LIVING BY GIVING

S HUMAN BEINGS, our first job on Earth in every lifetime is to remember why we came here. Then, whatever we came here to do, we can do -- which frees us to leave again for a while. Some people seem born with a roadmap in their pocket; they have a clear picture of their life course from a young age. This story is for the rest of us: a backward glance at the convoluted and sometimes hardly visible trail that has led me to where I am today. A story, mostly, of how the gift of Reiki has begun to awaken me to my true Self and purpose in this lifetime.

It seems much of my life has been spent finding things I did not come here to do. Before Reiki discovered me in 1991, at the age of 38, in Portland, Oregon, my life was a melange of pastimes, all of which I was more than happy to leave. I say it seems this way -- because, underneath my native cynicism, I do trust that everything has happened perfectly to bring me exactly where I need to be. This story is an illustration of how things that appear to be detours in our lives are really not.

As a child, I loved drawing and painting -- but I was told that I would not be able to "make a living" doing those things. I accepted that as truth, and decided to become a scientist instead. By the time I graduated from University with a science degree, however, I was already disillusioned with science and had decided to become a fiction writer. So, after my 16 years of conventional "education," I spent 16 years learning, on my own, how to write. The writing never "made me a living" for more than a few months here and there -- so I was able to try out quite a variety of other occupations during those years. I must admit, I never had a job I was not delighted to quit. I discovered a great assortment of careers that were not what I had come here to do.

Then Reiki found me. I saw the word, for the first time, on a poster advertising classes -- and instantly a voice inside me said that Reiki was indeed something I had come here to do. Until then, writing was the most fulfilling thing I had found -- and I had been sick of writing for 3 or 4 years already. I was fed up with words. I was looking for some unimaginable form of "wordless communication" -- and suddenly there it was!

Reiki was the turning point for me. Before Reiki, life was such a struggle, and I felt so out-of-place in it! I was always working-working....and the harder I worked, the more impoverished (both spiritually and physically) I became.

FTER MY FIRST-level Reiki attunements I felt, as I hadn't since childhood, that I actually did belong here in my physical body on this planet. I began to feel at home in my own life again. And a wonderful new approach came to me: the idea that what I needed was not to work harder and longer, just the opposite. I needed to stop working so much. I began to feel a desire to stop doing and start being, a distinction I don't recall even being conscious of before that time. It was a liberating revelation, which I attribute directly to the Reiki -- and Reiki is very much a practice of not-doing, of simply being present and mindful and still, allowing the Reiki to do the work.

Three months after my initiation into Reiki, I took the second level. I was already giving treatments, renting a space, charging what I thought was a reasonable rate for my time. Reiki was becoming my life. I dreamed of being a Reiki Master, but could not envision a way for it to happen. Master-level training cost $10,000, an amount I could not picture myself ever accumulating. It disturbed me to think that something as wonderful and beneficial as Reiki, something so natural and essential and Universal, was being withheld from people, especially on the basis of money. It disturbed me that, even if I had the money and became a Master, then I would have to charge the same prices for training other people: it was required by the Reiki Alliance.

I didn't dwell on these aspects. The healing energy of Reiki, the sudden ability to help people so directly (and wordlessly!), and the transformation already happening in my own life -- all this was such a blessing, I was not going to let anything spoil it.

Mexico had been calling to me for some time, and now I felt able to respond. I gave away my writing machine, liberated myself of all belongings except what I could fit in a backpack, and bought a seat on a southbound train.

In Mexico I didn't give Reiki to many people, though generally they seemed more open to it than in the U.S. The culture shock and my inability with the language made even the simplest tasks difficult and exhausting -- and there were so many new things to experience! I spent a lot of time meeting people, making connections (and not making connections), trying to explain what Reiki was and having promotional materials translated and printed. And I learned a lot about myself.

In 6 months I was back north of the border, needing the familiarity of language and culture, needing a place to live. My mother, in Arizona, gave me refuge....and soon a friend in California invited me to accompany him on a tour of the Southwest. I said yes without a second thought.

EAR THE END of our travels we stopped at a hot springs in a river canyon in Utah. Within a few hours, I was talking with the owner about staying and working there....and the next day I was waving goodbye to my friend as he left for California. I had found a new home. What a powerful, magical place it was! People came from all over the world to soak in the waters of Pah Tempe. I gave them Reiki and helped with the Bed-and-Breakfast there.

After 2-1/2 years, though, I was feeling the pull of Mexico again. Back I went, this time starting with 3 weeks of language school and living with a Mexican family. Then I renewed my previous contacts, rented a big empty space and started offering Reiki full-time. Most of my clients had barely enough money to survive. I couldn't think of setting a fee for my treatments. People gave me what they could. It felt better that way, anyway.

Another 6 months and I had to re-emerge: back to the sanctuary of my mother's house in Arizona. Then, a couple months later, back to Mexico. Something was bothering me: the old Reiki Master aspiration had returned, this time with a feeling of greater urgency. Much more than just giving treatments, I wanted to initiate other people into Reiki, so they could treat themselves. I had found a non-Alliance Reiki Master in New Mexico who would initiate me into the Master level for $1,000 -- which I didn't have, though I could at least conceive of eventually coming up with it. We corresponded a couple times -- but I never felt a connection between us, and that was the end of it.

Back in Mexico yet again, I settled into giving treatments. Then I fell in love -- with the most exotic, unimaginable woman! In a million years I would not have dreamed that such a person could exist. She was truly an angel, a Bhodisattva -- perfectly disguised as a homeless girl of the streets. I offered her a place to sleep, and she moved right into my heart.

Four months later I was back in Arizona, this time at my mother's request: she was very ill. I had tried unsuccessfully to bring my Bhodisattva with me. We had traveled across half of Mexico -- and lived for a month in a homeless shelter -- to obtain her birth certificate as the first step in getting her a passport and visa. Then we could not get the passport: she had no permanent address and no bank account.

HE INSISTED ON coming with me as far as she could, to the border at Nogales. "I don't think you'll like Nogales," I told her. "I don't care," she said, "I want to be there." We got there and spent a desperate day walking the streets, searching for a place where she could live. Finally we found a home for troubled girls -- mostly with drug problems -- willing to take her in. The next morning we said hasta luego and I walked across the border and caught a bus on the other side.

Our continuing efforts to get her across came to nothing. And she didn't like Nogales. And living at the home for troubled girls was driving her crazy. She wrote me that she had found another place and was moving....and when I wrote to her there, the letters all came back: No such address.

I never heard from her again, and it was killing me. I have never felt so desperate and so hopeless, before or since. I would wake up every morning and the sad reality would crash against my chest with the weight of an entire ocean. I was drowning in feelings of loss and guilt. Insurmountable guilt for having left her. I was barely functional. And I put aside Reiki.

I began to question whether my treatments were truly beneficial, or did they merely take away symptoms and create a dependency on more treatments? A particular scene kept replaying in my mind: the beloved Bhodisattva, laughing and saying to me, "You think your treatments are helping people....and really they're not. It's an illusion." I began to understand for the first time what she had meant, and to believe she was right.