Cluster: OGM and Lineage Bearer

 René's Highlights  Edith's Highlights
Video 29 Question 29, Day 2, Berlin, 0000-0112
Topic: Mother pushing Phyllis

00:00
Yes, it was my understanding that my mother really pushed my grandmother to see me. You know, she would… my grandmother and she  would talk about Reiki and about the different people who had come to Keosauqua to visit my grandmother because at that point she had moved closer to my mother. Because she was supposed to be retired but I can’t imagine being retired from Reiki and that was true for grandmother. So my mother, even when I was there she would just say, “It’s Phyllis look at Phyllis, she is your perfect person!”And I would go: «No! I’m not your perfect person.» But in the end it seemed as though my mother saw something in me and in my connection, future connection with Reiki that I din’t see, for sure. And neither did my grandmother.
01.12

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2. Cluster: OGM and LB
3. Cluster: Original 22 ...

RVediting: 15-2
Video 32 Question 32, Day 2, Berlin, 0000-0142
Topic: After Takata's death - discrepancies and struggle for succession

0:00
After Hawayo Takata died in December of 1980 the master community was slowly informed about this.. about her death by my mother. And what I mean by slowly is that at first she didn’t call anyone, I don’t know for how many months. And then she was starting to go through my grandmother’s papers and compiled a list of people, because some of the masters who my grandmother had initiated she was not acquainted with and didn’t know. Others she knew from the conversations with my grandmother and because they came to visit my grandmother, in Iowa.
0:59
As the masters began to be informed, many of them called me and recognized me over the phone in the sense that they said “well you’re your grandmothers successor, now what are you going to do?”. And it was a questions that I couldn’t really answer.
1:19
So 1981 passed by very rapidly because of course I stayed with my family through X-mas 1980 and then into 1981 (0133) (cough) ähm
01:42

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Hier, wieder, sieht man den Einfluss von Mutter, die Phyllis zur Nachfolgerin von positioniert. Neu für die Reiki-Gemeinde.

RV Editing: 18-2
in Video 15 there is part about Barbara Weber missing but here (and later in Arizona) she talks about the same.
Mother's influence: she had favorite Masters (Video 30) and here she chooses who gets informed about death....
Video 32 Question 32, Day 2, Berlin, 0142-0401

1:42
And during this time I didn’t really know what to do. And then it was evident at some point that Barbara Weber wanted to be recognized as the successor. And I believe that it was somewhere in the late summer or early fall, but again I don’t really know for sure, of 1981 that I went to visit Barbara Weber and asked her if we could do this together. And she said no.
2:22
There was another big question mark about a couple of master who had been initiated and I was surprised because it seemed like the had been initiated before my grandmother’s death which I was a little bit shocked about. But nobody would give me a straight answer. So I flew into Chicago to visit the Chicago masters and talked to them and I believe that I met everyone that year except for a woman named Iris Ishikuro, who was from San José and I never did get to visit her.
3:07
Eventually I realized that the masters had not been able to mourn their teacher of pay some kind of ceremony, you know do a ceremony about her, so I organized this meeting in Habi Hawaii in 1982 and I believe then it was in the spring, sometime like May or June. And this was the first time that a group of masters had come together and we stayed for a week together there. (0347) …(cough) (drinks)
4:01

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wichtige Info für die Reiki-Welt: Phyllis wollte mit Weber zusammen arbeiten...

Video 32 Question 32, Day 2, Berlin, 0731-0939
Topic: Foundation of The Reiki Alliance

7:31
Everyone there basically acknowledged me as a spiritual lineage, as my grandmother’s successor. And.. I remember the daughter of Virginia Samdahl was there and we had a talk. And she said “Well Barbara Weber is my master and I have great affection for her and great loyalty to her, but you carry something different and I can acknowledge you as a spiritual lineage”… well actually that … that wasn’t really coin, so I have to say “I can acknowledge you as your grandmother’s successor but I also acknowledge Barbara Weber as my Reiki master”. So in some way she was the first one that articulated this difference between – what I would call – the initiation lineage and the spiritual lineage, although that wasn’t actually named as such at that point…. Yeah, I think that’s true…
8:44
The next year when we met, there were more masters that had been initiated by me by this time and other masters that had been initiated by some of the other masters of Hawayo Takata and… a few masters initiated by Barbara Weber…. It was there that we didn’t really mean to come together and find a name for this group but it just arose out of kind of an organic process. And I think that that’s true that in… if you have a group of people that meet with a certain aim, then you end up naming yourself. So this group founded the Reiki Alliance.
9:39

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Wichtige Passage.

this could be a new Video? Alliance's "equal in Oneness" ... continued in Video 33.
Video 32 Question 32, Day 2, Berlin, 1257-1453

