Empathy and Beyond
I’m going to take you through the journey of empathy from its beginnings to its potential. What is empathy? I’m defining empathy here in the widest sense as the ability to feel / sense other people’s energy. Up until the mid 1990’s that looked like feeling other people’s emotions, since in a closed chakra system that’s pretty much all that was available to connect to and feel. From the mid 90’s until now, I’ve met and worked with about two thousand empaths. Generally, they would say that up until recent years, they’ve lived their lives feeling others’ pain and joy, feeling a strong connection to the Earth, knowing their connection to Source and honouring all living things. An empath cannot step on an ant, watch violence on television and likely has difficulty watching or listening to the news. In the past, these people might have been considered sensitives and been labelled as reclusive, agoraphobic, panic attack victims, ME sufferers, autistic, special needs children and much, much more.
But in more recent years, these people have come to know themselves and operate in a new way. In their childhoods and possibly even until recently, they felt alone even though they could experience the oneness of all things. They would often describe themselves as heart and soul people as opposed to mind people and many have expressed an inability to think and reason as society expects us to. They felt themselves unrecognised for their true gifts and talents, which often they themselves didn’t recognise … and that was only because our society didn’t recognise energy and all the gifts and abilities that come with the awareness of energy. Empaths generally would have said in years past that their gift of empathy was more of a curse than a gift. Many of them have experienced despair, depression and even thought of or attempted suicide somewhere in their past. But they were not meant to go. They were waiting … waiting till just recently … when the world was ready for the gift they had to give.
So what’s happened to change all this in recent years? These wonderful people have joined together, as one giant collective creation, all around the world, to do the job they came to do. Their job has been:
- To open up the human chakra system,
- To move this Earth into collective consciousness on a level never before experienced in the third dimensional plane of existence,
- To bring Source into physical existence, and
- To bring “home” home.
Every empath knows what “home” means. They have known it since they were small children. They have always known there was a better place, a place where they could be one with all things, and they often yearned to be there rather than here. It’s only in these past few years that they, as a group, have done the world consciousness work, to bring home into physical reality, into the energy fields around us. This is their gift of connection. Put in simple 3D terms, it’s the ability to reach out and connect with another person, being or any living thing in a profound way. Empaths have always hugged trees, loved nature and revelled in gardens. They seek the sacred and the beautiful. They bring back to the Earth a time of plenty, of love, of compassion and of connection to the Source of all that is.
Everyone has the ability to access empathy and at this point in time, it’s simply a choice to tune in or not to specific vibrational frequencies.. But empathy has changed dramatically in the past five years and I’d like to take you through the stages of it so that you can see for yourself where you fit into this now as an ability, a tool for the richer living of life.
STAGE 1: EMPATHY AS SYMPATHY – ENGAGING WITH EMOTIONAL CHAOS
If you open your heart to feel a room, a plant, a flower, etc., that’s using empathic ability. In order to accomplish this, you open a clear space in front of your heart and solar plexus area and reach out to feel from there. In previous years, unless you were in your own home or some other safe space, you would likely be feeling into a world of emotional chaos.
Generally people didn’t understand that empaths could feel their feelings. Closing their hearts to try to hide those feelings from the world didn’t stop the energy of the emotion from filling the area around them and transmitting to others. Empaths in this time period were operating first from a yearning for oneness, therefore they reached out to connect with another on whatever level they could. Since the lower, more emotionally centred chakras were often open and transmitting upsets, etc., this is what empaths engaged with on a sympathetic level. It might have occurred something like this. “Oh, that poor person. How can I help?” No sooner than the thought was thought than, whoosh, their own personal energy would rush out to assist that person energetically. OR, if they didn’t understand that what they felt wasn’t theirs, they would often absorb the energy (sometimes in a conscious or unconscious effort to transmute it) and then believe that the emotion (energy) that stuck with them from that process (and it always does stick when you’re doing transmuting in this way) was their own.
Studying how empathy worked during this earlier time shows that their heart and solar plexus chakras were open, but their energy fields were like a void reaching to embrace others. It’s as if empaths weren’t filled up in their own energy fields and so when they reached out to feel the world, they felt and experienced the chaos of energy there and then seemed to be unable to discern what was truly theirs and what was someone else’s. One empath described it to me in the early days as “drowning in a sea of emotion.” Then she said that she met me and it was like a ship coming along in the sea, throwing a life preserver into the ocean and saying “Get up here! You’ve got work to do. You haven’t got time to drown.”
I’d like to use a similar analogy here (a drowning person) to have you understand the various levels of empathy and its relationship to the actualisation of potential (to the true and transformative assisting of another). Here’s the analogy and how it looks in the various stages of empathy right up to the current moment:
Suppose you’re standing on a river bank and you see someone go by in the river and they’re drowning. What do you do?
