In January’s ReikiUpdate I asked, “How I can help?” What I had in mind was what classes and content would help you with your Reiki practice.

What I received was much more profound. I have never been so grateful that I didn’t communicate clearly!

Many of you opened your hearts to share your dreams, your frustrations, your doubts, and the wishlists for your lives. I was deeply touched by the outpouring, and moved by your confidence that, as a spiritual healing practice, Reiki can help us accomplish our life goals.

Reiki healing practice requires practice

The key word, of course, is practice.

Reiki healing is not magical, although it can seem that way. If we really want our Reiki practice to change our lives, and we want to stabilize that transformation, we need to do our part — we need to actually practice.

As with anything else, the best results come with consistent practice.

When asked about daily self -treatment, one practitioner responded, “off and on.” Other than hands go off and on as we proceed with our hand to body placements, that’s really a NO.

Another practitioner said she practiced regular self-treatment “most of the time.” What’s regular about “most of the time?”

There’s no con in consistent

We don’t sleep “most nights,” nor do we eat “most days.” The only way to keep from conning ourselves is to be consistent in our efforts.

Architects don’t just dream of buildings; they draw the plans that contractors then build.

We build our dreams through daily practice. Daily, as in every day. Unfailingly.

(We don’t have to be rigid. It’s okay if our Reiki practice is shorter some days than others, as long as it happens and tomorrow we’re back to a full practice.)

More off or more on?

When we settle for off-and-on, “on” tends to be only when we’ve hit a rough patch. Then just as our balanced state is stabilizing, and our daily practice is about to install a level of steadiness in our lives that we never imagined, our Reiki practice is off again.

When our practice is as important to us as sleep, when we crave the nourishment we receive from practice as much as we crave food, we have connected with the power to transform our lives.

The power to transform our understanding and our lives is ever-present; our daily practice is the vehicle it needs to manifest.

How can I help?

Do you have a question about practice that is keeping you from practicing? I want to help you. Here are links that discuss the questions I’m asked most often:

Do you have doubts?

Do you have how-to questions about daily practice?

Would you like to communicate Reiki with more confidence?

Are there other questions I can help you with here? Please leave them as a comment below. If you are reading this in your inbox, click here and then scroll down to the comment section.

If you don’t receive my free monthly ReikiUpdate and would like to, sign up here.

Will we meet soon in Barbados, San Juan, or Atlanta?

Pretty bows pictured above are available on Etsy.

For the sake of clarity, this discussion of healing crisis will contrast conventional, science-based medicine with natural, tradition-based medicine. Please keep in mind that these two approaches are not mutually exclusive, and that the patient receiving both conventional care and traditional care is likely receiving the best possible health care.

The series on healing crisis (you’ll find links to earlier articles below) started because a physician who is also a Reiki practitioner (not trained by me) asked for advice on “how to deal with the emotional and physical healing crisis/cleansing effect.” He wrote that a healing crisis “can be very severe and even potentially dangerous in some vulnerable individuals.”

The conventional doctor’s confusion is understandable. He knows very well that the body has the capacity to heal itself. Physicians I work with often tell me most of the ailments they see at their offices would resolve without intervention, especially if patients would give the body what it needs to recover (rest and appropriate nourishment).

Healing crisis or adverse reaction?

But doctors are trained to think in terms of adverse reactions and unwanted side effects. When doctors see a patient feeling worse, they tend to see a patient getting worse. They don’t see a healing crisis.

Physicians are taught to intervene in order to manage adverse reactions and reduce the likelihood of a negative outcome. And they are taught to intervene earlier rather than later, hoping to minimize harm to the patient and prevent the situation going from bad to worse. (We won’t get into the unwanted side effects of aggressive treatment.)

A healing crisis, however, is not an adverse reaction in the medical sense. Rather, a healing crisis is an organic development of stimulating the body’s self-healing mechanisms.

Healing crisis and cure…and prevention

Healing crisis doesn’t occur in conventional medical treatment because conventional medicine attacks the disease directly. Rather than engaging the body, conventional interventions take over the fight.

Also, conventional medicine’s definition of cure is very specific. Once the relevant tests are clear, the patient is deemed cured. No attention is paid to healing the underlying causes of disease and degenerative conditions, as they are largely not detectable by conventional scientific tests (this is slowly beginning to change).

Traditional healing systems, however, have a comprehensive vision of cure and don’t treat the disease separately from the person. The goal of natural medicine is to restore the entire human system to balance; acute and chronic conditions are addressed within that context.

