Making Time for Active Empathy

I have a friend who is a therapist. She has recently been creating videos about the work she offers, particularly those who have been involved in difficult and or abusive relationships. She posted a video on seven traits of Narcissism. One trait being a lack of empathy. It got me thinking about empathy and how vital it is to human flourishing and relationships.

Empathy has been in the public consciousness in recent months. It has come under a certain amount of criticism, which personally I have found hard to fathom. There is even a phrase amongst some sections of Evangelical Christianity. The phrase being “The Sin of Empathy”. In their view of their faith “empathy” can blur what they see as right and wrong, that empathy leads to people feeling with others, rather than correcting them and empathy leads to manipulation. It is view not held by most Christians, but is one that has grown in prominence in recent years. I have heard others talk of problems with empathy too. That it can be exploited and some see it as a danger to civilisation itself. I wonder if what is being discussed is actually empathy.

So what exactly is empathy? To empathise with another is an attempt to walk in another shoes, to feel what they are feeling, to understand things from their perspective. This is not easy by the way and no one should ever pretend it is. It takes effort and is a conscious decisions that is made and practised. To empathise with another, is not necessarily to act as a result of this, but to feel with them. It is not the same as sympathy which is less intimate and a more detached response. We express sympathy for a persons situation, perhaps following a bereavement, but we may not necessarily empathise with them. Compassion is sometimes confused with empathy. Compassion though is a response to empathy or sympathy and is a desire to act in order to ease another’s suffering.

I believe that empathy is the key to true human flourishing, but it is a real challenge. At its heart is the recognition that we are all born from the same flesh and have the same spirit running through us. That everything in life is interconnected. Echoed in those words of Jesus, what you do to the least of them you do to me; echoed by the great mystic Meister Eckhart “What happens to another happens to you”. Recognised by the Buddha who advised us to “See yourself in others, then whom can you hurt?” Empathy is an orientation of the spirit. I believe that it is key to reaching our highest human potential and the key to civilisation. It is the lack of empathy in seeing others as different that is a threat to human flourishing. As Hannah Arendt observed “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture falling into barbarism”. I think at the heart of human brutality is the failure to recognise the common humanity of another. At the heart of this is a lack of empathy. If we have no empathy we cannot live with compassion and or mercy.

I would like to share with you a short poem by the wonderful farmer poet Wendell Berry “If we have no compassion”

“If we have no compassion,” by Wendell Berry

If we have become a people incapable of thought,
then the brute-thought
of mere power and mere greed
will think for us.

If we have become incapable
of denying ourselves anything,
then all that we have
will be taken from us.

If we have no compassion,
we will suffer alone, we will suffer
alone the destruction of ourselves.

these are merely the laws of this world
as known to Shakespeare, as known to Milton.

When we cease from human thought,
a low and effective cunning
stirs in the most inhuman minds.

Back to “Empathy”. Etymologically speaking the word “Empathy” comes from an ancient Greek word “Empatheia” from “em” meaning “In” and “pathos” meaning feeling. From this came the nineteenth century German word “Einfuhling”, from which we got the word Empathy.

Now while empathy has been at the heart of human civilisation, the word is actually quite new. It only began to be used at the beginning of the twentieth century. Interestingly it originated in the appreciation of art, where it was used to describe the imaginative activity of projecting yourself into a work of art as an effort to understand why we are moved by such creativity. The word has it’s Genesis in the work of German doctor Wilhelm Wundt who almost by accident gave birth to psychology and the philosopher Theodor Lipps. Lipps originated what was then considered a radical idea, that the power of art was not so much in the work itself but in the viewer actively engaging in it. The power is in “The Creative Interchange”

In “You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin” Rachel Corbett explained how this developed.

“The moment a viewer recognizes a painting as beautiful, it transforms from an object into a work of art. The act of looking, then, becomes a creative process, and the viewer becomes the artist.”

…She continued…

“Lipps found a name for his theory in an 1873 dissertation by a German aesthetics student named Robert Vischer. When people project their emotions, ideas or memories onto objects they enact a process that Vischer called einfühlung, literally “feeling into.” The British psychologist Edward Titchener translated the word into English as “empathy” in 1909, deriving it from the Greek empatheia, or “in pathos.” For Vischer, einfühlung revealed why a work of art caused an observer to unconsciously “move in and with the forms.” He dubbed this bodily mimesis “muscular empathy,” a concept that resonated with Lipps, who once attended a dance recital and felt himself “striving and performing” with the dancers. He also linked this idea to other somatosensory imitations, like yawns and laughter.”

Isn’t it so true how yawning and laughing can be infectious. When we laugh and or yawn together we are feeling with each other. Empathy is to feel with another. It is to recognise ourself in the other and the other in ourselves. This can be difficult and painful at times. It takes effort. I would say it is a moral and spiritual practice. It can be taught and learnt and developed.

I recently went to prison. It was only as a visitors sharing my experience of with a group of inmates who themselves are trying to find recovery. In them I saw myself and I saw myself in them. I empathise with them deeply. I was humbled and moved by the whole experience. I saw deep care for one another. How they were supporting one another in what is as challenging an environment as you could live in. I felt deeply with them, I empathised.

“Empathy” is taught in Danish schools. Since 1993 it has been part of their “National Curriculum” It is named “Klassens time”, during which children can seek advice from peers, learn empathy, conflict resolution as well as strengthen their relationships and sense of community.

“Klassens time” is a step by step program. Students are shown cards that feature children experiencing different emotions, such as sadness, anger, and happiness. They are asked to not just identify the emotion, but to explain what it means to them. They learn how to interpret others’ emotions and how they make them feel. They are not taught to judge the emotions, just to recognise and respect them.

In an essay in “The Atlantic” Jessica Alexander, author of “The Danish Way of Parenting” explains why in “Klassen time” children of different strengths and weakness are mixed together. She wrote: “The goal is for the students to see that everyone has positive qualities and to support each other in their efforts reach the next level,” Adding further that: “The math whiz may be terrible at soccer, and vice versa. This system fosters collaboration, teamwork, and respect.”

Maybe we could all learn something from the Danish education system. It will certainly helps see we are all one and another. That we are all formed from the same flash and have the same spirit flowing through us. It will allow us to thrive and be who we are whilst also understanding that others have similar needs. Not to become clones and all alike, but to truly be all that we can be.

Empathy is not easy, it takes effort. It can seem too much at times, especially in this our modern age. A time when we are bombarded by fear of the other. Where there are voices decrying empathy and suggesting it might be a problem, or at least that there is an “empathy exploit” which maybe leading to what Gad Saad has described as “civilisational suicidal empathy”.

It is a view I don’t share. I think the problem is a lack of empathy. We need to develop empathy in its truest sense, to feel with another, to understand one another better. To value each other as we are, to enable one another to thrive as individuals and society as a whole.

