Teachings,+Empathy

Empathy
(By Sam)(ael)

Empathy is the ability to feel what others are feeling. To share in their emotions and to bond with people who you do not even know. Empathy is a special gift and it is not extremely uncommon. Because few people recognize or tech about this ability it is also lost to many. Sometimes the especially strong talent for empathy is never recognized and trained, sometimes in our ever-increasingly numb society where feelings are misunderstood, abused, and trained counter to their original intended purposes Empathy is actually destroyed. For all of you as Force Users this section is useful. To some degree we can all empathize with other beings that feel. To those with especially strong talent you might be in desperate need of training. Strong empathy can be a very confusing ability. I remember going to Church dances when I was younger and for years not realizing why I hated them so much. Why I got so exhausted and depressed halfway through. I didn’t realize that the emotional energy of a hundred excited young men and woman was draining me to extremely low levels. To help you both I would encourage you to do some studying on emotions in addition to this. We can learn to control empathy and to center ourselves so we are not swayed by every mood in the crowd, but sometimes you get pulled by a new one. Each person is different and you experience each person as you go. Even just walking by sometimes. Learn how emotions work and how to use them to your best benefit. Also Specifically look for my Teaching called the Alchemical Cycle. It will show you how to transform dead emotions.

The Science of Empathy
Empathy works upon several principles that I believe in but that are not official scientific concepts at the present. They are and have been believed in by many, many people for ages now including modern scientists from around the world. But at present you must understand that this is my own idea of how things work based upon experience and not scientifically accepted principles. I am open to the fact that my own understanding could be off or wrong in many ways but bear with me and you will find it makes sense to you. First off we start with the principle of everything unified. I believe that space and time do not exist. To clarify I believe that our ability to separate things is actually an illusion. Think of a car. You can divide it into wheels, screws, and other parts but altogether it is one singular car. I believe that the universe including time is not several parts but the whole. Only our limited perspective separates things. That makes us all one universal blob that contains all of everything. There is nothing but everything and everything is one. Based upon this principle, our ability to sense feelings, thoughts, the future, and other things are not limited by space, time, or anything else. You could say that my ability to feel you is no less than my ability to feel my own arm. Once again our separatist perspective seeing everything in pieces limits us to our own frame but Empathic people, Mystics, oracles, and all manner of other people since the beginning have worked on the edge realizing that this perspective cannot be true. Due to the dissecting and logical nature of most scientists science has not yet recognized it officially but its true. This is what Yoda means by “Size matters not”. Yoda is famous for his seemingly illogical statements like this that strike the soul with the most profound wisdom. Remember. This is the 900 Year old Jedi Master who has the most amazing ability to sense across the galaxy into the future and the added ability to lift things that his force power should not be able to. Look at what he says. “Size matters not” “There is no why” “follow your feelings and find him you will” “Through the force, things you will see. The future the past, old friends long gone.” If we can extend our mentally imposed limitations of belief for a moment we can access more power than science tells us is possible. Empathy is a working model of this. How does something as subtle as a feeling magically enter and individual that it did not originate from? I have used empathy with absolutely no diminished power over 6000 miles away on the phone. My insights have startled and even scared some many and some few.

Emotional Toughness
To start off our training let me just give you the long view on my own training. I had to learn to do this myself. I was and always have been a loner and it has allowed me to help other people who shouldn’t have to go through those horrors alone. What marked the point where I was finally over the hill with my empathy? Experience. It may seem hopeless but you are going to have to hang in there and be careful for a long while until you gain the emotional experience and maturity to survive easily. After a lot of experience and pain you will develop tough emotional skin. This will not make you numb but it will allow you to stay in control and realize which feelings are your own and which are radiating from other people. Please try to understand the pain. As you hurt feeling other’s hatred and sorrow, as you realize in great depth the scope of the misery and suffering in the world, it will help you to realize your role in that world. With your understanding of other’s suffering, you can Cure others. It hurts. But through your pain you will learn how to produce joy in other people and you will be able to experience it with them. Now there are some things that will help you suffer less and finish the process faster. Get yourself at least one good friend that understands what you are going through. Someone you can be close to who is a good friend. I would recommend that above all other help. I did this alone and in some ways it destroyed me in ways that I cannot communicate to you. Things that make you less human. Get a good friend you can be around for your own good. Other things that can help you include learning about emotions and their uses, meditating on clearing your mind and emotions and learning specifically to relax. Something I learned was how to relax into sleep and how to breathe relaxation. When you are stressed learn to take deep calming breaths and imagine the feelings leaving you as you breathe them out and taking in calming energy and feelings. To relax before bed so you can sleep focus on relaxing every muscle in your body one at a time while saying to yourself “my face muscles are relaxing” several times. Do this part by part and your body will get so relaxed eventually that it will feel almost not alive (in a good way). It took me something like two hours to do it well enough the first 5 or 10 times but after some practice I could do it in something like ten minutes. Let me tell you it is the best ten minutes of my day. Possibly learn to relaxation and health techniques of your own to take care of yourself with. I have an extremely high tolerance for pain but it was too much to handle without these. It may have been one of the underlying stresses that caused my split.

