On Empathic Alchemy……?
( or how being empathic can lead to an awareness of spiritual unity)
There are many positives to being empathic e. g. a more sensual awareness of Nature, an ability to read people more effectively etc. However if we are to benefit from these abilities and use them for the common good many of us need to harness and in some way take control of the dark side. This dark side is often the first sign an individual has empathic traits as it can manifest itself in substantial distress to the person involved.
On less grounded days I will find myself again drawn into the psychological and emotional maelstrom of raw, uncontrolled, uncontainable empathy.
It seems especially testing lately, the increase in hate crime in the UK, the race issues in America, the huge loss of life of those victims of terrorist attacks leads me to feel great sorrow.
I have tried to ‘ objectively’ to observe what happens within me when I get these feelings in a hope of not getting completely overwhelmed by the concurrent emotions.
I will get an emotional reaction if I hear such news on the radio but much more so if I see televised footage of the actual incident. The physical feelings of anxiety and complete distress undergone by those victims seem transferred to me, I feel the need to vomit, my throat constricts, my stomach knots, it feels as if the emotional centres of my heart and chest are tore open. I seemingly start to hemorrhage emotional energy and become quickly drained of feelings resulting in a kind of agitated lethargy. At other times I will have a virtually unstoppable urge to put right that what is painful and upsetting to others. I am ready to go to war against what or whosoever is the perpetrator of others pain, to the point of sacrificing my life in order to save others having to be subject to distress.
Fortunately the vast majority of the time I can ground myself or drag myself back to a more realistic appraisal of the situation.
I appreciate that the pain I feel possibly would not be so great as those individuals however it seems that with empathy comes an incisive and acute awareness that we are all linked at some level. That when one person or animal hurts, that we can feel their pain, that we feel mobilised to act on their behalf.
For all those struggling empaths and healers out there, hold on in there. It is, as is everything in life, a process. We often rise again like a phoenix from the ashes of our former selves. However we may become burnt in the process.
individuator 