I recently looked at my list of actions for 2017 that is posted on my bathroom wall and noticed that one of my goals was not going to be met. And I did not have a good reason as to why it was not accomplished by now. The goal was to post 12-15 blog articles this year, and since I had the habit of writing an article for each monthly newsletter, I figured this would be an easily attained goal. However at the beginning of the year I could not see that far into the future to know that I would not manage to write one for the December newsletter and in doing so create a challenge for myself in attaining this goal.
That did not sit well with me since I was the only person responsible for it, and I could not blame anyone else for mismanaging my time and preventing me from writing the article. Part of me was looking at this as a failure which could have easily been avoided if I would have found a way to write the article in time for the December newsletter. At the end of November, I was able to find (what I thought were) good reasons for justifying my inability to write it, but now I see that choice has now made me work harder at the end of the year to accomplish my original goal. It just delayed the work. It didn’t make it disappear.
I could choose to take the easy route. Do no work and be okay with calling myself a failure. Or I could do some work and achieve the goal.
Relax and fail. Work and achieve. Relax or Work. Fail or Achieve. The choice is mine.
Read moreWe are all reminded at this time of year to be thankful since we have Thanksgiving coming up, yet I’m reminded of another day this month that holds a special significance to me, the day my grandmother passed away. I’m not going to try to bring your spirits down in any way by telling you about Grandma Chuma’s death, but rather I’m going to tell you about how it impacted and deepened my relationship to her and “the other side”.
This all happened 5 years ago.
It was 2012, and I had just resigned from my teaching position at the high school and became a Reiki Master. I was diving head first into spiritual living and learning as much as I could about the healing arts, intuitive development, and other topics that were far removed from the linear thinking and rational modeling that mathematics had provided me for more than a decade.
I was regularly listening to a podcast called Psychic Teachers which was hosted by two women that were college professors for their day jobs and psychics on the side. One was a medium and Reiki Master, and the other was a tarot card reader and an intuitive.
Each week they would discuss a topic like mediumship, astrology, and oracle cards, and it was a great way for me to start opening up my own intuitive abilities and pull away from the need to be able to explain things logically and scientifically. The Psychic Teachers often talked about connecting with loved ones who have passed, and the techniques they discussed helped me on the days that followed my grandmother's passing.
After I got the call that she was gone I grabbed my copy of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and read aloud some prayers to help her soul transition from her physical body into the afterlife. When I finished the prayers I sat in meditation and watched an incredible scene unfold in my mind.
Read moreComing up on the 10th anniversary of my first Reiki attunement I want to share with you the real story of what got me into Reiki. Last year I wrote the story of the first Reiki class I took (you can read that story here), but I didn’t go into detail of what my impetus was in studying Reiki in the first place. I’ll admit that I’m a little frightened of what you may think of me after hearing this story, but this is something I share with all of my Reiki students to help break the ice in the beginning of class. Plus, it’s my chance to shine light on my shadow side so that I can take its power away. I see the fear. I recognize the fear. I act anyway.
And here we go with the real story of what attracted me to Reiki.
Read moreThis month's article is a long one, and I'm not really sure how many of you will want to endure it. It's a description of my experience during a 10-day Vipassana Course that I took in August 2014. For those of you that aren't familiar with it, it's a ten-day silent meditation course. It was an incredible experience and quite difficult for me to summarize it without going into the depths and importance of some of the insights that I had during those days.
For those that want the highlights, the themes of the days were as such:
Day 0 Carpool
Day 1 Frustration
Day 2 Anger
Day 3 Distractions
Day 4 Sacral Chakra: Creativity and Sexuality
Day 5 I'M NOT ENLIGHTENED!
Day 6 Energy of an 8 year old boy
Day 7 Death
Day 8 Re-birthing Ideas
Day 9 Visitation
Day 10 Scorpio
If you want to take a journey through my experience, I invite you to continue reading the detailed account below.
Read moreI started house shopping in September 2010 when I realized I had enough money for a down payment and thought I better jump at the opportunity to purchase a house in Los Angeles before the market picked up again and the opportunity slipped through my hands. By March 2011 I had looked at dozens of houses, written several offers, and still had nothing to show for it. In the meantime I had taken three Reiki classes in less than four months time with my second Reiki Master, Marla Mervis, (Check her out www.marlamervisreiki.com. She’s incredible!) and all the energy spun me into a deep depression.
I was easily irritated, unhappy at work, and felt like I was spread to thin with all the obligations and responsibilities I had.
