0:00
When I first started to teach Reiki and then started to travel around to meet groups of Reiki people, we were very much involved in personal healing, like how did Reiki affect people and how did Reiki affect the individual. When I first came to Germany however, I was really struck by the profundity of what happened in Reiki classes here. Brigitte Müller was the woman that I initiated and she was the first Reiki master who practiced here in Germany… And when I went to her class, which was about 17 to 20 people (1:07) (coughing) I found people weeping and going through some kind of cathartic experiences. And I didn’t understand German at the time. So I didn’t know what they were saying. But afterwards Brigitte said, well this happens all the time in classes, and it happened immediately when Mary McFayden came and started to teach. She was the master from Hawayo Takata, who came and taught in Germany and… was the mother of Reiki here in Germany, as far as I’m concerned.
1:58
And what was happening with people, is that they would say «Oh, I haven’t cried for 40 years» or «I haven’t thought of the war 20 years», and… or «I haven’t..», you know they were taken back to a time when their emotions were sort of stopped and held.. you know, kind of hold. And it seemed that Reiki pressed the hold button or the pause button and then they could feel their emotions again. And in doing that, it really felt that they were healing individually their own confusion and fear and shame and guilt about whatever happened around them during World War II. If a significant number of individuals have this experience in one part of the earth that I feel like there is an energy shift, you know, in that country.
3:08

5:52
But I saw, even then at that time, that Wanja Twan wanted to initiate masters, Paul Mitchell should initiate masters because he was growing in his own maturity. There were other masters, Mary McFayden, Beth Gray, John Gray, all of these people were ready to initiate masters and I just said: “I’m going to give this back to you, you know, I’m going to say to you every master has the right to initiate masters, because this is not about the system. We as masters are initiated to initiate 1st and 2nd degrees students. If you pass this on to a master student this is something that is in relationship with you and the system that you practice. It has nothing to do with me, it has nothing to do with your initiating master giving you the power. We all have the power to do this. But do we all have the means of responsibility that it takes to do the step?”
7:08
Because it’s not like, you know, 1st degree, 2nd degree, masters (marks equally split parts). It’s like 1st degree, 2nd degree and the master (marks one small part, then an immense part and master far away). And I said: “You know, it’s a really different thing. And I’m not going to be involved in it because there is now way as a master that you should ask anybody’s permission to initiate a master. Because this is not right, then you are not a master enough to do this on your own, you shouldn’t be doing it.”
7:40

00:00, 0008 (sigh)
After Hawayo Takata died 1980, in the end of 1980, sorry….
00:17
After Hawayo Takta died in December of 1980 some of her masters began to be asked to go teach in other countries. Wanja Twan, who came from Sweden originally and immigrated into Canada, went back to Sweden and initiated a Dutch master, a woman who was Dutch, excuse me, who immediately, literally went to the Netherlands and began to teach. Beth Gray was asked to go to Australia, Fran Brown was asked to go to France. I mean, it was an amazing process and Mary McFayden one of the very first students that she initiated was Brigitte Müller, who was a… whom she met in an ashram in California. Brigitte went back to Germany, took Reiki back as a 1st degree student and invited Mary immediately to come and teach and that’s such a beautiful story.
1:33

1:33
Mary was in London during World War II, she lived through the bombing of London by the Germans and Germany was THE last place she ever wanted to go. So immediately after she was initiated as a master she meets this German woman, starts going to Germany to teach and that’s where she did most of her teaching in her career. And she changed and transformed for me a whole generation of German people who were holding on to their own wounds, inflicted by World War II and by the whole process of the Nazis and fascism and so on, and by their own German culture of being very strong and not very emotional. So Brigitte said that one of the things that she was always astonished, is how much people could cry. That they would come to a Reiki class and in Germany people just sat and wept for these days because they needed to because it was a part of their healing that needed to happen.
3:03

3:03
Beth Gray went to Australia and she was a charismatic healer herself. And Reiki, I feel, gave her an opportunity to have a form for that healing along with a few other of the Reiki masters that Hawayo Takata initiated. And when she went to Australia, she found a waiting community. And who knows why these things happen, as in the story of Mary McFayden or Inger Droog who went to the Netherlands or Wanja Twan who taught in Scandinavia again.
0346-0348 ähm (cough)
The Australians welcomed Beth Gray, she had somehow the right personality, which was very forward, extremely charismatic and extremely opinionated, I will use that word. Which was great, because somehow it fit into their society and they’re very strong in their opinions, the Australians. And they need to be, you know, they are in a very harsh environment, given, everything. And when they were… when Australia was first settled they needed to be tough. And that toughness still is there in the Australian culture. And it is part of their charm, actually these days.
4:41