Reiki healing is a hands on experience, whereby this energy is channelled through the healer and into the person, where it can bring comfort and healing for many different problems, both physical and emotional. A sense of calm and relaxation is felt by most, and warmth and tingling sensations by others.

Reiki is non-invasive and harmless and can be applied to animals and plants as well as people.

I finally took my Reki First Degree in the summer of 2001, having had the odd treatment here and there. The story that brought me to this point is worth telling.

Last May, one of the library angels (and that's another story) showed me an illustratd book about Reiki. As I read it, I came across the five principals, which are:
1. Just for today, do not worry.
2. Just for today, do not anger.
3. Honour your parents, teachers and elders.
4. Earn your living honestly.
5. Show gratitude to everything.

Now these simple lessons affected me deeply and I found myself quietly weeping, realising that I do worry too much, for one. Here was a quiet reassuring voice telling me not to, at least for today. In the corner of my vision I became aware of an elderly Oriental Gentleman, wearing a jade green robe. He and I had quite a conversation!

Some days later, I then met a wonderful person who became (although I wasn't to know it then,) a very good friend. Check out her website at www.eklektika.co.uk .She told me about Wei Chi reiki, the lost art, which has been channelled through two American Reiki Masters, Kevin Ross Emery and Thomas A Hensel, who had written a book "The Lost Steps of Reiki".

They were due to come for a visit to the UK in October. I was intrigued by this news and continued to practice Reiki on myself, the cat and anyone else who was willing. Meanwhile I was aware that my psychic and intuitive abilities were increasing and although I didn't feel the need for healing as a result of a specific illness, I nonetheless began to feel more grounded, centred and less scattered. More whole, in fact.

October came, and my friend offered to attune me up to Reiki 2 level. The two gentlemen from the states were on the way and were planning to do a two day workshop, but only for those who had attained Reik 2 and above.

I was attuned on the Friday and the following Thursday I joined in with four Reiki Masters and a handful of others who were also at Reiki 2. I felt fortunate indeed as many people had had to travel from all over the country, and this was happening on my doorstep. I am a great believer in following a path, particularly when you find stepping stones along the way to help you in the right direction, and this did feel right.

The workshop was wonderful, and brought new elements into the Reiki experience. There is far more emphasis on doing what feels right, using intuition and guidance, and the total involvement of the 'body' as well as the 'healer'. Check out the website at www.weboflight.com for more information.

And so here I am, on a journey as many of you are, and now that I am able to do distance healing, over time and space email me if you would like to receive any.

Enrichment and Abundance

We live in an age where the gap between the poor and the wealthy is massive; the contrast between the haves and have-nots is staggering in a time when we have made so many advancements in technology and science. Even in our so-called civilised Western society, a vast number of people are impoverished materially and an even larger number are impoverished spiritually. It may be that material wealth is hard to come by for some by spiritual wealth is available to everyone.

Spiritual enrichment comes from living fully in the present, to being aware and conscious of this unique moment, never before experienced. It comes from being able to take a sideways step away from your current perspective and perception, and there are many ways to do this. I would like to share with you the artist's way.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to awake in the morning with a feeling of expectation, anticipation and an eagerness to get on with the day, to engage fully with life and its challenges? To be able to jump in with both feet and experience the exhilaration of life, just like you felt as a child jumping into the waves at the seaside? But how many of us wake up with feelings of dread, fear and a vague idea that we're not up to the tasks we have to perform? Perhaps our energies are focused so much on what we have to do in the near future that we miss out out on our present?

Supposing you encountered your surroundings like an artist
In order to paint or draw, an artist has to observe, assimilate and breathe in the very essence of what is there to be painted. I am not talking about laboriously copying nature, in an attempt to reproduce a vision in two dimensions, rather than three, but the ability to be so connected that you and the not you are one.

When I was very small, I found myself in the garden, in a flower bed full of gorgeous bright red poppies. I touched and squeezed a petal and felt a surge of energy streaming from the poppy, into me, and down into the earth beneath my feet. I looked around and realised that energy suffused everything I could see.

Not only that, but it was a wonderful, benign energy. It was almost as though the trees bent down and nodded to me in approval and acknowledgement. We were all part of the same family. This concept is as strong with me now as it was then, and led me to understand that to draw something, you must understand it, and become it.

For example, look at a chair as though you had never seen one before, note its colour, shape, texture, smell and the shape of the space that surrounds it. Use all your senses until you can perceive what it is like to be the chair. Are you hard, or soft, do you have cushions, what is like to support a person or the family pet?

When we use all our senses in this way, finding beauty and variety and richness in our environment, when we stop labelling and presupposing, we have a constant supply of new experiences and unexpected surprises. When we meet new people or study a new subject, for example, we are engaging in life.

There is no need to have feelings of inadequacy, or a lack of confidence, as everything that we come across is a learning experience, not based on success equals good, and failure equals bad. This way of living excludes our narrow concerns over having our perceived inadequacies or being what someone else expects us to be etc. We are always in a state of experiencing abundance and richness, and find that we attract it into our lives.

And you can start now, even while you are reading these words, and especially if you are going through a challenging time. The expression, 'To rise above" allows a sense of detachment from the overwhelming circumstances that you may find yourself in. You are on a path of your own making and you can make the rules and change the rules, or build a new path anytime you like.

There is no limit to our potential and we all have the capacity to live a life as beautiful as any painting or symphony, or we can continue to believe that we have no control, no choice and no fulfilment.

My Mother (now departed) gave me a book when I was twenty called 'The Zen of Seeing' by Frederick Franck. In it he describes an experience when he was about ten or eleven.

"I felt a snowflake on my cheek, and from far away in the charcoal-gray sky I saw the slow approach of a snowstorm. I stood still. Some flakes were now falling around my feet. A few melted as they hit the ground. Other stayed intact. Then I heard the falling of the snow, with the softest hissing sound. I stood transfixed,listening.. and knew what can never be expressed: that the natural is supernatural, and that I am the eye that hears and the ear that sees, that what is outside happens in me, that outside and inside are unseparated."

It is interesting to note that the author and I both had profound spiritual experiences when we were children. It is worth acknowledging the wisdom of children and also the wisdom of our parents. My father used to say 'worse things happen at sea' and ' it's all part of life's rich pattern', and my mother said, after I whined 'why me?', 'why not you?' Wise words indeed. Bon voyage!