0:00
Well, it took me a while to 0010 (räusper) it took me a while to come to an understanding of forgiveness. Because what I did instead, was I just took the responsibility on myself. And so my hardest thing was to learn how to forgive myself. And it was one of the things that we… I believe inadvertently touched upon in our self-assessment workshops. And there was some amazing times when people would … we would do roleplay or we would do communication exercises and somehow it would touch somebody so deeply that they would be catapulted into the process of forgiveness, much to their surprise I think and ours as well.
1:12
And for me …I found that forgiveness was a kind of miracle that happened when a certain set of circumstances occurred all at the same moment. And then somehow there was this revelationary occurrence and then forgiveness began to work….
1:44
So I have spent a lot of time in my therapy sessions trying to divest myself from the responsibility for everything that happened in the world, in my world especially. And to be able to forgive myself for being human, I mean that was one of my first things, is to know well you’ve made mistakes. Well, no I haven’t! I haven’t made mistakes and I am responsible for this and I’m in fault and …. So that was my line. And to get over that line
0216 (räusper)
and to come to a place of being able to forgive was really a major piece of work for me.
2:28

2:28
I have been in some family constellation work through students of Bert Hellinger . I’ve been very taken by depth of forgiveness that happens as a result of simply , in my book, understanding circumstances. So
0251 (räusper)
2:56
I haven’t done my own personal familywork, with family constellation work, which I would like to, but the situation has never come up. But I have done work within the lineage, so we had a constellation where there was a person standing in for Mikao Usui, standing in for Chujiro Haysashi, standing in for Hawayo Takata and standing in for me, Phyllis Furumoto. And then… for the successor of the lineage. Fascinating, really fascinating. And what happened was, is that in all of our imagination we found out that we had never connected like Mikao Usui with Chujiro Hayashi and imagined them having conversation, which is exactly what happened in the constellation. And for Hawayo Takata to have conversation with Chujiro Hayashi, which of course she did many, many times, for hours, I’m sure.
4:06

4:06
But I never imagined that, so to hear these people converse together and to say “Well, I always wanted this from you.” And the other person saying “But I couldn’t have given you that, that you had to find for yourself.” And then the energy of forgiveness and reconciliation coming in that same moment was astonishing, it was very moving for me and allowed me… I think they came at a time when it allowed me to divest myself of last ideas that as a lineage bearer I had to be perfect.
5:00
I knew my grandmother wasn’t perfect, for sure. And ..it was always my big paradox or my big….dilemma of how to hold my grandmother as the woman that I knew she was and my experience of her as a granddaughter as another person of the planet and as a Reiki Master 0526 knowing she was not hum… ähm 0528 knowing she was not perfect and yet hearing how.. she was so perfect for everybody else. So that was an interesting play in itself in this constellation. So I found it to be… I find it to be very interesting and it’s something actually that I’m still working on…0550 to get clear about
5:52

0:00
So the first thing that happened… well, so my mind goes to “Who would be on this list of forgiveness or making amend, coming to reconciliation actually, the best that I know. And when I go there, I think well.. is this really necessary?… And so there are two answers to this question “is it really necessary?”
0:46 (räusper)
On one end.. one level I feel that the gift of accepting who we were as human beings at that time and being able to understand both sides of the coin… both sides of the situation, is a kind of reconciliation of itself and doesn’t need to involve the other person.. necessarily.
1:15
On the other hand, for some time and in some instances I can when that would be really beneficial and be able to happen… by simply going out to dinner and talking about what happened and then come into a realization that both of us were in circumstances where we really just had to do what we did….
1:50
But what happenes in that instance is that… I believe it doesn’t build the ability to accept what’s so. And that for me is a kind of a foundation principle. It’s like … I met, I met this man at the beginning of when I was Reiki master in 19.., no, yah, in 1980. And I fell in love with him and we got married and we were married for about 7 years. And there were parts of our life which were ecstatic and they were incredibly creative, because we’re both very creative people. And in that creativity, we were undisciplined. So… (laugh)… we also created very painful situations for each other. So a sort of like the very best of ourselves and the very worst of ourselves kind of got brought out in this situation.
2:58

2:58
And when I talked about irrevocable damage, it’s like I feel that in our relationship unconsciously, unfortunately for the first few years, we did irrevocable damage to each other in the sense that we knew where our… because we were so intimate and so close, that we knew exactly where that sacred wound was in each of us. And that, you know, somehow we kept pounding on this sacred wound until it became so painful that the blissful parts and the creative parts of our relationship didn’t actually match this other part and that the pain just got too much for us to deal with being together.
3:56
It’s been a very interesting thing because we’ve stayed “friends” so to speak, very close friends, and he entered into a relationship almost immediately after we’ve separated. But she always felt like the second wife, for years until I actually had to go home at some point to kind of clean up this relationship. Burn has letters and burn… everything that we had that I felt like had attachment, and really release this relationship back to neutral, almost, so that she could actually take her place as his wife. And I…
4:44

