You don’t need to be perfect
Along with the need to be relaxed and laid-back and light-hearted about your Reiki practice, certainly not trying too hard, you should also make sure you’re not beating yourself up for not being perfect.
Now, there is a precept that deals with this: just for today I will be compassionate towards myself and others, and that means forgiveness amongst other things: forgiveness for others and forgiveness for yourself.
Believing that you need to be perfect in everything that you do is an insidious belief and something that should not apply to your practice of Reiki. Just to make this completely clear: you do not need to be perfect to obtain benefits for yourself through Reiki, you do not need to be perfect when you’re treating other people for them to receive all the benefits of Reiki.
Many different approaches work with Reiki, there is no exact way that things have to be done or carried out before they’ll work, and Reiki is very accommodating.
But my mind wanders
Perhaps you mind wanders when you’re treating someone.
So what?
This happens to everyone else and it’ll happen to you. You will not mess up a Reiki treatment or be ineffective as a channel just because you were thinking about shopping for a while when you treated someone.
But how do you deal with a wandering mind?
Well, what you don’t do is to try and force yourself to have an ‘empty mind’ – that will not work at all; that will make things worse because you now have two lots of thoughts: the original thoughts and all the new thoughts about getting rid of the first lot of thoughts!
Don’t worry. Pay the thoughts no attention.
No need to focus on them. Just let them pass.
It doesn’t matter, just bring your attention gently back to what you were doing, being mindful, merging with the energy and the recipient, letting it happen. And that’s all you need to do, just be gentle with yourself.
Be lighthearted and compassionate
Will your mind wander again, having done that?
Probably, so just go through the procedure again: be light-hearted about it, be compassionate, let the thoughts go and bring your attention back to what you were doing.
Some treatments will probably be better than others in terms of a wandering mind, it’ll sort itself out over time, and your mind will probably always wander some of the time. It doesn’t matter. Do your best, make sure you’re not forcing anything, and don’t worry about it.
You’re allowed to be human!
And there are other areas where you may well not do things perfectly, exactly according to the instructions, and it doesn’t matter. If you’re doing a self-treatment and you get the order of the hand positions wrong, it doesn’t matter: Reiki will still flow, you’ll still receive the benefit of the energy.
Maybe you realise that you forgot a stage that you usually carry out when treating someone: have you messed it up so they won’t receive any benefit? No, Reiki will still have given them what they need.
Reiki is simple, Reiki works simply, Reiki rises above any set of rituals and rules that we might choose to follow, or forget to follow. You have a healing intent, and Reiki will follow that, and that is sufficient, no matter what you might say to yourself, or forget to say, or forget to do.
So don’t worry.
Errors in Reiki attunements
Perhaps you’re carrying out a Reiki attunement and you realise that you’ve missed out a section. Do you need to go back and do it all over again, apologising to the student for mis-attuning them?
No, it will still have worked fine.
There are so many different attunement styles in existence, with many different conflicting stages. Some attunements use a particular ritual that isn’t present in other systems, other systems use stages that aren’t present in your system. What is most important about attuning someone is your underlying intent, and the exact details of the ritual that you are using aren’t so important.
By all means do your very best to carry out your attunement ritual according to the instructions that you were given, but also realise that there are no vital stages other than setting a definite intent when you begin; the rest is the icing on the cake, a set of movements, different in different lineages, that just help to remind you of what you want to happen, to support or focus your intent.
So you’re fine.
You can be human.
About the 10 Rules
The Ten Rules of Reiki were put together by Taggart King as a helpful guide to getting the most out of your Reiki.
If you like what you’ve read, Taggart has a wealth of Reiki resources for you to use to get the very best out of your Reiki.
Read comprehensive manuals, listen to audio CDs or MP3s and follow special guided meditations.
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“The Ten Rules of Reiki” MP3s
“The Ten Rules of Reiki” will help Reiki practitioners and Masters from all lineages to deepen their experience of this wonderful energy we work with.
Learn important Reiki principles that take your practice to the next level
International Reiki Master Teacher Taggart King has over 20 years of experience in helping people to embrace Reiki healing as a way of life, using the energy to change things for the better on many levels.
During that time he has crafted a number of principles which, when adopted, can really move your experience of the energy onto the next level, principles that feed into and permeate the Reiki Evolution way of teaching.
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Price: £12.98
Author: Taggart King
Picture Credit: U.S. Army
Thank you again for some more helpful reminders. I find it helps me to ask before every treatment and attunement for the Reiki and higher powers to make me a perfect channel for Reiki and to correct any mistakes. I feel more relaxed knowing I’ve set my intention in that way so nothing can be other than optimal.