Empathy

 

 

Empathy is one of those words thrown around in college dorms. In bars. In private moments. It literally means “in feeling,” and is the ability to share another person’s emotions and feelings. The English word is derived from the Greek word empatheia (“physical affection, passion, partiality”) which comes from en (“in, at”) + pathos (“feeling”).

“Empathy occurs when we suspend our single-minded focus of attention and instead adopt a double -minded focus of attention,” writes Simon Baron-Cohen in The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty.

According to Baron-Cohen, single-minded means what it sounds like: we’re thinking only about ourselves and our own thoughts, our own minds. Double-minded attention “means we are keeping in mind someone else’s mind at the very same time.”

The author writes about how when he was seven, his father told him that the Nazis turned Jews into lampshades. Into bars of soap. His father also told him “about a former girlfriends, Ruth Goldblatt, a whose mother had survived a concentration camp. He had been introduced tlo the mother and was shocked to discover that her hands were reversed. Nazi scientists had severed Mfrs. Goldblatt’s hands, switched them around, and sewn them back on again.”

Imagine that. It meant that when she put her hands out, palms facing down, her thumbs were on the outside and her little fingers were on the inside.

These horrific incidents are glaring examples of zero empathy, which Baron-Cohen theorizes may be the origin of cruelty. Nazis saw Jews as objects. The neighbor who keeps his dog on a six-foot leash outside as a hurricane approaches, sees the animal as an object, no different than a clothesline, a car, a nail.

In contrast, you see a stray kitten or dog, thin and limping around in your neighborhood, and you’re compelled to take it in, feed it, maybe even adopt it.

A friend is going through a divorce or has just lost someone close to them. You help however you can.

An empathic person feels what you feel.

And it’s this quality that seems to be missing from American culture as in 2023. How do we fix this?

In retrospect, it seems that trump tapped into the dark side of the American psyche. Suddenly, it was okay to be racist, to look at people of other cultures as invaders, enemies to be reckoned with. Suddenly, it was okay to be in a store, any kind of store, and get pissed about something and tell the clerk to fuck off. Suddenly, it was okay to be on a flight and give the flight attendant shit about something and punch her in the mouth.

During the pandemic, there were triggers – mask and vaccine mandates, Covid and all the conspiracy theories.

Trump is the classic individual without empathy. Everything was about him. It still is. For nearly two years now, his litany about a stolen election continues. Recently, he stated the constitution has to be dismantled.

Twice a month, we post an episode of The Mystical Underground on Whitley Strieber’s Dreamland. One of the recent episodes was of Trish reading the introduction of our newest book The Shift: Reports from the Mystical Underground. In the intro, we introduce the concept that we – humanity – are in the midst of a paradigm shift. A commenter left this:

“At the risk of being labeled here, democracy is at risk when citizens will be fired from their jobs or discharged from the military if they don’t get vaccinated. In the end, more people died that were vaccinated than were not; young males who didn’t really need the vaccination have developed myocarditis. The pandemic was about control and they, the powers that be, want you to know that.”

Our reply?

We’d love to see the statistics you have on this. In other words, what are your sources? Newsmax? Truth social? Fox News?

Silence on the other end.

Google it. We did. Here’s one article we found.

 

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The Mystical Underground: Jude Currivan: A Whole World View

A new episode of The Mystical Underground is live! “Jude Currivan: A Whole World View”:

Join Trish and Rob for a conversation with…

Jude Currivan, Ph.D., is a cosmologist, futurist, planetary healer, member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle, and previously one of the most senior businesswomen in the UK. She has a master’s degree in physics from Oxford University and a doctorate in archaeology from the University of Reading. She has traveled extensively, worked with wisdom keepers from many traditions and is a lifelong researcher into the nature of reality. She is the author of 6 books, including The Cosmic Hologram, and is co-founder of WholeWorld-View.

https://www.wholeworld-view.org
http://www.judecurrivan.com

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Our Animal Buddies

 

 

 

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve heard from several friends whose pets have died or are about to die. Any of us who have pets – cats, dogs, guinea pigs, turtles, whatever they are – eventually reach the point where the animal buddy is dying or dies and our hearts break.

There’s something profound about spending 10 or 15 years with an animal buddy – or several – that changes your life. It’s different with each animal. For us, it’s been Golden Retrievers, cats, and a Dusky Conure. The Goldens have all been special.

The first Golden, Jessie, was a gorgeous red dog who had flunked out of training to sniff out drugs in high school lockers, a job she clearly didn’t want, so we adopted her We had her for 10 fantastic years.

During that time we also had Kali a Dusky Conure who enjoyed interacting with the dogs, the cats, the humans. She used to spend her days outdoors, her cage under a tree, the door open so that she could climb out and enjoy the real outdoors. Rob taught her to ride on Jessie’s back to the treat area. He would then give her a dog treat that she dropped into Jessie’s mouth.

She died in the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma, a month after my dad died.

