First off, I'm not going to be talking about painted rock musicians, one of which has a very long tongue. Instead, I want to talk about a methodology, an approach to life, a way of looking at things. Back when I was in school to become a computer programmer, we learned that we could write computer code so that it was unintelligible, even to other programmers. But we found that the best approach was to keep things simple, so we adopted KISS... Keep It Simple, Stupid.
I have been seeing a lot of things people have been learning lately that seem to bury the actual process under such a deep level of dogma that I am starting to wonder what the heck is going on out there. I see people doing Reiki that have to do many things before they can ever think about bringing in and passing on the Reiki energies. In fact, I ran into a class advertisement for a Master Reiki class that teaches Moving Meditation, Manifesting Meditation, Antahkarana (the totality of two levels of mind, namely the buddhi, the intellect or higher mind, and the manas, the middle levels of mind which exist as or include the mental body), Reiki Grids (a manner of using crystals to send distant Reiki), Tibetan Shaman/Reiki Aura Clearing Techniques, and Psychic Surgery Techniques.
The problem I have with most of this is at what point are they really teaching Reiki? Now, I know that I teach non-Reiki exercises with my Reiki classes because I feel they are things all energy practitioners should know. But, I don't fill my class with them.
The problem I have with most things like this is that Reiki is simple. It goes where it needs to go, and does what it needs to do. All I have to do is get it to the person (or people) it needs to go to. And I trust it to do that. I mean, I have been taught forever that it is intelligent and knows what it needs to do. All I have to do is allow it. So, why do I need all these other things?
I have seen the same sort of things with other energy work. It is almost as if people are taught that they need to turn in a circle 5 times, stand on their head for a minute, and recite the healer's prayer (if there really is one). My comment... felgercarb! Why do we feel we need to convolute something simple by putting all types of conditions on it? Why do we create so much dogma around something that we lose sight on what we are doing? The problem is that we start relying on this dogma to the point where we believe it is affecting our work. The energy isn't flowing, because I turned in a circle four times instead of five. It brings doubt into what we do.
Energy is simple. It works through our intent and intention. All we have to do is think what we want to have happen for it to happen. When we try to add too many things that have nothing to do with it into the process, we water down what we do. To take a line from Nike, Just Do It. Sure, there are things we can do to make it easier for us to pass it on. Intention. Proper state of mind. Calmness. All these factor in. If saying a short prayer helps get you there, do it. But don't feel that this is necessary for the energies to work.
Quit overthinking things. Have confidence in yourself. Allow the work to happen. And KISS.