The Hunger to Understand Empathy
Navigating Life’s Waters – Queenstown, NZ
Imagine a life without empathy, without feeling and without emotion? It’s quite a ridiculous question and not a literal one, although some people do experience life without empathy, the majority of us are born with a degree of empathy and there are many aspects that can determine the strength of such which varies with every person. Including how we are nurtured from birth and throughout our childhood and into adulthood, so many influences can shape and shift our empathy such as our environment, the type of society we are raised in, cultural and traditional, relationships with family, friends, colleagues and even strangers, too what kind of education we have/had, this is a mere drop of what can and will determine our empathicness.
As education forms the greatest part of our growth, it can ultimately enhance our journey or bring a myriad of challenges, even to a state of paralysis of the mind, it can bring forth illness, disease and breakdowns that we are then convinced medical intervention is the only way to survive. We are taught to walk, talk, ride a bike, clean up our room, how to eat, when to eat, what to eat, what to believe, think, say and do, we are taught that science overrides the metaphysical, that fact is superior to fiction, that bogeymen do not exist and it is a result of an overactive imagination, that it is impossible to sense beyond the 5 senses, and yet science is far more aware of the 6th sense than many are led to believe.
Education is paramount to our understanding.
When I first came online back in the 90’s, I was underwhelmed at the lack of information available regarding empathy, such a depressing realization! There are indeed other terms used to describe a person with empathy, and one such term was, ‘highly sensitive or hyper-sensitive’ and yet still the information I hungered for was like looking for a needle in a haystack!
Empathy to me was not just about being sensitive to energy, be it human emotion, from animals, the weather, earth or other innate objects, my whole life was driven by what I sensed, by the energy that I felt all around me, everything had a vibrational energy field! It could push me, pull me, and lift me up so that I felt like I was bouncing of walls on a natural high, or bring me to a point where I felt I could not breathe, crippled by intense emotional energies of certain people or life experiences such as global catastrophes. It was vital to learn what was going on within me and to not be so emotionally overwhelmed by all that I felt.
Was there a school that existed, books, research material, someone to guide me, help me understand… PLEASE HELP ME! Only to find a wall of silence, even within my own culture this wall of silence was unbearable. I was constantly told it was tapu (sacred) to talk about these kinds of things online, that you must do so face to face, I had long tried the face to face so the feeling of hitting my head on a brick wall only continued. My frustration was consuming my desire to find understanding.
This is where the reality became blatantly obvious that I would find the answers within and I began to research my life, document many experiences I had and continued to have, almost like a diary, apart from the fact I was lousy at keeping a diary, it was a journal with intent. I intended to get to know me and what made me tick, what and to whom was I sensitive too, what level of energetic impact it had on me, and in the process identify that there were certain emotions that were jumping out time and time again. They were here to teach me that within each and every emotion a specific vibration existed and it came with understanding if I were willing to learn what exactly that was.
These were not just emotions with a name! They had meaning, and these emotions could teach me a plenty once I had acknowledged what it was, where it came from, how it felt, why it came and what it brought with it. Until I truly acknowledged and accepted it (the emotion) it would hold me, and always jump out and affect me one way or another. For it was neither friend nor foe nor was there room for fear or any form of misinterpretation. How could I truly have others understand if the vibrational energy (specific emotion) that initially brought us together I too did not understand more fully, who was I kidding? Then walk away and feel like I had somehow taken that emotional energy and was now carrying the weight of it on my shoulders!
Think beyond a vibrational energy/emotion as you know it and we are often drawn to people who come forth to teach us something specific, sharing knowledge, enlightenment, wisdom and skill, thus the energy of thought. We put it (whatever it may be) out into the universe with intent thought and thine shall receive a response! Magic! No, just energy in all things. Learn, read, ask questions, seek and thine shall find, get to know who you are and develop, direct and embrace energy (yours) first and foremost in a way that is empowering and brings forth clarity and meaningfulness upon your journey.
Copyright © 2014 Christel Broederlow