6:27
So we’re again talking about a spiritual practice. We have to get above social norms and social judgements and social understandings about how much dignity a person can have. So for instance, like I have a couple of stories: So there is this master who’s been teaching in Mexico. She is from Chile and there is a woman who comes to her 1st degree class and she recognizes her as a woman that sells lemons on the street corner by her place where she teaches Reiki. And she says “what are you doing here?” and she said “well I want to take 1st degree Reiki”. And she said “oh, okay, well…” and she said “I have the money, I have the money” the woman this lemonseller says. So she said “okay”, so she taught her 1st degree, everything is fine. So a year or two later she you know keeps coming back and finally the lemonseller says to her “I want to take 2nd degree now. I have the money saved”. And she said… and inside this Reiki Master said to herself “I can’t accept it, this is like a half a years’ lemons you know sold, I can’t accept this”. And so she calls me on the phone. And I said “who are you to steal this woman’s dignity? She knows exactly what she is doing! She knows exactly what she saved this money for! And you in your middle-class complacency are going to steal her dignity and say ‘you can’t do it because you’re too poor’. Like that is totally crazy!” And she said “okay, so there’s one more thing” So I said “okay, so what?” She said “Well she’s illiterate” and I said “So?” She said “Well, she’ll never learn the symbols”. I said “Are you crazy? This woman was smart enough to be able to sell lemons and save US$ 500, are you kidding me?” like, I mean, you know the wonderful thing about Reiki that brings us as Masters to these places where we confront our own believe systems about people, about what’s intelligence, about you know… significance of social standing, I mean, all these different things.
9:25

9;25
And we get to laugh at ourselves and say “ridiculous!”. So she didn’t laugh at herself then, but a few months later she did and she said “you know, this woman is practicing, she’s doing great work, now what do I do if she wants to be a master?” And I said “Well, don’t even go there, I mean, go there when it happens and count yourself lucky that you have such a dedicated student”.
10;00
You know, I love the story because it so identifies a lot of my own prejudices and my own believe systems that I had from the very beginning and a lot of these were broken when I, the first time I went to Russia because not only did I go to Russia .. I was really broke at the time, I hardly… I didn’t have any money to pay my employees in my office and here I was spending, you know, a thousand Dollars to go to this country and maybe not come back with any money because of course Russia had no money, that was my believe system and that they wouldn’t…if they did have that they wouldn’t pay for Reiki…
10;48

10:48
So when I got to Russia I was told that I would have one day with people who wanted to be master candidates and at that time there were 2 or 3 Russian speaking masters and they had just be initiated but all the other masters initiating in Russia were from other countries and flew in and did classes and flew back out. And they were not able to ask for US$ 150 for first degree, they just couldn’t bring themselves to do that. So I was to address these master candidates and of course one of the big questions was about the money, US$ 10’000. So I tell you I did a lot of Reiki treatment on myself, I did a lot of nashing of teeth and I knew that I had to walk in there and say “you pay your initiating master US$ 10’000, I don’t care what they ask you, you pay it!”
12:03
So.. I went in and I was like trembling and there were 130 people in this room, wanting to be Reiki Masters. And I have to say, that was in 1992 or 3 or something like this and today I still know most of those people, like 85% and 90% of them were initiated. And they paid US$ 10’000. They got it instantly which was amazing for me because if I had addressed 130 Americans and said this to them, I would have gotten a lot of resistance. So here’s the deal:
1250-51 (räusper)
I went in and I said “you know, this system is like a recipe and I want you to know that I paid US$ 10’000 to my grandmother for my commitment to Reiki, for being a Reiki Master and at the time I had no idea why I was doing this, because I didn’t even know what that meant. And I said “over the years I’ve initiated many masters and I want you to know that whether you know it or not, you will be a Reiki Master in this system and you will be a Reiki Master in a world community and though you cannot imagine travelling outside of Russia, now, you will! And when you go outside of Russia, I want you to be the same, I want you to have the same commitment to the system, I want you to have paid the same money and I want you to be able to hold your head up and say I’m a Master of Usui Shiki Ryoho, just like you!
14:15

14;15
… They stood up and gave me a standing ovation and I nearly fell to the floor. And some years after that I was in a master seminar with a man who was there and he said “you know, you came on the eve of the USSR breaking up because that was the only way legally I could go to Russia actually. And he said “here was this giant that had been brought to it’s knees and split apart and we had no dignity left and when you said that to us you gave us back our dignity and our desire to be a Reiki Master in the world.” And he said “we never even imagined that”. And he said “you gave us something to work for”.
15;20

15;20
And it still really touches me and at the time I was there, it was like about 2000 like early 2000’s, and I had gone to Russia
1534 (räusper)
expecting to address about 300 people and that’s what the hall can take, that was how many chair it had.
1544 (sniff)
And there were over 500 people that wanted to come for this weekend. So they immediately, the organizers scrambled around, they found another place that was bigger and that I could be there but it meant that I made an amazing amount of money even though each of those 500 people paid me US$ 20 or something like that.
1608 (sniff)
And I felt a little guilty about it. You know and this man just looked at me, he said “You earned every penny of that!” He said “Don’t you feel guilty, because if you feel guilty then again you’re taking away our dignity! Because we want to support you! We want you to go out of here, you know, content and able to be nourished in whatever way you want”. And it just really touched me and the relationship that the Russian speaking countries, the former USSR countries
1654 (sniff) 
have with money is something that’s very, very special!
17:00