0:00
Well, I would estimate, and this is very rough, I would estimate probably around 10’000 first degree students in the last 30 some years. And of course I usually don’t initiate 2nd degree students who were not my students, so they come along with that. And I would say out of those 1st degree students there is 037-0045 (pauses because of street noise) there is probably maybe 5% go on to 2nd degree, I don’t encourage 2nd degree. I don’t encourage 2nd degree, I tell people to just wait until you cant stand not to have 2nd degree and then you come to me.
1:00
And for masters, I’ve initiated probably 360 masters, something like that. And out of those perhaps half are not practicing Reiki at all anymore and practice and out of those some percentage like maybe 10% or so have broken off from me and are teaching their own system of Reiki, you know, whatever that is.
1:32
So the interesting part for me is that in my history of initiating masters, in the beginning I initiated people who were my grandmother’s students and I had a feeling even though sometimes I didn’t talk to my grandmother expressly about somebody, I could feel that they… that she had this connection with them and was preparing them as a master student. I only had 1 of my own students during that time come to mastery. And now it’s not a very…that’s not been a very successful relationship in the sense that she separated from me immediately after the initiation and we’ve had a very difficult relationship and a very separate relationship after that. 
2:29- 2.33 (cough)

2:33
But a high percentage, like I would say 85, maybe even higher percentage of those first 50 or 60 masters are still practicing, if they are alive, which is amazing. And then there came a time in the 1990ies where Reiki became sort of a fad and I think that we.. I didn’t have enough… wisdom, perhaps, to understand that I had been riding on my grandmother’s energy in the beginning, then somehow by the mid 80ies.. the end of the 80ies and into the 1990ies it was my energy that was holding these masters, but it wasn’t big enough. So in the mid 1990ies when this explosion of all these different kinds of Reiki practices came about, for me this thing I called «the golden age of Reiki» stopped where everybody had, you know, a waiting list for their 1st degree classes and there was all kinds of stuff and we were traveling around and doing teaching but we weren’t treatments, that was the thing.
4:04
And my grandmother always thought and it was always clear for me, that her classes came out of her treatment practice. So… when people started to lose their numbers in their classes, started to travel less, they went back to their homes, they opened a Reiki practice and they began to truly be masters as far as I’m concerned, well rounded masters. They had a treatment practice, they taught and they could take care of themselves. And this for me, Reiki did for us, because (laugh) otherwise I don’t know where we would be today. But for the people who couldn’t survive, like couldn’t earn a living then, instead of going deeper they just said «Well, it’s no longer a viable job, so I quit». And I thought «How can you quit being a Reiki master?» And so, I just was stunned.
5:15

5:15
And so by the time of like 1997 I quit initiating masters for about 2 years, because I really wanted to understand, number 1) how I… what was happening, the phenomenon that was happening and I was just really stunned by it, because these were people who were totally into Reiki and then all of a sudden they just turned it off and I..I… I couldn’t relate to that in myself at all.
5:55
There are many, many masters who do, you know «earn their living through Reiki» and I feel that it is.. a voice when you become a master to surrender your financial self to Reiki because in doing that then you really give Reiki a chance to develop you. And is doesn’t mean that you only earn your money through teaching 1st and 2nd degree classes but that you.. that you put your energy into the universe and the universe (if it’s not too esoteric a term) supports you. And sometimes it means that they give you your ideal «job» in the world so that you can learn something in order to bring that back into your Reiki practice. So it really, really depends on an individual level but I always encourage and it used to be a requirement, now I encourage masters that I initiate, to quit jobs and to just rely on Reiki and see what happens and it’s pretty miraculous.
7:10

7:10
Because when you go back to the story of Mikao Usui, I realized only a few years ago actually, that this kind of crazy way of my grandmother telling the story of Mikao Usui and he stubs his toe and he puts his hands on it and it stops bleeding and it stops hurting and she says «miracle No. 1». And then… I realized that actually if we surrender to Reiki as masters we really live in a.. in daily Reiki miracles and they’re not big miracles, they’re like miracles of daily caliber but added up it means that your life is one big miracle and it feels like that that’s something that as kind of «westerners» we are kind of jaded about, you know, it’s like «strange things happen all the time» but we don’t consider them miracles, we consider them to be good luck. And I think there is something about an attitude in that.
8:26
I have been able to sustain myself but it’s not without worry sometimes, there were times when I have been totally, totally without money and people have had to… my partner has had to support me 0841
8:45 (cough)
There have been business decisions that I made like to sell a house at a time when I should have just lowered the mortgage payment so that I still have my house. So there are different things and people think that I’ve, you know, that I’ve earned a lot of money and this has been a very lucrative thing. But what’s true is that money has flowed in and out of my bank account like a river and … and nothing really is dammed up, I don’t hoard it. So it isn’t that I spend a lot of money on fancy cars or anything, but I spend it on the Reiki community, because that’s my investment in the future, my future and for me the future of the world.
9:34