There is a need for “Active Empathy”, the type being taught in Danish schools. Something that I believe that free religious communities such as ours ought to be about. Active empathy is about opening our whole being to others. We do this not by forcing ourselves upon them, but by allowing them to be themselves around us. This is true openness. This is invitation. When I say come as you are, exactly as you are, this is what I mean; when I say, “but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition,” this is what I mean. This is the purpose of religious experience, that of transformation. This is not to suggest that we are fundamentally wrong, no it is more that we can become who we are wholly and at the same time invite others to do the same. Empathy and particularly active empathy is the key.

Of course this begs the question, how do we bring this about?

Well, I was reminded this week of the work of Karen Armstrong and her book “12 Steps to a Compassionate Life”. It came to me after I returned from prison. In it she offers a meditative practise as a starting point. It begins by imagining Confucius’ “Concentric Circles of Compassion”, beginning within ourselves and then moving out in ever widening circles until it touches the whole world.

The meditation suggests that we turn our attention to three individuals that we know. The three being an acquaintance we are not too closely connected to; someone we hold dear to our hearts; someone to whom we bear a grudge or hold resentment against. Armstrong suggests that we bring each one to our mind, to picture them and to name them. To bring to mind their good points; to look into their hearts and see their pain and to desire for each of them to be free of their pain and finally to resolve to help them in any way that we can; to wish for them whatever it is we desire for ourselves; to live by the Golden Rule. The purpose of the meditation is to develop upeksha ‘equanimity, which will allow us to relate to people with equanimity. Of course this is difficult to practice, but if stuck with, over a period of time, results are sure to follow.

Through developing empathy we will truly be able to practise compassion in our daily lives. Practise does indeed make perfect. Well maybe not perfect, but better. Opera singers have to train for years, as do dancers and even ministers for that matter, doctors are not made overnight and neither are decent spin bowlers. All these crafts take time, dedication and consistent effort. It is worth it though.

Through the practise of empathy we can live truly connected lives and we will no longer feel that sense of separation and aloneness that so many people seem to suffer from. Through practise we can grow into what Schweitzer described as a "spiritual relationship with the Universe" and we will develop reverence for all life, including our own.

Empathy is a choice, a decision and I believe it is vital to human flourishing. It doesn’t just happen. It is a choice we make to pay attention, to extend ourselves beyond the confines of our singular selves. Empathy is an intention. It is intention to create something better not only for ourselves and current neighbours, but for those who will follow when we are long gone.

Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "blog spot"

Empathy, guilt, shame, they are not exactly the same

You may recall that last week I discussed a conversation I had with colleagues at “Ministry in the Making”. I’m not going to repeat it now. I just want to talk about one aspect of the conversation, something that has been a primary motivation of my ministry. I talk with lots of people, well actually I listen in conversation with lots of people. It is my life. One thing I notice often, is that so many people struggle or have struggled in their lives with feelings of guilt or shame. The feelings of shame are often without cause. It seems to come from some place deep within them. I know that these feelings are often preyed upon with so many places offering easy alternatives. That whatever people feel is wrong with them could be easily cured. There is lots of money to be made. The truth is we are not in need of fixing. Yes there is healing for just about all of us. Most of us wander around with some wounds that need healing, but I do not believe that we are fundamentally flawed. Yes, we do wrong, but we are not wrong at the core of our being. We should feel appropriate guilt for the things we do wrong, but never feel shame, because we feel that we are wrong.

I would like to make a space where people can come without shame and explore these feelings in an open and safe environment and perhaps find a way to heal these feelings. A space where we can come to terms with themselves and put right whatever it is they need to put right in themselves and this world. To come to right relationship if you like. “To forgive ourselves, to forgive one another, to begin again in love.”

I am sure all of us have done things we wish we hadn’t or said things we wish we hadn’t or not acted when perhaps we should have acted. I was talking with a friend this week, out walking our dogs. We both shared about times when we have remained silent when we should have spoken up. We discussed how this made us feel. There was a sense of appropriate guilt, a vital feeling. It comes from this sense of conscience. That seed of the Divine, that believe is there in all of us. A healthy feeling, something we should try to develop, to live from. I feel that empathy grows from this, another vital aspect of our humanity. Empathy and guilt are vital emotions, when they are alive within us. We have them for important and vital reasons. We have them for good reason and they need to be developed if we are to live the good life. They are a response to life. Shame though is something very different. It a purely negative feeling and instead of being a response to life, seems to come from a rejection of life itself. Where it comes from, I am not wholly sure. What I am sure if is how destructive it is.

Guilt is a common feeling for most ministers. We rarely feel that we are doing a good enough job, we wish we could do more. I feel guilt around the suffering of others. Now in its healthy form this manifests as empathy, in its unhealthy form it can manifest as shame. I do wish I could do more when around those suffering, I feel guilt for those suffering and their loved ones. I feel it around family and friends too, particularly old friends. I wish I had more time for them. I feel it too sometimes when in a joyful state, when I feel so much joy at simply being alive. When I see others suffering and struggling, there is a part of me that feels bad. I also experience some survivor’s guilt too, with my fellows in recovery and when I think of friends and loved ones that have died far too soon. I then feel a little bad for feeling guilty about feeling joyful.

It is crazy isn’t it, but oh so very human. I don’t think I’m alone in these feelings. It does suggest I’m not some kind of psychopath, which I am pleased about. No, I’m a human being who experiences the same emotions and feelings as everyone else. Thank God. The feelings come from empathy, which is vital aspect of healthy humanity. The problems can come when such feelings can overwhelm folk. Or they tap into feelings of shame. Shame will lead a person to shrink away from pain, empathy and healthy guilt will often allow a person to be with others in their suffering.

Feelings of guilt come in many forms, helpful and unhelpful. To feel remorseful after saying or doing the wrong thing, is healthy. It compels us to do what we can to put things right. That said if this feeling lingers even after putting right what was wrong, if we dwell and beat ourselves up for unskilful action or word then the feeling is probably coming from another place, from this sense that fundamentally there is something wrong with us. This is shame.

I suspect that the key is where the feeling comes from. Does it come as a result of our actions, thoughts and or words, or lack of them, or is it a feeling that comes from some other place and almost dictates our thoughts, feelings, words and actions and regardless of these things we just feel bad.

Where does this feeling of being wrong come from? Why does it control so many of our lives?

Now in our culture some put it down to our Judea Christian heritage, the core of our culture, even in these secular times. Often folks who grew up in deeply religious homes will argue about who feels the most guilt. Now although the Judeo-Christian tradition seems to be seeped in guilt, the bible both the Hebrew scriptures and the Gospels make no reference to guilt as it is commonly understood. As Mark Belletini points out in “Nothing Gold Can Stay: The Colours of Grief”

“…I confess to being surprised that the word guilt itself, as in the feeling of guilt, is not found any place in either the Jewish or the Christian testaments. Not once. The few times the English word can be found in more antique translations, it refers only to the kind of “guilty” that courts speak about, which is not a feeling so much as a legal category.