STAGE 1: EMPATHY AS SYMPATHY
Is your first instinct to jump in to try to save them despite any cost to yourself? Our society has rewarded heroes and heroines who do these kinds of acts of bravery. But is it? Let’s look at it further as the newer stages of empathy engage.
STAGE 2: FROM THE HIGHER GOOD
Being a more spiritually aware person, do you stop just a moment and check your guidance, saying “Is it for the highest good that I go in to save this person now? Is it for their highest good that they are saved?” Perhaps this is their choice or their destiny in life and is it up to us to change it? At this level of energetic and spiritual awareness, it’s likely that you might not dive in, but you’d probably still struggle with your own emotions about your decision to assist or not.
STAGE 3: FROM COMPASSIONATE UNDERSTANDING
You’ve now gotten really big energetically and you stand back to look at this from a much wider perspective. “Ah!”, you say, “I see what this person is choosing and creating in their lives. And in fact I see that they actually don’t have to drown, but that they are making that choice at this particular point in time. Very interesting.” You might then call out from the river bank and say, “Do you wish to live? If yes, then engage your will and swim.” In the cases where they truly do wish to live, they will miraculously survive without you having to dive in at risk to yourself. (Remember this is an analogy for life, not a literal situation.)
STAGE 4: FROM COMPASSIONATE DETACHMENT
You’ve asked if the person really wishes to live and you and they discover that in truth they don’t. “Ah!, you say, “That’s ok. If that’s what you truly wish, if it’s truly your time and your choice to go, then I celebrate your choice with and for you without any judgement at all. For this too may actually be for the greater good of the person and for all. So from the river bank, you bow in honour of the greatness of that wonderful being, making this choice and you allow it to be as it is. You are left feeling complete and empowered by their passing through your life.
STAGE 5: FROM CREATIONAL INTENT
You recognise that they are creating it and choosing it, but you somehow know the unnecessariness of this. “Stop!”, you yell into the waters. “There is amazing work to be done and you don’t have to die to be a part of it. You can be a conscious creator. You can be everything you ever dreamed of and do the work you’ve truly come to do.” Is there a single higher good? Is destiny static and once it’s set in place, it’s unchangeable? I say no to both these questions. We are now creating our destinies, we are creating ourselves and our work in the world. Anyone can be ANYTHING and EVERYTHING they wish to be now. If they can hear you, if they are willing to recognise themselves as pure potential, then they will simply come up out of the water themselves and be ready to move to what’s next for them. Sometimes, this approach requires some emotional output from yourself. You might call it
anger, but it might also be called creational intent. In this scenario you have to be willing to be determined and to insistently call them forth. You also have to be willing to allow them to go on if that’s what they choose, without judgement. Mostly though in this scenario, the creational intent that you muster up to make this change of destiny happen, may leave you
quite connected to the outcome and you might find yourself disappointed that they didn’t choose to be all that they could be in the here and now.
STAGE 6: FROM BEING ALL YOU ARE
You stand on the bank and you call all of you forth. In that moment, you understand the perfection of it all, you see all the choices, you know that in truth they really are not drowning, for there is no water, no river, no drowning, no death and no struggle. There is only how we choose to perceive and create things. You simply stand there generating the energy of the potential of ALL THAT IS and you reach that energy to that person, like an energetic empowerment. You are a transformative force that awakens, inspires, energises and brings Life to everyone and everything. Will they choose it? Will they not? It’s up to them in the moment and if they don’t, you smile wisely, enjoying the moment and the perfection of all things, and you move on into the perfection of your own life, into the creation of paradise on Earth, doing the work you came to do as a GREAT BEING. You do not need to engage in the creations of others in any way, unless you choose to. You are an energetic master and you love everything that you create and honour the creations of others.
There is a stage 7 and probably an 8, 9, 10 and so on, especially as it relates to our new connectedness and collective consciousness. But for now, let’s stop here and go back and experience what empathy is like in each of these scenarios in real life.
EMPATHY AS SYMPATHY
Think of someone you know who is or has been sick or perhaps a young child who is dying or has died. Does your heart leap forward (if you’re not already mastering your knowing of the higher purpose of course) and your energy move towards the person or people involved? Watch how your energy moves. Observe how it moves beyond your own energy fields. Empathy as sympathy in its earliest stages left empaths’ personal energy running ahead
of them to give their energy to the person or situation to help to make it better, often leaving them more tired and unable to help themselves. Or try this, if you dare (I actually recommend that you not, but it does make a point). Walk into your least favourite supermarket and open your heart to feel the energy. I’m just making a point about how yucky and disorienting it can feel when you come at it in this way.
