I recently began studying Shoden, the first level of Usui Reiki Ryōhō, through Roots of Life. One of the teachings that has stayed with me is the idea that the true nature of the self is kind, loving, and honest.
That may sound overly simple because, obviously, human beings are not always kind. We are most definitely not always loving. We’re not always honest, even with ourselves. We get angry. We worry. We resent. We withdraw. We say things intended to wound, hold tightly to old grievances, and sometimes act in ways that don’t resemble the people we want to be.
But maybe those things aren’t the deepest truth about us. Maybe they’re what gathers around the truth.
Trauma teaches us to protect ourselves. Fear teaches us to anticipate danger. Rejection can teach us to withdraw before anyone has the opportunity to leave us. Betrayal can make suspicion feel safer than trust. Anger can become armor. Worry can become an attempt to control the uncontrollable. Dishonesty can become a way of avoiding something we simply don’t know how to face.
All of these responses come from somewhere. Once, they may have helped us survive, endure, or maintain some sense of control. Recognizing that doesn’t excuse the harm we cause, but it does help us understand that our most painful reactions are not the whole of who we are.
Underneath them, there remains a part of us that wants to love and be loved. We want to act with kindness. We want our words, choices, and lives to be honest. We want to feel at peace with ourselves.
I wonder if much of our inner turmoil comes from the distance between that true nature and the way we’ve learned, or been forced, to live.
We know when we act against our own values. We feel the weight of words we shouldn’t have spoken, truths we avoided, and kindness we withheld. Even when we defend our behavior, something within us recognizes the separation. We’re not only in conflict with another person or with the world around us. We’re in conflict with ourselves.
The awareness is there. We don’t want to live this way.
The Five Precepts of Reiki offer a simple daily practice for finding our way back:
Just for today, I will not be angry.
Just for today, I will not worry.
Just for today, I will be grateful.
Just for today, I will do my work honestly.
Just for today, I will be kind to every living thing.
These aren’t demands for perfection. They’re not telling us that anger makes us bad or that worry is a personal failure. The words just for today remind us that the work happens in the present. We don’t have to resolve every wound, correct every mistake, or become entirely different people before nightfall. We only have to become conscious of how we’re living now.
If today is too much, if an entire day feels impossible, begin with an hour. A moment. A single breath.
Anger and worry will still arise. There’s no need to deny them or force them into silence. Anger has its uses. It can reveal that a boundary has been crossed. Worry shows us where we feel vulnerable or unsafe. These emotions carry information, but they don’t have to become our identity. They don’t have to govern what we do next.
Listen to them without surrendering yourself to them.
Returning to our true nature doesn’t mean becoming passive. Kindness doesn’t require us to accept mistreatment. Love doesn’t require us to give someone unlimited access to us. Honesty sometimes requires difficult conversations, firm boundaries, and the willingness to acknowledge what has been done. Compassion without truth is avoidance, but truth without compassion is just another weapon.
What’s asked of us is to hold them together.
Healing may be less about creating a new self and more about clearing a path back to the self that’s been buried beneath all that pain and fear. It’s the gradual work of noticing what belongs to fear, what belongs to old wounds, and what reflects our actual values. It’s learning to respond from those values even when our protective instincts are telling us to attack, hide, or close ourselves away.
For me, Reiki offers a structure for becoming still enough to notice what’s happening within me. The precepts give me a way to examine my choices without immediately condemning myself for them. They’re not asking me to be perfect. They’re asking if I can return.
Can I release my grip on anger, even briefly?
Can I come back from imagined futures and inhabit the present?
Can I recognize what remains worthy of gratitude?
Can I work and live honestly?
Can I choose kindness without abandoning discernment?
The path back to ourselves is rarely direct. Old wounds don’t disappear simply because we understand where they came from. We may find our way for a time and lose it again. We may repeat an old reaction even after believing we’d moved beyond it.
But losing the path doesn’t mean our true nature has vanished.
Kindness remains. Love remains. Honesty remains. They may be buried beneath grief, fear, shame, anger, or years of learned protection, but they’re still there. The fact that we long to return to them may itself be proof of their presence.
The work isn’t to become someone who never feels anger, worry, or pain. The work is to remember that these experiences are not all of you. You are more than your fear. You are more than your pain. You are more than your shadow self.
And just for today, you can begin again.