There are times in our lives when we meet someone and just know how profound the intersection of lives can be. My Reiki Master is just such a person. I believe that she is a true witch, half here and half in the spirit realm, and she is in touch with her own magic in a way that I have never come across before.
To anyone who knows “vanilla” me, a paragraph like that would never come from these lips. To even my wife, the reaction would be bemusement. I grew up in conservatively, attended a religious school, went on to the right university, married the right girl, had the right job, and have lived a classically wasp life—outwardly J. Crew. Makes me want to vomit!
And yet, lurking inside of me, in my shadows (which by the way are vast in comparison to visible me—visible me is but a tree, but inner me is an endless forest), is a spirit world that I have tucked away and hidden because it was a fragile, happy, safe place where I have been able to retreat to. And I learned to hide it early because of the judgement and approbation of those around me.
I wrote about my first experiences with Reiki and this woman here. I left her studio in a state of grace. My skin tingled, deep into me, and I felt as if my feet were no longer touching the ground. We had not booked a time to come back. I had no idea when or if I would. I had asked her, “do I come again?” And she said, “you know where I am. You will come, or not, when you are ready.”
My number one champion, Mistress, knowing how impactful my time with the Reiki Master was, asked me wistfully if I would go again. I hadn’t really thought about it, but said “yes,” knowing that I wanted to, but also wanted to do my homework, the work given to me by the Reiki Master. Mistress also gives me homework, and I have to say that getting homework from these friends is very meaningful to me, sacred, and requires me to honour its content and the spirit in which it is given, by being assiduous.
I have written previously about how important it is to me to prepare my body and mind before seeing Mistress—this can be a process that lasts a few hours, but most typically lasts for days, or the entire week before I know I will see her. My time with her is precious, and it is both out of respect for her and for myself, that I take this seriously. It helps put me into a positive head space for connecting. Mistress has begun to insert elements into this process, something which I find delectable, and which I will write about at some point soon, as who better to help me find my path to service through presence than the person I seek to serve?
A few days ago I was struck by an intense desire to see the Reiki Master again. I called her on the phone and she answered on the first ring. I started to say who it was. “Yes, I remember you,” she said.
“I was wondering if I could come and see you again.”
“Yes, but it would have to be today, as I am leaving for Brazil tomorrow, and I left my diary open for the day.”
“When is convenient?”
“Come in a few hours,” she said, so I did.
The rituals of cleansing the space and incantations were the same, her purification of me with burning sage and also of herself, was also the same. We sat down to talk, and I told her of my progress with my homework, but also of how I felt leaving her studio last time, and how I felt after, and what it was like to meet my Spirit Guide. She was pleased. But this session was to prove very different than the last one. She was very direct with me. Very. This is a snapshot of our conversation.
“You have a tendency to look for guidance outside of yourself. But your best guide is you…and then you keep searching, but what you are searching for is you, and it is already in you.”
“I feel I need to be commanded,” I replied.
“Everything that you need is projected outwards into a female figure, and you are expecting validation, approval, and nourishment. That’s why you don’t like your male body. You reject everything you were born with. You disown you. You abandon yourself to search outwards to a female figure, because it mirrors what you think you are missing. You are searching for you through the image of the Mother you have never had. The challenge for you is how to stop looking out, and stay instead with yourself.”
I agreed with her diagnosis. Spot on, really.
“Stop being a searcher. Look inward. See who you are, be with you in your presence. Ask yourself ‘why don’t I like what I am seeing?’ And wait for answers. By asking someone else to guide you, you are giving your power away. Ask yourself why, why am I giving my power away?” She regards my searching, or love of external sources of structure, or continual looking for another thing, as a reflection of this. She went on.
“You are telling yourself, ‘I am not enough,’ so you pay [on this point I did not agree, and have I written why that is true in other posts, mainly this one]…’because what I am, who I am, is not enough.’ And your own identity is rejected by yourself—and that is why you reject your male body.”
It gets better.
