4:17
So I taught in this one little town near Seattle, Washington and so many of the people there finally had Reiki after about 5 years. Because by that time there were myself and then a master I initiated who was also doing Reiki classes there and so on and the town at the time was maybe, I don’t know, 20’000 people. And they estimated that 5’000 people at one point had Reiki, that’s a quarter of the town. And she said, you know, if somebody falls on the street, the people run out of the shops and give the person Reiki. Or, you know, if somebody is dying…
04:54-05:04 (street noise-pause)
5:09
Or if somebody…
5:17
Or if somebody is diagnosed with cancer then, you know, they just have the sign-up list, where everybody signs up to give this person Reiki every day, you know, and sometimes 2 or 3 Reiki treatments a day if they are open to it. So it’s this really beautiful community that was already had their community intact, some of these families have lived there for like 10 generations. And so they just took on this Reiki as a part of their communitive service. And their way of relating to each other as community members. And I found that to be amazing and I’m sure that that happens in lots of different cities, in neighborhoods, you know in little townships and so on.
6:05

6:15
So, it’s been a rich path and I don’t see it as a path of faults and stumbling, I see it as a.. as a path where I’ve been able to confront myself on many different levels and many ways by many people. And these gifts that I’ve received have come to me and have allowed me to be a better person for it. 0647 And ähm.. you know the (räusper)
6:51
The last big test for me was when I found out I had breast cancer 5 or 6 years ago and all of a sudden it was my body betraying me. And then I thought “Yes, but you travelled around for 22 years, you didn’t take care of yourself, you didn’t drink enough water for sure, you didn’t have days off where you renew yourself…”. And I read this article by this man, who said that cancer was a response of the body to adverse conditions and so he listed all the adverse conditions and I had every one of them. (laugh) .. and I thought “well, ok, so this is an opportunity to change that”. And that was the attitude that I went into treatment with and I feel that it was the greatest gift that.. another great gift that I have received, you know, in this life. And I am better for it, for sure.
8:07

4:30
So in the end when I had cancer and I started… and I was living in the same town as her, I was receiving hands-on-Reiki like from 7 to 5 times a week, almost every day, not from my mother but from friends of mine and people would come in and stay for a couple of weeks and treat me and so on. So, she would never let me treat her but she offered to treat me a couple of times and that was very special…
5:11
She said that she wanted to be a mother and that she didn’t want to take Reiki on as a career, so to speak. And I used to think that this was a kind of sacrifice, but I realized it was a choice of hers and that she made that consciously and I appreciated that.
5:39
Now that she had passed, I feel much freer in what I can do in the public and what is… what I can open up to the public because I feel that I have… I have taken on some of her understanding of what’s private with my grandmother, the line between grandmother as a private grandmother and Hawayo Takata as the Reiki master.
6:15
One of the things that has been exciting for me in … now I go back to the archives and what I’ve said about going through my grandmother’s things, my mother actually gave me in 1980…something when my grandmother … after my grandmother died… that they will be, I hope, will be housed in the Japanese-American-National Museum in Los Angeles because it… she will be held as a whole person, not just a Reiki person, but as a Japanese-American woman who did this amazing thing and dedicated her life and has touched the lives of people all over the world. So for me that’s an amazing story.
7:07

00:00
Well, I’m a little distracted by another question. (René… tell us first what the question is) (laughs and pauses
00:26
I’m.. I believe .. and this pertains to both, so I’ll see I can wrap both o’them into it. (0033) I feel that the calling to be a Reiki Master is an individual’s calling to mastery and that they’re choosing Reiki to be the form though which they gain mastery. I don’t feel it’s appropriate to set criteria for the certification of masters. I don’t know how you would do that and I don’t know how you could be fair, in the sense of, there were masters that I initiated especially in the early days that I might have known for three months and I initiated them as a Master because in those days I didn’t know better and the really amazing thing is that a lot of those Masters still are practicing as Masters. And have.. ya, have proven to be very sincere students.
01:41
But if their criteria is that they have to have been trained by…  for a year, for instance, as a Master, then they wouldn’t qualify and I think that’s kind of strange. On the other hand there are Masters who took the first, second degree and Master’s training all at the same weekend. But after ten years, they’ve worked their way through the whole process so that now, as Reiki Masters, they’re actually quite stable in what they’re doing. But that depends on the individuals. So it’s very hard to set criteria in this and I would be interested, not in having a part in the decision, but being… but seeing what’s happening before a decision is made.
02:41

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

4:17
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

5:28
But we are working on … investigating what are the functions of the spiritual lineage? Is there an energetic essence called the Master Body? Which I have spoken about from 1985 or 6. I believe there is a Master Body. There is an energetic Body that includes all Reiki Masters and especially all masters in the system and that they carry responsibility for the system because they’re masters. And we investigate what is the process of succession? What actually happens energetically? You know, where will this succession go? And what I’ve realized personally for myself is that of course somebody is not going to apprentice with me and be the next me. Somebody is going to appear at the time that’s very close to my death and they’re going to be recognized as the lineage bearer. And this person will take Reiki a whole other step that I cannot even imagine.
6:43
Just like when Hawayo Takata died at first I was really upset that she died so soon after my consenting to be a Reiki Master, not her successor, but a Reiki Master. And what I realized some years later is that in her dying then she gave me the gift of her wisdom and of her presence, because I’ve always felt her presence, but we didn’t have to struggle personality wise. And we would have had major, major struggles on the personality level.
7:25

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

0:00
Well I’m a little confused because I have another definition of global imperative, so I’m going to just speak in another way….
0025
When I found out I had cancer in 2009 I knew that it was a message from my body saying that I hadn’t been following a path, my path, and that I knew that because in the three years before that I knew that I needed to stop how I was travelling and what I was doing and to concentrate on something else but I could never find the something else, so as a human being I just fell back on what I knew. And…. having cancer has been the most wonderful gift. I tells me how I’m going.. and now that I have a metastasis it’s even a better gift: I know now how I’m going to die, I know that I don’t have 20 years, I have maybe 5 years if I’m lucky.
1:25