Becoming a Reiki Master and a Witch: Learning to surrender to the universe

When I think back about this year and the things I have done, achieved, and the changes in my life, one that seems to resonate most deeply is that I have become a Master Practitioner in Reiki.  It is not all that “hard” to go through the steps themselves.  Time and practice, however, make it less accessible.  More importantly, it is having the gift.

I asked my teacher if it was okay for me to find that I was ‘good at it’, and this resulted in a long conversation about this.  The short answer was ‘yes’, and is what she felt of her own practice, and one I can vouch for.  I have to say that it is hallucinatory to practice Reiki, and also to receive it.

I will be operating from a private practice in my home for the next months and will also be adding a second modality to this, so that I can do more general healing.  Sometime next year I will be adding spanking to the mix.  We might call it ritual tapping, now, mightn’t we?  Only it promises to sting.

Next summer, I will take the show on the road and be operating much more publicly, leading group sessions, and working for a short period on a full-time basis.  Why?  In part because I want to see if this can become a long-term source of income for me.  What I don’t know is whether I can charge as much as I would like, which is about half of what I pay to see an SW…but I am thinking of doing a sliding scale to allow those with lesser means to come and pay what they can.

Part of the journey of becoming a Reiki Master has been changes to my life and lifestyle, and a greater and greater feeling of general surrender.  And let me tell you, surrendering to the universe and allowing the universe to provide does not mean that everything comes out grand.  Some unpleasantness will always pop through.  But my attitude to these has changed.

The other day I got stood up by someone.  It became my fault.  It used to be that I would just be okay with that.  But this time I wasn’t.  I didn’t appreciate the circumstances or how it was done.  First, there was the sting of disappointment.  This was followed by being upset at it being pinned on me—the circumstances are not relevant.  In the end, I found myself moving past this and responding differently to how I might have done in the past.  I thought about how a relationship could get out of kilter for someone like me who has a tendency to be a doormat—a bit of a growing theme (not in deed, but in my awareness of it).  What I realised is that I need to fix it or the relationship is dead.

Once a dynamic goes off between two people, it is much harder to get it back on track than to just have it right from the outset.  This is crucial for someone as bad at protecting my boundaries as I am.

My feelings as I went through this process were first that I would just walk away.  That is what I have always done.  It felt a little bit like being taken for granted, which is a nice way of saying feeling disrespected.  [I am conscious of how this tendency to ‘take umbrage’ is a hallmark of the narcissist but am comfortable that we are not talking about the same thing.  I’d have to be, right?].

She didn’t apologize, not really, but she did reach out with very kind overtures and sweet words.  I am sure she could feel my energy.  What does this have to do with Reiki?  Everything.

I let the energy happen.  I let the situation happen.  I let it flow right past me.  And I am still letting it flow.  And this also means not giving a fxxk.  I realise that when you want things, your own energy might interfere with getting them.  This is another form of surrender.  There are some beautiful opportunities that lie ahead of me, and I will see some of them come to fruition, others not.

At some point during the 4 days that I went through the steps to show I was ready to become a Master Practitioner in Reiki, I was asked what my pronouns should be.

“Well,” I mused, “when I’m bad, I’m a bad boy;  And when I’m good, I’m a good girl.”  That was amusing to them, but the teacher said, “That’s too complicated, we’ll just ‘girl’ you from now on.”  And so they did.

And pretty much everyone seems to be doing that now.  No matter what I wear.  I was not rockin’ boy mode, but I went to the supermarket after ballet class in a parka and leggings, no makeup, hair not done any particular way, and a man said to his wife and child, “let her go first,” when they saw how many fewer things I had to pay for than they did.  So sweet.  

And everyone from ticket collectors, to strangers on a train, to the post-woman, to whomever, they are just gendering me female.  At dance class, some of them do, others don’t—in part I think because it began earlier in my transition.  But transition seems to have passed a point.  The continental divide…the line across which water flows in the opposite direction.  Well, that’s where I am.

And it seems to have happened at the same time that the Reiki qualification came through.  And I wonder, is that my energy?  Is it how I carry myself.  One doesn’t look so different from one day to the next, but suddenly I do look different.  I realise that I don’t really look quite as male as before.  Boobs aside.