Healing crisis demystified

A healing crisis can seem magical, but it is decidedly not magical. It has a cause and it has an effect.

If a healing crisis happens, it happens as a natural consequence of strengthening the body’s own self-healing mechanisms. When the body’s self-healing mechanisms function more effectively, the body’s detox system is also functioning more effectively. If the system is detoxing faster than it is releasing, there may be a temporary exacerbation of symptoms. This malaise abates as soon as the system catches up to itself, at which point the person feels much better.

Healing crisis doesn’t happen in conventional medicine because conventional medicine treats the specific markers of a specific disease, rather than stimulating the human system to rebalance itself.

Beyond healing crisis: Hering’s Law

Nineteenth century physician and homeopath Constantine Hering observed the consistency of the body’s natural healing process and identified three elements in what is now called Hering’s Law:

• the healing process moves from the deepest, most subtle part of the system (emotions, mind, vital organs)
• symptoms reappear and disappear in the reverse timeline in which they originally occurred
• as healing progresses, symptoms move to the surface and extremities (skin, hands, feet)

If a person is consistently using natural medicine over a period of time, the specifics of the healing process described in Hering’s Law may be observed, especially if there is a continuing relationship with a traditional healing practitioner who is tracking the process.

If you have questions about healing crisis, please leave them in the comment section below. If you are reading this as an email, click the title to be taken to the website, where you can leave your question. Thank you for participating in this discussion.

Other articles in the healing crisis series:
Healing Crisis: Part One
Healing Crisis: What Is It?
Conventional Medicine and Traditional Medicine

Would you like to learn First degree Reiki in San Juan? We’re having a one-time only class February 21-23.

Click here to learn more about the upcoming Medical Reiki seminars in Barbados, Atlanta, and New York City.

Did you enjoy REIKI: A Comprehensive Guide? If so, please click here to nominate it as About.com’s Best Reiki Book.

The vintage doctor bag pictured above is available from Etsy’s junquegypsy.

GUESTBLOGGER Suneil Shrivastav saved his weekly allowance to finance learning to practice First degree Reiki when he was 14. I noticed his insightful comments and thoughtful questions on Facebook and here at ReikiCentral, and asked him to share about his experience teaching Reiki in a women’s prison. –

“I often wonder what my son looks like now. It’s been more than 15 years since I last saw him,” Shakeela Bi said, her despondence more apparent in her manner and her gaze than in her words.

Shakeela, 43, was serving life imprisonment in the women’s section of the Bhopal Central Jail in Bhopal, a small town in central India. I was there with nine other Reiki masters to teach 100 women inmates to practice First Degree Reiki. We had arranged for fifteen hours over two days.

This was a first for me, but three of my colleagues had already taught over five thousand people between them.

Most of the women came from a rural background, had no formal education, and spoke dialects of my language, Hindi, that are not native to me. Speaking clearly about Reiki can be challenging in the best of circumstances; the language hurdle made it even more so. I had to figure out what exactly the women asked, and answer their questions directly and simply, without getting bogged down with unnecessary concepts.

Thankfully, the group provided instant feedback. As soon as I went off-track, they would either get distracted or question me in a very straightforward way to clarify what I meant.

I experienced the initiations with the usual sense of peace and heightened awareness, and observed the familiar indrawn calmness on the students’ faces. One of the inmates who earlier had seemed defensive and tight-lipped radiated a sense of peacefulness after the initiations. Two others felt heat in their hands and tingly all over, while other women expressed feeling freed of a heavy burden.

Our Reiki classes were silently supervised by prison staff, who were curious about what they were seeing. Whereas the meditation classes given in the prison involved either intensive breathing exercises or stringent sitting schedules, the Reiki class was offered in relative comfort and ease.

Perhaps it seemed to the guards that nothing was happening. However, the effects of Reiki – peacefulness, lightness and a feeling of comfort – were soon apparent. At one point, the staff laughed out loud, asking us afterwards if it were the dullness of the timed flute music and the hypnotic drone of our voices that had lulled the prisoners to sleep. I found out only later that many prisoners suffered a lack of sleep from recurring nightmares.

All the Reiki teachers noticed that the women who practiced Reiki treatments in groups were more chatty amongst themselves, and shared smiles with us as well as the prison staff. This was a significant change from the initial wary, defensive glares we had observed.

At the end of the class, we happily announced that our shiny new students were now able to practice Reiki for the rest of their lives. A student said, “If what you told us is really true, that we can keep ourselves in a better frame of mind and better physical condition just by putting our hands on ourselves, then you are nothing short of miracle-workers!” I had witnessed more than a few tears during the class; now it was my turn.

