2:24
It’s interesting for me that although sometime we had little differences in hand positions, at the end what we would say is “and that is what we were taught”…(laugh)… So…
that particular phrase joined us together in a way that really nothing else did. It was really like having a common mother, if you want to use that analogy.
3:10
To back away from this a little bit, in my opinion all human beings are on this planet and they all have a path and for some reason Reiki has become an expression or a… an accessible expression for people to enact their path of mastery. Because I believe that everyone who is born on this planet is on a path of mastery at some… of some kind. And it is… it depends on what their path is, what their destiny is if you will, whether that path shows up in parenting or in being a doctor or being a teacher or being a farmer or being … you know, whatever.
4:08

02:41
And, this may or may not happen. So, in light of that … I’ve gone through many stages of … preparing masters, that’s what I call it, actually, and now what happens if someone comes to me, they ask me if they could be prepared for Mastery by me. And I’d say Yes. And I’d say, well, you know, Reiki actually prepares you. You can… we can have a conversation. And basically it’s you living your life as though you were a master. And at some point in that time, Mastery will fill your body. Will change you, will… you will embody this energetic we call Mastery. And that will be the time that I will initiate you, recognizing this fulfillment.
03:48
And then your job really begins. Because then you start having experiences as a Master and you grow from that. So this is a part of your studentship. I definitely have a list of things to do and I use the four aspects and nine elements for people to kind of write their own program of preparation. The average time between somebody coming to me and declaring themselves a Master candidate and the initiation is from 5 to 10 years now. And…
04:41
it was interesting when I realized that I had breast cancer, I was going to chemotherapy and so on, some of the Master candidates just lost it. I mean, they were so concerned that I was going to die before initiating them. And tha… those were interesting conversations! And they said, «can’t you speed this process up?» and I said, «no», I said, «you know, if your path as a Master is to be prepared by me and I die before I initiate you, then that’s a part of your path. And I’m not changing this program for you or for anybody.» That was interesting… those were interesting conversations, yah.
05:38

4:00
I tell people: “You know, mastery is about knowing who you are not. That’s the most important. When we all know who we are and we have, you know, grandiose ideas about who we are quite often. But when you know who you are not then you know that you’re a master because you know what your boundaries are.
4:20
I think that it’s… it’s something that we’re developing as a master community, these boundaries of who we are and who we are not and that as we grow clearer about that, the people who come to us to be masters are also clearer.
4:42
So… in the 19… late 1990ies I stopped initiating masters because I was totally confused about why anybody would want to become a Reiki master. So because, you know, the bottom had dropped out, so to speak, of the vocation of Reiki masters, people were not able to support themselves…. So I didn’t initiate for 2 years but also to the master candidates who kept coming to me, I said: “Well, you know, why do you want to become a Reiki master?” and the answer was always: “Because it’s my calling and this is my next step. Whether I suffer or not is totally beside the point”. I went: “Wow”. And other people said: “It’s my spiritual path and this is the next step on my spiritual path”. So I couldn’t refuse them and now, …. almost.. well 15 years.. afterwards I just see that the motivation for people to come to Reiki mastership has really changed. And in that change shows for me the maturity of our practice.
6:01
And I kind of long for the old days when it was just like ‘you just do whatever seems right’, I mean whatever that was and it’s just kind of shocking on one hand and on the other hand it was so much fun and it turned out so well by some miracle of chance and at the same timed to go through this adolescent kind of testing thing and now we’re out the other end and just can’t wait to see what the next stage is of learning about mastery, not just for myself but how I prepare other students to become… to step into that place of mastery.
6:42

8:18
So I offer this to all of you who just don’t like me, which I totally understand. You know you don’t need to like me, you don’t even need to love me and you don’t need to recognize me. You just have to allow that I’m a human being who has a path and this path ended up to have this absolute … encouragement of lineage bearer. And I’ve done my best and I know that maybe I’ve could have done better if I’d have been a different person, but I wasn’t a different person. And I am lucky to have a family that is my … that has become my anchor in my relative world and at the same time have people around me to support me being my absolute best. So that’s a little pun a play on words, in English “absolute best”.
9:25