At some point, I found myself with several sheets of paper, notes and documents from different phases of my involvement with Reiki spread out in front of me. Some of them were many years old. They contained sequences, terms, hand positions, explanations and things that had seemed important to me at the time. As I leafed through them, I noticed something peculiar: the longer I had known Reiki, the less I needed any of it in order to feel connected to it. That surprised me, because we usually expect the opposite from learning. We gather knowledge, become more precise, expand our abilities and, after years of practice, possess more than we did at the beginning. With Reiki, my path seemed eventually to lead in another direction. I had learned more and, at the same time, begun to let things fall away again. Not out of rejection of what had accompanied me, but because I increasingly sensed that beneath all those forms lay something very simple. Something that did not become more complicated the longer I explored it, but quieter. It was from this experience that the idea emerged which I later called New Reiki – Back to the Source.
For me, the word source does not mean trying to reconstruct a historical form of Reiki or claiming that there was once a perfectly pure method to which we simply need to return. History is more complex than such simple ideas, and spiritual traditions also change as soon as people begin to pass them on. So the source I mean lies somewhere else. I mean the moment before explanation. Before I decide what I ought to feel. Before I assign a sensation to a system. Before someone else tells me whether an experience is right, strong or meaningful enough. I am interested in that first direct contact with my own experience. What happens if I do not reach first for what I have learned, but instead notice what is actually there?
For me, this was no small change. For many years, knowledge naturally held an important place in my engagement with Reiki. When I learn something, I want to understand how it is meant, what other people have experienced with it and what forms have developed around it. At the same time, I eventually noticed that knowledge can also come between me and an experience. If I already know that warmth is supposed to arise, I pay attention to warmth. If I expect a particular reaction, I am especially likely to notice anything that fits that expectation. That does not mean the perception is therefore untrue. But it can become difficult to distinguish what arose directly and what was already accompanied by my own ideas. Over time, one simple sentence therefore became increasingly important to me: perceive first, explain afterwards.
In spirituality especially, I find this order valuable. We are often dealing with areas that cannot be verified as clearly as a measurable external process. I can describe what I feel, but I cannot automatically conclude from that that everyone else must experience the same thing. I can speak of energy because the word carries meaning for my personal perception without claiming that I can definitively explain every sensation. I have found for myself that this restraint has taken nothing away from my relationship with Reiki. If anything, it has deepened it. I do not need to make an experience larger than it is. If something is barely perceptible, it is allowed to remain subtle. If I notice nothing remarkable, that does not have to become a deficiency. And if something feels intense, I do not need to turn it immediately into proof of a particular idea.
This attitude also changed my relationship with techniques, symbols and fixed procedures. I do not regard them as inherently wrong. Forms can help people focus their attention and give an experience a framework. But I began to ask myself what happens when the framework itself is declared a prerequisite. When I eventually come to believe that without a particular form I can no longer have any access at all. For me, that creates a dependency which places less and less trust in my own experience. This is precisely where my understanding of New Reiki begins. Not by replacing an old technique with a new one, but by asking how much technique is really necessary before we begin to trust our direct perception.
This question concerns me even more when it comes to spiritual authority. I have nothing against teachers. People can pass on knowledge, share experiences, open up questions and draw our attention to things we might otherwise overlook for a long time. It becomes more difficult for me when guidance turns into the idea that another person somehow holds the fundamental access to my own spiritual experience. Since my youth, I have been occupied by the question of how much of what we seek spiritually actually lies outside us and how much we search for it there simply because we have learned to trust what is external more than our own perception. Over the years, Reiki became less and less something that someone possesses and passes on, and increasingly a space in which personal responsibility begins.
For me, personal responsibility does not mean having to know everything on my own. Quite the opposite. It explicitly includes doubt. If I perceive for myself, I can be mistaken. Expectations can influence my experience, as can memories, physical reactions or my mood. That is precisely why I think it is important not to turn every inner impression into an absolute truth. But the possibility of being mistaken is not, for me, a reason to hand over my own perception. It is a reason to look more carefully. I do not have to choose between blind belief and complete rejection. Between the two lies a wide space in which I can experience, examine, leave things open and look at them again later. That space feels far more alive to me than a ready-made answer.
It was from this development that my book New Reiki – Back to the Source eventually emerged. For me, it is less an attempt to teach people more about Reiki than to remind them of a question that is easily lost: "What remains if I set aside everything I have been told must necessarily stand between me and my own experience?" That is why the idea of self-initiation also plays an important role in the book. I do not understand it as a spectacular act, nor as a claim that every person must experience something specific. For me, it touches a different question: does spiritual connection always have to be legitimised from the outside first, or is there a point at which I take responsibility for my own perception? The book grew out of my personal answer to that question, not from any claim to answer it definitively for everyone else.
When I think of Back to the Source today, I therefore do not see a path backwards. In truth, it is more like a path through everything that has accumulated over the years. The knowledge remains. The experience remains. The doubts remain too. Only the idea grows quieter that something must inevitably stand between me and direct experience. And sometimes a very simple image comes to mind. I spend a long time searching for a spring, following maps, listening to other people’s descriptions and trying to work out which path is the right one. Eventually, I stop and hear water. Not somewhere far away. Directly beneath my feet. Perhaps that is what source means to me: "Not forgetting everything I have learned, but becoming quiet enough to notice again what has never stopped being there underneath."