You're at it again, atmosblack, making entirely too much sense!

Wow, I never thought about it like this before, but now that you spell it out so clearly, this incredibly helpful to me.

I am definitely an empath. It took me a very long time in life to realize that what I was feeling were other people's feelings. And whenever negativity was directed toward me (which if you can imagine, happens a lot for a black person growing up in America) I identified with that negativity. I felt toward myself the negativity coming at me. Needless to say, it all created a pretty horrific life for quite some time.

I took refuge in the spiritual path and its promises of freedom from suffering. But now I see that it was all aimed at narcissistic concerns. Meanwhile, I was having spontaneous satori experiences of being able to read people's thoughts or even heal them without any clear intentions one way or the other.

Along the way, I developed considerable expertise along the spiritual path of the narcissist, to the point that I now teach those subjects. Yet it is true, it all comes from my mastery of someone else's path!

We empaths really do need to source within ourselves, within our true sense of self, and learn to do that when the input coming from others is strong. So much of our journey is developing that ability into a habit.

And it also helps a lot to experience unconditional love, like the love of a dog or a tree. That helps remind us of what is fundamentally true about ourselves, that we are infinitely lovable for we are infinite love itself.