12:57
This phrase “the spiritual lineage” came in the second meeting at Barbara Brown’s house when we were trying to put together statements of identity for this Reiki Alliance. And I still believe that these statements have great foresight and also a great challenge. I can’t say them right off hand but one of them says something like… “we recognize all masters as equal in the oneness of Reiki” and the Reiki Alliance members today still argue about this phrase. But I believe that all masters of Reiki are equal in the oneness of Reiki. It doesn’t mean we are the same and it’s very important for me…it was very important for me that this thought was a founding stone, a corner stone of the Reiki Alliance because I didn’t want anyone to feel that this Reiki Alliance was a like an exclusive club. But actually my fear became realized and when the new form started to appear in the mid 1980ies or actually in the late 1980ies the Reiki Alliance rally closed it’s door and became very specific to the practice that was passed on from Hawayo Takata to her masters. And that was fine for me but I also wanted them to realize that “they weren’t better than” and this is something that is still in discussion in the Reiki Alliance today.
14:53

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Video 33 Question 33, Day 2, Berlin, 0000-0224
Topic: After Takata / Alliance's "equal in Oneness" - Continuation of Video 32

0:00
Well, I’m just trying to remember, if I can, if there is another motivation to put that in… it may be that that was a little bit of a defensive statement because Barbara Weber had put out that she was the only true Reiki master that had been initiated and that it was maybe from that standpoint that some of the people voted for that particular statement. I wanted Barbara Weber to join the Reiki Alliance, that was my dream and for all of us to work together. I would say that….
1:09
..that maybe 85% of the masters were initiated by Hawayo Takata was a member of the Reiki Alliance at some point. And at that point, because we all practiced the same system it was really easy to say that, that “all masters are equal in the oneness of Reiki”. And for me it means the same thing as in the US constitution, that all men are created equal. And I.. I feel that that’s true still today and is our challenge not to go into our human ego and decide that we or our lineage or whatever is the best. It’s just so, this is the practice that I have. I cannot say this is the best practice. I can only say that this is what I’ve received from my grandmother and in my way of honouring her I want to be as and practice as close to what she taught me as possible and that’s true for all of the masters that were initiated by her.
2:24

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RV-Editing: 19-2
This entire video has a lot of potential. Also of controversy (Hayashi left house... Mother inherited from Takata...) Phyllis points towards origin of GM, lineage, etc. Many things have been said elsewhere though.
Video 36 Question 36, Day 2, Berlin, 0000-0213
Topic: Circle of 22 and Master Body

00:00
My membership of this circle of 22 masters initiated and recognized by Hawayo Takata was very important to me. I felt that this circle held the energy of Reiki and the practice of Usui Shiki Ryoho up until now… And now there are four members of that circle still alive, that we know of. And Wanja has been not teaching for a couple of years. So now its Rick Bockner, Paul Mitchell and myself. We were the youngest when she initiated us all. And … I felt that as the Grandmaster, as the recognized lineage bearer that I was the spokesman for this circle. That in truth I couldn’t do anything to «change» the system or to alter the message without actually going back to the circle and somehow having agreement among us.
01:28-0130 (rülps) Excuse me.
 I think that from their point of view I was doing a lot of things they didn’t like but most of the things they didn’t like I didn’t like either. But it was happening, and so what can I do? y‘ know, like all the change… all the different kinds of forms of practice. There was no way for me to control that. And… I learnt that very early on that, y’know, my job was not about control, because it was impossible to control people. I didn’t have the personality of a police person. So, there was kind of a joke about having Reiki-police
02:13

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Video 36 Question 36, Day 2, Berlin, 0213-0333

02:13
But it was important for me to be able to hold the totality of what Hawayo Takata passed on as practice and know that the totality really was about the 22 masters and in all the different ways and variations that we practice.
That the truth of the practice was in the whole, no’… was not in this person’s practice or that person’s practice but in the whole group’s voice of the practice. And right now, y’know, what’s sad for me is that that circle is now not alive. In the sense that most of them have died.
03:00
So, now what we’r… what I’m working on is creating something called, which is not just being created now, I mean, it’s already in existence but the… to create consciousness about something called the “Master-Body”. Which for me is this collective of all Reiki Masters and that whether or not you choose to be an active member of this body you add to the body energetically, just by being a master.
03:33

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hier gibt es einen Blick in die Zukunft mit Platz für mehrere...

Video 38 Question 38, Day 2, Berlin, 0000-0100
Topic: Australia, titles .. / "inclusivenesse" as in Buddhism - Continuation of Video 37

00:00
It isn’t that it it’s not painful. (0007-0011) (coughing) It can be confusing. And it can be thoughtless. But basically I think we’re moving into an era in which people see that there is a pathway and that my students will.. can go to another form and find what they are looking for there. And then there are other people who can come from another form and find what they are looking for here. And without this movement … what’s really important in nature is crossbreeding. And, y’know, it’s really important not to end up having a monologue.
01:00

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RV editing: 24-2
Video 38 Question 38, Day 2, Berlin, 0100-0204

01:00
And, y’know, at first with all these different forms I used to think that it was a betrayal of my Grandmother and her teaching, y’know, to stray from this form. (0114) But now what I’m seeing is that we just created (0117) we just created our own (0119) ähm… we created our whole ähm …(shakes head) (0131)  we created our whole field (0134) of different forms of Reiki practice, (0138) so that people could enter however they came to Reiki and that people could find their way through Reiki. So then it becomes even a multi-level path, not just entering into one practice staying there for the rest of their lives. But having the … the ability to follow their impulse to other things.
02:04

