Introduction to DANCERS BETWEEN REALMS -
Empath Energy, Beyond Empathy
The Empath. The word has found its way into our consciousness – accompanied by ideas of sharing and healing emotion and pain. There are vivid iconic images such as the empath episode of the original Star Trek © television series, in which the alien empath must overcome her own fear of pain and death to come into accepting her nature as a healer. Star Trek again explores empath nature, with the character of Deanna Troi, as an empath serving as a counselor. The healing touch of the empath is a recurring character in mystical fiction. The 1950’s tales of The People by Zenna Henderson tells of a gifted empathic race who settled in rural Arizona. A search on the internet may link you to angels, healers, and sensitives – all evoking the word empath. Most empaths are not psychic or paranormal in spectacular ways, but the intensity of their receptivity is apparent.
Sensitive, caring, responsive people - these are the empaths. Their language reflects their inner experience. You will hear them say that they sense things, “feel into” things, are moved by things. They experience life in a connected way that is often described as emotional. They flow easily with their feelings. Laughing out loud, crying at a line in a song or at the movement of music itself. Whatever attracts them -- people, animals, art, theatre, music, friendships, groups, fields of studies -- comes to them with intensity and passion. Empaths enter into and inhabit fully the aspects of their life. Their capacities are often shared in the helping professions, in the arts, in simply their intimate way of being present with others. You have met them and are moved by them. You are one of them and recognize yourself in this description. It is easy to see the beauty and delight that living with sensitivity can bring. It is clear that others can benefit from the caring responsiveness of an empath. Yet, being an empath is usually a challenging road to walk in life.
Current cognitive science views the capacity for empathy as part of the brain’s neural circuitry. We seem to learn to control our actions through a mirroring neuron system that appears to become attuned through personal experience, based on seeing others doing similar actions. Another circuit links this system to the emotion centers of the brain and the physical expression of emotion in the muscles of the face and body. It is felt that together these systems lead to a capacity for empathy. Further, it seems that this capacity must be supported and developed or it diminishes. Empath energy brings still another element to this physical root -- inherent qualities that amplify and expand empathy.
You are invited to consider the idea of empath energy in its broadest context. From there we’ll examine core principles and aspects of empath nature. Specific concepts and understandings, suggestions, approaches and tools will be explored, especially through the questions and comments shared by individuals who have personally explored empath energy, placing some of what has been discovered in the context of a spiritual psychology to understand ourselves better. Dancers Between Realms is compiled and edited from many years of personal sessions and workshops led by Elisabeth Fitzhugh and the Orion group, focusing on the idea of people living with and often, coping with, the intensive experience of connection with others that is empath energy -- a connection which is beyond empathy.
Excerpt from Chapter One - Understanding Yourself As An Empath
Empaths carry the energy of receptivity
in the essence of their being.
They hold all arenas of receptivity
in a deeply intensive and interwoven way.
Consider empath energy as the capacity to experience connection far beyond the rapport of empathy.We all carry a capacity for empathy.We can be receptive, sensitive and intuitive in varying degrees.Empaths find these qualities amplified in an innate way.They are led by a strong recognition of the energy that flows between people.Energy, in these terms, is the core dynamic quality of life, imbued with capacity for action.It is the current of life that flows through all of us and all things; a vitality that can ebb and flow.Energy is experienced as feelings and emotions -- your own and others. Energy represents connection -- within yourself, between people, with cultures and places.Energy vibrates as a sense of affinity and resonance.Energy is experienced in the physical body, in the realms of the mind and in what is called the heart.Whatever words are used to describe or point toward it, energy is always felt and recognized.The vocabulary and concepts of energy are continually evolving and becoming. In the broadest way, energy exists, is present and will make itself known.
Empath energy and awareness is embedded in a broad spiritual perspective that is rooted in the spiritual perspective of the interconnection of all things. As you explore empath energy, you can also recognize a deeper, innate connection to the All, the vast consciousness of being. Bringing a spiritual perspective to your inner work allows awareness through more than your conscious mind.
Empaths experience empathy, sensitivity and intuition
in a strongly amplified or even accelerated manner.
Empaths feel very permeable to sensing other people and their energy, especially in large groups or crowds and new situations. In addition, this sensitivity also results in an amplification of one’s own energy. Thus, worries and concerns, reactions and responses can be heightened and feel overwhelming or even invasive. Empaths often do not recognize how the degree of their sensitivity is different from others. Individuals often struggle for a long time before they are able to recognize that they are more receptive and responsive than others they know. Typically, someone else declares, “You’re too sensitive. You’re too reactive. You’re too emotional. You are too…” This is often the first time people begin to understand that perhaps they are sensitive in a different way. Thus, your first awareness of yourself as an empath comes as a critique and criticism. If you are acculturated as most, this difference is negatively internalized and becomes an effective superego, one you agree with by saying, “I am too sensitive. I am too emotional. I am too much.” Many people experience difficulty living with this capacity in this world of immense interaction and input. At the same time you hold qualities of connection that can touch others, building bridges of understanding and compassion.