Based on our introductory session with prison staff, the supervisory teams prepared a brief self-report questionnaire to document physical and non-physical changes. The students were asked to complete the questionnaire three weeks after the class.

Students who practiced Reiki regularly reported a decrease in their levels of physical discomfort and bodily aches and pains. The women also reported feeling calmer and happier. They attributed these changes to their practice sessions.

If you offer Reiki treatment or training in the correctional system, please tell us about it in the comment section below.

Photograph by Jesper Wilson.

The symptoms suffered in a healing crisis are the same symptoms suffered in disease. Disease states can be dangerous. What’s a practitioner to do?

Healing crisis is a fixture of traditional, natural medicine. In order to understand healing crisis in the context of today’s health care, let’s compare the paradigm of science-based conventional medicine with that of pre-scientific traditional medicine (sometimes referred to as alternative medicine).

Conventional medicine: it’s all about pathology

For all the talk of prevention, conventional medicine remains overwhelmingly reactive rather than preventive; far more healthcare resources and effort are used to address disease and trauma than to support health and well-being. That is not going to change any time soon.

Why not?

Conventional medicine has no model for health and well-being. All it has is the oft-quoted statement by the World Health Organization (WHO) that health is more than the absence of disease.

The scientific paradigm is based on the ability to measure objectively and replicate results. But how can conventional medicine measure “more than the absence of disease?”

Conventional medicine has few mechanisms to address the subtle components of health and well-being. It cannot notice something is going awry until the measurements are skewed to the threshold of pathology, at which point conventional medicine shifts abruptly into reactive mode.

By the time conventional medicine identifies an approaching train wreck in the human body, it’s rarely possible to prevent the wreck. Instead, the focus is on minimizing damage and prolonging life.

Traditional medicine: it’s all about function

Traditional, indigenous medical systems such as Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, Tibetan medicine, Native American medicine, and African medicine were used centuries before modern science was a twinkle in Descartes’s eye. Each system developed its own methodology and made use of what was locally available.

The primary goal of traditional medicine is to support balanced function throughout the human system so that the system’s self-healing mechanisms can maintain health. Disease treatment is secondary. Traditional practitioners gather information about their patients subjectively, without using technology.

Whereas conventional medicine gathers objective data and matches it to an appropriate standardized treatment, traditional medicine looks at each individual as a unique situation, customizing treatment accordingly.

Many traditional medical observations are obvious even to an untrained eye, such as the coloration of the tongue. Others — pulse-taking, for example — take a bit of training.

Putting together the various observations is what takes skill and experience. Nonetheless, observing skilled traditional practitioners over many decades, I have seen various practitioners relying on very subjective means make the same observations and similar assessments. As in conventional medicine, traditional practitioners may look at the same information and outline different treatment plans.

Traditional medical practitioners are taught to respect the body and observe with an attitude of watchful waiting, there to assist the body rather than override it. (In conventional health care, the training of midwives come closest to this perspective.) Traditional practitioners are taught to identify what the body is trying to do, and to work with that process as much as possible, gently redirecting rather than overriding the body.

Conventional vs. traditional cure

Conventional medicine is focused on measurable pathology. Traditional medicine is focused on balanced functioning. This difference in focus brings them to different perspectives on cure.

Conventional cure is tied to a specific diagnosis which is tied to specific pathology; the absence of that pathology is seen as cure. The larger picture is largely ignored. A patient can be cured of a disease and still be very sick. In the worst case scenario, the patient dies from attempts to effect cure.

The traditional understanding of cure is more comprehensive. Traditional medicine has models and mechanisms to address those aspects of health that WHO refers to as “more than the absence of disease.”

Traditional medicine detects subtle imbalances in function that are the precursors of physical pathology. Variations in function are tracked not only as the body moves toward disease, but also as it moves away from disease and toward stable health.

Now we have some context in which to understand healing crisis, and we will continue to discuss what healing crisis means in the next article in this series.

Integrative medicine

Meanwhile, there is increasing collaboration among conventional and traditional health care professionals. Sometimes this collaboration happens in integrative medicine clinics, other times the patient chooses to see practitioners from both camps, without the practitioners communicating with one another. Patients often don’t inform their doctors of what else they are doing.

If you have collaborated in an integrative health care situation as a professional, or have chosen to address your health using both conventional and traditional approaches, please click here to share you story, especially what worked well, what didn’t, and how you would do it differently next time.

