Today I came across a situation (comment) in a spiritual Facebook group that really made my blood boil. Firstly, please know your spiritual teacher is totally not above feeling irritated, frustrated, or succumbing to their ego, myself included. While I do have training and experience in Reiki Healing and Spiritual Guidance, at the end of the day, please remember we are still human and not above reactive emotion. It takes a lot of conscious effort to live a spiritual life. I have really made an effort to try and source out positive, like-minded individuals with spirituality as I recently performed a "house" cleaning on the types of relationships I hold space for in my life. The reality of the matter is that we all have egos and all are susceptible to moments of judgement, as I was today.
Now, if you know anything about social media you know that it allows others to freely share their opinions no matter if it is based on fact or fiction. Everyone claims to be an "expert" regardless of credentials or experience. When sharing your opinion on platforms, such as Facebook, it potentially opens a huge can of worms. Now, I am all for discussion but it becomes very obvious that it can be difficult to find exactly the types of people and quality of opinions you are looking for.I have been extremely selective about which groups I join and what types of conversations I participate in. I don't always agree with others opinions, but I typically refrain from commenting as I truly believe everyone is entitled to their opinion.
Here is where my story begins. Today I came across a post where someone was struggling with their Reiki attunement. Among the various comments, there was one that struck a cord with me. This person who responded has no obvious training or even works with Reiki (yes I checked), however I thought maybe they just don't post that information (not my place to judge without knowing the facts) and give them the benefit of the doubt. The individual in question stated that something must have went "wrong" with the attunement process and that the Reiki practitioner obviously "didn't have good intentions" when the attunement process occurred as the student was struggling with different strange experiences.
I will admit, this highly offended me. Firstly, the base of Reiki is that regardless of who, what, or when Reiki NEVER brings any harm as it is pure life force energy. Secondly, it is highly unethical to make assumptions regarding a practitioners ability/ intentions. While you CAN tune into others and their intentions, you cannot ETHICALLY tap into someone else's intention without their permission. As I have training in both Reiki and experience in spiritual awakening through my own experience, I felt compelled to correct this person.
From my view point of the student's explanation, it seemed that she was not fully adjusted to the attunement as she stated she was fearful. If you know anything about Reiki and Chakras, you know that fear can manifest itself from unbalanced chakras. In addition, part of the attunement process includes a 3 week adjustment period where you are supposed to administer self-treatments to help ease into the higher vibration from the attunement.
The other part of her experience was her hearing random sounds and experiencing various paranormal, and negative situations. From what she described, it seemed that in addition to her attunement she was also going through spiritual awakening. While I went through my awakening many years before I even knew Reiki existed, I will admit it was extremely frightening. I was seeing fairly morbid visions, feeling unease and fear, as well as hearing random "ghostly" sounds. To be blunt, it scared the absolute shit out of me as it was something I didn't know anything about. What made it even more difficult to navigate is that I was newly spiritual and didn't have much support from others as to what was going on. I was able to research enough, and connect with my guides to get me through this adjustment period. I also learned the importance of grounding and shielding from negative energies from my research.
I think what prompted me to respond to this woman was the fact that my brain was screaming "this information is so uneducated and wrong" and the other part was the empathy I felt for this girl because I could totally relate to her story. Here is where I made my mistake, I flat out said this woman was wrong. While it was with the best intentions, I did make a judgement. However correct I know the information I provided to the student was, I still stepped on someone's toes. While I truly believe in providing correct information, I maybe could have said it in a different way. It's so easy to take offense to something written through a screen.
Now the other part of my "judgement" was to figure out why I got so damn angry at this woman's advice and replies of "wow, check yourself" to me. I came to some conclusions:
1) I was frustrated that the information provided goes against the very core of Reiki (Reiki NEVER brings any harm)
2) In providing this information to the student, the commenter was feeding into the negative fear rather than reinforcing positivity and love
3) The commenter offered no constructive explanation or resources to help the student
4) The commenter's opinion was based off a judgement that the reiki practitioner had bad intentions (There is no way of ethically tapping into others energy without permission, so this opinion either was made on a whim or found through unethical energy probing)
5) I had a very close friend who made outlandish statements and misrepresented herself as a Reiki practitioner when in fact, she was not. This woman's statements and reactions reflected those of my former friend
6) In reacting to my information/ help I was trying to provide to the student the commenter challenged my knowledge, training, and integrity
From those reasons, I realized that my original intention of helping the student quite quickly morphed into my ego taking over. I would say that the core of my frustration was that one of my core values, integrity, was essentially shot in the face by this woman's outlandish and unfounded "advice". I take my responsibility as a practitioner and spiritual guide extremely serious. If you provide the incorrect information to someone going through spiritual awakening it can really affect their energy and well being. When it boils down to it though, I was not immune to my ego.