Psychics have played an important part in human civilization since ancient times.
Prior to the birth of Christianity, they also served as priests, priestesses, seers, and mystics of numerous religions.
Famous Empaths From History:
1. Samuel, Gad, and Amos are only a few of the Bible's psychic seers. Samuel was the one who discovered King Saul's donkey. Amos was the seer ordered by Amaziah to flee Judah and pursue his prophetic endeavors elsewhere. Gad was King David's own seer, while Amos was the seer commanded by Amaziah to flee Judah and practice his prophetic endeavors elsewhere.
2. The Greek Oracle of Delphi is one of the most well-known names of ancient psychics. The Oracle was not a single human, but rather a position occupied by Delphi's most intelligent individual. She sent direct messages from Apollo, the God of Light and Reality. The natural steams coming from the hot springs in the Delphi region heightened her dreams. The priests of Ra on Memphis were the well-known seers in ancient Egypt. Oracles were known as nabu in Assyria, which meant "to declare" or "to call."
3. During the Renaissance in France, Nostradamus became a well-known figure in the field of prophecy. His prophecies are now well accepted around the world, and they have been published on a regular basis since they were first written.
4. The Spiritualist Movement started and spread in the mid-1800s, when the planet Neptune (which governs psychic energy) was discovered. At that time, many psychics flourished, including Edgar Cayce, Daniel Dunglas Home, and Madame Blavatsky.
Since the beginning of human evolution, psychic empaths have wandered the Earth. However, empathic abilities were only recognized as distinct from other psychic abilities after the New Age Awakening of the 1970s and 1980s.
Famous Empaths From Contemporary Times:
1. George Orwell
George Orwell may not seem to be the sort of guy who can empathize at first glance.
But, based on his work and social accomplishments, he was a real empath who battled colonialism's harshness.
Orwell even took it a step farther.
He disguised as a beggar and lived on the streets of London to see the true misery of the people he encountered.
While serving as a colonial police officer in Burma in the 1920s, he earned his empathy spurs.
Orwell was outraged by the cruelty of colonialism that he observed firsthand, and determined that when he returned to Britain, he would put himself in the shoes of ordinary workers and see what their lives were like.
He added, "I felt like I had to flee not only from imperialism, but from every type of man's tyranny over other man." 'I wanted to immerse myself with the downtrodden, to be one of them and fight alongside them against the rulers.' That's when he decided to dress up as a tramp and live on the streets of East London among beggars and vagrants, a period of his life chronicled in Down and Out in Paris and London (1933).
Orwell, like practically no other writer in the twentieth century, shined a spotlight on neglected and marginalized sectors in British society with this book and his political reporting.
2. Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe, an American author, may be history's most unsung empathizer.
Slavery, particularly the terrible treatment of slaves on cotton farms in the south of the United States, was the major problem of her day.
Her novella Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was basically a political treatise against slavery, was published in 1852.
Within a decade, it had sold four million copies, making it a publishing phenomenon.
The book aided in the transformation of a generation's worldview by exposing people to the horrors of slavery up close, so supporting the revolt against slavery and its proponents that culminated in the American Civil War.
Following the terrible loss of her eighteen-month-old son Charley in the Cincinnati cholera outbreak of 1849, Beecher Stowe was inspired to write the novel.
'It was at his bed, and at his tomb, that I learned what a poor slave mother may feel when her kid is wrenched away from her,' she said of the experience.
3. Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandhi thought that if he was going to struggle for Indian independence from British control, he needed to see what life was like for the poorest people in the nation after returning to India from South Africa in 1915.
So he ditched his posh barrister's coat and collar, clothed himself in a dhoti or loincloth, and founded the Sabamarti Ashram, where he resided from 1917 until 1930.
It was all about putting yourself in the shoes of peasant farmers at the ashram.
He and his disciples farmed their own food, spun their own fabric, and cleaned the latrines, which was traditionally a chore reserved for the Untouchable (Dalit) caste.
Gandhi's profound sympathetic sensibility also led him to transcend religious barriers.
He was outraged by Hindu-Muslim violence and vehemently opposed the establishment of a separate Muslim state.
He once stated to a bunch of Hindu nationalists, "I am a Muslim!" while being a committed Hindu himself.
And I'm a Hindu, a Christian, and a Jew, just like you.' These remarks are among the most sympathetic of all time, and they still ring true today.
