Mastership and Lotus Light Reiki

In the usual sense, the term "mastery" leaves one with the sense of having worked very hard, overcome much, and having earned a state of accomplishment or advancement. The journey toward mastership would then seem to be gradual and taking much time and effort to advance our capabilities. Although Usui Reiki has very specific symbols and hand positions, Reiki teachers are very different in their approach to training and in what they offer their students. What is pretty standard is that there are three levels/sessions of traditional Usui reiki training, each one completed within the same day and each one accompanied by an attunement which is generally understood to bring you to a level of energy that is more advanced than before. Its important to understand however, that during Usui's lifetime, he passed only one attunement to each Reiki Master - just one and Mastership was complete. It was a later successor, Dr. Hayashi that broke the reiki training and the attunements into three levels because he was a marshal arts master.    

 
Lotus Light Reiki however points the way to a different perspective on Mastership. As we learned in our classes, the power behind Lotus Light Reiki is our ability to surrender into quiet and into partnership with the Universal Life Force. We purposely don't diagnose or direct from a feeling of having mastered the art of healing. Instead, our mastership comes from the work we do within toward Self Mastery which culminates in the courage to surrender and move with the Life Force intutively and very collaboratively. We inuitively move our hands, our minds, the symbols and our prayers.  Therefore Mastership can be understood as the moment of surrender when we decide to trust. In this moment we let go and through grace we realize the Self Mastery of surrendering to the purpose of Spirit.  It takes no time at all for Mastership unless we decide it will take time to gain the confidence to let go and trust our natural intuition and inner presence. Our gradual path then is preparing for the moment where we take the leap into the abyss. Its not about gradually improving or increasing our energy. Instead, it is a process of getting out of the way and therefore releasing the energy that is already present.  
 
For awhile and perhaps for a long time with Reiki, its as though we are walking out on a pier overlooking the waves of the ocean. We like having the pier to support us - we like having the symbols and our handouts as we learn where to place our hands, how to call  in the Life Force through our prayers. But, there is a point in everyone's journey when we look down through the depths of the water and waves and decide to dive knowing that we have no idea what we will find but we Trust.  In that moment, through the grace of Self Mastery, we are the Reiki Presence, the Reiki symbols, and the Universal Life Force.