Level One of Reiki teaches and enables you to do hands-on healing with the Reiki energy. It is intended as a level where you will do a lot of healing work for yourself and for your friends and family. It is certainly a well-accepted principle of any healing modality that one can only guide others where s/he has gone him/herself, and Mrs Takata stressed that Level One is about self-healing. The commitment here is to use the Reiki to heal into the best one can be. The class should teach you about what Reiki is, how it was discovered, and how one can use it to heal onself and others.
At this level, I also like to teach some basic techniques of personal energy management, such as grounding, centering, shielding, and clearing the aura. It is not a function of the Reiki itself that one picks up "stuff" from clients, but the empathic sort who are attracted to this work can often do so anyway, and it is worthwhile learning how to prevent it in the first place or clean up the effects if the prevention isn't successful.
Level Two gives you some very powerful tools to add to your healing work. The three symbols taught at Level Two include one that concentrates the Reiki energy, one that focuses the energy on the mental and emotional processes underlying illness, and one that allows you to send Reiki across distance and time.
The "Power Symbol" can be used in hands-on or distance healing to focus the energy. The "Mental/Emotional" symbol can be used in both distance and hands-on healing to calm the recipient and to bring emotional and mental material out of cellular memory to be dealt with consciously.
The "Distance Symbol" allows one to contact the higher self of a recipient and send Reiki energy across any distance for that individual's healing. It can also be used to send energy to a specific time and place. Hence, it can be used to send energy to yourself as a child or even in a past life. It can also send Reiki into the future, to an important meeting or event.
Level Three was traditionally the training where one learned how to teach Reiki and pass on the attunements. In recent years, many Masters have begun teaching it as two levels. In the first, which may be called "Level Three" or "Advanced Reiki Training" one is attuned to the Master Symbol and taught how to use it to further amplify the Reiki energy in one's life and in one's healing work for self and others. Later, when one is ready to commit oneself to teaching Reiki, s/he can take the "Master's Training" and learn how to teach and pass attunements.
Traditionally, most Masters would ask a student to wait for a specific period between each of the levels. In this time of accelerated world healing, many Masters are offering Levels One and Two in a single weekend. My feeling is that one gains by having some time to use the energy and feel it at work between levels; also, completing the cleansing process can help one be more open and ready for the next level. But many people are taking the first two levels together and doing very well with them. You will find the way of learning that is best for you.
Reiki is growing and changing as it becomes more widespread in our world. Many of us celebrate this, seeing it as an indication that humanity is growing and changing with it, and becoming better able to run this energy for healing our world. Some people look back to the dramatic physical healings that Usui was reported to have brought about, and are trying to move back to more traditional teachings in search of a "purity" of Reiki that they think might be stronger.
This is another situation where I think both sides are sincere and well-meaning in their practice. I prefer to trust that the healing Intelligence we know as Reiki will guide its --and the Reiki community's!-- evolution for the highest good, just as it does in healing the individual. Perhaps it is trying to show us the creative potential that dances at the heart of any set of opposites.
Embracing Reiki is a commitment to your own growth, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. As you progress through the levels, you become equipped to help yourself, then others, then the world community as a whole. The potential of this energy and the work you can do with it is endless.
