Reiki Help Blog :: Oasis Reiki Dojo

America Celebrates the Dalai Lama

Blog Action Day

The bravest thing I’ve done is to take responsibility for my life: my thoughts and feelings, actions and behaviors, my pain, and my creations. This type of responsibility is like a subscription that renews. It’s not like you’re done with it. And it can propel you into another sphere altogether. Taking responsibility is plenty courageous. There’s a point of total breakdown, of annihilation. It’s a death for certain.

Then courage in the from of an honestly raw accounting of the mess you’re in. This is what I call the ‘blood and guts of healing.’ It need not stop there. In my case and the possibility exists for everyone, taking responsibility for myself lead to something much scarier: embracing my true nature. It launched me into a quest, which wouldn’t have been possible without the ‘first’ courage.

One of the biggest things we run from is our true nature. Afterall drama is so much easier. You know it inside out, can give a command performance in your sleep, and really validate how miserable your life is like 2+2=4, no room for error. This is the persona I’ve donned, these are my poisons and you better get the hell outta my way! I’m running from my Self and even Olympic athletes don’t have the steroids I do.

I did that into my early-mid-thirties. Amongst many other things. It was hedonist, escapist, lustful, fun, utterly dysfunctional, I loved and wept and guffawed, opined, judged, raged, gave and stole, alienated and hurt people and myself, danced my tush off…and…

One dawn after Hurricane Andrew had torn through Southern Florida, I woke up. The proverbial light bulb. And that was still way back in the dark days, when the courage I knew I’d have to muster terrified me.

You have to be brave to have courage. Ironic isn’t it?

Folks, I’ve news for you. There’s so much unseen Grace. Divine intervention is waiting like a flickering candle about to drown in its own wax at the edges of our willingness. Initially it only takes your cupping the flame to steady it against the draft, to tease the wick out of the wax. That’s all. That moment of caring attention where you’re quiet and still enough that your true nature can enter, after its years of knocking and show you your colors.

Then the journey begins of healing the wounds of the human, and even more fear-wrought, that foundation propelling you into Self.

Self can be described in many ways and it’s not so important to do that here. What’s important is that upping the ante is courage on an entirely different level. This is the courage to own that while you were broken, your spirit never was; while you believed you were flesh and bones, your soul smiled and winked; while you felt worthless, gold poured into your heart; while you felt unloved, you were cradled in patient compassion; while your mind was weak, your consciousness was fortified; while you were in darkness, the Light buoyed you; while you were lost, wisdom protected you.

I know this. As a child, even though my personality never took it seriously, even though it was by rote and I thought I didn’t know how to pray, my soul took over and prayed and prayed and prayed everytime my house was filled with voices bellowed, things smashed, doors slammed, love crushed and laughter squelched. When later I consciously prayed my soul just beamed warmly.

In the physical world, you can’t ignore a wall. In the spiritual life, you can’t ignore Eternity. Eternity in this sense is the absence of time, not an endless span of time. Eternity is as real as the street you live on. Your street exists in Eternity. So there are two choices. Numb and run, and my god are there countless ways to do that! Consumerism is geared for that alone.

Or, allow the bravery of your true nature to infuse you and take the lead. This is going to require spiritual backbone, vigilance, recommitments, endurance, sourcing courage again and again, along with a host of other resources. But it then becomes a meritorious life. And simply happy and healthy.

That’s the one I chose, choose and re-choose.

I’ll end with a haiku of mine from way before my dawn, a kind of precursor:

hide and seeking
our souls
games people will play

© Pamir Kiciman 2007

Read the original meme “What Gives You Courage?” by Lorraine Cohen

Rather than respond to Meredith’s excellent comment (definitely read it!) with a superb quote from Lama Gendun Rinpoche, posting this seems like a better idea.

Some of my writing here is from many, many moons ago, from a time I was able to distill some spiritual nuggets, and also verbalize the drama I had healed, having moved past it in radical ways. This is the first public appearance of these condensed expressions. I’m sharing them here as a way to relate. I feel others will either remember similar moments, or be smack dab in the middle of one!And you may be wondering when I may write about Reiki. Well, Reiki addresses the human condition. We are all in pulsing in the human condition. So I’ll share a poem of mine from that period:

UNRAVELING

Everybody has to start somewhere
unraveling
What has happened
To live like a wound spring
is the greatest folly
So begins the inroad to life’s wonder
Can you see
Can you hear
It is calling from the depths
resounding
like a thunder of compassion
A lightning bolt of love that flashes
Until it is felt
Unceasing

We are struck down to our knees
onto the cut-glass velvet
of knowing who we are
Until we know we are more
We are raised to our heights
the silver and gold
tarnished from inattention and absence
Much time goes by
With cut-up knees adorned
by a silky care for the heart

Up or down
each time we bring something back
to help us know how much more of what
WE ARE

Up and down
Relentless
Until we settle into the high ground
of the truth we find at each end

© Pamir Kiciman 2007

I have no understanding except some dimmer than dim remembrance in my cells. The script writes itself as I weave and duck the projectiles of unhappiness and despair. I linger in various acts and scenes of repeated unhealthy habits, thought patterns and broken feelings. I stagnate in justifications and transparent excuses. I am a hypocrite and this fuels me. I am searching now. It seems so insurmountable that I am forced to ask question after question. Each question becomes a unit of grace. Little do I know that the units are stacked up in my favor.

© Pamir Kiciman 2007