On Being An Empath
Empathetic; adjective - able to understand how somebody else feels because you can imagine what it is like to be that person.
Being an empath is in some ways comparable to being on the neurodiverse spectrum. Whilst it has its problems, the intensity of some of the experiences can make life quite the adventure that it wouldn’t be otherwise.
As with all things the empath experience operates on a number of levels that you may or may not subscribe to and you may or may not manifest, but certainly transcend the dictionary definition of this ability. It is not an operation of the imagination. There are purely psychological levels and there are levels operating in the esoteric realm through the psychic senses. At the most extreme end you may be a super-empath with inexplicable skills that are greater than the sum of your sensory parts. Emotional engagement may not only be with living humans but beings of all types and at all times.
Our experience suggests that existing skills can certainly be enhanced with training. Barely existent or unrecognised skills does not preclude you from being empathic, the nature of internal training is such that this is a guaranteed side-effect with all of the positive or negative connotations a side-effect may have.
What follows are some experiences of our instructors, students and friends that indicate a highly empathic state of being;
‘There is a middle aged gentleman that walks past my house with his dog daily. I started to experience a wave of overwhelming grief as he passed. I found out from a neighbour that he recently lost his wife.’
‘I can walk in to an empty room and tell you what has occured there previously. A room that has had a party in it has a very different feel to where there has been an argument.’
‘Experiencing the physical elements is beautiful and even overwhelming at times. Feeling bare feet on grass, cold foamy waves of salt water crashing against me, the wind and rain or sun’s heat against my skin. It all elicits a huge emotional and energetic rush.’
‘The energy of place makes taking a trip somewhere an experience I wish everybody could have. Just a particularly beautiful waterside spot is a blissful experience, visiting an old castle gives me a instant download of it’s emotional history. Even commercial places, in fact sometimes especially commercial places that are designed to be immersive such as theme parks are a huge adventure in clairsentience and the other pyschic senses.’
‘All my life I have loved animals and lived for my interactions with them and my care for them. I assumed it was the same for everybody until I learnt that the relationship I have with them has so many more layers to it. It means that you don’t so much train them but just coexist with them and the skills which normally come from the standard animal training paradigm just develop naturally.’
You won’t hear us talking much about emotional energies as we take a somewhat passive approach to emotions. That’s not to say it’s all distant and observational, at times it is quite indulgent which may not be your cup of green tea if you are a zen type.
We would recommend that all people engage a little with fear control and internal martial arts are a good platform for this although it is probably not the Chinese internal martial arts that do this best. We will release a lesson on this in the not too distant future.
Whilst we see empathic ability as an integral part of a magical existence you are going to need some strategies to engage with it. To catalyse your ability consider working with some divination techniques such as oracle/tarot, pendulum or runes. You may have heard that we offer such services and some of us do, speak to your instructor or drop us as message. You will also need to be able to modulate or mute the various signals at times. Grounding and banishing techniques are your tool kit to cleanse yourself and your environment respectively. It is important to note that empathy as a receptive idea is only one side of the coin with healing or hurting being on the projective side. Energy healing is another thing that at a push we offer as a service.
We have noted a few quirks that are surprisingly consistent across super-empaths; video games are more stressful than enjoyable, horror films are quite a difficult experience despite being not real where as real life scare attractions (closer to being real) whilst still being scary are in fact a fun playground for energetic interaction. Gambling is definitely not for the super-empath.
This is just a skill like any other and as such it is neutral. Of course there are dark paths to be walked for those that seek them out. In our research for this blog post we came across a particularly awful video called ‘7 Reasons Why A True Super Empath is Extremely Dangerous’. Well that’s true, but not for the reasons given in the video. Even though empathy obviously has emotional content it does not have to be treated in an emotive way. If you can grasp that irony you are on the way to becoming a powerful magician/energy worker/warrior, whatever archetype you aspire to.