth of study data here as it's not relevant. Be it enough said that I've been meditating for most of my life, so I've developed a certain comfortable facility.

Reiki is something newer to my life, but no less significant or powerful a modality. I'd been interested for a while, but it was only when I'd realized I really needed to do this for my own healing journey and survival that I did something about it. I first started serious study of Reiki in 2006 and reached Master/Teacher level in 2007 for the first time. Since then I've continued to grow and study, and have been certified as Master Teacher in two different disciplines by two different Masters in three different lineages. My goal eventually, as time and money permit to add one more Master/Teacher certification to that. Then I'll have triple lineage and have grown enough perhaps to seriously consider opening my own practice.

One of the things that is learned in the Reiki II course (or level) is the distance symbol and it's use and application. In Reiki I, one is usually taught how to "beam" or project Reiki across the room. The distance symbol/practice dramatically extends that range. In fact it is almost ironic it is called the distance symbol, because in effect it removes any and all distance between practitioner and subject. Space and time become irrelevant, one can send Reiki to, or receive Reiki from anywhere, or anywhen.

When coupled together, advanced Reiki and Meditation is very much like time travel. Now, before you go thinking she's finally gone right around the bend give me a moment to explain. First of all, while I ascribe to a lesson, a precept a Sensei of mine taught me years ago, I have achieved a certain level of comfort and adeptness with both Reiki and Meditation enough to forward my experiences some. Back then Sensei suggested that I meditate upon my own place in the universe to try and find out just who I am and what I really know for certain. What I learned was interesting, the short version, which pleased Sensei very much was that I am no one and I know nothing. Which isn't nearly as horrible as it sounds. It is an invitation to the universe to fill me with light, love, purpose and gifts of abundance. It is also not always as easy to be as it sounds. Simply stated, it is a way to help balance what Freud referred to as the trinity of self. Id, ego and super ego. While many forms of Eastern thought advocate a complete surrender of the the ego, and the ensuing loss of self in the process, that is a road, a path I've walked far more often than I'd like. Almost always with disastrous results. However I digress. My point simply is this: I have learned and practiced enough that I can realized real, tangible benefits for direct, or even indirect intent.

Many in the mystical community often recite, as if a mantra, that energy follows intent. I wonder at times however if they really understand that at a deep and personal level? I know until yesterday I didn't really appreciate it nearly as much as I do now. For as much as it is about will power, or the ego, the self, directing thought and thus energy toward something or someone, what about when it really clicks? When you have an "ah ha" and "oh my" moment all in one for no other reason than you where trying to imagine something and make a point to savor it when you get there? Kind of a mental note to self to do something at a future point? You with me so far?

Okay, if you're still here, with Reiki you can initiate a connection to send healing energy to anywhere at any time, distance is not an object. With Meditation you endeavor to connect with your higher self. By melding the two, you can share thoughts, feelings, and experiences with any of your past or future selves. Surprisingly easily. Thankfully because Reiki will let you do no harm, and because time heals all wounds, one does not need to have an advanced degree in temporal mechanics to safely navigate the multiverse. The American Monk, Burt Goldman would, and does, refer to this as Quantum Jumping. For an 80 plus Monk, he's one really smart guy. For the technically minded, I'm simply modulating a Reiki carrier with additional information. Not unlike in radio where a carrier wave is modulated to send signals that can be understood on the other end. Frankly it's pretty cool!

Now I'm a sensualist near as I can tell. This simply means that how something, or someone feels, is at least as important to me as any specific details. I'm also naturally highly empathic, and highly intuitive. This makes for a powerful combination, and in some people, can lead to addiction, substance abuse, and death. Thankfully (I think) for me, I'm a reality junky. So I've never been tempted toward mind altering substances or recreational drug or drink use. Put me in the middle of a field of flowers beside a river on a perfect day, and I'm higher than a kite. Really. I'll get the whole doped up look to me and I'll have paying any attention to anything else. Then again, that's actually a type of meditation called mindfulness.

Okay, wow, this is getting deeper than I'd planned it. So lets just boil it down some for a moment shall we? I'm a sensation junky, and even my imagination can be more real, and tactile than many peoples day to day lives because everything is important. How it feels, how it move me, how it touches me and stirs my soul are often more important than little details.

So yesterday started off hard. My mood was way down, and I was even experiencing something like withdrawal. For what? A good bike ride. Yes, I'm serious. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I get into what some people might call "the zone" while I'm mounted up and moving out. Again, flying through the countryside on my bike on a perfect day, and yeah, high as a kite. So as regular readers will know, I've been working up to getting back on a bike, and this has been a long, building process for me.

Anyway, as I was writing my long reply to a comment on my previous post, I made a mental note to myself to remember and really savor one of those days where I was flying along in a perfect day enjoying being in the moment. Which was all it took. Suddenly I was there, in the moment, flying along, soaking up every bit of the yummy goodness that was the wind in my hair, on my skin, the slight burn in my muscles from going counter clockwise around Shaker Trace and having crested the hill. My heart, soul, mind and body on fire with sensation, the wind, the hum of the tires, the vibration, the corn crowing in the fields I was passing, the voices of the birds in my ears, everything. For a few blissful, blessed moments I was there. I was no longer at my desk penning my comments but I was on the west side of Shaker Trace Trail in Miami White Water Park, lost in that one perfect moment.

And the me then was laughing, high as a kite, and thrilled to be sharing that moment with me as I sit here on pins and needles waiting for the day I can pickup Serenity from the shop. In fact, exactly two weeks from today I'll be at the shop picking her up. In fact, two weeks from this moment in time I'll be finishing my last lap (weather permitting) for the day at Winton Woods. So there I was, on Serenity, flying through the countryside, high as a kite sharing that moment we I/we/she wondered about the future.

Talk about being blown away.

From Shaker Trace Trail a few months from now, to Conzelman Road in the Marin Headlands on the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. Yes, California! There I was, hunkered down to streamline my wind profile and the equivalent of a racing tuck, flying down Conzelman. Another perfect day, the air was clear, clean and smelling of the bay, San Fransisco there in the distance, and the sun starting it's gentle glide into the vastness of the pacific ocean at the end of another perfect day. Again, I was higher than a kite flying along on the road this time, not a trail, and so happy I was drunk with the pleasure and richness of that moment. It was a moment from a few years into the future, when I was half the woman I am now, and yet, all at once, way, way more than I am now. I was stronger, healthier, more confident and felt a level of safety and security that I've not tasted in more than a decade. I looked and felt amazing, and this trip was almost two decades in the making. This moment. Something I'd wanted since I was there with Earl, and so much more. The me then, while she is in no way the woman I was in my life before Earl, she's somehow better, stronger, faster.

And She/I/We knew then, and know now, that we're going to get there, that we made it. And when I do, I'm going to be looking back in wonder. She is even now looking back in wonder. Because she is still no one and knows nothing, but she's come a long, long way from being broken and dead, semi catatonic on the floor of her prison cell in New England. Sure, her heart. mind, body and soul are littered with the scars of her life, but she's stronger, healthier, amazing to me right now. She gives me a level, a taste, of hope I've not known in ... well, really ever. She is so there, taking her month long tour of California. She was going to watch the sunset from the bridge, make her way back to the car, and then head to the Fog City Diner for dinner for old times sake. The day before she'd already rode across the new Bay Bridge and back, and then finished off the day with dinner at the Stinking Rose.

She/I/We have come a long way to go.