Empathy is our Natural State - let's enjoy it!

thanks for original picture from Maksym Kozlenko 

We cannot outsource empathy... compassion, love, experiencing the oneness that we truly are behind all the distraction...

and what a shame if we could outsource this, really,

what a loss to miss the delight of connection.

We learn to make empathy SO hard.

But I believe empathy is our natural state, we are One.

Unfortunately, for most of us, experiencing this Oneness in this life usually involves the expereince of pain, fear, shame...

And we are programmed by almost everything and everyone around us to shut-down - so most of us do.

Meanwhile, I believe our natural heart state is like a sweet, gentle flower
- open to the sun, swaying in the breeze, so present, so joyful, so beautiful, so delicious.

But our flower gets covered-over - often with many ouches, scars, various armorings.

It becomes hard for many of us to even see the flower - to experience that it is there - in ourselves, in others...

But the flower IS there - our natural state of Oneness... its still there, under all the crap.

So I believe from this perspective,

it may be easier to see:

WHY getting to this oneness, enjoying empathy,

can - at first - be very confronting, painful, scary, sharp, full of resistance... wearing.

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Actually BEing with another means

actually BEing present,

in the moment, with what IS

- really with ourselves and with them and with this reality.

This can be Really!! Tiring!!

- all the getting over the crap - ours and theirs and our culture's crap.

For many this is way too hard.

We do half-measures, or some just give up.

But the road of opening the heart is available to all whole want it 
- it is not easy for most of us, but the fruit is delicious.

And the good news is: 
From a healed and open heart, empathy is like falling off a log, it is our natural state.

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So, most of us have closed-up our hearts, deep within ourselves.

And we are blessed with the challenge and the fruit of opening our heart.

But some of us are blessed with even more to learn and practice. 

(yes, where we trip IS our Treasure - so let's dig ;)

Very central to this conversation - what can be seen as the other side of the coin:

some are too open; in ways that are detrimental.

Some terms used for this are being an 
Empath, being a 
Sensitive or an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person)

BTW, this is not a heart-issue - our deep heart is made to open and expereince our natural connection.

But, Some of us, because of our background and choices, are too receptive in other ways - to others thoughts, feelings, experiences, will, desires...

Within, we have not learned things like:

• Dancing our own power and volition;
• Enjoying comfortable boundaries;
• Interacting-with and learning-from emotions, and then letting them go;

• Balancing within ourselves, not dragged along by our own or others feelings, instincts, drives, judgements;
• Belonging in this world, being safe and well regardless of others opinions and behaviors...

We can learn these things.

And it is important to note, there are always very compelling reasons why we have learned them yet.

So compassion around this learning is really helpful.

We can learn and shift inside, and then in our outward expereince.

But, until we learn how to live comfortably, safe and empowered in and with our body, in the presence of others,

we suffer, we are overwhelmed, we take-on other people's stuff, our lives don't work.

This really is a super-draining way to live, and often painful, debilitating - certainly ineffective.

But, this (also) is not our natural state.

Naturally, we are powerful, and we can find and live in that natural flow of power.

And we can find and learn to own our free will, again.

Naturally, we can learn to turn our internal senses up and/or down, comfortably as needed. 

Within ourselves, we can turn down the volume of others feelings, experiences, communication 

- so we can comfortably be with others, without getting bowled-over.

Naturally, we can learn to shift our intention:

although we are all, already One;

we can learn to happily play the game of I/Thou in this life of dichotomies.

In this world of 10,000 things, we can be our own selves, enjoy our own body our own life, our own challenges, our own choices - and not get lost in everyone else's journey and expereince.

We can be blessed in a relationship with all others - with a space between us - so we can see, love, and play with others - and not be a big pile of mush one finds, for example, in co-dependency.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but truly honoring another and ourselves as separate unique individuals, can support us to show-up to Be With them, in a safe and loving way.

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Here I go, on and on

because

I am passionate that

our natural comfortable empathy, connection with each other, understanding and being-with each other very deeply

really can be easy, delicious and enriching.

I believe it is our natural state.

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Archimedes said:

give me a firm spot on which to stand and a lever long enough and i will move the world.

As in sports, business, etc -

it helps to stand-in and act-from an efficacious place

and have many levers/practices to utilize

- so we can be equipped and empowered to be who we are and do what we are here to do - more easily, more gracefully.

I believe it is useful to know,

this is possible regarding empathy, as well.

If we are willing to learn and shift:

Showing up in/with empathy can be easy & fun, 

and true connection with others can actually help fill our well, not drain it.

Empathy is our Natural State - let's enjoy it!

Thanks for reading.

Blessings on your Unique Journey, Wendy

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After I wrote this, I realized it goes very nicely with a class I am offering, starting in a few weeks: Enough! Receiving & Giving... and Boundaries! with Mother Mary - online workshop

you can read more about being an Empowered Empath

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Want to Help & Heal Others, but tripping yourself? Learn from Wendy's Mistakes!

