A question about Reiki

[xblimeyx]

Why is there so much emphasis on the "initation" in Reki, and a master has to initiate you for you to be able to give Reiki..but the whole process doesn't take longer than a weekend session, a copule hours every day ( this is information from a few books about reiki)....Why does every book on reiki insist that i give a (in my case, large) amount of money for someone to initiate me....

i believe you can heal yourself and others just by energy work and developing yourself , but this thing in reiki just bugs me and i was wondering if there is a logical answer to it

tnx

[Doringo]

That always bothered me, the whole money thing, but the guy at www.xehupatl.com does it for free!

I always figured that it was more to do with human nature than the invalidity of the healing system. So someone discovers the healing system, and decides to make money out of it; that's what most people would do, really..

[xblimeyx]

acctually my question was more focused on ,why the whole initiation thing ?  but speaking of paying... alot of spiritual seminars, workshops etc. are really really expensive....it's kinda ironic how people pay some guy alot of money so he would tell them how to attract money in their lives....i don't mean to be ignorant, i know everything is expensive , the whole organisation of such events, but i think alot of this stuff is very very overpriced...what do they need the money for, some of these, in their words,very enlightened people ? Shouldn't they just share the knowledge? Or share it on a criteria other than money?

[xblimeyx]

I mean, if you ask for a lot of money, ppl are going to take it much more seriously, don't you think?

it's my opinion, but i take the free things much more serious than the 700$ lessons, i kinda trust more a person that offers knowledge without wanting something in return, it seems much more sincere and "enlightened" so to speak
well i always felt that knowledge should be shared, and basically from what i know you cannot use reiki for a bad purpose...i don't know, i just found that the best things in life are for free (free as in not materially priced), and involving more money than necessary into spiritual work, well seems wrong to me...i feel that these things should not be about money....

sorry for the bad spelling 

[andonitxo]

Some said if you are to receive the initiation you'll pay for it as much as they can ask for it. Said in other words: if life wants you to become a reiki master it'll give you the money somehow. I don't agree at all with that statement, anyway.

The need for initiation is because the master inserts some energy symbols in your aura, and they'll act as keys to open certain energy paths. I don't know if there's some way to do it by yourself.

[star]

The Reiki attunements make it much easier to use Reiki.  You can simply learn it yourself through prayer and meditation, if you so desired, its not like someone is standing in our way. 

[vlazapax]

I've heard that the whole Reiki thing is quite different in my home country of Japan than here in the U.S. But here's what I understand about why people do things the way they do here:

Initiation is not neccessarily needed to be successful, but like in so many occult or energy working traditions, you have to be "attuned" to certain energies. Energy itself is in everything and all around you, but there are many sub-energies, I can call them that. These are specific energies from specific entities, stars, places in the galaxy or of divine manifestation. Not all energies are available freely--some are earned or are meant for certain people whose lives are ripe for that particular energy. Thus people have a better chance of being fluent in that energy if they have been initiated into it. Sometimes spiritual beings can come to you and choose you for such initiations bypassing human means (they tend to do a better job, too)     Some people who practice Reiki do not believe that Reiki enrgy is a specific energy and if that is the case then I don't understand the need to initiate beyond the fact that it is good for the subconcsious.

Now with the money, there is a school of thought that in order to get something, there has to be an exchange of energy. This is usually said to come about in Reiki because of the story of Dr. Usui having gone back to Japan and worked in the Korean slums healing people. The story goes that he healed for free but the people would not change their habits after being healed, therefore they would be back to him again as sick as before because they did not help themselves or change the very habits that caused the sickness. Now, I have a problem with the logic of this story because I doubt that a very smart man such as Dr. Usui was said to be, would go to a Korean slum (as there is in Yokohama, Japan) and look around at the wooden shacks that these poor people live in while sitting in the piles of their own filth, in the middle of a downtown area where they sleep in flooded sewer water and urine and think, "Hey, I'm going to heal these people and they won't get sick again." Somehow...that doesn't seem very bright. But, as the story goes, he realized that these people took his healing for granted because they did not have to pay or work for it. Then he started charging.

That's why a lot of people charge exorbitant amounts of money for EVERYTHING they do. Personally, if we are trying to enlighten ourselves and be of service to mankind, charging more than we need to get by is plain shady.