While D. and I are talking I try experiencing her empathically. With that intent I feel as if something flows out of me and into and around her. I listen to her and talk to her but I am at the same time aware of the current. I look at her but am also aware of the periphery. As I am walking her back to her classroom, I note that the current doesn’t seem to want to come back to me. It seems to want to stay with her. I wonder if it is that I just don’t want to let go. At some point I have a sense of her body as the perfect manifestation of her being. Then the image of D. posing, mouth rounded, hands clasped as if singing arias in an opera. In a way she is acting silly. At the time I don’t think of this as an after image. I am frustrated because I have 6 more clients who I see in rapid succession right after her and I feel there is no space nor time to receive an after image of any of them. That night before I go to sleep, I find it easy to hold an image of D and in a way ask for insight. Just before I go to sleep there is some association of her and a fish.
When I wake up I recall bits and pieces of a dream. In it a woman I know in waking life (N) seems to be the focus. She is talking about the way she does things and I seem to be trying to learn from her, comparing what I do and how I do it. There is a piece about magic, perhaps my responding to her that I also have some limited experience with magic. I think we have been talking about magic tricks. The dream seems to go on for a long time. Toward the end she is saying I am a nice guy.
When I wake up I wonder about the dream in relation to D.
First there is a sense that this empathy work is not a trick, not a technique,
as in the magic in the dream perhaps. I think the readings by Rudolf Steiner
helped me realize this. I’ve often had the sense that N tries to develop
tricks and magic; she seems so heady and so unbalanced in her perceptions,
yet there is such longing in her to touch people that way. I realize there
is a part of me trying to make empathy work as a trick, a technique. Another
realization comes around the relation of the body and empathy: the body seems
an integral part of the empathy experience; it is not left out. In the experience
with D there was a sense that her body was being “built” or created
even as we talked, that it was the perfect manifestation of her being, and
a perfect manifestation of her relation to the world. But this is still a
bit tricky and elusive for me, and I’m not sure it has to do with future;
however there is a sense that it is dynamic, that the body is being created.
I note that D has a lot of physical as well somatic difficulties with her
body. Still working with the dream, I also wonder about D’s relation
to N: both are smart, emotionally needy, manipulative, demanding; and struggling,
really struggling all the time, yet strong. Also both have a strong longing,
and leaning out for love, the struggle to be loved and to love. I note D’s
separation anxiety, her feeling unloved (N too), and her love of her baby
niece and liking to work with children…and already developing some expertise
in that. One can see this psychologically, but in light of this empathy experience
one can also see something else at work here. Is it the current from the future
that is manifesting as the longing?
I need to stop here, disappointed that I still
haven’t a clear after image and wishing I had more time, for it still
seems easy to be stay within her image. Suddenly these words come: Afterwards, when all is said and done,
there is only one thing left for D: the future. The future coming to get her
and marking her forehead with a piece of cloth. Immediately I get the image of
D kneeling and a woman or women touching her forehead with a white cloth,
putting the mark of the cross there. The women seem to be dressed in white
loose ceremonial garments perhaps with gold edging. Now I think: woman’s mysteries? More words come: Hear me, hear these words: D is being
marked (for future). The word
“penitent” comes up…as in a penitent. Now what comes to me is an
understanding I hardly dare to believe: It is a sense of D as doing penance,
this is her suffering, and being prepared for this life of the cloth. Being
prepared not in the sense of a future time, but in the sense of future as here.
Now the appearance of the fish that came before I fell asleep makes sense in its
spirit/soul association, as does the image that came yesterday of D posing,
mouth rounded, hands clasped in front of her and shoulders slightly raised, as
if singing an aria in opera or, as I think of it now, religious music.
Why is seeing D this way so difficult to accept fully? As
I reflect on this I realize I am accustomed to seeing the young people I work
with as deeply wounded and not really having a good chance of moving much
beyond that, held by the extreme circumstances and experiences of their lives.
But this image of D says something different, radically different, and so is
difficult to take in. One of the thoughts that flashes into me is a sense of
many lives, as in rebirth, and a sense that in this life perhaps D is living a
kind of penance, so in another life she will be a great giver. It strikes me
with some force that many of the young people I work with could be like this:
future beneficent beings, undergoing suffering now for the benefit of all
later. It is a moving thought. And gives me a sense perhaps of why I work with
them. A memory now arises of something that happened quite a number of years
ago when I attended a weeklong experiential training around myth-based work
with adolescents. At the end of the training as we stood close together in a
circle, we were asked if we wished to say anything. I found myself feeling and
expressing gratitude to these very troubled young people we worked with and
saying, “They will save us all.” I was surprised and a bit
embarrassed at these words because I didn’t have any idea what they
meant. Now maybe there is more understanding.
I can see that this empathy experience could profoundly affect my relationship with D, especially if it continues to stay alive with me, not just becoming a concept. I think the empathy experience, profound as it may seem at any given time, must be continually allowed to express itself anew. I note what is happening in relationship to D even as I write this: many things she has told me about her life are falling into new arrangement, reorganized along the lines of this new knowledge and feel for her: Her strong relation to her grandmother (both when grandmother was living, and now that she is dead), her daily suffering, her crying herself to sleep every night, her bodily ailments, her constant neediness of mother and leaning out for love; her love of her baby niece. It is an astounding vision. The word “penitent” keeps coming to mind, and now the phrase: a great sacrificial lamb. This is penitent not in the sense of sinful, but in the sense of living a life of atonement (at-one-ment). Now I feel awe for the being of D, and deep, deep respect. My movement now with her would not be so much to take away the suffering as to acknowledge that “enlarged” sense of her, being with that, accepting that in the spirit as above: recognition and respect. Now the song “Ave Maria” keeps going through me; perhaps that is what D was singing in the imagery.
As I write this I note there is a part of me that still wants to adjust something in D. I wonder what that is. Maybe it wants to help D move toward deeper awareness and acceptance, even if only mirrored through my awareness and recognition. I realize I don’t truly have a grounded and practical sense of how the empathy experience is affecting her, and so I have some doubt, some mistrust. Hopefully this will become clearer as I open more to the empathy experience.
There is another piece here: There is a sense that empathic work is not at all linear;
that is, one doesn’t just do it at a point in time, then later get an
image, and after that some insight. Rather empathic connection has started
happening even before one begins, elements of it are all around, and it is not
set apart from what is going on in the rest of ones life. Sometime I’d like to fill this
out more: this sense of not linear time and one’s life not being separate
from the one with whom you are in empathy.