Empathy

We often hear this word but do we really know what it means? Where sympathy is feeling “for another”, empathy goes beyond that to have us feeling “with another” almost as if we are one and the same.

Empathy is the natural ability to feel and understand the feelings and perspectives of other living beings. When you have empathy, it extends your boundaries into your surroundings and those you are close to. This provides you with a sense of your external environmental state and the capacity to embody feeling states of others as if they are your own.

This can be a really beautiful thing to be able to do as it provides an overall sense of connection with everything around you, however, it can also be very burdensome. With lax boundaries and difficulty with processing all of the information, we can be weighed down by problems and emotions that aren’t our own. The mind can get overloaded from this and a decline in mental health follows, which makes sharp discernment between the state of ourselves and our surroundings next to impossible, potentially driving us to insanity.

Empathy can be cultivated and honed throughout our lives, which leads us to…

CLAIRSENTIENCE

Clairsentience is a highly acute form of empathy. More than that, it is a psychic gift that few individuals hold from birth, however, it can be cultivated and practiced to be activated within us. 

To have clairsentience means that an individual can sense with crystal clarity the feelings and emotions of other people, animals, plants, places, and spirits. They may have the ability to feel the past, present,  or future emotional states of beings and places as well.

A clairsentient individual has more control and awareness over their ability than the empath. The empath may still struggle with boundaries and processing power. They are in their raw and rough state with this higher-level form of consciousness.

A person must be fully conscious and lucid before becoming clairsentient. When you are aware with great clarity of yourself, your surroundings, and the feeling states of other creatures, you are able to hone your capacity to empathize. It is also important to understand that others around you have potential for these gifts just like you.

EMPATHY IN EVERYDAY LIFE

So empathy enables intimate connection to others and our surroundings. This is really important for our individual growth. If we are disconnected from others and our world then some aspects of our growth and existence will be severely stunted.

Empathy enables us to create deep and meaningful connections. It enables smooth flow in relationships and nurturing love to develop. Without understanding the feeling states of each other, we typically struggle to move from conflict to harmony. Empathy gives us perspective beyond our own in the realm of emotion and physical feelings. Expanding our perspective encourages our evolution as individuals and as a collective.

From empathy connection to nature unfurls. We can experience the nature of animals in a way that is beyond the food chain, the nature of plants beyond what they provide solely for our sustenance and oxygen, the nature of people beyond their primal functions and mental fixations.

In Tantra, empathy is paramount. As practitioners, we work directly with empathy to delve into the practice with each other in fullness to build powerful undulating ecstasy together.

From empathy arises the arts, music, dance, flow, kindness, compassion, and love.