Empathy

I once had a client who had been in the Iraq government before the time of Saddam. He told me of the day Saddam took over and how he and others were taken into custody and for many months  tortured and eventually condemned to death.  The day before the execution he was mysteriously allowed to escape.  He later learned that his family had paid a high ransom for his escape.

The point of the story is the way this changed his thinking.  Never again, he told me, would the loss of anything material concern him. When you have expected to die in a few hours and then by the grace of God, or many thousands of dollars, had your life and liberty returned,  would you value anything except liberty and life itself. A lady spilt a cup of coffee on his new, white office carpet. She was terribly upset and worried but as he told me, what is a mark on a carpet compared to life.  He had completely lost his sense of value for the material world.

This terrible episode had also changed the way he empathized with the fears and worries of others. When he witnessed suffering he was able to understand the inner torture of the sufferer. The only difference, he told me, was one of degree. The bigger the crisis in life, the greater the suffering the more easily we are able to overcome the smaller problems.

Many people have told me how suffering some disaster in life had completely changed the way they saw the suffering in others and how it had enabled them to put their own losses into perspective. So why do we suffer, why does God not do something to prevent the terrible things that overtake the innocent in life? Africa, the Middle East and so many other places on earth suffer hunger, war, disease and other crises while others have more than enough?

The personality we have become did not happen by accident of birth. We have all lived many lives the purpose of which is to build an independent personality from separate and chaotic energies.  Then to express the experiences of these lives through emotion with love. The expression of the  lives we experience eventually comes to be dominated by a creative spirit, the intent or will to climb above personal gain and to see that all is one. We may have become an individualized personality but only by overcoming thoughts of superiority can we become one with higher forces of Love.

It is difficult to empathize with the problems of others if they are not experienced in ourselves. Therefore at some point we will all endure suffering. It is at this point that our values change and we begin to value the energy of Love. Unfortunately the human race causes enough suffering for itself without the need for natural disasters.  

However, to empathize does not mean going down into the worries and despair of others. Feeling sorry for someone does nothing to help. The suffering already have enough negative energy of their own without the well wishers adding to it by crying, raging or suffering with them. What they need is to be lifted up into the happiness and Love of those more fortunate.  Before doing anything the attitude has to be right. Love is not what you do it should be who you are. Love is a power beyond understanding. I am not referring to emotional love which can vary with the situation or mood of the personality. I am referring to a way of being. As someone once told me we are Human beings, not Human doings. Being comes first, doing comes later.  Notice how a loving Grandmother, sitting in the corner doing nothing except being there can bring comfort to a child just because she is there. Able, without words, to comfort  a frightened or lonely child. A stressed child in the arms of love needs nothing more for it to feel secure and safe. But if Grandmother begins to shout about how badly the child is treated the love has gone and the child is not helped or comforted in any way.

As I have said before, this life is just the latest in a succession of lives to bring us to a point of personal expression dominated by the need to recognize the oneness in all life. To lift others to a higher point of awareness and liberty through an expression of love that we also may be lifted beyond  the need to value anything except the love in all life.

Malcolm S. Southwood

Southwood Healing
Jungfrauenthal 33
20149 Hamburg
Tel. 0049 +40 41356601
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www.southwoodhealing.de