El Ser

 'El ser' is a Spanish word which has such a profound meaning, it should be the first lesson everybody should learn. There is no good translation into English for the thought that this word conveys. 

If I literally translated 'el ser' into English, it would be 'the being.' Then you would be thinking of a monster movie, and that's the wrong thought completely.

If I try to tell you a more relatable translation, I might say 'your being.' This too is disingenuous because this talks about you and who you are and not something you possess. You cannot possess who you are any more than you can grab air with your bare hands. You are who you are.

No, it is 'the being as in you' or 'you are the being' or even better 'the being who is you.' 

Some may say, "Oh, your soul." Others may say, "Oh, your spirit." No! You are not your soul or your spirit. You possess a soul. You possess a spirit. The being who is you cannot be possessed.

The being who is you is a free person. The being who is you thinks. The being who is you learns. The being who is you loves. The being who is you hopes. The being who is you dreams.

There is nothing else like the being who is you. You are unique and irreplaceable.

Listening To Intuition

Highly Sensitive People (empaths) are nothing if they're not listeners.  We listen to everything and sometimes wish we didn't.  People in general have intuition.  People in general don't seem to listen to their intuition enough.  Dr. Judith Orloff has an article with a test on how much we listen to our intuition (see Dr. Orloff's article).  Do you listen to your intuition?  We get really busy and focused in our daily lives.  It's common for everyone to get tunnel vision and we loose sight of what is going on around us.  When we do that, things may happen that can affect us without us realizing it.  So it's helpful to stop look and listen to intuition.  What I want to do is highlight some things that may prevent us from listening to our intuition.  Through experience, I found out that trusting intuition does not come easy,  interpreting intuition can be hard, and wishful thinking is a hindrance.

In our society we are told not to listen to feelings, hunches, and imaginations.  Well, not in so many words, but over time and the fact that hard cold facts is what gets listened to rather than preference.  So, it's not surprising that we don't trust when thoughts come to us out of the blue and give us information that seemingly has no evidence.   Our overgrown analytical minds want proof.  The reasoning goes nuts without logical steps.  So we blow the information off.  That information is our intuition telling us something.  We must learn to trust it.  It took me some time to understand that my intuition was giving me good information.  Sometimes even now, my mind wants to say that it's just all my imagination.  That's how strong my analytical brain is.  I have strong reasoning abilities and it often clashes with my intuition.  Telling yourself that there could be something to this information and testing the information is one way to start trusting it.

Interpreting the information gleaned from intuition can be hard to do.  Interpretation is a function of the analytical brain.  To interpret intuition, we need to have a "common frame of reference".  Yeah sure, I took that one from Spock in Star Trek IV The Voyage Home (see quote).  You do have to have a common frame of reference to have practical information.  I see most of the common reference is learned in life as we associate feelings with situations.  Intuition comes in the form of emotion, and emotion is a language in and of itself.  Some things don't translate.  Some things are hard to put in words.  Some things you can only describe.  Some things are a driving force for action.  I went to a balloon race last weekend, and there was a large crowd with a festival.  There were lots of vendors of food and drink.  There were even some student dancers.  I picked up on the overall intuitive emotion int the area and my mouth relaxed and the ends of my mouth were edging upward.  That told me people were relaxed and were enjoying themselves overall.  Sometimes intuition comes like that.  I interpreted that one based on how I reacted to the emotion.  It's quite an art to interpret intuition. 

Wishful thinking is an enemy to intuition.  It will try to override the intuition information.  What I mean is that if you want something bad enough you may try to wish it into existence.  It's important to distinguish between what you want and what your observing.  I use this word observing in the sense of picking up information from intuition.  I have a hard head, as my wife would say.  That means my will is a strong one.  I blame genetics for that (thank you parents).  So, what I have to do is to get into a meditative state and listen for the intuition.  Sometimes, this takes a while.  I don't think it's because the intuition doesn't come to me.  I think it's there all the time.  It just takes a while to quiet down my analytical hard head.  By the way what I call analytical mind Dr. Orloff calls linear mind.  I use that word because I understand that the brain is very very complex, more than science understands.  So I don't think the work linear quite describes it.  Wishful thinking is a function of the analytical mind and it's made when we establish an intent (wish, desire, manifestation, prayer) we made earlier.

