Why New Reiki Is Not a Textbook, but a Return
When I began writing my book New Reiki – Back to the Source, I did not want to create yet another textbook about Reiki. My intention was not to rearrange familiar material, explain an additional method or give readers a fixed sequence of steps that they should follow as precisely as possible. There was a different impulse behind the writing. Over many years, I had come to know Reiki, practised it and considered it from different perspectives. During that time, one question became increasingly clear within me: do we really come closer to universal life energy through ever more knowledge, or can the many ideas surrounding it actually distance us from what was originally simple and immediate? My book therefore did not arise from a desire to add something to an existing teaching. It arose from the need to remove, layer by layer, what had been placed between people and their own perception. I wanted to point towards something that does not first have to be learnt, earned or bestowed from outside. Something that has always been there, but has become difficult to recognise beneath rules, expectations and spiritual concepts.
For a long time, I too believed that Reiki above all needed to be understood. I explored procedures, initiations, symbols and ideas about how energy should be received, passed on or directed. At first, this knowledge gave me orientation, because it is reassuring to have a framework when approaching something that the mind cannot fully comprehend. A clear structure creates a sense of security and can help us make sense of our first experiences. But over time, I noticed that my attention was becoming increasingly focused on the form itself. I wondered whether I was doing everything correctly, whether my perception was clear enough and whether I met the necessary requirements. The more I searched for confirmation, the less I trusted what was revealing itself directly within me. I began to recognise that knowledge can open a door, but it can also become a wall if it leads us to believe that truth must always be found outside our own experience.
This realisation did not arise from rejecting what I had experienced before. Much of what I had learnt was valuable and had accompanied me on my path. But I began to distinguish between the energy itself and the explanations surrounding it. If Reiki is universal life energy, then it cannot first come into existence through a system. It cannot be present only where certain terms, degrees or symbols are known. The energy must already be at work within life itself, in every breath, every body and every natural movement. It cannot be separate from us while at the same time being the force through which we are alive at all. This thought fundamentally changed my understanding. I no longer had to ask myself how to create a connection that already exists within the very nature of life. Instead, I could begin to look at which ideas prevented me from perceiving that connection. That was where the return to the source began for me.
For this reason, my book does not lead from one technique to the next in the manner of a conventional textbook. It promises no stages through which a person gradually becomes more valuable, more powerful or more spiritually advanced. There is no position from which someone stands above others because they possess more knowledge or control special forms of access. Universal life energy knows no such hierarchies. It does not ask for a title and does not test whether someone is sufficiently prepared to be touched by it. I increasingly found this idea liberating because it removed the pressure to achieve something from spiritual experience. At the same time, it brought responsibility with it. If no external authority needs to stand between me and the energy, then I cannot rely indefinitely on prescribed rules. I am invited to become quieter, to perceive more honestly and to encounter my own inner experience again. The book can accompany this process and offer guidance, but it cannot take that personal step on anyone’s behalf.
As I wrote, it became increasingly clear to me that the real message was not about giving the reader something new. It was about reminding them of something already present beneath all their searching. This remembrance is not like recalling a forgotten thought. It is not knowledge that we once learnt and later lost. Rather, it appears as a quiet inner recognition. Perhaps we read a sentence and feel that it touches something within us that we have always known, even though we had no words for it. Perhaps a moment of stillness arises in which the many questions become quieter for a while. In such moments, we do not necessarily find a new answer. Something simply falls away that had made us believe the answer had to be somewhere else. This is what remembrance means to me. It cannot be forced, but it can happen when a person becomes willing, for a moment, to give less weight to their own preconceptions.
This is also why I speak of self-initiation in my book. The term can easily be misunderstood if we think of initiation only as a ritual through which someone is opened or connected with an energy from outside. For me, self-initiation means something different. It is the conscious recognition of a connection that has never ceased to exist. It is not a process through which something foreign enters us, but an inner acceptance of what is already alive within us. No one can give another person universal life energy, because that person is themselves made of it. Another human being can accompany us, hold a space and point towards something. They can share their experiences and offer encouragement. But the deepest recognition must happen within the person themselves. It begins where they no longer believe they depend on external permission in order to feel close to the source.
