Nurturing Authentic Intuitive Languages // Passion Project Announcement
I chose to become a reiki master so that I would be able to give others the gift of empowerment and alignment with universal life force energy, the capacity to experience manifold healing, and the tools for intuitively guided knowing. I also chose to become a reiki master to continue challenging myself to break limiting patterns, beliefs, and actions; to move the teachings that I intellectually resonate with into authentic integration with all of the realms of my being: mental, physical, spiritual, and energetic.
I am conditioned to a worldview and cultural heritage that English-speaking peoples have co-created over time. English is a language of concepts. Concepts create disembodied and abstracted relationships and carve out space for belief in things like domination, separation, and limitation. I have little to few thoughts or words in my mother-tongue that communicate with or create space for the non-dualistic, non-human, immaterial, or unified nourishing reality that we are all part of. Because direct perception and intuitive knowledge ways are primary aspects of practicing reiki I am tasked to translate and discover my own understanding of our expanded reality. To complete my mastership I decided to begin making my own tarot deck as a way to explore and communicate authentic intuition through symbolic and creative language-making.
Tarot is the visual language of the Alchemists. Each symbol represents great mysteries, each card is a portal of transformation. To discover my own expression of mystery I promised myself not to edit or scrutinize my work, to sit at my desk, ask for intuitive guidance, and honor the images I create as an honest reflection of my understanding and expression of each card. Instead of already knowing what I am going to create I want to learn from the imagery that emerges, to be surprised, and to be accepting. To achieve that I have to face the void with each card, and with each stroke along the way. When I began I didn’t know what size the images were going to be, I made piecemeal elements and collaged them together on two pieces of canvas paper. After completing the first card I was seduced by the comforting idea of having a formatting standard and approaching the work chronologically. Ultimately that approach limited my process and betrayed my intention. I had to allow myself to release the precedent set by the last card and flow into the next without knowing, this is the ebb and flow of my process. All I can do is keep coming back to the practice and allow myself to create from a place of authentic connection.
Mastery is an ongoing process of learning, observing, and refining. I go through waves of self-doubt, self-judgment and avoidant behavior, all of which reinforce themselves until I return to my original intention. Just as all of the Reiki Principles are simple but not easy, trusting in my own authentic creative process and “doing my work honestly” is a deceptively difficult task. I can’t follow that statement up and say that I made it through and completed all 78 cards during my mastership year. At this point, I have elements that might become three or four different cards and one completed card. The challenges that I come up against in doing this work, both in creating the cards and in honestly living the reiki principles, allow me to observe, learn from, and refine the ongoing flux of my will and actions as they are corresponding with my intention. Even though I will hold the title “reiki master” the mastery I achieve is in continuing the gradual process of creative discovery and transformation.
Gina Elizabeth Murdock, Reiki Master
Gina uses Reiki to connect herself and others to the vibrations and spirit of universal love and care.