I am convinced that families of origin, cultural and ethnic patterns, and categorical realities play a far greater role in how much guilt we feel than does religion. I certainly have known folks raised without religion of any kind – including the “shopping mall spirituality” created by cultus consumerism – who have struggled with guilt as much as anyone raised in a particular denomination of religion, Western or Eastern.”

The feelings of guilt coms from a place within us. When it is in appropriate proportion it is a good thing. It connects us to one another and to life, it keeps us humble and therefore human and saves us from the dangers of destructive hubris. Such guilt is a function of conscience. This is key to my understanding of my faith as a Unitarian, this concept of living revelation that is an aspect of my humanity, if I can tap into it and allow it to lead me. When I do I see this same spark in others too. You see in opening myself to the divine spark within I open myself to that same spark in everyone and everything. This is key to my understanding of religion, my attempts to live my life in the company of others and through which I attempt to shape an ideal that I strive for, but suspect I will never attain. I always fall short of this ideal, in this sense I sin (from sinare which meant to fall short of the mark). This though is not original sin, it is actually more original blessing. I feel guilt, appropriate guilt, because I fall short of the mark, although I do at times feel shame too, in doing so I deny my true nature. I also occasionally fall short in shaming others too, something I strive not to do. I sometimes fail to recognise the divinity in my brothers and sisters, but hey these short comings save me from becoming too pious and separating myself from brothers and sisters.

What is key is to develop this feeling so it can used in good purpose in this world. The key is empathy and bring empathy to life, to act upon this empathy. Active empathy is about opening our whole being to others. We do this not by forcing ourselves upon them, but by allow them to be themselves around us. This is true openness. This is invitation. When I say come as you are m exactly as you are, this is what I mean. When I also say, “but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition.” This is the purpose of religious experience, that of transformation. This is not to suggest that we are fundamentally wrong, no it is more that we can become who we are wholly and at the same time invite others to do the same. Empathy and particularly active empathy is the key.

Now Shame is something else. Shame is destructive and it keeps us separate from ourselves and one another. Shame is not formed from our actions or inactions, but from some other place in our being. It’s that place that people have tapped into throughout human history. Yes religion has used this, the classic example being the concept of Original Sin, but then so has the secular world. Advertising is the classic example it’s how they sell lifestyles to us and it’s how they get so many of us to feel we have to change who we just to be acceptable. How many people suffer from a sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with them? I know it’s crippled me over the years. Thankfully it does so less and less as I grow faithfully.

When I look at myself in the eye these days what I see is a man who gets things wrong from time to time and I feel appropriate guilt for this. This enables me to act in the world positively. Yes I wish I could do more, but hey I am only human. I feel less shame about my being, but I must confess that I am not completely free of this. There is a part of me that is ok with this. Why? Well because it keeps me grounded, for I know that every single one of us is still living with these feelings. Maybe this too helps with the empathy too.

When you look at yourself in the eye, what do you see? Do you a decent person who makes mistakes? Or do you see someone who is fundamentally wrong to the core.

It matters you know, it really does. For it will affect how you interact with the world and how the world interacts with you.

Let us recognise these feelings within ourselves and begin to understand them in others. Let’s develop active empathy and invite others to do the same. In so doing we will live lives of love and purpose and encourage others to do the same.

I’m going to end this morning with a bit of Mary Oliver, her classic poem “Wild Geese”

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

The Three E’s Empathy, Ecstasy and Enthusiasm: Turning Self Consciousness into Consciousness

I was in the park with Molly on Monday morning. I was feeling tired and somewhat run down. I had woken up with a bad throat. Sunday had been a long day, three services and several other activities. There weren’t many dogs around for Molly to play with so she made her own fun. She is such a happy little dog, full of life and character, at ease with herself and life itself. After a while a woman appeared with her tiny dark cavalier spaniel. I have passed the woman in the street many times over the time I have had Molly. Her little dog was somewhat unfriendly towards Molly as a puppy, the woman said her dog didn’t like puppies, or men for that matter. Even as Molly became an adult the woman never stopped for them to get to know each other. It was different this time though. The woman came talking to me, she seemed upset. She told me her dog was unwell, in fact she had heart failure, she was only eight years old. It was her fifth Cavalier and two of her previous ones had died the same way. I told her I had seen her dog with a walker a few days before and I pointed out to the walker that there something wrong with her. The walker had informed the woman and she had taken the dog to the vet. The woman told me that she was trying to get her dog to go to the toilet, but didn’t want to walk. Then Molly brought her to life and she ran around and played for a little while, before they went off to the coffee shop. The poor woman has some big decisions to make over the next few days, as she doesn’t want her little dog to suffer. I felt for her.

As I walked away I was thinking about the three keys of the spiritual life that Forrest Church had identified, “Empathy”, “Ecstasy” and “Enthusiasm”. They are essential antitdotes to the blight of self-consciousness and lead to connection and consciousness. I was awake, I was conscious that day, despite feeling somewhat low and tired in mood. I had been a few days earlier when I noticed the little spaniel struggling. Molly had too, her empathy and enthusiasm had brought a few moments of ecstasy to that sweet little dog. We were at ease with ourselves, we knew ourselves and thus we were not slaves to ourselves, we were instead awake to the life around us.

Socrates said that “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Now while not wishing to argue with the great philosopher I do wonder if the “over examined life” can prove just as worthless. It is so easy to get lost in ourselves, wrapped up in our own underwear, to such an extent that we do not live at all. We can become so self-conscious that we fail to become conscious of all that is and all that has ever been. It is so easy to become wrapped up in our own perceived needs that we fail to live in the world with others and then complain about feeling lonely. Yes it is important to examine ourselves, to understand who we are and what makes us tick, but that should not be an end in itself, a destination. It is a staging post in the spiritual adventure, but not an end in itself.

I remember at last year’s “Ministry in the Making” I was asked to speak on the purpose of ministry, which literally means to serve. The college principal was somewhat concerned that while the students had a great deal of self understanding this in itself was not all that the spiritual life is about. That it is not just about knowing and understand ourselves. Self awareness and spirituality is something that comes to life in the real world, that its purpose is to fit us to be of maximum usefulness in this life. I thought about my time in the park with Molly, I probably do as much ministry there as anywhere else in life. Monday morning proved that once again.

The spiritual life is about love. Yes love for ourselves, but also one another and life itself and of course whatever it is we believe is at the core of all, what I call God. Sadly sometimes spirituality can tend to be too inner focused and a turning away from life. Such approaches can make us even more self focused and instead of setting us free, enchains us even more.