0:00
Well, Hawayo Takata had a very interesting way of working with this. She was very mindful of this thing about how to … how to initiated masters who would actually surrender to Reiki on all these different levels. So she this group of masters who reached almost retirement age 0032-0:36 (cough)
who had made their money and they had grown children and they were kind of ready to … ready to be in the world to be themselves. And then there were the young people, only a few of us, who hadn’t had families yet and who were willing to just say «ok, I be Reiki master and this is what I’m doing with my life». And the interesting thing is that that’s what we did, I mean… my colleagues who are my age, Paul Mitchell and Rick Bockner, who I’ve been together with all these years in our path of mastery, we always, you know, surrendered to the will of Reiki so to speak. And it didn’t mean that we didn’t do other things sometimes but it’s been a really wonderful opportunity to see that we could live our lives for 35 years in this way and come out of it feeling very rich. We’re not rich on an American level of «success» but we are rich in the way our lives are and what our priorities are and the wonderful people that we have in our lives and the profound experiences that we have almost every day.
2:06

2:06
And I really believe that there is a quality of mastery that calls for this and that not everybody is ready to take this step and in the .. in the beginning like in the first 20 years or so I used to feel that it was my job to convince these people that they really needed to quit their job. So one of the women that I initiated in the late 1980ies, she was.. had a very good job at the government and she was ready to quit and she did with her job. So I initiated her, she started her Reiki practice and then, about 2 months later, her boss came to her and said «Want you come back, like halftime for a year?». I went: (looks aside) «This is a temptation» (laugh). But she did it anyway and then of course that expanded into a full-time job and this woman is not just a 40-hour a week-full-time-person, she is a 60 or 70 hour a week person, which she expanded to and then went back and expanded and went back 0328 (cough)
3:34
And during these 20 years that she did this back and forth she always was struggling with this piece, where she felt like… she was struggling with this piece where she felt like as a Reiki master she wasn’t successful because people didn’t come to her classes and so on. I said «Well, you know, you don’t have any space in yourself to hold the class and to hold a class of 15 you have to have a lot of space and all your space and all your energy is going into your work. So you either quit your work and become a Reiki master or you be a Reiki master while working, which is a really different energetic…. formula»….
4:35

4:35
And when she was ready to retire, she had several very intense, physical things that happened to her, she couldn’t not retire. And now she’s really living her Reiki master live and her creativity and her joy of what she’s doing now is… is supported by this financial foundation that she has. And maybe for her personality that’s what she really needed to do, was to live this paradoxical kind of life and to struggle with this question «should I quit my job tomorrow or next year or when do I retire?». And you know, be able to follow this flow of the energy and maybe that was her way of doing that.
5:35
So about 10 years ago I had to go to her and say «You know what? I’ve really given up convincing you to quit your job (laugh) and I really want you to know that I totally trust you and I realize that in the message that you’ve been getting from me all these years is that I haven’t trusted you. And that was true. So I… if I trust my path then I have to trust your path the same way and so I just have to trust that this is what you needed to do. And I’m glad that you never succumbed to my will because then it probably would have been a disaster.» So this was an interesting insight for me as her master to support her process. She was willing to quit her job, she totally demonstrated it but then the universe came back and said «ok.. (laugh).. this is what you need to do now».
6:42
There is another man that I initiated and he did really well as a Reiki master, he is German actually. And then about… when he was about 45 or so, after about 10 or 12, 15 years of being a Reiki master he said «You know, I’m gonna go back to Dentistry». Because when he found Reiki he had just graduated from dental school 0710-
7:12(cough)
and had opened up his own dental practice but he never had the satisfaction of completing that particular cycle. So what he is doing now, is, I believe, he’s completing that cycle that he needed to do and in another year or two he’ll retire and will become a Reiki Master again.
7:31

7:31
So it was really interesting for me how the universe allowed, you know, took this as a cycle and showed him the way and he followed the energy and so. There are lots of different stories like that but I feel that if people go in with the premise of understanding that mastery is about surrendering everything and that there are no safe spaces. You have to be afraid, because you know, as human be (hiccup) as human beings.. if we don’t have a little bit of fear then we aren’t motivated to change anything, really, I mean it’s kind of sad about a human being. and…
8:23
There is a wonderful book that I read when I was just to becoming a Reiki master and I can’t remember the name or the author or anything, but it’s a story of this man who has become a Sufi and was quite wealthy and he was from California and… when he got to the point where he wanted to be kind of the equivalent of a Sufi master, his master lived in kind of the eastern part of Europe, maybe around Turkey or Iran or some place in there. So his master said «Well, you know, as Sufis we live in community. So what you have to do is you have to divest yourself of all material possessions, your house, your car, all your money. Give it away. Whatever you do, you do something! Don’t save a Cent and then come to us and be a part of our community. That’s your next step». Well of course he couldn’t do it, right? So he put in this very safe, impersonal some kind of an account 0933- (cough)
9:38

