Most Empaths are not born with an existing filtration system or any kind. Therefore there are no boundaries to prevent feelings of others from being experienced directly.
The first memory I have of experiencing someone else's feelings was when I was four years old. I was sitting on the living room floor of the little house I grew up in. My Mother sat in a chair to my left and a guest on the sofa to my right.
I knew somehow that she was not a friend but an acquaintance. My Mother said to her, "How are you?" She said, "Fine. "
I looked straight at her with a look on my face that must have clearly said, " Fine? You are not fine! Why do you say you are fine?"
I knew she was not fine. I could feel her "not fine-ness" quite clearly
She looked at me for a moment with a look of pure shock on her face, then dismissed me and continued her conversation with my mom.
As the years went by I found that not only was I aware of people's feelings, but I felt them go right through me. If someone was sad, I immediately felt sad. If they were angry I felt it hit me like a fire. If they were lying I felt suddenly off balance as if everything was skewed. But I didn't know why. Actually, I assumed everyone had this experience.
When one is being constantly inundated with infinite feelings, sensations and emotions, there is no time or energy to figure anything out. Most empaths go into some state of overwhelm, manifested in a variety of ways.
There is the fix-it mode, where one immediately becomes the caregiver, fixer, the make it okay person. There is the turtle mode where one simply withdraws and closes down and tries to be invisible. There is the controller mode, which is quite popular, and of course, the victim /blame mode where something is always being done to one, and life is then a series of reactions to the outside realities as if one is constantly under attack. And it truly feels that way.
It is as if you live in a house where all the windows and doors are always wide open and the world just keeps on walking through and dropping all their luggage and garbage in your living room. Unfortunately, your living room is your consciousness and your energy field which of course extends into the material world in the form of your body.
Feel familiar?
We then experience physical exhaustion, the feeling that someone pulled the plug and all our energy has drained out. One can experience depression, overwhelm, self-judgment and more; feeling that because we feel it we are responsible for it and for fixing it.
And the list goes on.
There are several aspects involved the building, creation and maintenance of a dynamic filtration system without having to disconnect and cut off the feelings and sensations.
In order to build a filter one must first be able to separate one's own feelings from everyone else's.
The simple question "How do I feel ?" can be very confusing if one cannot separate their feelings from the collective's.
Understanding the difference between emotion and feeling is the first step.
Feelings are pure perceived sensations. Emotion is the reaction to those sensations.
For instance: It is cold. Cold is the sensation. I hate being cold is the reaction or emotion associated with the feeling.
So knowing your own responses to feelings is quite important. It means honouring the truth of your own feelings, Not only trusting the feelings but being able to observe them, accept them, translate them and allow the ones that are not yours to pass on not through.
The tendency is to grab onto all the feelings and emotions, which is another subject.
Building the Filter: Your Energy Field
Every person carries with them and exists inside of an energetic and vibrational field. Every single thing that exists as matter and in physical form also exists in an energetic form. All physical realities, attachments, relationships, material things, including structures of belief.
If one could see these energetic fields, one would see something that looks like a large bubble and inside the bubble are floating a multitude of things. Each of these things has a filament of light that attaches it to the person it belongs to, and each filament of light vibrates at a certain frequency. This sets up a resonance which both magnetizes and generates, reproducing continuously the environment one lives in at all levels that supports our choices, attachments and our consciousness .
These things either support, uplift and carry one, or they pull or weigh one down, depending on the nature of one’s relationship with them.This relationship is either pulling inward, getting smaller, more dense, less mobile, less active, generating slowly, or is moving with and in harmony and balance, energetically vibrant, always growing, always changing.
Change and one’s willingness to experience it, is one of the keys to a vibrant, expanding growing energy field and life. The desire for security in a tangible, recognizable and traditional form, which often involves a deep attachment to fear and control, and the placement of this as an overlaying energetic, vibrational membrane often precludes the needed and natural process of change, creating a somewhat static field having very definite limits.
This, of course, is only one layer, one part of the human energetic field and quite specific to the process of the creation of one's reality. However, the willingness to see and feel this energetic field, to perceive its contents and to feel one’s relationship with it, is a huge gateway to instantly creating healing, transformation and expansion in one’s life on a multitude of levels.
For Empaths, cleaning and clearing one's energy field must be a daily process. Sometimes several times a day until it has been established so clearly that one can perform so-called routine maintenance to keep it strong and clear.
I never wanted to work with or see energy etc. I thought I had enough to deal with feeling feelings , and so did not want to put anything else on my plate. However, I began to see and experience energy spontaneously and so began to explore it. I discovered the power of unlimited free imagination and the ability to use it to create dynamic realities. When you say to yourself, " I am just going to use my imagination" the logical, rational brain basically ignores it without reacting or trying to be rational because it does not believe in the imagination.
Imagination is the free unlimited infinite space of pure creative force.
I perceived my energy field as a rather large bubble that was all around me. When I looked at it to see what it was made of, it looked like swiss cheese. Holes everywhere. It became clear to me why my energy was so drained and why everyone was always in my living room.So I closed all the holes. Then I looked around inside to see if there was anything there that wasn't mine. This manifested in images of people things clouds shadows all sorts of things that were very clearly ready for the cosmic composter. So I cleared it all. O my! What a feeling. My own space with no one but me in it. The only thing I can compare it to is the first time I found my self in the Painted Desert. I got out of my car and there was nothing. NOTHING AND NO ONE !!!!!!!!! It was the most wonderful quiet, empty yet still, open feeling I had ever had. I could stretch out my feelings, let loose so to speak with no guarding, no protection and all I felt was nothing, sweet quiet nothing and a few lizards laying in the sun. It was heavenly. This is how your field should feel. Home sweet home.
Then I felt, it must be strengthened. I remembered sailing once on the Great Lakes in Michigan at noon time and seeing a pathway of sunlight on the water. It was golden and shimmered as if it was made of a million stars. I thought this is what I want inside my field to make it strong and vibrant and vital. So, I pumped it up until it was full of golden stars.
So now the holes were closed, the field was cleaned and clear and filled with golden stars.
It was a life-changing, life-giving moment. I believe I am alive and vibrant and empathically available because of this practice and process.
And of course, the trick was to check it every day and make sure it stayed that way. My habit was to let everything in and through me because as an empathic healer I felt I had to let it go through my entire system. This is not true. But at that time that was what I did and it depleted me so much that I was near death when I first did this process.
I continued to do it every day and sometimes more than once a day for about a year. One day when I went inside to see my field and clean and clear it, I saw that it was fully intact. And it has stayed that way. Certainly, there are times I need to recheck and I always clean and clear but it is now a dynamic fully functioning filter system that allows me to feel but to filter what comes in.
Tomorrow: How does one recognize what is mine and what is theirs?
For more information on Kate Rose, her workshops, retreats and private sessions:
Kate Rose is an Empathic Intuitive Healer. Her gift creates the ability to perceive all types of emotions and feelings, translating those deep and often unconscious feelings into a simply understood, potent and empowering language in support of each person’s unique healing process. Her ability and willingness to join with another human being and feel their pain to help create their healing is unconditional and remarkable.