Mahatma Gandhi was a tremendous empath who dared to use his energy and strength to hypnotize the world.
With the express intention of enabling his empathy to develop and foster mankind, he lived a life of self-sacrifice and made poverty vows.
Gandhi was a pacifist because he had a greater knowledge of emotions.
He emphasized the need of comprehending how painful negative emotions may be.
As a result, he became a potent metaphor for how to recognize and apply your compassionate abilities.
4. Claiborne Paul Ellis
Ellis was born in Durham, North Carolina, in 1927 to a poor white family.
He joined the Ku Klux Klan after struggling to make ends meet working in a garage and thought that black people were to blame for his problems.
He ultimately rose to the rank of Exalted Cyclops of the Durham chapter of the KKK.
In 1971, he was asked to a ten-day community gathering to assist resolve racial tensions in schools, which was a watershed moment in his life.
C.P. Ellis was nominated to lead the race committee with Ann Atwater, a local black leader whom he despised.
Working with her, on the other hand, utterly demolished his preconceptions towards African Americans.
He saw that she was struggling with the same economic issues as he was, and that their actual adversaries were white merchants and politicians who kept their salaries low and put impoverished blacks and whites against one another.
'I was starting to look at a black guy, shake his hand, and perceive him as a human being,' he said of his committee experience.
'Something was going on with me.' It felt almost as if I'd been reborn.' He stood in front of a thousand people on the last night of the community gathering and tore up his Klan membership card.
C.P. Ellis went on to become a well-known civil rights activist and labor organizer for a union with a 70% black membership.
For the remainder of their lives, he and Ann remained friends.
5. Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela is maybe one of the most well-known empaths.
He, like many empaths, was prepared to put his personal wants aside for the greater good.
Mandela had a strong sense of right and wrong.
This is why he gave up years of his liberty for something he sincerely believed in.
Mandela, on the other hand, was not deterred by his imprisonment.
He took use of this opportunity to hone his empathic powers.
Because of this, he was able to usher his nation into a new era.
With his genuine compassion for his people, Mandela pushed everyone to support the transformation.
6. Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt was the first lady of the United States.
Eleanor Roosevelt was more than just the First Lady of the United States of America.
She had a sweet and compassionate temperament and was a creative empath.
Eleanor has the kind of compassionate attitude that made her a pleasure to be around in any circumstance.
Eleanor Roosevelt utilized empathy to help people who didn't seem to have much in common.
Her unselfish attitude made her a driving force in the civil rights struggle.
7. Princess Diana
It's possible that Princess Diana's abrupt death shook the globe because of her great sympathetic qualities.
She didn't have a very strong capacity to interact with people on a variety of levels.
And she seemed unconcerned about her surroundings! Princess Diana had a lot of trouble dealing with her sensitive empathic qualities.
It's difficult to quiet such sensitivity, which is why she was engaged in so many humanitarian deeds.
8. St. Francis of Assisi
Giovanni Bernadone, the 23-year-old son of a rich merchant, visited St.
Peter's Basilica in Rome in 1206 on a pilgrimage.
He couldn't help but notice the contrast between the lavishness and richness inside—the dazzling mosaics, the spiral columns—and the destitution of the beggars outside.
He convinced one of them to swap clothes with him and then spent the rest of the day asking for charity in rags.
It was one of the world's first major empathy tests.
This was a watershed moment in the young man's life.
He quickly established a religious order whose brothers labored for the destitute and lepers, and who gave up their worldly possessions to live in poverty like the people they helped.
"Grant me the wealth of sublime poverty," Giovanni Bernadone, now known as St.
Francis of Assisi, is said to have said, "let the characteristic symbol of our order to be that it has nothing of its own under the sun, for the glory of your name, and that it has no other inheritance but begging." From luxury to sweatshop,
9. Beatrice Webb
It was fashionable in the early twentieth century for authors and would-be social reformers, such as Jack London and George Orwell, to spend time living on the streets of East London, seeing the reality of poverty among the homeless, beggars, and jobless.
Beatrice Webb, a socialist theorist, is credited with starting this tradition.
Webb was born in 1858 into a wealthy family of politicians and merchants.
However, in 1887, as part of her studies into urban poverty, she left her affluent bourgeois existence and went to work in an East London textile mill, clad in a frayed skirt and buttonless boots.
Pages From a Work-Diary, Girl's her description of her trip, created a stir.