So, trusting intuition, interpreting it, and handling wishful thinking can help you listen to intuition.  As you listen, you come to realize that everything changes.  Then the more they change, the more they stay the same.  Sure, it's a paradox.  I think life itself is a paradox as well, but don't ask me to explain it.  The more you listen, the more you will change, and the more you become yourself  and you shed the facades you have in life.

Thinking Through Conflicts

I react to people who push my buttons.  I suppose everyone does.  It's hard in such situations. If you've been there, then you know.  When you react to these things, you do what your pre-set 'programming' says to do.  You vigorously defend yourself.  Then afterwords you feel bad about it when you look over the astonished faces of those around you and you have to deal with the aftermath.  It comes as a surprise to you and to them.  How do you deal with this situation could dictate what your relationship to these people will be.  I recommend excusing yourself and getting away to think it over for a couple of hours.  When you do this you will go through many emotions and plausible plans and outcomes.  Let me give you some advice on how to successfully go through this with minimal damage and maybe come out in a positive light.

After getting away and start to think about what happened, you going to go through some shock and anger.  Your imaginings may shock you because your going to think of extremely extreme things to do that may not be totally legal if at all.  When I go through this, this phase always shocks me and I feel embarrassed of the thoughts.  I think its OK to go through this phase as long as you get to the next phase.  I feel that this phase is the hardest because the strongest emotions are coming out.  These emotion seem to be reactionary emotion.  They do have meaning and should not totally be dismissed, but they shouldn't be acted upon.  The point is that you have been hurt.

To get to the next phase, which is an intermediary phase, you have to tell yourself that your hurt and now it's OK, that your safe.  Then you have to tell yourself that there's a better way to deal with the situation.  Next come the thoughts that evaluate your current situation in a broader aspect.  You start identifying the different people involved and those who could get involved.  You start to think of things to tell the authority whether it's your boss, parent, or even police.  In this phase it's good to seek advice from a trusted friend.  This allows you to express what is going on in your life and helps you think through this phase.  You will come up with ways that may be drastic though legal to retaliate and get revenge or even protection.  If you think through these ideas you will find that they will hurt relationships.  Those relationships include the one with the offender (the person who's pushing your buttons), and your relationship with the authority, and your piers or friends.  In the past I have not moved on from this phase and acted on the thoughts and ended relationships drastically.  It is much much better to say NO to these thoughts and move on to the next phase.  The point here is that your identifying all the direct and indirect players and their positions.

This third phase is a rational phase.  This is where your going to come up with your best ideas.  To get here you need to tell yourself that you really don't want to hurt anyone.  Realize that strife begets strife, that is, if you hurt someone chances are they are going to hurt someone and maybe you.  No, hurting is not the answer.  Empaths and highly sensitive people (HSP) generally don't want to hurt people, but rather prefer healing.  The thoughts in this phase may come as some form of communication which can be verbal and/or non-verbal.  You may choose to tell the person who hurt you to stop hurting you.  You have to gauge this though.  You can use words directly, or you can use body language.  That is, you can walk away or disregard the person when you see they are about to push your buttons.  You also can avoid the person for a time, and later find a way to heal the relationship communicating that you were hurt.  What your doing is a form of punishment on the person.  Everyone has authority on their own person.  You choose who you have a relationship with and who you don't want a relationship with and what kind of relationship that is.  I'm not necessarily talking about love, because love involves a mutual agreement to love each other.  This is more of interpersonal relationship.  Whatever you choose you want to choose a thought that first hurts the least amount of people, and hopefully no one at all.  Second, you want that thought to have some benefit to yourself and the other parties.  Then relationships are strengthened and respect is also strengthened.  The point is to find a win-win situation.

