This time last year I was living in the Village in New York, I took my Dog Akasha for a walk every day in Washington Square Park. Most mornings I would meet the breakfast dog walkers club for donuts and coffee before we started work for the day. One morning I got talking to another lady about the filming of a Police TV show I had witnessed in the park the day before. She told me her husband is in the NYPD. I asked her how he had been affected by September the 11th, what she told me was quite amazing. She had been on the phone to him looking out of the window at the towers when she watched the first plane hit. She told him what she saw; he got off the phone and made the first announcement in his police department office. She then didn’t hear from him for the rest of the day. When he finally came home covered in dust, he just held her and didn’t say a word.
She told me that the mayor of New York had said ‘if you were affected, moved or feel emotionally changed by the event, help’ (or words to that effect). So she started cooking. She and some friends made large pots of food and every day she would take meals with clean socks and under ware to the men working looking for survivors. To be of use was the only thing that made any sense in a situation that made no sense.
A friend of mine was on the tube train that had the bomb on 7/7, she is a healer and spent her time giving healing to the people who were in panic on her carriage.
We don’t have to wait for an event we are involved with to feel moved, but somehow we seem to need to wait for an invitation to help. Today I was in a long queue for tickets in the train station, two opportunity’s to help came my way, one was a man who needed help with his ticket 5 mins before his train was about to leave. He walked down the whole line of people and asked each one if he could jump in front of them until he was top of the queue. The other was a lady with a Cain. Most of us hate a long line, but when you can’t start for long periods it’s a painful situation. There were seats, so I suggested she sit it out and I would hold her place. These are small things, but both come from a place of empathy. I know how it feels to be that person.
Empathy is a vital part of intuition. It is a somatic feeling in the body of a deep understanding. I luckily have never had to use a Cain, but I can use my empathy and imagination to know how that feels. The imagination gives information to the sub-conscious mind. The sub-conscious doesn’t know the difference between imagination and reality, which is why when I go to watch a film, I jump as though I am the character I am watching, this is how we learn without having to personally experience, a great tool for story tellers and theatre creators.
Our empathy gives us the power to be ‘called to action’ to help other people. Yet often we see people turning a blind eye to the call. The only type of person who doesn’t have empathy is a psychopath. But you don’t have to be a psychopath to not feel empathy. Often we can block our empathy as we are so bombarded by things we would normally feel empathy for. This might be images in the news or films we choose to watch. Our empathy becomes closed down, because it becomes too much for us to deal with. You see this happen in large cities. I really notice the difference between people in Bristol and people in London. I also find myself becoming less caring or even careful when I am in London. It’s a part of survival to become self-interested, but if we don’t feel intuition through the body, we can also miss intuitive guidance that might be useful to us.
As you grow your intuitive empathy, you really become that we are all one. By being called into action to help others you are also helping yourself. Remaining open and not becoming shut down is also the key to being a truly alive. The one positive reaction you have to another human, changes their actions to everyone they meet. You get to be a vital shift in the emotions of humanity, just by your positive empathetic action, and one moment later, it all comes back to you.
