Seeing the Light

Last night, I had a follow-up with one my past Usui Master students. I offer an optional two-hour session to students after each class. It's a chance for them to come back and ask questions face-to-face that have come up for them since their training. Then we trade energywork.

I hadn't seen this student in well over a year. At our last meeting, I had given him a book about auras that I felt he might get a lot out of. Turns out he did! He's become quite proficient at seeing auras.

After performing a powerful combination of Usui Reiki and the Chi Kung he's been studying on me, he easily tuned in to the green and golden light swirling around me (colors that tend to be dominant in my aura as documented by other gifted aura readers and aura photography).

While the ability to see the aura isn't necessary at all to be a successful Reiki practitioner (the vast majority really can't), visions of it can offer helpful clues about what's going on with a person.

I can easily see the green "gloves" on my hands (the color of the heart often dominant in various types of healers), but I have limited ability to see it around other people. Though I can see the glow around people, it's usually clear white, not revealing particular colors.

I tend to be more claircognizant with my energywork (experiencing a sense of knowing/feeling about what's going with a person's energy) than clairvoyant (having visions). Others are more clairaudient (actually hearing their guidance).

While we may lean one particular way with our intuitive ability, that doesn't mean we can't develop our sensitivities in other areas.

It was interesting that as I chatted with my past student in the warm glow of my Reiki studio, I began to see the colors around him more clearly than I had around anyone in a long time (perhaps ever).

Most people probably don't see auras well because of limitations of the human eye, which is incapable of seeing the vast majority of the electromagnetic spectrum, including ultraviolet light and gamma rays. Some believe that tiny children often see them well, but lose the ability as society steers them away from trusting their "irrational" intuitive insights.

Back in mid-2002, one of my earliest Reiki students was a writer/editor colleague at a university public relations office. Hearing me describe the aura in the class somehow turned on an intuitive switch for her, and she began easily seeing the colors around others (an awareness she had not had -- or perhaps mentally blocked out -- before).

Not long after, she joked, "How do I turn this off?" She noted that the majority of people in the office had a lot of sky blue in their aura, the color of the throat chakra. It made total sense that this would be a dominant color for these people as they went about their jobs as professional communicators.

My dominant colors of green and yellow reflect my dual career interests. While the green light (related to the loving heart chakra) is indicative of healing abilities, lots of golden yellow light (related to the intellectual center of the solar plexus) is not surprising around a professional writer with an amiable personality who’s not particularly extroverted.

Of course, our energies are constantly in flux and influenced by our physical/mental/emotional/spiritual states.

I know that self-hypnosis can greatly affect mine. Once after conducting a self-hypnosis session intended to bolster my self confidence and self esteem, I visited Phoenix & Dragon metaphysical bookstore to see a visiting aura photographer.

My hypnosis session had been so successful that I walked in feeling like I owned that place. I wasn’t entirely surprised when the aura photograph showed orange instead of green as a dominant color. Orange is the light of the sacral chakra, strongly associated with self esteem and go-getter personalities.

Funny thing was the photographer was clearly such a gifted intuitive that she told me I was normally dominated by green, even though she’d never met me before. She didn’t even need the camera equipment to read me, based on a variety of things she said in just a few minutes.

Some people sense auras more with their third eye, perceiving colors with their eyes closed as they perform Reiki. And for others, like me, it’s more about feeling and perceiving what’s going on the energy. Tonight, for instance, I just looked at a client’s arm and asked him what was wrong with it. I didn’t see the energy problem; I just sensed it.

However energyworkers perceive energy and experience their intuition, I caution them about making trying to make medical diagnoses. If I feel like a chakra on a Reiki client is really blocked or needing a lot of healing energy, it easily could be something other a serious physical condition (mental, emotional, or spiritual).

I like to gently mention that an area seemed off balance and ask the client a few questions about why that may be without trying to create alarm. Stress can wreak havoc on the energy field, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to die – right away anyway.

If I seriously suspect something is greatly amiss, I might softly suggest that they consider a checkup. Reiki is a not a reliable diagnostic tool.

There are plenty of medical intuitives out there employing gifts other than Reiki. Years ago, I was once visited one, who was dead-on about identifying the problem areas – but not so much about why.

Reading my chest area, she said, “It’s either male breast cancer….or you pulled a muscle.” Let’s throw out the worse-case scenarios right away, shall we! “It’s either HIV….or digestive trouble.” Wake up from passing out after you figure out which, okay, Lady?

Which reminds me of a reality show I caught at a friend’s house recently. It’s a competition to determine the best psychic. They had a group of four professional psychics in a doctor’s office trying to detect patients’ problems that’d already been diagnosed by medical tests.

On the whole, they weren’t very accurate and threw out some heavy possibilities: “You’re pregnant;” “You have breast cancer.” And to the same poor woman, who was neither.

I’m not ready for a psychic reality show, even though I’m pretty darn intuitive. All I guarantee from Reiki is that it will be good for stress reduction and relaxation.

The beauty of it is that you don’t have to be psychic or see auras. You just need to intend to be a clear open channel for the energy, which takes care of what needs to be done. If a person is ready to heal from within, they will allow that energy to speed their process.

I’ll wrap up this rather long blog entry with an important point about the aura. It’s incredibly complex, often extending many feet out from the body with many layers dealing with different aspects of our mind, body, spirit.

You’d have to be pretty skilled at seeing all of its nuances before jumping to many conclusions. Most often, people only perceive the color(s) right around the body.

Still, my recent interaction with my student tells me this is an ability I need to evolve further.