So yes I agree with Socrates, that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. That said the “over examined life” can prove just as worthless. It can easily become inhibiting and can lead to a kind of self-consciousness that can become so consuming that it takes over our human interactions. I wonder how many of us suffer from this kind of commentary when we meet up with people. “What will they think of me?” “How do I look?” “If I say something, will they think I’m an idiot?” and then as it continues, “He gave me a funny look, he must have thought me a fool. Why on earth did I have to make that stupid remark? Gosh I’m such a freak, they all seem to be staring at me.”

I was talking with a friend on Tuesday morning who described some such interaction at a work event the other day. She found herself becoming consumed by such an inner dialogue. Thankfully she was able to step out of herself and begin to make contact with others, this helped them do the same thing.

This though is not always the case. This kind of self conscious inner dialogue can be so crippling. It can haunt us from the moment we wake and continue throughout our day, eating away at our every decision. Oh and of course because we doubt ourselves and every decision we make, we assume that everyone else must be doing exactly the same thing. This kind of self-consciousness can be so crippling and it blocks us off almost entirely from the world around us. We can become so consumed by this kind of self-consciousness that we see the world entirely from our own point of view, excluding all others.

One of my great frustrations with a lot of modern “so called spirituality” is that it does not seem to be about relationships at all. It seems to be all about the self, almost about protecting the self, from the so called “messiness” of living. It seems to have become almost narcissistic in its nature. Maybe that’s why it can seem so appealing. The truth is of course that all we ever achieve in blocking ourselves off from the messiness, from circling our spiritual wagons, is increase the loneliness and the emptiness.

The spiritual life is about relationship. We need to be in what I have often heard called right relationship, with ourselves, with others and with whatever it is we connects all of life, what is often called the Divine, to live spiritually alive.

I can usually get a good measure as to where I am at spiritually by simply checking where I am at relationally with myself, with others and with God, they are all interconnected and inter related.

So what can we do about it? How do we wake up to a greater consciousness? How do we break free from this crippling self-consciousness? How do we become better inter-related.

According to the Gospel’s Jesus taught his followers that they must lose themselves in order to be found. That by emptying ourselves of our self-absorption we begin to be filled with the spirit of neighbourliness. So that when we look deeply into the still waters we are not drawn in by narcissistic self-consciousness and loathing at our own reflection, but rather into a deeper contemplation of our shared lives. We become conscious of all that is, all that has been and all that will ever be. By opening ourselves to and for others we begin to shed that debilitating skin of self-consciousness that is so easy to become imprisoned in.

Gandhi said “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in service of others”

The Buddha talked of Nirvana, of being freed from the suffering that was the blight of humanity. He showed that we all suffered and that it was in seeing our suffering as individual that led to this sense of separation. He suggested that we needed to break through our suffering not only to serve others but to reach a higher state of being, true consciousness, to be awake to the life in which we live.

Now please don’t get me wrong this morning I am not suggesting that we do not need to know ourselves to understand how we tick, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. All I am saying is that we must not get stuck there, we must not get lost there and we must not see this as a destination, more a staging post on the journey. The adolescent stage I suspect. Sadly for many folk, me included, this adolescent stage often goes well into adulthood.

So how do we move from self-consciouness to consciousness. Well as I mentioned earlier Forrest Church in his wonderful book “Lifecraft” offered three simple suggestions, which he called the three “E’s”, “empathy”, “ecstasy” and “enthusiasm”. The key he claimed could be found in the literal understanding of these words. “Empathy”, to suffer or feel with another; “Ecstasy”, to stand outside ourselves; “Enthusiasm”, to manifest the god (theos) within us.

“Empathy” is a deep felt compassion. When we open our hearts empathically to another we are courageously refusing to allow self-consciousness to stand in the way of a higher consciousness that comes into being as we feel what another is going through. In so doing we serve both ourselves and the other person, as well as that higher consciousness beyond our singular selves.

Now “Ecstasy” has often been misunderstood as some kind of hedonistic state and therefore self- indulgent, it is far from this. In its truest sense what it actually does is takes us out of ourselves and lifts us beyond the confines of ourselves. In so doing we transcend our self-consciousness and enter a realm in which purpose begins to emerge and meaning is found.

“Enthusiasm” means to be filled with spirit, with holy energy. Enthusiasm allows us to be fully involved and engaged in whatever it is we are doing. It allows us to see beyond the confines we have created. Forrest himself states that “Here, once again, consciousness displaces self-consciousness. We escape from our mirrored room. Its mirrors turn into windows. Or the pond grows so still that we can see beyond our own reflection to the trees and clouds and birds and sun. There is, by the way, no higher form of spiritual practice. When we step out of our own shadow, consciousness replaces self-consciousness.”

In so doing we are set free to walk with others in our own faltering ways. Instead of being lost in what we believe is wrong with us we are set free to do what we can in this our shared world and in so doing we encourage others to do the same, as perfectly imperfect children of God.

For me the purpose of the spiritual life is to develop a deepening sense of connection. We all have our troubles and our worries either within ourselves, those around us or wider world. We need to see them for what they are, we need to acknowledge the truth, but we must not get stuck there, for that will paralyse us and stop us doing what we can. We cannot change the way the world is but that need not prevent us from doing what we can do and in doing so we will grow spiritually as we become integrated into all that has been, all that exists and all that will ever.

So much of modern spiritually gets it wrong because it is seeking the wrong thing. There is so much talk of finding ourselves, when in actual fact what we ought to be doing is losing ourselves. What we ought to be striving for, I believe, is integration and remove those aspects within ourselves that block this. We all ask the question “Who am I?” when really we ought to asking is “How am I doing? And if we are still feeling utterly dis-connected we need to ask why? And how can I integrate once again? You see if we can begin to integrate with all that is, all that has been and all that has ever been we begin to truly cohere. In doing so we transcend our self-consciousness and become conscious. We become spiritually mature. We wake up to the world in which live and breathe and share our being and we will know the joy of living, in all its mystery.

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

Are You Awake? Consciousness and Self-Consciousness

Sunday’s have been extra busy these last few months. After leading worship Molly and myself have been going to puppy school. Before Christmas she passed puppy class and these last few weeks we have been working towards the Bronze Award of “The Kennel Club Good Citizen Dog Scheme”. When working with her at home she has been doing great. The problem is when she is with other dogs; when Molly is with other dogs she just wants to play. All the commands have been going well, except recall. In the park this one seems the most difficult.

Last Sunday was the examination, for the Bronze award. Things did not begin well. For some reason she chose this Sunday to turn her nose up at the training treats I had. Thankfully one of the other owners leant we some cheesy ones which she loved.

