The Fun and Agony of Empathy

 

 Card courtesy of Tarot Illuminati by Erik C. Dunne and Kim Huggens

 

Welcome to your next stop on the Tarot Blog Hop!  Your previous stop should have been John Marani's blog.  I hope that you are seated comfortably and are enjoying your journey so far. 
 

I have always felt an affinity to the High Priestess card because she represents receptiveness, intuition, and information coming to light   She is a perfect representation of my gift, empathy.  If you are not familiar with the term, an empath, very simply put, is someone who is highly sensitive to the feelings and vibrations of other beings.  An empath will take on the feelings of others that are around them but it isn’t always feelings for some people.  I have been an empath my entire life only I didn’t really know what was going on for a very long time.  In my family, I was just known as being over sensitive and I have struggled to find a way to shield myself so I can better discern my feelings from everyone else’s.  There are varying degrees and while some people have a handle on putting up a shield to keep other feelings at bay, others have a difficult time doing that.  Not only do I take on other peoples feelings, but I can take on other people’s ailments as well.  Let me explain….I can physically feel what someone else is physically feeling. 
 

Several years ago, I was having some very bad leg pains.  I went to the Dr. to get checked out and they found absolutely nothing wrong.  The pains weren’t consistent but they were very painful.  Now, at the time, my mom and I weren’t really talking but I felt that I needed to call her (not having to do with the leg pains) so I called my dad to see how she was doing.  As it turned out, she had clogged arteries in both of her legs and needed to have bypass surgery in them in order to fix the problem.  She would wake up in the middle night because the pains in her legs were so intense.  After I talked to her, I realized that it was her leg pains that I was feeling and that I was being told to get in touch with her. 
 

For a long time I just took the pains as they came, most of the time not knowing where they were coming from.  It took awhile before I figured out that I could tune into this gift so I started testing and practicing.  A couple of years ago, a few friends and I went to a cemetery to walk around and visit the deceased and to look at the head stones.  We came to one headstone and one of my friends stopped and asked us if we could feel anything from the person that was buried there and she didn’t let anyone see the front of it.  I felt a pain in my chest, felt as though I couldn’t breathe and when I closed my eyes I pictured a bubble.  As it turns out, we were at the grave of a man that had drowned when the Sleepy Hollow mine flooded in Central City, Colorado in 1895.  

 

Now the absolutely fun, and practical, part of this gift is that I knew when my kids were faking being sick in order to stay home from school.  They, of course, did not know this until very recently when I was telling someone about it and my youngest did a double take.  The look on her face was absolutely priceless.
 

Empathy helps me tune in as a tarot reader and a Reiki healer.  When I am with a tarot client, I can tell if they are testing me or if they aren’t being honest with me.  I also have a way to be able to get to what they really want to know about and I can access their feelings, knowing what they are really feeling rather than putting up a front, enabling me to react to a situation appropriately.  My empathy helps me to get more in touch with my Reiki clients, being able to scan them to see where they may be having health issues so I can spend more time on that part of their body if necessary. 
 

It can be a difficult gift to wrangle but it can be amusing and extremely interesting. 
 

A fun tarot spread to try, if you are not so empathic inclined and you like to cruise cemeteries (like I do), is to take your cards and use them to read one of the residents.  Here is simple spread that you can utilize on your next trip.  Once you have results, you can always take it a step or two further and do some research on the person that you read to try to verify your findings.

 

    4

    1                      2

    3

 

1. What did this person do for a living?

2. What was this person like?

3. How did this person die?

4. What legacy did this person leave after their death?

 

If you happen to try out this spread, please drop me a line and let me know how it went. 

I do hope that you are enjoying your journey through the Tarot Blog Hop.  Please be sure to continue on to Sharon Cumming's blog.

 

Happy Litha and happy hopping!!!

 

 

.