Changes and Openings

2012 was quite a year for me. My father, Alvin Gleekel, passed away on  July 2, followed by an intense period of grief that has lasted until now.

Starting last year, my grandmother (my Dad's Mom) started visiting me in dreamstate. I had not had a chance to connect with her since she died over 15 years ago. She first revealed herself to me on a park bench (in my dream). She said that my Dad had begun visiting her in her kitchen and she wanted me to know. I think this was her way of telling me he was getting ready to pass. In May 2012, she came again, telling me that if I wanted to see my Dad as I knew him, I needed to visit him. I did so over Father's Day weekend and was able to sit with him for several hours one-on-one and share Reiki and conversation. He had stopped eating and was beginning to be in terrible discomfort from the swelling his weakened heart was causing. I felt it would not be long for him and this time with him felt sacred to me.

Two weeks later, I received a call from my brother saying that he wasn't sure how long Dad would be around. He thought it would probably be a few weeks, but he wasn't sure. I had planned on traveling to teach a class in Colorado, so was trying to find out intuitively what to do. My intuition said very clearly as I meditated: "Get in the car and go!"

Steve and I left the next morning after a huge Derecho storm had hit Maryland, leaving us without power and many of our tree branches. We drove two days to Minnesota, arriving at 7:30pm. My Dad died with us there (along with my brother and nephew) at 4 the next morning. We cried, prayed, and put on Frank Sinatra music as people began to arrive back at the room. The nurses at Methodist Hospital were wonderful, but all I could feel was gratefulness for the experience of my Dad. Even though he had never been an easy person to talk to for me, he had clearly done his life his way and was teaching me to do the same.

The funeral and shiva followed over the next two days with the final shiva service at my sister's house on July 4th amid fireworks. Quite a symbol for the freedom my Dad probably felt as he left his worn-out shell. The next few months, I tried to do my life: seeing clients, teaching, keeping it together. But I truly felt something in my life was broken. My energy remained low, even though I was soaking in it all the time. I needed Yin energy and a well-deserved vacation.

In October, my partner Steve and I traveled to Massanutten Resort for a well-deserved break. On Day 1, Steve threw his back out loading dishes and on 6th Day, I broke my leg hiking.

Since then, it has been a journey of rest, receiving healing distantly and hands-on from a myriad of my community, physical therapy and doctor visits, splints, walking boots, and braces. And now I see that it really isn't about what has physically happened -- it's about its effect on my life and understanding...also on my energy.

Now I feel the opening of the new era as the 12/12 and 12/21 dates have passed. I'm looking foward to an opening to spirit that opens my heart with love, rather than sadness.  Stay tuned...

Returning

I am back in Minnesota, the land of my birth and my first 18 years. Since it has been my family center since my beginning, family life cycle events call me back. This time was for a joint Bat Mitzvah, that of my second cousins, Addie and Raye Gleekel, daughters of my first cousins Peter and Karen Gleekel and Tony and Beth Gleekel.

I'm staying with my brother Jim and his family...feels very different from the two people + two beagles + Reiki Center at home. I see highways that now have been completed that were just starting up eight months ago when I last traveled here. I see parents and uncles changing with the passing of the time, getting slower and more frail, memories getting weaker, systems breaking down. I see the lines on my brother's face, new gray hair, signs of how hard he is working on keeping it all together.

My family loves through bickering, teasing, criticizing, and occasionally laughing. One of these began with Dad and his brother at lunch with my Dad teasing my Uncle about his long hair (brother only recently out of after a month in the hospital). I said to my Dad, "Dad, he's your brother, just give him a hug!" and for perhaps the first time that I have every seen, they did.

I see myself in these people. They are my tribe, my clan, my mishpacha. No matter where I go, I take them with me, but they are here to remind me that I carry them in my DNA and by loving them, I love myself. The reverse is also true.

