Home

I arrived home on Friday, filling my time with the Reiki sessions for those I had rescheduled to help pack my parents and a HUGE Usui Reiki II class on Saturday and Sunday, March 13-14.

It had been a long time since I taught such a large class and it was a pleasure to co-teach it with my colleague and student, Reiki Master/Teacher Lu(cille) Shifrin. Lu prefers Lu to Lucille, but I'm reminded that Lucille means light and she was indeed a light for me.

I see that the path Reiki has built for me is one of light, one of connection, focus, and harmony, very much unlike the past week. Indeed, in the teaching of Usui Reiki II, we focus on these themes by working with symbols borrowed from Tibetan Buddhism to represent individual energies used in healing. I have chosen a path very different from the one my family has chosen; I seem to be less affected by losing material goods. I guess this is true because I'm more focused on spiritual ones that are harder to lose. This isn't a judgement (or maybe it is) of my family's own values, just a comparison of how my home is here versus my home in Minnesota.

I really do love what I do, even with missed appointments, up and down finances at times, the uncertainty of self-employment; I love to be in an atmosphere of growth, transformation, and a release of pain.

Thanks to the following students who joined us this past weekend:

• Randi Altman
• Summer Stevenson
• Carrie Williams
• Rebecca M
• Dan Hitchcock
• Linda Arvin
• Melissa Arvin
• Ida Kingsberry
• Irene Boone
• Andrew Johnson

Lu Shifrin has now completed her RCGW Certification to teach Usui Reiki I and II classes here at the center and will be teaching an already full Usui Reiki II class the first weekend in May. I am so grateful that she adds her strength to RCGW's. I also want to thank Krystal Jordan for her assistance in leading our two RCGW Reiki Student Clinics this past week while I was away. I am so lucky to have these souls of light in my life!

Boulder, Colorado Summary

Well, it's been a couple of months since I last had an entry in the blog. During this time, I have been teaching and working, trying to make time to get ready to travel to Boulder.

We left on June 12 and arrived at Denver International to tornado warnings. We arrived in the Boulder valley to a "hail" of hailstones, most about 2 inches in diameter. But the sun was also shining and the greenness of the mountains and trees beckoned, seeming to say welcome.

The first night, I received a tibetan bowl sound healing with Sri, a Nepalese man who was in Boulder briefly. This was at a store called Old Tibet on Pearl Street, near the Pearl Street mall, about a mile from the University of Colorado. I had really only been in the city two hours and immediately I was drawn into a healing from a soul that I felt I had already known and worked with. I knew then that things would be different from other places I have visited. This was a real place where mystical awakenings happen surrounded by absolutely the most beautiful natural spaces I have ever encountered.

The next day, Steve and I went to the Solstice Center on 302 Pearl Street where we had rented the Lotus Room to give a Sekhem-Seichim-Reiki I-II class to two students, Cathy and Andy Barton, newlyweds from New Castle, Colorado. They had only recently done Reiki I training and found the class a very powerful opening to their sensitivity to the reiki energy. We had wonderful Italian food with them for lunch on the first day and on the second day went to the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse, a miraculous wooden structure built in Tajikistan and shipped and reassembled in Boulder. Wonderful teas and a space that has no description that can give it justice.

Since the class, Steve and I have been dining out, walking, driving up into the mountains, meeting with a new Reiki Master friend named Deborah who moved to Boulder four years ago from Takoma Park, MD, and today went with Marie, our new Real Estate agent to see some houses in Louisville, Lafayette, Niwot, and Longmont (all of them a bit east of Boulder, since our Reiki dollars don't seem to stretch into the city right now).

I think we are moving here/here being Boulder, since I'm sitting at our hotel right now. It feels strange to say it...I love the DC area and have deep roots there, but feel like home is moving west.

Grocery Shopping with Dad...a Mirror for Me

I spent the afternoon with my Mom and Dad...first at Chili's for lunch, then with Dad at Cub Foods on Texas Avenue in St. Louis Park, Minnesota for a mega-shopping expedition. My
Dad, Al (or Big Al as many call him) has been getting over a cold that has settled in his chest. Between coughs and looks at my Mom's extensive list, we had a chance to connect among the various vegetables in the immense produce section.

I have an annual migration to St. Louis Park, a city of 50,000 or so in the southwestern suburbs of Minneapolis. Their house is actually only two blocks from the city and within a short walk of three beautiful lakes (Cedar Lake, Lake of the Isles, and Lake Calhoun {don't ask why it isn't Lake Cedar}). All of the lakes have beautiful paths around them that are wonderful to hike when the weather is nice, which it was today. But, of course, being Minnesota, tomorrow it is going to snow.

Dad and I talked about his role as a "shlepper". This is a Yiddish term that means one who goes to get for someone else, usually in this case Dad for Mom. Passover time is a busy season for shleppers and I consider myself an honorary shlepper when Mom begins the cooking ritual for the upcoming Seders. This year will be the first that Mom and Dad haven't hosted it since I was a toddler.

I'm feeling the energy of things changing, even as I return to the same house I grew up in. The house has new siding and roof, courtesy of the insurance company thanks to last summer's hailstorm. There is new paint on some of the walls (since the house itself may be transitioning as my parents move to the next stage of their lives).

It feels odd to return and see the change that my family that lives here sometimes misses because it happens so gradually.

What I saw today was my Dad's tendency to be particular about simple things:

• How to double bag (I learned that you don't open the inside bag until it's in; actually a helpful hint).
• How to interpret my Mom's grocery list (get one of each option). When I called on this one, my Mom actually asked for one of each.
• How to pick apples (red tastes better).
• How to give the right of way to a pedestrian (avoid hitting her and go first).

My Dad is slowing down; won't take a pleasure walk, but has no problem with shlepping. He says that if he has a choice of which to do, why not do the one that is needed. I see this as his philosophy of life: love is duty to those we love...we do for them as a way to show them they are loved. Mom and Dad regularly do for one another (as my partner Steve and I try to do in Maryland). I think it keeps them going. What I see is that I was raised by parents who tried to do the right thing, literally, for me and demanded the same thing from me in return. I may not always succeed, but I try to be what Steve terms "a good citizen". I think I get this from these two lovable shleppers who raised me.

Soul Group Meetings

I have had an interesting day today, some longtime clients and a new intuitive reading client that seemed quite familiar to me.

Today's article is about that: as healers, who are the people that come to see us?

It's my theory that many of those who come to me are those in my soul group, i.e. those whom I have worked with or known in the past (past lives, that is). Not everyone is in this category, but I have found a significant number of people fit this description.

How to recognize someone from a past incarnation?

• Their voice may sound familiar.
• You feel immediately comfortable (or uncomfortable) with them.
• There is a sense of familiarity about their life, their way of being.
• You notice that they feel just as comfortable (or uncomfortable) with you.
• They sometimes share things that are quite intimate about their lives or experiences early in meeting you and it doesn't seem at all unusual to either of you.

I have found that as I walk on the path of the healer (or intuitive), people who have worked with me in the past seem drawn to me. The meetings do not seem at all strange, just serendipitous. It can be a weird way to live, but there is always someone coming to connect...sort of like family you haven't seen in a while. You feel the urge to share everything.