At the time, we also had 3 cats – our black and white boy, Whiskers; our girl Fox; and our other girl, Powder, a pure white. Kali charmed the three of them. I think there’s some sort of telepathy that occurs among different species of pets, an agreement to learn from each other, respect each other. The night we knew that Jessie was on her way out, Powder curled up next to her, slept with her, and seemed to offer comfort.

The day that I knew Powder was dying, she had 3 dogs around her – Nika, Noah and Nigel. I was sitting on the porch with the cat and dogs and went inside to get some water. When I came back they were all gone. I went outside and found a hole at the side of the house that the dogs had dug and that Powder had crept into. I brought her back onto the porch and the dogs followed. A few hours later when she died, I realized the dogs had dug the hole for her, Powder’s burial site. And that’s where I buried her.

Our backyard is a pet cemetery, but not in the Stephen King mode. Kali is also buried somewhere out there with Powder, with Fox, a cat we’d had since Megan’s birth, our beautiful orange cat Simba, and our feisty boy, the black and white cat, Whiskers.

We got Nigel in 2017, when a friend texted me that a couple in Boca were giving up a pair of Golden Retriever pups they’d bought 2 weeks earlier and was I interested? I immediately ran over to the woman’s house and so did my friend Caren Griffin. Nigel and Sunny were running around the woman’s living room. Caren and I waited patiently to see which dog would come to whom.

Nigel crawled into my lap, Sunny crawled into Caren’s lap. The deals were sealed.

I brought Nigel home and Noah took him in and became his mentor. The cats loved him. When Noah was dying two years later, Nigel was literally at his side. Noah made his way to the family room, got onto the couch next to Nigel, rested his head against Nigel’s body, and died.

Nika was living in Orlando with our daughter then, but when she came back here on a visit she spent a lot of time searching the house for Noah. She’d grown up with him after Megan had adopted her in 2011.

He was too big to bury in our yard. He’d been cremated and eventually she realized he was gone and curled up next to Nigel. They’ve been almost inseparable ever since.
With all of these animals, whether they are dead or alive, they are friends, buddies, wise beings whose lives unfold within us, around us.

For the people who have emailed me about losing their pets, I’ve recommended they contact Heather Bristol, an animal communicator we wrote about in our newest book, The Shift, or to Suzanne Cunningham, a Reiki healer, or to Tammy Billups, whose book Animal Wayshowers, lays out her case that animals are the embodiment of 5D Consciousness.

Each of these women is a beacon in the vast sea of humanity who grasp the importance of the matrix we share with our animal friends.

After all, these buddies offer unconditional love. And through their love they offer us insight into their souls – and our own.

Simba

Nika & Piper

Kali

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Mercury retro OVER!

 

Okay, a happy dance!

Today, Mercury retrograde is in your rear view mirror! It ends at 8:12 am ET and  5:12 am PT.  The next one begins April 21 and ends on May 14.

Now make your travel plans, buy that computer you’ve had your eyes on, or that car. In other words, get on with your life!

This one delivered some computer and blog problems, visits to past issues, and a couple of really fun guests on our podcast. It wasn’t all bad. But it wasn’t all good, either. These Mercury retros often hit us with glaring truths about ourselves and others and things we’d like to change in our lives. In doing so they offer us a chance to resolve the past so that we can live in the present and embrace the future.

So between now and April 21, move at the speed of light.

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The Mystical Underground: Tammy Billups – Animal Wayshowers

A new episode of The Mystical Underground is live! “Tammy Billups – Animal Wayshowers”:

Join Trish and Rob for a conversation with…

Tammy Billups is an international holistic healing practitioner, global educator, and pioneer in the animal-human sacred soul partnership. The creator of animal-human Tandem Healings, she has been a Certified Interface Therapist (Bioenergetics) for over two decades. The author of Animal Wayshowers, Animal Soul Contracts, and Soul Healing with Our Animal Companions.

https://www.tammybillups.com/

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What one woman learned from long Covid

Suzanne Cunningham is a Reiki healer woith whom I connected when she sent me an email about a message she’d picked up from a deceased man. That story is in the October 5 post.   We didn’t know much of anything about Reiki and had never had a Reiki healer on the podcast, so we invited her to come on the podcast. Her episode will be released  on October 9. During our emails exchanges, she said that she had long Covid.  We hear a lot about this but I asked Suzanne to explain what it has been like for her.

FROM SUZANNE:

I ended up getting Covid in the middle of May. I felt grateful I had received the vaccine because I always questioned if I would survive it. At 62,with Hashimotos and crazy inflammation, I wasn’t as cavalier as I might have been back in my younger years. I’m not afraid of dying but I am afraid of dying without doing what I’ve tasked myself with doing. I think we each have a list and mine only had about half of it checked off.

The weird part was that as I felt Covid moving through my body, I became aware that with it, at least for me, were the emotions I had carried through the pandemic and the emotions of those who didn’t survive moving through me as well.