Finding your Center
With any luck you will eventually gain the toughness that will allow you a much higher degree of freedom with your talents. Once you have weathered the thousand storms of the Empath you will notice not just a sudden withdrawing of pain but you will notice you have found inner strength that you did not know you had. You have found your center. You have achieved (for the most part) Serenity. Things that would shake other people no longer bother you. You can look ugly situations and fear in the face with unflinching resolve and pervasive calm. In order to rise above the storm of emotion you will have to survive, but once you rise above you will be most of the way to an aspect of emotional mastery. People and even animals can sense that strength. It will take a painful weakness and make it a hundred times worth the effort. My own leadership ability stems from several traits but all backed with the calm, almost boldly placid ability to stare people and problems in the face and not give an inch. When you give a person an honest look that communicates that you don’t care what horrors of the underworld bubble up out of the chasms of hell and carve a bloody swath straight in your direction you won’t budge and you won’t slow down… People will back off or fall to one knee.

Harnessing Empathy
Empathy is very useful for diplomacy. Emotions are not read like little news strips on someone’s forehead but if you learn to sink into it and be sensitive and smart you can guide a situation with perfect politics. You have four portions to focus on. First you will work on receiving. The trick is to be aware of your feelings. You will feel other people’s feelings flowing into you. With this awareness you will notice the difference in other people’s feelings. People are all unique, their feelings are tainted with a hint of their personality. When you get masterful you will be able to identify people with this taint or special tang like emotional tracking, I have developed the ability to the point where I can guess the thought that goes with the feeling, I can also get a very wide grasp of a person’s character simply by being around them for a little while. Sometimes a single emotion can reveal a person. I have a special knack it seems for identifying girls who have been abused in childhood. Its an on-site sense. Sometimes just hearing a voice and not even feeling a person can identify them. You should be aware that since this is a new science you will likely have your own talents within empathy. Just be aware and as time passes you will learn your particular bounds. Second is extension of your boundaries. This specifically will be the boundaries on your mind as we discussed in the above section. Remember, distance does not exist. All you need is to hear a voice, see the person, touch them, or turn your thoughts to them if you already know them. You only need the smallest link to pinpoint them and tap in like you were sitting next to them with an arm around their shoulder and a cable from your heart to theirs. There is no time, there is no space, and you are not contained in them either. Third is extending your senses. Now this might sound strange. Didn’t we deal with distance already? There is no distance. Well there is your immediate presence. Remember, just by being in a room or making visual contact with a person you have established a link to their feelings. This is the ability to extend that range. As you strengthen your range you will be able to feel the area around you without any contact save closeness. Focus on what you can feel around you of people and their emotions. As you develop this you will be able to sense anything that can feel accurately around you. Fourth is forming small bonds. Bonds are your only influencing tools. Only if you can form a bond with a person can you trade emotions back more than usual for a normal person. A bond has to be genuine. If you don’t like people you are screwed. This is like forming a friendship or a relationship and you should be careful to only do this with people you are willing to be attached to. Bonds are like permanent links to people except they work back and forth especially if the other person is empathic. Small bonds are a simpler version of bonding but read about bonding first and beware! I REPEAT BEWARE!