Dear God, please allow me the grace to continue to love them as I love myself. Please keep my heart open even with they or I disappoint, allow me to find the joy here, instead of the sadness of changes I wish were not happening. And there is joy...

Two girls (now young women or bachurot in Hebrew) who gave amazing talks, shared themselves and their families with us, and led the service by chanting the Torah and Haftorah beautifully. I felt the synagogue opening to change and connection with its congregation, very different from how it connected when I was last there. Another party is coming this evening (or food event, as I like to call it) with dancing, fun, etc. It's good to be in happiness here with the tribe...they do joy well.

I have done my life differently from this group, but still they are a part of me, they lead me to bring joy to my reiki classes and clients, to treat them with respect, to try to do some things differently, but to keep the sense of deep connection I feel with these people. So strong that when cousins were invited up at the end for the final blessing, I jumped up, considering the relationship close and found myself the only one of my generation on the bima.

It all seems like no time has passed since my own Bar Mitzvah or my nieces' or nephew's. Maybe that's the reason to keep doing these events: to keep reminding us of the continuation, the new generation, but our own heartlinks to them as well.

2012: A Reiki Odyssey

Today was our monthly Reiki and Integrated Energy Therapy (R) Share and Student clinic after which I did a session for a longtime client who has been a major supporter of the Reiki Center of Greater Washington aka RCGW. It was a good day.

I have been working on updating the website for RCGW, but have run into a bit of a connundrum: I usually put six months of events on the site, but I'm planning on being in another place starting in June 2012, Longmont, Colorado. How to reconcile this? My guidance says to continue putting six months up on the website, first perhaps putting only the class titles without a location, next, once I have a definite location, posting in on the site.

Our plans are dependent on lots of factors: selling our house, my partner Steve finding a position in Colorado, and finding space for home and office in the Boulder area. I have been in this process for almost three years, but now a greater urgency is pushing harder in that direction and I can't (or won't) ignore it any longer.

I know that several of my clients and students would rather I not go. I wish I could pack them in my suitcase and do a reiki caravan to the West. But my soul's mission seems to be pulling me there and I know there is no such thing as really losing anyone, we actually live in a small town from a soul perspective and continue to reconnect with those we love and work with.

So...I will be true to my journey and put up all events through the end of June, keeping to my process. We'll see how things evolve from there.

Thanks for listening!

Earth Changes 2011: Japan and Us

Many of my students have been sending healing to the nation of Japan this week after its recent earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident. The Tuesday before the earthquake, in our Reiki Practice group, many of us were scanning the earth for healing need and found that Japan really was hurting, four days before the actual incident.

What is happening on our planet these days? Is it random or planned? Why?

I believe that what is happening is the earth's attempt to release built up tension, some of which comes from human beings. We collectively seem to be exhibiting more anger, tension, fear, and sadness than at many other times in human history. Some of us are feeling these things, but neglect to let them out, thus letting them build to a tension that releases into the environment. My cousin Suzanne believes that to create peace we need to be peace within ourselves. From a Reiki perspective, letting the anger, fear and worry release, working hard and being kind to each other is the way towards peace. Where have I released these emotions today?

What I find to be true for myself is that the outer world definitely reflects the inner world. When I notice people being particularly self-centered, I must go within to see where that is operating within me. When I feel anger towards others, I must look at what I feel anger towards within myself. Today, I notice that I must continue to pay attention to others, that a smile to another opens their heart, that seemingly small acts of kindness make others and me feel better, that we are not powerless to change the energy on this planet.

Today, I send this peace to the Japanese people, to our atmosphere, to the people on the west coast of the US who are in a panic about the radiation. All of us are interdependent, all of us are one.

Visions: How to Work towards your Future Activities

On January 30, RCGW is planning to have a workshop on working towards our visions. "What are visions?", you may ask. Visions are the soul's expression of the future, the blueprint, if you will, the desire that the soul had when it incarnated to create on the earth plane.

