To be cured rather than cure
An unexpected manifesto of service.
If you are new here, welcome to a rare and random check in outside of the prestigious bi-monthly MOON MAILER.
I am excited to share some news and updates as well a little (re)introduction to those who may not have been around for as long in this space.
I’m URSIDAE.
Just like you, I’m a lot of things.
In this e-space I’m a hearth keeper of sorts, tending the flames of inspiration. I provide bi-monthly sonnets to the Moon using the language of astrology and my experience of becoming. These reflective musings started in 2019, instigated by my relationship with Heather Ann Parker Roe of KIN evolving into Moon Mailer, the Inspired Astrology Podcast, and its catalogue of interviews and reflections as well a smattering of social media snack bites archived on instagram.
The backdrop to the Moon Mailer is years of self-doubt and worry that i would not know enough to take the role of a teacher, a mentor or a guide. It took a friend seeing what was in me to help pour it out. That is the same energy I bring to all my client relationships.
I commenced metaphysical studies formally in my teen years after having a life long intersest in the occult — all thanks to a purple clad astrologer who took care of me and my sisters as kids. I had a wonderful writing teacher who encouraged my world literature studies that accompanied my world’s religions curiosity. I had a thirst for ancient European wisdoms, western astrology, Buddhist philosophy and Asian philosophies and practices, spending my high school evenings in Qi Gong classes in community centers, in accupuncture clinics, doing what I could to find other Buddhists in the Midwest, of all places. This was all at the turn of the millenium.
In 2002, REIKI found me. And for being as non-commital a person as I am, it still shocks me that it has woven its beautiful influence into my life for 22 years now. Years of seeking the right teacher, working on myself and my shadows and sorrows, under the tutelage of a critical “master” for 15 of those years and finally stepping into myself and attempting to decolonize my practice and methods.
I know I am a white woman practicing and teaching an energy modality established in Japan with roots tracing much much further back into human’s relationship with the sacred. Usui’s construct of Reiki was meant to be accessible and broadly taught. Usui, Hyashi, Takata and all the practitioners of the past dedicated themselves to this practice with a devotion I’ve rarely witnessed in the western transmission of these teachings. There are stories that Usui would step into the street markets during daytime, brandishing a torch to attract attention. “If you want to know real light, come with me.”
That level of crazy wisdom astounds me.
Hayashi’s clinic and his student Takata would sometimes move their lives temporarily to the place where they were treating clients. By instructing and training family members, spending hours a day providing Reiki therapy, instruction in spiritual principles of Reiki and sharing nutrition and dietary advice for certain conditions. There was a whole system with Usui Reiki now boiled down to online workshops, three day Mastership trainings and what my teacher called “bargain basement” techniques in diluting the instruction and hastening the integration process, if such a thing is possible.
I feel like a total weirdo MOST of the time, and I think that my approach to Reiki and instruction is an oddity in 2024. A whole weekend of instruction? Seriously?
Yes. Seriously.
When I read about the practitioners of a hundred years ago, there seemed to be so much more time. There was space to settle into the healing process. Today, we want a pill. We want a wand, we want a profound and magical awakening that we don’t necessarily have to integrate after the fact.
We want to be cured rather than cure.
I wanted that, too. Why do you think I started this whole wild journey two decades ago? I was a mess. A miserable sad, depressed, anxious, angry mound of neurosis and suffering. I took a bargain workshop. I took many. I went to healers, paid for packages, signed up for trips acrossed the world all before I was 18. By the time I was in my mid-twenties I had been abused by so many lost practitioners who promised sacred and delivered the mundane and the snake oil. It sucked. I learned a lot.
In 2022, I commenced teaching, though painfully aware of what I was up against. Reiki had en masse become an MLM. It had become an argumentative space. It became a joke. The first episode of the first season of White Lotus, Jennifer Coolridge’s character steps onto the resort, begging for the spa, for any treatment, massage, sound healing — “anything but Reiki.”
There’s a reason for this joke.
Insufficiently trained practitioners trained by insufficnelty trained teachers who were poorly trained by (probably) well-intentioned, likely American, probably trying to make a name and a buck for themselves teaching a Japanese Energy Modality to other hippies or culturally curious. And yes, I am being fascious, and I would probably unpack this more lovingly in a conversation — but the telephone game that has become Reiki in the United States is worth examining.
I started teaching, and as I created my manual, as I combed through all the books and all the teachings, I had to question everything I was taught. A long lineage of psychics and sensitives, of travelers with privilege and access and most importantly, time and energy and income to pursue practices such as this. I had to unpack the baggage of my teachers before me. I had to unpack the “ascension” concepts that sound a lot like the “it will be better in heaven” realities for religious practitioners. I had to unpack the nature of “The Ascended Masters” and all the channeled teachings out there written by white westerners in the last century and what pieces had value, what was about power, what was painting a picture or trying to explain the unexplainable.
I arrived at the reality that I do not know. And I tell my students that if someone tells you that they DO know— you should probably walk or run away from that individual.
Life is big and beautiful, profound and unknowable. It is confounding, it is terrible, it is wonderful, it is bliss it is suffering. Nature shows us this. Yet humans are always trying to sugar coat and sell another opioid to the masses.
This is probably why a Master’s in Social Work was the right avenue for me to become a clinician. The study of systems, of oppression, of harms, of seeing a person impacted by everything that exists and everything that has ever existed feels right. It feels necessary in taking a functional, holistic approach to health and overall well-being. It is through each of us pursuing the path to wellness that we might be able to be unified in our suffering and work to change systems that perpetuate harm, othering and inequity.
This means that our personal liberation is dependent upon everyone elses. That the metaphors of a spiritual path are spoken in the words of activists and liberators like Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Lama Rod Owens, James Baldwin, adrienne marie brown, oumou sylla (to just crack the surface). That my path as a practitioner aims to be a radical one. That my approach is built on consent and curiosity. Knowing I am imperfect and that I am a person and not a stringent robot paid to process and provide feedback in talk therapy.
Through our relationship, we both grow.
