Have You Learned this Important Spiritual Lesson Yet?

Article by Ashwita Goel, Reiki Master

Learning Reiki is a stepping stone for many, leading us to embark on a deeply spiritual journey. It brings us face to face with the emotional and mental blocks holding us back in life, the negative patterns making our lives harder and the thought processes that are affecting our bodies. And as we start to let these go and feel better, we look outside and see the world suffering. That is the beginning of one of the most important spiritual lessons.

Most of us learn when we participate in a Reiki class, that it is essential to take another’s permission to be able to heal them. This doesn’t make sense to many – why would I need your permission to help you? But let’s think about it – if we saw someone falling, would we go and pull them up, or would we offer them a hand? If they really need help, why would they refuse? And what if we did more damage by lifting them up wrong, or when they weren’t ready? Are we really helping when people haven’t asked for help?

Not Everyone Wants to Heal

When someone encounters a new problem in their life, they experience a state of shock that can last a few hours, days or weeks. The death of a loved one or the ending of an important relationship can leave a person in shock easily for a few months. During this period of shock they don’t need help, but understanding. It is easy to identify when a person is in this state – either they tend to talk too much about their problem, or too little. When offered advice, they are either not interested or find some reason why it will not work.

When we meet someone who might be going through this phase, we need to remember that what they need is someone who can listen to them and accept them as they are. People going through a difficult time often find it very hard to think straight and it is very easy to want to fix things for them, but this creates a dependency and a belief that they are weak and incapable. If instead we can sit with them, listen to their problems or just observe their silence in acceptance and love we make it easier for them to accept themselves, thereby speeding up their healing manifold.

When People Go a Step Further

A steady practice over time gifts most people with deep insight. This makes life easier on many fronts but it also means we can see ahead when it comes to other people’s actions.

To watch from the sidelines as someone you love goes ahead and makes a mess of a situation or their lives is probably one of the toughest, but most critical lessons we learn on the pathway. A desire to fix things comes from a belief that there is something inherently wrong with problems. There isn’t. Problems exist to help us grow, evolve and become a stronger, more independent version of ourselves.

Watch Yourself

The real reason why we cannot see another person getting into trouble is not because we don’t want to see them facing the consequences, but because we can foresee our own pain when we see them going through the disaster. When we introspect, we realise that it wasn’t a desire to help at all, it was in fact, a desire to prevent ourselves from foreseeable pain. This is why when people refuse to listen and do what they want anyway, it agitates and disturbs us. When we can see this drama going on inside, acknowledge and accept it, we are already helping the situation.

To Really Help

When we really want to help someone who might be busy creating trouble for themselves, it is essential to remain in touch with ourselves first. More often than not, the tussle we create when we try to prevent them from messing up sours the relationship and we cannot help them when they really do need help. While we’re trying to fix them or trying to send Reiki to help them see sense, we’re really subconsciously screaming ‘you are not good enough and your choices are pathetic’. People sense this and it drives them away. If we replace this with healing ourselves and our own reactions, we remain on the sidelines watching, waiting, knowing that they will fall, but fully prepared to lift them up when they really do need us.

Surprisingly, more often than not when we simply heal our own reactions we lead by example and people follow – whatever internal disturbance was causing their errant behavior also tends to fade because they turn their attention inwards, and the problem is resolved before it begins.

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Having learned Meditation as a child, Ashwita incorporated Reiki into her life during her early teens. After a decade of witnessing the magic Reiki, she felt compelled to take up Reiki professionally, and ended her corporate career in 2007, taking up Reiki full-time. She eventually incorporated EFT, hypnotherapy and past life therapy into her work. Apart from her healing work, she teaches Reiki and meditation, and her book ‘Healing Through Reiki’ is available on Amazon. She holds regular full moon and new moon meditations at @AshwitaGoel. Her website is www.reiki-bangalore.com and her blog www.ashwita.com