A Reiki Way of Life

“People don’t take trips, trips take people.” – Travels with Charley: In Search of America, John Steinbeck

It was a desolate and stunningly beautiful evening at Salinas River State Beach, between Monterrey and Santa Cruz, California.   A light fog bank had moved in from the sea and a gentle glow lit up the evening sky.   With just seabirds for company, we had the seashore to ourselves.  This was John Steinbeck country, the 1962 Nobel Prize winning author having been born in the town of Salinas, just a few miles away.  In classics like The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck explored the fate of "downtrodden or everyman protagonists" and the plight of the working class during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s.   

Despite the beauty of our surroundings, I was feeling quite downtrodden myself that day.  For a few months now, I'd been suffering from a mysterious pain in the hip and sacral area which had eluded explanation despite multiple scans and x-rays.  Limping at every step, I wondered how I would cope with the hikes we'd planned at Point Reyes and John Muir Woods for later that week, and if this was to be a permanent feature of my life moving forward.  The doctors back in Seattle had suggested surgery, an option that I did not have any appetite for.  It was in this despondent frame of mind I found myself as we walked back to the nearly deserted parking lot.  

 Salinas River State Beach Image Credits: Kris Shankar

That's when I saw the man in the pickup truck, middle-aged and vaguely Hispanic in appearance, with a broad cowboy hat on his head.  He gazed at me intently as I limped past him towards our rental car, and then as if making up his mind, spoke out "You have a problem with your sacral iliac joint, no?"  I nodded, taken aback by this precise diagnosis.  "Whatever you do, don't go in for surgery.  That will make it worse."  He consulted a pair of copper dowsing rods mounted on the dashboard in front of an icon of Mother Mary, speaking softly to himself as he did so.  They swung apart asymmetrically, as if reflecting the misalignment in my hips.  He then jumped out of his truck and spread a towel on the ground, beckoning me to sit down. "Do you mind if I take a look?"  Not knowing what to think, I obeyed.  Bhavna had walked ahead with the kids to the port-a-potty.  She was back now and watching the proceedings with increasing alarm.  

Icon and Dowsing Rods Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons

Here I was sitting cross-legged in empty parking lot with a complete stranger pushing down on my knees.  He bade me stand up on one leg, then the other, assessing my balance.  With my permission, he then placed his palm in the small of my back.  After a minute, he asked if I felt anything.  "Not a thing", I replied.  He reached back into his truck and handed me a business card.  "I perform healings for immigrant laborers in the Bay Area" he said, "If you want to come back for another healing, get in touch."  I thanked him more out of politeness than anything as Bhavna bade me hurry.  The sun was low and we had a long drive ahead of us to my cousin's apartment in San Francisco. I limped back to the car and got in, tossing the card into the glove compartment without so much looking at it.   "What were you thinking" Bhavna chided me on the drive back, "putting yourself in the hands that stranger?"

The next morning, as we prepared for our trip to Point Reyes, I noticed I wasn't in any discomfort.  I walked for about 10 hours that day.  And the next day.  And the next.  After six months or more, the pain and the limp had vanished, inexplicably.  When we cleaned out our rental car at SFO airport prior to returning it, I found the card in the glove compartment and glanced at it for the first time.  It was the calling card of a working man, the kind of man that John Steinbeck wrote about, offering "Landscaping and Yard Cleaning Services, Free Estimates".  Further down it read, "Reiki Healer, spiritual healing for injuries and pain."  In a turn of events that Carlos Castaneda would approve of, Don Ortiz - for I shall call him that - had healed me and opened me to possibilities I'd never imagined.    

Gilberto Ortiz, Reiki Healer Image Credits: Kris Shankar

Post-Script: The events described here occurred in 2008.  After we returned to Seattle, I called Senior Ortiz to thank him and mailed him a check for $120, though he never once did ask for money.  My hip bothered me again some months later and I tried his number, but it had been disconnected.  