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Video 43 Question 43, Day 2, Berlin, 0203-0421

2:03
There are a couple of other interesting points: nr. 1 I wanted to create another name for the Reiki that I do like … .. well like Barbara Weber came up with «Radiance Technique», she trademarked it, it was totally clearly hers, nobody fought her for it and it was really clean. You know, and that’s what everybody could have done in that moment, is to just have been clean. But it wasn’t, we weren’t there, we weren’t mature enough at that time and I am including myself and I couldn’t think of another name, so I went back to Usui Shiki Ryoho, which was not trademarkable because it was in common use and also… because it contained a man’s name and the man was not alive to ok it.
3:05
So then, after I couldn’t think of another name and couldn’t trademark Usui Shiki Ryoho then I thought, well this is Reiki just telling me: “ok, you stood up to somebody who wanted to sort of… exercise control over a certain group of masters and it was good that you said «no”. And I appreciate the Reiki Alliance for supporting me in handling the costs of this particular law suit.
3:49
And I feel like it was a good thing for us to do, for the whole Reiki community, because now…. in the… now people can not trademark Reiki and so it’s still… it’s the same, we still have freedom of use and… no one has to be the Reiki police. (laugh) .. So we get back to that again.
4:21

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2. Cluster: ... Master Body
3. Cluster OGM...

Video 66 Question 19, Day 2, Arizona, 0138-0348

1:38
However, when I came to Reiki and then my grandmother died. It seemed instantly but it was a couple of years later. And then I was recognized as the lineage bearer or Grand Master of the system, her successor. I tried to listen to all the voices and somehow come to a compromise about what I should do and what should happen and what direction will we take and so on. But I started to find my own will and that was very important for me. One of the very first times that I had a difference of opinion with this group of masters was in 1983 when we were drawing up the foundation of the Reiki Alliance. And people really wanted to exclude Barbara Weber, because at that point she was saying really nasty things about us and ….being very righteous, I think that’s an accurate word.
2:59
I wanted to include her… I was… I did not found the Reiki Alliance in order to have my own organisation. I really want this on the record! I wanted to found an organisation that would lift everybody up to a higher purpose so that we can all sit in the same circle. So I kept inviting Barbara Weber Ray and her… the masters that were her students or her masters actually to please come to the Reiki Alliance, so that we could have a place to sit and talk.
3:48

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Hier erwähnt sie wieder, dass sie Weber mit einbeziehen wollte.

Video 67 Question 20, Day 2, Arizona, 0000-0156
Topic: Barbara Weber versus Phyllis as successor to Takata?

0:00
When my grandmother died in 1980 and Barbara Weber Ray, well then Barbara Weber said that she had been told that she would be the successor, I… my reaction was it was totally possible.
0028 (räusper)
And the process of succession is more than telling someone that you will be the successor. There has to be recognition. And of the 22 masters that were initiated by Hawayo Takata, most of them recognized me. Sometimes because just before her death Hawayo Takata had said “Phyllis is my successor”.
1003 (räusper)
But because there is another factor which is that the energy came to me and this Hawayo Takata had no control over. I believe that this was also true about Chujiro Hayashi. He might not have wanted Takata, Hawayo Takata, to have been the successor but he got where the energy was going and he surrendered to it. It wasn’t that I was the favourite of my grandmother, let me tell you. She wanted me to be very different. And she was not happy with me but she also recognized something inside of me, that I didn’t even recognize myself in truth. And….
1:56

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Phyllis does not know of the Video claimed by Sikmonsohn.
Cannon MVI 5151: RV… Barbara Simonsohn
eos MVI 2953 …RV; Barbara Webber Ray… simonshon… grandmother on stage: webber ray-successor…
Cannon MVI 5152
Video 67 Question 20, Day 2, Arizona, 0638-0841

6:38
Barbara took the stands of being the only one who had better training than us, that had received a… more symbols and so on and eventually said that she was the only Reiki Master that my grandmother, Hawayo Takata, had ever actually initiated, that all. the rest of us were not really Reiki Masters. So that put me and all of us into this question “Are we really Reiki Masters?” And that was the best thing that could have happened to all of us, including me, because I had to go inside myself and find this truth. You know, am I a Reiki Master or not? Do I feel like I’ve gotten what I need from my Master? And eventually the answer was yes. So…
7:44
She pushed me in a lot of ways, some not nice. But I have to say and I said this at the time in the 1980s, she was the gift that my grandmother left me. She made me, forced me to go inside and find the strength that I needed to have this position. And to be able to nourish and have the community nourish this part of me because I believe that all of us initiated by Hawayo Takata had the possibility of being her successor. I mean, I don’t feel like I was special in the sense of I had more education or I had the right education or I had her bloodline or anything… that… that actually I don’t think had anything bearing on the case at all.
8:41

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Video 68 Question 21, Day 2, Arizona, 0000-0208
Topic: Individual as successor or can it be a group?

