Mikao Usui and Practice

Mikao Usui and Practice a transcript from a talk by Frans Stiene

A live video again! Live from Haarlem in Holland!

Anyway! So I've been travelling around and talking to lots of people - teaching here and there. I’m teaching in Paris next week so that will be exciting and after that I’ll be here in Holland. Then I'm off to Japan with a group of people so that will be exciting! Talking about Japan, we are of course going to visit Mount Kurama and lots of other wonderful places.

I want to talk about Mikao Usui today. So there is not much known about the man. There is no written information by Mikao Usui himself, as far as we know. Maybe it is out there but at the moment it’s not available. We have to rely on Hayashi, Takata and all sorts of other teachers and information.

But you know what is really interesting, someone the other day said, “Well we don't know much about Mikao Usui, but we know some things, don't we?” I think this one thing in particular is really, really important and I think it is so often not talked about within the system of Reiki - by teachers and practitioners, even though it is one really, really, really important aspect. I’m going to talk about it today.

So what is that really important aspect? It’s that Mikao Usui sat on Mount Kurama for 21 days. This is written about on his memorial stone. The 21 day specific meditation practices are still done in Japan today by people who practice Japanese esoteric teachings. It’s very, very difficult. So before you can do the 21 days you have to have done the seven day practice. Before that you have to have done the three day practice and before you can do those you have to have prior training. So on Mikao Usui’s gravesite we can see that he practiced a very difficult practice. He was a really dedicated practitioner.

So, he sat on Mount Kurama for 21 days. Why? It is said that one of his teachers said, “You have to die once”. It’s not a physical dying, it's a dying of the ego, right? It's a very common theme in Japanese spiritual practices. It's about the death of the ego, not the physical dying. In physical death it is something quite different, however there is a similarity in it, of course. We go through the same death process except while we're living.

And so here is a really important element. Mikao Usui went to Mount Kurama to do this 21 day practice, to really experience this kind of death - not the physical dying, but a dying of the ego. These kinds of practices in Japan are very difficult. What do you do? You do lots of chanting, lots of meditation practices and lots of inward visualisations to really help you strip away all these layers. Then we can drop away and our great bright light shines again.

Mikao Usui pointed his bright light out in the Reiki three symbol and mantra. Hiroshi Doi - a wonderful researcher and Japanese Reiki teacher. He said that he once got a little booklet from a student of Mikao Usui and he had a look in it. This particular student was taken to Mikao Usui’s teaching space and shown the Reiki three symbol and mantra to point out the inner great bright light. What is that inner great bright light? It’s stripped away of all the ego, all these layers. So your true self, your essence.

Now what is really interesting is that Mikao Usui practices 21 days on Mount Kurama and after he had done that he walked down the mountain. The story goes that he suddenly realised that he could heal with his hands. Now here - this is a really important element.

So keep tuned everybody, keep tuned! I could wait till next time, but I won’t. Here is the really important element! He wasn't there practicing hands on healing on Mount Kurama.

He discovered that after his enlightened experience he could perform hands on healing. That is a really important element if you really think about it. It means that he only started to teach hands on healing after his enlightened experience. Now hands on healing is our birthright. We all can do it no matter if we received an attunement, rejiu or initiation (whatever you want to call it) or not! Hands on healing is a birthright. A little kid falls over, what do they do? They put their hands straight on their knee. A mother sees the kid fall over and places a hand straight on the knee.

But we can of course increase the hands on healing. How? By rediscovering our bright light. The more we lay bare the bright light, the more potential for hands on healing there is. It makes perfect sense. So therefore Mikao Usui started to only teach and practice hands on healing after he had this really direct experience with his own true bright light. Now when we practice the system of Reiki we first learn hands on healing and then, hopefully, we aim towards that bright light. But Mikao Usui did it the other way around.

So that for me is a really important element. It teaches us that if we want to tread in Mikao Usui’s steps - to really practice hands on healing, we need to be like Mikao Usui.

First, as much as we can, we have to rediscover our great bright light. Now as we already discovered in this talk it is very simple. Mikao Usui realised he could do hands on healing after his enlightened experience, not before. Which means he wasn't practicing hands on healing on Mount Kurama, he practiced meditation and chanting.

