My Consiglieri and Me

So have you ever walked into a room, perhaps hostile to the subject at hand or not, but seemingly completely unwittingly set in motion a series of choices that changes your life forever? It has happened to me, more than once within the last 10 -15 years and I’ve been lucky enough to be paying sufficient attention to at least be able to look back and see just what it is I’ve set in motion.
In October of 1994, my friend Barb told me about Aikido, a martial art I knew very little about but hey, it was martial, it was art, I went and watched the class she was taking, and I signed up. Met some new people, learned all kinds of new and mostly good things about myself. Then in December 2000, I’m on the phone with my friend IJJ and I am supposed to be studying for a final in The Economics of Healthcare and after hanging up with IJJ, I sit and read the stuff for the zillionth time and say to myself, self something’s gotta give. So back to Aikido (which by the way is where I’d met IJJ) my Sensei is finishing up his course of study at Somerset School of Massage. And something resonated with me as massage was something I’d always wanted to do, and would usually do for anyone that’d stand still for it. So by March 2001, I’m enrolled for the June 2001-2002 12 month class at SSMT. Now, I’d always enjoyed school, always enjoy learning stuff and I was enraptured by massage school, anatomy, grease, the whole bit.
It’s useful to note, that at this point I had so many rough edges still that it’d be fair to call me prickly or even nuts, because I was but that’s a story for another day. Well, 3 months, almost to the day of starting massage school was 9-11-01 and knowing what I know now about energy and so forth – there was a major energetic shift on the planet. But at that point, I knew very little of energy but can recognize the energetic shift in hindsight. In November of 2001, there came the weekend that marks almost the halfway point of massage school – Experience Weekend, or let’s pimp the continuing ed to a captive audience for 2 days. Basically each of the continuing ed instructors, presented an hour and a half or so, on whatever their particular offering was. So I was quite excited about the Neuromuscular Therapy, Shiatsu, all the hands on stuff, Chi Kung was interesting but still a little ‘wifty’ for me. So Sunday morning, my cohort Ro drags me into the front row of Reiki which to me seems to be all wifty all the time. I’m not a front row dweller, generally preferring to take the smart ass back corner by the window seat. But here we were front and center and my body language was resistant, ok, it was hostile, arms crossed over my chest, legs crossed and the steely weather eye ball cast upon the presenters.
The main presenters were 2 reiki master candidates, and a Reiki master. Now I will say this about that, the Reiki Master – A – pure eye candy. Looks like Angelina Jolie’s taller sister. The Reiki master candidates – E had and has the kindest eyes and L radiates life force – if you’d not ever seen a force of nature before you might not know what to look for, I have seen quite a few in my time and L is certainly one of them. So there was talk of energy – ki – which of course, I knew of from Aikido, and one does not develop at least some skills at chucking people around the room without a decent working knowledge of ki. Then there’s Rei, now in my training Rei means to honor, but in reiki they refer to rei as universal or spiritual. And when combined into reiki it’s universal life force energy, which surrounds and is in everything. Everyone has some natural ability to be tuned into this life force energy but the study and practice of reiki increases your connectedness. And by the way, at the time I WAS BUYING NONE OF IT, wouldn’t have taken a free coupon had one been offered. So they had us offer one another Reiki, and here I am sitting in the front row, thinking what the fuck so loudly, I’d bet it was audible. Ro had placed her hands on my head then shoulders in the demonstrated style and then someone else came over and put a hand on the back of my left shoulder. It felt as if my heart shifted from right to left in my chest and my body started to hum. Tripped me out. Now, one would not ever refer to me as a kinetic person, I am much more of a slave to inertia and momentum, but after this I had to go outside and jump up and down and my 30 year battle with insomnia was won. Yes, after one hands on deal from something I was absolutely resistant to, A still tells stories about this. And to make an exceedingly long story short, the first continuing ed class I signed on for was Reiki 1, then Reiki 2, then Advanced Practitioner and 2 years later I found myself in the Reiki Master course. The Reiki Master course as practiced by the Center of Living Light (purveyors of Reiki and Light) is a year long adventure where the coursework is centered mainly around one subject and that subject was me. So whilst, I was doing the formal monthly coursework with A, L and I had become close friends and she helped guide me down the road of what I like to call who the fuck am I and what have I done with the real me? She really did the heavy lifting to get me to where and who I am today. And for that I’m overwhelmed with gratitude, and if you know me now and didn’t know me before you should be too. And if you know me now and knew me before you’re still in freakin’ awe.
So to illustrate, when I first started in this RMC (Reiki Master Candidate), I was so disinclined to discuss my feelings, I would not use the word ‘feelings’ preferring instead to call them the ‘f’ word. Hell, disinclined to discuss I was disinclined to admit I had any feelings ever about anything. So, L, helped me to cross that divide and not by dragging me kicking and screaming although sometimes I felt that might have been funner or at least funnier. But by gently asking questions, and going all the way into what the shit was really about, and what core of feelings I was actually trying to handle or more accurately trying to not handle. (I will engage in a certain amount of this with people who seek it, but I’m a blunt instrument where L is finely tuned, insightful and brilliant) Also, there is the whole business of decoding the messages the universe tries to hip us up with, and there were so many messages, I didn’t want to see or hear, but I was never alone in having to deal with them. So I did, and that I think has made much of the difference in allowing me to completely change my life.
I am blessed with several friends named L and to distinguish them this L is referred to as my consigliere, she’s a very gifted one and I was lucky to have been led to make all the different choices that led me to this place and this time, with this consigliere. So if you read all this way, would you be so kind as to send L good energy and a warm thought? Thanks, we appreciate it.