0:00
The succession question for me had been one that has been foremost in my mind since 1983. And … of course back then I was so young, that I was gonna live forever, and we didn’t really have to think about it. But I did think about it because my grandmother’s death created so much havoc for all of us and at that time of course we were still in this conversation with Barbara Weber and I thought my grandmother could have been more clear and so on. And at the same time realizing how advantageous it was to have a restraining force, you know, this activating/restraining, it was fabulous. So…
0:57
And then in the late 1980s Paul Mitchell and I started to travel in … to other continents, we came to Europe first. And we often flew on the same airplane. And finally somebody, I’m pretty sure it was a German master said to me “you know, you guys shouldn’t fly on the same plane”. And I just laughed and I said “You got to be kidding me”. And she said “no, actually I’m not. I’m saying to you that you two have a responsibility that you’re not taking care of”. And I thought to myself, well that’s actually true, I guess accidents can happen. And at this point the Reiki community was so fragile that if Paul and I had died in the same time it would have shattered the community. I’m not saying that to feel like … you’re replaceable or anything, I just feel like if I was living responsibly as a leader, you know, I had to take care of that.
2:08

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Cannon MVI 5153: RV: succession one person? Cannon MVI 5154
Video 68 Question 21, Day 2, Arizona, 0417-0528

4:17
So when I .. found out that I had cancer and the treatment for it was so effective and so quick actually, I feel like the Reiki community was alerted but we didn’t do anything about it.
I went back to my old, you know, not
0443 (räusper)
as intensive travel schedule but I went back to my old ways and travelled and did my thing and so on. And then my metastasis happened, three years ago. And then the Reiki communities .. the master community sat up and said “okay, this is not over”.
0504 (räusper)
And I believe my body really has served me because three years ago we started on these… having these weekends called succession weekends. And they were not about voting to see who the best candidate was, which actually people did come thinking that.
5:28

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Video 68 Question 21, Day 2, Arizona, 1117-1153

11:17
So, whoever comes now, they have have what we call a millennial brain. They have to…. they have to be able to really see you know the globe and our world community as one. And all these young people do. I mean they get it by you know, being born with computers in their hand. I mean… I don’t know…. I don’t get it. But I really get how different their perception is and how oecumenical their view point is.
11:53

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Video 69 Question 22, Day 2, Arizona, 1102-1300
Topic: continuation from Video 068 ...one individual as successor or group?

11:02
So the succession may of not be one person, I don’t know. It could end up being a group of people, but for sure the master body of this system needs to be able to open to another way of thinking and another way of being as masters, I would say a higher expression of mastery in order for the succession-process to be successful. And what I mean by successful is that it is done not without conflict because I don’t believe that there is a possibility of no conflict but I believe that we can see the conflict as a natural progression toward a creative resolution, reconciliation.
11:59
And if they don’t keep that in mind, if they vote… if they want to take a vote by personality, then I will have failed. Because this position is not about personality, I mean, I would have lost, hands down if they would have taken a vote on personality, because my personality was a wreck. Reiki healed me. This having to force myself out of my personality idiosyncrasies to think bigger and to think, you know, more humane, you know, it made me this way. You know, I might have had leaning sort of. But y’know it made me give up a lot of personality distortions. And it’s not about personality…..
13:00

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Cannon MVI 5156
wichtiger Eintrag - kann Gruppe sein..
Video 69 Question 22, Day 2, Arizona, 1300-1459

13:00
At some point… (laughs)
1303 (Schneuzgeräusche)
… in my…. realisation I realized that I didn’t want to be liked, I wanted to be respected. I didn’t care about being loved, I wanted to be respected. And I’m still working on that, because in the first 10 years all I wanted to do is be loved. So finally people thought “okay, I’ve succeeded in giving her what she wants”. And when I got it I thought “well, actually this is not what I want”. I want respect and it’s coming, because I’m respecting myself… more.
13:45
So the succession process is a process and it is very exciting because last weekend… a weekend in February in Mexico a small group of us got together to speak about succession. And because my cancer is active again and I don’t know how many years I have of active duty so to speak, I feel time really pressing on me now. And so now we have a…. what is called, what we call a transformational succession process plan in place. And we are starting it… you know, the first steps of that are being started. There’s a letter of invitation that’s going to go out and there’ll be a small group of masters who will …. well my guess is small group of masters who will say yes to the invitation.
14:59

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Video 69 Question 22, Day 2, Arizona, 1606-1736

16:06
And then with the webinar, people who are interested can sit in as witnesses. So we could have hundreds of witnesses if we want, which will be really great. And it will be able to inform the master community in a kind of networking situation. And eventually in a year we might be able to have a collective in-person gathering, you know where we speak in person for once. But anyway, we’ll just see what happens. But this is being coached and facilitated by Ben Haggert, who was a … my go-to-person with this regenerative developmental thinking process. And it’s really changed the way that I think and the way that I see the process of life.
17:05
I’m very, very excited by this because … it gives me not hope but a way to carry this system forward into the future and I believe that not only the system but the whole of the global Reiki community.
17:36

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Video 70 Question 23, Day 2, Arizona, 0526-0648
Topic: Do you consider yourself GM, lineage bearer for all of Usui Shiki Ryoho?

