empath
Left Holding The Bag
One of my clients recently said, “I’m the one left holding the bag.” Have you ever been ‘left holding the bag?’ This is when you are put in a situation where you are unfairly held responsible, because other people fail or refuse to take responsibility.
The expression “left holding the bag” originated in 18th-century Britain, but at the time it referred to a person being caught with stolen goods, while the rest of their criminal gang escape responsibility.
Many of us are left holding the bag at some point in our life. This is especially true for empaths, healers and highly sensitive people. They are often the scapegoat in their family, or the friend who is taken advantage of, or the coworker who has to pick up the pieces when others neglect their duties.
The solution for this is often found in spiritual self-empowerment, inner child healing, energy shielding, or simply the setting of boundaries. These are challenges I often assist clients with.
A client was about to purchase a bed and breakfast establishment with the support of an investor. When the day came to sign the papers, the investor decided it was just too much to deal with at the time. This left my client ‘holding the bag,’ having to find a new investor.
Another client was abandoned by her siblings when their mother’s mental and physical health suddenly began to deteriorate, and she was left to her own devices having to care for her mom with no assstance or support from the rest of the family.
The Ideal Starting Crystals For Beginners
Crystals and gemstones are a popular resource in modern metaphysical practices, mysticism, and alternative spirituality. It can be used in various powerful ways, including healing, energy protection, meditation, prayer, manifesting, divination, psychic reading, and channeling.
Crystals are versatile and useful in enhancing one’s spiritual practice or energy work, but there are so many to choose from that it can difficult to know where to start.
Three of my favorite crystals that I recommend for beginners to get started with are amethyst, rose quartz and black tourmaline. These three crystals are affordable and easy to find, so they are ideal to start with if you wish to explore using crystals to expand your spiritual practice.
Amethyst
Amethyst is the ideal stone to start with because it has a gentle energy that almost anyone can tolerate without being overwhelmed by its influence. It is a fantastic stone to help you get in touch with your intuition and find your calm center. Amethyst’s calming energy especially enhances meditation and dreamwork.
Amethyst is associated with the crown chakra. It heightens our spiritual and personal awareness, which in turn helps us to self-reflect and evaluate more honestly where we need to make adjustments in our beliefs, behavior, and perspectives. Amethyst thus supports us in maintaining clarity in our self-reflection, which is a vital first step in a spiritual journey of higher consciousness and personal enlightenment.
Simple Energy Work To Balance The Elements
The ancients believed that the Universe is composed of five elements, namely Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit (Ether). These classical elements are an important theme in Ancient Greek, Indian and Japanese philosophy, Hermeticism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Medieval Alchemy and Western Astrology.
The elements are therefore also a key aspect of various ancient healing practices and metaphysical traditions. Traditional Chinese Medicine in particular stresses the important role of the elements in healing. Working with the elements is believed to create and maintain energetic harmony and balance which is essential to good health and holistic well-being.
The classical elements are also a key component in Neo-Pagan, Wiccan and Druid teachings and practices. When casting a protective circle in a ritual, for example, the practitioner traditionally calls the four cardinal directions or ‘the four corners’ (North, East, South and West), along with the corresponding elements for each.
The five elements are essentially energies. Energy can be experienced in different ways, however, when the elements are aligned within us, we tend to be able to better handle imbalance and adversity in the outer world.
The energetic harmony of the elements within us can easily get ‘out of whack’ and become imbalanced or blocked due to everyday life events and circumstances, but with increased self-awareness and a few simple self-care habits, you’d be surprised how easily your natural state of energy balance will come back into alignment.
Anger Release Empowers The Empath
As an empath, I’ve been personally and professionally targeted by others many times in my life. But I am not the only one. These challenges are common among the highly sensitive. Why do sensitives tend to experience so much bullying? I believe we tend to attract it because we are called to support others in balancing their emotions. We are meant to use our gift of empathy to help heal others.
But at times the empath becomes overwhelmed. She is only human and sometimes also needs to vent. Most of all the empath must learn to release anger and other negative emotion she may experience as a result of the injustice, callousness and even cruelty she often tends to suffer.
Unresolved anger is one of the underlying causes for many addictions and dysfunctional behaviors. Anger that leads to a sense of entitlement, and from entitlement comes dissolved hopes and dreams.
If we learn to surrender our egos and release entitlement, then we find the hopes and dreams we’ve lost return to us. Peace is the ultimate foundation of prosperity and well-being. Having peaceful thoughts and kind intentions for everyone invites abundance into our lives.