“We give what we want to receive. It is always like a bargain. You are trading. And your sense of worthiness is destroyed by this. You were unworthy even of breastfeeding, of having a loving and nurturing relationship with your mother, and so your idolatry of the female has become your source of nourishment, and this affects every aspect of your life.”
Gosh.
“Spend time being with you. Be vigilant, don’t look outside…don’t buy the admiration of people you adore. Stop the idolatry. Stop the co-dependency.”
We talked for a while about how Mistress has begun to reframe my relationship to my own masculinity in several ways, both intentionally and simply in reflection of her own thoughts. [Blogged about here, here, and how this is affecting me here]. One of the things I felt when Mistress told me about things that she admired in the male were many things that I am proud of in myself. I shared this, and the Reiki Master asked me to enumerate them. And so I told her, “I am protective, generous, emotional, nurturing, honest, kind, giving, intensely creative, but above all, I am solid.”
“You see, those things are all very nice things. Aren’t you proud of those things?”
“Yes,” and then I told her about my adventures out and about wearing women’s clothes, and how it felt. [Blogged about here]. And she asked me to describe to her how I felt when I was doing those things. What emotions and qualities did my female self, stir in me?
And I described how I feel when in touch with my femininity and said, “natural, happy and calm, no longer afraid, accepted for me, comfortable.”
“You see, you have everything you need already inside of you.”
“Yes.”
“I want you to fall in love with yourself for the first time,” and she had me repeat my mantras.
“They are really beautiful, did we create those together?” she asked.
“Yes, we did.” And then we talked a while about the importance of the daily ritual of saying them and breathing into them and feeling the divine light whilst I do.
“You will give birth to yourself on whoever the f$£W$ you are.”
“But I have a fear that if I fall in love with myself that I will not be submissive again, and then I won’t need it anymore. The urge will end and I will find it inside of me.”
“Your comfort zone is the searching process in a woman outside of you. It is an addiction. You are co-dependent. You need to do this to find inner peace, self-acceptance, and you will lose your anxiety.”
“I understand.”
“Who and what are you?” she asked.
“I am innocent.”
“Yes, you are. You are in contact with all the beautiful things that you are. You are rediscovering yourself. Get to know you and fall in love with you for real. You will need to do the energy work.”
And then we discussed this concept of innocence. She felt it very strongly in me. She said, “this is why I could work with you all night if needed. You are pure. I feel that. Do you know Oxala from African mythology?”
“No, I don’t”
“You have the Jesus lineage, the Christ consciousness lineage. You carry the Christic Light. Your energy is not contaminated, and that is why people are drawn to you. This light is the light of compassion. The more you step into it, the more people will seek you out.”
This was a lot to take in for me, not least because they were terms that I am not familiar with, spiritual practices I have not heard of…but it also resonated with me, because we had never discussed “innocence” or “purity of heart” which is how I am trying to relate to Mistress and to relate to everyone.
What did I learn? What she was talking about in the Oxala (pr. “O-Sha-La) tradition is that the Oxala figure is the creator of the earth. Oxala and other similar-named spirit deities also appear in Santeria. With equal paths male and equal paths female, this spirit is more often crowned female, and is the “White Deity” in the sense of purity, both physically and symbolically, as in the “light of consciousness”. Followers of this Spirit God typically wear all white. Mistress and all of my vanilla friends will know my penchant to wear white—not a conscious choice in life, but I have closet full of trousers, all of them white. Ditto for white shirts. This is my fashion—imagine to discover there is a reason for it (and no, I was not wearing white on either visit to the Reiki Master—ha!).
And what of the Christic Light? I found with some searching online that this appears to be manifest in the form of visions from various holy people, and I paraphrase from a recent manifestation of Mary, Rose of Peace, to a friar in Italy…
“I offer my light as the symbol of original purity which comes from God…I come to you from the depths of my soul and my spirit to offer this light through which you may contemplate your own purity, and through that find your own transformation. This is the path of Grace and this light is spiritual communion with the Holy Mother. Service is the path for finding the Pity of God and the means through which you will find God’s Divine Will.”
How about that?
