Hi,
I'm Trevor Lewis,
Author of Thriving as an Empath,
Empowering Your Highly Sensitive Self.
I've been an empath all my life and since 2013 I've been on a mission to help other empaths learn more easily the lessons I had to learn the hard way.
This talk looks at how we as empaths can handle our personal power when dealing with authority figures in our modern controlling societies.
I created this talk in the context of answering the question,
Is there a conflict between being an empath and religion?
The answer to that question is less about religion than it is about retaining our personal power.
Most of us have grown up in a society that tries to control our self-expression and that encourages us to give our power away to authority figures.
Then the short answer to the question about a conflict between an empath and any authority.
If you indiscriminately give your power away to an authority figure and if that person holds an unfavorable view of empaths then indeed there is a conflict regardless of what I say here.
However,
If you want to make up your own mind about this question,
The following guidance regarding the evolution of society from control to partnerships may help.
People have created controlling communities since the Sumerian civilization in 4000 BC or earlier.
Over thousands of years human interaction based on controlling others has developed unsustainable greed to a point where the planet itself may not be viable for many more generations.
What was replaced can be seen today in what is left of the planet's indigenous people who live in partnership societies.
The idea of a small percentage of the population controlling a vast portion of society's wealth is insanity to native tribes.
What we see around us today are the early signs of controlling society's crumbling.
Institutions are set up to monitor the people within their sphere of influence.
As the planet evolves,
People are increasingly intolerant of being controlled.
All of the civil unrest around the world is reflecting a global trend towards resisting control.
Our institutions are breaking down as people lose confidence in the churches,
In government,
In the schools and in the corporations.
At the level of our personal relationships,
How do we interact with the others around us?
Is it on a basis of who can control who where the winner takes all outcome?
Or is it by mutual empowerment where only the acceptable outcome can be a win-win for all involved parties?
The temptation to give our power away is deeply embedded in our societies.
From our parents and our school teachers to our religious leaders,
Spiritual counsellors,
Doctors,
Financial advisors.
Most of us were taught from an early age to yield to authority.
Specifically from a religious viewpoint,
Ask yourself,
Does religion try to control me or empower me?
To be more precise,
Do the religious practitioners try to control me or empower me?
Do they pretend to empower me while teaching me how to conform while speaking of freedom?
What feelings do they engender in me?
Regardless of their words,
If they speak of love but there is a tightness in your gut,
Ask yourself if they are instilling fear?
On the level of society,
We are approaching full circle by coming back to partnership from control.
On the level of the individual,
The rising awareness and empaths can be seen as a development from separation to oneness.
Concurrent with that,
The individual level is learning to trust what we are experiencing in our own bodies rather than what other people tell us we cannot or should not be experiencing.
The more you trust the information you are getting from your heart and gut,
The more you will intuitively know when other people are giving you false information.
Keep learning to trust your body.
The Native Americans have a story of having a wolf on each shoulder.
A bad wolf on one,
A good wolf on the other.
To paraphrase the original version,
One wolf encourages you to give away your power,
The other encourages you to use your own personal power.
Which is going to win?
The one you are choosing to feed.
Thank you for listening to this talk.
Thank you for helping yourself learn to become a thriving empath.