Yes, it's hard when people push your buttons.  It's even a sign that your being bullied.  Taking the necessary steps to think through what your going to do and taking time to think through is important.  Getting to the good thought where relationships are strengthened is preferred.  At first you may feel like the perpetrator, but you have to concede that your also a victim.  If your good thought does not work, then you have your other thoughts in the second phase that should work, but relationships won't be helped.  I think when these things happen they give us an opportunity to grow and become stronger and wiser.  Your wounds will heal through this process.  Some wounds though never heal and you carry them with you all your life, but thinking these actions through can minimize those.  This is a serene subject to write about and think about.  Let's not the hurt build up to some grievous action.  Let's mend the broken hearts.

Think You Might Be An Empath?

If you wonder if your an empath there are no lack of websites and advise on how to tell.  Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) is a term that has a presence on the internet.  It's a psychological term for empath.  There now are several psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and coaches who cater to HSPs.  Many have tests from psychologists or esoteric teachers.  These tests can give a sense of disappointment if you prove not to be an empath or HSP.  If you wonder if your and empath, you're really on a quest to understand yourself.  To seek to understanding your strengths and weaknesses is a noble quest.  Every type of person is important, and everyone should understand how they can contribute to their themselves, their loved ones, their community, and their society better.  I will give a couple of ways that would seem less bias and a more generally beneficial a way.

The personality test I recommend is the Briggs-Meyer test.  You can find many free online Briggs-Meyer tests just by googling.  The result of the test is four letters that describe you, or your preferences.  You can read up on it in the link I provided.  When you do take the test, I recommend to take it 3 times to get some consistency.  You may not be familiar with the language of the test so that would skew the results.  Taking it more than once is a good idea, with the idea that the last time you take it is the best result.  Also, taking more than one test online might be a good way to go as well.  Now there are 16 distinct results from the test.  You are only one of them.  Where do HSPs fall into?  They fall into the results that have NF in them.  There are 4 of those: INFJ, INFP, ENFJ, ENFP.  Now just because you have NF in your result may not mean that you are indeed an HSP.  I'm not a researcher on this, so I have to allow for this possibility.  With any result from the test, it's a good idea to read up on it via Wikipedia and other sources.  Always check out the sources mentioned in Wikipedia because academically Wikipedia is not a valid source in and of itself.  If you do have NF in your result, then you may want to check out the other empath and HSP tests that are strictly geared for HSPs.  This test lets you know of your preferences on how you operate and relate to things and people in your world.  Understanding these can help resolve long standing problems you may have encountered in communicating with other people.

The bad news about HSPs and empaths is that they have a disability.  That disability is that they sense too much.  So much so that they will be involuntarily affected by peoples emotions and/or pain.  This disability will show itself in everday happenings.  Evaluating and acknowledging the happenings that go on around you and affect you can confirm if your an empath/HSP or not.  Mind you it seems that through meditation, a normal person can become clairsentient and feel as well as empaths, but it doesn't mean they are empaths/HSPs.  Personally, I'm affected by people's emotion.  Strong emotion from another person will cause me to act in kind.  I take on their emotional state and imitate it without thinking.  Which is why I have made arguing matches into shouting matches, been overly sad by a sad event, and able to reflect emotion to a person.  Of course if you find out you are an empath/HSP, then you have a lot of work to do.  They need time to train themselves how to operate in a emotional and painful world.  Over time, they can turn the disability into one or more abilities.

[UPDATE]
I've been reading Emotional Freedom by Judith Orloff.  It's a great book for all people.  It has self evaluation tests and helps you determine emotional problems and preferences.  I highly recommend it, especially if you want to evaluate yourself.  Dr Judith Orloff is Psychiatrist and an empath herself.