Upon recognizing this, I pulled back from socializing with friends and knew that I had to analyze my situation and do some soul searching, and then a friend of mine invited me to attend a service at Agape International Spiritual Center.
I had never been to Agape and I was excited to go because I had heard so many great things from others about it.
Read moreAs I sat facing the doctor from the other side of his desk, I could feel my muscles beginning to tense up and my heart starting to race while he told me he was sending me to the emergency room for an immediate MRI because of the results of my blood work that was drawn just an hour prior to sitting in front of him. I had never had an MRI before and I was getting nervous because this was all happening so quickly. I had come to Urgent Care because of a mild stomach discomfort I would get after I eating, and after a couple weeks of hearing me comment about it my roommate urged me to get it checked out.
After the MRI, I went back to the doctor’s office to wait for the results. The waiting room is the worst place to be in times like these. This is when the mind likes to travel to those dark and scary places.
Read moreAs difficult as it is to believe for me now, there was once a time before I was a meditator. Ten years have passed since I took my first meditation class, and I can honestly say that my life has drastically improved ever since. Through meditation I have learned so much about myself and have become a better person because of it. I have been able to notice tension in my body and consciously release it in order to be more relaxed, and I have been able to recognize when I'm paying attention to the task at hand or daydreaming and not present. I have learned to observe my thoughts as they are without judging myself harshly for the ones that I would rather not appear in my mind, and I have also learned to cultivate more positive thoughts and perceptions on life.
I'm not going to tell you that meditating is easy, and it definitely was no walk in the park for me in the beginning.
I was very frustrated at my inability to remain focused on my breath for more than two or three inhales at a time during those early meditation classes, however after taking a weekly class for several months I made a commitment to myself to meditate every morning as soon as I got out of bed. On some days it was easier for me to focus, and I could see progress being made. On other days my inability to focus seemed to stir up harsh self-criticism which I could have easily used to tell myself that meditation is not for me and that I should quit the practice.
But that's just it. Meditation is a practice. It's not a perfection. You see the results of meditating from doing it consistently.
There’s a quote from Zig Ziglar that I used to have posted in my classroom that said, “People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily.” I could say the same thing about the effects of meditation. They won’t last unless you do it every day.
Nutritionists will tell you that you can’t really determine the effects of a change in your diet for 2-3 weeks when you follow the plan daily so don’t go into meditating thinking you can get great results by sporadically meditating. Make a commitment to yourself to meditate daily for 21 days and then assess how you are doing.
Read moreBill Nye, the famed Science Guy, has a new show released on Netflix and being a fan of this science educator I decided to dive in and watch a few episodes the other day. The second episode caught my attention because it was on debunking claims from alternative medicine. Although it didn’t bring up Reiki specifically, it reminded me of some of the opposing views that I as a Reiki Practitioner have to face in the world. Someone even said that I was doing “the work of the devil” a few years ago when referring to my Reiki practice, and these types of thoughts and beliefs about what I and other practitioners do can get me down. I’ll even admit that there are times when I think of myself as a “snake oil salesman” and charlatan when comparing what I do to doctors and other medical professionals because I don’t know nor can I explain scientifically what, if anything, is actually happening during a Reiki treatment.
The practice of medicine uses scientifically based methodologies that have shown to produce consistent and repeatable results time and time again, and Reiki has yet to be consistent in its results nor has enough research been done to refute the claims that is no better than a placebo. With articles such as “Reiki is Nonsense” (2015), “Reiki: Fraudulent Misrepresentation” (2014), and “Giving placebos such as reiki to cancer patients does more harm than good” (2011), it makes it hard to share openly in public what I do for a living, and even harder to talk about it some family members.
These critiques of the use of Reiki helps drive me to find out what research has been done and to look at what the results say, and surprisingly there are a lot of studies that have been done. Not all research has followed the strict guidelines of being a double-blind study, but more and more of them are starting to show up. I’d like to share some of the research and articles that I have found with you, and let you come to your own conclusions and conduct your own research.
Read moreInspired by the artist that spoke last night
I'll attempt to write a rhyme that flows faster than light.
But there I go again,
Comparing myself to others
When all of my pain comes from focusing on these druthers.
I'll prevent myself from editing
As is so often the case in this place called my mind
Where you'll find that these thoughts are not even mine.
Yet they come from a place we might call the Divine
Even though I have no thought of what I will find.
When I look to the depth of the world of inside...
