Jonathan H. B. Lobl

I refuse to be terrorized into submission. Grow a spine. Take a stand. I can be killed. Fear is optional.

Yes. One inerrant word. Oops.

You have a good vision of the future. To bring it into being will require the Medical world to change as well.

It is a poor basis for social harmony. However -- This is not an either or binary. Should I be in terror of the Christian Hell for non-Christians? Or should I be afraid of the Muslim Hell for non-Muslims? I prefer a different solution. Screw all the terrorists with their fear based doctrines. I repeat. All of them. While I'm at it, screw all the secular minded, who can't tell the pious terrorists where to stick it.

Without regard to legalities, I have a few thoughts on "value". I don't want to be cosmic, so I will use my own experience. My ordination by ULC means something to me. It is what it is. ULC ordained me. No problem at all. My honorary D.D. is like wise not an issue. My church "honored" me with a title. My "earned" Doctor of Metaphysics degree falls under the heading of youthful indiscretion. I wouldn't do it now. I have a friend who gained a Ph.D. in history. It took him 11 years of hard work -- post graduate. (On top of the Bachelor's degree) That is what an earned doctorate is. A $100 diploma is not funny. It's fraud.

True. Sometimes, things get better.

Yes. Your point is a good one.

I have difficulty respecting those, who spread terrorist doctrines about damnation.

That was an eye opener. Thank you.

Tenets? Of Jediism? What did you have in mind? Not the war between the Light Side and the Dark Side of the Force.

Perhaps I lack imagination. It would not occur to me, to take my problems to a professional clergy person. Why would I?

Alright. Except you don't need an ordination to perform sacraments. At least in America, the government has no such regulatory authority. The exception is marriage. Even there, the couple has the option of a civil marriage -- and they can arrange for their own sacraments. There is no ministerial license. At least, nothing issued by the government. Legal issues aside, the world has a rich history of religious persecution. This alone demonstrates that governments have no moral authority to control sacraments. To my understanding, the primary issue for this thread is church issued degrees. What do they count for and what use are they? Ordination is a different topic. Just to put it on the table, I have the ULC ordination, the honorary D.D. and the Doctor of Metaphysics degree. The ordination has come to mean something to me. I'm not always sure what. The honorary D.D. amuses me. The Metaphysics degree has soured. It's supposed to be an "earned" degree. It's not. Which brings us back to the foundation of this thread. The ULC issued Ph.D.

Please clarify. Which part of this applies to your degree from U.L.C.?

Alright. What have you put into your degree -- and what is the intended application?

There are indeed many paths up the mountain. It is very annoying when Christians line my path -- and insist on telling me that my path will take me straight to Hell.

My memories are vague. When I was growing up, there was a major protest rally in New York City, put on by an Italian Anti Defamation League. At the high point of the rally, the mobster who was running things, was gunned down. There was a reality shift.

There are a few different things going on here. First things first. What matters is growing into the energy. Maturing with it. Making it part of your awareness. Of course, you develop. Is this because you have taken a more advanced degree? Studied with a new teacher? Learned more symbols? Learned a new, more complicated attunenment process? No. Because over time, we mature and progress with the things that we make part of us. People love to make simple things complicated. Look at me. My symbols are better than your symbols. My teacher is a greater master than your teacher. My lineage is hotter than your lineage. It's all crap. There is a maturing process and it is that simple. Of course, people do want to make themselves known as great healers. Certificates and diplomas have a certain cache if the goal is to build up a resume for potential clients. It is also possible to go to a martial arts school and be declared a master 0f the grand glorious fighting crap. That won't help you in a fight. That pretty black belt won't jump off your waste and defend you. In the same way, mastering the symbols from twenty different Reiki systems won't make you a better healer. A small incidental. I have the Karuna training. More symbols. More certificates. A sad reality is that some people really, really, want to be the founders of their own system and lineage. Money, glory, and all the rest of it. That is another reason why so many new things are springing up. Talk is cheap. They have a way of saying that their system is more powerful than Reiki. This is a claim. I have yet to see a healer with a better system do better with that system. In fact, every where you go, Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, Pranic Healing -- the rest of them -- they don't just have a system. They have the system. It's part of Human nature.