4:44
I feel that still there is this place that we never go to anymore because we know that we’re vulnerable with each other and we don’t really trust each other and actually I feel like both of us, not just him, which I’d like to think, but…( laugh).. also myself. I feel like in that sense we are untrustworthy with each other, that there is this kernel of some piece of our relationship which is untrustworthy and that we recognize that and in that recognition I think it’s just realistic to accept it and do the best we can of what we have and be able to enjoy that piece and enjoy each other and not go to the places that would again put us in this place of irrevocable damage. And so..
5:50
I think that’s a good example of that and I feel like that there are people in my life, I could make a list of those people, and what it’s taught me about myself has been invaluable. So in my next relationships I was very careful when I went there and in my present relationship, 0614 you know, there’s a…  I won’t say it because it’s really nasty, but
06:19
there is this phrase that as a sort of a wild Hippie person, which just flung around like … you know, we just used it for every situation and so it became part of my vocabulary and in Reiki of course part of my private vocabulary, but this is a phrase that really goes to the sacred wound part of my present partner and I got it after a few instances that it would be better if I could not say this phrase, you know, in our conversations. And…
7:05
In this situation she was conscious enough being able to say „You know, if you say this again, I’m out of here, no matter how much I love you, I can’t stay here“. And I was conscious enough to say „Well, I don’t wanted to do that. So, you know, I’m not gonna do this anymore“. And I have, sometimes when I feel really hurt and upset, but it’s gotten.. she’s gotten less sensitive but I’ve also gotten much more sensitive. So in the sense that we learn from these places where we’ve created this irrevocable damage… I just hope that, you know, there is something better that comes out of that, you know for myself and for people who come to.. come into my life afterwards. And then I can honour my realtionship with this man that I was… that I’m still very much in love with, but I still… I can’t live with him for sure, that is not possible. So .. interesting..
8:18

0:00
Again, this is a… my problem because I know the question isn’t going to be asked, it’s just so weird for me to just say “I’m sorry”, you know, like where does that come from and what am I sorry for and you know there is that whole thing. So I’m just trying to formulate a starting point and then where to get to from there.
0:43
Some years ago I was introduced to a little book called “The four agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz and he’s a Mexican…. He’s a Mexican … sorry I’ll start again…
1:06
Some years ago I was introduced to a little book called “The four agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz and it’s been translated into many, many languages. And basically he is asking people to start on a spiritual path having these four agreements with themselves. One is to do your best, another one is to not take things personally, to be articulate with your word and ….. okay, what’s the fourth one? Do not take things personally, do your best and be articulate with your word and … oh ja, don’t make assumptions. Okay, I’ll start again…
2:11

2:11
So a few years ago I was introduced in this little book called “The four agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz and I really recommend it to all of us who practice Reiki because it’s a really great way to … measure and to take assessment of our own humanness in human relationships and in the relationships with the planet and everything else as well. And I …. these four little phrases run through my mind, always do your best, don’t take it personally, do not make assumptions and be articulate with your word.
2:59
I try to do that in my own mind. And of course, being a human being, when I do my best I often don’t do what other people want or expect. When I don’t take it personally, sometimes people think that I’m cold or I don’t care. When I don’t make assumptions, it means that I don’t assume that somebody is hurt, I don’t assume that this is being taken the wrong way or I don’t assume that it actually affects people, which is actually not usually accurate (laugh).
3:46

3:46
And being articulate with my word, I think that for all of us, we try to express ourselves verbally and one of the things that is so clear for me now is that our verbal language has gaps and it definitely has places that cannot express what we really want to express. I spent some time in the 1980s and 90s learning German. It was a very interesting endeavour for me because language is not one of my better skills and though I love the German language I also didn’t have time to dedicate to the learning of it. Though I did take a 3 or 4 months course in Hamburg and that helped pave the way for more coherent German sentences (laugh)
4:45
Although I missed the week about pronouns, which turned out to be definitely significant (laugh) So I’m not very good in German pronouns. So anyway, I realized though when I was taking this language and trying to speak it that I really had to get into the mind set of German, you know and of being German. And it was really fun for me because at that point I was liv… I had an apartment in Hamburg and I really loved North Germany as a part of the country. And I was feeling very at home there. So it was easy for me to kind of slip into this German part of myself, I would call it.
5:37

5:37
But when I went to other countries and I didn’t have knowledge of their language, I didn’t really understand their culture and their cultural priorities, I realized that I often offended people or as they say here in America “was kind of like a bull in a China shop”. I just, you know, blundered my way through being an American, not really understanding that I might be offending people.
6:10
So there’s that part of me, being human. And then there’s the other part of me, which just is shy and sometimes not wanting to put myself on the firing line, which I think all of you can understand. So I have more courage these days and I also have more understanding about where other people come from, that I feel like everyone is doing their best. Everyone follows their path of Reiki and even though I may not like it or I don’t agree with it, I will fight to the death for your right to have your own path, because for me that is the gift of Reiki and the gift of this path.
7:02

7:02
And I have told my students this as well, that if we differ in opinion it’s okay for me on one hand, I may not like it, I may not like you for a few days but I will fight to the death to make sure that you’re right to disagree, or to have your own opinion more accurately. It’s preserved because that’s our inalienable right as a human being.
7:33
I also feel that, whether or not I like it, I’ve made assumptions and whether or not I like it, I not always said what I really needed to, because of my shyness or because I feel like I won’t be taken seriously. So there are many different relationships that I have that I don’t even know I have, out in the Reiki world and also relationships where I know that I’ve transgressed. And for all these times when you feel that I’ve transgressed, that I’ve entered your space unwillingly and uninvited, where I’ve offended you in some way, where my … where my loyalty to my master has caused you pain because it’s different from what you have learned is Reiki, and that has given you pain, for all these things I want to ask your forgiveness because it wasn’t my intention, it’s not the way I hold you and everyone has been a great teacher for me. And without you I wouldn’t be who I am today.
9:09