The Jewel in the Lotus

 "Good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine lives that I mean to make bold withal" - Act 3, Scene 1, Romeo and Juliet

Our visitor was a banker from New York, a high-flying vice president at a Wall Street firm that is a household name.  In another life, metaphorically speaking, she had been a Reiki healer.  But that was in the past, and she was now busy juggling the demands of corporate life.  When I proposed a session of deep trance and shamanic journeying on our deck that morning, she readily agreed.  Despite the bright sunshine, there was a nip in the air.  We got a blaze going in the fire pit and settled in around it.  Aided by the soothing crackle of the flames, Gita was soon in a state of deep relaxation and extraordinary lucidity.  A giant pillar of white light, her Reiki light as she called it, manifested in her field of vision.  This was a conscious energy that would guide her for the entirety of the session.  For the first hour or so, Gita was flooded with insights on work and family issues of importance to her.  We then decided that she would attempt to retrieve memories of past lives, curious to see what would emerge.   

Image Credit: sparksofthedivine.com

Upon my cue, Gita closed her eyes and merged with her inner Reiki light.  After a few minutes of deep absorption, she looked up and in a matter-of-fact manner, began reporting what she'd seen to me.  One after the other, fragments of six lives tumbled out: Memories of a Native American youth running on a hillside with his friend, weapons hanging from his side;  a fleeting glimpse of a priest, lonely but unwavering and sincere in his devotions, high up in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church somewhere in Europe; a vision of a shaman or healer wearing a leopard skin over his head in a cave in Africa; recollections of a life as a young housemaid serving in a wealthy household in renaissance-era Italy; images of a worshipper gazing at the granite statue of a Hindu goddess in Indochina.  

In popular culture, we are most familiar with past-life regression from the work of Dr. Brian Weiss, as documented in his book Many Lives, Many Masters and other best-sellers.  However, it is Dr. Samuel Sagan who has drawn from Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and other ancient Indian texts to provide an explanation for this phenomenon.   

Image Credit: vision8studio.com

As Sagan explains in his book Regression: Past-life Therapy for Here and Now Freedom, while your Karma* is responsible for the circumstances of your present life, it is your Samskaras** that are responsible for your subconscious fears, anxieties, biases and behavioral patterns.  When past-life memories do surface during regression, they are often samskaras, especially emotionally charged and frequently traumatic events, that were defining moments in that life.  For this reason, people often recollect the trauma of their own death or the loss of a loved one in regression sessions.  Such recollection is frequently cathartic and results in the healing of physical ailments or psychological issues in this life. It was interesting that in Gita's case, her recollections were mostly positive and empowering. 

Having tired of past-life memories, Gita decided to dive into her Reiki light for other insights.  After a few minutes we had the following exchange:

Gita: I see a giant lotus of glowing light. I am going towards it.

Me: What else do you see?  

Gita:  I see Brahma.  He is sitting cross-legged in the lotus.  He's inviting me to merge into the light...[after a pause] I am stepping into the light.

According to the Hindu myth of creation,  Brahma sits in a lotus that emerges from the navel of Vishnu, who is asleep, reclining on on his serpent Adisesha^.  As if in a dream, Vishnu watches Brahma create the entire material universe. By the very act of dreaming, Vishnu sustains the universe; for when Vishnu wakes from his dream, the current cycle of Creation must end. 

Was Gita now spectator to the very moment of Creation?

Image Credit: booksfact.com

A deep silence hung in the air.  It was a beautiful Pacific Northwest afternoon, with the sun casting a gentle warmth and puffy clouds grazing across the sky.   I gazed into the fire as it crackled and ate away at the logs, waiting for Gita to open her eyes.  

* karma [ˈkärmə] In Hinduism and Buddhism, the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences

** samskara [samˈskärə] According to various schools of Indian philosophy, samskaras are the subtle mental impressions left by emotionally charged thoughts, intentions and actions that an individual has experienced. Often likened to grooves in the mind, they can be considered as psychological or emotional imprints that contribute to the formation of behavioral patterns.

^ Adisesha is also known as Ananta and is said to represent Time without beginning or end