Empathy

I was always proud of my balanced emotional world (the past few years at least), and I have always been a good judge of what people might be feeling at a particular incident – I have been quite a sympathetic person. Little did I know that in the course of my meditation ventures I would develop empathic abilities at such a level where my otherwise balanced, stable feelings would be greatly influenced by the feelings of others.

I can feel emotions in the atmosphere, they saturate the air, they are heavy and burdening on my shoulders. They primarily attack my stomach and/or my heart depending on their ‘quality’. It is now obvious to me that a lot of people fake their emotions; they might be creating the illusion of an emotion with an appropriate facial expression and tone of voice, which can be quite misleading but I know there is nothing there. Similarly, a lot people mask their emotions even from themselves under a veil of cynicism and detachment, creating the illusion of absence of emotion but to an amateurish empath like me their feelings are as obvious as the pain they cause in my stomach. Unexpressed emotions are the worst, they emanate from people and fill the whole room with a suffocating stench of tension and turmoil. People’s emotions are so impure, so confused, so…underdeveloped – now I understand what Rob Monroe meant with M-band distortion. I have become truly sensitive to this unnecessary emotional pollution.

Mild feelings cause a mild disturbance in my solar plexus, which helps me understand and appreciate what the other person is feeling. When faced with stronger feelings though, they are too much to bear; I try to control them by deflecting them or avoiding them, I visualise my shield and even call upon the white light to stop the insanity – but it seems that I am involuntary absorbing them. When subjected to these intense emotions for a long period of time (more than a day) I start reflecting them; so for example if I’m faced with aggressiveness I will start being aggressive myself. Being aware of the process means that I try to put this absorption-reflection under control, but I always end up crying from frustration and emotional imbalance.