I always find it difficult to write about spiritual/mystical experiences.   I grew up in a family that prayed to the saints for everything – a lost sock, to sell a house, to be safe in the car, you name it, there was a saint that specialized in it. We all wore medals ansd carried rosaries and had scapulas pinned to our underware.  Not because we understood the theology or the symbolism.  It was religious and cultural traditon.  Some of it was flat out superstision. So I developed a real aversion to all the trappings of religion.  Anything that smacked of the mystical turned me off.       

A month ago, I attended a Reiki I class. I had no idea what to expect.  For some time now I’ve been off-balance and uneasy. It was like a swarm of bees was trapped inside my body, buzzing angrily, trying to get out. Meditation and massage weren’t helping. Nor were the antidepressants I took.   I kept coming across references to Reiki, so I decided to try it.  The class was very small, a Master teacher and apprentice, myself and another student.  I did not realize that, at this class, I would receive an attunement.  An attunement  is when a Reiki teacher passes Reiki on to the student.  I thought I would learn about it and then choose if I wanted to continue.  Receiving the attunement meant sitting in a chair with my eyes closed and my hands folded while the Master teacher made signs over me and blew on me.  

Afterward, the apprentice told me she had had a vision while I was receiving the attunement.  She said she saw a cauldron with a fire in it.  I was in the cauldron and suddenly this cloud of something flew out of me.  She thought it might be bats but they were both black and gold.

I also saw something while my eyes were closed and this is what I saw.  A fire in stone pit, deep in a dark cave.  The fire burned brightly but not strongly.  Suddenly, it was as if the top of my head opened and a swarm of bees flew out.  Very much like the scene in “The Green Mile”  with John Cofey.  Immediately afterward, I felt calm.

Part of the class required us to give Reiki to each other.  When I put my hands over the other student, they began to burn.  They got uncomfortably hot.  I got a little frightened.  I had never felt anything like that before.  The Teacher and the apprentice jumped in and helped.

Later on, when they worked on me, the Teacher said my Heart Chakra was blocked.  The Heart Chakra is the middle Chakra, between the material and the spiritual, right where I am stuck.

That was a month ago.  My hands still tingle and heat up whenever I even think of Reiki. I no longer take the antidepressants.  I’m content.  I fall asleep every night with my hands over my heart, sending energy there and praying that my heart opens.  Until I did this, I didn’t realize how much anger I was holding there as a result of a life of abuse.  Even though I am loved well now, that still lives in my heart.   But it is dissipating.  And as a result, I am opening to the spiritual and mystical in life.  

It is amazing.