If you are interested in collaborating with conventional health care providers either in hospitals or through referrals from physicians, the Introduction to Medical Reiki recorded webinar will give you context and detailed strategy, and which you can access whenever you want, as often as you want. Please click here for more information.

Other articles in the healing crisis series:
Healing Crisis: Part One
Healing Crisis: What Is It?
Healing Crisis and Cure

The Antique Chloroform Esmarch’s Dropper Print shown above is from Forgotten Pages.

I have a special invitation, just for you: Please join me in giving Reiki to the world.

Let’s do it now.

I’m not envisioning an elaborate network of distant treatment, nor suggesting we take to the streets and get our Reiki hands on a record number of people (although that’s not a bad idea).

Reiki now

My invitation is simple: whatever you’ve been plotting Reiki-wise, whether it’s starting daily self-practice or approaching a host partner to sponsor a public Reiki event in your community, take the first step now.

Right now, take a simple action to start the Reiki ball rolling out of your dreams onto a field where others can play too.

Do it right now to make sure it gets done. Don’t wait until it’s perfect enough or convenient enough. With whatever means you have at this moment, take action.

Your Reiki action

Your action might be writing the first draft of your event plan or writing the email asking for a meeting. It might be adding your daily Reiki self-treatment to your calendar, or contacting a Reiki buddy to meet regularly to exchange treatments.

Take an action that brings you closer to giving Reiki healing a larger presence in your life, and thus in the lives of others. One leads naturally to the other.

And if Reiki’s presence in your life is already overflowing the brim, take an action that will make Reiki practice available to others. Chances are that many people would appreciate the benefits you are experiencing, or other benefits you haven’t dreamed of, that would bring greater balance to their lives.

Think what your Reiki practice has brought to you, and how it has changed your life. Don’t you want others to have that opportunity? Take action.

Reiki audience participation time

Can’t think of an action to take right now? Ok, I’ll make it easy. Please share your Reiki story to delight and inspire us.

How did you come to practice Reiki? What has your practice given you? Scroll down to the comment section, or f you’ve received this as an email, click here to tell your Reiki story.

Next week we’ll return to our discussion of healing crises.

And please have a blessed, peaceful New Year.

Reiki Healing Crisis: Part One left us with this cliff-hanger –

A client receiving four Reiki treatments on four consecutive days often feels less than par on the third day. Is that third-day discomfort a healing crisis? Is there a point at which discomfort might be a sign of danger?

In order to shed some light on those questions, let’s clarify what a healing crisis really is.

What is a healing crisis?

The term healing crisis is used throughout natural medicine to refer to a very specific event that may or may not occur in an overall healing process.

What do I mean by natural medicine?

Natural medicine is a broad category of healing practices that are based in tradition. Natural medicine is distinct from conventional medicine (the medicine practiced by physicians and nurse practitioners), which is based in scientific evidence. Distinct, not mutually exclusive.

Natural medicine uses holistic, non-tech healing practices to address the underlying imbalances understood to create an internal environment in which symptoms and disease can occur.

The techniques used in natural medicine, while varied, all seek to engage the body’s self-healing mechanisms to remove imbalances and restore optimal health. A healing crisis may occur during that healing process.

Healing crisis is understood in natural medicine to be a usually brief period during which a client who initially felt improvement doesn’t feel so well. This temporary period of malaise occurs before improvement stabilizes.

What are the specifics of a healing crisis?

The malaise of a healing crisis falls into one or more of these categories:

• lethargy, fatigue
• feeling as if one might be “coming down with something”
• appearance of flu-like symptoms
• a return of specific recent symptoms
• a recurrence of much older symptoms.

The sequence that characterizes a healing crisis is:

• initial improvement
• temporary aggravation
• stabilized improvement.

A healing crisis is typically short. It may last a few hours at the end of the day and be gone by morning. Or it might last a day or even two. It will not usually be longer than that unless a more imposing healing approach (such as fasting) is being used by someone with chronic illness (hopefully with proper supervision).

Healing crisis not

If the person’s symptoms do not fall into any of the categories above, and do not occur in the sequence described, the event is not a healing crisis.

If a client has an immediate ill effect during a treatment, without having had a period of feeling better, that is not a healing crisis. If someone leaves a treatment feeling well but falls on the way home and is injured, that is not a healing crisis.

Such situations need to be addressed differently than one would address a healing crisis.

Why does a healing crisis happen?

According to natural medicine, a healing crisis is a period in the self-healing process in which the system is cleansing itself of toxins.

