When I look back on my journey with Reiki today, I can see how long I believed I had to move closer to an energy that somehow existed beyond my immediate experience. I imagined there was a distance between me and the source, an invisible stretch I first had to cross through knowledge, practice and spiritual development. This thought was never loud, yet it accompanied many of my decisions. It kept me searching, learning and hoping that one day I would reach a point where I felt truly worthy of, open to or close enough to universal life energy.
At the time, this search seemed entirely understandable to me. After all, much of our life follows the principle that we have to learn something before we can master it. We gather experience, develop abilities and move towards our goals step by step. Without realising it, I transferred this idea to Reiki as well. I believed that my connection with the energy would become stronger the more I knew about it, and that each further step would bring me closer to a source I had not yet fully reached. For a long time, I failed to notice that this very idea was creating the distance I was trying to overcome.
The more I searched for a special experience, the more closely I watched for particular sensations. I waited for warmth in my hands, for tingling, inner images or a distinct sense of energy. When something appeared, I felt reassured. When everything remained quiet, I began to doubt. I wondered whether I was open enough, whether my perception was sufficient or whether something essential was still missing. Today, I can see how strongly I tied the presence of the energy to particular sensations. What I could not clearly feel seemed less real to me, even though stillness itself may have been its purest form of presence.
Over time, however, I began to notice that the deepest moments did not always arise when I was making the greatest effort. They appeared instead when, for a moment, I stopped trying to achieve anything. Sometimes I simply sat quietly, without using any technique and without waiting for a result. In those moments, a different quality of awareness emerged. It was not spectacular and was difficult to explain, yet it felt familiar. It was as though I was not discovering something new, but remembering something that had already been present beneath all my ideas.
This experience gave rise to a question that changed the course of my journey. What if Reiki had never been beyond my reach? What if I did not first have to learn how to reach the energy, but simply recognise that I had never been separate from it? At first, the thought almost felt too simple. Part of me had become accustomed to associating spiritual depth with effort, development and extraordinary experiences. The idea that the source might already be present contradicted so much of what I had learnt about attaining things of value.
Yet the longer I lived with this question, the more clearly I understood that universal life energy cannot be a reward. It is not something we are given only after meeting certain conditions. If it truly is the force that flows through all living things, then it cannot at the same time be something waiting outside us. It must already be present in our breath, in our bodies and in every movement of life. Not only when we consciously work with it, but also in those moments when we neither seek it nor give it a name.
This realisation changed my understanding of what it means for something to be within reach. In the past, I thought reaching something meant having to stretch far enough to touch it. Today, I experience it differently. Reiki was never too far away. Rather, my attention was often directed so strongly outwards that I overlooked what was closest. I searched for a connection while already being part of it. I waited for an energy that was already carrying me. I tried to open myself to something that was already alive within every breath.
Spiritually, I began to recognise in this a quiet return. This return did not take me to another place or turn me into a different person. Instead, it brought me closer to what had always been present beneath my ideas, expectations and doubts. It was not a movement forwards, but a letting go. A release of the idea that I had not yet come far enough. A becoming still amid the inner voices telling me what I supposedly still lacked.
The more I allowed myself to enter into this return, the less Reiki appeared to me as a technique. For me, this does not mean that exercises or particular forms have no value. They can help gather our attention and create a conscious space. But I began to distinguish between a signpost and what it points towards. A method can remind me of the energy, but it does not create it. A symbol can focus my awareness, but it is not the source. An initiation can set an inner movement in motion, but it cannot give me something that is not already inherent in life itself.
This distinction brought a great sense of calm into the way I related to Reiki. I no longer had to keep checking whether the connection was strong enough. I began to understand that connection is not something that is present at one moment and disappears the next. My perception may change, my thoughts may become loud and my trust may waver, but the energy itself remains untouched by any of this. It does not withdraw when I doubt. It does not move away when I cannot feel it. What changes is only my willingness to perceive its quiet presence.
