Empathy doesn’t serve you. Or your friend. (Photo by Sydney Sims)
Empathy is never your friend. Not if you’re wanting to have your dream life, including a loving relationship with your dream partner.
Society heralds being empathetic as something positive. Empathy, we are told, is the ability to feel and understand the feelings of another. Sounds harmless enough. It may even be beneficial to our friends and loved ones to be empathetic. Especially when they’re feeling sad.
But is it really?
When you’re feeling what another is feeling, you’re giving control of your life to another person. If that person is feeling negative, now both of you are inviting more experiences of the kind that had your friend feel negative emotion in the first place. That’s not helpful. For either of you.
Why?
Because all that you want, including another person feeling better, is only available to you when you are in a happy place, appreciating all that life is giving you and enjoying the process of your own becoming. When you focus on another person’s negative condition, and because of that, you match their negative feeling experience, you are closing yourself off from your ability to receive what you’re wanting. That’s why you feel bad when you do that.
Your friend feels better, yes. That’s because he or she has cut herself off from his or her power by focusing on the negative aspects of a situation. So when you join them in that perspective, of course they’re going to feel better. You’re the only friend they have at that moment. They’re using you to fill the void they created by cutting themselves off from their higher self. So now you both are cut off and the only company you have is each other, both of whom are powerless.
It’s far better to relate to your friend from your only place of power: your connection with yourself. You know you’re connected with yourself when you feel good. Period. When you hold your own happiness firmly in the face of your friend who is struggling, you have a better chance of lifting them to where you are. And feeling happy is always better-feeling than any negative emotion.
If you want to have empathy, then empathize with your friends positive perspectives, even if they’re absent right now. Remind them how great they are, how great life is, how this immediate situation that has them feeling negative is temporary. This is the best medicine. For everyone.
A few transwomen (and, admittedly, a couple trans attracted men) read our material or check out our videos, then claim that we advocate the “silly” idea that if you just think happy thoughts, you’ll have a better life. Or if you meditate you’ll “get everything you want”.
We don’t say that.
Well, we do, but that’s a kind of shorthand describing a much more detailed process through which you already are, right now, creating the reality you’re experiencing. What we do advocate is a process which involves examining the stories you tell about your world, your “reality”. Then, after examining those stories, we advocate using a deliberate, conscious process that leads to new stories. These new stories are part of a larger process we describe more deeply in our material, a process that does actually get you everything you’re wanting: more money, that lover you want, that fulfilling and enjoyable work you wish you had, a safe place to live…whatever.
But we can’t go through the entire process in every one of our shows. That would be too repetitive and b-o-r-i-n-g.
Instead, we use a shorthand. That’s why we harp on “telling positive stories”.
Photo by Tom Barrett on Unsplash
Here’s a summary of the process. Again, it’s not as simple as this, that’s why it’s called a summary. Following this process will, guaranteed, produce a life where you have everything you’re wanting. No exceptions.
Let’s say you’re wanting to become a doctor. You create your reality. So to create the reality in which you are a doctor, here are the steps we recommend (and stand behind as guaranteed to work):
You must realize you are creating the realty you experience. For many, this is the most difficult step.
You must realize the creative momentum you have created up to this point. This momentum is creatively expressed as the life you currently have, warts and all. That creative momentum is strong and going against it, while possible, is going to take a while, just as it took a while to get where you’re at. So….
You must then start changing the stories (beliefs) you have about the reality you currently have. The primary story needing changing is that you think the world just “happens to you” out of some random, uncontrollable set of criteria such as your race, location, politics etc (see step one). Another primary story might be that you think things can not ever change. That story sounds like this: “Life sucks”, “Men are always…”, “Transwomen are always treated…” “Transwomen are all….”…
You must understand the nature of “momentum” (what it is and how it works) and begin creating momentum in the direction of where you’re wanting to go ( in our example, becoming a doctor).
Then you must begin telling stories about why you want to become a doctor, stories that create certain emotional responses within you. This emotional response is your first indicator that you have begun changing your reality. Meditation is certainly part of the process because, for most people, the mind is unruly and seemingly random in its thinking. It must be reined in to serve the deliberate creative process instead of creating willy-nilly or seemingly randomly.
Point five is a major milestone, known as the “Be” of the “Be, Do, Have” process resulting in becoming a doctor.
You must then continue telling such stories and having these certain emotional responses while training yourself to become sensitive to your inner being’s guidance through quieting your mental activity (meditation). As you become more sensitive, you will begin noticing you are receiving impulses to think certain thoughts and take certain actions. One, thought, for example might be “what is required to become a doctor?” You might then be inspired to go to the library or get on the internet and start researching. This is the “do” part of the process. You are being guided by your inner being to have thoughts (stories) and actions (manifested reality) that accord with “doing” what doctors do.
Over time, supposing you are consistent in the seven steps above, you MUST wind up in the “have” part of the “Be, Do, Have” process where you have, in actuality, your actual, real life, become a doctor.
That’s it. There is nothing magical to the process. It is not about daydreaming or telling yourself untrue stories. There’s a lot more to it than these eight steps because one must get clear on an accurate nature of “reality” and where it comes from for this process to really work, but that’s essentially it.
And it works.
Every time.
It is even working for you right now, although in a probably indirect, in-deliberate way. For many people, that’s why they have a life that is less than fulfilling. It’s not because of fate, or the circumstances, being born in the wrong place or even being trans or transattracted. It’s simply because people aren’t deliberately creating the life they can have. So they get the one they got.