The customary model of being receptive is reflected in this language of “too much;” implying that one degree of emotion or sensitivity is acceptable, but other degrees of response are not. Sensitivity is seen only as a byproduct of psychological development or the conditioning of life experience. Empath sensitivity is an innate quality, neither optional nor a mental choice. The empath system of receptivity and sensitivity is intensely acute; an integral part of the mental, emotional and physical self. Consider this receptivity as “empath DNA.” The term highlights that this quality is innate, intertwined and embedded, not something you can just get over, throw out or deny. When you consider your sensitivity as part of your physicality, you open to a different perspective.
It is vital for empaths to consciously
explore, understand and address
the energetic flow in their lives.
The 20th Anniversary Edition
The ORION MATERIAL - Perspectives of Awareness
From the Foreword -
for working with new understanding
for building upon knowledge.
living what you have explored and have come to understand.
In integration, extraordinary moments of knowing will be the master thread –weaving, linking and flowing throughout the patterns of your life.
Know, again, that life is a great tapestry and that this is a time in which you are aware of being the weaver; of holding the needle and the thread. Think of the single thread of your spiritual awareness as a golden thread moving through every aspect of your life. See the thread outlining, supporting life and enhancing life, as the pattern you are weaving is guided by Unity.
What you are asked to bring to these times is your consciousness, accountability, and responsibility to allow the awareness you have explored and the expansion you have experienced to touch all of the aspects of your life. We remind you to see life holistically. Do not create a polarity or walk in separation and perhaps, judgment, of those who explore the spiritual and those who do not. Resist the path of ‘us and them’ that can become prevalent. Remember, all are of the spiritual. It is simply that you have chosen to consciously explore this aspect of being. Embrace holism. Hold dear the idea of life being interwoven with all aspects. Hold strong the goal of the integration of the spiritual view with the mundane and know that you best teach that which you share by living your life as an example.
From ASPECT ART - Art as the Soul's Journey
ART IS A DIALOGUE WITH THE UNIVERSE 
As you work, Art Leads You. You find that things demand their own place and their own colors, their own expression. You really can’t overcome it. [HS: You ruin the piece if you try to!] Sometimes you have to work to bring your mind into alignment with what is happening. It is continually fascinating how the work leads you somewhere else - somewhere you may not have gone, may not have explored consciously.
We’ve often noted that pieces become a series — the idea of doing a ’series’ was not there at the beginning. We both have had an instance where find ourselves in a place and with an inner understanding that was simply not what we thought of. The art work itself led to another perspective. Not just mentally, but actually experientially; uncovering a new way to experience one’s own situation.
I find this exciting element of art is heightened by working with found objects. Another dialogue emerges from taking something which exists in one realm, as it were, and altering it. You are asking it to represent something other than it ‘actually’ is, finding another dimension in the object. I know painters who say that a color has to be there or that particular stroke has to be there. I see these movements as a dialogue with the All – the known and unknown in its entirety, physical and spiritual life in every aspect - and as the essential aspect of the whole of creative process.
All our work has to do with the individual – most of it has to do with inner dynamics and the spiritual qualities within human life. The work is continually expressing the psychodynamics of life. Psychodynamics explores human behavior from the point of view of motivation and drives, expressed mostly through emotions. It is based on the assumption that one’s personality reflects the interaction between the conscious and unconscious mind and the environment in which we are embedded. In my own perspective, psychodynamics also dances with the energy of a greater consciousness and all the known and unknown elements of the vaster world, the spiritual realm.
In this vein, ‘following the energy’ is another important principle of aspect art. If reflects the experience that you can’t know where a piece is going to go, pieces demand their own way and you have to follow the movement.
From RIVER TRAILS by Charles Harris
Getting Ready for Life Near Mount Subasio
He’s growing larger with time
Narrowing life to a few truths, giving him space to be
Momma Rosa’s recipes, Gus’s rule for listening, Ramana’s question
and Christ’s instructions for inheriting the earth
We are practicing today – in laughter
The kind coming from your middle
shaking out all suffering
We see ourselves on a warm summer afternoon, too old for one damn thing after another
Seated in the shade of an olive tree
On a hillside near Mount Subasio
Where St. Francis and few others found what we love
The garden took all morning
Lunch a little too much
Drowsy
We enter a long conversation about happiness
“Yes”
“Maybe”
A jar of cool wine passes between us
“Is that so?”
“Wait and see”
“I don’t mind what happens”
Soon the sound of bees, a distant train drowned out by muffled quiet
Stillness
Charles Harris' writing is one aspect of a lifelong interest in the inquiry into questions of who we are and what is most true. River Trails is a lovely and moving collection that shares inner exploration, along with poems expressing how the heart is touched by people and places.
Charles and his wife Nora live in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, returning to their beloved Montana as often as possible.
All photography in River Trails is by Nora Harris.
