One thing that struck me after a horrible mass shooting last year was that many people said prayers for the deceased and for their families. It was a time for healing the grief, loss and damage they all felt. This is usually what is seen in a tragedy. People gather and offer their support to each other through prayer, kind words, and healing of spirit.
I notice the intense rage felt toward the young man who killed those people and then himself. The rage was such that everyone seemed to be filled with hate toward him. I saw no one offering prayers for him. I felt it was critical to pray for him, to heal any situation that caused such a deep tear in his heart that he would commit the act of harming others.
Those that hurt others are in terrible psychic and emotional pain. They need our offering of healing as much as those they harm. Perhaps they need it even more. They need mental and emotional healing in order to mend whatever situations led them to feel they needed to hurt others. Healthy people don’t cause harm.
When we see something upsetting on the news, the precepts are important to remember. “I will not anger, I will not worry, I will be grateful, I will be kind to every living thing.” Saying these to ourselves can clear our minds of the sense of horror and anger that tends to arise in response to violent crimes. Then we can clearly see that the entire situation needs our healing care.
When sending Reiki to a tragic situation, intend that it flow to all involved, not just the victims. Intend that it flow to the witnesses, all who see coverage on the news and to the person or persons that caused the harm through their actions. Healing applied to the whole situation is much more complete than that which is offered to a select few. This can heal the mental and emotional wounds that led to the event in the first place.
Sending Reiki to a bad situation does more than heal those we send Reiki to. It heals our own hearts. We can become hardened and callous toward other peoples pain when seeing so much violence in the media. We want it all to stop and we become angry at those we believe caused it.
But if no one offers to heal those that are in such pain they become violent, then the cycle never ends. If we believe they are unworthy of healing, we have now made our own hearts violent. We need to have peace in our own hearts if we expect it to be in others’ hearts. We have to want all hearts to be healed, not just those we love and find favor with.
We can’t undo the event once it has happened, but we can help undo some of the damage, past, present and future. In doing so, we open the possibility that change may take place for the better. We may even help prevent future harm by healing the present and the past. At the very least, we undo the harm in our own hearts.When we see a tragedy, it would offer such a service to the world if we would pause and send Reiki to the entire situation, to our own hearts and to those involved—including the “bad guys”. Offer it to their past and their future, healing anything in their lives and their minds that set off the chain that led them to commit violence. Offer it to everyone who has to see it and hear about it. Offer it to anyone in the world contemplating violence. Offer it to the world for its violent history, that it may heal.
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