0:00
The succession question for me had been one that has been foremost in my mind since 1983. And … of course back then I was so young, that I was gonna live forever, and we didn’t really have to think about it. But I did think about it because my grandmother’s death created so much havoc for all of us and at that time of course we were still in this conversation with Barbara Weber and I thought my grandmother could have been more clear and so on. And at the same time realizing how advantageous it was to have a restraining force, you know, this activating/restraining, it was fabulous. So…
0:57
And then in the late 1980s Paul Mitchell and I started to travel in … to other continents, we came to Europe first. And we often flew on the same airplane. And finally somebody, I’m pretty sure it was a German master said to me “you know, you guys shouldn’t fly on the same plane”. And I just laughed and I said “You got to be kidding me”. And she said “no, actually I’m not. I’m saying to you that you two have a responsibility that you’re not taking care of”. And I thought to myself, well that’s actually true, I guess accidents can happen. And at this point the Reiki community was so fragile that if Paul and I had died in the same time it would have shattered the community. I’m not saying that to feel like … you’re replaceable or anything, I just feel like if I was living responsibly as a leader, you know, I had to take care of that.
2:08

5:28
But we are working on … investigating what are the functions of the spiritual lineage? Is there an energetic essence called the Master Body? Which I have spoken about from 1985 or 6. I believe there is a Master Body. There is an energetic Body that includes all Reiki Masters and especially all masters in the system and that they carry responsibility for the system because they’re masters. And we investigate what is the process of succession? What actually happens energetically? You know, where will this succession go? And what I’ve realized personally for myself is that of course somebody is not going to apprentice with me and be the next me. Somebody is going to appear at the time that’s very close to my death and they’re going to be recognized as the lineage bearer. And this person will take Reiki a whole other step that I cannot even imagine.
6:43
Just like when Hawayo Takata died at first I was really upset that she died so soon after my consenting to be a Reiki Master, not her successor, but a Reiki Master. And what I realized some years later is that in her dying then she gave me the gift of her wisdom and of her presence, because I’ve always felt her presence, but we didn’t have to struggle personality wise. And we would have had major, major struggles on the personality level.
7:25

13:00
At some point… (laughs)
1303 (Schneuzgeräusche)
… in my…. realisation I realized that I didn’t want to be liked, I wanted to be respected. I didn’t care about being loved, I wanted to be respected. And I’m still working on that, because in the first 10 years all I wanted to do is be loved. So finally people thought “okay, I’ve succeeded in giving her what she wants”. And when I got it I thought “well, actually this is not what I want”. I want respect and it’s coming, because I’m respecting myself… more.
13:45
So the succession process is a process and it is very exciting because last weekend… a weekend in February in Mexico a small group of us got together to speak about succession. And because my cancer is active again and I don’t know how many years I have of active duty so to speak, I feel time really pressing on me now. And so now we have a…. what is called, what we call a transformational succession process plan in place. And we are starting it… you know, the first steps of that are being started. There’s a letter of invitation that’s going to go out and there’ll be a small group of masters who will …. well my guess is small group of masters who will say yes to the invitation.
14:59

16:06
And then with the webinar, people who are interested can sit in as witnesses. So we could have hundreds of witnesses if we want, which will be really great. And it will be able to inform the master community in a kind of networking situation. And eventually in a year we might be able to have a collective in-person gathering, you know where we speak in person for once. But anyway, we’ll just see what happens. But this is being coached and facilitated by Ben Haggert, who was a … my go-to-person with this regenerative developmental thinking process. And it’s really changed the way that I think and the way that I see the process of life.
17:05
I’m very, very excited by this because … it gives me not hope but a way to carry this system forward into the future and I believe that not only the system but the whole of the global Reiki community.
17:36

0:00
It’s specifically called…. (sighs) OK lets start again
0:14
When I refer to this system or the system or the system as I teach it or the system that Hawayo Takata passed on I’m speaking about a system called “Usui Shiki Ryoho” which was the original name of the system as Hawayo Takata taught it, however she just called it Reiki because it was easier. I guess. And… Usui Shiki Ryoho translated roughly into English is “The Usui System of Natural Healing”. So we used that phrase in English for many years up until about 1994 or 5 and then I reverted back to Usui Shiki Ryoho because many people took on Usui’s system of natural healing, but it was not really the Usui system of natural healing, it was something else.
1:19
But they didn’t understand that the naming the system actually named a certain form of practice. So when that became more clear then I also in the late 1990s decided to add the lineage because that really identified it as a specific practice. So for me its Usui Shiki Ryoho honouring the lineage of Mikao Usui, Chujiro Hayashi, Hawayo Takata and Phyllis Furumoto.
2:00

3:01
So anything out of that should have been renamed and I’m not attached to this at all. I’m just saying to sort it out. This is for me what would have sorted it out much better. I did try actually to find a name for this system to separate it .. not separate it, but to differentiate it from other practices but I couldn’t do it and probably that’s true for them too. So okay. But in Japan this is very common, they change the name a little bit, they use a different character and it changes the name of the practice. So people are very clear about honouring each other and their own practice.
3:52
And one of the things, this is little digression, but one of the things that are sad for me that in Japan what happened because of the way Reiki “returned” to Japan, it returned in a sense of resistance against me and resist… and also in competition. And you know that’s totally for me not the Japanese way. And so people felt like they had to be defensive. But I… they didn’t have to be defensive about me, I mean, I’m not claiming the right way or the best way or the only way. I’m just claiming that I have a way.
4:43

6:20
In this day on confusion and fusion, confusion and fusion of different cultures. You know like you go into restaurants now and if it says Asian Fusion you have no idea of what kind of food you gonna get but it’s somebody’s idea of Chinese/Japanese/Thai/Korean whatever, all mixed together, right. And this is very confusing to me, I just want you to know. So fusion sometimes results in confusion. And I believe that one of the gifts of having clear different practices is that students get to choose which practice they can come to, that’s right for them in the moment. I’m not a proponent of putting all the practices together and having one universal practice, that is not going to save the day. What’s going to save the day is for us is to be respectful with each other no matter what.
7:33

13:57
And I was really praying that he would go through this psychological therapy because you don’t… you can’t sit in that seat if you haven’t sat in this seat. That is just a human … I feel like it’s really an important human condition.

14:26
I would like to see, actually, each school of Reiki have their own public practice program. That would be the ideal for me. Because I don’t believe that I could mentor and instruct students from another system because I would always be running up against disrespecting their practice because of the times where the practice is not the same. And… I don’t feel like I want to be in that situation and it puts me in an unresolvable position.
15:11