That’s why we say everyone can have the life they want. It begins with telling positive stories. When are you going to get started?
We’re not sure the latest murder of a transwoman, the first of 2018, should be considered a hate crime and thus included among the epidemic of murders over the last few years.
Instead, we see it as domestic violence. For the spouse of this locally famous transwoman murdered her, not in a fit of shameful hate-filled rage that accompanies a true hate crime, but instead in a fit of out-of-mindness, similar to any other crime of passion.
We’re not taking anything away from the tragedy, or from the fact that another transwoman was murdered. What we are saying is circumstances surrounding this one seem to be quite a departure from recent trends.
According to police (as reported in the New York Post), her husband, Mark Steele-Knudslien, pleaded not guilty to murder after admitting hitting her with a hammer and stabbing her after an argument. Not a hate crime. A case of domestic violence. Admitted.
Sad, but not something out of the ordinary: women are murdered by men in similar contexts far too often. Transwomen are women. So it shouldn’t be a surprise something like this happened.
We are eager for the day when it is a surprise. For as we said, it happens far too often. But this tragic incident should not be included among the real travesties of justice.
A transgender person has coined both a new term and new identity: tranimal.
The article describing the writer’s identity made it into the peer reviewed journal on theoretical humanity called Angelaki. Essentially, the author, a transperson, identifies as a hippopotamus.
Fascinating. I’m not even going to try to get the pronouns right. I honestly can’t make them out. The basics in the author’s own words:
“It was, in fact, the main way through which I had learned to deal with what was broadly considered to be my “trans identity,” a term that always felt uncomfortable and irrelevant. For a while, if someone was asking me how I “identified,” I would joke about being a hippopotamus trapped in a human’s body – later, a human trapped in a hippopotamus’ body, until my humorous “truth” solidified and I began announcing myself as an old butch hippo dyke trapped in a young human faggy transboy’s body (it may sound better in French)…”
“…In a surprising, sometimes overwhelming way I find comfort in this collectively performed animal identity. Let me put it this way: something about being a hippo makes me feel cute, confident, sexy, and safe. I discovered that another self was available for me: being a hippo means that I don’t have to be a boy or a girl, a child or an adult, normal or strange. It means that my smile becomes a hippo smile, and the way that I carry my body, a hippo walk. It brings me freedom, space, and a thrilling sense of possibility. Where does this transformative power come from? How does a word, how does an image disrupt “reality” to the point that my body’s relationship to space is somewhat altered?…”
What I find so intriguing about this, especially as it relates to trans-ness and trans-attraction, is how much freedom humanity is aggressively taking in expressing itself in as many diverse ways as possible. I don’t know if humanity has always done this, but there seems perhaps to be a golden age to identity that is blowing to smithereens, nearly every convention of what it means to be human.
Another fascinating trend is being “Tell me I’m fat”. This American Life featured two weeks ago a show about women who are claiming being fat as an authentic identity, not something that should be shamed or be embarrassed about. The podcast episode is deeply satisfying…if you can accept the possibility that All That Is is getting serious about diversity, tolerance, and acceptance. Here’s a transcript excerpt. In case you haven’t heard the show, Ira is the host. Lindy is a fat guest.
“Ira Glass
Coming out as fat is a strange idea, because, of course, people can see if you’re fat. It’s no secret. It’s not like when you come out as gay or transgender. Nobody says to you, dude, I can’t believe you’re fat. Lindy says it was obvious how big she was.
Lindy West
But I always felt like if I didn’t mention it that maybe people wouldn’t notice. Or it could just be this sort of polite secret, like, open secret that we didn’t address, because it felt so shameful. It just felt impolite to talk about, like me not wanting to burden you with my failure.
Ira Glass
Like, I’m not going to bother you with this.
Lindy West
Yeah, and just give me a little more time. Let’s not talk about it, and I promise I’ll fix it.
Ira Glass
That’s key, she says. As long as you’re a fat person who’s trying not to be fat, that’s acceptable. That’s a good fat person. You don’t totally admit to yourself you’re fat, because, well–
Lindy West
The way that we are taught to think about fatness is that fat is not a permanent state. You’re just a thin person who’s failing consistently for your whole life.
[LAUGHTER]
So to actually say, OK, I am fat– and I have been as long as I can remember, so I don’t know why I live in this imaginary future where I, you know, someday I’m going to be thin.”
Those angry about increasing visibility of transgender people need to “get over it.”
Those aren’t my words. Although I agree with them. They are Robin Hammond’s Words. Who’s Robin Hammond? He’s the guy who took the National Geographic cover photo of transgender girl Avery Jackson. Though the issue hasn’t been published yet, National Geographic is being both hailed and hated for it.
It’s just another step in the eventual full embrace of transgender people worldwide.
I’ve seen a lot of responses to this photo. Which is beautiful by the way. Avery’s quote is so perfect. Since we focus on positive aspects the Transamorous Network, I’m not going to recount negative comments people and organizations have made about it. Instead, I’m going to quote Hammond’s reaction to them, which I think is gold:
“[Some people are] likely scared of change,” He said. “They saw a world where [being trans] didn’t exist and now they see it as a new thing. It’s sad for them because it leaves them closed off to people who are different to them.”
“The best thing about being a girl is now I don’t have to pretend to be a boy.”
– Avery Jackson
If you’re interested in reading more about Hammond and his remarks, you can read this article. Here’s National Geographic’s explanation for their exceptional cover.
A transgender person has coined both a new term and new identity: tranimal.
Those angry about increasing visibility of transgender people need to “get over it.”