Dearest Friends:
I will never forget my father saying, “If you can’t do it right the first time, don’t do it at all.” I used to think that his perfectionist attitude was the result of attending military schools his entire life —first at Georgia Military College in Milledgeville Georgia, which included all grade levels, and then at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland where I was later born when he was teaching physics there. However, I have recently found myself telling students, clients and friends: “If you don’t believe in what you’re doing, don’t do it at all.” Hmmmmm---
The truth is that I’ve been in the healing trenches with people long enough that I have accumulated some anecdotal observations. One of those observations is that when people believe in what they’re doing, the outcome is positive. However, it is often difficult for people to believe in much of anything when it comes to healing, particularly if they have had negative experiences in regard to their health care, which is often impacted by their own painful life experiences. So, they “kind of” hope and “kind of” wish and “try”---but believing---well, believing can be such a stretch.
As for myself, I concluded a long time ago that I wasn’t going to waste a minute of my time doing anything that I didn’t believe in---as in “be true to yourself”. It also didn’t matter what people thought about that, either. I am making an analogy here because I honestly see people who are concerned and even fearful about what their family, friends, doctors and peers will “think” if they realize they are into “alternative” and “complementary” methods of healing such as Reiki. After all, they might think Reiki is rather whacky despite the fact that Reiki has gone mainstream medicine.
I actually believed in Bhutan’s Drukpa Kunley (1455-1570) fertility wang (blessing or empowerment) when, in 2005, I asked for a fertility blessing for a student of mine who had just experienced her 5th miscarriage. I believed that this blessing would result in a child, and 11 months later she delivered a healthy baby boy. Thus, when my own son and daughter-in-law were unable to have children after nearly four years of marriage and beginning to accumulate some serious medical expenses for infertility work-ups, I wanted to return to Bhutan earlier this year and ask for a fertility blessing for them, also. Believing in Reiki and some other healing modalities is rather conservative when compared to appreciating the life mission of the beloved Drukpa Kunley, also known in Bhutan as “The Divine Madman”, an enlightened Master, recognized as the reincarnation of the great Mahasiddha, Saraha, and from the Kagyu Buddhist lineage of Tilopa, Niropa, Marpa and Milarepa. Born in Tibet, Drukpa Kunley was precocious as a child and had a full memory of previous incarnations; however, after his father was killed in a family feud, he became disillusioned with the world and became a monk, dedicating himself to a spiritual life. Then, in his early 20’s he discarded his robes and became an ascetic wanderer or neljorpa (yogi) who discovered and gained control of his spiritual power. His behavior, exploits, songs and humor were outrageous, wild, and often obscene--an example of the Tibetan tradition of “crazy wisdom”--but never for personal gain or self-aggrandizement, but rather with a spontaneous desire to benefit and Enlighten others. Often viewed as irreverent when he mocked “the establishment” and man-made rules and prescriptions, he developed an unorthodox teaching style that shocked people out of hypocrisy, greed, stiff and rigid ideas, religious dogmatism, attachment, and egoistic self-possession—things which he felt kept people from learning the Buddha’s true teachings. His miracles were undeniable; i.e. turning a small quantity of tea into amounts for thousands to drink; exorcising evil spirits, transforming demons, and instantaneously transporting himself to far away locations. He never killed an animal for meat without restoring the animal back to life. He is even credited for the creation of a species of animal, the takin, by putting together the remains of two different animals (a goat’s head and a cow’s body)!
To honor Drukpa Kunley, Drukpa’s cousin built a yellow-roofed monastery in 1499, known as Chimi Lhkhang, near the town of Punakha, Bhutan in the valley below Metshina, which was dedicated to fertility. Each year hundreds of childless couples come from Bhutan (and now from around the world) to pray for children and receive a fertility blessing, which includes having a lama bless the couple on the head with a large wooden and bone phallus. Yes, I want you to know that I went through this ritual in proxy for my student and more recently for my son and daughter-in-law, making a donation and giving the lama their names written on a piece of paper.
I believed in what I was doing. I hiked once again for about 20 minutes across rice fields to the monastery that sat afar on a hill…past many modest, Bhutanese homes in Pana with a white flag on the roof swaying in the breeze—an indication that their home had been blessed by their lama, past a white chorten with prayer wheels, following a tiny stream downhill to Yoaka (“in the drain”), across an archery ground, past more wind tattered prayer flags jutting more than 40 feet into the air, and finally, finally—a short climb to Chimi Lhakhang monastery with monks playing in the yard without a care in the world. Once inside, we were able to view a central statue of Drukpa Kunley with his beloved black dog, Sachi.
Not once did I “hope” or “wish” that this blessing would be effective, nor did I want to “try again to see what happens.” I never even considered that it was quite absurd for an educated person as myself—trained to respect reason and rational order---to travel thousands of miles once again and go to such lengths without concern for any one’s opinion. I just believed in what I was doing….totally....100%….not even half a bubble off.
My dear friend, Elka, from Bulgaria, also received a fertility blessing for her youngest son. And yes, just so you know---both Elka and I are both going to be a grandma in February---11 months after our sons received a fertility blessing from Chimi Lhakhang, the monastery of Drukpa Kunley near Punakha, Bhutan.
Our lives are blessed with miracles; yes, I love the word miracles (considered Judeo-Christian) even when I hear people say that they cannot stand the word. I say that I love the word miracles because it is the world in which I live. But, we need to believe in order for them to manifest, even when our lives get so chaotic and complicated that the simplicity of that principle gets lost somewhere. Another wonderful miracle in my family this month is that my youngest daughter just returned from a trip to Italy with her boyfriend—ENGAGED. Yet, before she believed this could happen, she joked about writing a sequel to the book How To Lose a Guy In Ten Days.
Finally, to those of you (over 200) who attended Lama Ole’s teaching and received so many blessings here in SLC, thank you. There are many of you whom I wanted to visit with but I was multi-tasking beyond my capabilities, I’m afraid. I was fielding phone calls from Europe and doing dozens of other things that I hadn’t planned on, including the fact that I needed to be the tech person during the lecture even though I had hired a tech person for the evening.
Boundless Love-Light
Carol
Copyright @ 2008, Carol A. Wilson
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