If you’d rather, simply take a recent experience where you’ve unexplainably suddenly gone weird, upset or angry. Now ask yourself, in that scenario, was the energy (emotion) that you were feeling yours? Did it source from you or was it something that you empathically picked up from someone else? If you discover the answer is yes, go back and track it to who the person was you picked it up from. You see, it’s not always that we actually realise we’ve “taken something on” for someone else. Far too often, the energy is just there and you walk into it, absorbing it as you go. Absorbing it even more if you have a sympathetic link to the situation. What can you do if you’re one of these people who constantly is picking up other’s energy and emotions?
The first thing you want to do is to always be aware of it. Every time in the next few days that you have an upset or a downturn in your energy, ask “Is the source of this mine?” If it’s not, ask what that energy would like you to do with it. Assume that even if it’s not yours (or even if it is yours) that it has a higher purpose and since you’re aware of it, then you can be the one to fulfil that higher purpose with and for it. Expand, become the totality of ALL / everything and zing its potential into play for the whole of the world and beyond.
I don’t recommend that you pick up other people’s emotions. I suggest that you actually ignore the energy of emotional pain / trauma / etc. as what you give energy to increases. Instead give energy to the potential of that same energy and zing that into full being.
Some empaths find that despite their very, very best efforts and a solid intention not to pick up other people’s feelings and energies, it still happens sometimes. If that’s so, ask is there a piece of work that you are meant to do with this person OR is there a piece of world work that this is a symbol of for you to do? If the answer is yes, find out what it is and do that work. Once you’re aware of the message and the work is underway, you will no longer experience the energy. This is getting in touch with the greater work and fulfilling yourself on a completely different level, making a difference for us all. And you always feel GREAT afterwards.
EMPATHY FROM THE HIGHER GOOD
Understanding will always bring you to a higher energy relationship with any person or situation. As you seek the higher perspective, your own energy will sort itself out well. Sometimes it’s our lack of understanding of situations that brings our reactions to the fullest pitch. And sometimes it’s our trying to pull away when in fact there’s work to do (as I just mentioned above) that keeps our energy connected long after we’d like it to be. If you’re still carrying the energy / emotion / upset, then ask why has this come to you? Seek the higher view. Once you’ve got the ah-ha, your energy will restabilise almost every time. So now, think back to the situation you used above of someone who was sick or dying and ask why did this affect me? What was the higher purpose for them and for the situation coming into your life? Or apply any other real life situation to it where you haven’t been able to let go yet of the emotion. Keep looking at it from higher and higher places until you get what it is … not as a learning for you, but as a piece of work that is yours to transform into greater potential. You can assist a person to resolve any issue if they’re willing by using the higher approach combined with the transformative energetic approach.
EMPATHY FROM COMPASSIONATE UNDERSTANDING AND DETACHMENT
Practically everyone I know has been experiencing an increased sense of detachment since 2001 and even more so in 2008. At first we asked the question “Where has my compassion gone?” And now, I would say it was a huge evolutionary leap for us all. Our energy fields have gotten so expansive and our understanding so much deeper and higher, that we smile as we observe life in the making. In fact, I surprise myself when things like this happen … a friend called and said that her father had just died two weeks before and out of my mouth came, “how wonderful!” The woman laughed because she said that it actually had been wonderful for both she and her father, but both she and I were still surprised at the immediacy and unusualness of the response.
We are becoming the great beings we have always longed to be. We are able now to understand what is happening way beyond the 3D version of it. Unfortunately way too many people still say “I must be mad to believe these things.” or “I must be making it up.”, when in fact this is their new-found means of understanding the world. NOTHING HAPPENS IN THIS LIFE THAT IS NOT PERFECTLY DESIGNED TO BRING US TO THE NEXT LEVELS OF BEINGNESS. So don’t judge yourself for your new detachment. It still has a compassionate sense to it, but it won’t leap to the fore embroiling you energetically in that which you don’t need to be embroiled in. Try this. Take the same issue of someone sick or dying that you used before and really look higher and deeper than you even looked before to see the absolute perfection of the situation. Once you’ve got it, see how your energy response to it changes yet again. It’s not that we don’t care. It’s that we know why we’re here and what we’re up to and we use our energy for the things that truly make a difference towards those goals.
It’s kind of like this. If you knew you were here to truly transform a planet … and your job, let’s say, was to maintain the energy state of paradise for a month while it was growing stronger and stronger as a new energetic reality, would you send all your energy to a “drowning” friend who’s choosing to drown? Some people might say they would, while others would say they could probably do both. That may be exactly so. But what if you absolutely knew that sending them that energy would make very little difference at all to them, would leave you exhausted and down for the count, and would leave paradise untended for the future of our world? What would you decide then? Now, of course, there’s no absolute answer here. Every decision has to be made in the moment and that’s why it’s so important to develop your access to your own knowing / wisdom. But generally, once you’ve made the decision from the biggest and most transformative orientation, you’ll find that your own energy field, your own life, will soar with energy and that the paradise energy will soar as well.