Stillness also took on a different meaning for me. In the past, I sometimes interpreted it as absence. When nothing special happened, I believed that the energy was not flowing clearly enough or that I did not have genuine access to it. Today, I see that stillness does not have to be empty. It can be a space in which nothing stands between me and my immediate experience. In this stillness, the energy does not need to prove itself. It needs no intensity, no visible effect and no special sensation. It is simply present, as naturally as my breath.
This experience also led me to a new understanding of trust. Today, trust does not mean firmly believing in a particular idea. It means not constantly feeling the need to intervene. I do not have to control the energy, strengthen it or push it in a desired direction. The less I try to make it fit my expectations, the more clearly I can perceive what is actually present. There is a form of surrender in this that has nothing to do with passivity. It is an alert willingness to meet life without immediately trying to shape it.
I also began to recognise how often my search for Reiki had really been a search for certainty. I wanted to know that I was right, that my perception was accurate and that I could make something happen. External forms gave me orientation, but they could not give me the deeper security I was longing for. That security only began to emerge when I stopped constantly testing myself. It grew from the simple recognition that I do not stand outside life and therefore cannot stand outside its energy either.
This changed the way I looked at healing. Healing no longer appeared to me only as the changing of a condition, but as a return to a deeper alignment with what is. When I accompany myself or another person with Reiki, I do not have to fight against anything. I do not have to prove that energy works. I can be present, listen and open a space in which life may begin to flow more freely again. This attitude removes pressure from the treatment and brings me back to a simplicity I had overlooked for a long time.
For me, there is nothing superficial about this simplicity. On the contrary, it demands honesty. When external forms become quieter, I can no longer hide behind them. I have to notice the attitude with which I meet another person, the expectations I bring with me and whether I am truly present. In this way, Reiki does not become less profound, but more immediate. It does not lead me away from myself, but directly into my own presence.
The quiet return to the source therefore does not mean rejecting everything I have learnt. Many experiences have accompanied me and helped me to look more closely. Today, however, I understand them differently. They were not stages that first made me worthy. They were signs pointing towards something that had long been there. They did not lead me to a distant source. They helped me recognise that I had never truly left it.
When I place my hands on myself or another person today, or simply sit in stillness, I no longer try to call Reiki towards me. I allow myself to notice what is already happening. My breath moves. My body is alive. Thoughts come and go. Beneath all of this remains a quiet presence that neither begins nor ends simply because I turn my attention towards it. For me, this presence is the space in which Reiki is no longer something external, but can be experienced as a natural expression of life.
Perhaps this is also the deeper meaning of the source. The source is not a past state to which we must struggle to return. It is not a lost place and not a spiritual destination. It is what remains when our ideas about what we still need to become or achieve grow quieter for a moment. It is the closeness that becomes visible when we stop creating distance.
Today, I recognise that Reiki was never beyond my reach. It was not hidden behind a locked door or at the end of a long path. It was present in every step, even those in which I felt lost. It was there in my searching, in my doubts and in my desire to understand more deeply. Even when I believed I was separate from the energy, I was still being carried by it.
This realisation changes not only my relationship with Reiki, but also the way I see myself. If universal life energy does not exist outside me, then I no longer have to regard myself as incomplete. I do not first have to become someone else in order to be close to it. I am allowed to perceive myself as I am now, with everything that feels clear and everything that is still unsettled. The connection does not depend on my perfection. It is the ground upon which any development can take place at all.
Perhaps the quiet return therefore begins in a single moment of honesty. In the moment when I stop asking how I can reach Reiki and become willing instead to feel what is already carrying me. In that recognition, the search does not dissolve through a final answer. It simply becomes still. And in that stillness, what remains is not emptiness, but a familiar presence that was never beyond my reach.
For me, this is the deepest meaning of New Reiki. It is not another method placed between me and the source. It is an invitation to let everything rest for a moment that tells me I am not yet ready or not yet complete. It reminds me that the energy does not first have to come to me. It is already here. Not as something I can possess, but as life itself, breathing through me, carrying me and waiting in every quiet moment to be recognised again.