Wendy was called as a healer-becoming, when she turned 30, and quickly became a much-appreciated healer.

BUT, she also started 'taking-on' other's pain and brokenness - even more than she had before! 

She did not have healthy energetic boundaries.

She did not understand the deep importance of letting others be responsible for the trajectory and outcomes of their own life...

But, she did learned the consequences of these missteps Very Well. 

She experienced the emotions, energy, illnesses, and brokenness of others, within her own system - experiencing almost every malady of her healees. and more...
Wendy quickly went way beyond burn-out to succumb to a syndrome of chronic illness, stuck in pain & fatigue for over a decade, and bed-ridden for years!

It wasn't JUST taking on other's energy that brought her down. 

It was the unprocessed trauma and abuse from her earlier life, as well as the deep pain, fear and invalidation... that were hidden within, like a time-bomb released when she said YES to a whole new level of operating as a healer in the world.

The usually unappreciated news of being a Healer:
the First, Last, and Middle step is ALWAYS self-healing.

The GREAT News is:
As we heal and transform ourselves, we heal and transform our world.

It is Amazing how much change happens around us, just as we BE more and more ours true selves, and DO more and more our true path!
      
At 40, with increasing well-being, having learned to powerfully heal and create in her life, as well as safely assist and inspire others to do the same; she began investing in her life’s work in a whole new & powerful way:  serving soul evolution.

See here for more about how she did this:

• Wendy's Journey
• Flourishing as a Healer

This Path is Spiritual, Not Religious

As spiritual practitioners, we should be open to being a failure. We can take heart in the fact that Siddhartha found enlightenment not through his great success at religious practices, but through his failures.

I found this to be a wonderful essay from Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche about Ascended Master Buddha, and about us. Copied below Huffington Post, August 6, 2010.

This is written to Buddhist practitioners, but i believe it has more universal usefulness.
I highlighted a few sentences which I found especially exciting…

Is Buddhism a Religion?

We often talk about Siddhartha, the young man who became known as the Buddha, as if he were a god. The fact is that he was just a simple Indian guy, a human being like you and me. We think of him as some kind of super-genius for having attained complete spiritual awakening, but in fact his real genius was in showing how any one of us can attain the same awakening as he did. We describe him as a prince and a member of the elite royalty of his time, and we think that must have given him an advantage over us — but the reality is that most of us today are probably better off, in material terms, than Siddhartha was.

We talk about his kingdom and so forth, but what the prince Siddhartha had was really no more than what you might find in any middle-class American household. He might have had more wives, but you’ve got more gadgets, more technologies and comforts and conveniences. Siddhartha didn’t have a refrigerator, and you do. He didn’t have WiFi, or a blog, or Facebook or Twitter. He might have had more houses and land, but you’ve got a more comfortable bed than he had. Maybe you even have one of those new, space-age Tempur-Pedic beds. Think of how much time you spend in bed, and how important your bed is. I guarantee that Siddhartha had a worse bed than you have.

The point is, we shouldn’t mythologize Siddhartha’s life and think that his spiritual awakening was due to his special circumstances. Most of us today actually live in conditions very similar to Siddhartha’s, in terms of our material situation.

Siddhartha was a truth seeker, nothing more. He wasn’t looking for religion, as such — he wasn’t particularly interested in religion. He was searching for the truth. He was looking for a genuine path to freedom from suffering. Aren’t all of us searching for the same thing? If we look at the life of Siddhartha, we can see that he found the truth and freedom he was seeking only after he abandoned religious practices. Isn’t that significant? The one who became the Buddha, the “Awakened One,” didn’t find enlightenment through religion — he found it when he began to leave religion behind.

The Lure of Religious Trappings

A lot of people prefer to think of Buddhism as a religion. It’s easy to see why, when Buddhism abounds with religious trappings: the rituals and the chants and the golden statues sitting on the shrine. Buddha himself never wanted to be deified in any kind of icons; at the beginning, he told his students no icons, no worshiping. But it’s said that he had a very devoted student who kept pestering him, requesting his permission to make a statue of him, until finally the Buddha gave up and allowed the first image to be made. And now we have all these elaborate golden icons that look like they were dug out of an Egyptian pyramid. It’s nice to have these reminders, but we must remember that’s what they are: reminders of something, an example to be followed, not idols to be worshiped.

If our goal is to turn Buddhism into a religion, that’s fine — in America we have freedom of speech and the Bill of Rights. We can make Buddhism into a religion, or a branch of psychology, or a self-help program, or whatever we want. But if we’re looking for enlightenment, we won’t find it through relating to the Buddha as a religious idol. Like Siddhartha, we’ll find real spiritual awakening only when we begin to leave behind our fixed ideas about religious practice. Seeing the Buddha as an example and following his example — recreating, in our own lives, his pursuit of truth, his courage and his open mind — that’s the real power of Buddhism beyond religion.

