December 27, 2016
Empathy is a concept we often misunderstand and thus misuse. What is your understanding of empathy? Is it truly helpful? Does it help another to rise to their strength in Oneness? Or does it keep them in a pattern of suffering? A teacher of mine once described the difference between empathy and sympathy as follows. Suppose I come across one who has fallen into a deep pit and cannot climb out. They perhaps have lost hope of finding a way out and are in despair. How do I best help them? One alternative is to show sympathy for them and jump in the pit to comfort them. Then we are both trapped in the pit unable to get out. The alternative is to stay out of the pit and find a way to help them climb out or go and find help and return to stay near them and guide the help to them so they can be released from the pit. We don’t join this one in their suffering, yet find a truly helpful solution. The Course teaches this about our understanding of empathy.
To empathize does not mean to join in suffering, for that is what you must refuse to understand. That is the ego’s interpretation of empathy, and is always used to form a special relationship in which the suffering is shared. The capacity to empathize is very useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Spirit use it in Its way. Spirit’s way is very different. Spirt does not understand suffering, and would have you teach it is not understandable. When Spirit relates through you, Spirit does not relate through your ego to another ego. Spirit does not join in pain, understanding that healing pain is not accomplished by delusional attempts to enter into it, and lighten it by sharing the delusion. T-16.I.1:1-7
We do nothing truly helpful by sharing with another in the delusion of suffering. This sister or brother who has believed they are suffering is calling out for help. How can we be truly helpful? The Course has taught us to be vigilant for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. First, we must stop and listen with our spirit ears and hear a true cry for help and realize there is a more helpful way to respond if we seek Spirit’s guidance. Our egoic thought system rooted in our beliefs about our past would have us jump in the pit with the one suffering and find ourselves just as trapped as they are. Is that truly helpful? This makes our relationship with this one a “special relationship.” We’ve joined in the illusion of suffering. There is a better way. It is rooted in the power of love.
The meaning of love is lost in any relationship that looks to weakness, and hopes to find love there. The power of love, which is its meaning, lies in the strength of the One that hovers over it and blesses it silently by enveloping it in healing wings. Let this be, and do not try to substitute your egoic “miracle” for this. T-16.I.6:1-3
Strength and true helpfulness always comes from love as guided by Spirit which is always within us. No exceptions. We tap into this strength as we are willing to allow our minds to be guided by Spirit. How do we begin practicing this? Focus your mind only on this:
- I am not alone, and I would not intrude the past upon my Guest.
- I have invited My Guest, and My Guest is here.
- I need do nothing except not to interfere.
True empathy is of the One Who knows what it is. You will learn Spirit’s interpretation of it if you let Spirit use your capacity for strength, and not for weakness. Spirit will not desert you, but be sure that you desert not Spirit. Humility is strength in this sense only; that to recognize and accept the fact that you do not know is to recognize and accept the fact that Spirit does know. You are not sure that Spirit will do Its part, because you have never yet done yours completely. You cannot know how to respond to what you do not understand. Be tempted not in this, and yield not to the ego’s triumphant use of empathy for its glory. T-16.I.4:1-7
Place your trust in the Higher Holy Spirit Self within you who will guide you in everything as you allow. No real harm can come to you or anyone else when we rely on the strength of the love within us that rises from the awareness of Spirit within us and the remembrance of who and what we really are. Step into that awareness and be truly helpful through the practice of true empathy.
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