A member of respectable society, particularly a lady, having personal knowledge of living among the poor was unheard of.
In her memoirs, she remarked, "My personal inquiries into the persistent poverty of our large cities opened my eyes to the workers' side of the tale." Her empathetic immersion motivated her to push for better working conditions in factories and to promote cooperative and trade union organizations.
She went on to co-found the London School of Economics and became a key figure in the socialist Fabian Society.
10. John Howard Griffin
Crossing the racial barrier with John Howard Griffin.
Griffin, a white Texas native, sought to experience what it was like to be an African American man living in the segregated Deep South in 1959.
He used a mixture of sun lights and pigment-darkening drugs to turn his complexion black, then traveled and worked in Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina for six weeks.
Nobody ever suspected him of being a liar.
It was a life-changing event for me.
He was astonished by how white folks glanced through him without recognizing his existence while working as a shoeshine boy in New Orleans.
He endured the humiliations of segregation on a daily basis, such as going kilometers to use the restroom, and was subjected not only to racist verbal abuse but also to the fear of physical assault.
His experiences were chronicled in the monthly magazine Sepia, which had funded his experiment, and subsequently in his best-selling book Black Like Me.
While it may appear arrogant or inappropriate for a white man to speak on behalf of other races now, most African American civil rights activists considered his work as important at the time since it was so difficult for them to have their own voices heard.
Griffin achieved notoriety for his efforts on behalf of racial equality, and he collaborated with Martin Luther King Jr.
"If only we could put ourselves in the shoes of others to see how we would respond, then we could become aware of the inequities of discrimination and the sad inhumanity of every sort of prejudice," he writes at the core of his book.
11. Günther Walraff
Günther Wallraff, a German investigative journalist, spent two years undercover as a Turkish immigrant laborer in 1983, in what may be the most intense empathetic immersion of the twentieth century.
He flung himself into a series of backbreaking tasks, such as unblocking toilets on construction sites that were ankle-deep in urine and sweeping coke dust at a steel mill without a protective mask, which left him with permanent chronic bronchitis.
What struck him the most, he subsequently said, was the humiliation of being regarded as a second-class citizen by "native" Germans, more than the 19th-century labor conditions.
Lowest of the Low, his book exposing the Apartheid-like circumstances faced by immigrant workers in Germany, has sold over 2 million copies in 30 languages.
It resulted in criminal investigations of companies that used unlawful labor and enhanced contract worker protection in numerous German states.
Walraff's work emphasizes the importance of experiencing empathy in discovering socioeconomic inequity, a method that subsequent investigative reporters like Barbara Ehrenreich adopted.
12. Patricia Moore
Patricia Moore, a U.S. product designer who specializes in leveraging empathy to bridge generational divides, is one of today's main proponents of experienced empathy.
Her most well-known experiment took place in the late 1970s, when she disguised up as an 85-year-old lady to see what life was like as an elder at the age of 26.
She donned aged-looking cosmetics, fogged-up spectacles that prevented her from seeing well, splints and bandages on her arms and hands to mimic arthritis, and uneven shoes that caused her to limp.
In this disguise, she traveled throughout North America for three years, attempting to use her tied wrists to go up and down subway stairs, unlock department store doors, and operate can openers.
What's the end result? Moore pioneered a whole new approach to product design.
She developed new items for seniors based on her experiences, such as the thick rubber-handled potato peelers and other utensils that are now available in practically every kitchen and can be readily used by those with arthritic hands.
She went on to become a powerful advocate for older adults' rights, assisting in the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Her most recent effort involves creating rehabilitation facilities for U.S.
military veterans who have lost limbs or suffered brain impairments, allowing them to retrain how to live freely again, including purchasing groceries and using a cash machine.
"Empathy, an awareness that one size does not fit all," she argues, underpins her whole approach.
What can we learn from Famous Empaths and their inspirational lives?
Few of us will dress up as an 85-year-old or pretend to be an immigrant laborer for years.
However, there are additional ways in which we may all cultivate experiencing empathy.
You might participate in Live Below the Line, an anti-poverty initiative in which tens of thousands of individuals live for five days on $1.50 per day, the same amount as more than 1 billion people on the earth.
Sure, spend the first week of your next two-week vacation sleeping on a beach in Mexico, but why not spend the second week volunteering as a teacher at a local school? If a "wealth exchange" isn't for you, consider a "God swap" instead: Spend a month attending services of several faiths, including a gathering of humanists, if you believe in a specific religion.
These are all examples of how you can incorporate some experienced empathy into your life.
Not only will this broaden your viewpoint and creativity, but it will also help you to employ empathy to promote social justice.
And that's certainly preferable than letting this amazing type of human comprehension to become simply another commercial tool.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
What is the most uncommon sort of empath?
Heyoka empaths are the rarest and most powerful kind of empath, working as a spiritual mirror for others around them to help them evolve.
Others are forced to reconsider their own preconceived beliefs of what is good and bad, real and imaginary, because of the Heyoka's unconventional attitude to life.
What is the greatest level of empathic experience?
Because the Heyoka empath is basically an emotional mirror and tends to be more spiritual than the others, it is the most potent of all the empath kinds.
They are also supposed to have the ability to read people's thoughts.
Is it possible for an empath to be a narcissist?
The empath struggles against this low vibration condition.
An empath becomes a narcissist's narcissist in their plutonic condition.
As a result of mirroring them, the empath loses empathy for the narcissist, becoming excessively cold and intent on destroying their fragile egos.
What does it mean to be an intuitive empath?
Intuitive empaths are said to be a special kind of empath that blends empathy, or the capacity to comprehend and share other people's emotions, with instinct and observation.
Some people feel intuitive empathy is a valuable talent with its own set of limitations.
Is it possible for empaths to be actors?
You may be an empath as well as extremely sensitive as an actor or other artist.
Dr. Orloff, who has written several papers, books, and videos, can teach you a lot about this kind of high sensitivity.
How do you know if you're an empath?
12 indications that you're an empath: You have clairsensibility.
You are a different kind of "clair."
You are often overstimulated.
You can have trouble setting limits.
You have the ability to sense other people's feelings.
You're feeling overwhelmed by the people.
You must consciously choose not to let energy in.
You've always been sensitive, even when you were a kid.
What Are the Three Main Empath Types?
Physical Empath.
You're very sensitive to other people's bodily ailments and are prone to absorbing them into your own body.
Emotional Empath.
You mostly pick up on other people's emotions and may become a sponge for both joyful and negative sentiments....
Intuitive Empath.
What makes me think I'm a Heyoka?
Despite your outstanding social abilities, you prefer to be alone.
It might be difficult for empaths to control how they truly feel when they are bombarded with emotion from their surroundings.
You are open and honest with others....
You are inventive....
You are compassionate.
Is it true that intuitive empaths are uncommon?
Empaths are a very uncommon subclass of HSPs.
According to some estimates, empaths make up less than 1% of the population.
Empaths (like me) are described by psychiatrist Judith Orloff as "sponges," having the capacity to "absorb" both good and negative emotions from individuals around them.
What is an educated empath?
An educated empath is more wholistic and focused on a group or community.
This group strives for a win-win outcome that benefits everyone.
The empaths' task is to educate themselves on the methods of the taker/predator and acquire self-defense techniques.
They must master the art of outmaneuvering the manipulator.
You may also want to read more about Empaths, Psychic Empaths, Intuitive Empaths, and Healing here.
References And Further Reading:
- Hollan, Douglas, and C. Jason Throop. “Whatever Happened to Empathy?: Introduction.” Ethos 36, no. 4 (2008): 385–401. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20486588.
- Montwieler, Katherine. “Reading, Sympathy, and the Bodies of ‘Bleak House.’” Dickens Studies Annual 41 (2010): 237–63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44371449.
- BRADLEY, CHRISTOPHER. “THE INTERCONNECTION BETWEEN RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM, SPIRITUALITY, AND THE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF EMPATHY.” Review of Religious Research 51, no. 2 (2009): 201–19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20697334.
- LADA, ISMENE. “‘EMPATHIC UNDERSTANDING’: EMOTION AND COGNITION IN CLASSICAL DRAMATIC AUDIENCE-RESPONSE.” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, no. 39 (1993): 94–140. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44696701.
- Spector, Scott. “Edith Stein’s Passing Gestures: Intimate Histories, Empathic Portraits.” New German Critique, no. 75 (1998): 28–56. https://doi.org/10.2307/488577.
- Boyd, John D. “‘In Memoriam’ and the ‘Logic of Feeling.’” Victorian Poetry 10, no. 2 (1972): 95–110. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40001620.