5:26
But there are many, many masters who practice this system who are not members of the Alliance. So the Alliance is a volunteer organization for masters to support themselves as masters. 0545 Yah..
5:48
Question from René: OK, within…. .??… yourself as a Grand Master for those fractions?
0552
Well, I’m only a Grand Master to those who recognize me. So there are members of the Reiki Alliance who don’t recognize me… now…. which is interesting. And I … in some way my questions is how do they get to be members of the Reiki Alliance? But that’s true for me that they’ve come and told me “I don’t really recognize you as a Grand Master”. So I asked them “Why are you a member of the Alliance?” And then our conversation ends there. I’m only the Grand Master for those who recognize me, I’m.. it’s not a titular head that is so, if everybody tomorrow ceased to recognize me as the Grand Master then I wouldn’t be it anymore and that would be fine for me.
6:48

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Cannon MVI 5160 ends at 09:25 with "...fine for me."
Thereafter follows RVs question: lineage bearer and GM are one and the same – clarification? ends at 10:30.
Video 71 Question 24, Day 2, Arizona, 0000-0128
Topic: What do you mean by "THIS system"? / GM, LB of Usui Shiki Ryoho? Continuation of previous Video 70

0:00
You know titles that are transferred from culture to culture are often very problematic. And it’s the same for this from the Japanese culture into Western culture in English. They referred to me as a Grand Master, it was a term that was coined and has been used in other Japanese art forms, the Grand Master, to say the Sensei, the head Sensei, teacher of teachers so to speak. But it means more than teacher.
0:46
So a master for me has a least five different aspects. There is the initiator, the teacher, the mentor, the student and the tradition keeper. So when people say “I’m a Reiki teacher” my response in my head is to say, “Oh, I see, so you’re not claiming responsibility for being an initiator, for being a mentor, for being a student or for being a tradition keeper”. And for most of the Reiki teachers that I know that’s true actually.
1:28

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Cannon 5161, Cannon 5162
make one Video 70 and 71 ot two different ones?
the 5 roles of Mastery come at another point, too - which one to take?
Video 71 Question 24, Day 2, Arizona, 0128-0316

1:28
So then as Grand Master I believe that there are several different aspects of Grand Master which we are starting to articulate now which is very interesting. And one of those aspects is bearing the lineage, is actually the lineage bearer. And it was a decision on my part to use both simultaneously because in 1993 Paul Mitchell and I formed the Office of the Grand Master, which meant that he also had a role that I would say is an aspect of the Grand Master called Head of Discipline.
2:11
So both of us together envisioned that this office would actually contain many people by now, but it hasn’t. We haven’t… we haven’t matured to the point of adding another person or two. But it wouldn’t surprise me, we just don’t… we just haven’t had those people emerge. And so Head of Discipline is one aspect of being Grand Master, that’s the person who holds the form and who holds the discipline of the practice, exactly what it means. And usually in the martial art they’ll have a Dojo Master and the person who is the philosophic head of the martial art and that’s who I am, I’m the lineage bearer. So I’m the energetic head of this practice and he took on the role of being responsible for a Head of Discipline.
3:16

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Video 71 Question 24, Day 2, Arizona, 0316-0439

3:16
Now, when I die it’s very possible that his role will be subsumed or assumed by a circle of people who will come in and have collective lineage bearing. So it will be like a kind of a committee or circle of lineage
0339
but what I’ve, we’ve been talking about is that every 0344 ….OK, let me see where I was … 
3:52
So when Paul and I formed the Office of the Grand Master I thought it would be clearer if I were also be referred to as a lineage bearer. So this means that I carry the essence or the energetic essence of this system. And he does not replace me, he is taking on one of the aspects of the Grand Master position that I felt I couldn’t do at the time. Now whether or not one person will be able to be the Grand Master of this practice Usui Shiki Ryoho in this lineage … I don’t know.
4:39

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Video 71 Question 24, Day 2, Arizona, 0551-0804

5:51
So, you know, in this particular practice, say we have a million students and … 9000 masters, I don’t know, these are numbers I am just picking out of my hat. 0604 (Schneuzgeräusche) But how is the succession going to be carried smoothly, well somewhat smoothly and clearly into the future, and this is something that we are studying now. So it is possible that when I die that one person will take this on and be supported a group. And it isn’t a group of “in-people”, it’s a group of people who are willing to be committed to this part of their practice.
6:44
I realized very early on that any of the masters that Hawayo Takata initiated could have become her successor. And I believe that as masters, when we are initiated and recognized as masters we have the potential to be a lineage bearer. It’s obvious because if we, if you or anybody else initiate a master then we are actually starting a lineage.
0716 (räusper)
But the masters who applicate in some way this part of them as masters to me as lineage bearers, I want them to awaken this part of themselves not so that they can be lineage bearers but that I believe that it is this part that will recognize my successor. Does that make sense?
7:45
So I’m very excited by this process and… excited because it expands my awareness of my own life and what I’ve been doing all these years.
8:04

