This being a condensed version of the seminar I gave last night, we’ll start with a friendly definition, so we’re all on the same figurative page. “Empathy,” in psionics, is the ability to sense other being’s emotions and to project one’s own emotions into another being’s mind. It is a subset of telepathy. I say “being” because it is not restricted to humans. Other animals have and are responsive to empathy. There is some evidence that plants might also be so, if Backster’s experiments with lie detectors are true.
Empathic projection is handy for several purposes:
*adding strength to other projected abilities ranging from telepathy to PK;
*hiding, by making it seem as though you are somewhere else;
*calming someone down by sending a wave of calmness over them (or imposing other emotions as desired in the same manner);
* making a performance more intense or believable, usually in music or acting;
*whapping people upside the head (or other places); and
*clearing out a room or to getting a specific person to leave.
During the seminar, K2 asked about the second point, because it is a little unclear. Have you ever felt someone staring at you? Other people feel that, too. So, if you are to the north of someone, and you make them feel as though they are being stared at from the west, and you _both_ know that you’re the only two people around….that other person is going to think you are to the west instead of the north.
Receptive empathy can be used to determine if someone is lying, or simply to determine what is wrong, particularly when dealing with someone who cannot speak (such as a horse). Sometimes, it can be used to cheat at chess or other games, by feeling out what the other person is going to do, in time to thwart it. I’m told that it can also be used for similar purposes in games such as poker.
From this small smattering of uses, you can see that empathy is not only a matter of being flooded and disoriented at the mall. (Shielding is your friend.)
For some people “how” to do empathic things is not much of a question. They are more concerned with how to make it stop. For these people, the important skills are grounding, centering, shielding, and cleaning of the field…often. Shields are our friends. Dampers are good, too. Hematite works well for some people, onyx and amber for others. Try a few and see if they help.
It’s also important to get enough rest and “alone time,” as Ayule reminded us.
Sending empathic data is not especially difficult for most people. Of course, doing it well takes practice. Stewing on something, particularly any of the strong “basic” emotions (rage, lust, etc) will tend to radiate outward whether you want it to or not. And the stuff sticks to things, which is why many people can feel the residue of an argument in a room, even after the people who were fighting have gone elsewhere.
Sending feelings intentionally, and in a controlled manner, is more easily accomplished by making a fake emotion, instead of using a real one. This isn’t nearly as complicated as it sounds.
Choose an emotion: strong, weak, mixed, doesn’t matter. The stronger emotions are the ones more likely to send accidentally. They are also the most useful for adding strength to strictly “data” types of telepathic sendings. When sending an emotion to a member of another species, it can be useful to choose images from their own cultures. For example, sunbathing in a safe place is a good image if you want to project “contented calmness” to a cat.
Once you’ve chosen the emotion, search your memory for a scene that evokes that emotion. The scene can be from your own experience, from a movie, from a book, from the news, or entirely from your imagination. As long as thinking about the scene reminds you of that emotion, it’s good to go. . Once you have your scene, concentrate on it, remembering it as vividly as you can, for a moment. As you start to feel the emotion it brings up, push it forward and outward from your tummy toward your target. It doesn’t matter where your target is – let the trajectory bend wherever it needs to go after it is already clear of your field.
If you want to add a little extra certainty to things, push in little short bursts, repeatedly, in time with your pulse. For most purposes, ten seconds is more than long enough. To be really certain, though, keep at it for a minute or two.
Using this approach, you can send a strong emotion to one person and the people sitting on either side of him/her won’t feel it. For a broadcast type of Sending, replace the tightly-focused push with something more like the ring of energy that goes out from an explosion.
K2 had a couple more good questions leading to the following two points:
While it is possible to track such things back to the sender, normally the recipient just feels as though the emotion is their own. If you want to send a mental hug, or otherwise want the person to know the emotion is being sent, you usually will need to add a telepathic message of some kind, even if the person cannot pick up telepathic messages.
It is possible to make the feeling be associated with a person other than the receiver or sender. I believe the easiest way to do so is to keep an image of that person in mind while sending. If you know the recipient has certain associations with that person, include those with the image. Otherwise, just the face, posture, basic shape, and possibly name.
Receiving empathic sendings is normally just a case of lowering your shielding.
If that doesn’t work, take a couple of slow breaths to calm your mind, and just ask yourself: “What is (whoever) feeling/sending?” The first impression to come in is probably the right one, if anything is going to come through at all. It is pretty much the same as receiving in any other subset of telepathy. Generally speaking, empathic data comes through more clearly than other telepathic data, but that doesn’t hold true for everyone.