Just for today: the little understood precepts of Reiki
The healing power of the five Reiki precepts
Just for today, don’t worry.
Just for today, don’t be mad.
Just for today, honor your parents, teachers, and elders.
Just for today, earn your living honestly.
Just for today, show gratitude to all living things.
Reiki energy is a powerful healing tool and can help you align with your own inner truth. There have been a large number of people around the world who are learning Reiki. Many of these people use the precepts lightly, as a way of thinking about work, but these precepts contain a powerful healing mystery in themselves.
The precepts contain a pattern for living a life of constant peace and harmony. They are not something to strive for, but rather, if you look closely, you will see a treasure map to live a life of wonder, joy, and awe. Although these precepts appear in various essays from book to book and teacher to teacher, they are basically the same with one exception: not all versions begin with the words “Just for today.”
“Just for today …” These three words, alone, can heal, because you can do anything for just one day. Alcoholics Anonymous and Anonymous’ other 12-step programs work well because of this one day at a time concept. But it also contains, and even more deeply, the concept of “being in the NOW.” It helps you remember that the past is gone. It only exists in your mind. The future has not arrived. It also exists only in your mind. NOW is truly the only place where you can truly live in peace. No past; without anger, guilt, resentment. No future; without fear, anxiety, manipulation.
In the first precept, “Just for today, don’t worry,” you are given a hint that you might be living too long in the future. The future is the place we are all going to worry about. But in reality, the future does not exist. It is simply a story that you have created in your mind, and then it becomes so real that it takes you out of your current life. The imaginary future is where the worried spend most of their days. And for those who believe in self-fulfilling prophecies, they will virtually create the future they care about in one way or another.
In the second precept, “Just for today, don’t be angry,” you can see that you may be living too much in the past. Counting old injustices day after day places you in the imaginary world of the past, as you literally interpret that circumstances only exist now, in your mind. As you go through this story over and over again, it rekindles anger and other negative emotions, triggering chemical reactions in your body that can literally make you sick, sometimes in the most extreme ways. And you are stealing the present. Thinking of circumstances filled with anger or guilt in your mind virtually guarantees that you will continue to attract circumstances and people into your life that make you angry or feel guilty.
In the third precept, “Just for today, honor your parents, teachers and elders,” is the notion of humility in honoring those who have participated in our becoming who we are. In our modern world, counselors and psychologists often ask us to analyze our past, and many of our current neuroses and psychoses are rooted in family and parental “dysfunction.” At that point, many of us become separated from our parents and spend a good deal of time blaming our parents for much of what we have become. Honestly, we couldn’t find much to honor while digging into our past. However, again, by choosing to enter infinity NOW, you can see that the past is gone. All the pain resulting from the past only moves to the present moment only in your mind. At the present moment, you and only you have responsibility for your behavior. Not only can you forgive, but you see that in this moment there is nothing and no one to forgive, only the stillness of life itself, breathing through you. You can honor all your teachers, all the elders who have gone before you, including your parents. Even your reactions to them have been valuable lessons. In the present moment, you can see that you are who you are because of these prompts.
The fourth precept, “Just for today, earn your living honestly,” also brings the infinite NOW. If you are aware and aware of your true self here and now, you cannot violate yourself or others. It is only in the unawareness of fear (a symptom of living too much in the future) or anger, resentment, or guilt (a symptom of living too much in the past) that someone would work in a position or perform their job in a way that it was not aligned with his true calling or that he was doing harm to others or the world in some way. Clearly rooted in the NOW, there is trust and knowledge, love and truth. It would work for good and the world would respond in kind to support your well-being.
In the fifth precept, “Just for today, show gratitude to all living beings”, the principles are closer to the belief system of its founder, Mikao Usui. Because if we delve into the Buddhist teachings, you will find the concept of reincarnation, where you are told that during the millions of incarnations that you have had, literally all sentient beings have been your mother in one lifetime or another and should be honored and grateful. simply by giving you birth and life. This combination of lives is again more clearly found in the NOW. If you sit or walk in silence, peacefully noting the stillness of nature in which sound and movement arise, you begin to see the connection of all things and realize your place in the landscape of life by looking at around you. In stillness you find peace. In the stillness without a past, without a future, you are able to show gratitude for life itself. You can forgive and release the past, and you free yourself from fear and worry about the future.
In these five little teachings you are healed and you can heal others. These ideas lay the foundation for any Reiki healing practice and should be viewed with reverence in their simplicity. Underneath all the historical teachings and information given on sacred symbols and hand positions is the fundamental healing nature of Reiki. Namaste ‘