Seeing God Doesn't Guarantee Happiness

I was once told, "Barbering is your true calling."

I had a session with Gary Bonnell when I closed the barbershop I had run for 30 years. That was what he said to me at the time.

According to him, energy was coming from my hands, and my mission was to raise people's self-esteem, so barbering was indeed my true calling and I should continue. I didn't, though.

Speaking of energy coming from hands, that was my grandmother. For a time, she made a living as a medium for dragon gods, seeing things that were invisible and hearing things that were inaudible. When she placed her hands on a painful area, the pain would fade away before I knew it, and if I gave her a withered houseplant, it would be lush and revived by the following year.

But as for whether my grandmother was happy, I wonder. I don't know.

My grandfather changed his family register during the chaos after the war. The name that should have been "Tokio Hayashi" suddenly became "Kiyoshi Oikawa" one day. On top of that, he would disappear after eloping with the mother of one of my daughter's classmates, only to return years later as if nothing had happened. My grandmother used to say, "When I served my husband tea, the tea looked like a kitchen knife to me." Even now, anger seeps through when my mother talks about him. Naturally, the relationship between my mother and grandmother was also a mess.

There was even a time when my mother changed the front door lock while my grandmother was out at her hobby choir practice, kicking her out of the house.

Growing up in such a house, I knew from an early age that seeing God or having energy come from your hands didn't mean your life would be happy.

Seeing God doesn't guarantee happiness. I just wanted to live happily.

As I worked as a barber, my hands gradually began to touch "things that could not be put into words" through the texture of hair.

Even without being told anything, I began to sense what people wanted me to do. It was a convenient sensor for a barber.

But at the same time, in the days of constantly meeting "someone's expectations," I felt as if the air was gradually becoming thinner.

Eventually, my hands began to protest, saying, "I don't want to touch anymore," and when I ignored them, pain began to appear in various parts of my body.

Around that time, I encountered meditation at a yoga class I went to for exercise. That was in 2017. Since then, meditation has become the axis of my life.

Since then, I have deepened my learning in readings, healing, and spirituality. However, what always resonated at the root was my grandmother's words.

"The only one who can heal a person is that person themselves."

My grandmother often said that. To save, to heal, to change—these may look like good intentions at first glance, but my grandmother taught me, "If you meet someone who says, 'I will cure you,' run away from that place."

"Only what is necessary happens, so it's okay. All a person can do is look at 'what is happening now' together."

It is also a fact, however, that because of that, my grandmother's life was in extreme chaos.

Well, I no longer guide customers to a seat to touch their hair. But I can guide you to a seat to touch the emotions that cannot be put into words.

Although these sessions are called casual chats, almost everyone requests some kind of work.
Particularly popular in these chat sessions is the work (money work) where you use only your physical sensations to observe your own beliefs.

Every session I offer is based on the principle that
“You are the one who speaks about yourself.”
Even in remote healing, the one who heals you is
“your own inner healer.”

That is not because “you can do it too,” but because
“only you can do it.”

The reason I have put down my scissors and chosen to do these sessions now is—
perhaps because I have begun to understand the meaning of my grandmother's words a little better.