Egotistical?

I was thinking about empathy and was suddenly surprised I had not considered something before: That the development of this capacity to generate feelings spawned by another person's experience and not our own - should hardly be surprising; that this capacity and the capacity to appreciate our own experience may in fact be nearly - or else exactly - the same thing.

Identity is a strange thing and largely warped from illusion. I must wonder if feeling something for our own self is (at least for empaths) in fact just empathy - because a human being is not a solitary party. The conscious and extinctive minds are not the same thing and are (I'm inclined to say "in fact") so obviously separate that they must communicate (or more likely eavesdrop) in dreams. 

We do know for fact that the brain is a collection of agencies which lack a stable hierarchy. They have to send communications back and forth.

I know that when I feel strong emotions (good, bad or neither precisely) in regards to my own experience it feels very much like an empathetic experience because I rarely feel much liability if any. It's merely the context which moves me.

I mentioned this to the Eloquent Potter - that I wondered if empathy and attached feelings were in essence the same thing and he seemed to agree. He claimed that empathy was in fact egotistical in nature. I see the point. Common empaths are not psychics. We don't actually feel another's feelings. We feel our own but which are stimulated by the ponderance of another's experience as we interpret it, no matter how close or far we are from the mark.

"Egotistical" sounds like a harsh criticism when I think of some empaths. One dear friend who identifies as such seems never to look down on those she empathizes with but in fact seems to suffer for her gift often more than the actual sufferer does. In fact there are infrequent occasions where I will withhold from her my own unfortunate experience because I feel certain she will hurt for it much more than I am! I'm talking about Dog Whisperer and I freely name her because credit is due. I know she is sincere in her empathetic offerings. She regularly handles her own suffering as well as that of others with generous grace and aplomb. There's a good soul in that woman and I hope she knows it.

Ganges Delta Blues

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