108. Reiki and Beyond: Unlocking Healing, Spiritual Growth & Self-Discovery with Rev. Cosmo T. Thornton

In this enlightening episode of Together We Seek, JJ DiGeronimo welcomes Rev. Cosmo T. Thornton, a Reiki Master, spiritual coach, and author of Reiki and Beyond: A Practical Journey into the Realm of Reiki. Cosmo shares his powerful journey into energy healing, beginning with a life-changing Reiki experience that led him to spiritual awareness and healing.

Cosmo's practical insights on how Reiki can heal physical ailments, clear emotional blockages, and activate one's highest potential. He blends Reiki with shamanic healing, chakra balancing, and spiritual coaching, helping students reach a deeper connection.

With his Great Conjunction Spiritual Center, he facilitates energy healing, workshops, and retreats to bring together people and spiritual wisdom. He also shares the exciting upcoming Self-Discovery Retreat.

If you’re curious about Reiki, energy healing, or starting a spiritual practice, this episode will inspire and empower you to explore new dimensions of healing, self-discovery, and soul expansion.

• Great Conjunction Spiritual Center: https://greatconjunction.org/ 
• New Book: Reiki & Beyond: A Practical Journey into the Realm of Reiki... and Beyond

Rev. Cosmo T. Thornton – Bio Summary

Rev. Cosmo T. Thornton transitioned from a career in journalism to fully embracing his spiritual calling. A Reiki Master trained in the Usui Ryoho method, Cosmo has also studied Pranic Healing, Shamanic Energy Work, and Holistic Life Coaching, earning certifications through the Edgar Cayce Foundation.

As an ordained minister, he officiates weddings and baptisms while serving as a board member and faculty member at the Brigger Center for Reiki Education. He is also the co-founder of the Great Conjunction Spiritual Center, a nonprofit dedicated to spiritual growth, energy healing, and holistic wellness. Cosmo helps others align with their highest potential and deepen their spiritual journey through his teachings, coaching, and healing work.

JJ DiGeronimo is an award-winning author, speaker, and podcast host dedicated to helping women trust their inner wisdom, illuminate their gifts, and align with meaningful work. 

JJ is the author of four books, including her latest release, Illuminate Your Path: 6 Phases of Spiritual Awakening. Find Your Phase at: https://quiz.jjdigeronimo.com/

Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/JJ-DiGeronimo/author/B01INZ5GA2 

Website:  https://jjdigeronimo.com         
Together We Seek Community: https://www.togetherweseek.online/  

Email her at jj@togetherweseek.online                                                              

Transcript

Reiki and Beyond: Unlocking Healing, Spiritual Growth & Self-Discovery with Rev. Cosmo Thornton

00:00 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

Hello, hello, JJ DiGeronimo. Here from Together we Seek. I'm always so honored on the souls that cross my path and today is no different. I'm with Cosmo Thornton. I'm with Cosmo Thornton. I was thinking about John, of how I got connected, John Michael, how I got connected to Cosmo. I was looking for water at a property that is a spiritual center and wellness facility, and I found him just in my searches and we've become friends and in the process he told me you need to meet Cosmo. Cosmois amazing. He has a fantastic new book coming out and it's somebody that needs to be in your network and I just love these serendipitous connections. So, Cosmo, thank you so much for joining me. 

00:46 - Cosmo (Guest)

Thank you, I appreciate it, jj. 

00:49 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

I really believe in serendipitous moments and connections, and the fact that you're here with me today is really spectacular because you do work not that far away from me, but you're really creating a place for people and ideas to come together with a spiritual focus, and I definitely want to dive into that, for sure. But before we do, I want to talk about your Reiki work. You have recently released a book about Reiki, the Realm of Reiki and beyond, and I really want to talk about how Reiki and how did you get involved in Reiki? 

01:29 - Cosmo (Guest)

Oddly, I got involved. Oddly, this was probably a good 12 years ago. I was having some sort of problem with my shoulder. I couldn't work it. I was in pain all the time. The doctor couldn't find anything. 

01:43

So, as a last ditch effort, john took me to a Reiki share and I had heard of Reiki but I didn't really understand what it was. And a Reiki share is a group of Reiki facilitators who get together socially but share Reiki with each other so everybody gets a chance to receive. So he took me to the Reiki share and the host was gracious enough to let me in and four people, including John, sat around, knelt around me while I was in a chair, and each of them put their hands someplace on me and I was very aware of who was where. And during the session they had me close my eyes and I felt a fifth person come up in place. What I assumed were were his hands on my chest and stomach because they were so large and really cold. And then, after a while, the woman in front of me who was the host went around and I heard her walk behind me, but that was all I knew. 

