The Skeptical Mystic

                      The source of love

                              is deep

                                in us

                  and we can help others

                realize a lot of happiness. 

       One word, one action, one thought

     can reduce another person’s suffering

                and bring that person joy.

                                               ---Thich Nhat Hanh

Lives, like money, are spent. What are you buying with yours?

                                                …Roy H. Williams

Empath: a term I never heard applied to psychic sensitivities until….maybe Star Trek: the Next Generation. It is now used to describe psychics who are hyper-sensitive to the emotions of others, and I’m glad to see it finally recognized as a psychic ‘talent’.  Actually, it’s a curse until you learn to control it.

            If you are just highly sensitive or empathic to others’ emotions, when you stand in front of someone as they describe the difficulty of a parent’s illness, they may be under emotional control but you end up with tears streaming down your face. You ‘feel’ all the emotional pain they’ve been through or that they are currently repressing. You can toughen yourself up, but I prefer to let the tears flow and not resist the emotions flowing through me. Surround the emotional pain with love and let the love flow back to the friend in need.

            An empath can walk into an empty room and get hit with residual emotions of people who just left the room still bitter after a heated argument. You feel like you’ve been hit in the solar plexus or gut. Identify the source as outside yourself to minimize its effect.

            An empath can start driving home on the freeway in a perfectly good mood, only to find themselves suddenly distraught, crying and wondering what in heaven’s name brought on this emotional outburst. The logic part of your mind can find no explanation and yet the emotions continue until you pass a certain exit, at which point the emotions fade (as if moving out of range). Wipe away your tears, and then figure out if there might be any underlying conflicts in your life or if this experience should be written off as someone else’s upset.

            An empath may take on the pain and suffering of others going through health problems. It’s not a pleasant life, until you learn to handle your own energy fields.

          More than most people (psychic or not) you need to learn how to strengthen your aura, focus on your own center of well-being, and find a system for dealing with outside impressions. Never give yourself the luxury of leaving your awareness consciously or unconsciously open to ‘everything’, unless you are in really friendly surroundings.

          Honest, you can learn to open to friends at the same time you are closing yourself off to crowds or passerbys. I’ll go in more detail in later posts, but would love to hear from empaths about how they learned to cope or about the problems they still face.

Empathy: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts and experiences of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully  communicated in an objectively explicit manner.

          I consider it a good thing to be empathic to other people’s feelings. The awareness is an inherent sensitivity.  Studies have shown that even small children have some innate (hard-wired) capacity to interpret and respond to the pains or struggles of another.  

        Empathy should be further developed by the family or society, through emphasizing the way humans share similar hopes, dreams and fears.  How one behaves towards others, how one addresses the needs of others, can definitely be learned and reinforced by those around us.

          Never under-estimate the way this innate capacity can be adapted and molded through life experience toward extremes of either an egocentric/ethnocentric awareness or an expanded awareness. One person grows up to divide the world into rigid compartments of Us versus Them; another sees a personal connection and responsibility to all creation. We don’t have to be one or the other of these extremes, but do take personal responsibility by assessing whether your current life choices actually move you toward the person you want to become.

         In the midst of busy schedules, take time and reflect. How do we become more humane if we are not becoming more empathic toward our fellow human beings? If we rear children to compete in an Us versus Them world, to be sensitive only to the needs of those most like themselves, what kind of a future do we create for our children and grandchildren?

         I worry that television can emphasize the Us versus Them attitude, encouraging the selfish parts of human nature, instead of placing value on constructive, sensitive interaction. Polarization of politics and religion serve only to block empathic understanding and communication. Can our communities, our family or our own lifestyle counter these effects with compassion, tolerance and love?

          Any sensitivity can be encouraged or repressed. I hope to address psychic empaths in a later posting (because being too sensitive can create its own problems).  For now I would be happy if empathy was seen as a value essential to a successful, cohesive society.      

          Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid.

                                                                                    ---Marcus Aurelius