4:01
So it was hard for me, this phrase “the Grand Master”. Now I don’t care, people can call me the Grand Master, that’s fine. But then in…2000… no in… 1992 Paul Mitchell and I actually formed a business entity, called “The Office of the Grand Master”
(0429-0431) (cough)
And at that time I was not so interested in the form of the practice. He as a person who was a catholic brother, was used to a lot of ritual and organization of the church, the catholic church. He also had taken many, many years of Aikido, so for him this emphasis on form was really important. And I was not so much into form as I was into essence.
5:09
So our partnership started out that way. Now I feel like we are both very balanced in this form/essence thing. And sometimes I’m much more strict than he is on the form. But that’s ok… The thing of it is, that at that point…. In martial arts, because I had to have something to compare it with, there’s often the founder or the founder’s successor that holds the essence of the practice. But the Dojo master holds the form-practice and teaches. So Paul and I saw us, ourselves, as him being the Dojo master, so to speak, and my being the essence person. So that point, to make it much clearer… I don’t know who came up with the phrase personally, but then I introduced this phrase “lineage bearer” because I knew that I was that. That I was the successor and that in this lineage I was the bearer of this lineage. And that I didn’t feel like was disputable, that’s what I was recognized as.
6:40

12:55
In the same light, to kind of get back to my topic again, I believe that the Grand Master has it’s own individuation with roles and that one of them is lineage bearer, one of them is the form keeper or something like that but we haven’t gotten to explore that and I think once we do, we will understand more about the essence of what is meant by this phrase. Whether or not that phrase actually communicates in, is totally … I don’t know, we may come up with something really different.
13:35
One of the things that is not understood at all, it seems, by the general public and by the Reiki community, is that a Grand Master is actually recognized. It is not taken. So in the process of my becoming recognized as a Grand Master, I could not say to people “I’m in, vote for me”. It needed to be.. come from the other side, it needed to be recognized. And in that recognition, I believe, that the Reiki community grew me as a Grand Master, that every master of Hawayo Takata did have the seed of lineage bearer or Grand Master in them. It was the recognition of me and my willingness, whether I knew it or not, to take it on and the energy of Reiki that came to me, whether my grandmother wanted that to be or not, that really grew somebody very different than the masters who were initiated by Hawayo Takata.
14:56

10:18
So, there is a really large mix of form and essence. And for me there is…  it’s important for us to have a common practice, which is the form, and there is also this important factor to recognize that all Masters are equal in the oneness of Reiki. And that we can change form to suit our incongruity of our own practice
10:58
So, when I’ve read about Japanese Buddhist practice, I think there is like 12 main sects,  S E C T S and you can sit in a Zen temple for 20 years and then all of a sudden decide, «no, I need to go out in the world» and then «oh, I see I need go sit in this other sect for a while and do… and explore Buddhism through that way.»  There doesn’t seem to be any animosity … or (1138)  ähm… what’s the word (1143)  … competition. It just is so. It’s like you follow the path of Buddhism, you can follow the path of Buddhism in these different expressions. That’s how I would like to think about Reiki.
11:58

0:00
Another application of form and essence is this piece about what… and the answer to the question “what practice is it that I follow”. So there is one, is initiations, that’s essence for me and the other is the form of practice, that’s the form, obviously. And there are many masters that I have initiated, who don’t practice this form but they have the initiations. So… and then as I said before, there are other people who have been initiated into another practice, who adopt this form. So for me both of them are equal. I don’t find that form is more important than essence or the other way around, they create a kind of partnership….
1:07
Those people are very.. in some way in a kind of bloodline, as you said, people who can trace their initiation through from Hawayo Takata or me or from Chujiro Hayashi. Then the… evaluation is on the form, because if the form is in alignment with this practice, then they’re practicing this system. If their form is somewhat out of alignment, but their intention is to practice this system, then they are.. they just have alignment issues.
1:58

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