Reiki in Wisconsin

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A Goal Achieved? A Dream Come True?
Or A Gift From My Soul?

by Arline Rowden, Reiki Master Teacher © 1996

This morning I woke up "again" much earlier than I used to a year ago. Is it that I'm getting older and I don't need as much sleep? But I feel younger than I did ten or even twenty years ago. So I get up and walk out to the living room and look out the window onto our back yard. Then I have those same feelings of happiness, excitement and contentment that I've felt so often since last August when we moved here. I feel like I'm on vacation. I see the majestic willow trees and the river and two geese with their goslings. I feel like a kid at Christmas and I just opened a gift that I had asked Santa to bring me in each of the 50 letters I wrote to him.

My husband, Ron, had to be at work earlier than usual today, so it's just me and our two dogs and cat here to enjoy this beautiful early morning view. Penni, our 14 year old Schnerrier, just goes back to sleep. Zach, our 15 year old Maine Coon/??? cat wanders off to explore the house and look for a good place to sleep for the day. But Levi, our 14 month old Black Lab/Border Collie, enjoys the view with me. Or is it that he has noticed the geese? I tell him that we love having the geese and goslings here and that he can watch them from the window, but he can't go out until they swim away. So I just stare out the window, lost in a day dream.

After awhile, my thoughts turn to my work day ahead. Since I work at home and am self employed, I set my own schedule more or less. I often start my work day early and then I can take breaks during the day to go for a walk or relax and just look out the window. It's been about six years now that I have been self-employed and after 26 years of being employed in the corporate world I feel truly blessed to be able to follow my heart in my work.

I think about what I need to accomplish today and for the week ahead since today is Monday. I taught four Reiki I classes last week, but I haven't scheduled any this week. Today I need to put on my NEW AVENUES hat again and on Thursday I need to turn in the ads for my accounts. Then Friday is scheduled for preparation for the Awakening Your Light Body class that I will be teaching on Saturday. It's a good combination of careers for me now. But it's quite a change from my prior career as a cost and budget analyst. It's a "change" that I love though.

As I focus on NEW AVENUES, my thoughts are about the theme for the June issue - "Setting Goals". And as I think about the familiar process of setting and achieving goals, I wonder if living here is the result of setting a goal, breaking the process down into manageable steps and taking the steps one by one until the final goal is achieved. I've completed that process many times for many goals over the years, but somehow this feels a little different.

It's true that Ron and I had talked many times about finding a place out in the country with a few acres of land, lots of trees and by water if at all possible. As a matter of fact, a couple of years ago we even started a special savings account just for that purpose. Every month when we paid bills, we sent off a check to the savings account. It felt good to be able to set a "little" aside for this purpose. We thought in about five years we'd start looking for that special place.

So that may have been a step on the path to our goal. But with goals I've always been focused on the goal and aware of the steps as I took them one foot after the other, so to speak. As I look back on the process that brought us here, I realize it wasn't like that with this process. I feel it was a way of saying to the universe that we are open to receive a new place to live that is for our highest good and for the highest good of all who touch our lives. It felt more like a process of allowing and trusting. That's a process that I haven't always felt at home with, but it feels comfortable more often than not these days. I'm not saying that goal setting isn't desirable, because it's a great process and has been very appropriate at many times in my life, I'm suggesting that it's not the only way to have a "dream come true".

Goal setting may at times create a limitation in our ability to receive. I know that as a human being it's not possible for me to fully understand the nature of God, and in the same way, I believe it's not possible for me to fully know what is for my highest good. I began my personal and spiritual growth path 20 years ago, and my ideas about what is good for me have changed a lot along the way.

Before we moved here, I was happy in a small house on a small city lot in a large city, Milwaukee, WI. I didn't think being there wasn't the best place for me. So I didn't feel drawn to focus on the goal of being somewhere else in a certain time frame. I focused on living each day to the fullest and included some time for thoughts and dreams for the future. I was mostly content with my life but with just enough discontent to keep me on a growth path.

I tend to be a rather practical person by nature and it seemed that living in the city, for my business and near Ron's job, was a practical way to live our lives. It took Ron under ten minutes to drive to work in the morning. Now it takes him 35 minutes. Many of my clients for meditation, Reiki and Awakening Your Light Body Course lived in or near Milwaukee and it was easy to give them directions to our home over the phone. It was even easy to tell my out of town clients how to find me. I never even thought of writing out directions and mailing them to new clients as I do now. You see, our new street (and the street to our street) isn't on a county map in the Wisconsin Gazette much less on the Wisconsin road map.

But inside the practical logical me there is also a dreamer. When I was growing up on a farm in central Wisconsin, I had a tendency to day dream. Until I was old enough to be "useful" around the farm, I had a lot of time to entertain myself. I had a very active imagination and would at times get lost in my fantasy world. Over the years I haven't had as much time for "dreaming" but my imagination has remained very active.

It's because of this active imagination that creative visualization has appealed to me on my spiritual path. When I meditate or facilitate meditations for others, I can use this skill that is so natural for children. Perhaps the imagination of a child was one of the things Jesus meant when he talked about the importance of being like a child.

