Lucy Gabrielle

I am musing today about the nature of mothers and how they seem to be the same everywhere you go, and across all species.

As many of you know, I am perpetually ‘calf clucky’. I just love them. Until recently, we had plans to adopt two bobby calves that were marked for the meatworks and hand raise them. Then we started a horse charity and suddenly our land has been earmarked for horses destined for the meatworks!

We still have plans to get calves, but they the timing just isn’t right at the moment.

For the time being, I have to enjoy my neighbours’ calves through the fence. I have calves on two sides of our property and today, the newest arrival, a gorgeous little calf that we’ve named “Freedom” (because his new owners have named him “Freezer”… why? Apparently because “that’s where he’s going”… grrr) was up for some play.

He spotted my dogs as I wandered around doing the midday horse and chicken feeds and came to fence to say hello. He’s only about the size of a Golden Retriever and they had fun touching noses through the fence, until one of my dogs started barking loudly in his face. He startled backwards, looking a little shaken. Now, his mum (who is huge!), was nearby and had been calling out cautionary moos to her little man to be careful. When he jumped backwards, she rushed to his side, shook her head at the dogs in a scolding, protective gesture, then began licking and nuzzling the little man all over to check that he was okay and to ease his shock.

I stood watching this with a smile on my face, enjoying just how strong the mothering, protective instinct is across all species. I’ve seen it in horses, and cats, and cows and humans. And it’s all the same.

While “Freedom” may not be destined for the life I would like him to have (i.e. wandering around and living out his days in comfort and style), I am at least pleased that he and his mother get to enjoy this sacred mother-baby time together, rather than being separated at a few days old and experiencing all the grief and trauma that accompanies it. I do hope she gets to see him grow up.

I received a great question from a Reiki student today who was researching Reiki for an assignment at college.

Q. I was just wondering what your opinion is about differing qualities of Reiki given by a reiki Master or a level 1 or 2 practitioner?

This is a wonderful question, which I am pleased to be able to offer an opinion about.

I can really only speak from personal experience. For me, the ‘quality’ of Reiki coming out from my hands didn’t really change from Level 1 to Level 2, but increased dramatically when I did the master level. Having said that, I think there are so many factors influencing the ‘quality’ of a person’s Reiki, including how grounded they are, how much spiritual development they have done, whether they’re coming from a heart space or ego space (especially!), how strong their spiritual practice is, what’s going on in their life at the time, and how much of a “click” factor you might have with them in general. I’ve had Level 1 or 2 people put their hands on me and it’s been just wonderful and I’ve had “masters” put their hands on me and I’ve wanted to slap them and run away!!

My general advice, at all times, is to ask your higher self to direct you to where you need to go and then trust your instincts.

I don’t really know how I feel about the ’scientific’ study of Reiki… I appreciate that we all want to quantify things and that ‘research’ gives us great arguments to defend what we do. But, personally, I’m not really interested in defending something that I simply know to be true. (In my experience, defending something rarely gets results anyway because the people on the attack aren’t really interested in hearing the answers.)

The biggest problem for me with ‘research’ of Reiki is that it assumes you can control the energy, and the first principle of Reiki is that we must let go and let the Reiki do its own work. We cannot control it. To assume otherwise is laughable. And, because of the individual’s effects on the ‘quality’ (as discussed above), for me there can be no such thing as a ‘control group’ because that would assume that the Reiki coming from everyone’s hands is exactly the same, and we know from experience that that’s just not true.

In summary, I don’t believe that the level of Reiki necessarily affects the quality of the healing and I don’t believe that it can be ‘proven’ one way or another. So, trust your instincts and take guided action.

You can find out more details about the workshops at www.herculespublishing.com.au/workshops.