Bonding
This is potentially the most permanent, dangerous, and powerful ability that can be learned from this talent. The ability to bond is the ability to permanently link yourself to another person. You will feel their feelings no matter the distance for the rest of your life. They will always be at least a gentle feeling in the back of your head. Also you will be able to communicate if you can teach them some basics through feelings. I must warn you seriously. Any strong or very emotional/familiar relationship in which you specifically try to bond with a person for an amount of time that varies will become a permanent bond. Let me share what this is like with you. Once I was in love. This was after I had gained my balance and knew what Empathy was. I was deep in with this girl. I planned on forever so I was naturally trying to be aware of her emotionally so I could help quickly. I read a book that involved something like bonding (the wheel of time) and I remember specifically trying to build a bond. I felt increased sensitivity each time I tried and now it is permanent. It took me only a few days over several months of idle attempts. There were times when I could feel her crying because she was hurting. I woke up in the middle of the night and called her and asked why she was crying before she even spoke. I was right. Several things like this. Now let me tell you about the down side. This girl ended up marrying another man. It caused me so much pain I wished I was dead first thing every morning for two years and I still do some days. Now I got over that pain for the most part. I survived. But, I can feel her in the back of my head. I can feel when she feels loved and when she is happy and when she is excited. It can be embarrassing and I am grateful I didn’t know enough about bonding to tell her what had happened because it is a serious invasion of privacy even if you keep your mind to yourself. I will suffer for that mistake for the rest of my life. I would suggest that only after you are actually married and a year or so down the road you form any bonds and I suggest extreme caution with small bonds. These are friendship bonds which are made with less than intimate feelings between two people but they can accidentally become permanent. It is not an exact science. In fact, it’s a rather paradoxical one.

Command
After several years mastering Empathy first because I had to and then because I enjoyed the leverage and help it offered me, I have learned a relatively new skill. As of now I think I am the only one I have ever encountered who has done some deep study and experimentation into this area I have decided to call Command. Command is essentially the reversal of Empathy. After you learn to cope with recieving other's emotions, then to remain yourself in the storms of emotion that surround you, the next step is to learn to use your gift to project emotions. This is not a force power in any sense. It operates without any of the constraints most force powers operate with however it does physically and emotionally drain you very very quickly and much emotional strength is needed to maintain even a weak presence. The basics I can explain online (With Empathy and with the powers of the mind it is an instinctual feeling of how to do certain things which is not easy to convert into words and probably leads to many cryptic sayings like "There is no why" or "No! No different. Only different in your mind") are that instead of the usual way things work where the feelings are naturally there and they get stronger when you pay specific attention to anyone specifically, you now add the element of your will and project in the same way that you feel those emotions. With your will you will not be commanding so much as convincing. Since most people are not naturally as sensitive as you are to emotion, just feeling is not enough. You must project specifically. In order to project into a room you must be aware of the individuals within. With a crowd this can be easier. In my studies of crowds I find that any mass of people even people just as different as the crowds in the mall are connected emotionally. It seems that people naturally form very minor bonds with anyone they are close to. Even strangers packed together. If you get enough people in a room you need only target the whole group, otherwise you will have to feel the emotions coming in and reflect your command on those presences. Also a minor note: Sometimes there are more presences than people in a room. Some places hold a memory of an emotion. There is a spot in Tucson where a lot of Cowboys died in indian raids but also in infighting over women. To the best of my knowlege these are accurate impressions most of the time. I have never been wrong with empathy but I also don't have a LOT of experience to share in these 'extra' impressions. I am however fairly convinced we are not talking about ghosts or spirits since they are sensed more often by force senses or spiritual awareness. It will be up to you to learn how to do this but be very warned that it is extremely dangerous to do this without a firm background in emotional toughness and serenity. It's negative implications are fascinatingly addictive. Don't start down this path if you aren't wise enough to put others before yourself.

-Toughness (Learning to survive the emotional bombardment, confusion, and pain.) -Center (Learning to seperate your own emotions from those of other people.) -Serenity (Gaining the strength and wisdom to overcome the intense trials presented by empathy.) -Bonding (The ability to permanently connect to others) -Command (The ability to reverse the gift of Empathy into an area of emotional projection)
 * __Steps of Empathy Mastery__**: