Empathic X-Ray Vision: The Jedi Skill for 2024
Francis - a rare new client on our fully reserved Sunday schedule - careened into the studio and collapsed on the front desk counter like an Ironman finisher. We were still hours away from opening and the day’s first light was just beginning to stream in. “Is anyone in yet???” she called over the counter, breathlessly.
“Yep, down here.” I was sprawled out on the floor of our healing arts studio, filing papers & tidying from the day earlier. It was a little after 7am on a Sunday morning - I loved these still moments and rare time alone in the studio with just my little dog Tate. After seven years of devotion and many thousands of healing sessions, the studio had taken on a beautiful energy of its own: Peaceful. Expansive. Safe. Tate would nap in his little bed while I set the energy for the day, diffused essential oils, swept out the meditation studio, and refreshed the flowers in each treatment room. It was a peaceful morning in March of 2020, and a lethal virus was spreading quickly out in the world; I knew at any moment word would come from the government to shutdown.
Francis was not happy. “I wanted you to know your Google listing is WRONG. The map to get here is WRONG!”
Tate opened one eye. I smiled. Our town’s “downtown business zone” was all of about four blocks long. “I’m so glad you were still able to find us.”
“I also want you to know, the meditation event you have on the calendar this week… the registration link on your website doesn’t work!”
“All of the links? There are a few different places to register for tickets…”
“Just the middle one isn’t working. The other two work. But the middle one DOES NOT!!”
Francis’s voice was getting higher pitched, more oddly outraged with each word - her wiry body was wound up like a top and her hands trembled with what might have been perceived as anger. But it wasn’t.
Francis was afraid.
One of the most meaningful benefits of microdosing practice is its ability to enhance our self-awareness, especially around the emotions of ourselves and others. With practice, we experience an attunement & expansion of our emotional spectrum - we can recognize and hold a greater range & nuance of emotion with more compassionate understanding. We grow able to “see through” and “behind” the emotions of others (and our own) with more insightfulness and clarity. And we can especially see - with near X-ray vision - that what so often presents in humans as outrage, anger and anxiety is actually - deep down - just fear & insecurity.
Francis was in a brand new town, going to a brand new place, in a world on the precipice of a threat we’d never experienced — her anxiety & efforts to ‘correct, fix and control’ were her conditioned best efforts to soothe the fear and insecurity she was feeling inside. Throughout the pandemic my personal microdosing practice was my greatest ally in being able to recognize the reality behind people’s (frequently unskillful) projections & behaviors, gifting me the ability to have compassion for their fear, not take it personally, lead our team, and navigate a challenging time with as much grace as possible.
What is behind hoarding? Fear. Controlling other people? Fear. Criticism & judgement? Fear. Selfishness & scarcity? Fear. Shaming, attacking & threatening others? Fear. Railing that the world & everyone in it is failing to meet our personal expectations? Fear.
In the present era we are not - as a society - a generally emotionally mature people. Most of our leaders are not emotionally intelligent people. Many of us have emotionally immature parents. But nature and her medicines bless us with a greater perspective, a humbling quality and a new skillfulness in seeing beyond the behavior and straight into the heart of the other. Emotional mastery & skillfulness - the ability to recognize & transmute our fears - will be the Jedi skill of 2024, as we embark on a year that will be full of disruption and destabilization.
Our empathy and enhanced ability to ‘read emotion’ can recognize and neutralize fear; the ability to process & release our own fear will contribute to the rising consciousness and creation of a more evolved culture. If we can break the cycles of fear and overcome the contrived narratives of insecurity, we can model a new way of living for the future. Nature is our greatest ally in our healing, a natural antidote to fear, a model for reciprocal & sustainable co-existence, and catalyst for our collective evolution.
Step into her domain with us — Winter Immersion begins January 30th.
