05:29
Barbara McGregor and then there is another woman who was from Sydney area that she initiated. And Barbara McGregor in my viewpoint, sort of took took Beth’s tendency to dramatize and sort of expanded that. So, a lot of her material anyway when I first was in Australia in the early 1990ies then that Beth was the first occidental Reiki Master. Well I don’t even know what that means.  She certainly wasn’t the first “white” Reiki Master, for sure. She definitely wasn’t the first Master, so, I don’t really know what that means.
06:26
And then they sort of put titles on her to make her to make her special. The really sad part for me about that is that Beth Gray was an incredibly special person. She didn’t need a title, y’know, to indicate her specialness. This is the part that really bother me a bit. Because people would ask me, «well, what does that mean and is this true?» and it put me in a place, of either lying or being evasive, which I am not very good at. Or trying to explain this very strange claim that really meant nothing to me.
07:09
Because I didn’t know what they were using “occidental” as. Y’know. So…  The woman in Sydney and her partner came very often to visited Beth. And it was kind of sad for me because her reluctance her reluctance to initiate Masters in Australia, which may have been wise, actually, forced all of her very loyal students out to be initiated by masters they didn’t care about. They were masters who had been initiated for maybe 2 months as a Master and just wanted to, y’known, reproduce themselves or whatever. And they had no relationship with the Master that initiated them. They were really Beth Gray’s students and continued to be Beth Gray’s students
08:07

08:07
and continued that teaching without her blessing as a master. And there is something about that that was really sad for me. So, our… our and I will say “Our” consciously, our understanding of recognition of mastery and lineage was so slim at the time that we were doing all this that I have to say, that we were really lucky we didn’t get into more of a muddle. (0841) And that now it feels like
08:45-08:47 (coughing in the background)
on some level because I don’t know anything about real lineage I can kind of invent what I want to about lineage and its OK but I also feel like it also is very inclusive… for instance … there are masters that I have initiated who don’t practice the system I do, their form is very, very different, so I don’t recognize them as Usui Shiki Ryoho Masters. At the same time there are other Masters who started out definitely not in this form of practice but have come through taking the intensives from Paul and I, but also through their own willingness to just connect with the energy of this practice
09:34
that they become practitioners though they were initiated into another practice of Reiki before which is fine for me. Some of them don’… can’t trace their lineage because they wer… they went to some kind of a music festival and in the middle of the music festival somebody said, «I’m going to initiate you as a Reiki Master.» and they do. And they don’t even know their name. But y’know, somehow they… that initiation was sincere enough that they actually followed the path of mastery and ended on my doorstep. And I said, «Well, Okaay..if you want to do this and are committed and you are sincere, then why not?»
10:18

1:58
If they are not intending to practice this system but are very close to the actual form of this system, then their intention is that they are not practicing this form – they are practicing another form. But then there are people who don’t practice this form and they are, you know, some percentage outside of the alignment and their initiation is from another form, then it seems that they are really practicing another form. So… I hope that was really clear?.. It seems not clear. Anyway…
2:49
If you want to speak about Barbara McGregor, I actually don’t know what her practice is, so I couldn’t make any kind of judgement. I do know that her…the way she teaches and her attitude toward other masters and so on is not in alignment with this system. She is very much of a woman on her own. And her students are her students… and I have known other Reiki masters who are like that as well. That they won’t teach or mentor anybody else’s students. And I have found that always to be disconcerting but I also accept it..
3:52
RV: when you say: ‘this sytem’, that’s equivalent to Usui Shiki Ryoho?
4:03
Yes, but now to be specific: it’s Usui Shiki Ryoho honouring the lineage of Mikao Usui, Chujiro Hayashi, Hawayo Takata and Phyllis Furumoto. Because without the lineage you can’t differentiate from all the other practices that practice but don’t honour this lineage.
4:27

0:00
Well the deal is that one of the masters died, her first master… I believe it was her first master. She was from Melbourne? Her name was …. I can’t remember. And she and her husband had a Reiki center, but she died, she died very suddenly of a massive stroke, I believe, at the age of like 52. I mean, it was really weird. And she died like in 2000..… when was the last time I was in Australia? It was in 2009. So maybe she died in 2005, 2004 or something like that. She was more quiet than Barbara (McGregor) of course. But she had a huge, huge following in the south-east part of Australia. This woman… and I really wish I could remember her name…
1:05

1:05
And then there is Beverly Bultitude, who is in a part of Sydney. 0111 She’s ähm 0114 (räusper) She has a woman partner and she’s still alive but she is very quiet with her Reiki. So Barbara being kind of a chip-off the old block of Beth Gray, but even more Australian just took it and ran. So, you know, that’s true. And that’s true in Australia. I think that the Australians would say that she is really carrying Beth Gray’s … a lot of Beth Grays’ idiosyncracies as well as her gift of Reiki. But she’s very unapproachable and very uncooperative, which Beth was as well.
2:02
You know, Beth didn’t want to… Marta Getty and she was also a master I initiated in the early 80s. And both of them taught in Australia extensively. But 0215 (räusper) Beth, you know Beth practiced with Beth’s practice, Martha’s students couldn’t go to Beth’s classes and Beth’s students could not even speak to Martha. So it’s this thing that happens sometimes. 0231 (Background voice) Yes, it does, absolutely. (OK) 0236

2:36