02:42

After about 20 minutes they told me to open my eyes, asked me how I felt, and my arm was completely pain-free and fully functional. And I asked you know, where did everybody go? Where's this fifth person that was here a second ago? And they said well, there was no fifth person, that was one of your guardian angels. And then I asked the woman, the hostess, when she walked behind me, where she went to, because I never felt her touch me again. She said she was supporting the man who was behind me and she was supported by a line of people behind her. And she noticed that there were two women sticking their heads out in line trying to get her attention. And she described both women perfectly, and one was my mother, one was my stepmother, who had both passed. So that night I just said this is, this is insane. I have to know how to do this, I have to understand this. So I started studying right then. 

03:37 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

And it's led me all this way. That is amazing and you know, I always say this because it's been said to me so often that our messes become our message and I feel like we are often activated in ways, through pain or sorrow or tragedy, that we are activated at levels that we couldn't humanly do on our own, that we have, like this group of souls that we can see or not see, that really activate us. So I love the idea that your first was that your first activation at a Reiki share. 

04:16 - Cosmo (Guest)

Yes, first experience I ever had with it. 

04:21 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

And how long? 

04:22 - Cosmo (Guest)

ago was that, and how long ago was that? 

04:29 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

That was a good 12 years ago. 

04:45 Cosmo (Guest)

That's amazing. That's amazing people who are trained in Reiki. So me, as somebody who hadn't been at that time, I was an outsider and it was very unusual for me to have been let in. 

04:53

But the hostess was very kind and, like I said, before it's meant as a chance for the people that share Reiki to receive it as well, rather than continually offer it. It's a selfish kind of thing, a community self-healing situation. I have one that we do periodically here in Youngstown. We've took some time off for the winter season because we can't count on the roads and the weather, but Reiki shares are a lot of fun. 

05:34 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

They are very like I said, they're very social, but they're very healing too. So you go on this Reiki journey and and how? What are the transformations did you experience beyond your shoulder? Cause I'm sure if you started to dive in and now you have a book about it, I mean, you really dove in. 

05:47 - Cosmo (Guest)

Yes, I don't know if it's head first or feet first, but it went completely in. The first thing I really experienced was a severe detox, and it manifested in a very unique way. For the better part of probably six, seven months, I was insatiably thirsty all the time. Water wouldn't do it, soda wouldn't do it, milk wouldn't do it. Nothing helped except fresh squeezed lemonade. I would go through like three pitchers of lemonade a day for a good five, six months. So that was my physical manifestation of the beginning of the changes. 

06:31

After that I just got more and more curious as to what was actually happening during sessions. So I started taking notes, talking with my clients, anonymously of course, and I let them know I was going to make notes, but it was only for myself. What experiences did they have while we were working together? And one person said they continually saw eagles. And the very next day when I was doing my meditation day, when I was doing my meditation, I asked if I had any other, any additional Reiki guides that would come to me, and what came was a golden eagle. So her vision was my reception. So it was coming through to me through her. I also had a client once who said she felt she could see Jesus in the corner of the room waiting. So that just made me more and more intrigued by the connection to the energy and to the universe and to our higher selves. So I kept pushing my education. 

07:42 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

Well, and it's amazing too. I want to back up a minute and just talk a little bit about what is Reiki. But this is not something that you didn't come out of the medical field right, you were in journalism, you were an entrepreneur, but you had the shoulder pain that then drove you to seek healing, because the doctors and people you were visiting nothing was happening and you trusted a friend you've trusted your partner to just go and get healing on your shoulder and then you start doing Reiki. So how do you describe Reiki? 

08:15 - Cosmo (Guest)

Reiki to me is it's the energy that binds us all together, not just communally and socially, but physically our atoms. It's the energy within the universe and we are all comprised of it. Reiki is all-knowing, all-feeling, and it doesn't understand or know the concepts of time and distance. So I have many clients who I do distance Reiki with in California and so forth, and they have the same degree of response that I do with my in-person clients. Reiki energy is, just in a nutshell, love, it's love, and when you're sharing Reiki you're not giving of yourself energetically but emotionally, because you have't. You have enough compassion and empathy for your client that you want what's best for them. 

09:31 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

I love that that feels so good, like I feel so good just talking about this and you know, I think a lot of people feel like they have to see something to believe it, and I feel like we all all not all, but many of us get to a point where we're in need of something bigger than we can explain, and people that are open to other levels of healing and ancient wisdom. There's so much to discover about ourselves and others when we allow ourselves to be part of these experiences. 

10:05 - Cosmo (Guest)

I find that one of the things that can hinder people from experiencing these things on a deeper level is they let their mind go and they don't stop. They don't quiet themselves. So my personal mantra when I'm about to share Reiki with a client is help me to just shut up and listen and do what I'm told. The key is to just let go and be present. 