As I continue to reflect about how we came to be living here, I remember a meditation experience I had about three years ago. It was at a three day Light Body Graduates' seminar facilitated by Judy (Reis) Author. She led us on a journey to what might be referred to simply as the higher realms. The purpose of the meditation was to begin the process of creating something from pure energy and then letting it go to allow it to manifest here on earth. There had been several meditation processes prior to it about connecting with one's soul and asking to receive guidance from it. So I felt inspired, perhaps from my soul, to use this meditation process for a retreat center.

Last October at Edgerton's Apple Fest, Ron and I bought a wooden sign for over our door. The vendor would machine carve the sign and we had some choices about what would be carved on it. We choose a tree since we have so many trees here. Then instead of just having him carve our first and last names we decided to have just Rowden's Retreat. Could it be that the meditation from three years ago had played a part in being here now? I will never know for sure, which is the way life so often unfolds.

I believe that the meditations, Reiki and Light Body energy work that I have done for myself and others has made it possible for me to be more open to my intuition and the creative flow. By tuning into my intuition and my feelings, I find it easier to be at the right place at the right time to make a connection with whatever is for my highest good. I seem to be able to recognize, more often than not, the path ahead that has the most energy for me. But the process of "manifesting" our new home was a team effort for Ron and I. We each followed our own inner guidance and used our own process in a blending of energies and focus.

There were some other "significant" events that led up to us finding our new home. In February and March of 1995, I worked several times with a very powerful meditation from the Radiance: Filling in the Frequencies Light Body Graduate Course. It's a course that Light Body Graduates can use to facilitate filling in the frequencies of vision, precision, intensity, clarity, harmony and brilliance into their Awakened Light Body Cocoon. The meditation that I'm remembering was by Sanaya Roman (she and Duane Packer developed the Light Body Course). She facilitated my working with three different qualities of light and suggested in the meditation that I add each of the qualities of light to a different area of my life as energy. Each time I worked with the meditation I choose the same three areas. They were my physical well being, my relationship with Ron and my career. I didn't focus on any particular change or outcome in these three areas, but just whatever would be for the highest good for myself, my husband and all the other people that I would have contact with in my life.

In April 1995, Ron and I took a day to go to the Madison, WI area, since I needed to take my high speed tape dubber to a place in Madison and leave it for the day for repairs. So we had a day to explore and decided to drive west of Madison towards the Spring Green area. We noticed a sign for House on the Rock and we decided to visit it. It was a magical day for us, we each had a chance for our inner child to be active and bright eyed as we walked through all the rooms of exhibits. The most impressive, we both agreed, was the carrousel. It was huge and ornate and full of lights. We just couldn't stop smiling. It was a great day. I believe that day of being a child again opened both of us to new possibilities in life.

We decided after that day to arrange a weekend in the Madison area in a couple of weeks. It was a fun weekend. We even stopped at a Real Estate office and an open house out of a sense of curiosity. When we were talking with the Real Estate Agent showing the house, we told her we were really looking for a house out in the country with lots of trees and maybe on a lake or river. To our surprise she said there was a house listing that met our requirements in a price range we would consider. She gave us directions and we decided to go see it just for the fun of it on our way back to Milwaukee. We could hardly believe our eyes when we arrived, it was such a beautiful location and the house was lovely, too. We thought we might be dreaming.

On the way back to Milwaukee, we talked about the possibility of actually buying this house and relocating. Could we really do it now? How would it affect my work? Would Ron be able to find a job in the Madison area? We had a lot more questions than answers at this time. But we did decide to call the Real Estate agent on Monday morning and make arrangements to see the inside of the house the next weekend.

The week went by slowly as we waited for Saturday to see the property again. Would we think that it was as beautiful this time as it was at first sight? Would we like the inside of the house? Would someone else have already made an offer to purchase? More questions! We would have to wait for the answers.

Saturday finally arrived and we headed for the Stoughton/Edgerton area. The agent showed us the inside of the house and we liked it very much, but we really loved the grounds that surrounded the house. The house was on two acres of land with many trees, a large wild flower garden, a small wetlands area with springs and 450 ft of river frontage. The agent had also set up appointments to view some other properties in the area at our request, just to compare. We looked at the other properties but none of them kept our interest as did the location on the Yahara River.

We returned to Milwaukee and talked and talked on the way. We decided to put in an offer to purchase on Monday. Ron would call a friend who worked for a computer contracting firm in Milwaukee and see if he could recommend a good firm to check into in Madison. We knew that if this move was meant to be that the pieces would fall into place as we took the steps.

As they say the rest is history. We were able to buy the property. Ron was able to find a job in Madison. The Milwaukee computer contracting firm that he contacted actually had a branch in Madison and they hired him. My business moved with me since I'm self employed. We moved into our new home on August 8, 1995. And we go to bed earlier and get up earlier now that we live in the country. We spend a lot of time outside or looking out the windows when we can't be outside. Both of us know how blessed we are to have found our dream home. We thank God, the Universe, our souls, etc. for the opportunity to be here and to share this place with others. And I believe that my soul inspired me to let go of my limitations to receive when it serves the highest good for me and all the people who touch my life.

This article was published in the June 1996 issue of NEW AVENUES Magazine.