The world of Reiki -- I know too much to think of it as a community -- has a lot of wonderful aspects. However -- It is not all Sunshine and sparkles. There is also greed, ego, vanity, bull crap, outright lies, self deception, ferocious politics, self promotion, fraud, etc. In short, everything that comes with dealing with people. Such is life. Let the buyer beware. If you don't trust a teacher, you may or may not be picking up on something. There are other teachers and other methods. Move along. Don't get stuck and don't be a victim.

In my case, Reiki turned out to be a gateway experience. I was practicing what I had been taught for a distance healing. Sending the Ki from where I was to the person being healed. In other words, sending Ki through space. I discovered that I was not sending anything from point A to point B. What I was doing was over coming the illusion of distance. It follows that if space has an illusory component, then so does time. I'm still dealing with this discovery. This is a larger world. Healing is still important to me. Other aspects have become more important.

Therapeutic Touch does not have the attunements or the symbols. There are differences. There is over-lap. The differences are more important for the beginner than the advanced. Consider the Martial Arts. There is boxing, kick boxing, various styles of kung fu, karate, jiu jitsu, etc. In the beginning, it matters a lot. Past a point, there is only one question. Can you fight? In the beginning, there is some real difference between Reiki and Therapeutic Touch. If you care, we can get into it. Past a point, technique stops mattering. It's just you and the energy. Even there, I'm not always sure how real the energy is. When I act like it's real, it works. Kedem Morton, a Buddhist monk, said -- "The gods are illusory, but if we call upon them for assistance, they will help us anyway".

We are going to have to do this in small bites. Otherwise, it will confuse and overwhelm. Reiki traces back to Buddhism. It begins with a "Master Teacher" performing an "attunement" for the student. In essence, hooking the student up to the "Universal Life Force". I am persuaded that the attunement process is a watered down Buddhist empowerment ceremony. At First Level, the student is taught touch healing. At Second Level, the student is taught distance healing. Also, the symbols which had been "planted" in the student at First Level are taught consciously at Second. The symbols are a means of expressing intention. I'm being simplistic here. We don't want to get lost in the details. Therapeutic Touch derives from Theosophy. It is elegant in it's simplicity. Since it is practiced by a lot of working Nurses, who are concerned with medical credentials, it sometimes seems more formidable than it is. Likewise, the Nursing schools that teach it also love complexity and jargon and credentials. Still, the practice is simple. Keeping things simple, we are a collection of different energy fields. Fields which are constantly interacting with the fields of others. Basic Therapeutic Touch is a process. 1. The practitioner centers self. Calming and grounding. Making quiet. Don't make too much of this. 2. Assessing the field. 3. Unruffling/Smoothing the field. 4. Directing the healing energy. 5. Knowing when to stop In time, the five steps become a continuing process, without sequence. This seems like a good place to stop. I really don't want to overwhelm. Questions?

I used to enjoy that game. It can be a lot of fun with the right group.

Therapeutic Touch derives from the Theosophy movement. In ways that I can't describe, Therapeutic Touch changed my life. It certainly altered my perceptions of reality.

My cousin's piety seems to be genuine. It's his Humanity I question.

I don't know enough about the biochemistry to get into it. I have made some loose observations. I have been acquainted with a few people who were involved with Astral travel. They were beyond over weight. They were huge. I have also known a few Reiki people where the same thing happened. I hesitate to make pronouncements without anything more solid to go by. I suspect it has to do with not being well grounded in physical reality. The spiritual energies need grounding or bad things happen. By contrast, people who get involved with Qi Gong, talk about weight reduction as a benefit of the practice.