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.

Constructing Your Fortress of Safety

Wouldn't you love to have a house by the ocean or a mountain with cool breeze.  Someplace to call your own and where you can be at peace?  Well, we live in the real world where people bother us, lie to us, and don't often enough seem to improve themselves.  For the Highly Sensitive Person this world is a nightmare of constant bombardment of emotions.  Having a mental place of solitude and safety can help the day to day debacle.  It's a place to go to de-stress when you can't go anywhere else.  Let's build ourselves a safe place and fill it with useful things, and this is how you do it.

Make a building.  It can be a building you know or one you make up.  Make sure that it's a building where you feel love and loved.  To help your memory, you can draw it.  Make detailed plans about it.  Then, think about the base material with which you want it built.  I like concrete.  Its strong and durable.  Large logs are also a good option.  The point is that the outer wall should be for protection from the outer world.  Imagine the outer walls.  Feel them inside and out.  Then lay a reflective shield on the outside.  Next, lay a blue inner shield on the inside.  Now you have the shell of your home, your fortress of safety.

Now lets populate the place.  Think what rooms you will need.  I personally opted for a worship room, a library, and an intimate space.  You should make rooms where you will spend some time in and use for your own needs.  Now visit each room.  Put lights in it.  Put down a nice floor and wall paneling.  Put some furniture you like in it.  You should feel comfortable in this fortress of safety.  Once your comfortable there, you will want to spend time there.

Sure it's your place and your space, but it doesn't have to be lonely in there.  Make characters that though are an extension of yourself, can do tasks for you.  I strongly recommend a guardian angel or a bodyguard of some sort.  You never know when you might get an unexpected visitor that plans to stay.  Bodyguards are good to throw out unwanted guests.

I have always heard that it is good to keep your house in order.  Keeping your mind in order is also good.  This method is a 3 dimensional way of doing that.  Since I have started residing in my house in my mind, I have been more at peace and less affected  by the world around me. 

Change Your World

We all would like some control over our world.  We would like children that listen to us, parents that don't embrace us, bosses who encourage us, etc.  Dream on, right?  Well, maybe.  I saw a documentary called Killer Stress by National Geographic (2008).  It comfirmed to me what my life has taught me and what people deny.  We don't need an alpha dominate society.  Therefore I say, you can change your world or environment to get it away from alpha domination.  I would like to share with you how this is possible.  I'm going to spell out the problem and give some tips on how to combat it.

First, what do I mean by alpha dominant society?  Well, this can be any size society: from a family to a global organization.  The dominant individuals in a hierarchy are called alphas.  The alphas have subordinates and there are subordinates to the first subordinates and so on.  This apparently happens naturally among primates.  My guess is that it happens in many animal societies.  An alpha dominates its subordinates with violence and fear.  We can see the same thing happen in High School with the action of bullying.  The alpha wants to dominate rather than be dominated.  According to the documentary this causes stress for subordinates which could lead to early death.

Cliques are formed by alphas.  Some cliques become gangs, some become political parties, and some become religions.  Actually they become many things.  In forming a cliques the alpha will recruit people to join in.  Here is my first tip.  Don't join.  Don't play their game.  Play your own game.  If we're going to be evolved humans that think for themselves, we have to act like one.  An evolved society shows mutual support and respect.  Alphas beat down on their subjects whether physically or emotionally.  An evolved society builds up people.  Once you reject the Alphas' proposal, they know you are not under their control.

You should actively pursue mutual support amongst your peers.  Show support to all of them.  Soon you may get support back.  This will take time.  You can show support by actively listening to them, empathizing with them, and respecting their positions.  This shows to all that you have a different thing going on than the established hierarchy.  People will naturally gravitate towards positive support.  Refrain from yelling, or raising your voice.  Give people time to think about things rather than trying to convince people of your point in conversation.  Allow people to have different opinions.  Allow yourself to listen to their points as well.  Using communication wisely is the key to change a society.

Respect all people even when you don't like them.  In an evolved society, respecting everyone is key.  People have wants and needs.  They have a need to be heard, they have a need to be respected, and they have a need to feel safe.  Communicating with them in a respectful way gives them all these needs.  People use violence when they feel threatened.  Removing all threats from your communication will resolve a lot of tension.  There are opponents in history who didn't like each other but respected each other.  General Patton and General Montgomery comes to mind.  These two generals of WWII didn't like each other.  They had very different styles of command.  Yet had to rely on each other in fighting the Germans in North Africa.  Military officers will respect each other even if they may use terms like "fool" to describe each other.  You can respect someone you don't like.  This is very important.  If you disrespect someone your going to start a war, or feed into the alpha hierarchical system.