The assessment began. I found myself feeling anxious about it. It actually felt worse than my driving test, but I kept centering myself and saying “The fear prayer” over and over, under my breath. “God please remove my fear and direct my attention to what you would have me be. Molly was her usual calm self. Just playing in-between the different tests. Things went well. There was a moment during the stay command, when the dogs are to stay still for a whole minute. A motorbike went past and misfired loudly, this caused a couple of dogs to move, but Molly just looked up, and stayed still. The only test that proved difficult was recall, I knew that this would be the case. She did, just not with the rushed enthusiasm of the other dogs. She came, but slowly at her own pace.

We passed the exam and will now move onto the silver award in a few weeks time. An observer of the test had been the woman who had instructed us during the first puppy classes. She said some lovely things to me about Molly and our relationship and how far she had come, saying that we must have been working hard on our relationship. I cannot tell you how much this meant to me.

One thing I have noticed since Molly came into my life has been an increase in old feelings of self-consciousness. Not so much about myself but how others perceive me, through Molly. People do offer comments all the time about her and I have taken on board the odd critical one. On the whole though she is a lovely dog, very calm, friendly and sociable, pretty fearless too. She is smart and knows her own mind. She is not at all self conscious, she is fully conscious of herself and the world in which she lives and breathes and enjoys her being. She is teaching me so much. Molly is a treasure and fully awake.

As I was reflecting about Sunday this week I was reminded of a story attributed to the Buddha.

It is said that soon after his enlightenment that the Buddha passed a man on the road who was struck by the Buddha's extraordinary radiance and peaceful presence. The man stopped and asked, "My friend, what are you? Are you a celestial being or a god?"

"No," said the Buddha.

"Well, then, are you some kind of magician or wizard?"

Again the Buddha answered, "No."

"Are you a man?" "No."

"Well, my friend, then what are you?"

The Buddha replied, "I am awake"

The Buddha was awake, he was fully conscious to all that is and all that will ever be. He was fully integrated, he did not see himself as separate, well he did not see himself at all.

Now this is not a claim I would or could make about myself. I believe I am more awake these days than I have ever been in the past, but I am very aware of a sense of separation from time to time. That said I am more conscious than I ever was before. There is a simple reason for this, I am less self-conscious than I once was. Of course, I am not yet the perfectly self-actualised enlightened being. It is highly unlikely that I ever will be, but I am not crippled by self consciousness these days, it does not paralyse me. I feel more connected, at one, with all that is, than at any other time in my life. I feel conscious, I feel awake, but I used to be terribly self-consciousness and I suspect that it was this that was the very root cause of so much of that aching loneliness that used to eat away at me. I felt, separate, cut off, alone. How many of us feel like this, it is so much the plague of the modern age.

It has been interesting to notice how I have been revisited by some of these feelings recently. I was terribly self conscious as a child, there are many reasons for this, or should I say I found many reasons for it. One being a birth defect. I was born with some of the nerve endings at the base of my spine being underdeveloped. It was something akin to a less severe form of spina bifida. As a child I had to frequently go for physiotherapy and there was a period when I was not allowed to engage in any sport. I hated the feeling it engendered in me as I looked at the other kids running around in the playground, knowing I wasn’t allowed to join in.

It was a few years later when the pain really hit me though, in my mid to later teens when I was painfully aware of the way I walked. I remember walking down the street of the town I grew up in and whenever I saw someone walking towards me I would stand up straight and attempt to push my feet inwards in the vain hope that they wouldn’t think that there was something wrong with me. I must have looked a right sight.

I was just so terribly self-consciousness; I was just so locked in on what I believed was wrong with me. Today I have come to understand that the problem was not my perceived physical imperfections. I suspect that if I’d been born without this physical difficulty the problem would have manifested in other areas of my life. The problem was the self-consciousness, I was locked in myself and therefore not fully conscious, I was separate and felt alone.

One thing I’ve learnt over the years is that I am not alone in this. So many of us suffer from forms of self-consciouness. We feel lost, lonely and cut off because we are locked in what we believe is wrong with us. Sometimes it is harder to see what is right, than what is wrong. This is a deeply lonely, isolated, way to be.

Socrates said that “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Now while not wishing to argue with the great philosopher I do wonder if the “over examined life” can prove just as worthless. It is so easy to get lost in oneself, wrapped up in our own underwear to such an extent that we do not live at all. We can become so self-conscious that we fail to become conscious of all that is and all that has ever been. It is so easy to become wrapped up in our own perceived needs that we fail to live in the world with others and then complain about feeling lonely. Yes it is important to examine ourselves, to understand who we are and what makes us tick, but that should not be an end in itself, a destination. It is a staging post in the spiritual adventure, but not an end in itself.

Now this form of self-absorption has been labelled Narcissism. You remember the ancient Greek story of the boy who fell so in love with his own reflection that he fell into the water and drowned. I’m not sure that it is entirely correct to label this form of self-consciousness this way. There seems very little love there at all. Quite the opposite in fact the pre-occupation is with what is wrong. When you look at your own reflection in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see someone that you love? Do you see who you really are? While we may see ourselves warts and all, how many of us see the beauty spots too? The self-absorption that most people I come into contact with suffer from tends to be a deeply ingrained negative type. The preoccupation is often with what is wrong with them, with their shame, rather than how wonderful they are.

This kind of self-consciousness can become so consuming that it takes over our human interactions. I wonder how many of us suffer from this kind of commentary when we meet up with people. “What will they think of me?” “How do I look?” “If I say something, will they think I’m an idiot?” and then as it continues, “He gave me a funny look, he must have thought me a fool. Why on earth did I have to make that stupid remark? Gosh I’m such a freak, they all seem to be staring at me.”

This kind of inner dialogue can be so crippling. It can haunt us from the moment we wake and continue throughout our day, eating away at our every decision. Oh and of course because we doubt ourselves and every decision we make, we assume that everyone else must be doing exactly the same thing. This kind of self-consciousness can be so crippling and it blocks us off almost entirely from the world around us. When we become consumed by this kind of self-consciousness we see the world from our own point of view and it aint a pretty one.

So what can we do about it? How do we wake up to a greater consciousness? How do we break free from this crippling self-consciousness?

In the Gospel’s Jesus taught his followers that they must lose themselves in order to be found. That by emptying ourselves of our self-absorption we begin to be filled with the spirit of neighbourliness. So that when we look deeply into the still waters we are not drawn in by narcissistic self-consciousness and loathing at our own reflection, but rather into a deeper contemplation of our shared lives. We become conscious of all that is, all that has been and all that will ever be. By opening ourselves to and for others we begin to shed that debilitating skin of self-consciousness that is so easy to become imprisoned in.

Gandhi said “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in service of others”

The Buddha talked of Nirvana, of being freed from the suffering that was the blight of humanity. He showed that we all suffered and that it was in seeing our suffering as individual that led to this sense of separation. He suggested that we needed to break through our suffering not only to serve others but to reach a higher state of being, true consciousness, to be awake.

