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.

The Importance of Independence

When you think of independence, you may think of having a job, maybe a family, and having hobbies at your discretion.   Throughout history humans have had dominion over other humans.  This brings thoughts of the conqueror and the conquered.  Believe it or not many people still think in these terms where it comes to personal relationships.  These tend to be sociopaths, but it could also be a cultural attitude in some places in the world.  To the empath this is a killer.  The empath is likely to be the one who is conquered and owned by someone.  A slave to serve the master.  I am not talking specifically about race, though in modern times that is also a factor.  The enlightened individual understands that people are equal and adapt their behavior to reflect it.  The empath can easily get into a trap of ownership by the sociopath if they are not careful.  It doesn't matter if the empath is male or female.  It doesn't matter if the sociopath is male or female, the result is the same.  I would like what I mean when I refer to sociopaths.  There is a list of sociopath characteristics on answer.com.  For the purpose of this essay, anyone who displays sociopath like behavior is considered a sociopath.  Sometimes these are learned and not part of the person's real makeup.  In order to counter the sociopath's trap, the empath would do good securing his/her independence.  You can secure your independence by owning your time, avoid sociopaths, and/or using persuasion to control sociopaths.

Time is an important and necessary evil.  We are riding on this river of time down to the future.  Our personal time has to be just that, personal.  Keeping a schedule is important.  That is, having a time to sleep, to wake up, to go to work, to get off work, etc.  Sociopaths will try to veer you off your schedule.  Don't let them do it.  One of the ways to value yourself is to value the schedule you set up for yourself. You must take care of yourself before you can take care of others.

If you can avoid working directly for a sociopath.  Having at least one supervisor level between you and the sociopath boss is a good idea.  If there someone who is handling the sociopath, that is even better.  In extreme cases, you might want to find another job.  Working for people who appreciate your work is the best environment.  A sociopath will not appreciate anything that is outside his goals and ambitions.

If you have to be with a sociopath, you can persuade them with your ideas by stating how your  idea or thought will stroke their ego.  Sociopaths hate to look bad.  When they become groveling messes and seemingly vulnerable, don't believe it.  They only want to feed on your empathy.  Keeping emotional distance and disconnection is important.  Heed your intuition, it will tell you when your being manipulated.

Well, keeping your schedule, avoiding direct contact with sociopaths, and learning how to handle them are just a few ways you can keep your independence.  All too often in my life I've been subject to a sociopaths ownership of me.  Every time I had to break away after realizing what was happening.  I have even been direct at times with them saying I was not theirs.  Surprisingly that works.  There are sociopaths who truly mean you no harm, and there are the predators and dangerous ones.  If you suspect foul play, don't hesitate to bring out the big guns and get authorities involved.  The sooner you get away or deal with a sociopath the better for all.

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.

Lies and Lying

I've been reading an interesting book called Lie Spotting by Pamela Meyer.  The book endeavors to make the reading into a live lie detector.  It's not a long book, but it does it gives some good information about lies and why people lie.  This is stuff most people would not want to discuss in public.  The book is for the public at large.  Pamela Meyer has certainly done her homework.  I get the impression she is a normal human, that is not a highly sensitive person (HSP).  She points out ways normal people use lies, and she assumes all people do the same.  What dawned on me is that HSPs or empaths are not normal people.  We tend to abhor lies.  I'm exploring what empaths attitude is when it comes to white lies, feelings about lying, lies of omission.

Meyer points out in her book that lying is natural when it comes to self defense.  She takes a broad definition of lying to include deception.  She points out that people use white lies on a daily basis.  White lies will include a 'I'm fine' response to a 'How are you today' question.  They also include smiling in public when we feel otherwise.  As an empath, I remember that I had to force myself to say 'I'm fine' instead of going into detail about how I feel and the consequences of it.  I was told to smile at people so to make them feel comfortable.  These white lies do help in the day to day business to keep appearances and appropriate distance from co-workers.  So to a certain extent I do lie, though under protest.  Meyer points out that everyone lies and are lied to on a daily basis.

Empaths feel bad when telling lies.  It's not the best thing in the world to deceive someone, anyone.  I always felt bad telling lies.  That's why I cannot carry a lie too far.  My brain does not want to remember the lies, so it will not allow me to make elaborate ones like some people do or have.  It's very uncomfortable for me even to use an alias in person.  I tried using an alias before but it did not work very well because I would not respond when being addressed by the alias.

Empaths will use lies of omission.  That is, it's easier to say nothing at all than to have to actively lie about something.  I do tend to hold my breath a bit when doing this.  I notice my body tenses up as I let the individual I'm communicating with believe a lie.  It is less uncomfortable than lying outright.

By doing this little exercise of going through attitudes of white lies, feelings about lying, and lies of omission, it seems that empaths do suffer when having to lie.  In a perfect world I would not lie to anyone.  I would but on a face on how I feel all the time, I would get into lengthy conversations when asked questions in the spirit of small talk, and I would tell everyone everything I think they need to know.  Of course, I would make faux pas on a daily basis.  People would be shocked.  Actually they have.  Once I told the truth in a wedding party about one of the members who was not known to be reliable.  They had asked me to be a backup for the best man.  Well, at least that made the unreliable person reliable for the wedding.  It all came out fine.

Shortcircuit Analytics

The last few days I've been preparing for an job interview.   I had it today and I learned something about myself.  Self induced stress can shortcircuit the analytical brain.  I've been in stressful situations before, sometimes I am stressed in them and sometimes not.  I really think it depends what I think about the situation and what to expect.  Fear tends to cause stress in me.  I will share what it did to me and what I did to mitigate the stress.

While in stressful situations feeling stress is normal.  At least that seems to be the common thinking.  Stress comes from fear, and fear can be caused by several things.  You can fear the unknown, or the known.  Fearing the known means you had a bad experience before and you don't want to repeat it.  In my case, I have had bad interviews before.  I also had some good ones.  I just did not want to screw it up.  In the bad interviews I felt stress.  The stress cause me to be rigid, shifty eyed, and scared of my own shadow.  That is not a good recipe for an interview.  In an interview you want to feel loose and comfortable.  That way your answers will flow out and you will have a good time.  It would also be a good experience for he interviewer and that can only work in your favor. 

Going to the interview I felt myself tensing up.  I knew I did not want to be tense.  So I meditated. I did some basic breathing and basic meditation.  No fancy meditation, just what I was comfortable with.  I went into the meeting with a little trepidation, but it was under control.  I had a good conversation with the interviewers.  We talked and laughed.  My brain was picked and I answered confidently and loosely.  Bingo, I made it happen.  I went away from that thanking the Source and my lucky stars.

I gained a small victory for myself today.  I acknowledged the fear, the stress, and the tensing up.  I mitigated that with some meditation.  Then I had a good time.  It's been hours since I had the interview and I still feel good about it.  I tend to criticize myself, but this time that was cut short because of the good feeling.  I may not get the job, but I did master myself and was a good player in conversation.  That is quite valuable in any business.