To take an empath or HSP test is not enough to find out who you are.  Taking the Briggs-Meyer personality test and evaluating your behavior in daily stimuli can give you a bigger picture of who you are and whether you are an empath/HSP.  Either way knowing yourself is important for your self development and the betterment of the world.  The Ancient Greek maxim "Know Thyself" comes to mind when I think of how to better myself.  We are a mystery most of all to ourselves.

Self Examination

Do you get angry when people cut you off in traffic?  Do you cut people off in traffic?  Well let's not talk about fingering people or road rage because they can't get off the cell phone waiting at a light that has already turned green or texting on the highway with the elbows on the wheel.  No, this is not about traffic but this is about the very human tendency to apply rules to others and not to ourselves.  The religious word for this is hypocrisy.  The reality is that its a very human thing to do and probably innate to our nature in order to get ahead and survive.  Yet mature empaths and enlightened individuals should treat others as they would want to be treated (the golden rule).  The answer to this is self examination.  The way to do this is: by evaluating your emotional state when it comes to each issue; by recognizing that you are in a state of development; and by training yourself to change.


Say you find that your loved one seems annoying when they ask for something.  In such a situation ask yourself why does this bother you.  What fear do you have.  Is your fear founded in reality?  That is will your loved one behave or think of you in the way you fear?  This is the evaluating part.  These are hard questions.  If you feel that the situation is severe or your having trouble evaluating something perhaps it is time to seek professional help in a counselor, psychologist, or psychiatrist.  Self evaluating is emotional and can be draining.  You may want to take your time with it.

How do you view yourself? Do you feel altogether and in need of no-one's help?  Do you feel inadequate?  Do you feel out of place?  However you feel about yourself, you should understand that your in a process of development.  That is, your on a journey to better yourself and you may not reach your ultimate destination in this lifetime.  Yet, it's the journey that matters.  Sometimes you get off course or even realize that a change in course is what is needed all along.  The point is that your working on it and learning as you go.  Who could fault you for that?  Understanding that your in a state of development is important to the self examination process.  It allows you to make mistakes and correct them and also to come up with some accomplished goals.  If you stop this learning process then you will not move forward, and you could get depressed.

Deciding on an action to take really depends on the situation.  If it is a case of how you think, then coaching reason into your thinking could be the answer.  If it is an act that you do, then training yourself to do an alternative act could be the answer.  You have to decide the course of action to take.  In any case, training yourself takes time.  It gets easier as time goes on, but you have to stay with it until its second nature.

 

Self examination is a good process to do.  Through evaluating yourself, understanding your state of development, and training yourself are simple steps to understand, but they take some courage and some work to get through them.  I examine myself many times and often.  That is excessive, I know.  You may want to do self examination maybe once or twice a year.  Don't discount what other people say about you, especially if they say the same thing and have no connection to each other.  Often, the help of others in this is important.  This process is a good way to get balance in your life.

Independence

As the United States is celebrating its independence this week, the thought came to mind how do empaths establish their independence from the world.  The following is from a empath friend of mine, Laura Ryder.

How we define ourselves is crucial to establishing the boundaries we need to understand our role in the world. The alternative is to just meld in to the background until there is no distinction between us and the world.  I give you three steps to take to achieve independence: grounding, knowing your abilities and disabilities, and establishing your role in the world.

When it comes to getting to know ourselves, grounding or centering is a place to start.  What grounding does is let us get to know our own feelings rather than other people's feelings.  At certain times in life it's good to get reacquainted with your feelings especially when you are trying to deal with issues your struggling with.  In this way we grow to become our own person, rather than being dictated what to be by the world.  Thus we can start to establish our independence.

Knowing your abilities and disabilities are essential to being independent.  Some people may equate these to strengths and weaknesses.  For the empath it's more specific.  Every empath have disabilities.  That is those things that make us hurt, or act crazy.  Usually these are due to external sources like other people, animals, plants,...etc.  The key is to learn about these weaknesses to understand how to use them in a way that they become abilities.  This is a long term proposition, and every empath is different.  Gathering a repertoire of abilities is important for the empath to be empowered and gain independence.