Now, we can find these teachings back in how he formulated the system of Reiki. We see symbols and these were traditionally internalised to remember your great bright light. We can see this with mantras - they were traditionally chanted over and over again to realise your great bright light. Practices like joshin kokyu ho are internalised to rediscover your great bright light so that we could do hands on healing. The precepts are contemplated and chanted to realise that we could do hands on healing. So if I want to practice the system of Reiki as Mikao Usui was doing himself, then that is the key. We might not know exactly how Mikao Usui practiced or what he really taught afterwards because a lot of that is Chinese whispered, lost in translation.

I just saw this wonderful video about Japan and this gentleman was asked how he would translate "kami" After a few explanations about kami he said, “Actually I don't translate kami. It’s untranslatable for me.” That makes perfect sense, because as soon as we translate something we get caught up and we miss the whole point. So even if we translate the system of Reiki, sometimes we miss the whole point.

So for me, I don't really want to practice Hayashi’s Reiki because that was created by Hayashi. Hayashi has already changed many, many things in the system of Reiki according to Reiki researchers such as Hiroshi Doi. Then of course Mrs. Takata practiced with Hayashi, so there's also already a small change there. Again, we don't really know what Mikao Usui was teaching because that is lost, in a way.

However we have these elements, we have meditations, symbols and mantras, reiju and the precepts. So when we look at all these elements together then we can say - if I start to practice them like Mikao Usui practiced these teachings on Mount Kurama, as an internalised practice, then I can chant the precepts for a prolongedperiod of time (maybe 45 minutes, the whole day or maybe eight sessions of 45 minutes).

If I want to practice a system which is based on Mikao Usui I have to look at Mikao Usui. Not Hayashi and not any teachers who came after that, right. And as we already discovered, Mikao Usui only started to practice hands on healing after he had his enlightened experience, not before. So it means he wasn't sitting on Mount Kurama going like this *gestures in hands on healing positions*. As we already said - hands on healing is our birthright. It's a birthright of who we are, but of course we can increase it.

So how can we increase it? Focus on the precepts, really internalise them, chant them. Chant the mantras, internalise them. Internalise the symbols - really rediscovering who you truly are. Internalise reiju ( if you practice it), see it as a spiritual development, as a spiritual blessing for yourself. Work with meditation practices like joshin kokyu ho, again internalising, grounding, expanding then grounding and expanding again, contraction and expanding.

All of these practices! You look at these teachings which Mikao Usui left us - precepts, hands on healing, meditation, symbols and mantras and reiju, we can see the heritage of his esoteric practices. So therefore it’s really important to ask yourself - do you want to practice like Hayashi or another teacher? That is wonderful, however if you really want to be in the footsteps of Mikao Usui then don't follow the footsteps! Practice and aim for what he wanted to aim for.

What was that? He didn't sit on Mount Kurama to realise “I want to practice hands on healing”, right? No. His intent was that he wanted to rediscover his true self - that he was Reiki. Nowadays a lot of people say “We're just going to be Reiki!” But man that is so difficult! I hear it so often, people say, “Oh yeah just let’s be Reiki,” but this is difficult. Being Reiki is not being distracted by past, present, future or having the exact same experience that Mikao Usui had on Mount Kurama, as we all know that is very difficult.

Therefore the system of Reiki is a lifelong practice. Grinding away, keep practicing, keep chanting, keep meditating, keep internalising, keep contemplating on the precepts and all of these other teachings. Then we really know what Mikao Usui was pointing out. What was he pointing out? His true self. His inner great bright light. This point is throughout the whole system.

So for example, if you really think about it - do not anger, do not worry, be grateful, be true to your way and your being, show compassion to yourself and others. That is a description of the great bright light. He's pointing in the precepts already towards the bright light. There is no mention in the precepts about hands on healing, there’s no mention about any physical illness. Why? Because for Mikao Usui the essence of the system of Reiki was the precepts. This is why he sat on Mount Kurama.

This is so important and it's very interesting that not many people think about it or teach it. Hands on healing is the basis, it is a really basic element. So for me, hands on healing is a great start and hopefully, even though we do it the other way as Mikao Usui, by practicing hands on healing we then get the inclination to say “Hey, I want to rediscover my great bright light!”

