{"id":8132,"date":"2015-11-30T21:21:33","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T02:21:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/?p=8132"},"modified":"2015-11-30T21:36:16","modified_gmt":"2015-12-01T02:36:16","slug":"taking-on-the-pain-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/2015\/11\/taking-on-the-pain-of-the-world.html","title":{"rendered":"Taking On the Pain of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am an empath. Rather like the Star Trek: The Next Generation character Deanna Troi, I can pick up on the emotions and sometimes physical sensations of others, whether or not\u00a0I know them personally. It is both a joy and a challenge. I love being able to identify what someone what might be experiencing in order to help them see their way clear. I would prefer not to take on their pain. There are moments when I need to remind myself: &#8220;If it&#8217;s not mine, I release it.&#8221;\u00a0 It has come in handy in my work as therapist and Reiki master and yet, I am sometimes feel myself overwhelmed with the onslaught that sometimes ensues.<\/p>\n<p>One such occurrence happened over the weekend. I was attending a workshop that culminated in a death meditation. Lively rhythmic music was playing and one of the facilitators invited us to dance with the cautionary statement that at any moment it would stop and we were to drop down to the floor wherever we happened to be. Kind of like musical chairs.<\/p>\n<p>The music stopped.<\/p>\n<p>I brought my body to the yogic posture know as savasana or corpse pose (literally this time). I covered myself with my favorite purple silk scarf and proceeded to deepen my breathing as we were led on a journey. I couldn&#8217;t tell you the specifics, but all I know is that when we were called back to consciousness, I didn&#8217;t want to return. It wasn&#8217;t a sense of desiring death or giving up on life, but rather, such a sense of peace that I wasn&#8217;t ready to relinquish.<\/p>\n<p>That was when I became aware of the reason. Too much pain. Sadness. Grief. Wounds. Anger. Violence. Destruction. Hatred.<\/p>\n<p>I thought that it was my job to clean up the mess and heal all of the wounds. My own all too human pain was screaming for attention while I ignored it in the service of the world. As I sobbed, others in the workshop reminded me that it was not my place to carry it all. They beamed support and the facilitators reminded all of us that when we relinquish the pain to the power of love, then we need not bear the burden alone.<\/p>\n<p>The Tibetan Buddhist practice of <a href=\"http:\/\/old-shambhala.shambhala.org\/teachers\/pema\/tonglen1.php\" target=\"_blank\">tonglen<\/a>\u00a0comes in handy at such times, as we are instructed to breathe in pain and breathe out love and compassion. Such is one way to heal the wounds of the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am an empath. Rather like the Star Trek: The Next Generation character Deanna Troi, I can pick up on the emotions and sometimes physical sensations of others, whether or not\u00a0I know them personally. It is both a joy and a challenge. I love being able to identify what someone what might be experiencing in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":233,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2,13,70,41,3532,19,21,22,14,16,7,10],"tags":[1743,4664,4861,2173,371,1816,1290,4663],"class_list":["post-8132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-attracting-what-you-desire","category-bliss","category-blissfull-thinking","category-community","category-death","category-edie-weinstein","category-empowerment","category-energy","category-healing","category-how-to-invite-bliss","category-my-personal-bliss","category-re-creating-your-life","category-spirituality","tag-buddhist","tag-deanna-troi","tag-death","tag-life","tag-reiki","tag-star-trek-the-next-generation","tag-tibetan","tag-tonglen"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Taking On the Pain of the World - The Bliss Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/2015\/11\/taking-on-the-pain-of-the-world.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Taking On the Pain of the World - The Bliss Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I am an empath. Rather like the Star Trek: The Next Generation character Deanna Troi, I can pick up on the emotions and sometimes physical sensations of others, whether or not\u00a0I know them personally. It is both a joy and a challenge. I love being able to identify what someone what might be experiencing in&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/2015\/11\/taking-on-the-pain-of-the-world.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Bliss Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/snuggleyoga\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-12-01T02:21:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-12-01T02:36:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Edie Weinstein, MSW, LSW\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@EdieWeinstein1\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Taking On the Pain of the World - The Bliss Blog","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/2015\/11\/taking-on-the-pain-of-the-world.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Taking On the Pain of the World - The Bliss Blog","og_description":"I am an empath. 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She has also contributed to several anthologies and personal growth books. Edie has interviewed such notables as Ram Dass, Wayne Dyer, Debbie Ford, don Miguel Ruiz, don Miguel Ruiz, Jr. Marianne Williamson, Grover Washington, Jr. Noah Levine, Shirley MacLaine, Dennis Weaver, Ben and Jerry and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. She calls herself an Opti-mystic who sees the world through the eyes of possibility. Edie is the founder of Hug Mobsters Armed With Love, which offers FREE HUGS events on a planned and spontaneous basis. www.opti-mystical.com.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.opti-mystical.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/snuggleyoga","https:\/\/x.com\/EdieWeinstein1"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/author\/eweinstein"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/233"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8132"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8135,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8132\/revisions\/8135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}