After knowing ourselves and gaining abilities, empaths need to figure out their role in the local world they live in.  Careful thinking and reading people will come in handy for this task.  Some questions to consider are: How do I help my co-workers; Where do my family need help; How can I assist my community.  Empaths are in unique position to be able to read people more readily than others.  As such we can realize problems and concerns of others.  Though sometimes its enough to vocalize the concerns, a better way is to help alleviate concerns by purposeful acts of kindness.  Doing such may keep you from the spotlight and still effect help.  When empaths are spotlighted, other people tend to put demands on them which is not good.  Remember, you want to keep your independence so you want to avoid the spotlight as much as possible.  Encouraging, coaching, listening are some examples of acts of kindness.  Again, every empath is different and every situation is different.

As an empath, forging your own independence takes courage, diligence, and creativity.  Using grounding, knowing your abilities and disabilities, and establishing your role can set any empath on the road to independence from the world.  I did not mention here what to do when you have relationships your uncomfortable with.  That is another essay.

Strong or Loud Emotion Friends

Everyone is different.  Everyone has a unique emotional signature.  On top of that everyone emits more or less emotion.  It's hard for empaths to be around strong or loud emotion people.  I will define these people and give a couple of suggestions on how to handle the situation.

So, what do I mean by strong or loud emotion?  Well, empaths like me pick up on people's emotions unconsciously.  Some people have a very strong signature.  I liken it to sound.  If you stand next to a person who speaks really loud, that's what its like.  The loudness distracts you.  The person may be a very nice and considerate person, but they are loud.  The same is true with emotion signatures.  Empaths can get distracted if someone with a strong or loud emotion is next to them.  I remember one time I was correcting a test when one of my students came up and stood close to me without me seeing them.  I immediately lost my train of thought due the the strong emotion signature this person emitted.  I ended up taking a couple of deep breaths to get in the right mind to deal with the situation.

Say your an empath and have reason to befriend a strong emotion person.  What do you do?  The emotion will distract and tire you out.  What you do is that you learn to let the emotion flow through you without you taking action on it or owning it.  I call this emotion flow.  This takes considerable practice.  You have to tell yourself that it's OK, and that it's not yours.  This helps relieve the desire to jump back or pull away.

The other thing to do is to practice quick meditation.  This also takes practice.  It's when you take a couple of timed breaths and you fall into a meditative state on the fly.  This is really practical and helps alleviate the need to react.  To practice this I recommend getting into a meditative state often during the day.  Taking timed breaths is a quick way to get to it.  I usually breath in for 4 seconds, then hold for 4 seconds, and breath out for 4 seconds.  If your out of practice, it may take you 10 to 20 breaths to get into a meditative state.  With practice you can get there in just 2.

Knowing what to look for in a strong or loud emotion person will help you take action with meditation and emotion flow.  These are good tools for everyday activities to go along with your routine of grounding or centering.  If your an empath and find that you are not handling it well, take breaks from people several times a day.  Work on getting grounded.  Remember that everyone is different.  So you may find you have to modify techniques you hear from me or others to suit your own situation and person.  Life is more fun when you can enjoy your surroundings.

Interpersonal For A Better World....

Remember the saying 'Can't we all just get along?'  It used to be a popular saying in the '80s.  Ok, why can't we?  I have one idea, that people are in their own worlds and are disconnected emotionally from everyone else, or at least from people around them everyday.  Social internet was supposed to connect people, and it does but mostly in a superficial way.  It's that way not because of the internet, but because of the habits people have developed in communicating.  The worst habit of all is not listening.  Listening is fundamental to empathy.  Listening requires being quiet and contemplating what the other person's position or argument is.  It requires some halt to self, and some pause on our impulse to comment.  Now, most people think that listening involves ears.  Well, it does, but not just ears, it also involves eyes, nose, touch, the brain, and even emotion.  Yes, emotion.  How does one listen to someone's emotion and what does it have to do with people getting along?

