Compass & Quill

Only have a few minutes this morning. I forgot to take my meds yesterday and I woke up somewhere between rage and whatever this feeling is (being flat like a paint splotch?). Gotta love being fucking insane. I joke. Kinda.

Anyway. I’m drinking a cup of coffee. I took a peek in the mirror, and things are not looking good. It’s a Monday, and I guess I’ll have to take what I can get.

This weekend I got certified in Reiki 1. I’m not sure how I feel, other than exhausted. I really liked the teacher, and there were a couple of other students in the class that I thought were so cool and hope to run into again. I won’t talk too much about the actual underpinnings of the class, since it’s kind of a Fight Club scenario (as in, the first rule of Fight Club is that we don’t talk about it.) But I’ll tell you a few things so that I don’t forget them…

There’s a connection exercise that is somewhat similar to the Ground/Clear/Protect exercise that I do often. It’s not the same thing, and I need to probably sit and write it all out so that I can see the differences, but in general, the Reiki version is about filling yourself with light that stretches outside of your body and envelops you in a bubble of protection.

Pretty sure I’ve mentioned it on here about a million times, but I’m an aphant; I don’t have visual thoughts. My imagination is completely fine, but I just don’t “see” things like that. So it’s tough for me to imagine being inside of a ball of light. The way I got around this in the Ground/Clear/Protect exercise is that I do have a really great internal sense of sound/feel.

For instance, for grounding, a lot of teachers advise you to “grow roots,” but I have no frame of reference for what that would be like. I do, however, have a great reference of what it feels like to insert tent stakes into the ground and to feel them sliding past the layers of dirt/rock/sand/particulates/roots as they are firmly set. So I mentally push tent stakes through my feet to anchor to the earth. For clearing, one teacher I follow recommends that if you don’t feel strongly about light as a cleansing source, to try cleansing yourself with any of the elements (fire, earth, water, air). I tried water and fire without feeling that connected, and then I finally mixed up a mental batch of mud in a cauldron and poured it over my head–et voila! It’s very easy to imagine squelchy mud dripping down my body. It could be a bit of a stretch for some people to imagine getting clean with mud, but I love spa mud treatments, so it’s no problem here. Protection felt similarly weird. A bubble of light feels like nothing, and since I’m cold natured, trying to imagine the heat of a ball of light doesn’t feel like much. Instead, I landed on building myself into a cellophane candy wrapper, like one of those old-fashioned strawberry candies. I must have unwrapped thousands of those as a kid, so it’s very easy to imagine re-twisting the top over my head and getting sealed into a strawberry of protection.

Anyway, I need to find a similar process to work through some of the initial setup for Reiki.

I did experience some interesting things. Nothing absolutely huge. No unassailable proof. But my hips were hurting yesterday, and I spent a few minutes using Reiki to see if I could alleviate the pain. It worked after one session. Could be power of suggestion, but I don’t really care. Working is working.

The first day, I had a couple of big emotional things come up. And I was told to go to Salem again, alone, to meet the next person I need. So I need to figure that trip out with my current bank account at zero. Sigh.

The second day, I felt Reiki strongest when I was working on my third and fourth chakras. During both attunements, my heart skipped a beat when I made it up to the heart chakra. Weird, but not unheard of, I’d assume.

I also had a moment where I could feel my ears start to tune back in to spirit. It was very weird. It was a little like a change in pressure for both ears at the same time, but like more pressure in the right, less in the left, and while that was happening, I could hear an extra voice under the live human voice that was speaking in the room. It was only for a few seconds, and I couldn’t make out what was being said, but it was heartening. I’m hoping that giving myself daily Reiki will help to correct my energy and open me back up to communication.

We also talked about movements for correcting energy and reconnecting to our bodies. I was particularly interested to hear that depression is often connected to having parallel meridians. I have no clue what that means, but I’ll research it later today. We worked on some simple movements (including a dance I often do, so that’s weird) to cross meridians again. I’d really like to get my energy repaired enough to not have to rely on pharmaceuticals for the rest of my life.

Anyone reading along has to be like (?) at half of the things I say. Here’s a song by Amyl and The Sniffers to make up for some of that. Or not.