Now please don’t get me wrong I am not suggesting that we do not need to know ourselves to understand how we tick. All I am saying is that we must not get stuck there, we must not get lost there and we must not see this as a destination, more a staging post on the journey. The adolescent stage I suspect. Sadly for many folk, me included, this adolescent stage often goes well into adulthood.

So how do we move from self-consciouness to consciousness. Well Forrest Church in his wonderful book “Lifecraft” offered three simple suggestions, which he called the three “E’s”, “empathy”, “ecstasy” and “enthusiasm”. The key he claimed could be found in the literal understanding of these words. “Empathy”, to suffer or feel with another; “Ecstasy”, to stand outside ourselves; “Enthusiasm”, to manifest the god (theos) within us.

Empathy is a deep felt compassion. When we open our hearts empathically to another we are courageously refusing to allow self-consciousness to stand in the way of a higher consciousness that comes into being as we feel what another is going through. In so doing we serve both ourselves and the other person, as well as that higher consciousness beyond our singular selves.

Now ecstasy has often been misunderstood as some kind of hedonistic state and therefore self- indulgent, it is far from this. In its truest sense what it actually does is takes us out of ourselves and lifts us beyond the confines of ourselves. In so doing we transcend our self-consciousness and enter a realm in which purpose begins to emerge and meaning is found.

Enthusiasm means to be filled with spirit, with holy energy. Enthusiasm allows us to be fully involved and engaged in whatever it is we are doing. It allows us to see beyond the confines we have created. Forrest himself states that “Here, once again, consciousness displaces self-consciousness. We escape from our mirrored room. Its mirrors turn into windows. Or the pond grows so still that we can see beyond our own reflection to the trees and clouds and birds and sun. There is, by the way, no higher form of spiritual practice. When we step out of our own shadow, consciousness replaces self-consciousness.”

In so doing we are set free to walk with others in our own faltering ways. Instead of being lost in what we believe is wrong with us we are set free to do what we can in this our shared world and in so doing we encourage others to do the same, as perfectly imperfect children of God.

For me the purpose of the spiritual life is to develop a deepening sense of connection. We all have our troubles and our worries either within ourselves, those around us or our wider world. We need to see them for what they are, we need to acknowledge the truth, but we must not get stuck there, for that will paralyse us and stop us doing what we can. We cannot change the way the world is but that need not prevent us from doing what we can do and in doing so we will grow spiritually as we become integrated into all that has been, all that exists and all that will ever.

So there you have a solution to self-consciousness, a way to develop consciousness, the three “E’s”, “empathy”, “ecstasy” and “enthusiasm”. “Empathy”, to suffer or feel with another; “Ecstasy”, to stand outside ourselves; “Enthusiasm”, to manifest the god (theos) within us.

As a kind of conclusion I’d like to leave you with one final thought. I think that so much of modern spiritually gets it wrong because it is seeking the wrong thing. There is so much talk of finding ourselves, when in actual fact what we ought to be doing is losing ourselves. What we ought to be striving for, I believe, is integration and remove those aspects within ourselves that block this. We all ask the question “Who am I?” when really we ought to asking is “How am I doing? And if we are still feeling utterly dis-connected we need to ask why? And how can I integrate once again? You see if we can begin to integrate with all that is, all that has been and all that has ever been we begin to truly cohere. In doing so we transcend our self-consciousness and become conscious. We become spiritually mature. We become like the Buddha, awake.

I was thinking this as I watched Molly rolling and dancing and frolicking with several other dogs in the park the other day, what a joy, what a freedom, oh to be so awake.

So how conscious are you today? Are you truly awake?

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "Blogspot"

Are You Awake? Consciousness and Self-Consciousness

It is said that soon after his enlightenment that the Buddha passed a man on the road who was struck by the Buddha's extraordinary radiance and peaceful presence. The man stopped and asked, "My friend, what are you? Are you a celestial being or a god?"

"No," said the Buddha.

"Well, then, are you some kind of magician or wizard?"

Again the Buddha answered, "No."

"Are you a man?" "No."

"Well, my friend, then what are you?"

The Buddha replied, "I am awake"

The Buddha was awake, he was fully conscious to all that is and all that will ever be. He was fully integrated, he did not see himself as separate, well he did not see himself at all.

Now this is not a claim I would or could make about myself. I believe I am more awake these days than I have ever been in the past, but I am very aware of a sense of separation from time to time. That said I am more conscious than I ever was before. There is a simple reason for this I am less self-conscious than I once was. I feel more connected, at one, with all that is, than at any other time in my life. I feel conscious, I feel awake, but I used to be terribly self-consciousness and I suspect that it was this that was the very root cause of so much of that aching loneliness that used to eat away at me. I felt, separate, cut off, alone. How many of us feel like this, it is so much the plague of the modern age.

The other day I was chatting with my mum, it was a wonderful conversation. She was doing most of the talking. This is the case in most of the conversation I have these days. I like it this way. “Now the ears of my ears are awake.”

We got talking about childhood things and what life was like back then. I asked her a question, which I haven’t asked for years about a birth defect I suffered from. She went into detail explaining how when I was born some of the nerve endings at the base of my spine were underdeveloped. It was something akin to spina bifida, but in a less severe form. As a child I had to frequently go for physiotherapy and there was a period when I was not allowed to engage in any sport. I hated the feeling it engendered in me as I looked at the other kids running around in the playground, knowing I wasn’t allowed to join in.

It was a few years later when the pain really hit me though, in my mid to later teens when I was painfully aware of the way I walked. I waddled when I moved, I still do now. When it was my time to be teased at school I would be called "Penguin, cripple, crip, criptic acid and spina bifida." I remember walking down the street of the town I grew up in and whenever I saw someone walking towards me I would stand up straight and attempt to push my feet inwards in the vain hope that they wouldn’t think that there was something wrong with me. I must have looked a right sight.

I was just so terribly self-consciousness. I was just so locked in on what I believed was wrong with me. I’ve been thinking about this over the last few days and do you know what I’m not wholly convinced that the problem was my perceived physical imperfections. I suspect that if I’d been born without this physical difficulty the problem would have manifested in other areas of my life. The problem was the self-consciousness, I was locked in myself and therefore not fully conscious, I was separate and felt alone.

One thing I’ve learnt over the years is that I am not alone in this. So many of us suffer from this from of self-consciouness. We feel lost, lonely and cut off because we are locked in what we believe is wrong with us. Sometimes it is harder to see what is right, than what is wrong. This is a deeply lonely, isolated, way to be.

Socrates said that “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Now while not wishing to argue with the great philosopher I do wonder if the “over examined life” can prove just as worthless. It is so easy to get lost in oneself, wrapped up in our own underwear to such an extent that we do not live at all. We can become so self-conscious that we fail to become conscious of all that is and all that as ever been. It is so easy to become wrapped up in our own perceived needs that we fail to live in the world with others and then complain about feeling lonely. Yes it is important to examine ourselves, to understand who we are and what makes us tick, but that should not be an end in itself, a destination. It is a staging post in the spiritual adventure, but not the final destination.

