When I think about my path with Reiki and spirituality today, I can see how naturally I once assumed that I was separate from the source. I probably would not have described it in those words at the time, yet my entire search was built upon that assumption. I believed I had to draw closer to a force that existed somewhere beyond my immediate experience. Something within me longed for connection, while at the same time I was convinced that I did not yet fully possess that connection. In this way, an inner contradiction arose that I failed to notice for a long time. I was searching for something that was already carrying me, and I took the very fact that I was searching as proof that it was still missing.
For many people, this sense of separation does not begin only when they embark on a spiritual path. It often grows out of the experiences of ordinary life. We learn early on to understand ourselves as individuals who must assert themselves, protect themselves and find their place. We experience approval and rejection, closeness and loss, security and disappointment. From this, an image of ourselves emerges that appears clearly separate from the world and from other people. This distinction is necessary for life, but it can make us forget that difference is not the same as separation. We can be individual beings and still arise from the same life force.
I too had learnt to define myself mainly through my story, my thoughts and my roles. I was the person with certain experiences, responsibilities, abilities and limitations. Everything I called myself seemed to exist within my body, while life began somewhere outside me. Within this view, I searched for spirituality as though it were a bridge meant to connect two separate realms. On one side stood I, with my questions; on the other, I imagined the source, energy or something divine. The more I longed for that bridge, the more natural the distance itself began to seem.
When Reiki entered my life, it initially appeared to offer a way of overcoming that distance. I learnt to open myself to universal life energy and to perceive it more consciously. These experiences touched me deeply, yet beneath them remained the unconscious idea that the energy had to come to me from somewhere else. I waited for warmth, a sense of flowing or other sensations that would confirm that a connection had been established. When I felt something clearly, I felt close. When things remained quiet, doubts arose. Only much later did I recognise that I had tied the presence of the energy to my own perception and made it dependent upon whether it matched my expectations.
Over time, however, I experienced moments that did not fit this picture. Sometimes the deepest sense of connection was present precisely when I was not trying to call anything forth. It appeared in a conscious breath, while sitting quietly or during a walk in nature. In those moments, there was no clear boundary between me as the observer and the life I was observing. I had not disappeared, yet the feeling of standing apart from everything grew quieter. The sounds around me, my breath, the movement of the air and the sensations in my body all seemed to be happening within a single presence. Nothing had to be connected because nothing had ever truly been separate.
This experience led me to see the source differently. For a long time, I had understood it as a distant beginning to which I somehow had to return. Today, I experience it less as a place and more as the living presence from which every moment arises. The source does not lie behind the world, nor does it wait somewhere beyond my perception. It reveals itself in everything that lives, changes and passes away again. My body, my thoughts and even my doubts arise within this life. If that is so, then I can never stand outside the source, because even my sense of separation is carried by the same energy.
For me, this recognition does not mean that the experience of separation is unreal or insignificant. It can feel profoundly real and cause deep suffering. When I can no longer feel myself, lose myself in relationships or cannot find any inner ground, it is of little help simply to tell myself that everything is one. Words like these can even become another form of avoidance. The idea of unity must not be used to bypass human feelings, personal boundaries or painful experiences. A more honest understanding only began for me when I was able to allow both. I could feel separate and at the same time recognise that this feeling did not describe the deepest truth of my being.
The body became an important guide in this. Thoughts can offer convincing explanations for why I am alone, incomplete or cut off from life. The body, by contrast, repeatedly brings me back into immediate experience. When I become aware of my breath, I feel that life is happening within me without my being able to control it completely. Air enters and leaves again. Food, light, warmth and countless natural processes sustain my body. Even here, it becomes clear that the boundary between inside and outside is more permeable than my mind would have me believe. I do not exist independently of life, but through a constant exchange with it.
My encounters with other people also began to change through this way of seeing. I realised that connection does not mean dissolving all differences or allowing every form of closeness. Every person needs personal boundaries, a space of their own and the freedom to follow their own path. Yet beneath our different stories, the same fundamental aliveness is at work. If I see another person only through their opinions, their role or their behaviour, I see only a fragment. Beneath these visible forms lives a being who, like me, seeks safety, love and belonging. Recognising this does not excuse hurtful behaviour, but it changes the place from which I set boundaries.
In energy work, this perspective became especially meaningful. As long as I believed that I had to give another person something they lacked, an imbalance arose without my noticing it. I saw myself as the one who had access to a force, while the other person was supposed to receive it. Today, I experience a Reiki treatment more as a conscious encounter within a shared field of energy. I am not creating a connection that did not exist before. I become still, open my attention and trust that universal life energy is already present in both people. This makes my role simpler and, at the same time, more responsible, because I do not have to prove anything, but neither am I entitled to impose anything upon the other person.
From this understanding, New Reiki is not, for me, a new system that places itself between people and the source. It is rather a reminder that no system can possess the source. Methods, symbols and rituals can help us direct our attention, but they do not create the connection. The moment a form leads us to believe that without it we are separate from the energy, it becomes another boundary. The real path therefore does not lead towards another dependency, but towards direct perception. I can receive guidance, learn and gather experience without forgetting that the source does not lie outside me.
The longer I live with this recognition, the less I experience spirituality as a search for some special state. For me, it reveals itself in the way I meet the present moment. When I eat, breathe, speak or listen to another person, I can either experience myself as a separate observer or become aware that I am part of something larger that is unfolding. This awareness is not always clear and cannot be held on to permanently. There are days when old thoughts of loneliness, lack or separation become louder again. Yet even then, I know that the connection has not disappeared. Only my attention has moved away from it.
There is therefore no real wall between me and the source. What stands between us are ideas about who I have to be, what I am missing and how far I still have to go. These ideas can seem very convincing, yet they arise within the same consciousness that is capable of recognising them. In the moment I become aware of them, a quiet space already opens that is wider than any story of separation. There, I do not have to achieve anything or force any particular experience. I can simply notice that I am alive, that I am breathing and that I am carried by a force that has never ceased to be present. Perhaps returning to the source is therefore not a journey at all, but the quiet recognition that I never left it.