Here is my Reiki 1 & Self Healing Manual that you can download free (3.4Mb). It has been constantly updated over the past few years and has much of this website content in it.
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So if we are here to ultimately realise our divinity, isn't the sensible thing to do to spend all of our time praying and meditating? Well, yes, that's one way to be assured of liberation from the need to reincarnate, and to find peace and tranquillity on higher planes. But we are not expected to do this. We are loved equally, no matter what we do. And the ascension of humankind is inevitable. But the more that we live balanced lives, the less pain we cause ourselves and others and the more we make progress to true happiness. Having healthy balances of things in our lives reflect inner balance. We all know these things: making money to live, not just for the sake of it; enjoying pleasurable things and treats, but not to excess; having healthy relationships, including healthy sexual relationships. caring for others, but not at the expense of yourself; etc, etc.
Your mind is free in that you have the choice of thinking any thought that you like, any time you want. But the thoughts that come in to your mind may be affected by many different factors, notably:
So your will is free, but with influences upon it which can be overcome or ignored and you can ultimately choose what to think, say and do.
Your life is planned so that you will have the experiences that your soul needs in order to learn and grow more loving and wise. Your Spirit Guides have more loving and wise (more conscious) Spirit Guides who have more conscious Spirit Guides and so on. The greater (more conscious) that a consciousness (a spirit) is, the more that they can see and predict. The greater the consciousness, the less there is time or space. So the greater consciousnesses around the Earth that guide humans know and see so much that they can predict almost exactly what we will do, before we do it. Even with 6 billion people on the planet with free will, the greater consciousnesses around us know what any one of us will do at any instant and know exactly how things are going to work out, way into the future.
Through your intent to be loving, wise and happy you can make conscious choices that guide you in the right direction and through your intent and thoughts you can guide your soul to a better and higher place. Through being mindful (aware of your conscious thoughts) you can get into the habit of thinking positive and loving thoughts that will in turn have a positive effect on your subconscious mind, on your soul and on the whole of your consciousness.
Your soul reincarnates as many times as are wished and agreed between the soul, the higher self and Guides. Your soul has probably lived hundreds of lifetimes as a human and after a lifetime there may be a period of review in order to fully understand what can be learned from it. Or a soul may immediately reincarnate. Although we may not be consciously aware of what has happened in our past lives we do actually have conscious memories of them within our souls. These memories can be accessed by us or someone else or we may be guided by our higher selves to know parts of past lives. I have had many people ask me if I can do past life regression for them or help them to know about past lives and my question to them is ‘why’? I have found out about a few of my past lives but it has always been my intent and prayer that I only find out about them if it is of some use to me now. I have been guided to learn about past lives that have helped me to understand myself in this life more and to understand my current life challenges and how my personality is a reflection of my soul’s experiences. To try to find out about past lives for no good reason other than recreation is folly and could potentially cause problems. The history of your soul has brought you to this point and to find out about relevant past life problems only requires self examination of your current attitudes, beliefs, fears and problems.
Know that within your consciousness is your soul which is the essence of you and that it has lived many lives and has learned a great deal of love and wisdom. Know that through meditation and prayer you can learn more about your soul, your self and your past and through this you may become more balanced and healed.
Karma is a way of helping our souls to grow over consecutive incarnations but is not necessarily the punitive system that some may interpret it as. Sure, we will inevitably incur a karmic debt as out souls learn and this debt will be repaid as we go along. Some lifetimes we may incur a greater net karmic debt than others and some lifetimes we may earn net karmic credit. I liked the way that karma was explained by a Western Buddhist as being less about punishment and more about each action having a consequence.
Whether we realise it or not, every time we think, say or do something negative it causes us pain. We will feel that pain, whether or not we realise that it is a consequence of that particular thought, word or deed. We also feel an immediate effect since it lowers our energy in some way and it also may have a negative effect outside us – on something or someone else. We may consciously learn through experience that these things cause us pain - we learn that lies escalate and that malicious thoughts just deplete us and that violence causes us suffering. And this conscious learning is to our minds what karma is to our souls. Karma is a way of giving a learning experience to our consecutive lifetimes so that our souls have a long-term way of gauging experiences and learning through them. Karma helps our souls to realise that good thoughts, words and deeds lead to happiness and vice versa. Without karma our souls may get stuck in a mode of painful existence lifetime after lifetime without ever getting out. But we should realise that our lifetimes are planned so that we have learning opportunities within each lifetime as well. And often the short-term learning opportunities mirror the long-term learning opportunities, in other words the lessons that we can consciously learn in a single lifetime may be the same lessons that our soul has been learning over many lifetimes.
I was talking to someone who had recently had a tough time and put this down to karma – specifically, karmic debt repayment. However the story that she relayed to me seemed to have a great conscious learning opportunity in it which she had not seen. She did not necessarily see it as punishment but more that it was something that was out of her hands. I knew that there was a lesson to be learned from her experience and suggested that she contemplate it. I explained that karma was a little like getting a student loan. Sure, the loan has to be repaid at some time in the present or future, but the repayment of the debt is not the reason that the student graduates and gets a job. Borrowing the money is just a necessity in order to get to a better place. The reason that we are here is not just to repay karmic debt and when we have a painful experience we should look at the immediate lesson that we can learn and treat it as an opportunity for growth and know that the wisdom that is gained will be embedded in our souls for future lifetimes. I have learned that the way in which our souls learn and grow over many lifetimes is varied and tremendously complex and mostly beyond our conscious recognition or understanding within a single lifetime. So it is unwise to try to find out the karmic reasons for an occurrence in our lives or try to guess the karmic implications of a particular action. Concentrate instead on thinking, saying and doing things which you know are good, true and right.