Welcome friends and mystical travelers. This is Ayn Cates Sullivan, host of Wisdom of the Ages, where we invite the sacred into modern-day reality. And today we’re going to invite in a lot of extra light too. So each week I offer stories and interviews and spiritual monologues to inspire, heal, and uplift the soul. So you can listen to many more episodes on superpowerexperts.com/wisdom of the ages.
So let me tell you why you’re going to be excited about this episode. My guest today is Shari Hembree, and we’ll be speaking about her book, Journey of the Lightworker. So I really enjoyed this book. It takes us to many, many different places. We started out in San Francisco, but we went to Israel and I just thought it was really fun to visit Israel, especially in this day and age where we can actually travel. I’ve been wanting to go to Israel. So I got to find out what that was like. And the journey through Spain. And I really enjoyed that too. A journey to Japan, and then concluding with the journey to England and Glastonbury, one of my favorite places on Earth.
So I think it’s really important to have books. This is a novel, and we’ll find out how much might be a biography, but how important it is these days to understand what it is to become a lightworker. It’s really a heroine’s journey. And so we’ll get more into this book in a minute, but before I introduce my guests, I want to tell you a lightworker story about Reiki, which is a form of spiritual healing. And Reiki features in this book. So I’d like for you to know a little bit about it.
So in the 1980s, I ran across this very interesting woman by the name of Arielle, and she happened to be a Reiki master. So after a session with her, well during the session, I felt this warmth of spiritual healing energy, and I just loved it. I just tingled, and I felt good and I felt light. And so I asked her about this divine energy, how it worked, where it came from, and she was so cute. She had this dark hair, and she used to wear these ponytails. So she shook her little cute ponytails. And she explained that Reiki was developed by a master teacher in Japan, by the name of Mikao Usui. And our guests today might have more about this, but she told me about Mikao Usui who lived from 1865 to 1926.
And so Mikao Usui was raised as a samurai from childhood, which is pretty intense if you think about it, but we could have some more samurais these days, so he understood energy. So he was specifically skilled in martial arts and the technique of Aki, which you can see in Aikido. So, A means joining and Ki means spirit. And in this form of martial arts people are really taught to blend, not clash. So might be one that women might be more attracted to, but all of us could really use this kind of martial arts, where we learn about peace and energy.
Anyway, he was a very spiritual man and was inspired to go on a very important inner quest. And during 21 days of fasting and praying on Mount Kurama, Mikao Usui rediscovered Reiki. So one day during the fast, he felt strong energy over his head and he received this gift, the gift of Reiki. And I know when I had my initiations, I really felt this energy that came from the divine. So in 1923, there was a really devastating earthquake that struck Tokyo. And he was called to go out and really help the people. And in doing this, he became known as a healer.
Now it’s thought that the origins of Reiki actually go back thousands and thousands of years, maybe to Tibet. And certainly, when we start to tune into this energy, it feels very ancient and very wholesome and very aligned, very connected to the elements and the divine. It’s still used as an alternative therapy for the treatment of physical, emotional, and mental diseases. And from what I understand, they’re about 4 million people that practice in the United States. So it’s really something lovely and sweet. Doesn’t matter what religion you come from. I think you do need to believe in some sort of source or God or something to access it. But it’s really a lovely way of working with energy.
So recently, I started looking for Arielle, this Reiki teacher, and I really wondered what happened to her. And I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t find her in the town that I had met her in. I couldn’t find her online. And she used to do a lot of classes. So I sent it away. So I asked before I went to sleep to have a dream, to see if the dream would guide me. And she did appear in my dream. And she said, “My name is Maria Odom.” And I woke up and I thought, of course, I forgot. That was her Christian name or her birth name. And in the dream, she smiled. And she shook her little cute ponytails. And I felt this wonderful stream of healing Reiki coming from her. Anyway, when I got up, I looked her up, and actually, I found her obituary.
So she had crossed over some time ago, some years ago. But I thought how lovely that was, that she would still be willing to connect with me from the other side. She was very, very lovely. It’s a lesson I think that we never really die, but we continue to stay in touch with people or we can stay in touch with people who are meaningful to us that are helpful to us. So healing can come from the magical other worlds. And we’re going to talk about this.
So if the idea of healing between worlds interests you, I invite you to go explore some of my stories on ayncatessullivan.com or, and we have lots of healing stories on my publishing company, which is infinitelightpublishing.com. So you can go and just get really nourished there. So we’re going to take a short break. When we come back, I’m going to introduce Shari Hembree, and we’re going to talk about lightworkers and journeys to find the true self and angels and all sorts of things. So, and also Reiki. Hopefully, we’ll go into that a little bit more. So when I come back from the short break, we’ll get into what it is to be a lightworker. Okay. Stay tuned. We’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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