Truth Has No Religion

Siddhartha actually became the Buddha through his failure at religion. He saw that the ascetic practices he’d been engaged in were not leading him to true liberation, and so he left them behind. But he had five colleagues who continued their religious practices of asceticism, and they regarded Siddhartha as a failure. From their point of view, he just couldn’t hack it, and that’s why he gave up. Later, after he attained enlightenment and became known as the Buddha, they became his first five disciples; but at the time when he left behind their religious program, they regarded him as a failure. I find that very encouraging. As spiritual practitioners, we should be open to being a failure. We can take heart in the fact that Siddhartha found enlightenment not through his great success at religious practices, but through his failures.

As Buddhists, Siddhartha’s example is the most important one for us to follow. He was a great explorer of mind and its limits. He was open-minded, seeking truth, with no preconceived agenda. He thought, “Okay, I’ll do these religious practices and see if I can find the truth that way.” He did the practices, he didn’t find the truth, and so he left the religion. Like Siddhartha, if we really want spiritual enlightenment we have to go beyond religiosity. We have to let go of clinging to preconceived religious forms and ideas and practices.

Religion, if we don’t relate to it skillfully, can trap us in another set of rules. On top of all the ordinary rules we are already stuck with in this world, we pile on a second set of religious rules. I’m not saying there is anything bad about religion or rules, but you should be clear about what you’re seeking. Do you want religion and a set of rules to follow, or do you want truth? Truth has no religion, no culture, no language, no head or tail. As Gandhi said, “God has no religion.” The truth is just the truth.

If you are interested in “meeting the Buddha” and following his example, then you should realize that the path the Buddha taught is primarily a study of your own mind and a system for training your mind. This path is spiritual, not religious. Its goal is self-knowledge, not salvation; freedom, not heaven. And it is deeply personal. Without your curiosity and questions and your open mind, there is no spiritual path, no journey to be taken, even if you adopt all the forms of the tradition.

Standing outside the Fire

If your knowledge of fire
has been turned to certainty by words alone,
then seek to be cooked by the fire itself.
Don’t abide in borrowed certainty.
There is no real certainty until you burn;
if you wish for this, sit down in the fire.
~ Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi

I believe poetry is wonderful because there is no exact meaning, it means many things, and different things to different folks. Below are 3 thoughts, of many, I have regarding the quote. I would love to hear your ideas!

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1)
Experience and practice, being in present time with our body and in this world, ARE reality
I hear Rumi say: jump in with no holds barred!
Theory and hearsay are shadows of reality.

I would rather directly experience what is real and true and love and God… for Myself…
not second-hand (That is like watching it on TV, it is not LIFE!)
AND at the same time, oh how reality Burns!

But then, no one can say this theory or that theory to me,
I KNOW my experience.
That is my own certainty, not someone else’s belief or theory…

Christian writer Paul says:

in order that we may be no longer babes, tossed and carried about by every wind of that teaching but… holding the truth in love, we may grow up to him in all things

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2)
God (Light/Love/Life/Fire) burns up everything that is not God (Light/Love/Life/Fire).
My favorite preacher, Dr Bruce Morgan, used to say this all the time, for me it is axiomatic.

From my perspective, everything comes from God and everything returns to God.
I can flow with the process or resist it.
From my level of resistance I can suffer little or much.
But in the end, everything ends: everything goes into the fire…

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3)
One of the Christian spellings for Rumi’s quote, I believe, is Jesus saying:

If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

I would translate this something like:
I must let go of letting the ‘lower/ego self’ run the show…
let go of the physically-focused self;
and be who I really am as spirit, a part of God, and walk my unique spiritual path.

This fulfills me and naturally serves the world;
AND this Way goes through the fire, there is no way around it!

When we stop chasing around outside of us (fixing, changing, squirreling, consuming, desiring, worrying, scheming, helping, controlling… ad infinitum)
and focus inside of us (which feels like sitting in the fire, no? at least at first!!!)
then, well, that is IT.
The way can be painful, but the fruit is sweet.

The fire could be THE BELOVED (GOD),
it could be LOVE,
it could be LIFE,
it could be BEINGNESS,
it could be the LIGHT,
it could be Our PATH...


So, here is one possible reading of Rumi’s words, that could sum all these things:

If your knowledge of GOD
has been turned to certainty by words alone,
then seek to be cooked by GOD directly.
Don’t abide in borrowed certainty.
There is no real certainty
until you are consumed/transformed through/by GOD;
if you wish for this, sit down in GOD.

Of course I find myself singing Garth now  ; )

Life is not tried, it is merely survived
If you’re standing outside the fire

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ReNew You! with Wendy R Wolf

You can find more, earlier, writings here:
ReNew You! with Wendy R Wolf