Authenticity and the curse of the empath

Have you ever lost a relationship because you started showing someone the real you and they couldn't handle it? It's easy to feel like your job is to dance around someone else's wounds and unintentionally triggering someone means you did something wrong.

Our emotionally backwards society teaches us how to be inauthentic in our relationships, how to show an acceptable face to the world and to the people close to us. How to maintain the illusion of being a "good" person. The repercussions of this are devastating.

In Kundalini Mediumship, we use a technique called "tracking" to uncover how this inauthenticity is physically, emotionally and energetically wired into our body and how this plays out in our relationships with others.

Our entanglements with other people can be seen as cords of energy with 3 distinct layers. The innermost layer is spirit, which is the place of love and compassion we have towards others. The next layer out is our wound. The wound is made of all of our unhealed karmas and trauma, and it is filled with unembodied rage, shame, fear, grief, etc. Many of us get entangled with others from our wound. This entanglement happens because our wound is trying to get our attention, to get us to integrate and embody it. The reason we do not integrate and embody is because of the protective actions of the outermost layer of our cord-- the wall.

The wall is one of the most intriguing, complicated and nuanced energetic structures in existence. Its function is the unending, impossible task of separation. All the wisdom traditions speak of inter-connection and unity as the primary structure of the universe, and yet the function of the wall is to help us feel as if we can disconnect. When we use the wall to disconnect, we are trying to escape the pain in our wound. For many people, it (unfortunately) works just well enough to allow them to function in our unembodied society. Many people are stuck in a daily cycle of wound triggering and dissociation.

It's only when we hit rock bottom, when we get sick and tired of our defense mechanisms and wall maintenance, that the true spiritual work of wound embodiment begins.

When this happens, we begin to see how our entanglements with others are an expression of our wound/wall structure. This structure is held together by contracts or agreements we make with our wall, in the form of what I call the empath contract and the narcissist contract. These contracts form the basis of many of our relationships with others.

• The empath contract says "If I take care of/manage/fix the wound in someone else I won't have to deal with my wound".

• The narcissist contract says "If someone else takes care of/manages/fixes my wound I won't have to deal with my wound".

Many people reading this probably identify with the empath contract, but I'll tell you this. They are the same damn contract! The empath who spends their life trying to fix or please other people will eventually resent those who don't do the same for them, who don't play the game. Eventually the resentment will build up enough to create a pole switch whereby our accepted and rejected identities switch (more on that in another blog post!). Either way, both contracts guide us to become a victim in pursuit of a perpetrator.

In Kundalini Mediumship, we try not to use the language of fixing, because there is nothing broken. We use the word "embodiment" because we believe the goal is not to fix our wound but to embody it, to give it a voice by feeling into the darkest corners of our being.

Where does this all lead and why am I writing this?

Integrating the skill of tracking in the real world means being authentic in our intimate relationships. It means telling others what we want and how we feel. It means cutting through empath/narcissist games that are the enemy of intimacy and connection. We do this not to get something from others, not even to get them to listen to us or understand us, but to embody the parts of ourselves we've cut off. But time and time again I've seen the same dynamic arise. I'll walk you through it...

1. You start being real about your (difficult, painful) feelings with someone close to you.
2. By revealing your wound (instead of hiding it under the wound/wall game) it will activate the other person's wound. If the other person is willing to go with you on this journey, congratulations! You will now have a deeper, more meaningful relationship. However, if that person is not willing to enter into this space...
3. The other person will feel attacked and it will feel as if you are hurting them. They will try to get you to stop by using the narcissist's contract-- "I am hurt and it is your fault. You are not managing my wound, you are doing the wrong thing!"
4. At this point your own empath contract will be activated. The people closest to you have the deepest insight into your wounds and triggers. If they are deep in the game, they will use everything they know about pushing your buttons to get you to stop pushing on their wound. They may use truths, lies or half-truths-- anything and everything to get you to stop activating their wound when revealing yours. In the shamanic view, this is a case of the poison being the medicine. A person deep in the narcissist contract can show you where your wounds lie, and if you can keep embodying them with someone who is playing out the narcissist contract, you'll eventually get to...
5. They will cut you out of their life, and they'll blame you.

For me, this has been the most difficult place to be. I have a deep hunger for intimate connection, and at the same time I have no patience for playing games around wounds, by putting on a little face or pretending things are the way someone wants them to be.

This type of work is risky. In order to get more meaningful relationships, we risk superficial ones that may also give us other benefits like companionship, money, safety or security...

I've also seen that these changes don't usually happen overnight, and many times I've seen people tear down their walls only to see new ones come up in their place.

If you want to see what this looks like in a (relatively) safe way, this is one of the things we do in the Foundations Classes!