But doing that just through hands on healing is very, very difficult, particularly if we see hands on healing as something external or if we see that energy or Reiki as something external. So Hiroshi Doi points this out too - he says that in the Usui Reiki Gakkai, when Mikao Usui was alive, he would train his students very deeply in Shinpiden and in amshin ritsume (or enlightenment). After Mikao Usui died no one took his place to teach them, so all of that has disappeared.

However we don't need to know how he exactly did it because the tools are already there. All we need to do is sit on our butt and do the practice. This is really where the difference lies. We can intellectualise all his teachings, but where the difference really lies is how often do you sit on your butt in your daily practice internalising the precepts, meditations, symbols and mantras, reiju and then finally the hands on healing. That, for me, is Mikao Usui’s teachings.

So if we say we practice Mikao Usui’s teachings, then we have to think about it. What do we practice? Hands on healing? Or as Mikao Usui did himself? He went to Mount Kurama and wanted to have this direct experience of death, not the physical death but the death of the ego. Then we can shine that bright light. That bright light is compassion, kindness, joy, gratefulness, no anger, no worry, being true to your way and your being. That in itself is healing!

A tremendous amount of healing takes place if you let go of your anger and worry. Think about it - if you're worried and angry the whole day do you feel tired? Of course you do! You feel extremely tired. Therefore you're losing your energy, you’re expanding your energy, worry and anger so if you do a treatment there is no energy left. Of course I hear a lot of people say, “I don’t have anger, I don’t worry!” but we really have to investigate that. There's very subtle levels of worry and anger.

Then what is the biggest worry? Mikao Usui pointed out that his death experience is the most profound element of letting go of our biggest worry. Our biggest fear is death, right? All of that is already there. So some people say “Oh we don't know what Mikao Usui really taught.” No we don't know but we have traces - precepts, meditations, symbols and mantras, reiju and hands on healing. We know that he went to sit on Mount Kurama to meditate for 21 days to realise his great bright light. After realising his great bright light he rediscovered that a side effect of that was hands on healing!

Again, think about it. If you lay bare your true self, your inner great bright light, will there be a difference in your hands on healing or not? Of course. It's common sense.

So investigate for yourself, what would you want to practice - the system of Reiki according to some teachers or the system of Reiki according to Mikao Usui. Again we don't know exactly what Mikao Usui taught at that time but Hiroshi Doi said that Mikao Usui was teaching his students according to their spiritual awakening. Which means that he would have taught different people different things.

I think this is where he would have taught some people just a basic form of hands on healing. Voila - not that difficult. Some of his students he might have taught a very deep practice to have that direct experience and anshin ritsume - their own inner great bright light.

Of course if we want to practice the system of Reiki we have to have a clear intent. So what is your intent? Is your intent to just heal your knee, to do hands on healing and to have a job as a hands on healing teacher or have Reiki as a “job”. Or is your intent to actually rediscover your great bright light.

A different intent creates a different outcome and if we couple intent with practice then we also have a very different outcome. Therefore check your intent. In a way, the best intent, if I want to practice Mikao Usui’s teachings, would be wanting to reach enlightenment.

Show compassion for yourself - an enlightened experience is the most compassionate thing you can do for yourself, and show compassion to others... What is the most compassionate thing you can do for others? Helping them to rediscover their own inner great bright light.

We can see lots of these pointers in Mikao Usui’s teachings. I cannot do hands on healing on everybody, right! If I walk into the street I can't go like this *gestures outwards with hands*. Impossible! But if I walk in that great bright light of no anger, no worry, no fear, being grateful, being true to my way and my being and being compassionate. What happens automatically is it will affect the people I come in contact with in my daily life. We don't “need” to use our hands to do healing. We're not “healing” anybody - healing is becoming whole. This is another very important element.

Anyway I've talked enough for today! I hope you enjoyed this and I hope you can contemplate this and check yourself. What do you want to practice - Mikao Usui’s teachings. What is your intent while you're practicing and do you couple it with certain practices to follow your intent? If I have the intent to get toothpaste and I don't couple it with putting on my shoes, jacket and a walk to the shop, then I never get the toothpaste. So couple your intent with applied practices. This is why sitting on our butt is so important if we want to tread and be in the same space as Mikao Usui - with that inner great bright light.

I hope you all enjoyed this chat for today! Anyway have a lovely weekend and I see you next time! Bye!