10:37 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

I love that and when I've done a ton of energy work, you know I had situations in my life that I had nowhere to turn and I ended up just being really open to what crossed my path. And I would always tell people I'm clearing out my vessel from what is no longer serving me so I can be a light for myself and others. And I feel like when you start to do this work, you realize that is our job. That is our job is to illuminate in a way that helps and attracts and empowers others. 

11:06 - Cosmo (Guest)

Yes, absolutely. The point of a Reiki session generally is to help somebody in some form of healing, whether it's physical, emotional, spiritual. And you can't do that if you don't have a passion for wanting to be of assistance to, to want to see this person bloom and thrive. Same with with animal break you want, you have to come with, with utter compassion and love, you have to it. Just, it makes it pure, it makes it stronger and it makes it much more intimate and personal for you and very rewarding, very rewarding. I've always actually thought of doing Reiki as being very selfish. While I'm physically not gaining anything, boy, it makes me feel good, though. It just feels so good to have somebody sit up from the table and smile and say, oh my God, that was wonderful, that was an amazing experience. There's very little that I find more rewarding than that. 

12:12 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

I think that means you're in your gift. When you're in your gift, you would do it for free and it feels like you're getting the benefit. That's how I feel out of these conversations. I walk away from them so illuminated and with so much love for people and so much hope for what's ahead. 

12:30 - Cosmo (Guest)

Yes, and energized emotionally energized? 

12:34 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

Yes, definitely energized. So how do you put this into a book? I mean congratulations first on your book. It came out in the fall of last year. It's beautiful and I love the colored copy and there's a price point for everybody, but it is just so gorgeous. So how do you put this into a book and how did you decide what to put in the book? 

12:54 - Cosmo (Guest)

That was the hard part. Putting it together actually wasn't. I've been teaching Reiki for quite some time and that's one of my favorite things to do is to teach. What I would do is write handouts, basic stuff, hand positions for Reiki, things like that and I'd give those to my students. But we would just talk. The class is a conversational one-on-one frequently and they could ask all the questions they wanted about anything, but I would have a structure so I could get them from point A to point B, you know. And eventually I just fleshed more of that those discussions out, and that's how I ended up coming up with putting the book together. 

13:37

But what I chose to put in and not put in was the hard part. I didn't want to do what other Reiki manuals have done, including the one I was taught from. I respect that writer very much. I respect the book. I used to teach out of it, but there were aspects of it I just couldn't completely get behind. It made me a little uncomfortable. So I was able to pull some of that out and dive in a little deeper and ensuring that everybody understood that Reiki is for everybody. It is not to be segregated in any way from or for anybody. 

14:17

But what I wanted to do more than anything was add into it the things that I never found in other Reiki books, such as how do you start a business? What do I need to think about? Then? Details about well, I understand the chakra system fundamentally. How do I work with that? 

14:35

So I've got special sections on that, including tear out cheat sheets that you can take with you. But, most importantly, I felt there had to be more than just run-of-the-mill Reiki. This is what you do, and then this is all you ever do, and I had studied several other energy healing modalities, including shamanic healing and a lot of the things from those other areas felt like they connected to Reiki perfectly, so I incorporated those into my practice, but that's also what I teach. Okay, you've gotten this much of an education in Reiki. Let's show you how much farther you can go just with this level, you know, rather than just a dead stop. There's a lot more gray area here to walk into, and that is why I called the book Reiki and Beyond. I've given you Reiki, but I'm giving you a lot more too a lot more energetic process, energetic practices to follow through with your clients and yourself too. 

15:37 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

And I just love it because it's a practical journey into the realm of Reiki as the subtitle. Love it because it's a practical journey into the realm of Reiki as the subtitle, and I think that for so many people who have spiritual gifts, they often do need to know the other aspects of how to mobilize those in the world. And the fact that you've included best practices on how to get a business started or how to run a business, I think is so important for people because so many of the creative spiritual souls need guidance in that area. 

16:09 - Cosmo (Guest)

Yeah, when I had gotten my first attunement at Reiki level one, I felt very empowered, and I really wanted to get out there and do stuff, but then I thought, what do I do? What do I do now? How do I get there? And I felt just thrown to the wolves, as it were, and I wanted to soften that blow a little bit for my students and for the people that read the book, and, like I said, I wanted to do practical things that I hadn't seen anybody else do, like. There's an extensive area on how to work with chakras, but I also put those in the back of the book as cheat sheets you can take out and take with you, so you don't have to lug the book with you. You know and I did the same for how to pass along attunements, so you can. 