Regret, sadness, shock, panic, grief, surrender all swam through my energy system as I began the Covid journey. On the third night I felt Covid go into my heart like you feel a cold go into  your nose or a cough settle into your lungs. I just knew it was there although I wasn’t sure what that would mean. I wasn’t ever afraid, but actually relieved to get it over.
As I recovered I did Reiki and the self healing I knew I needed. It helped and I could feel the illness recede.

A month and a half later I found myself laboring, trying to get through each day and really not feeling like myself. I called my husband one afternoon to tell him I was driving myself to the emergency room. He said go home he would be there in 10 minutes and off we went to the hospital which is about 2 minutes from our house.

My blood pressure was sky high and my pulse rate was very low but no signs of a heart attack or blood clot so I gratefully headed home. For the next few weeks I saw our family doctor, rested and tried to figure out the message in the illness.

It didn’t take long before I realized my heart was overcome with grief. I thought back to my fevered knowing that other people’s sadness and pain had come to lay in my body while I was sick. I immediately recognized that the only way to get through it was exactly that, feel the feelings, hold abiding love, forgive myself and all of us for the reactions and judgements we were holding towards ourselves and each other. “There but for the grace of God” was my mindset.

How often had I been wrong, miscalculated and hurt myself and others, misjudged a situation and made irrevocable choices? The questions kept coming and I continued to use Reiki and my commitments to myself, my loved ones and my beloved human family.
We may not ever know the true story, what really happened, how we were visited by a pandemic in a world that feels above such connections to nature.

I focused and continue to focus on what I do know, that holding each other in the light is essential, that seeing the best in each other serves us all, that feeling the love each person deserves to receive is following the truth we all know we should be practicing. The Golden Rule is simple, profound, dignified, hopeful and, if we allow it to, it will bring us home and heal our hearts.

+++

 

 

 

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Trish MacGregor: Sci – Fi Writers

https://soundcloud.com/themysticalunderground/trish-macgregor-sci-fi-writers


Join Trish for a writer’s corner.

Science fiction writers have a long tradition of envisioning the future and its technology that later became scientific facts. Through their creativity, they tune in on the future.

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The Mystical Underground: Rob MacGregor: Jewel In The Lotus: Mindfulness

A new episode of The Mystical Underground is live! “Rob MacGregor: Jewel In The Lotus: Mindfulness”:

Join Rob for a reading from his book “Jewel In the Lotus”…

Many people are recovering from the holidays and are back to work and maybe finding things a bit hectic in their life. So today, Rob will read a chapter on mindfulness from his book JEWEL IN THE LOTUS: Meditation for Busy Minds. The chapter has been slightly altered and updated from the book version.

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The Jan. 6 Global Synchro

One of the ‘secrets’ of synchronicity that we wrote about in The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity was called The Global. It was secret # 7: When synchronicities manifest themselves through global events, the universe seems to be addressing us as a collective.

The chaos over electing a new House speaker came to a head on Jan. 6, two years to the day of an attempted coupe inspired by Trump to stop the vote certifying Joe Biden as president. The turmoil in the House in recent days was led by 20 of the most radical Republican in Congress. These were people who – after the insurrection – went back and voted not to certify Biden. Some of them have been accused of involvement in the planning of the insurrection and could be indicted in coming weeks.

Kevin McCarthy was finally elected as speaker on the 15th vote. It was a good thing that the Republicans finally picked the speaker so Congress could move ahead with the business of government. However, the radical, pro-insurrectionists  actually won the day by gaining numerous concessions from McCarthy – stripping him of most of his powers – so as to gain their votes. Those concessions could make it difficult for McCarthy to have any power as speaker.And it may make it really challenging for anything significant to happen for the next two years.

It’s a sign of problems to come in Washington. And it’s a global synchronicity and an ominous warning that it came on Jan. 6.

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INTERIM MERC RETRO REPORT

 

The year’s first Mercury retrograde, in Capricorn, hasn’t been personally bad. But it has been evident in the inability of the house of representatives to choose a leader.

This actually makes sense. Capricorn is about the government, the powers that be, an earth sign that demands practicality and solutions. And right now with this Merc retro, McCarthy is groveling. The ultra-extreme wing of the party – Marjorie, Lauren, Gaetz and their ilk – are the ones holding up the proceedings, refusing to vote for McCarthy. Until the house can decide on a leader, there isn’t any house. The elected congress people are Congressman and Congresswoman elect.

So chaos reigns supreme in the republican caucus. They don’t have an agenda to get hem from Poingt A to Point B. They don’t have the vehicle.

On a personal level, one of the things I advocate NOT doing during this period is buying anything with moveable parts – computer, car. But when your engine catches fire while you’re on the road because a belt snapped or a compressor failed and you need a car to get around in your daily life, you break that rule.

So today, our daughter, Megan, bought a 2018 VW Touareg, a decade newer than the car that basically blew up. It’s her first car that isn’t a hand-me-down. Mazda paid her $500 for her 2008 Mazda. You know, the one that blew up. I can’t imagine what they’ll do to this car to make it sales worthy for anything except loose parts. But this is one of the reasons we’ve driven Mazdas for the last 20 years. It’s also why Mercury retros are also so weird.

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