Empathy is Where it’s At

We live in a culture which promotes fear, sensationalism and bullying. It pervades our society from the way we treat animals, the environment all the way up the chain to ourselves. Does fear and attack actually support our collective best interests? How do we reinterpret everything in order to promote love, peace and healing? 

An excellent starting point is to develop empathy and compassion, choosing to love others as well as ourselves. Ensuring that the solutions we employ are focused on love and healing because as history shows us, fear/authoritarianism leads to repetition of the same cruelties. The trauma, guilt, dissociation, projection and chaos over and over again. 

It all begins with healing of the self. If each of us would turn within, have empathy and compassion for ourselves by practicing forgiveness, deciding to choose what’s most loving as a matter of habit, then the whole world would be flooded with love/spirit instead of ego/fear. What a happy, shining world that would be!

It is challenging to discipline your mind. But that’s what’s needed if we ever want to achieve what most of us say we truly want. We all want the highest good which includes love, belonging, safety, abundance, purpose, equality, unity, understanding, to live in peace and harmony. Most of us say we want this, but what are our daily practices and habits. What are our priorities and values? Do they promote our healing, joy and love?

It’s really difficult, I keep falling back into habits of fearful perception, complaints in my mind that disturb my peace and impacts what happens in my external reality as well. It’s all connected. We’re all connected energetically, through what we are collectively thinking and being. There are no neutral thoughts or actions, they’re either fortifying love and compassion or fear and attack. 

When I notice myself becoming frustrated, angry, resentful, anxious, I catch myself and ask if this is really what I want? Is it that important to disturb our peace with this irritation. I can still have boundaries and communicate my preferences and hopefully get cooperation from the world, but I don’t need to take it personally. I can choose an empathetic interpretation which is healing for us all. I can honor my reactionary thoughts and feelings, but not let them overtake me. I can respond lovingly if I choose, but that takes mindfulness and practice. 

Most of what upsets us is only what we are imagining, how we interpret things. And the aspects that are external, concrete happenings we either can choose to remove ourselves from the offending situation or change our interpretations of the situation if we choose to stay.

For example, you’re in a relationship or an environment that is unpleasant and possibly harmful, you can leave. We can use our common sense. Having empathy and compassion does not mean being a martyr. You have to employ equal empathy and compassion for yourself. 

If you stay, then to have peace you will need to interpret everything in a different light to be able to transcend it. Maybe just forgive it and treat it as a dream, not take it personally, view it as unreal with no impact on who you really are. Or just laugh at the absurdity of it all 🙂 If it’s within your power you can try to change the situation.

That’s where I get stuck. I try and change something that I think is the problem and get frustrated when it doesn’t work. Eventually I figure out that it wasn’t the real problem, it was me using it as an excuse to distract me from the real problem which was me choosing to focus on the external rather than choosing to change my mind by practicing empathy, compassion and forgiveness, all leading to inner peace. 

I guess that’s what they call resistance. I keep thinking this should be different and fighting against it, holding grievances instead of moving beyond the horror to the actual place where I have the most power which is centered in truth, love, joy and peace, my logical heart. I shift my energy to what’s most loving, to what I truly desire, to the deep sense of relief when I surrender to love by letting go of the resistance by forgiving.

I trust that we are all doing our best and that the universe holds us as one in the eternal and there is nothing to fear and everything to love.

Even if you don’t believe in the beyond, if this is all there is and we are bodies, live briefly and are no more, then why fret anyhow? Why squander any precious second on littleness and pettiness? Lol. It’s really silly, but we still do it anyway 😀 We forget to laugh and love. More empathy is where it’s at! ????