Read moreWhile perusing through my old journals, I came across a couple of entries that I titled “Why it’s time to Believe in Reincarnation.” In those entries I went into a rant about how we are destroying our planet and that by believing in reincarnation we might take better care of it because we would be destined to live on it again for many lifetimes. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have a home to come back to in our next life.
Aside from that rant, I found that I had somehow explained to myself how we are connected to the beginning of time as we currently define it in through science (The Big Bang) and that we will continue to be connected to the cosmos long after we die.
I’m sure there are many “holes” and assumptions in my explanation, which would make it a terrible logical argument, but this all came to me in a flash over two mornings in 2014. If you willing to set aside judgments and beliefs for a few minutes and allow your mind to go on a journey, then I invite you to read further.
Read moreLet's start with you. You are the center of the universe so I think it's a good place to begin. Let's represent you with a point, Point Y as shown in Figure 1. Since a point is defined in Euclid's Elements (the book that contained the ancient geometric understandings of Greece) as "that which has no part", we can safely say that you are nothing. You have no dimension. That is until you start to think.
From there you start to have thoughts of things outside of yourself and create lines of thought, or rather, rays of thought. These rays begin to create single dimensions stemming out from you and reaching out in a specific direction or on a line of thought. See Figure 2. You can have many thoughts reaching out from you, and thoughts on different subjects go in different directions as represented in Figure 3.
Read moreAt the beginning of the year, I like to take a look at what to focus on in terms of my life and my work because each year has a different energy to it, and it moves in 9 year cycles according to numerology. First, let's take a look at the Universal Year 2017, and then I'll explain to you the energies of the cycle and how you can figure out where you are in your cycle.
Numerology collapses all numbers down to one of the 9 single digit numbers, and each of the numbers 1-9 has its own energy and personality that it describes. To find out what single digit number 2017 collapses to we must add together all of the digits within it.
2 + 0 + 1 + 7 = 10
This gives us a double digit number which we must add together again.
1 + 0 = 1
Therefore, 2017 is a 1 year which means that on a global scale this is a year of new beginnings and the start of a 9 year cycle. This year will have a sense of new-ness in the way we see things on a large scale (countries, governments, corporations, large populations, etc).
The 9 year cycle flows like this:
Read moreMarie jumped out of my hands staring me down with large questioning eyes and exclaimed, “HOW DID YOU KNOW???” I jumped back startled by her response to my question, and then she gave me the whole story. But before I fill you in on her story I need to tell you how we got to that point.
I was at the Saddle Ranch in Universal CityWalk to see some friends play in a band showcase when Marie showed up looking…
Read moreAfter sharing about my first reiki attunement last month, I thought I would continue the story and tell you about my first reiki treatment. I went about things a little backwards from a lot of reiki practitioners that I meet in that I first was attuned before I had ever experienced a reiki treatment. I was ready to go out and give reiki to everyone that was willing and interested, but I had no idea what they would be experiencing or even what they should expect to experience. All I could do was regurgitate what my first reiki teacher, Julie Raftery, told me in the class. After a couple short sessions I gave to friends I realized I need to experience a treatment for myself so that I could speak about reiki from a place of experience with those I would be giving reiki to, and learn from both mine and their experiences during the sessions.
I looked through my notes to find Julie's business card, mustered up the courage to call her, and dialed the number.
Read moreOn October 20th I will be celebrating 9 years since I received my first Reiki attunement, and I had no idea at the time just how much of an impact that class would have on the direction my life would take. Not a clue did I have that in four and a half years I would resign and walk away from a career that I planned for and built my life around. I didn't even have a hint that I would go on to become a Reiki Master and teach others this healing art known as Reiki. As a matter of fact, I didn't even really know what I was getting into. At this point all I had known about Reiki was what I read about in a book...
Read moreI take pride in being the calm, well-mannered guy when I’m working or when I’m just hanging out with friends. I keep myself together and help others cultivate the same inner peace that I strive for on a daily basis.
The last couple weeks, though, have been filled with inner turmoil and anger.
Read moreAs the end of class bell was ringing one day in 7th grade science class, I started feeling a little funny. Not the kind of funny you get in junior high when the girl you have a crush on sends you a note, but more like the strange feeling you get the first time the dentist gives you laughing gas and the world starts becoming more and more distant a n d d r e a m l i k e. . .
The peripheral vision on my right side started to become sparkly and slowly started disappearing. The students were all getting up to leave for the next class, and I carefully started to follow along as best I could, still feeling spaced out and now unable to see to my right.
Read moreHave you ever had a goal in mind, and as much progress as you made towards it, you never seemed to achieve it?
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