Thanks for all your input, Two Bears. I doubt your stories will convince anyone though. After all, they are only the usual questionable second-hand anecdotes - why should they? A few years ago I'd have read them and thought "Yeah right - and don't look now, but Santa Claus is on his way down the chimney too!" (Actually, that is exactly what I thought the first time I was offered Reiki and had it explained to me).

The more scientific and scholarly-minded folds here prefer "empirical evidence" over anecdotes, and that's understandable. Only problem is they'll probably be pushing up daisies by the time any such "empirical evidence" (which may or may not be honest "empirical evidence") is produced and made available to the public by the scientific community. So the only "empirical evidence" I can offer at this time is the chance to produce their own "evidence" and "Bridge that chasm" for themselves, once and for all, by experiencing the effects of life-force energy first-hand. No one has taken me up on it yet, and that's not surprising either.

If I hadn't been in so much pain from that cat-bite through my fingernail years ago, I wouldn't have been interested in trying Reiki either - and I may never have discovered the truth. IT was a case of being desperate enough to try a technique I'd never heard of before, to take a chance and trust the stranger sitting beside me who'd offered it to me in compassion.

Well, I'm not going to hope somebody here lapses into some sort of hellish pain so I'll be asked to give a demonstration, that's for sure!

But if even one person finds something helpful in anything I've posted above, it will have been worth the time and energy I've spent here. That's why I posted what I did - not to engage in the formidable (and certainly thankless) task of attempting to "convince" a die-hard debunker or skeptic via the written word.

daylia