When you have a messed up knee, do you say, “I have a bad knee”? Do you think, or say, “I have a bad back”? Your knee and back may be causing you pain because they are in need of repair, but they are not bad. It’s a lot easier to heal a sore or damaged body part if you extend love to it. After all, love is a manifestation of life energy, the force that animates you and your knee to begin with.
Reiki is a healing art, a laying of hands, that focuses Reiki energy, which I believe is love, to allow your body to heal. Energy practices like qigong also move love through your body to release blockages and allow healing. I suppose you could hate a broken arm and it still may heal, especially if you begrudgingly love it enough to put it in a splint and you want it to heal. But love is the critical ingredient — it forms us and all of life.
It’s a mistake to say, “Bad dog!” to a dog that you want to behave better. It’s even more counter-productive to call a child bad, since you want that child to deeply believe that they are good and can do good. I would like to extend this reasoning to other people. Like a “bad” knee, you may have a “bad” neighbor who creates pain in the world through their rhetoric and actions. Certainly what they are doing is harmful. If you want to diminish that harm then you want that person to get better. Hating them doesn’t have any possibility of…
