Reiki and Christianity

Home >> Reiki Articles >> Reiki and Christianity

Reiki at a church healing service?

The other day I was at a healing service at a church in Cambridge – a church open to all manifestations of the Spirit, embracing different lifestyles and incorporating silent meditation into the service. I knelt at the rail as the priest raised his hands to my head before asking God to send healing to me. I became aware, well before his hands touched me, of tremendous heat radiating out from his palms. "Aha," I thought, "of course. Just like Reiki!" And as he placed his hands on my head, I felt the same kind of swirling energy move through me as I have come to know from giving and receiving Reiki.

So was there any difference between a Reiki treatment and that Christian hands-on healing? Do they come to the same thing? And if they do come to the same thing, why do so many Christians oppose Reiki as an unacceptable practice?

Religion and Spirituality

The problem is that, as in other religions, many branches of Christianity have lost touch with their spiritual heritage. They measure everything according to the letter of the law found in the Bible (which in fact insults the Bible, but that's another story), wielding the Bible as an instrument to determine who is on "their" side and who is not – dividing, not uniting the world. This divisiveness seems to me a denial of the Spirit that is found everywhere in the world, moving in ways far beyond our human ability to understand. A religion that excludes the Universal Spirit has moved in a harmful direction.

To remind myself of a more wholesome direction, I often go back to the title of a story by Flannery O'Connor: "Everything that rises must converge." Think of the lines of longitude on a globe, which as they rise towards the North Pole, come together in unity. Think of each line as a different person, rising into greater spiritual awareness, and at the same time drawing nearer in love to all other souls – from all other traditions – who are also rising to greater spiritual awareness. All religions contain groups that promote this kind of convergence and groups that fight it. Some Christians, then, will be hostile to a "foreign" practice like Reiki; other Christians, in touch with their own tradition of mystics and spiritual non-conformists, will welcome Reiki as another way of bringing about God's kingdom on earth.

Where Reiki and Christianity come together

One way we can see the connection between Reiki and Christianity is by looking at the Trinity, the Christian concept that the One God can be seen through three different aspects, for which we have traditionally used the images of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Father is the Creator, who proclaimed the world to be "good", who loves the world like a parent, and who shapes the world in accordance with his benevolence. As long as Reiki is done for the highest good (and we know it cannot be done for any other purpose), it is in accordance with the Father. In fact, as we offer the healing for the best good of all concerned, what we are doing is placing the healing on the altar of God, in thanks and surrender to the divine parental will that wants the best for all of us. We are assisting in his creative energy.

The Son is the Divine Word, incarnated as Jesus, the manifestation of God upon earth, the Christ who carries out the work of creation by caring and shaping and repairing the world, "in great humility" – a man of sorrows, embracing the poor and outcast, rejected by those in power. Also, of course, the healer. Some of the accounts of his healing strike Reiki practitioners as very familiar, such as the time (Mark 5.24-34) when the desperate woman touched Jesus' cloak in the midst of a large crowd and was healed of a twelve-year haemorrhage, and Jesus felt the healing energy leave him. "Who touched my clothes?" Jesus said. "Are you kidding," said his disciples; "we're in the middle of a huge crowd; everyone's been touching your clothes." But Jesus knew, as a Reiki healer might know, that there was a special connection made between him and the person asking for healing.

But some Christians will argue that no healing is valid unless it is done in Jesus' name. Here is often their main objection to Reiki. This recalls the time the disciples ran to Jesus, complaining about a man who healed in Jesus' name but was not a professed follower of Jesus. Jesus reproached his disciples, saying, "Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us." (Mark 9.39-40) But what does it mean to heal in Jesus' name? Do we have to pronounce the word "Jesus" for it to be valid? Surely more important is the fact that Jesus is Love, and thus if we heal in the name of love – that is, if we send healing through a compassionate heart – then we are healing in Jesus' name. He has many names.

Jesus as the model for our healing can also remind us that we do not carry out healing for our own glory; we must set aside our ego to become a divine channel. We cannot force things, and we must remain open to all, even to the point of exhaustion, as we serve others in non-judgemental, unconditional love.

The Holy Spirit is seen through a variety of different images: the dove bringing peace, water to cleanse us, or, in the words of St John of the Cross, a "living flame of love that tenderly wounds my soul in its deepest centre". In the Holy Ghost come all those forces and impulses working beyond the material world: inspiration and creativity, community spirit, even erotic desire (the poet Dante showed that passionate love for another person can become a path to heaven). And, of course, the Holy Spirit comes as healing. When we tune into Reiki, I believe, we are tuning in to the Holy Spirit in its frequency of healing energy. The wind, or spirit blows where it chooses (John 3.8); we do not control it and it knows better than we where and in what form healing will take place. Or, as we say in Reiki, it is intelligent energy.

Why bother with the Christian connection?

So much for my belief that there is no essential conflict between Reiki and spiritual Christianity, but, one could ask, why bother with Christianity at all? What can it give to a Reiki practitioner that Reiki does not already give?

Although, as we know, it is more often abused than not, religion can serve a vital role in our life. It provides rituals, meaningful actions that connect us to universal archetypes and to the larger community of past and present observers. These rituals are beautiful and effective.

Christianity, in common with Judaism, envisages God as personal, that is, as a being who communicates with us on a rational and an emotional and a physical level (though God is also so much more that we can never know). This means we can develop a relationship with God, speak to God, listen to God, complain to God, thank God. God does not, as some unspiritual religions might tell us, provide us with an insurance policy whereby all believers are handed a happy life. No, the religion does not keep us from harm – anymore than practising Reiki will keep us always in top physical or emotional condition. It just adds a deeper and richer dimension to our lives, and, if we choose, to our Reiki practice.

The old Reiki myth spoke of Usui as a Christian teacher. We now know that this is not true, but in as much as he went around doing good, he was Christ-like, and a Son of God.