Understanding the nature of alpha domination, applying 'play your own game', learning to listen, and giving respect are a start of changing a society.  Alpha domination is the default architecture to a chaotic society.  To change society we have apply support with diligence and patience.  One day we can have a society that will be encouraging rather than dog eat dog.

Sick Loved One

Taking care of your loved one while the're sick is quite common.  Sure, we have a lot of medicine for many things, but for the highly sensitive person, medication is not the worry.  My loved one was sick this week and I had to take off work to care for them.  I learned some thing in the process.

The first night, they were up all night.  Of course that just made things miserable for me as well.  Being an empth that communicates in a tactile/kinesthetic way I mimic their behavior.  When they are miserable, I am miserable.  So it behooves me to keep them healthy and happy.  The following two days, I gave them medication that was strong and also made them drowsy.  They slept and I was at peace.  Sometimes this empath thing takes a little time to kick in.  The next day, I was sleepy.  The third day, we slept a lot and got some good rest.  Now were on the recovery.

What did I learn?  I learned that keeping my love one adequately medicated helps me as well.  I've felt very overextended these last couple of weeks.  Fall season does that to you.  So many things to do and the sun goes down earlier and earlier.  I needed that rest.  Now, its time to hit the gym and shave off all the calories we ate while sick.

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.

Obsession or Focus?

As a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) I tend to get focused on things.  My loved one says I get obsessed about things.  In fact I get so focused that someone could come up to me an startle me.  I usually give out a sudden high pitched sound and jump up.  That sounds kind of crazy.  They always apologize for it but it's really not their fault.  As kids, my brother would do this to me to see me jump.  There was an amount of shame and guilt associated with this.  For years, I did not understand what was going on.  Now, I would like to describe what this concentrating is like and what I do to help my situational awareness.

I've learned to accept that being focused is part of being a HSP or an empath.  I think it's natural for us to think intently on a subject or item that's in front of us and analyze it or read it.  In such a mode, I seem to naturally shut off all other distractions.  It takes someone coming up to me, sometimes closely to break the concentration.  Other times it takes someone talking rather loudly to break the concentration.  Something else is curious about this.  I tend to concentrate on something for a long time.  Several minutes can pass before I break the concentration myself.  The concept of time warps for me in these instances.

One thing I try to do when I concentrate like that is to take a look around every once in a while.  A problem with this is that the concept of time is warped for me.  So I may look around a couple of times a minute or not look around for several minutes.  That's not very consistent.  So, someone could and do still startle me.  Yeah, it's still a problem I'm dealing with.  At least people just shrug it off, especially when I say it's OK after I literally jump out of my concentration.  Sometimes the other person gets scared and I have to assure them.  It may sound comical, but it's really not for me or the other person.

Well, I gave a short description what this concentration is and what I try to do to minimize it's effects.  Living with this all my life can be traumatizing.  A bully can pick up on this situation and have their way with the HSP.  This is pretty much involuntary for me.

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.

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.

Handling Ever More Stress

In this age of ups and downs, it's important to make it a habit to relax.  I coming to realize this more and more.  My personal schedule is getting busier, and as a consequence so is my apprehension to loading up my schedule.  Having a busy schedule can cause a lot of stress and, for people like me, an empath and a migraineur, can cause migraines and emotional insecurity.  Sometimes having a loaded schedule in necessary, and that's when some good practices can come to the rescue.  Grounding, pushing out emotion, and rest are three things that can help.

Grounding is getting away from everyone at least by 50 feet and for about 10 minutes.  This can help you find out how your feeling and let you know what personal areas need attention.  Sometimes coaching yourself helps or other techniques while grounding.  Being around plants or a quiet place helps.  This gives some time to recuperate during the day.  You should feel better equipped to keep going on afterward.

Pushing out emotion is a technique that you can do on the fly.  When you feel too overwhelmed with emotion, take a couple of breaths.  With each exhale, push out energy from your body with the use of some intentions.  I usually imagine the energy leaving my body through my hands, feet, and head.  You can do this with people around you, or whatever situation your in.  It helps with the immediate need.

Get extra rest.  Get extra rest.  I can't emphasize it enough.  Get extra rest.  Dr. Judith Orloff also mentions this point in her article How Listening to Your Body Can Improve Your Life.  Empaths and highly sensitive people need extra rest.  We live through enough emotions everyday as it is, more so than other people.  We need extra rest.  Taking at least 2 hours can turn a painful day into a lighter one. 

In this day and age we are bound to get more stuff on our plate.  Grounding, pushing out emotion, and getting rest can help alleviate some of the effects of stress.  We may find ourselves going in several directions at once.  Managing ourselves is just as important, if not more, as taking care of our other responsibilities.  Don't let yourself fall apart.

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.

