The five precepts of reiki are:
For today only:
Do not be angry.
Do not be worried.
Be humble.
Be true to your way and being.
Show compassion to yourself and others.
Together, they are a philosophy for living and for every day.
While they seem simple, I think they’re quite profound, and cover all the bases for a content life pretty well.
To tell the truth, however, I’ve always been a bit murky with ‘Be true to your way and being’. The others seem simpler to me, and make more sense. Let go of anger. Let go of worry. Be humble. Show compassion to yourself and others. I can do all of these, and I can picture myself doing them. But I’m not as sure with the other precept.
So, I went back to my teacher Frans Stiene’s blog from a few years ago:
Be True To Your Way and Your True Self
He wrote about this precept, though applied it more to how we teach reiki to others. It’s a good read, particularly if you are teaching reiki yourself or studying reiki.
He also explained in the post that this precept is closely linked to the others. So, not only in teaching or learning about reiki, but in our daily lives, what would it be like to live, do and make decisions without anger and without worry? And then, by being humble, can we act without ego: the ideas of who we think we are or the ways we worry about how others perceive us?
Would this be the way to act according to our true self, our inner self, the great, bright light that is inside of us, that we are?
It also helps me to think about this precept in the contrary. Not being true to myself would be to act to try to please or not offend others, or to do something because I think someone else wants me to do it, or that I’ll look better in their eyes. Or it would be to react to a situation, because of anger or worry that would block my clarity. So, perhaps it’s easier for me to think about this precept from this perspective. As there is no one ‘truth’ or ‘true self’ nor one way to be ‘true’ to oneself, I can start by making sure I am not false with myself and act accordingly.
Appropriately, after I wrote this blog a few weeks ago, I’m suddenly finding myself in a situation where the precept feels much clearer. All of a sudden, a lot of clients are calling, and asking for treatments immediately, in the next hours or the same day.
So I’ve set myself a limit of three treatments a day. I’ll have a write a blog about it sometime. I have my other professional work to balance with reiki, and I can’t do it if I do more than three treatments a day (I have to limit myself to two treatments on certain busy days). I also find that three treatments is a good limit for me. It’s not that the treatments are draining, exactly, but to be in that healing space, and try not to let my thoughts wander (to dinner, to whether I’ve fed the cats, to my other work) – this does require intention, and three hours of intention a day is a good limit for me, especially since I offer treatments seven days a week.
So, what I’ve been finding is that I do have to be true to myself and my way, and that when people are begging for a treatment (‘Please, can you fit me in?’), while I have a natural inclination to want to please them, and want to help them, and want to say ‘yes’, that it is being true to myself to ask them if they can come another time, and explain that, no, others have booked in treatments before them (or I have other commitments). And in any case, while I don’t say this, there shouldn’t be a situation where sometime needs emergency reiki!
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