Some label extreme self-absorption as Narcissism. A word taken from name of a boy of ancient Greek mythology named Narcissus who fell so in love with his own reflection that he fell into the water and drowned. Now I don't believe that it is entirely correct to name the type of self-consciousness I am discussing here as Narcissistic self-love. There seems very little love here at all. Quite the opposite in fact the pre-occupation is with what is wrong. What I'm describing is a deep form of self hatred and or loathing, not love.

When you look at your own reflection in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see someone that you love? Do you see who you really are? While many of us see ourselves warts and all, how many of us see the beauty spots too? The kind of self-absorption that most people I come into contact with suffer from tends to be a deeply ingrained negative type. The preoccupation is often with what is wrong with them, with their shame, rather than how wonderful they are. This is certainly not what Narcissus suffered from.

This kind of self-consciousness can become so consuming that it takes over our every human interactions. I wonder how many of us suffer from the following kind of commentary when we meet up with people. “What will they think of me?” “How do I look?” “If I say something, will they think I’m an idiot?” and then a little later, “He gave me a funny look, he must have thought me a fool. Why on earth did I have to make that stupid remark? Gosh I’m such a freak, they all seem to be staring at me.”

This kind of inner dialogue can be so crippling. It can haunt us from the moment we wake and continue throughout our day, eating away at our every decision. Oh and of course because we doubt ourselves and every decision we make, we assume that everyone else must be doing exactly the same thing. This kind of self-consciousness can be so inhibiting, so much so that it can block us off almost entirely from the world around us. We can become utterly consumed by this kind of self-consciousness, leading to us seeing the world entirely from this point of view. When we do the world does not look like a pretty place at all.

So what can we do about it? How do we wake up to a greater consciousness? How do we break free from this crippling self-consciousness?

In the Gospel accounts Jesus taught his followers that they must lose themselves in order to be found. This beautiful paradox taught that by emptying ourselves of our self-absorption we begin to be filled with the spirit of neighbourliness. So that when we look deeply into the still waters we are not drawn in by narcissistic self-consciousness and loathing at our own reflection, but rather into a deeper contemplation of our shared lives. We become conscious of all that is, all that has been and all that will ever be. By opening ourselves to and for others we begin to shed that debilitating skin of self-consciousness that it is so easy to become imprisoned in.

Gandhi said “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in service of others”

The Buddha talked of Nirvana, of being freed from the suffering that was the blight of humanity. He showed that we all suffered and that it was in seeing our suffering as individual that led to this sense of separation. He suggested that we needed to break through our suffering not only to serve others but to reach a higher state of being, true consciousness, to be awake.

Now please don’t get me wrong I am not suggesting that we neglect ourselves and that we do not need to understand how we tick. All I am saying is that we must not get stuck there, we must not get lost there and we must not see this as a destination, more a staging post on the journey. The adolescent stage I suspect. Sadly for many folk, me included, this adolescent stage often goes on well into adulthood.

So how do we move from self-consciouness to consciousness. How do we lose ourselves so that we can be found? Well Forrest Church in his wonderful book “Lifecraft” offered three simple suggestions, which he called the three “E’s”, “empathy”, “ecstasy” and “enthusiasm”. The key he claimed could be found in the literal understanding of these words. “Empathy”, to suffer or feel with another; “Ecstasy”, to stand outside ourselves; “Enthusiasm”, to manifest the god (theos) within us.

Empathy is a deep felt compassion. When we open our hearts empathically to another we are courageously refusing to allow self-consciousness to stand in the way of a higher consciousness that comes into being as we feel what another is going through. In so doing we serve both ourselves and the other person, as well as that higher consciousness beyond our singular selves.

Ecstasy is one of those words that has often been misunderstood as some kind of hedonistic state and therefore self- indulgent, it is far from this. In its truest sense what it actually does is take us out of ourselves and lifts us beyond our self created confines. In so doing we transcend our self-consciousness and enter a realm in which purpose begins to emerge and meaning is found.

Enthusiasm means to be filled with spirit, with holy energy. Enthusiasm allows us to be fully involved and engaged in whatever it is we are doing. It allows us to see beyond the confines we have created. Forrest himself states, drawing on the imagery of Narcissus, that “Here, once again, consciousness displaces self-consciousness. We escape from our mirrored room. Its mirrors turn into windows. Or the pond grows so still that we can see beyond our own reflection to the trees and clouds and birds and sun. There is, by the way, no higher form of spiritual practice. When we step out of our own shadow, consciousness replaces self-consciousness.”

Experience has revealed to me that in so doing we are set free to walk with others in our own faltering ways. Instead of being lost in what we believe is wrong with us we are set free to do what we can in this our shared world and in so doing we encourage others to do the same, as perfectly imperfect children of God, children of Love.

As I understand it the whole purpose of the spiritual life is to develop a deepening sense of connection. We all have our troubles and our worries either within ourselves, those around us or the wider world. We need to see them for what they are, we need to acknowledge the truth, but we must not get stuck there, for that will paralyse us and stop us doing what we can. We cannot change the way the world is but that need not prevent us from doing what we can do and in doing so we will grow spiritually as we become integrated into all that has been, all that exists and all that will ever.

As a kind of conclusion I’d like to end this little chip of a blog with one final thought, inspired by some wisdom that Forrest Church shared right at the end of his life.

So much of modern spiritually gets it wrong because it is seeking the wrong thing. There is so much talk of finding ourselves, when in actual fact what we ought to be doing is losing ourselves. What we ought to be striving for is integration and to let go of those aspects within ourselves that block this. We all ask the question “Who am I?” when really we ought to asking is “How am I doing? And if we are still feeling utterly dis-connected we need to ask why? And how can I integrate once again? You see if we can begin to integrate with all that is, all that has been and all that has ever been we begin to truly cohere. In doing so we transcend our self-consciousness and become conscious. We become spiritually mature. We become like the Buddha, awake.

So how conscious are you today? Are you truly awake?

Empathy: by breath, by blood, by body, by spirit we are all one

During my recent trip to Transylvania I enjoyed many moments of genuine connection; when my heart and mind connected with the people I met; people who offered me genuine love and hospitality. Perhaps the greatest gift of the whole trip occurred in a cold, dark, broken down building in the village of Icland. Here I was invited to participate in a religious education class, with half a dozen adults and two teenage girls. Now of course it was difficult to understand what was being said and to participate as the class was taken in Hungarian. That said the minister Anna Maria translated the conversation from Hungarian into English and vice versa. We talked about keeping faith in difficult times, learning to let go of what is out of our control and do what we can in areas that we can. Something I am sure all human beings can relate to. During the conversation the “Serenity Prayer” came to mind “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference”

The whole world is going through a difficult time at the moment. Things are hard enough here in England, but they are even harder in less developed and more economically disadvantaged countries such as Romania. The trip has shown to me, just how fortunate I am to have been born and brought up in England, at least with regard to material wealth.

