If you’ve been practising the first two prescriptions – forgiveness and gratitude – then empathy will be emerging in you as a matter of course and your body-mind will thank you for it.
Feeling empathy for your fellow human being is a great boost for your immune system. To practise attitudes of forgiveness, gratitude and empathy is the best thing you can do to restore vibrant good health. It is also the best thing you can do to forge connection to others. Attitudes like empathy draw us closer to ourselves and other people. They open our hearts and expand our circle of trust from me, to those close to me, to all of us together.
Radical forgiveness comes first, because without it we can never free ourselves from our own suffering. Forgiveness is radical because it leaves out no-one, least of all ourselves. It is an all-or-nothing- affair that has to be extended universally. You cannot forgive one person and blame another; you cannot forgive some things that happened to you and begrudge others. Forgiveness brings the quality of open-hearted love which must be unconditional. If not, it’s just another ego demand: I’ll love you so long as you fulfil all my expectations. Failure to do so means I can whip the love rug from right under your feet. It is only in the act of sincerely forgiving another that we begin to shake loose the bolts of our own prison.
When you refuse to forgive, you are the one who suffers because you are ruled by your grievances. You put yourself at the mercy of an ego which keeps itself alive and kicking with every complaint, criticism and comparison.
Suffering is kept alive to the extent to which we deny or project on to others all the things we don’t want to face in ourselves. Lacking the courage to feel our feelings, to admit to our demons, to acknowledge our fears, we bring them into our orbit by seeing them played out in the world we perceive – the people, the events, the institutions and all the other happenings around us. When we forgive everyone that triggers our fearful emotions, we begin to heal.
If we truly realised this, then we would thank the people and situations that invite strong reactions in us, whether they be anger, jealousy, helplessness or whatever other costume fear is choosing to wear. We would feel gratitude for bringing these fears up into our conscious awareness so that they can be released. Without forgiveness and gratitude, these feelings continue to exert their negative effects from their underground bunkers.
It is important to understand the meaning of true empathy. Real empathy is not about joining someone in their fear. If you justify and agree with their fears, you’ll simply stir up your own unhealed emotions. Then you will both disappear down the black hole of fear together.
Empathy is about offering the one gift that we all yearn to receive. This is the gift of being totally seen and heard. This gift can only be offered in presence. You need to be present to the other person in the moment. This means you are not in your own head comparing and judging what you hear against your own experience. The attitude you bring is:
“I may never understand your experience entirely because I have not walked in your shoes. But I can provide you with an open, loving space where you get to hear yourself think”.
Empathy offers this spirit of open acceptance, of love without judgement. If you are completely present to what another person is saying whilst emanating this quality of unconditional love in you, they will surely feel it.
Your heart emits a measurable electro-magnetic field that is far more powerful than the one produced by your head. It’s like a force-field of energy that is in you and surrounds you. This is how we can sense when someone is not being truthful, for example; their mouth may be saying one thing but their whole energy field is telling you something quite different. But when empathy is offered from the heart, it blossoms into love and compassion because all grievances have been dropped.
So, if you want to show me empathy and understanding, come to me gently with open ears, open heart and empty mind. Simply be present with no judgement, holding a welcoming space for me to voice all my fears and worries.
Now you are treating me the way I’ve always wanted to be treated. In this moment I feel genuinely seen and heard.
In this experience are we both freed from fear as the realisation dawns of how deeply connected we all are.
The Light in me sees the Light in you. Namaste.