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Video 72 Question 25, Day 2, Arizona, 0000-0121
Topic: What do you mean by "THIS system"? / GM, LB of Usui Shiki Ryoho? Continuation of previous Videos 70 and Video 71

0:00
I have this idea that this practice is like a heritage seed. It isn’t the practice that has the most members or students anymore but it is a practice that is seminal that is of the essence in the whole circle of Reiki forms and practices that we have today, because it was the seed
0041 (Geräusch) from which many of these came. So whatever happens to this system is going to affect the other systems of practice, the other forms of practice. And that’s okay because we are all interdependent anyway, I mean it’s obvious that we are. 0103 And ähm …
1:05
whether or not they recognize me as their lineage bearer, which of course they don’t or they would be in this practice, then… well that’s not quite true, so I have to go back.
1:21

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Cannon MVI 5163
make one Video with the previos 70+71? or one on itself: USR styles and styles coming from Japan (Jikiden)?
refers to Reiki "returning" to Japan as a reaction to USR/Takata...
Video 72 Question 25, Day 2, Arizona, 0121-0301

1:21
Whether or not those people in practices that are named Usui Shiki Ryoho recognize me as the Grand Master, my passing and the succession will affect their practice to a certain extent. Not because they want it to but because it just is so, I believe that and it will affect… as it will affect all the other practices that call themselves something else. Mainly because a lot of people have founded their practice in resistance to me. And if you found a practice in resistance to me then I hate to say it, but you are as connected to me as those who feel like they are connected to me.
2:12
One of the things that I have asked people over and over again if they want to start their own practice, please go ahead and do so but name it something else so that students have an understanding about what they are practicing. So all the people who have Usui Shiki Ryoho as their, you know, name of practice are holding that name in some way in resistance to change it. Because if they chose Usui Shiki Ryoho at the time, even in 1988 they would have recognized me as the lineage bearer. Because it was in fact the only system basically that existed.
3:01

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Video 72 Question 25, Day 2, Arizona, 0620-0733

6:20
In this day on confusion and fusion, confusion and fusion of different cultures. You know like you go into restaurants now and if it says Asian Fusion you have no idea of what kind of food you gonna get but it’s somebody’s idea of Chinese/Japanese/Thai/Korean whatever, all mixed together, right. And this is very confusing to me, I just want you to know. So fusion sometimes results in confusion. And I believe that one of the gifts of having clear different practices is that students get to choose which practice they can come to, that’s right for them in the moment. I’m not a proponent of putting all the practices together and having one universal practice, that is not going to save the day. What’s going to save the day is for us is to be respectful with each other no matter what.
7:33

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Video 80 Question 33, Day 3, Arizona, 0427-0539

4:27
Was this an act of dissonance or an act of surrender? You know… I mean… I think it’s a bit of both actually myself. And I have to say that I never… I never said, or if I … if people understood that I said, I just want you to know that this is misunderstood, but I never said that Barbara Weber was not ever…. introduced as the successor to Hawayo Takata. Because I believe that it was totally possible. Before I came into Reiki, Barbara Weber was her pride student. She was educated, she was a great organizer, she doted on my grandmother, she wanted to further all of my grandmother’s wishes, which she did, totally. She helped her record a book that she wanted to write, she made it possible for Reiki to become a household word
5:39

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Video 80 Question 33, Day 3, Arizona, 0539-0630

5:39
I don’t believe that she actually changed the teaching that she received from Hawayo Takata. She might have added to it, but I don’t feel like she changed the actual teaching, because she was a really dedicated student. She did what her heart and her education and her being really needed to do for Reiki. And I will never call this dissonance. It wasn’t comfortable for me for sure. I didn’t like some of the things she said about me but about what she did, she followed her path and I did the same thing. And so did all the other masters that Hawayo Takata taught and initiated.
6:30

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Video 82 Question 35, Day 3, Arizona, 1045-1255

10:45
So in keeping to this feeling of doing my best at the time, I think that when I was… in the mid 1990s when I was going through this trademark thing, I had some regrets but I couldn’t have made a different decision, at the time, in 1983. I just couldn’t have, it was not to be done.
11:18
Another decision that I made, that people… that seemed to be a very big deal in the Reiki community, was in 1988 during the first Reiki Alliance conference in Europe in Friedrichsdorf. I made a very important speech. And unfortunately… I wasn’t…. I wasn’t able to be articulate and to be accurate in my word. So people misunder….. people misunderstood me, they interpreted this speech really differently and … than I had imagined they would and … I did my best. So basically this … the whole thing that it came to was that I … that I had listened with growing dismay about people saying “Well you’re the only one who has the power to initiate masters”. And I would tell them “You’re wrong. This is not about power”.
12:55

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Video 82 Question 35, Day 3, Arizona, 1255-1424

