New Reiki Books Reveal a Very Different Picture of Usui Reiki
Three new reiki books, in electronic form, are now available from ReijuTree Publications. The new books -- "The Entrance", "The Deep Inside", "The Mystery" -- comprise a single volume, "An Exploration of Usui Reiki and Beyond" (which can be downloaded, free of charge, via new-reiki-books. johreiki. net/new-reiki-books. php). The books, which signify a notable departure from the prevailing worldwide perception of Reiki, are based on teachings of Reiki Masters in Japan who learned directly from Dr. Mikao Usui (the founder of what has come to be called Reiki), and are the work of Don Beckett, a Reiki Master in Hilo, Hawai'i.
Hilo, Hawai'i (PRWEB) March 24, 2005
Three new reiki books, in electronic form, are now available from ReijuTree Publications. The new books -- "The Entrance", "The Deep Inside", "The Mystery" -- comprise a single volume, "An Exploration of Usui Reiki and Beyond" (which can be downloaded, free of charge, via http://new-reiki-books. johreiki. net/new-reiki-books. php (http://new-reiki-books. johreiki. net/new-reiki-books. php)).
The books, which signify a notable departure from the prevailing worldwide perception of Reiki, are based on teachings of Reiki Masters in Japan who learned directly from Dr. Mikao Usui (the founder of what has come to be called Reiki), and are the work of Don Beckett, a Reiki Master in Hilo, Hawai'i.
According to Mr. Beckett (who has been practicing Reiki since 1991 and initiating others into Reiki since 1999), these 3 new books present a very different picture of Reiki than what has previously been taught throughout the world (via Chujiro Hayashi and Hawayo Takata and the students in their lineage).
Chujiro Hayashi was a Christian, and his student Hawayo Takata (herself a minister in a Spiritualist church) taught -- contrary to the facts -- that Mikao Usui had been a Christian, and that Usui had been searching for the healing method of Jesus, when Reiki was revealed to him!
Hayashi was also a medical doctor, thus inclined to focus his attention on Reiki primarily as a treatment for healing disease in others (whereas Usui's "method to achieve personal perfection" was about the healing and spiritual awakening of oneself).
Hawayo Takata was one of Dr. Hayashi's patients, who came to him gravely ill. After recovering her health, she learned Reiki from Hayashi, and devoted the rest of her life to helping others with Reiki. For 3 decades following World War II, Hawayo Takata seems to have been the only Reiki Master outside Japan (she was an American citizen living in Hawai'i). From the mid-1970s to 1980 -- the last years of her life -- she initiated 22 Reiki Masters. Through them and their students, the Takata version of Reiki spread (and continues to spread) all over the world. Thus, Hawayo Takata single-handedly defined Reiki throughout the world at large.
Then, in the summer of 2000, an English Reiki Master named Chris Marsh (also a student of martial arts and the Japanese language, and a Tendai Buddhist), while in Japan, was introduced to a 106-year-old Buddhist nun who had been a student of Mikao Usui in the 1920s (she was also a niece of Usui's wife!). She revealed to Chris that she was not happy with what had been presented to the world as Reiki, and she intended to teach him what she had learned from Usui himself.
Back in England in the following months, Chris began sharing his new Reiki knowledge with another Reiki Master, Andrew Bowling.
The following year, in Japan again, Chris was introduced to 11 more of Usui's students (ranging in age from 96 to 111). Since that time, in addition to Andrew Bowling, Chris has shared the Japanese teachings with another English Reiki Master, Taggart King, who has been Mr. Beckett's primary source of these original teachings.
Beckett said it was only through a series of fortunate events that he was in a position to write these books. "Following my own Master-level initiation in 1999, by Deb Frank at Niagara Falls," he said, "I was given the opportunity to attend the first Usui Reiki Ryoho International workshop, in Vancouver B. C., organized by Rick Rivard and Tom Rigler and Andrew Bowling. That was the first appearance, outside Japan, of Hiroshi Doi-Sensei, a member of the Usui Reiki Society in Tokyo. It was a great opportunity to learn the Society's version of the history of Reiki."
It was also the first presentation, outside Japan, of a Reiki empowerment procedure called Reiju; the empowerment procedure said to have been used by Mikao Usui (though the Reiju taught by Mr. Doi at the workshop was a modified version).
The very next month, Beckett attended a workshop presented by Frank Arjava Petter (author of "Reiki Fire" and "The Original Reiki Handbook of Dr. Mikao Usui", and co-author of "The Spirit of Reiki") and Chetna Kobayashi. Then, in 2001, he was contacted, "out of the blue," by English Reiki Master Taggart King, who offered to share his own newly acquired Reiki knowledge (including the Usui Reiju procedure), received via Chris Marsh and the group of Japanese Masters who had learned from Usui himself.
Beckett began putting together the various threads of information he had received -- from Doi, Rivard, Rigler, Bowling, Petter and Kobayashi, and Taggart King -- incorporating it all into his own Reiki practice, and rewriting the training manuals he gave to his students.
Then, in the fall of 2002, one of those students, Oxana Alekseeva in Moscow, notified him that she had shown his training manuals to a Russian publisher, who was interested in publishing them in book form. "If not for Oxana, I doubt that the idea of turning my manuals into a book would ever have occurred to me," said Beckett. But, with her encouragement, he began a period of intense research, meditation, and contemplation -- rewriting his manuals again, then shaping them into a volume of 3 books, designed to be suitable both for Reiki students (at any level) and for anyone interested in Reiki but not yet initiated.
"This was just after I had started living in Hawai'i," Beckett said. "I had gone to Kaua'i -- the island where Hawayo Takata was born, where she had lived for years and had practiced Reiki! There I was introduced to the spirit of aloha by a woman named Donna Lee, who provided me with a perfect sanctuary, a place to live and write these books.
"For a few months, I did almost nothing but sit in my room, writing and meditating and doing Reiki, day and night. The energy of that island (which corresponds to the 6th chakra in the human body) is very inwardly-directed; it was the perfect place for doing this -- and, thanks to financial help from my mother, I was able to do it."
Another element, crucial to his understanding of Reiki history -- and particularly the origins and meanings of the Reiki symbols -- was the knowledge gained through correspondence with Dave King, a Reiki Master in Canada. Dave (no relation to Taggart King), like Chris Marsh, had spent much time in Japan, and had learned from students who were taught by Mikao Usui -- though what they had learned was very different than what Chris Marsh was learning from the other group of Usui's students, and did not involve Reiju or any sort of energetic empowerment.
The information from Dave King became the final strand in the tapestry, completing Beckett's composite view of Usui Reiki. After the first draft of his work was finished, Beckett moved from Kaua'i to the Big Island of Hawai'i, where he soon was drawn to the town of Hilo and felt immediately at home.
Here he put the finishing touches on the e-book version of his "Exploration of Usui Reiki and Beyond" -- and then discovered that Hawayo Takata had lived and practiced Reiki here, as well as on Kaua'i, and that, after her passing, her ashes were interred at a Buddhist temple in downtown Hilo (from which they have since been moved).
"It seems remarkable," he says, "that this project was born on the island where Hawayo Takata was born -- and that it was finished here, in the very town where her ashes were laid to rest!"
The new books, which are compiled in a single volume, "An Exploration of Usui Reiki and Beyond", present quite a different view of Reiki than the Hayashi/Takata version the world has come to know. The e-book edition of this new volume, from Don Beckett and ReijuTree Publications, can be downloaded, free of charge, via http://new-reiki-books. johreiki. net/new-reiki-books. php (http://new-reiki-books. johreiki. net/new-reiki-books. php).
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