Answering a client question about Reiki.

I have a question here from a client that allowed me to post my response to share with others.

He asked why Reiki appears to fail to heal at times.

Now, I am a Reiki practitioner however I have never charged anyone for my Reiki work. The truth is I work with animals 98% of the time. I don't mean I work with people that have animals, I work with animals directly. Animals don't pay for my services but I don't let that stop me from offering and giving them Reiki.

This is a very important question for me since we lost (the bodies of) two of our closest loved ones in this last two months.

Rogan enjoyed life to the fullest. She was a large Shepard Cross with only ten years of life on that body. She was enthusiastic, inquisitive, profoundly intelligent and most noticeably, incredibly loving. Without any warning at all, she died. Her body just literally turned on her and she died. It was a condition called bloat that killed her in a matter of two hours. We rushed her to the emergency and they told us her stomach and completely twisted and that while surgery was possible, her prognosis was grim. Even with surgery, her survival was a torturous proposition. Oh my God!! I couldn't believe I was being forced to make this decision. My husband and I were living a nightmare in that moment. We let her go as peacefully as possible on July 20 2010 at 10:30 pm.
There isn't a single moment that goes by that I don't second guess myself and wonder why I didn't just make them do the surgery. That as long as she survived that, I could get her back to health with love and Reiki. There are many other success stories why didn't I? Why did we choose to let her die?

Before I answer that I will tell you what happened next.

Shortly after the death of our Rogan, my big dog and 'sister' in a sense, I noticed there was something wrong with one of our cats.

Theo was born in my sons closet. We have shared his company for twelve and a half years until one day he stopped eating. I began force feeding him but it wasn't working and off to the vet we went. This was overwhelming. Our dear Rogan had so recently died suddenly and now we were told Theo had liver disease and he was really sick. This time however, the vet said there were great hopes for his recovery. We got a feeding tube in place and I nurtured him constantly. After a short stay at the vet clinic, he was released home in much worse condition than he had gone in. A week at home and I knew he was not recovering. My Theo kitty was dying! Despite the feeding tube and the medicines and the constant care and attention, Theo was dying. I took Theo back to the vet and me and my husband held him and loved him as we let him go HOME on August 9 2010 at 4:30 pm. A year to the day that my 97 year old Grandfather had made the journey HOME.

I wished that I had never put Theo through all that treatment. In fact, I wished I had not taken him to the vet at all. This went a long way in answering my questions about why we didn't 'save' Rogan.
I felt frantic when I found out Theo was sick and despite the fact that I knew he was in fact dying, I went ahead with treatment. I shouldn't have. I should have held him and loved him through the process without allowing the terrifying hospital stay and the pain of feeding tubes and questionable drugs. I need to learn to allow Reiki to help me to remain strong and calm as we approach our deaths.

The thing is that Reiki couldn't stop these animals from dying because dying is part of life. It is a transition we all must make at some point.

Going over all this trauma (and for me this was traumatic despite my Reiki training and Shamanic knowledge. I am so emotionally attached to the animal family I care for that it is like ripping out a piece of my heart to have to go through this with them) has taught me alot about how I need to use the Reiki method to help achieve the highest good for the receiver which does not always mean prolonging life.

I have a sixteen (very nearly seventeen) year old dog, five cats that range between sixteen and twelve and a half, an eight year old pleco (fish) and two - two and a half year old budgies. I will not abandon them so the fact of all this is I will have to experience all of their moments of passing (provided I don't go first). I have to adjust my practice of Reiki to include helping others die gracefully and without fear.

Death is not failure but it does hurt the ones left behind. I am only just beginning to recover enough to be able to use Reiki to heal my grief. These friends that have now past on were part of my daily life, part of my daily experience of joy and love and they are not here anymore. I have had amazing meditations, dreams and visions about them since their move and I honor the process as much as I can through my own suffering but did Reiki fail to heal them? Did I not use Reiki properly? These animals are loved and have experienced blessed lives. Because they still seem too young and because I was not expecting them to go it does not mean they shouldn't have. If we continue to view death as failure then we will see Reiki and every other healing modality fail much of the time. Everybody dies. What we can do with Reiki is enhance the quality of the remaining life we have on the physical level and in that process learn what it really means to embrace the process of death and dying. The appearance of failure is an illusion caused by fear and grief.

I am still going through the hardest parts of this journey and I don't discount my grief on losing their bodies but there has been no failure here. No intentional suffering was caused to anyone, this is what it means to live and love.


Zuesa

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