If the person is basically healthy, with self-healing mechanisms functioning well, a healing crisis might still occur, but it will likely be mild. A person who is suffering symptoms is more likely to have a noticeable healing crisis.

How can we be sure it’s a healing crisis?

The symptoms of a healing crisis may be the same symptoms associated with the disease. This can be confusing. Alarming even.

Certainty about healing crisis is only available after the fact, once the client has emerged comfortable and healthier. That said, a hallmark of a healing crisis is that the person recognizes the experience as somehow beneficial and retains a sense of well-being despite the discomfort.

When experiencing a true healing crisis, the person has an intuitive recognition that it is part of a curative process and is not alarmed. This is true even for people who are usually anxious to manage symptoms. The wisdom inherent in the human system is asserting itself, and the enhanced awareness of the client is a sign of that process.

Is a healing crisis ever dangerous? That’s our next topic to explore when we resume this discussion. Meanwhile, please click here to share your experiences of healing crisis.

A Reiki practitioner and physician recently asked “how to deal with the emotional and physical healing crisis/cleansing effect.” She was concerned that “it can be very severe and even potentially dangerous in some vulnerable individuals.”

It is surprising how often this question comes up. Surprising because in 25 years of professional Reiki practice, I have never seen a severe healing crisis.

But since questions about healing crises come up so often, let’s take a thorough look. Here is Part One.

Reiki healing process

When I offer Reiki treatment, that’s precisely what I do — offer. I’m not imposing anything beyond the light touch of my Reiki hands. This is my understanding of Reiki practice, that it is more mere presence effect than active intervention, human-being more than human-doing.

As my hands linger in the placement sequence, my client’s system responds to the Reiki connection from within. Her system begins to reorganize itself toward greater harmony, coherence, and balance.

In this way, Reiki treatment is quite unlike the oppositional medical approach to cure. Whereas conventional medicine uses drugs and/or procedures to oppose what’s happening in the body in an attempt to correct a specific problem, the benefits of Reiki healing emerge organically from the system’s enhanced state of balance. Medicine recognizes and values this balanced state, which it calls homeostasis.

I have no control over the process through which my client’s system moves toward greater balance; I can neither speed it up nor slow it down. Moving my hands through the placement protocol may effect my client’s experience of the treatment, if she is awake enough to notice, but since her healing response comes from deep within her own system, it doesn’t significantly effect her overall healing process.

The experience of the Reiki treatment itself is generally comfortable and deeply relaxing. Snoring is often heard.

Reiki healing: it ain’t over till it’s over

The client’s healing response continues long after the Reiki treatment has ended. How long? We can never know. The process is too complex and there are too many variables.

To help my clients recognize what’s happening as their body’s self-healing mechanisms go about doing what they do best, I ask them to notice anything that feels different in the days ahead — quality of sleep, choice of food, mental clarity, emotional balance, how they feel upon awakening, how they interact with others, any way in which it feels more enjoyable to simply be themselves.

I encourage clients to do whatever they feel the need to do in terms of their medical care, and to otherwise follow the body’s lead, going to bed early if they feel tired. The less we burden the body with unnecessary activity, the more resources it has for healing.

After the first session, I discuss with my client how she would like to continue. Some return for treatment on four consecutive days. Others choose to start with twice a week or three treatments in two weeks, tapering from there as needed. Some sign up for my next First degree training session.

Traditional Four Reiki Treatment Series

Clients who feel an imperative often choose the traditional four treatments in four days to give a solid foundation to their healing process. On the third day or evening of the series, many clients feel a bit out of sorts. Symptomatic discomfort may return, and a sense of being unsettled. Sometimes the third treatment does not feel as restful as the others.

Discomfort resolves in the fourth treatment, and the client finishes the series feeling renewed and hopeful that she can continue to heal.

Was that third-day discomfort a healing crisis? Is there a point at which discomfort might be a sign of danger? Good questions. In the next post, we’ll take a look at them, and at what a healing crisis is. To be continued…

Other articles in the healing crisis series:
Healing Crisis: What Is It?
Conventional Medicine and Traditional Medicine
Healing Crisis and Cure

Vintage image from TammyTutterow.

Are you a doubting Thomas? Would you like to be?

Did I hear you say, “I doubt it?”

Perhaps you’ve never thought of doubt as something positive, but it can be, if you use it deliberately to develop your understanding.

Let’s call this practice Productive Doubting.

Even the minds of Easy Believers have currents of skepticism. The mind naturally questions, and when we don’t engage in conscious questioning, unrecognized doubt undermines our happiness in ways we could have prevented.