D’you know how people come to resemble their dogs?  I think the pets we choose are a reflection of our inner landscape.  And dogs are in particular tuned into their keepers.  Both grow together.  For good and bad.  For beauty and ugly.  I hate to say it [or do I?], but my wife is becoming ugly.  There was a period where she was becoming prettier in my eyes early on in the divorce process.  But I saw her recently and she looked grey.  Drab and older.  It was sad in a way, but also a reflection of the energy she is putting out.  For her sake, I hope that she is able to lose her anger and find peace (frankly, for mine too).  But it doesn’t really concern me anymore.  If she wants to feel hate, and anger, although I do experience it in the form of crippling legal bills, I don’t care anymore.  Whatever happens will happen.

Is surrendering to the flow a form of passivity?

The obvious answer is yes, of course.  But is it true?  And what are the parallels to submission?  I no longer believe submission is passive, but rather is a deeply active process.  It also takes strength.  The more submissive I become, the stronger I become.  I suspect that something similar is true with surrender.  Letting go is harder than hanging on.  

Is this true?  I think it is.  We hang on to things because there is comfort in them.  Comfort with what is known.  Allowing for the unknown, embracing uncertainty, is weird and unfamiliar, in part because there is nothing there.  We might tell ourselves that ‘everything will work out’ which may be a form of optimistic faith, but it is also a form of hanging on.  We cling to faith in this sense…and it is the act of clinging which is the flaw, the weakness, the final resistance to surrender.  In other words, having faith that it will ‘all work out in the end’ is just another way of not letting go.  Make sense?

I guess I am saying that ‘trusting’ that the universe will take care of things is just another crutch.  What surrender is really about is emptying the mind altogether and no longer thinking about it at all.  Not even trusting anymore, just simply being.

Reducing our expectations of material comfort or the way of life that we lead is a part of it.  You cannot just let go if you are still thinking of what you are responsible for, or how you want to be able to afford that holiday in the Maldives.  I guess I am saying that it is an aspiration.  We take it as far as our life circumstances permit.

How might that manifest itself?  Getting less worked up about things.  No longer feeling the consequences of anger—being angry, observing it, letting it go.  Letting go of disappointment altogether when things don’t work out the way we had hoped.  This is not to be confused with being blasé or without intention.  No, we can be very intentional but still be thwarted or denied, but how we react to this is what matters.

And of course, the example above of being stood up is a perfect instance of this.  We made a date, a place, a time, and because I had been late the last time we had seen each other, I went early.  I also had my hair done, my nails done…I looked fabulous, and all dolled up.  It was only after I was done that I found she would not be coming.  But I was so happy with how my hair looked, and how it felt to be all done up, that in the end I decided that it was far better to observe and learn and see what I could draw from the situation, rather than to focus on what might have happened, what could have been.

And this felt really good.  It was an epiphany.

And I guess part of what I am saying here is that my energy has radically changed.  Amped up, yes.  More powerful, yes.  More responsive, absolutely.  But also more constructive.  And yes, my witchiness is part of it.  It also really resonates with me that this is happening at the same time as I am increasingly just feeling female.  I am beginning to forget what it was like to be a man.  Some of waiting for a vagina is in here too…knowing that my operation is only 6 months away…and knowing that this will complete the circle for me.

There are several women in my life who have tried to talk me out of having a vagina, who say bad things about life with a vagina, and ‘why would you want to do that to yourself’, etc.  Did you know that only 18% of M2F transgender people actually go through with gender reassignment surgery?  Amazing.  I had no idea.  I respect their decisions, arrived at in a myriad of ways…but I could not imagine.  

There is no final step, no moment where I went from man to woman, but that is a big one.  So too will be to change my birth certificate.  So too was embarking on hormones.  So too was coming out.  Growing breasts.  There will be others.  

Part of the surrender is to my own femininity.  It has begun to flow out of me, transforming my way of moving, acting, feeling, living, engaging, desiring, working, loving.  It feels natural.  I can’t remember boy me so well anymore.  At least the feelings.  I see pictures of me and see a stranger.  When I see myself in pictures as a child I find I almost always cry.

Life is so beautiful and sweet.  The best thing that ever happened to me.  At least to my knowledge.