If you are curious to read more about this “Christic Light” I found this lovely blog post on the topic by a spiritual healer. She describes this as an alchemical process that puts us in touch with our higher selves.
The Reiki Master continued with her lessons. We were talking about the parallels in what she had just told me about and my vision of the Spirit Guide that I met for the first time in session with her. “Don’t look to the spirit to tell you what to do. Don’t look to the Spirit Guide or someone else to do things for you. Don’t imagine that anyone is wiser than you. You have what you need in yourself.”
We talked about other spiritual practices, including the use psychedelics, and more particularly about the Ayahuasca tradition. She described Ayahuasca as the “death” herb, and that it puts you in contact with your shadows. She was quite enthusiastic about mushrooms as part of the journey.
“You need to be vibrating higher, and to have purity, because you open your aura, so it is important to do it with good people around you. Do it with people who have high vibrations, and make sure that they are aligned with you and also high-vibrating people and be open to your divinity. Vibrate high and beautiful because how you vibrate is what you attract, including parasites.”
She continued, “you are making a big effort to come out of dependency and co-dependency. Look at this as medicine, not recreation. You do it once, and then you move on. But I will teach you how to do excellent breath work and to hyper-oxygenate your brain, and the high you will get is stronger than any drug. This will extend your ability. You must purify yourself. Cleanse your house, be in a good mood, ask for the presence of your guides and angels to protect your space, and then download your giving energy from your higher self, and invite him to merge. And then begin to breathe like that,” and she showed me what she meant by this breathing. “Imagine you are pumping energy through your body, up your spine from the coccyx and through the neck and down your chest to your belly and then through you, round and round as you breathe, and then, when you feel like screaming and are dizzy, stop, then breathe deep and slow all the way up to your source energy and then bring it in to you. Exhale from the front, inhale from the back…and when you pull everything in you are pulling from the Divine. And toss the toroidal field all around you on the big breath like streaming, sparkling bolts of lightning. After you do this a few times, you tell me if you need psychedelics.”
She reiterated her key points. “Protect yourself, especially you, with your pure energy. Clear your mind. Don’t do this when you are down. Have only purity of intention. Breath is free and contains Divine Light.
After this long talk, we did a session. This time she did not wish me to connect with the Spirit World or with my Spirit Guide, she wished for me to connect with myself. She led me on an inner journey of focussing on my Self and my Body. It was very different than the last time in terms of what she did, what I did. I felt very good after, but a different kind of good, not ethereal or electrified, but more in my body, physically present.
After, we talked some more. She was curious about the tea I was drinking from a thermos I had brought with me. “Do you like tea?”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “This tea is one of the teas that Mistress has given me. She is a witch, and she has given me this tea so that I may be open when coming to you or doing similar things.”
“Yes, she is a witch,” she said, “one of the good ones. She is on the side of magic.”
“Yes, I believe that. I believe that she is my champion.”
“I too will give you some teas. I want you to drink these things to keep yourself pure, to keep your light clean.” And just like that, she gave me some teas and other supplements she would like me to take.
We talked about how much my belly makes noise at times when I am with Mistress. “The belly is the source of sexual energy, and it is your creative source. She is stimulating you in these ways.”
I told her how much I appreciated her taking the time to be with me, particularly since she was travelling. “I love working with you,” she said, “and no matter one hour, 10 hours, the charge is the same. You are very powerful, and you have a sweet light energy. This is my life purpose. It is my calling. Do not look to anyone. No idolatry! And yes, you can still see Mistress.”
As I rose to leave she admonished me to not forget anything, to leave anything behind. And I thought, why would I leave anything behind, I never do that. And I picked up my one bag and she asked for a hug, and then I left. When I got home later I realised I had left my thermos of tea. I texted her and she said she found it. I was to go by the next morning to get it and did.
What I discovered as I met her in the reception of her building is that she is almost completely blind. She could not see me until I was standing 3 feet from here—not even my outline or shape, or that I was there. It was unreal, because of how deeply she sees in her studio, and how easily she navigates her space, but also the spiritual plane. An incredible, healing person. I am very fortunate to have found her.
Beyond Non-Binary 
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