Travelling through London with a dog isn’t the easiest thing and in the underground it’s possibly the hardest place. We emerge out at Paddington and my dog can smell the air, under the ticket barrier she goes. I know I could have stopped her, but with bags and the back pocket faf to get the ticket out, I don’t. Now the ticket won’t work, and she is in the line of the oncoming commuters oblivious of her small white body in their way. The ticket inspector is right beside me and he could save us with one wave of his magic ticket hand. But he doesn’t, he grabs all the personal power he can out of the situation. I have a number of options: Act all dumb female, flutter my eyes and scream ‘HELP’ in my best Penelope Pitstop voice; Get angry and shout at the ticket guy or with rage push the barrier open with the power of lifting a burning car off a trapped child. I don’t do any of those, I just keep repeating what I need whilst he takes forever and checks out my chest. The dog is fine, I am fine, yet here is another example where a touch of empathy could go a long way.
The ego self enjoys having power over others. It shows up in many different ways: the way some people will talk to waiting staff in a restaurant, a boss that won’t grant the wishes of his staff, or corporate companies who value money over people. When we put ourselves into the situation of another person, feel how they are feeling or see a situation from their prospective, we have empathy.
It’s unlikely that once you have an understanding of another person that you will laugh in an evil way and enjoy the power you have. If you’re really empathic, it is likely to shift you from having ‘power over’ to giving ‘power to’. If you imagine that humanity is round like a ball, there are those at the top of the ball who have power over, and those at the bottom of the ball who are trying to be in the position of the top of the ball. The ball is then stuck, it moves one way and then back the next way, there is no flow, just conflict. When we give power to, the people at the bottom of the ball move round to the top. If we keep giving power to the ball keeps moving round and everyone gets a fair share of being at the top. You might even forget that there was a top and a bottom of the ball, in the same way that we don’t feel that there is a top or a bottom of the world. When you can feel another person with empathy you know how similar they are to you. It’s so easy to see someone as being different, but on an emotional level, in all my time of seeing clients, there is only a difference in capacity. Once person might be able to take on-board more than another before they crack up, but cracking up is experienced with the same emotions for all. T.V shows like the ‘X factor’ all play on our empathy, the people who get to the finals of those shows are not the best performers, but the ones who tugged our heart strings.
If you were to take pips from an apple and leave them to dry overnight, then cut open a fresh apple and remove the pips, the place both sets of pips about an inch apart on white paper and relax your eyes you would see a remarkable thing. You would see a ring of white energy around the fresh apple pips, than you would see a line of energy form between the dry pips and the fresh pips. The fresh pips are reaching out and giving energy to the dry pips. I believe that all living things are biologically programmed to heal other living things that are the same as itself. Our empathy is healing; we reach out and give our energy or effort for other people. Naturally we are all empaths, but in a world where we see so much pain every day we are overwhelmed, and often turn off one of the most valuable gifts we were born to give others.
