June 2008 Archives
So, where is your
awareness right now?
Being totally identified with someone else’s feelings means
that your awareness is not in your body! If you’re an empath and feeling spaced
out all the time and don’t know why it is probably because your awareness is perpetually
outside your body. The guide map of my experience as an empath is very simple.
Let’s start with the body. Your body contains all these different states of
consciousness and feelings; it contains many many different levels of consiousness. In order to change your state of consciousness
all you need to do is focus your awareness on a different part of your body. As
you do this repeatedly those states will start to refine and get smoother and
more pleasant.
I never “turn off” my empathy. My technique for “turning it
off” consists of placing my awareness entirely within at least one part of my
body – then my state of consciousness shifts completely and I feel my own
feelings in that part of my system. If I
place my awareness in my stomach I feel much different than if I place it in my
heart. There are, as previously mentioned, many layers to the stomach or heart so you can choose the depth to stay at. I flood my awareness with the state in that part of my system, by focusing entirely on it, and it effectively filters out anything else I might pick up. This is a great way of relegating your state, but it is a very poor way to take into account a total body or total system awareness. So please note this is kind of a beginner's approach.
I do not “push out” or “push away” someone else’s feelings as
might be done with a kind of shielding technique. I re-center my point of
awareness onto my own body and then start experiencing a different state. So it
would be more accurate to say that I “pull myself into my body.” Pulling my
awareness into the solar plexus part of my stomach does have a pushing away
effect on people though.
After doing this self-centering of my awareness on a part of
my body the only empathy I feel is related to blockages. I will then only pick
up on reflections of the blocked states I know are in my system. So if I know I
still have a bunch of issues and areas in my chest that are full of anger
states then I will pick up anger from others in one way or another. This is a
form of unwanted empathy I call unconscious projection.
The problem here is that if you haven’t been aware of your
body consciously before then you will probably have a lot of crap, unpleasant
feelings, and blockages to work your way through in order to get to anything
pleasant. Additionally, it may take some time and work to even become aware of
your body initially. Numbness, pain, white energy/electricity, fear, anger, voidness,
shame, pride, lizard or doglike feelings, and so on may all have found their
way into your body somehow. All of these blockages are stored in your body/mind
system and you can go through them with your awareness, layer by layer. When
you go through them in this fashion they evaporate. Unfortunately, if you have
years worth of repressed or unexpressed feelings then this may take a while.
These blockages are mirrored across your whole system in a holographic fashion.
So if you find one nasty state in one part of your system it will usually be
mirrored in at least some discernable way in other systems. This is the dark
side of meditation and Law of Attraction that no one talks about, which is not
surprising; you would probably be unable to sell your book or product if you
said, “After years of dedicated focus observing nasty feelings and blocks without
judgment, you too can have amazing things in your life!”
So the same layer by layer movement of awareness that you use
to experience things empathically outside of your body can also be used within
your own body.
You also want to be careful about shifting too deeply in a haphazard way. I notice that if I spend a few weeks shifting my awareness all over the place in my body and try to go too deep then my head feels like it gets these tiny cracks in it. Obviously you need to rest. You wouldn't expect to lift weights everyday for weeks without rest periods. Also expanding my awareness too far out of my body will produce giant cracking pains that span the length of my entire face.
Now there are other forms of awareness movement you can use
within your body aside from the layer by layer, paper stack like, forward movement.
Robert Bruce’s NEW energy ways has a bunch of different techniques for moving
your awareness inside your body simply and powerfully. This is the point at
which you really need to step back and take things slowly, one step at a time,
or else you can really hurt yourself. I accidentally raised my body temperature several degrees for a few days because I did excessive awareness movements in my navel; that was frightening. It felt like I had raised an excessive amount of energy into my mental system and my mind felt "fried" -- like it had these painful cracks in it for a couple weeks. Obviously it is a good idea to start with the basics first and not rush ahead.
Finally, a level by level analysis and awareness of your
system is just a starting place; a better practice needs to be integrated with
an overall total awareness in addition to a deep movement awareness. Knowing how your whole system works together is necessary, but
that is for another series of posts.
