The ability to understand the experiences and feelings of others is one way to define empathy. An empath often lacks the filters necessary to keep from experiencing excessive stimulation through absorbing the energy of this environment. Empaths are highly sensitive and able to interpret feedback from other sources to arrive at a perspective of what others might be going through. Empaths have big hearts and hold a lot of compassion for others, which makes them excellent caregivers, healers, friends, and partners. Empaths are highly intuitive, with a well-developed gift called clairsentience or ‘clear feeling’, which is the ability to gain knowledge through a feeling.
Empathetic illnesses are those in which you manifest symptoms from taking on energy that is toxic. Some doctors and psychiatrists label this as agoraphobic, with panic disorders, chronic depression, fatigue, pain, bloating, or mysterious ailments that respond only partially to medications, psychotherapy, energy healing, or other treatments or practices. Agoraphobic as an adjective describes a person with an extreme or irrational fear of entering open or crowded places, of leaving their own home, or of being in places from which escape is difficult.
In my personal career change toward a focus on my gifts, I had some experiences that shook the ground beneath me (tee hee). This led to a process of shifting the physical empathy to mental empathy. Let’s get a whisper on the subject of life as an empath:
The ability to clearly feel vibrations from people, animals, and the Earth develops and strengthens under certain conditions. Each person holds the seed of empathy which can lie dormant, especially if the gift is rejected early in life. Unhealthy attachments can surround and contain the energy, leading to an underdeveloped intuition and an over-developed instinct.
Without the balanced integration of masculine and feminine energies, empathy is often rejected due to unwanted emotions. The porous energy field can also develop larger openings due to trauma, leading to the potential over-absorption of environmental vibrations. Absorption of toxins can influence the illusion that your gift is a burden. Recognize this one truth, and the shift will have already begun. There is no reason having a gift should lead to isolation. The gift of empathy provides a constant reminder to remain mindful, authentic, and present. Do not trade good health over some notion you are meant to suffer by taking on external negativity.
Being empathic means you hold a high level of emotional intelligence that goes beyond simple knowledge. You can use that intelligence to bring the gift to the mental dimensions, where health is not susceptible to compromise. The desire to help make the world a better place is a common theme to all those with empathy. It doesn’t matter how you have positioned yourself in the world, expressing the gift of empathy gives more meaning to your life.
Emotions are expressed in a variety of vibrations, like keys on a piano. The concerto of one’s life orchestrates a response to all experiences. An occasional sour note can be struck, and when this occurs, an empath can absorb the tone of that energy. Your talents, strengths, and gifts set you apart from all others, with the opportunity for profound growth at the soul level.
Take the empath quiz to see if you are an empath, what kind and to what level. Find ways to manage and enhance your gift.
Bring joy, ease suffering and create beauty, then dance like you mean it!
Blessings, Russell
“for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.” Milan Kundera
