Spiritual Guidance
A Blog Series By:
Reiki Reverend, Ph.D.
In this article, I’ll be discussing why I temporarily shut down my website, and how Spirit renewed my call to teach healing.
Right now is our time to center, to remember who you are and why you are on your path or spiritual journey.
When I had made one of the simplest drop-shipping mistakes, my drop-shipping business was quickly plummeting, I knew I needed a drastic change in my life if I were to be able to keep moving forward without losing sense my sense of self. I thought I had to shut down my business to find myself, what I found instead was far more enlightening.
My attempt to have a successful business was not very small at all. I had invested not only over 12 hours of research, but a chunk of my savings towards the success of that business. A major investment which lost the battle of will with my desire to fully embrace parenthood with my then-developing toddler, and my then almost 18-month old. I wouldn’t have had it any other way though.
At the time I was managing a separate blog and spiritual jewelry drop-shipping business, Pathways of Limitless Light. From its beginnings, I felt like had done more than enough groundwork, study, and communications with the shopify admin to ensure a successful journey. I made sure my everything was in proper order for my page, and even began working my partnership with shopify into my posts about various spiritual and religious wares.
I had started this journey after my online church, Limitless Light Healing Ministries, had too may hardships in because of my workload and a lack of true accountability with my board. All of this, along with an intriguing amount of difficulty with finding a consistent secretary, made it remarkably to make it all work. My goal of sharing healing with the world from a paradigm founded in raising healing spirits was not quite met, but nevertheless I washed my hands ceremonially of the experience. I feel in my heart that starting the church and attempting to raise it in a way that could serve many was preparation for the next steps along my journey. As this is what I am doing now, I have no regrets.
The two losses, combined with the common stresses of parenthood left me in a bit of a mental tumble.
My way of thinking about remaining in business in general had changed drastically. I had just registered Reiki Reverend LLC formally mind you, up until that point I had seen my business a an evolution of how I would continue my life’s work; Helping others grow. However, as my time away from my children became more obvious, it was with great burden that I considered it leaving it all behind for a pretty long time.
I never considered shutting down the website entirely until I found myself unable to cope with the weight of continuing. I would tell myself that my work didn’t matter in the bigger picture, that it wasn’t impactful, just to try and convince myself of what my heart would not truly believe.
I continued with injecting myself with a lot of different limiting beliefs, but the emotional toll was impeccable. I care about my work, and I also care about my children. To be consistent I have to make time, but with young children that time is liminal. The big picture at the time was how far I was willing to go to be a father and do my work honestly. It’s not a secret that this business can hold a lot of projects simultaneously, and I never know when Spirit will call on me to work with someone, record, something for a blog or Podcast. To balance both, I felt my life may become unmanageable.
One thought continued to prevail however, it would send a shimmer to my mind whenever I would circle near delete buttons for too long.
You see, I never found a problem with any of the long-term projects I would drift to and from, but I was always taught by a mentor to be consistent no matter what, or you may fall from attention. To my heart-space, time for reflection to share fully and beautifully are all in-part aspects of my spiritual journey.
For many it isn’t a problem nevertheless, however I personally don’t like feeling rushed with what I would give freely to others.
When I meditated on everything, I came to the conclusion that this had to be the work of Spirit calling me to tend my shadow yet again. It took time to feel better about even posting deletion notices, and taking my webpages offline, but I couldn’t stay active wavering as I did. So, it was in full faith that this would resolve as needed that I took a bow and left.
It took a good while for me to finally relax and not think about my projects, but I was finally able to relax my mind and heal from the limiting beliefs that the nature of business held over my spiritual progress. In this time, a few of my students and even some friends will attest to how often I reached out to share knowledge or energy. I just couldn’t help myself from the moment I felt called to assist.
Even in my darkest moments, the joy from helping others has always brought a special type of bliss to me. That joy surpasses what I want from a business because its value is limitless. I realized that the business has been, and always will be, a vessel for a portion of my spiritual journey. Never the whole.
After all, I had been helping others anyway in general. It puts a huge smile on my face to know that I was able to help. In meditation, I asked Spirit to help guide my course.
What happened after would be nothing short of a powerful message.
Even though I had occasionally helped my students and friends out with various things, it was never very frequent that this would happen, maybe once a week or so. However, slowly but surely, I noticed a change in my Facebook newsfeed.