12:55
And finally what I realized was in order to dissipate this rumour, this misunderstanding, I needed to just open the doors. Because the doors were already been pride open by other masters who were initiating masters already, Barbara Weber being one of them. And people saying “Well, are they really masters? Does she have the power to initiate masters?”. And I kept saying “It’s not about that. It’s not about that!”. So… and I also, one of the other motivations for me was that I saw that some of the masters of Hawayo Takata, who had been practicing and teaching and doing their path, were really ready to initiate masters, they had master… they had students coming to them, wanting to be initiated as masters. And those students were given to me to prepare and initiate. But I was starting to get students who weren’t my students, they were the students of the masters who sent them. And I couldn’t, in all integrity, take them on. I wanted to say “You study with Paul.. you study with Beth… you study with somebody…” you know, whoever has sent them, because it just wasn’t right.
14:24

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Video 82 Question 35, Day 3, Arizona, 1424-1607

14:24
So in this speech I tried to say (laugh) that the circle of masters who had actually given me their power to initiate, like there’s a word in English called “abdicate”, they gave this power to me and I believe it was the good thing to do at that moment, 1983… ah 1982 because this would have split the Reiki community I think maybe irrevocably, if so many masters had started to initiate masters for even the first 5 years.
15:09
So I did it, everybody saw how I did it. A lot of people didn’t like what I was doing but they couldn’t say anything ‘cause they had given me and said “you are the person to initiate masters in this system”. And that would have worked, if the system had stayed small, had stayed local but it didn’t… it just… in 1988 people were being initiated all over Europe, in India, in Canada, in Australia. You know, it’s like “Really? I’m going to initiate all these masters? Forget it!”
15:47
And the other thing that I said to my friends, was “I am not going to be an initiation machine, where people just send me their students, I initiate them and that’s it. I mean that’s too weird for me. So…
16:07

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Video 82 Question 35, Day 3, Arizona, 1607-1728

16:07
I made the speech and I said “you know, it is a master’s right to share their information and their calling as a master to any student that they feel is worthy. And it is up to you to prepare yourself for this step”. And I don’t know if any of the other messages have gotten through but the response was I had given away my power, I had… and I said “I haven’t given away anything. I had nothing to give away”, because this whole power thing was a misconception, you know, it’s not about giving away your power, it’s about sharing sacred tools so that a worthy student can step on the path of mastery and have their own experience of this. It’s not a… it’s a gift but in a kind of funny way. Because you know they are going to have hardship, challenges, confrontations… it’s going to take their life and totally change it. And… that’s a kind of funny gift I have to say.
17:28

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Video 82 Question 35, Day 3, Arizona, 1728-1821

17:28
So, anyway… I spent a lot of guilty feelings around this because it was so misunderstood at the time. I felt like I hadn’t been able to really articulate what I wanted to and, you know, at some point I just had to say “I did my best and it opened up the space and it was a little ungraceful but in the end it accomplished what I wanted. And that was to dispel this idea that it was only me who had the power to initiate masters. That was really important for me. 1807… So
18:21

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Video 83 Question 36, Day 3, Arizona, 0000-0207
Topic: Forgiving yourself? - Continuation of Video 82

0:00
.. but my peacefulness around this has come and lately, what’s really funny is that I actually found my notes for this speech… as I was going through these papers… I don’t know where they… I can’t lay my hands on them today, but it was really interesting to read it and to see how progressive I was but at the same time people were not able to listen to this language. They wanted to have kind of a physical “You can initiate masters and you can not!”, you know “You are not ready!” and “You are!” and I couldn’t have done that because it really, really for me was not my place to bless anybody to initiate masters nor to prevent them from initiating masters. So of course what happened, was.. is that … the masters that I thought were ready to initiate masters were angry with me and they didn’t initiate masters for years. And the people who were kind of young, upstart masters, who ‘thought they knew everything’ and so on, they began to initiate masters right away and they soon learned what initiating masters was about. I couldn’t have taught them that.
1:33
And in the end it was really right. You know, it wasn’t something that was “pretty” in the beginning and we all had judgements. But… and I opened Pandora’s box, I admit.. but I feel like it was now a good thing. I wish I would not had used the sledge hammer but perhaps the key (laugh). But I didn’t have the key then.
2:07

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Video 83 Question 36, Day 3, Arizona, 1039-1303

10:39
So I just, you know, at that point between my personality and my lineage bearer self I was crushed. And I just dropped it, just like that. And I left a lot of people high and dry in my own community. Some masters actually left Reiki because of this situation. My relationship with the Reiki Alliance has never.. I don’t think healed from this particular process, on my part, because I felt not supported, not recognized and not heard….
11:37
There has been tremendous misunderstanding that has come out of this particular four year period…. And… there is nothing I can say to … convince people otherwise. You know, there is an idea that I was doing this just to make money. Well, you don’t make money on a trade mark unless the people who are able… unless the people who want to use a trademark actually pay you money. And I knew that Reiki masters wouldn’t be able to pay me US$ 5’000 a year, so that was not what I was gonna ask. It was just assumption, after assumption, after assumption, that for me, especially with the Alliance members felt very painful because I realized, they didn’t know who I was, they didn’t know how much I thought for them and they didn’t know that I could see them and that I would be compassionate. So this was just a heartbreaker.
13:03

