©2004 Athene Bitting All Rights Reserved
CXVI
Requirement for 3DI:
Empathy
The Reason for Karma
Lecture based Questions:
1. Draw or describe a reminder or symbol of one of your helpers.
Who has perfect empathy? Angels do! This would be a great opportunity to remember one of your angels. Even though they might set up "educational" situations that aren't fun, they are still feeling your confusion, pain, and remorse. In wisdom and compassion, they still do what we need for character development. Thank you, angels!
2. Why is Empathy Important?
Empathy is the key to understanding all forms of life—how life exists biologically, what motivates life spiritually and instinctively, and what makes each life form distinctive from the other. In clairvoyance, empathy is required in all types of perception. That connection is what creates a telepathic bond, makes Astral travel possible, and finds lost objects. When we reach the 7DI, empathy becomes a pathway to creating life and planning evolutionary directions for the life forms in our care.
At our level of spiritual progress, empathy is at its most basic grade. It merely seems to be a way of reaching out to other people (human or otherwise). It can also seem to be the understanding of what others are thinking. At the Soul Dimension (sixth dimension) empathy is much more than this and wields powerful forces of energies and influences. It is called The Great Governor, because it creates in a person a natural sense of goodness and rightness. It is also called the Progenitor of Wisdom, as it sets the stage for many of the virtues.
3. How is Empathy connected to the Law of Karma?
One could say that the single reason for karmic law to exist is to teach Empathy. It does so by creating a variety of experiences tailor made to the individual to finish off the shortcomings that the person expresses.
As an obvious example, let us consider the interaction of murder. If I murdered someone, there would be many nuances at play. The victim typically would experience terror, shock, pain, victim consciousness, trauma, violation, sadness, death resistance, and then the post mortem emotions of outrage, vengefulness, sorrow, need, and obsession. As the murderer, I would have set in motion certain energetic mechanisms that guarantee my future to include a similar circumstance. This is so that I may fully understand what I did not know before. If I were to comprehend what it felt like to be murdered, I would not do it. It doesn’t feel good. If I already could dynamically grasp what being murdered meant, my ability to understand it would be ingrained with my character, and I would not need to experience it physically. Usually, young souls experience unwelcome death or murder several times before the understanding of it sets in.
As a footnote, you who read this have already committed human murder during your younger spiritual incarnations [excepting nature spirits in the body for the first time who have not had the opportunity]. When we are inexperienced we lash out without thinking of the consequences. A few tit-for-tat death ordeals eventually educate us to think twice before acting with violence. By the 1DI, some people can no longer imagine themselves committing such an act, although they already have.
The universe does not discriminate between human life or insect life or bacterial life. The main difference between human life and bacterial life is that a human body is a colony of millions of single cell lives with the additional expressions of the Astral and Mental bodies of the human spirit. A multi-celled organism such as a mammal, reptile, or insect has all the varieties of emotion that a human does.
This said, we can translate the obvious example of wrongdoing by murder into other more subtle forms of insensitive expression. Anytime we think of a person as being “other” or separate from ourselves, we commit ourselves to walking in that person’s shoes. Anytime we say “I don’t understand how __________ can do that,” we have committed ourselves to future identical circumstances so that we will understand.
Simply put, to experience is to know and to know is to understand and to understand is to feel empathy for anyone in that same situation. This is the reflex mechanism of karmic law. You can call it the knee-jerk system of enlightenment. There are other paths to the same end, but this is the karmic way to learn empathy.
By the way, karma is only paid off during physical incarnation. We must therefore incarnate repeatedly until all personal karma is expunged from our negative energy account. This marks the beginning of the 3DI. There are other facets to karmic motion, such as pay-as-you-go suffering for Initiates at 3DI level and beyond, but we discuss them elsewhere.
4. How do I learn Empathy outside of the Karmic System?
Pray for enlightenment without suffering whenever you feel separate from another person. Your clues in this regard would be when you feel irritated, critical, baffled, uncomfortable, fearful, angry, superior, or indignant. Those are the moments when you must pray for your understanding without karmic experience. Otherwise you would already have set the machine in motion for life ordeal.
We live in an era where there are many opportunities to exercise empathy without real suffering by anyone involved. Fiction in books, movies, and TV afford the viewer moments of imagination that put one in situations of choices and circumstance that are beyond his/her normal experience. Recognize the positive possibilities offered here. You can use these scenarios to integrate the moral dilemmas of fictional characters into your own repertoire of personal knowledge.
5. What is Perfect Empathy?
There are several levels of enlightenment about empathy. It is the skillful ability to completely share the experience of anyone. Although relative Perfect Empathy is required for the 3DI, there are still levels of empathy mastery that can still be acquired afterward. Absolute Perfect Empathy is a highly enlightened state, and we are not expected to master it absolutely until the 5DI. This includes awareness at the cellular, body (somatic), emotional, and mental levels. At that level, a Master can communicate perfectly with a physical body and regenerate life.
6. What level of Empathy is available to me at my spiritual stage?
One situation at a time, view each interaction in your life as an opportunity to gain insight into the vast Network of Light to which you belong. Get behind a person’s eyes to share her/his point of view. Phase yourself into the cellular and somatic feelings so that you can glimpse the health, sensation, and motivation of someone’s body.
Everyone is crying out to be more understood. Everyone is inviting you to learn more about his/her unique world. One of the greatest services that you can render to another life is to reach out and participate in the loving companionship of our collective ocean of life. We feel less isolated when someone takes the time to observe us, remember our preferences, and share experiences with us.
7. Meditation Exercise: A Moment of Zen Yen
•Sit comfortably so that your body does not distract you. Leave all worries and fears in a bag on the floor.
•Close your eyes and breath deeply and slowly. Feel the cool air filling your lungs as you breathe in and out. Be aware of your skin against your clothing and the air of the room. Feel your shoulders marking the boundary of your somatic size.
•From your shoulders, increase your somatic awareness outward to the person on either side of you. If you are alone in the house, this person can be an animal or a neighbor. This would necessitate that you expand your somatic awareness for some distance. Make sure that your worries and fears are in that bag on the floor.
•Not needing to get inside of these persons next to you, simply be aware of your shoulders conjoining their shoulders. Savor the essence of their companionship. Note the sparks of blessings that emit from your contact.
***