This doesn’t mean we have to be a ‘doormat’ for others. If we are truly at peace, our higher vibration commands a natural boundary and the Universe fills in the energetic gaps.
For example, while dealing with a difficult person, someone else may come along to interrupt the conversation with some humor. The Universal Spirit naturally intercedes on our behalf once we set good intentions for everyone by releasing our anger and resentment.
Spiritual Self-Care For Clairsentients
We all have access to the four channels of psychic energy and intuition. These include clairvoyance (clear vision), claircognizance (clear thinking), clairaudience (clear hearing) and clairsentience (clear feeling). While everyone has access to each of these channels of inner guidance, one or more of these tend to be stronger for every individual.
Clairsentience is the pathway for receiving divine guidance and spiritual information through feelings and physical sensations. You are probably clairsentient if you often saying, “I feel” or “I sense.” For example, you may say, “I feel it would be a good idea,” or “I sense a bad vibe in this place,” or “I just don’t have a good feeling about that person.”
You may also experience clairsentience as ‘tingles’ on your skin or the back of your neck when your Angels or Guides are near or sending you a message. You probably also get ‘gut feelings’ or ‘hunches’ about things and typically experience the sensations in your solar plexus area.
Some clairsentients also pick up strongly on people and animals’ feelings and emotions. This is an aspect of clairsentience known as being an empath or a sensitive.
No matter how one uniquely experiences clairsentience, it is vital to practice good spiritual self-care. Clairsentients are especially vulnerable to energy influences and can easily get sucked into drama, addiction, and co-dependency – all of which negatively affect your psychic abilities and distract you from your true path.
The Romantic Challenges Of Being An Empath
I frequently do readings for clients who are discovering their empathic abilities, as well as awakened empaths who are still working on their self-empowerment. The majority of empaths that I have worked with over the years have all been in very high-stress romantic situations that do nothing but magnify what these highly sensitive people are already experiencing. While this is no doubt confusing, frightening and intense for the empath, one must consider the fact that it also greatly impacts their partners.
An empath a highly sensitive person who is very aware of the feelings, moods and motivations of other people and are deeply affected by the energies around them. This is experienced by the empath in many ways, including as physical sensations, moods, and emotions, as well as an inner knowing of what lies beneath the surface of other people’s words and actions. An empath has the ‘psychic radar’ to hone in intuitively on the truth of a person or situation.
Relationships, especially romantic ones, can therefore be a nightmare for empaths, and their partners. While their partner may be saying one thing, the empath ‘knows’ or ‘feels’ something different, and can sense if their partner is being dishonest or deceitful. While this can be useful at times to protect the empath from pursuing relationships with the wrong kind of person, it can also be very damaging and destructive to a potentially happy, healthy relationship with loving partner.
It can be very disconcerting and intimidating for the romantic partner of an empath to feel so constantly questioned, judged and exposed. I get many calls from empaths who are deep in an argument stemming from their partner’s refusal to come clean about what is really going on, or what they are truly feeling. The more the partner protests, the more the empath pushes and prods, leading the partner to shut down, withdraw, or disconnect completely.
Simple Energy Cleansing Techniques
Everything in the universe is energy – so are you. In addition to our physical body, we also have a subtle energy body consisting of various layers, including the aura or energy field, the chakras or energy centers, and various smaller energy channels and points.
To be holistically healthy and happy it is therefore important to not only take care of the physical body (which is undoubtedly also very important and unfortunately too often neglected), but also the energy body. Our energy body can become unbalanced and even dis-eased with toxic patterns, old blockages, repressed negative emotions and deep energy imprints of trauma. It is vital for our spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being to regularly cleanse and maintain our energy body.
In addition, as spiritual beings in humans form we are all energetically connected to each other and therefore we are affected daily by the energies of others. And the truth is that many people in our everyday environment have unhealthy and even toxic energy bodies that are not exactly emanating good, positive vibrations.
For example, you are in a happy, energized mood when you visit relatives or friends, and although everyone in the room outwardly appears to be doing perfectly fine, you soon begin to feel energetically drained or experience unusual emotions, such as suddenly feeling depressed, anxious or angry. This may well be due to someone else’s energy frequency present in the room. Energy never lies, even when we pretend or try to hide it.
The more empathic and highly sensitive we are, the more likely it is that we will intensely feel these environmental energies. A regular energy cleansing is vital to neutralize and shield us from external toxic vibes. I am such a person myself, and I have learned the hard way how destructive it can be when I neglect my energetic self-care and spiritual cleansing.