People looking for teachers in the Healing Arts, people with deep questions that seemed to be directly aimed at things I had either felt or experienced, some of them even reflections of questions I had myself. It was all rather triggering for me, but I continued to abide and answered who I felt guided to.
About 3 weeks ago, I started getting messages and activity on my Etsy shop that I had completely forgotten to close. These messages were most often dense with content and emotion. I was torn with the first message I had gotten.
*The following statements have been quoted with permission, but due to their potential perceptions from peers I have chosen to keep the name of my student anonymous to protect all directly involved.*
“Do these Usui Reiki Certifications also come with the proper attunements from you? I ask this as I have seen some Etsy sellers simply sell the information from the books and not offer the attunements to go with it. Without the attunements, the information out of respect for the art of Reiki should not be used.”
It struck deep, but the part that made me completely rethink my decision to teach was the most unsettling.
“I need to protect my wellbeing and make sure that I am working with a Teacher of Light and Love. As a teacher of Reiki, do you follow the ‘Principals of Reiki’ taught in Usui Reiki I; do you follow what you teach? If I am struggling with something in the session, will you help and uplift instead of scolding me? If you feel for any reason at all that I have violated your space and/or time, will you tell me in a kind and empathetic fashion instead of yelling at me?”
In this world that we live in, I can understand the need to survive by other-than-normal means. We all have in the very least held witness to it throughout life. I myself began humbly, but would soon begin the same as others for a time.
When I saw firsthand the minuscule imprint I left on my students compared to doing my work honestly, I quickly resumed the latter. So, the details they gave me regarding the first question didn’t come as a shock to me.
It was the context they gave to the second question, that made me ponder in a trance-like pause.
To hear of a teacher who would treat a student with such disrespect is gut-retching.
I’m not oblivious to the ways of others, but to me the relationship between student and teacher is sacred. If it’s not in Love or higher purpose, then there is no good reason to ever yell at a student.
I was once told by my guides that it would not be what I did that gave me the most energy and success, but it would be how I did it that would attract abundance for my practice.
For me, teaching others is a passion, guiding their spiritual paths and even life’s journey in various ways. I could never think to treat the people who come to me dishonorably.
Whether people come to me for simple healing services, psychic services, life coaching, or even learning a certification course, I do my best to remain invested in how people feel about our interactions.
Not just the results of a working, or how easy the written content was to read, but how they feel about their development and growth since we first began. Most often, I even maintain dialogue after they have completed their course-work.
However, I do cast aside personal investment with all of my healing practices to best allow for the highest intentions to manifest. Not only have I seen better results personally, but it is also a core element of my tradition.
The begging question, left publicly unaddressed to those who have followed my work, is why did I leave to begin with?
As I said earlier, at its center, a lot of personal ordeals and challenges that I had buried repeatedly and walked away from all surfaced at once. Immediately, I had far too much on my plate to comfortably work through, along with my responsibilities as a parent. To be quite frank, it was crippling.
Bit by bit, I felt my motivation waning, and I had to make a decision at the time whether or not I’d close down, perform a soul retrieval, and wait for Spirit to guide me to my next step.
Little did I know how that would manifest.
As I continued to hear and read similar messages that my now student had sent to me, from multiple sources, I knew that I could not allow myself to sit while the community began to degrade.
That I would do my part in whatever way possible to help in the very least balance the community of teachers out and assist with helping more teachers better reach, and be accessed by, students.
This all being said, I bear no ill-will to anyone who sells courses without interaction or purchases courses simply for the certificate and proverbial blessing to practice.
There are far more practitioners and even teachers who started the same way but will never publicly admit to it. What makes us different is our will to push beyond ego and learn how to best do our work. How to heal others while holding sacred the Light that enables us to do so.
In gaining experience, wisdom, and perspective, you may best prevent mistakes that could harm the ill-prepared or even the recipient.
The rest is giving those who seek access to their teacher(s) or resources the ability to do so most simply.
As we are all healers inherently; Constantly growing and developing, there will be a dire need for things like this in the community if there isn’t already.
Whether or not you will count yourself among those who stood in the Light, honoring their students and healing traditions; Guiding the steps of those who have invested their energy and placed their faith into you.
That choice is yours to make.
That challenge is yours to accept.
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