Emotion Literacy

In this analytically society based on reason and science, there are oasis of emotional communication.  Some are bars, sports events, clubs, religious get-togethers, game night, or a dinner party.  At these we let our hair down and say what's on our minds with little consideration of the consequences.  We communicate our fears, concerns, hopes, and dreams.  It seems we need an excuse to communicate emotionally.  What if society communicated emotionally on a daily basis?  What if our fears, concerns, hopes, and dreams could be related every day to our friends, co-workers, and love ones?  Sounds scary?  Well, it could be at first, but I believe it could revolutionize our society.  Opening up communications about our concerns can be very therapeutic.  It can also give new ideas to businesses, shore up risks, and foster synergic efforts.  In order to do this people need to be educated on Emotion Literacy.  Emotion Literacy is all about reading people and their emotional state, interacting withe them using empathy, and build solutions and conclusions out of the conversation.

 How do you read people?  For Empaths it comes naturally to read and listen to people's emotions.  For non-Empaths it may take more of an effort, but it can be done.  The key to reading people is first to shut up and second to consider the other person.  To all my fellow talkers and extroverts, I say with all the love and humility in the world, "SHUT UP!"  When you have someone in front of you, you need to be quiet and listen before speaking.  Knowing when to speak, is a key skill to be heard effectively.  To the introverts I ask to withhold judgment until you get the full message.  Often times people need to vent about something that is causing them stress in their lives.  Listening to them eases that stress.  When you listen to someone remember to take in the whole person, that is not only their words but tone as well, their body language, and their facial expressions.  Empaths also take in the person's emotion since they can feel what the person feels as the conversation progresses.  You may ask yourself what is this person actually saying, and how do I summarize what their message is?  These are key questions to answer as your listening.

How does one interact with Empathy?  This Empathy is 'walking in their shoes'.  This means to imagine going through what they are saying they went through.  How did they feel?  What were the circumstances?  What was the outcome?  What could have been done better?  I think this is also as skill Empaths need to learn.  Empaths naturally will listen and not do much else.  They will feel emotion of the person and thus have a deeper experience in listening, but they tend not to think about how things could have been better.  Yes, this skill normal people call Empathy requires analysis.  You have to use the analytical brain to interpret what is going on and what could be done.  The outcome of using Empathy puts you side by side with the person as a friend, confidant, and guide.  That means there is an amount of responsibility on your part.  The other person most always appreciates any Empathy they can get even if they don't say so.

How do you build solutions and conclusions?  This skill is an active one.  You listen and you submit ideas and opinions.  You also acknowledge all the points of the other person.  You make known the points you agree with.  All the while you keep using both reading and empathy skills.  Where you end up in the conversation may surprise you and the other person as well.  What your doing is building.  You are building up the person and yourself at the same time.

The Emotion Literacy I'm defining here is made up of reading people, using empathy, and actively building.  I just looked up Emotion Literacy and got a wiki page. I believe that what I wrote here is in concert with the definition of that wiki page.  The difference is that I'm giving practical advice to use in an interpersonal communication setting, that is talking to someone one on one.  Like any interpersonal communication skill, using the advice here takes practice.  I believe you would see how effective this is.  I use this on a daily basis with people I meet, and the rewards are many.

Early Spring, Renewed Reminder

Spring is early this year.  I went to the park and noticed that shrubs, grass, and trees are blooming.  Wild life is out and about.  This all means an influx of emotion has come.  That is emotion from nature.  It was in a Spring when I learned a certain technique to cope with the increased emotion.  This Spring I was reminded of the technique.  I call the technique disconnect and I want to explain it.

Of all the emotions out there, plants are the calmest.  They tend to sooth humans and animal alike.  For empaths any influx of emotion can be harmful or at least distraughting.  Since plants are calm and do not pose a threat toward humans, but rather could benefit humans, I came up with disconnect.

Disconnect is where you let your guard down.  You disattach from emotion.  You let the emotion flow through you.  It is quite an intense feeling.  Plant emotion flows like rivers of water.  The biggest step is to disattach from emotion.  I liken it to getting into a pool for the first time.  You know that water drowns people, but you want to learn to swim.  You sum up the courage to get into the water and step by step you learn to swim.  Disattaching requires a level of trepidation.

I have taken this disconnect a step further with plants.  I put one hand on a trunk of a tree while standing and let the engergy of the tree flow through my hand, down my torso and out my foot.  It's quite an experience.  When I do this my body absorbs some of the energy and for a while I will feel like a tree even after I let it.  The funny thing is that some animals like rabbits have come closer to me when I felt like a tree.  They seem to thing that I was tree kind.

Empathic disconnect is an interesting technique.  I explained how to start on it.  You may be able to use this in cases where you deem there is no danger.  It also allows you to take on the base emotion signature of others, so you can be like a chameleon.  I think I will play around with it some more this year.

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.