This perspective also changes the meaning of symbols and techniques. I do not see them as fundamentally wrong or without value. They can focus our attention, make an intention tangible and be helpful in certain moments. But they are not the source of the energy. A symbol can remind us, but it does not create what it reminds us of. A technique can help us become present, but it cannot replace presence itself. If we believe that without these aids we have no access to Reiki, then we have turned a form of support into a condition. The form no longer serves the connection, but becomes a boundary. My book therefore does not invite people to reject everything they have learnt. It invites them to examine honestly whether a particular form opens their perception or makes them dependent on something outside their own inner experience.
While writing, I also had to keep asking myself from which inner place my words were arising. Did I want to persuade, explain and establish a new truth, or did I want to open a space in which the reader could perceive for themselves? This distinction mattered to me because New Reiki should not become a new system that one day stands just as rigidly between the individual and the source as the structures it questions. The aim is not to replace old rules with new ones. Even the statement that no technique is necessary could become dogma if it denied other people their personal experience. For this reason, I do not regard my book as a final answer. It is my perspective, shaped by my own path, my doubts and the insights that emerged from them. It invites personal examination and asks for no belief.
For me, true energy work does not begin with the correct position of the hands, but with presence. It begins in the moment when I stop overlooking myself. When I become aware of my breath, observe my thoughts and recognise the intention with which I meet another person, the quality of the connection already begins to change. I do not have to create some special force. I can become still and allow life to reveal itself in its own way. This attitude may appear simpler than any complicated technique, but it demands a great deal of honesty. I cannot hide behind a procedure and afterwards claim that I did everything correctly. I have to notice whether I was genuinely present, whether I was trying to force a particular result and whether I was able to respect the other person in their own dignity. New Reiki therefore does not lead towards arbitrariness, but towards deeper personal responsibility.
Healing also took on a different meaning for me through this understanding. In the past, I often associated healing with the idea of changing a condition, releasing a blockage or putting something right again. Today, I see healing less as correction and more as a return to relationship with ourselves. A person may begin to change where they no longer have to fight against their own experience. When tiredness, fear or sadness are allowed to be perceived without immediately being removed, a space can arise in which something begins to relax. Reiki is then not a force working against the present condition. It becomes a quiet accompaniment that excludes nothing. This does not mean that every condition simply has to be accepted or that medical help becomes unnecessary. It means that energy work does not reduce a person to a problem, but meets them in their wholeness.
My book is therefore not a set of instructions through which healing can be guaranteed or controlled. No one can promise what effect a treatment will have. Life energy does not follow our personal expectations and cannot be used like a tool that produces a desired result on command. What we can do is create a conscious space in which closeness, perception and inner movement become possible. We can learn to listen without immediately interpreting, and to touch without wanting to possess or control. This attitude takes nothing away from the depth of energy work. On the contrary, it frees it from the demand to prove itself constantly. The value of an encounter lies not only in visible change, but also in those quiet moments in which a person begins to feel themselves again.
When I look at my book today, I do not see a path that leads from ignorance to some special spiritual status. I see a movement back towards something simple. This return is not backward-looking and does not require us to forget all experiences, methods or developments. Rather, it leads beneath these forms, to the place where the immediate connection with life becomes perceptible again. The source is not a distant place and not a lost state that we have to restore. It is the presence in which our breath happens, our body lives and our perception arises. We cannot truly leave it, but we can lose sight of it beneath ideas, expectations and constant searching.
Perhaps New Reiki – Back to the Source is therefore best understood as an invitation. The book does not ask anyone to exchange their own truth for my words. It seeks to encourage them to look, feel and recognise for themselves again. It does not say that nothing may be learnt, but reminds us that knowledge alone does not create connection. It does not reject guidance, but questions whether guidance has to lead to dependence. It takes people seriously enough not to convince them that they are lacking something which only an external system can provide.
For me, this is the true meaning of the book. It seeks to place nothing between the reader and the source. It does not want to build a new wall of concepts, but to make visible that the apparent distance existed only within our ideas. Not everyone will find the same experiences within these pages, and not every statement will suit every path. But if, while reading, there comes even a brief feeling that there is no longer any need to search, then the book has fulfilled its deepest purpose. No new teaching has been adopted. Something of one’s own has been recognised again. That is precisely why New Reiki is not, for me, a textbook in the conventional sense. It is a quiet return to the simple truth that universal life energy has never existed outside us, and that the source has carried us even through those times when we believed ourselves to be far away from it.