Try applying these same kinds of questions to new situations as they arise. Stand back, way back, and look at it to see what you’d choose to give your energy to and what you wouldn’t. You’ll find it an amazing exercise in strategically visioning for yourself and for the transformation of Life as we know it.
FROM CREATIONAL INTENT
Now this one particularly sings for me. I’m after all the one who the empath said threw her the life preserver and said “get out of that water, we have work to do.” I now have a particular view of the world which keeps my empathy completely disengaged by conscious choice. I can pull it back into play if I want to, but I’ve discovered that it serves no purpose and makes me ineffective in the transformative, evolutionary game, so I never engage it unless I’m trying to demonstrate something to a class I’m teaching.
I don’t walk around in life seeking to feel the energies around me. Instead I seek to know greatness and to work towards the fulfilment of planetary and cosmic consciousness transformation. I measure practically everything I do in terms of whether it supports the fulfilment of this goal. Every question I ask is directed through this filter first and all other filters later. If you’re someone who has stuck up your hand for world consciousness transformation (or whatever words you put on it) then you’re probably going to have a much more focused creational intent level than the average person. As mentioned above, this particular approach can leave you feeling intense and sometimes disappointed if people don’t reach for the potential you can so clearly see for them, but then that would be a good time to learn to lighten up and take things less seriously while still maintaining your creational focus.
Just out of interest take a look and see where you are on the scale of consciousness work. Are you working on:
- yourself
- assisting others
- creating community
- a better world
- a new reality
- global consciousness
- evolutionary, cosmicious Life on planet Earth and/or
- omni-dimensional, omni-present living for all of LIFE everywhere?
There’s no right or wrong answer. There’s just where you like to work at this moment in time. But just out of interest, shift your intention up a level or two and then take a look at situations in life from this perspective. How does it change things? How do you feel now about the friend who’s upset and wants to keep you on the phone for 2 hours telling you his/her story? If you believed that this was truly a mega-time in the history of our world, that there was a time band of a few years to complete the work that previous generations couldn’t even conceive of, would you still let the negative energy pour forth for this length of time, possibly taking you down for days, weeks and even months? I have seen these exact scenarios play out in many people’s lives, myself included.
This is actually the place where you might initially find yourself rather feisty and definitely more assertive than normal about what’s ok for you and what’s not. You begin to realise that people who are not responsible for their energy are actually affecting much more than themselves and you begin to say “get up out of that water!” But then this isn’t the ultimate place of mastery for you either. But it is a great step along the journey to true transformative mastery.
FROM BEING ALL / EVERYTHING
What is transformative mastery? Well, for now, it looks like being all you are and more, the totality of Life expressing itself and creating its and our evolution. This is simply done by expanding your energy fields to encompass more and more and more of all of Life. We can now consciously move ourselves at any time to any level of ourselves. We live in an open energy field (the Earth’s and humanity’s). We can access any wisdom / knowledge and we can tap into the source of creation. We are not small grains of sand in a universal beach. We are the very source of new consciousness, consciously creating a new reality of beingness and Life for all we touch. This is not about ego or personality. This is about the recognition of the true power of why we’re here and what we’re here to do.
So right now, allow yourself to expand to be the totality of ALL / Everything. How does it feel? Let yourself sit there for a moment ……. and then, swing your focus to that sick friend we’ve used in previous examples. How’s it look now? How do you feel about it? Experience this level and then compare it to empathy as sympathy. It’s quite a bit different isn’t it? Your energy moves in a completely different way. As sympathy, it may rush out without your conscious intention to “do good” in the world. From being the totality of All and Life, you may find yourself smiling at the perfection of the situation and then your energy expands some more as the true potential of the situation moves to you. Then you offer the greater potential to the person involved to see what they will choose. Try it on a real life situation in the coming days and let us know how you do.
One way to accomplish this with ease is to seek an ecstatic, exhilarating relationship with anyone or anything. That puts your energy into a completely different space, you smile, you’re connected, you know and you attune to doing the biggest work with such transformative grace and ease that you and the other person or situation are left buzzing with super energy to create what’s next for them and all.
I believe that it’s imperative now that we leave empathy as sympathy way behind us and use our vast, amazing, new energies to transform everything, to bring greatness present in all we work with and to empower a new collective consciousness that zings with Life and fulfilment and massive potential. Here is where we discover the evolution of us all into a brand new level of beingness and our ‘home’ as a brilliant, cosmicious paradise of the nth degree, where everyone is honoured, everyone is seen, every moment is treasured as an opportunity for potential to express itself into realisation. Have fun with it. Part of the mastery of it all is to not take it all so seriously and significantly.
