An Open Letter to our Students;

An open letter to our students;

Hi Everyone….Loush here. I am writing this letter due to a phone conversation I had with a former student yesterday that I found truly hurtful, insulting, and sad for me as a teacher. I am writing this not to call out the former student I was talking to, but to clarify our stance on certain issues. I was accused of being “Vague and Mysterious”, which I can only understand as not having made certain issues clear. Well ….how on earth could any teacher possibly teach every facet of something like Reiki to their students? Sometimes things can only be learned through the experience of doing and practicing which is all we have ever said. This is not so we can appear mysterious. This is so we can tell the whole truth. If any teacher out there claims that they can tell you absolutely everything….get away from them…they are liars. 

There are certain things that can ONLY be learned through going through it. We were not spoon-fed everything by our teachers like toddlers. And even if we could have been… what would have been the point of it? We would never have truly learned everything that way. I am not here to spoon feed people like they are infants. I am here to teach adults how to utilize and develop certain skills which they can use in life to help enrich their own lives and the lives of those around them, while also helping the world to evolve and find healing. It is true that we don’t tell our students a lot of books on reiki to go and read like we did in the beginning. This is because we learned better than to do that. Most reiki books written today have nothing to do with reiki; and are a way of spiritual authors putting their own biased view on the art and practice of the reiki discipline, rather than really being about reiki. Beyond this….I will just come right out and flat say it….we disagree with the vast majority of these books. Not only do we disagree with their version of the so called history of reiki, but on the authors life philosophies written into these books.

We have never lied about who and what we are, though we have undergone a type of transition. Reiki is not a religion, but a spiritual discipline that cuts across almost all religious barriers. Having said that…every teacher, practices and teaches the art from their own point of view. This is to be expected. We however tell our students the difference. We tell them what is part of the reiki tradition and what is our own point of view and where we are coming from. Most reiki practitioners in the states, and in fact around the world are not like us in spiritual terms. Most of them are Buddhists, Taoists, pagans, new age subscribers, or what have you. We have always been Christians and always will be. The only thing that has changed about this, is that we have learned through experience that we don’t want to gloss over that. We want to be bold and more open and adamant about that fact and truth. We are unapologetically Christian and we tell everyone that before they come to class with us so that they are aware.

We have also created our own way of teaching reiki that is in harmony with our religious beliefs and we are totally up front about that. This is to avoid having people come to our classes who will have an issue with this. Reiki is not a Christian tradition, but we are Christians who are practicing and teaching reiki. That is who and what we are, and we make no bones about it.

I was told during this phone call I received that our former student tells their students to go buy these three “really great books” so that they can learn to see the aura and do reiki, “better than we taught” them how to see it. I am truly sorry that they don’t find our methods on aura work, to be enough for them. Having said that….I personally couldn’t care less if a person can see an aura or not when they leave our tutelage. What I care about is how we have helped a person spiritually evolve and if they are going out into the world and helping those around them to find healing. I don’t care if our students can do parlor tricks or not. I am not interested in that in the least, and I can’t state that strongly enough.

I was born seeing auras and such things; as were a great many human beings. Perhaps that is why parlor tricks don’t impress me. Is seeing the aura a valid skill to have? Absolutely!!! Is that skill the end all be all of reiki? Absolutely not!!! And to the former student I was speaking with yesterday and all of our former students who have gone on to teach….please don’t be so deluded or arrogant enough to think that you can teach people all they need to know, as if you are a one stop shop. Crawl down off that pedestal please! Some things can ONLY be learned through experiencing it as I said earlier. THAT IS JUST A FACT! And before you teach, you should understand that if you think teaching in a cookie cutter fashion is going to work….you are very much mistaken. Not everyone learns the same, nor does everyone have the same gifts. Some people will never see a rainbow colored, full blown, total light spectrum aura. Some people just don’t see. Sometimes people feel, or just know instead. Some people taste or hear as well, or instead of. Not everyone sees or is going to “see”, or is even meant to see. Not everyone is the same. Not every method is going to work on or for every person. This is why we teach so many different possible methods of doing this to our students.

As far as paperwork and manuals are concerned, I was told we just didn’t give enough. Oh please…you must be joking; person who said this to me. I have spent a great many years of my life researching and typing up everything so that my students will have what I didn’t. Namely, paperwork. In my personal training, my beloved reiki master did everything hands on and through experience. I learned in four levels. I think I perhaps received during all those years a total of 20 pages, only 8 of which directly had to do with reiki lol. I sometimes feel that perhaps we give and tell our students too much information. Sometimes I feel that perhaps I have experiences like this phone call, so that I can learn… that perhaps we are not expecting enough from our students. Perhaps they are not learning enough on their own and we should give them less. But then I learned that, this is not the issue or problem either. My own training was so rich, perhaps because Sensei Laura didn’t coddle us; and required us to utilize what we have learned. Perhaps when giving our students paperwork on everything became a quest of mine, I cheated them out of learning things the hard way like I had to, which helped me to truly understand things. I don’t know. What I do know is this….lack of paperwork has never been a problem for a single student I have ever had the pleasure of training. We have paperwork coming out of places on our persons we never knew existed lol! 

Frankly Rhonda and I and My family have suffered some financial losses to get all the manuals and paperwork printed up and available. Beyond financial loss, we have stood in print shops for sometimes five hours at time making copies or paying for copies to be made and putting manuals together for endless hours. It has taken a toll on us physically, mentally, emotionally, and as I said financially. It has drained us and our pocket books, so that is why we decided to create this blog site. We are putting almost our entire school curriculum on here so that we don’t have to print it out any more. We will give out a very small group of papers in person and everything else will be found on here. In this way all of our students and the general public have access to our hard work. The information is here at your fingertips for your disposal so you can get to it any time you like; any time you want or need it. If you want to print something up, you can do this for yourself at home. This way you can design your own personal manual the way you want it. We still require our students to bring note books to class in order to take notes. Purchasing binders and stuff however, will from this point on be up to you. The point of class is not in the paper work. It is in the learning, doing, practicing, and experiencing. This site is new and we are still in a lengthy on going process of uploading things. In fact we plan on uploading not only the vast majority of our curriculum, but putting stuff on here that we don’t take the time to teach in class; due to priority. Not only can our students access our site, but their students will be able to as well, and so on and so forth.

I have written this letter because I was so disturbed, disappointed, and perturbed by the phone call that I knew I had to respond publicly  without calling anyone out by name of course. I had to take a stand, and make our feelings on these matters clear. So if  we ever appeared vague or mysterious to any other student of ours, I apologize for ever having seemed that way. It was unintentional I assure you. I never realized that telling our students THE TRUTH; that experience is the best teacher, and that necessity is the mother of invention, was being likened to shirking my duty or responsibility as a teacher.

Having said this…let me make it clear once again. We are Christians and teach from a very, very, very Christian point of view. We give out far more paperwork than any other reiki trainers we have ever encountered; which we will no longer be doing as we are putting it all on this site. We are not here to spoon feed or coddle any adult student as if they were infants. We are here to serve and to pass on what we have learned to others in order for them to empower themselves and the world to find healing, and to evolve. Beyond this… what we are here most of all to do... is to bring Glory, praises, and honor to The Holy Name of God by spreading his Truth, Word, and Message in our own way. We have no wish or desire to produce students or reiki practitioners that don’t know what they are doing and have to constantly refer to paper work in order to be effective healers.

I hope this clarifies our stance on certain issues and the fact that again, SOME THINGS CAN ONLY BE LEARNED THROUGH EXPERIENCE! So please stop being a victim if you are being one, get off your keester and go get some real life experience. 

Rev. Loush O'Raven