I connected deeply with the people I met, in that religious education class; I will probably never meet them again. I empathised; I felt what they were feeling. Life is an uncertain experience for all of us and we all worry about those we love and care for. One woman, Elizabeth has been haunting me ever since, her face is etched deep into my soul. I can picture her now as she spoke of her struggles to accept the uncertainty of the current situation, but also as she spoke of her faith and of course her struggles with that too. I am sure we can all relate to this, especially when life is not seemingly going the way we would like it to.

I, like most people I suspect, find it difficult to be with people who seem utterly absorbed by their pain. This is especially true the closer I am to a person. I recently spent time with someone I profess to love dearly, someone I have known all my life, who has been struggling. I found it difficult being in their company as there really was not much that I could do to help. Well actually there was an awful lot I could do; I just needed to sit with them and listen. To feel their pain and to know their pain, without getting swallowed up in it. The problem was that I kept being asked what they needed to do to get out the situation they had found themselves, what tips I had to offer. The truth is of course that there is no magic wand, or at least I’ve not found one as of yet. For me the solution is always to surrender to what is and to slowly build from there. The road to wholeness and fulfilment is a slow steady walk. a trudge; there is no short cut or magic carpet, not in my experience. Yes there are moments of sudden revelation and even grace, but they usually come after the hardest of times.

It is never easy to see others in pain, I believe it is even harder if it is someone close to you. Karen Armstrong in “12 Steps to a Compassionate Life” “Step 4 “Empathy” says that “The Tibetans call this quality shen dug ngal wa la mi so pa, which means ‘the inability to bear the sight of another’s sorrow.”

To live more compassionately we need to learn to bear the sight of another’s sorrow. She says that “The suffering we have experienced in our own life can help us to appreciate the depths of other people’s unhappiness.” She gives several examples where the great sages of human history were able to look into their own experiences of suffering in order to help the people of their time and place.

She states “The dynamic of the Golden Rule is beautifully expressed in an early Surah of the Qur’an in which God (referring to himself in the third person) asks Muhammad to remember the sorrows of his childhood – he had been orphaned as a small child, parcelled out to relatives , and for years  was a marginalised  member of his family and tribe – and to make sure that nobody else  in his community  would endure this deprivation.”

She highlights the example of Gandhi, who much like the Buddha before him was born into privilege; he only became aware of the plight of Indians in South Africa after being thrown off a train, for sitting in carriage reserved only for white people. Within a week he had summoned all the Indians to a meeting in Pretoria and began a lifetime’s campaign of non-violent opposition to oppression.

Our own pain can indeed become an education in empathy. 12 step fellowships such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) talk about the former sufferer’s past being their greatest asset. Those who have recovered can help the sufferer who is seeking a way out. They can truly empathise with their plight; they understand the illness of addiction in a way that none sufferers cannot and can therefore offer true hope to the seemingly hopeless one. One of the promises of the AA program is “We do not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it”. Their painful pasts can be brought to good use in carrying a message of hope to those who still suffer.


Empathy is at the centre of Albert Schweitzer’s concept of “Reverence for Life”, which he extended beyond the confines of humanity to incorporate all living things. He stated:

 "Reverence for Life” gives us something more profound and mightier than the idea of humanism. It includes all living beings. We reject the idea that man is 'Master' of other creatures, 'Lord' above all others. We must realize that all life is valuable and that we are united to all life. By ethical conduct toward all creatures, we enter into a spiritual relationship with the Universe."

Schweitzer's "spiritual relationship with the Universe" grew from his understanding that religion balanced the spiritual with the practical. For him “Faith without works” was indeed dead. True religion demanded the kind of ethical activity that Jesus called for in the Sermon on the Mount. He was critical of the church for failing to follow Christ’s "great commandment of love and mercy”. He believed that whatever path we choose compassion and concern for all living things must be incorporated into that service; that “Reverence for Life” leaves no breeding ground for cruelty; that it is a "boundless ethic" which includes all beings regardless of race, religion, or species.

Karen Armstrong highlights the importance of art and creativity in helping us to enter into the lives of others, to know their pain. In the 21^st century cinema seems to have the ability to help us empathise with the plight of people we normally would never consider. It opens our hearts in a way that a news item could perhaps never do. This is because we begin to empathise with the characters involved we feel with our emotions what they are experiencing. This is because we share a common humanity, a common life, we are made from the same stuff. She says “The big screen can bring us close to the characters; we can find ourselves moved to tears, our mirror neurons firing as we witness their pain, even though our rational minds tell us that their suffering is entirely fictional.” The Ancient Greeks understood this and portrayed it in their epic plays; Shakespeare understood this too as have most creative’s, throughout human history, who have brought a deeper understanding to us all. They have helped us walk in one another’s shoes. The point is to see another’s pain as also being our own. After all we are all made of the same stuff.

Of course this begs the question, how do we bring this about?

Well Armstrong offers a meditative practise as a starting point. It begins by imagining Confucius’ “Concentric Circles of Compassion”, beginning within ourselves and then moving out in ever widening circles until it touches the whole world.

The meditation suggests that we turn our attention to three individuals that we know. The three being an acquaintance we are not too closely connected to, someone we hold dear to our hearts and finally someone to whom we bear a grudge or hold resentment against. She suggests that we bring each one to our mind, to picture them and to name them. To bring to mind their good points; to look into their hearts and see their pain and to desire for each of them to be free of their pain and finally to resolve to help them in any way that we can; to wish for them whatever it is we desire for ourselves; to live by the Golden Rule. The purpose of the meditation is to develop upeksha ‘equanimity, which will allow us to relate to people with equanimity. Of course this is difficult to practice, but if stuck with, over a period of time, results are sure to follow.

Through developing empathy we will truly be able to practise compassion in our daily lives. Practise does indeed make perfect. Opera singers have to train for years, as do dancers and even ministers for that matter, doctors are not made overnight and neither are decent spin bowlers. All these crafts take time, dedication and consistent effort. It is worth it though.

Through the practise of empathy and compassion we can live truly connected lives and we will no longer feel that sense of separation and aloneness that so many people in the materially rich west seem to suffer from. Through practise we can grow into what Schweitzer described as a "spiritual relationship with the Universe" and we will develop reverence for all life, including our own.

I will never forget that conversation we shared in the village of Icland, in that run down house in the Transylvanian countryside. I will never forget Elizabeth’s face. She is permanently etched onto my soul...I felt with her and she helped bring down some barriers that were around me...and helped me to glimpse that something in the corner of all our lives, that we cannot quite see.

Karen Armstrong being interviewed about "12 Steps to a Compassionate Life"