Doubt is not black-and-white and it doesn’t announce its presence, but careful questioning uncovers pockets of doubt in even the most strongly entrenched belief system.

Transforming doubt

Conviction is arguably the greatest gift of transformational practices such as Reiki and meditation.

Conviction is not belief, but rather a profound inner knowing that supports us through times of challenge, a compassionate knowing that is steady and deep without being rigid or positional.

The process of developing conviction is gradual and developmental. It happens invisibly as we practice consistently over time, and we cannot fast track it.

But we can organically accelerate the process somewhat by identifying where we lack conviction and acknowledging the presence of doubt.

Uncovering doubt

What do you doubt? (This is a time for deep self-honesty.)

Do you doubt you can have happier holidays this year?

Do you doubt your healing practice is a benefit to your clients?

Do you doubt you can sustain meaningful, enduring relationships?

Do you doubt you have a purpose in life?

Here’s another approach to Productive Doubting:
what have you assumed to be true, and never questioned? (Sometimes these beliefs hide in sentences that include the word “never.”)

Productive Doubting reveals how our continuing practice is transforming our awareness in ways we might have otherwise missed. This in turn gives us patience with the process, and conviction in the effectiveness of practice.

What understanding or opportunity has opened up for you because you chose to doubt what you were told, by someone else or by your own mind? Please share in a comment below.

Ever notice that when we feel bad, no matter how sure we are that we want to feel better, what we really want to do in that moment are things that would most assuredly make us feel worse, if not immediately, then not too soon after?

It’s the Snowball Effect. The mind has momentum to keep making choices in the direction in which we are already headed.

Enter Chinese wisdom. A Chinese folk saying reminds us that if we don’t change course, we will end up where we are heading.

Changing direction

It’s clear that when we feel badly in ourselves, if we want to heal, we need to choose a different direction.

Pivot in place. About face. Resist the instinct-of-the-moment. Do precisely what you do not in that moment want to do: Practice.

Practice whatever practice you practice. Watch your breath. Place your Reiki hands. Repeat your mantra. Roll out the yoga mat (and use it). Take an action that brings you back to yourself.

A Taoist proverb advises: When you have a disease, do not try to cure. Find your center and you will be healed.

First practice

Practice. Then be bad if you want to.

But of course then you won’t want to be bad. Once you feel good, momentum starts working for you. You want to do good things to protect that good feeling, that I’m-having-a-good-time-being-myself-just-the-way-I-am feeling.

Even when when no one else is looking.

And even when they are.

Please tell us about a time when inserting even a brief practice — meditation, Reiki, yoga, mindfulness, your choice — turned your state around and headed you back in the direction of health and happiness. It could be something as simple as placing a Reiki hand on your heart before you eat, or before you hit “send.”

“There are dreamers and there are realists in this world.

“You’d think the dreamers would find the dreamers and the realists would find the realists, but more often than not, the opposite is true.

“You see, the dreamers need the realists to keep them from soaring too close to the sun.

“And the realists? Well, without the dreamers, they might not ever get off the ground.”

This bit of wisdom from the popular television comedy Modern Family set me thinking. I got the drift, and agree completely, but the language seemed a bit polarizing.

In that scenario, the realists are the debunkers, the naysayers. But what makes their rebuttal more real than what the dreamers see? It didn’t seem fair, or accurate, to put reality solely in their domain.

Visionaries and Builders

What if the dreamers were “visionaries,” and the realists were “builders?” While we each have some of both (switching sides as we please), these two functional categories of people truly need one another. Reality — making the dream happen — requires input from both sides. The vision needs a form where the world can participate.

Visionaries see the long term while builders focus on a more immediate future. Builders gather the temporal power needed to make something happen; visionaries see a subtle, transcendent power at play.

Visionaries warn builders of the unwanted side effects of what they are building; builders fashion visionaries’ dreams into a shared  reality.

What ultimately comes into form is a co-creation of visionaries and builders, and it needs constant tweaking.

What’s Your Vision?

As more people hold a vision, the likelihood of the vision being built increases.

Spiritual practice of any form –  meditation, Reiki, yoga, etc. — makes us both visionary and builder. As we practice, we give form to our vision in the world, as ourselves.

Actually being our vision (with thankfulness, work diligently) makes it more likely that our vision will show up in the world around us.

What’s your vision, for yourself and for the world? Please click here to share it as a comment.

The illustration is William Blake’s Jacob’s Ladder.