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Video 83 Question 36, Day 3, Arizona, 1303-1520

13:03
Could I have done something different? No, I felt like I did my best. Unfortunately … (laugh) unfortunately my best was not nearly good enough. Ahhh… I was not prepared for this. I had no one in the community that would step up and be there for me. I had business men come and tell me … who were Reiki masters… come and tell me “Don’t get into this, you’ll regret it” and then walk away. They didn’t come and say “Listen, you need help. You need to know what you are getting into, I can help you with this” and eventually show me that this was not where I wanted to go. But nobody was willing to do that and that kind of unwillingness, I don’t blame them, I blame mys… I don’t blame myself, I just feel like I wasn’t open to it. And they didn’t feel the opening to come and support me.
14:05
So … I don’t know where that came from, but … It’s been my … If I have any regret in my whole time being recognized as the Grand Master, that’s the one. I never met Joop in person. I would…. Now I realize I should have several times met him in person. We only talked through attorneys. We never talked face to face. We didn’t go to court, it was settled out of court, so I didn’t even see him in court…. And I feel badly about that, because I feel like we only have the projection of who we think he or she or I was at the moment and it’s probably still present. I mean that’s where our relationship ended, so to speak. And that’s where it’s going to stay, because as human beings we can’t progress until we actually progress in real life. And that’s really sad.
15:20

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Video 83 Question 36, Day 3, Arizona, 1713-1828

17:13
Since then (laugh)… since then my life as Grand Master has been pretty mellow (laugh), and I feel that…. I changed in a way through this process and I’ve become much more clear about what I’m willing to do and what I’m not willing to do, who my audience is and who my audience is not and so on. So these are the three places when you asked me about forgiving myself that come up for me and that there’s obviously energy still there, and I think rightfully so. It’s…. these were times where in our…. in my community anyway.. in this practice that there were significant changes of development that happened.
18:28

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Video 84 Question 37, Day 3, Arizona, 0522-0613

5:22
The activating force is the preservation of this system. The restraining force is about personality. If people were able to think about me not as a personality but as a part of this system that they practice, I am just as essential as the symbols, as the hand positions, as the initiation, as themselves as masters. We don’t understand what the dynamic is but I know that the dynamic is there. 0603 (nods her head) 0605 So …. ähm… Ya! 0611 
6:13

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Video 88 Question 41, Day 3, Arizona, 0006-0117
Topic: How would you like to be remembered / your legacy?

0:06
It is my hope that my legacy will be that I not only invited the Reiki community to move to a higher expression but to have guided it so that it became a higher expression of itself. And what I mean by this, and I don’t mean to be critical of where we are because every level of expression is necessary and needs to be lived thoroughly, it’s a little bit like growing up as a human being: You know, we need to live babydump (0:46) thoroughly or it gets stuck somewhere. We need to live adolescence thoroughly, we need to live young adulthood thoroughly. And what we’re moving into as a community for me is a maturity, but it needs to what I feel like Reiki is asking of all of us is…
1:17

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Video 90 Question 43, Day 3, Arizona, 0829-0916

08:29
In 1992 we came together because he had had a feeling that he should step in and help me as the lineage bearer, as the Grand Master actually at that point. And I also had the same feeling. And we had not had a very friendly relationship for the last 2 years before this. So it was really reconciliation immediate that we came together and it was recognized by the Reiki Alliance as a community and so he became known as head of discipline and our office together was the office of the Grand Master. 0912 So.. (räusper) 0915
09:16

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I had asked as a last question, as an after-thought, about Paul Mitchell.
Video 90 Question 43, Day 3, Arizona, 0916-1047

09:16
So since 1992 and 3, we started this relationship until now, he’s been a peer and this particular relationship of peer has been very important for me. He’s a very different person from me, personality-wise, we have very different approaches to money, to travelling, to ….lots of different details like that, but our approach and what we are called to do in Reiki is the same. So we have had just amazing experiences working together.
10:09
He is really clear that he is not a lineage bearer, anyway now, he’s 2 years older than I am. We don’t know if his position will be filled if he dies. He is very clear that he wants my position filled by one person when I die. And I don’t know really if that’s gonna happen. I would like to think that I’m open to any.. whatever comes up, with the energy of Reiki with the Master Body and with the community.
10:47

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Video 90 Question 43, Day 3, Arizona, 1047-1151

10:47
He has played a significant role of kind of anchor in all these years and has provided either the activating force or the restraining force in our discussions and vice versa. About 10 years ago we got kind of tired of the polarisation that this was creating. So after 2 or 3 years of actually going to counselling together and trying to work out our differences, we came to this conclusion that we were just very different personalities and that we didn’t really want to change each other. His reticence to talking, his way with money, his ideas of what Reiki was and what Reiki wasn’t stimulated me to really research my own ideas and vice versa….
11:51

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