Empathicness...The next step in the evolution of mankind?

By David J Lincoln

Are you empathic? Are you someone who picks up on other people’s emotions and feelings? In the past, those with empathicness have considered it to be a real problem in that they were constantly dealing with emotions, upsets, etc. and couldn’t figure out why. Empaths feel emotions as energy and have had difficulty going into crowded areas like the supermarket or shopping areas because they come away with all the upsets, anger, fear, etc. that is left by the unknowing general public. If everyone was empathic, people would be more careful with their emotional states and would realize that it is energy that can be picked up by others...in particular by empaths.

Everyone may be born empathic, but many shut it off (by closing the heart) as they grow up. They believe that this helps to protect them from all the hurt and pain, but it stops them from feeling how others are feeling and from experiencing and expressing love. Those people who have stayed empathic in life (who are what I call natural empaths) seem to have a number of things in common:

• Their hearts are open most, if not all of the time and they feel everything through their heart centers and their auric fields.
• Getting angry is difficult for them because they understand what the other person is feeling; they feel oneness with that person.
• They have spent their lives feeling like the "odd man out", weird, different, unable to cope in normal society. In some respects they have considered themselves weak emotionally and energetically and yet they know that they are the strong ones because they are able to cope with so much disharmonious emotion and energy.
• Some particularly sensitive empaths feel like they are drowning in a sea of emotion, and often they have confused this sea of emotion as their own rather than the world’s.
• It is difficult for them to use normal energetic protection (for example being surrounded by a ball of light) because it stops them from being able to access their feeling centers.
• They say that a person’s soul records exist in their auric fields and can be read there; that when they meet a person they essentially know all about them in seconds.
• They have had great difficulty in wanting to stay on Earth because they have found life so difficult here. Most of them have had a number of near brushes with death in this life.
• Clearing their own life issues seems to help somewhat, but because they’re constantly picking up on others’ emotional states and confusing them with their own, they think that the job of clearing/releasing is never done.
• They have difficulty learning in the normal way of learning. They seem to absorb information and know it, rather than learn it in the traditional mode of learning. In school they were likely considered to be the dreamers and yet they are highly intelligent and articulate.
• Many empaths have been locked in their homes over the years, just trying to stay clear of the disharmonious emotions and energies that surround them. They might be labelled as reclusive, agoraphobic, fearful and many more terms to describe their difficulty in walking in this world of emotional states/energies.
• All empaths are also telepathic, as empathy and telepathy are really the same thing. It is being able to read the true communication that a person is sending energetically through the heart. It’s not reading people’s minds. It’s knowing the truth of the communication.
• All empaths are intuitive. They just KNOW things. This is usually their primary mode of accessing information and guidance. Trust it. It will guide you well.

If some or all of these things fit you, then you are likely empathic. It may have seemed to be a kind of living hell but, once you can recognize it as what it is, there are ways to deal with it effectively and to turn it into the gift that it is meant to be to help us all understand one another on this world.

First, if you are an empath, almost all your issues are not yours. Yes, you may find that hard to believe, but we have now proven it to be true with a very large sampling of empaths (over 500). Realizing this, the first thing to do when you start to "go down" is to ask yourself intuitively if the source of this problem is yours or someone else’s. Yes, the energy will have a resonance with you or it would not have come to you, but first transmute it as if it is not yours. Let it pass on through. You don’t need to hold on to it. Send it to the Light and replace it with Divine Light or Love. Then ask what is the lesson that it is pointing you to; get it and integrate it into your life. Then ask, assuming it really is not yours (which 99.9% of the time it will not be) ask whose it is and whether you can assist this person with it in some way. Your empathy is your signal to work. So, once you have transmuted the energy, turn your heart chakra around (facing outward in ‘transmit mode’ instead of inward in ‘receive mode’). Send healing love, light, a telepathic conversation to the person to help resolve the issue, etc. You get the point. Turn and work. Do something about it.