The soul blueprint is stored energetically above your 7th chakra, about three feet above your head, according to Integrated Energy Therapy(R). It contains the people, places, and things that will help you with your vision, as well as the desired vision or blueprint itself. For some people, it may involve their desired work or career, for others their loves and relationships, for others their beliefs, spirituality, or struggles. Each vision or blueprint is completely individualized, based on the soul's path to that point. What makes all visions powerful, however, is that their full expression makes the Earth different from it would be without that person's expression. The Earth needs all of us and it is important to the Earth for all of us to work towards our unique expression. It's not just for our small personhood that we work on our vision.

Visions do not need to be specific; they can include the qualities that you want to manifest, if not the substance. Do you want to be powerful or gentle (or both)? Do you want to be famous with large communities or do your work with individuals?

In our workshop, we'll be working with some IET techniques for connecting and manifesting our visions, as well as using some Reiki enlightenment techniques from Gendai Reiki and journeying meditations from Native American shamanism. For more information, please see http://www.reikicenter.info/conferences.htm.

September 2010: A chance to look at the last year

In the past month, I have had the opportunity to look at some major life issues:

• My parents are selling their house.
• The relationship with my brother needs nurturing.
• My healing practice has been quieter than normal.
• My house needs fixing.
• My plans to move to the West have slowed to a halt.

I keep wondering why spirit has asked/shown me whether I need to be here now, in the D.C. area for a longer time, to meet new students, to continue with my clients, to have some time to connect to God once again in the power of the silence.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur have come and gone and I see that the year past showed me that some things I thought had long been taken care of need care instead. I feel like I have lost my parental center and that my guides won't recommend a course of action to me but ask me to choose one and ask their help instead.

In the coming year, I want to find myself moving forward gently, but not with hesitation; getting some of my outstanding "loose ends" cleaned up; living from my heart, not my head. Take a day at a time, I guess.

I taught a Sekhem-Seichim-Reiki I-II class in Phoenix and finished up a Sekhem-Seichim-Reiki Master/Teacher class with Mike Hilwig, one of my students who has moved to Arizona to follow his healing path. Before the classes began, I drove up to Sedona to take a hike to Bell Rock, one of the most powerful vortexes in the area. This one seems to awaken me to a new direction, to get me unstuck, and to clear my energy. Results: clear sinuses, renewed energy, good classes.

Back to Arizona for Sekhem-Seichim-Reiki

I am heading back to Arizona, this time to Phoenix, to followup on my earlier Master class in June for one of my students, Mike, who wasn't able to complete the full scheduled class then. Mike is assisting me at a Sekhem-Seichim-Reiki I-II class to follow his makeup session this weekend at his and his fiancee Andrea's house in Phoenix.

Arizona is like a breath of fresh air to me, the energy seems to lift me up, the sun cleans out all the East Coast mildew and my lungs seem to be twice the size they are here in Maryland. I definitely feel like it has become a second "retreat home" for me over the years, especially Sedona.

I am planning on driving up to Sedona tomorrow (I get in at 1:30pm and have some time to play). The mountains up there seem to be calling me to come back, take a hike, get some sun, and let some of the sadness of the past year go. Why the sadness? Well, let's just say that plans are like caterpillars, some of them become butterflies and some of them are just dead pupae. I have had a few dead pupae this year and need to focus on the butterflies that have flown, rather than those that haven't developed.

How to stay in a place of light? For me, sometimes the answer is to go within in meditation or healing or speaking with an inspirational friend or Master and sometimes...you just have to get out of town and go to a happy place. That, for me, is Sedona.

I call out to the guides and to God to be there with me and help me find my center once again, to spread my wings and be in a place of love, truth and light. Let me walk the path of Gratefulness once again....

I remember once again the Gokai or Reiki Principles:
Just for Today-
I release all anger.
I release all worry.
I am grateful.
I work hard.
I am kind to all.