The Reiki Blog

The surffering which doesn’t affect us. September 6, 2014

“We run the risk of forgetting the suffering which doesn’t affect us.”
—Pope Francis, @Pontifex

“One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.”
—Josef Stalin

Maybe your news feed is better than mine, but if it isn’t, what’s been dominating the headlines so far this week is that nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities have been hacked from their smartphones; that Hello Kitty is supposed to be a girl, not a cat (shock! shock!!!); that a cat who became an internet celebrity because of her “sad” eyes has been adopted; that one of the 3,000 members of the disgraceful Duggar family is looking forward to her first kiss; and that Joan Rivers has died. As always, there’s a whole lot of sports news, too, not to mention spoilers about upcoming TV series. Oh, and which celebrities have the worst hygiene.

Geez. Between these massively important stories, you might find an article or commentary about scientific discoveries about what started the Ebola epidemic or how HIV spreads, or a report about the millions who’ve been forced to flee Syria, or the torture and murder of minority communities in Iraq by ISIS/ISIL forces, or how they rose to power and what their ultimate aim is. Or how Napa Valley is responding to being hit by an earthquake. Or how the California coast has been deluged with huge jellyfish die-offs, and how fish that are normally never seen in warm waters have been washed ashore or caught as trophies thanks to global warming.

But more likely, you’ll see a big feature story on Angelina Jolie’s wedding dress: a triumph or a travesty? Mercy. Maybe those looking at her wedding photos would do better to notice her skeletal arms and hands and think about their tragic import instead. I can’t imagine that a photo of any other bride clutching her groom with those skeleton hands wouldn’t draw a horrified response, but everybody’s talking about her dress, not her body. After all, she’s Angelina Jolie, the luckiest woman in the world! Married to Brad Pitt! If she’s a living skeleton, why should we notice?

Sometimes, tucked between all the celebrity gossip and sports writing and adorable cat videos, we’ll see a feature on, say, women who’ve had acid thrown on them in India, an apparently common practice when they spurn a suitor’s advances or their in-laws don’t like them, or women who are raped and sometimes killed in India for going to the bathroom, or children and pets who’ve been left to die in hot cars here in the good old USA while their parent shops or sexts or simply forgets about their existence (until, in the last case, watching a “Game of Thrones” episode with a crying child reminded him, oh wait, I left my foster daughter in the car!). Or the fad here in America of punching strangers in the street, desperately harming and often killing them, including pregnant women, called “the knockout game.” How tough those guys must look to their watching buddies when they punch out an old man or woman! But hey, it’s just a game.

There are also stories about the crisis in the Ukraine, the crisis in Gaza, the protests in Pakistan, the ongoing monstrosity of the Taliban, the horrors that the Supreme Court has allowed to take root in American soil, the devastations that soulless companies like Monsanto have wrought all over the world, the monstrosities of the druglords in Mexico and Central America. Not to mention the volcanic eruptions in Iceland and other natural disasters. But why should we bother about them when we can read about the new lineup for this season’s “Dancing with the Stars” or Princess Diana’s makeup secrets?

I’m as guilty of this as anyone: If I see a feature about some especially luscious-looking recipe or a health tip or breakthrough, I’ll almost certainly click on it. Not to mention just about anything about science, archaeology, natural history, or paleontology (including today’s story about the discovery of the world’s largest dinosaur, Dreadnoughtus). When eBay sends me an e-mail listing marbles (which I collect) for sale on its site, I eagerly look them over and drool appreciatively, though I’ve not bought anything on eBay for many years, since it switched to PayPal-only payments. Ditto for peonies and other plants I love, including edibles like curry plants and Meyer lemons from nurseries, or product tests from America’ Test Kitchen (which Dijon mustard is really the best?).

Why do we spend our time on these frivolities when the world is suffering? I think it’s because they make us feel good. When I read about the latest discoveries at Stonehenge, I’m not thinking about the atrocities of ISIS/ISIL or the potential horror of the Russian aggression in the Ukraine or the effects that the prolonged drought in California and the citrus greening disease in Florida will be having on our food supply, not to mention the horrific aftermath of GMO crops and the monstrous amount of herbicides being dumped on them, the effects of global warming, the horrors inflicted by the Taliban on women. I’m not thinking about the rise of cancer and diabetes and dementia and so many other diseases. Instead, I’m reading about something “interesting.”

What’s someone who follows the Reiki Way to do in the face of so much global horror? Just reading the local police blotter about the street fights, stabbings, rapes, crashes, fires, pet abandonment and abuse, and so on is overwhelming. But fortunately, there actually is something we can do: send Reiki. I’ve written about this before, but it’s something I believe strongly in and suggest that all Reiki practitioners do, even if they haven’t progressed to the second level of Reiki, which teaches practitioners the symbol and technique that will allow you to transcend time and space.

It’s simply this: Hold a marble of the world in your hands. (They’re readily available for very little money at Land of Marbles, http://www.landofmarbles.com.) Look at this “Earth Marble,” observing the continents and landforms and the oceans, before you fold your hands over it and feel it warming as you call in the Teachers, Usui Founder, Hayashi Sensei, Takata Sensei, and any other Sensei you feel especially connected to. Ask them to help you with the world’s problems, to heal the world. Name any problems of special concern to you that you’d like them to focus on, such as global warming.

If you’ve been trained in the Third Symbol, draw it and the First and Second Symbols over the marble globe in your hand, 1-3-2-1. If you’ve been trained in the First Symbol, just draw it and put your hand down over the marble globe. If, for whatever reason, you’ve been trained in no symbols, just put your hand down over the marble globe and let the Reiki energy flow out to our suffering world. When you feel the heat (or tingling, or cold, or however the energy comes to and through you) diminish, open your hands, thank the Teachers for spending this time with you, and either blow the First Symbol over the glass globe or, if you don’t know the First Symbol, simply blow over it, set it down gently and with gratitude, close your hands in gassho (prayer position), and bow. Your easy exercise is over, and you’ve sent Reiki out to the whole world.

Just for today, Reiki the world.