You cannot help someone else heal by taking on their pain and suffering. Almost all empaths do this naturally and automatically, to transmute the suffering of others, but because they have believed the suffering was their own, they couldn’t transmute it. The only way to transmute something is to love it and it seems to be very difficult to love your own suffering. How you can use your gift is to find out whose problem it is and then ask what you can do to help that person. If you try to transmute it without their having gotten the lesson and you think it is yours, then you end up with a problem and they recreate it again for themselves so that they can eventually learn from it. When the person is ready, willing, and committed to transmute their stuff, then you can act as the facilitator for the release. You cannot heal anyone who is not ready to be healed. If you are empathic, you may understand it intellectually but not really be able to act upon it because it is natural for you to reach out to take it from them, to try to make it better for them. But it does not work. That’s the problem for you. So, if you can, do not take it on yourself. Over the past year (1997 and into mid 1998) many empaths have found themselves moving into a more detached view of things (dispassionate compassion) and seem to be not so willing to take it on for others. An empath going down with someone else’s problem is increasing the problem for the world by adding to the disharmonious energy.

To help you keep your energies strong, keep the energy spaces in which you live and work as clear as possible. Sunshine and open windows really help. If someone has come to visit you, or you’ve run into someone who is down or angry, be prepared to clear yourself energetically of their emotional state. Know that it is not yours and do what you can to clear it. A shower and a change of clothes is often a good way to clear energy but may not do the whole job. Get outside in a clear space and blow it out from you, and ask that this energy be taken from you and from the Earth.

For protection, try this. Feel your heart open wide and then feel all your higher chakras opening as well. Feel the flow of energy from the Source coming straight down the pranic (chakra) tube into your heart. Let it move through your body and ground down into your feet and into the Earth. Grounding really helps you stay strong and centered to be able to work. Call for your own Spirit energy, your Life Force, to join with you fully. Feel this energy move in and through your body, and then out through the pores to fill the room, the house, and beyond. Every time you need to enter into a crowd or to do shopping, etcetera, use this exercise before you go out. Your true protection is the Light that you fill yourself with.

When you are out and you see something that disturbs you, do not judge it nor sympathize with it. Judgment and pity will ensure that you pick up the energy of it. Compassion is the answer as it has no judgment or pity in it. A compassionate view knows that all things are perfect and that the spirit has a purpose for everything it chooses in life. If you cannot do anything else to help a situation, send Light to it through your heart with compassion as the focus.

Find out what it is you are here to do on the Earth - and do it. Begin to do the things you love doing. Let go of the past and all of the cultural conditioning that says you cannot do it because... Experience the joy of living. Despite what it feels like, the world is getting brighter each day as more and more people learn to release their issues and emotions and walk in the world of energy sensitivity. Choose life and express it for yourself as often as possible.

Almost every empath we have met comes from angelic origins and was also on Earth at the time of Christ (see the ‘Moments with Christ’ article in the March newsletter on our home page on the Internet for more details). There is an empathic circle of people all over the world that works every day, consciously and unconsciously, to transmute the world’s fear and suffering. They link through the heart, they send love to the Earth for its transformation, and they transmute the mass consciousness always. This is why it is very important, especially now, that you assume that the energies and emotions you experience are not yours. Use the empathic reaction as a signal to work and get it conscious for what you do. Doing your work consciously on the 3D level gives it ten times the power than doing it unconsciously (which you are doing anyway). It is also a lot more fulfilling to do it consciously. You then know you are making a difference.

Begin to teach others to be empathic (they are all becoming it anyway as the chakra system is opening for all of humanity). Train the people around you to understand the gift of empathicness and to be respectful of energies and others’ sensitivities. It is really the rest of the world that needs to learn to be sensitive. You don’t need to desensitize. You just need to learn to use your sensitivity as a signal to work.

Don’t we all need to learn to have compassion and understanding for all beings to make this a better world? Empathicness is the next step on the evolutionary path for mankind. How can we achieve brotherhood and peace until we share one another’s feelings and understand one another as if we are one? If you are an empath, you are blessed and are holding a gift that the world is in much need of right now. Begin to dance with it as the gift that it is. And, rather than sinking in a sea of emotion that is not yours, be passionate in doing your particular work to clean up the emotional mess and train people to respect the emotional sensitivity of others. We all need to learn from you. Thank you for being one of those who is holding the open heart for all of us to learn from.

© David J Lincoln February 2008