16:55

Hopefully, people that use my book as a teaching tool will do a class similarly to my method, which is not sit down and read the book, because you don't need me to read a book to you. You've got two eyes, you can handle it, but we talk about it. I share my experiences, I share my knowledge, and you can ask me anything, and we'll just hash everything out. You, though, can take the book home and read it on your own. You don't need me for that. So I wanted to be a very hands-on, practical experience. 

17:29 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

That is so beautiful and I think practitioners all over the world can benefit, no matter where they are in their business. And also I think there's so much value in learning from each other and having ways to connect and talk about what's working and what's not, because many practitioners that have so many gifts with their hands, their mind, any of their chakras like there's a lot to it, there's a lot to it and in creating a journey for people is so powerful. 

17:58 - Cosmo (Guest)

Yeah, if you go to a psychic fair and you see different energy workers, they all work completely differently. They all do completely different things. Some people are very grand in their gestures, some people are very quiet and sedate and and I never really could could reconcile that until I had studied further energetic practices and I realized it's because there is no real hard and fast rule. It's flowing through you. You're doing what the universe is telling you to do, what your spirit is telling you to do, rather than, oh well, the instructions are A, b, c. After a while, once you get this under your belt a little bit, you throw the rules out and you just listen to your guides and do what your heart says you need to do. 

18:44

I love that it's a unique situation with every client. 

18:48 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

I think that's fantastic. So tell us a little bit about your spiritual center. I love the fact that you have a 501c3, the Great Conjunction Spiritual Center. I love your tagline that you bring people and ideas together for spiritual focus. I think that is going to be even more important as we're entering the age of Aquarius, with Pluto entering Aquarius here for good. So tell us a little bit about the work you're doing in addition to the book, in addition to your Reiki. You're very multifaceted, I love it. 

19:20 - Cosmo (Guest)

Yeah, we keep busy. We have different services available through Great Conjunction Reiki services, life coaching. I'm also a holistic life coach. My husband is psychic. He does psychic readings. We have different workshops periodically classes in psychic development, in spiritual cleansing. 

19:44

Also, we're very excited now we're doing a four-day retreat toward the end of October this year. It'll be October 23rd through the 26th. It's a four-day retreat just over the border from Ohio into Pennsylvania, so I'm in Youngstown, it's about 20 minutes from me. We're going to have different presenters doing different types of modalities and experiences. One woman who is actually my Reiki master she taught me Reiki she will be doing channeling, the sacred wise woman. We're going to have a woman doing a shamanic healer, doing a drumming circle and a meditation through the drumming, so you can travel and take a journey of your own. 

20:37

It's going to be a very unique situation where everybody can get something completely different out of it and something very deep or casual. It depends on your willingness to participate. That's why we're calling it self-discovery, the unplugged retreat. So turn your phones off. You know, and you're going to get out of it Just what you put into it. You can attend all the workshops or not. You know there are other things to do there, so it's going to be a lot of fun, and we're doing it in conjunction with a company called Reiki Yoga or, excuse me, shanti Yoga Love up in Ashtabula, so that's going to be really exciting. Again, that'll'll be in October, so we've got a lot of time to work on it so I can feel it already. 

21:22 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

That's amazing, amazing. Well, for anyone who's listening, all of Cosmo's links are below. We'll be sure to add the retreat link, because we didn't add that, because that wasn't scheduled when we scheduled this. So we'll go back in and add that for everybody. But, Cosmo, as we're parting ways, is there anything else you want to share with the listeners, and just anything that really captures where you're going? 

Really, all I would want to say is and this is something I always really hammer home with my students is when you're meditating or studying something or reading a book that you're trying to grow through, shut up, Don't overthink it. Experience it first. Then you can come back and evaluate and reevaluate and decide is this connecting to me? Does this work for me? But the biggest thing is don't let yourself get in the way. Turn it off, Shut up, Focus and then make your judgments and see where your heart's going. 

22:28 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

I love that. I talk a lot about in my book too, like really allowing yourself to sidestep your ego and just allow yourself to explore, do and be without judgment. And I think that's super hard. You have to train yourself to do that, but when you do it really it's just such a much more peaceful place to be because you give yourself the space to learn, explore and experience. 

Yes, yes, ego is a wonderful thing, but it can get in the way sometimes. So when it comes to broadening your spiritual horizons. Ego is not your best friend. 

23:05 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

Well, I'll end on that, because that is the truth and, Cosmo, I'm so excited you joined us here on Together we Seek. I will add the additional links below for anyone listening that wants to reach out to Cosmo, please do. We'll check out your retreat and your book, reiki and Beyond. Thank you so much, Cosmo, for joining us. 

Thank you, JJ. I appreciate it. It was a pleasure. 

23:24 - JJ DiGeronimo (Host)

Thank you.