Let's tackle the first part of the question.  Have you ever had a nagging feeling that someone was watching you, and then you looked and someone was staring at you?  Well, you've picked up on their emotion.  People transmit brain waves all the time.  It's not a hard stretch to realize a brain can receive brain waves from another brain as well as transmit them.  So when your conversing with another person realize that the feelings you feel are not only yours but theirs as well.  This becomes clear when you pause your thinking brain and just listen.  The process of transmitting and receiving emotion is an on-going one.  People have emotions, and they transmit them, and it just takes a listening brain to start to interpret them.  The biggest hindrance to interpreting emotion is unbelief.  Unbelief stems from selfishness.  That is being concerned mainly about ourselves.  Putting that part of ourselves on hold is key.  Once that is done, we are ready to get those brain waves to help us experience what the other person is experiencing.  This is not mind-reading as depicted in movies.  These emotions are on the current emotions we all experience.

What would the world be like if we really listened to each other's emotions?  Listening involves all inputs including listening to emotion.  What we are talking about is interpersonal communication.  Listening to emotion is different than hearing what a person says, than a person's facial expressions, than picking up on subtle odors, or even than feeling them tremble.  Listening to their emotion lets us have a sense of experience to what their talking about.  It's like the difference from reading a good story to seeing the story as a movie, or seeing the story as a movie and playing the story as an immersed 3D computer game.  We're there.  This will innately help us understand the other person.  This is true empathy.  I believe that the act of listening to one another's emotions fosters reason rather than competition, intelligent argument rather than heightened emotions, and a spirit of working together rather than working against each other.  Being heard and understood is a basic human social need.  When that need is met we feel we are part of a community, and when that need is not met we feel we don't belong.  Listening has the power to create community.

By listening to one anther and listening to each other's emotions is key to fostering community.  So to answer the question 'Can't we just get along,' we can if we listen.

Taming Thoughts

Here is something that occurred to me to other day.  I had a bad thought.  It was a thought that could have developed into reality and be detrimental to my job.  I have had thoughts like this before and I obsessed about them and they came to pass.  I want to discuss what is happening and what to do about it.

Why do these thoughts come to pass?  Sure we all get stray thoughts.  Most of the time they entertain us and we forget about them.  Sometimes we get a thought that is a shocker.  If you obsess about these thoughts, like I have, then intent sets in.  Intent is the push or force that bring things to pass.  It's sometimes called manifestation.  It's best used for self improvement.  So you can activate the intent on a bad thought without wanting to.  You may ask yourself why do we get these bad shocking thoughts in the first place?  That is a question for another time.  I have yet to come up with a good concise answer, but I believe it has something to do with claircongizance or perhaps even the universal balance system activating.

What to do with these bad thoughts?  You have to get rid of them.  Merely trying to forget them may help a little but not enough.  This is what I did.  I used intent and imagined I took the thought and crumpled it up like a piece of paper and burned it.  Of course all this was in my mind.  Some people recommend to write down the thought on paper and actually burn them or consecrate them in some oil in a religious ceremony of sorts.  In Valencia, Spain, they annually make papermache statues of the sins of the year and then burn them in a celebration.  Instead of doing all that, I like to use pure intent.  Intent is a powerful force especially when it comes to personal issues.  After I did this exercise, I felt better and knew it was effective.   This use of intent with these bad thoughts was so immediately effective that I did the same with the insecure thoughts I have been carrying around with me for many years.  I felt a lot better and calmer.

To understand how bad thoughts can manifest into bad things happening to us and how to counter the action is of great benefit.  You could turn your luck around.  I do believe that we can train ourselves to be better all the time.  Warning, a smile may appear on your face.