9:39
He put into this impersonal some kind of account some money, maybe I don’t know, a 100’000 Dollars or so, just in case. And he gave it to.. he had the signing rights to this friend of his in London. And he thought, ok, I can be gone for 10 years and nothing will happen, I won’t have to deal with this money or anything. And so…. about a month or two after he gets to wherever this village was, there comes a message from his friend in London, saying «you have to come to London, about your money». And he was freaked out because 1017- (cough)
10:21
Number one of course his teacher found out and number two his teacher said «ok, you go to London but until you can come back cleansed of this, don’t come back». So it’s like a story of this whole processes, internal process about attachment. And I feel like the economic piece is very… like we’re very attached to our economic health, whatever that means or safety, maybe. But some of the most profound and attachments that I have are attachments about who I am, who I think I am. And so those become actually more difficult than surrendering to Reiki and saying «Ok, Reiki if you want me to teach, you know, let me know». But I’ve had to go through transformational processes where a part of me that I believed so fervently was me had to die and something else had to come back instead. And those are actually in some way the most difficult because there is no physical, tangible counting of attachment, you know… you… you just get you’re attached and you don’t know how to deal with it, you can’t really give it away, you have to work through it. And so for me money is a great indicator of attachment, but it’s not the only one and maybe it’s not the most difficult.
12:06

0:00
Yes, Oh Yah, the thing is that … our relationship, 0016 my relationship with this student was very complicated and I was a very young master. So, for me what happened is that I opened these different parts of myself to her that was not wise and it wasn’t because she wasn’t capable, it was just that I wasn’t being a Reiki Master. She became best friend I revealed things to her that I would not have done if she were only …only (hand-movement: inverted comma), sorry, if she had been my Reiki student and that was the only relationship that we had. So I said things to her that … were taken out of the context of a friendship and put into a Reiki context.
01:14
And in doing that the message that was assumed in the Reiki context was not accurate for me. So… And there were things that we shared in our personal lives that I felt really influenced and sort of overtook the Reiki relationship that we had. And that was my naivety as a Master to think I could do everything with everybody. And that wasn’t true.
02:01
I felt betrayed as a person, as a friend but I don’t feel betrayed as a Master. So, and it’s hard to separate the two because obviously I’m, it is all the same person. So, I learnt not not that I couldn’t be friends with some of my students but that I have to be very, very thoughtful about the boundaries of different relationships and what actually I depend on and so on and so on; it’s been an interesting dynamic.
02:40

02:40
Because eventually if you surrender to Reiki it’s like your whole world becomes Reiki. So like all your social acquaintances and so on end up becoming Reiki. And even if you don’t want them to become Reiki they end up taking Reiki because their drawn to it because they are friends with you. So, it’s .. (gestures).. You know, sometimes I just say “oh please don’t’ take Reiki” …. I just want some friends without Reiki. And that’s really true for me.
03:11
But my friends… most of them have finally said “OK, I’m taking Reiki, I don’t care what you say. When I say, “OK, go do it with somebody else…” (laughs) So it’s really important to maintain boundaries in all these different relationships that we have. So it’s very interesting as a side-note to this ..to.. is the question of initiating your own family. And initiating first degree, well, that’s not so mu.., that’s not such a big deal, but 2^nd degree is really on the path to mastery. And then when you get to initiating a part of your family, blood-family as a master then there needs to be some really … thoughtfulness that goes into that. It isn’t that it can’t be done  …it is just not the easiest decision to make.
04:10

00:00
I don’t know if she has understood that this is the part of the pain for me … and I had to have a number of years before I actually realised that even though ähm….yah and … I have to say that within me there is some resistance to exploring this further even though we’re getting older and older. It might be kind of sad if we don’t do this before one of us dies. I know that she is doing well as a Reiki Master and I can take comfort in that and I realise that being her friend was just not a functional situation. And so maybe it is fine to just leave that alone. And .. You can’t … I think that I’ve come to also to a place of saying to myself, well, if the circumstances arises that we are able to talk, then of course I would.
01:29

6:15
And some people walk and so on. So it’s… it’s an interesting process, but it’s important that this particular activity be conscious because if its not conscious and you have your own process remain in an unconscious state, then…. you will for sure involve your students and people around you into your drama and then to extract yourself is really difficult. I know because I have been there.
6:51
The woman that I was talking about … in my early Reiki life was part of a drama that I have created and that my husband and I have created. And I could totally understand her feeling so unsafe, that she just couldn’t be with me at all. And … and jet I really trust her teaching of Reiki, I trust … I know that she is dedicated to Reiki and dedicated the rest of her life to Reiki. So in that way, you know, it comes to this kind of question about success. It’s like…. was I successful as a Master? Well, yes, I was, but I wasn’t very successful as a friend and I wasn’t very successful in my own inner family relationships where she got swept up into it. And then…there.. at this point there is really no way to go back and extract ourselves from that and it happened. And sometimes there irrevocable… there is irrevocable damage that happened. And it’s good to accept that so and not have to… you know..lessen your own guilt by making it OK for you. But I think for her it will never be OK. And that is sad but it is true. And I hope that there are not very many people in my Reiki life where I have created that kind of situation.
8:38