What is Reiki? with a side order of history

Reiki is the universal life force energy. It is in all things and through all things. Reiki is that which allows all things to exist through unconditional love and radical acceptance.  Reiki is the divine energy source and force. 

All Reiki is Reiki, yet it is individualized. Each person has their own style of doing Reiki, and even have created their own branches of Reiki. I, myself, often sing the words of the symbols, which is not something I was taught to do. It simply felt right!

In the book Fools Crow: Wisdom and Power, Fools Crow says "Twenty medicine [people] will treat a person in twenty slightly different ways, and this is one of the fascinating things about curing and healing. We all respond differently to Wakan-Tanka, and do what we do the way each of us hears and feels His guidance. I am telling you this for the book so you can tell others. In their personal relationships with the Higher Powers, people out there will use the concentration tools a little differently than I do. The first time they might try to copy me exactly, and maybe the next time. But then they will reshape what they do until it is entirely their own in communion with the Higher Powers." 

The same is true of Reiki. Your relationship with Reiki is yours. 

Mikao Usui may have rediscovered it, as the story goes, after much searching, and soul searching. However, that doesn't define you. Usui Reiki Ryoho guides you, as it has guided me. And my flavor will add to the guidance you receive, but in truth, it's all yours, like a delicious bowl of soup that you can add salt and pepper to if you desire. Usui went up to Mount Kurama, and while there he was able to cross that bridge from knowing about oneness to actually embodying oneness and coming down from the mountain he unexpectedly discovered that he also had the power to heal. He created the system of Reiki as a way to help people get to that point without having to go through unnecessary struggle to get there. 

Hawayo Takata is the woman responsible for bringing Reiki to the Western world. She was a student of Mikao Usui and was very much a, memorize everything, type of teacher so you don't need your notes. My theory is that she wanted the symbols and the understanding of Reiki to be written in their Hearts so they wouldn't need to rely on any external material, but it is said she was like this because she believed that Reiki was too sacred to write down. 

I have heard people have all sorts of ideas about the origins of Reiki iteself, that light being aliens from the Pleiades gave it to us, etc. But to me, Reiki is the universal life force energy. It simply is. A radical notion I have is that Reiki is what will prevent the heat death of the universe, that Reiki is that which heals to sustain the life of all that is, and thus entropy simply becomes a process of creation and renewal.