Sensitivity Hinderance

I've had some kind of dry congestion this winter.  It had a couple of effects on me.  It first cause me a major migraine.  I was surprised to find my migraine relieved after I took a decongestant. The other effect is that something happened to my sensitivity.  I became less sensitive.  Physical ailments can cause you to loose some sensitivity. You can also limit sensitivity with shields.

So the congestion hindered how much I can sense.  Though it did not hinder sensing someone who is standing right next to me.  Nor did it affect how I get influenced by crowds.  I suppose what is happening is that my analytical brain doesn't want to work with congestion and therefore does not want to interpret emotions I pick up.  When one of my migraines start my sensitivity also decreases.  This could be due to the brain being traumatized and able to cope.  Getting away from people as well as light and sound helps.

Another way sensitivity can be hindered is by the creating shields.  I create shields around me to protect me from strong emotions.  I will use a little intent to do create on.  A bright white shield is the common one people talk about.  Of course white includes all colors.  I like to use light blue to block out emotions.  I also use an orange shield when I don't want to give off my sexual emotions.  I find that shields can also keep my emotions in as well as keep everyone else's out.

So an highly sensitive person can have times where their sensitivity is decreased.  This may not decrease how they are negatively affected by others, but decrease how they can use their sensitivity as an asset.  Everyone need down time sometimes.

Diversity Of Life

In many documentaries I've seen, biologist and scientist talk about how diverse life is on planet Earth.  I find this principle to be true in social situations as well.  Many people I've encountered in my travels have been colorful and unique.

I met a person in an airport.  We both had to wait for connecting flights.  He seemed mesmerized with my accent.  While my accent would seem uncommon to most people, he found it uncommon.  He was able to pick up the diverse nuances in my speech.  I grew up with more than one language and more than one national background.  He was able to pick up some, but not pinpoint all of them.  Since then, on occasion, I come across people here and there who comment on my accent.  I figure that these people have a special gift.  Their gift must be in their hearing.  They seem able to pick apart things they here and analyze them.  I cannot say I can do such things.  While I enjoy music, that's where the magic of hearing stops.  I can't sing, and I can't even keep rhythm.  These people have a special ability.  You never know who or what your going to come across.

I know a person who has never had a broken bone.  She's even been in a car accident but with no broken bones.  This reminds me of the movie Unbreakable.  In the beginning of the movie the hero slowly discovers that what he took for granted in life was remarkable to others.  He did not break.  He would walk away from accidents.  This prompted some self discovery and he found out how else he was different.  I have encountered just a couple of people like that.  I can safely say that they are strong but level headed and quiet people.  They don't seem to have egos to bruise or care to prove themselves to anyone.  These are amazing individuals and they have my full respect.

Some people I've encountered had a very different gift, if you can call it that.  They were unlucky.  Unlucky things would always happen to them.  They were not necessarily devastating, but there were many of them and they happened almost on schedule or time table at regular intervals.  These incidents would be things like a fender bender, or a freak accident.  I used to think that these people just attracted these things to happen somehow.  Perhaps they do, but now I don't think its intentional.  It could be a gift, and if these people would do some self discovery perhaps they may find a way to control it.  If I had to guess, I'd say that they have natural intention that is always active and it is unruly because they have not yet found a way to control it.  Sometimes these people would say things like that they have tried to think positively but it did not work.

Empaths are natural sensitives to other people's emotions and/or pains.  This means that the untrained empath can get into trouble and suffer various emotions throughout the day.  This may seem like a disability.  The trained empath can turn the disability into an ability.  I know several empaths, and I am an empath as well.  Most empaths just want to cope with life day by day.  Others want to use their ability to help others.  I have to say that it was very liberating once I found out how to control my gift.  I was able to shore up the weaknesses and improve the strengths.  I stopped getting in trouble with my employers, and my relationship with all people improved tremendously.

People are diverse.  They have gifts.  It's important for people to find out what their gifts are and how to control them.  This requires some self exploration or self discovery.  Our society only supports self discovery on a limited basis.  It's up to each person to discover themselves.  You just may be more unique and special than you thought.