There is no such thing as empathy.
Since you thought of empathy, there IS such a thing!smile
“All thoughts of a turtle are turtles, and of a rabbit, rabbits!” RWE
Any thought of empathy IS empathy!
Secondarily, there are two realities.
Primarily, when I have the pity of Love for myself as you, then I automatically have the pity of Love for you as myself: that is both sym-pity or sym-pathy and empity or empathy.
qed.
So on at least 2 levels, we have empathy.
What do you think?
Remember that ever else you think IS!smile
loveandrespect,
iloveu
So just because you can think about the word empathy that makes it exist? I’m talking about the real world. So from that, if I say “alien”, does that make them exist?
And what’s with all the smug smiles?
‘Smug’ is a good example: ‘smile’ to me means that I am saying it with a smile and pleasantly and trying to be nice. I learned it from my dad’s way of writing.
But to you that ‘smile’ meant ‘smug’ as it relates to me. So I AM smug to YOU: my smugness is a reality to you…in your mind, and so you project it on to the reality of me out here in the reality of cyber space. I love me as smug: so I can take with Love and so with no offence your honest opinion of me as smug even when I know that I was unsmug! With Love for being smug, I understand why you may think of me that way. No problem.
That is what I mean: the first reality is in our minds: that is our primary reality since we use it to make sense of outer reality. When inner relity is our reference reality, outer reality is virtual reality! And vice versa: when outer reality is our ref., then inner reality becomes our virtual. The truth is more with inner as the real and outer as virtual.
So from that, if you think ‘smug,’ or ‘alien,’ they do exist!..to you! In inner reality, words and images and imagination ARE the reality. Plus, we have resident aliens in the usa. Plus the movie Aliens.
So too with empathy: when you say that IT does not exist, that is your shorthand for all of this:
I have an idea of what empathy is in my mind and so that intangible reality does exist in my mind: but I can’t find it or haven’t found it as an intangible in outer reality.
Have you ever heard the song ‘Love only is real,’ everything else is unreal? It is by carole King.
Thanx for replying.
iloveu.
LOL, the smugness thing came out of my awful mood. 
sorry about that!
LOL, still funny, I’m sorry. But yeah I see where you are going with your premise, and it’s interesting, but I WAS serious about the question of empathy as it exists outside the “inner reality”, as it exists in the real world, but since we can say that it exists in the inner world, it consequently exists in the outer world, correct? So everything we can think exists? But I can doubt that those things really exist. The only thing that’s undoubtable is that I think, so Iexist. From there, you know the rest.
Take that smugness with pride!
Thanx!
See? It works!smile
Nice to see you laughing!smile
Don’t you think that it is ‘I love, ergo I think,’ since Love is or shd be the first thought… since Love leads to all thinking and to all being and to all having and to all living?
Without Love, no one even wants to think of the hated words by which to think!
love and r,
iloveu
I see. Go on about love. I’ll be glad to listen.
Okay, here is some for now:
The two opposite sides of our brains work by words and their opposites.
And all words and their opposites are made of the 26 letters and sound work by the master word Love.
Love simply is a noun and a verb and loves itself and its opposite Hate, and all other words and their opposites.
Hate is also a noun and verb and hates itself and its opposite, Love, and hates all other words and their opposites.
But now because Love loves all words,
the first misprogramming that occurs is to hate any word,
and logically there are no words for the word Hate to hate.
Therefore, the one and only proper use for the word Hate is to hate to hate any word or to hate the hating of any word.
So prpoerly used, both Lover and Hate work as a dream team:
Love loves all words and their opposites,
Hate only hates the hating of any word by Hate.
All of that above means that our schools first start out right: they teach us to lvoe all the letters and the sounds that will make up all words!
But then they screw up: they begin to teach us to hate words made up of the Loved letters, and we are off course and offtrack from then on on a mixed program or misprogram: Love of some words and Hate of opposites and other words.
This Love-hate mix for words then really messes up how kids think and lessens their ability to think especially for this reason:
each word and its opposite are interdefinable:
example:
Give and take:
to give is to take from myself
and
to take is to give to myself.
So any kid taught to love self as a giver and love giving and hate self as a taker or a getter and hate taking is royally screwed up in thinking! They lose sight of what is front of their very eyes: I can’t give without taking from myself! Please try this on anyone: ask them if they can give without taking? they will all say no: then you ask them to give you something without taking! Then as they give, ask who are they taking from?
This interconnection goes for all words and their opposites.
Order and chaos, up and down, sane and insane, left and right, truth and lie, winner and loser, male and female, in and out, back and front, over and under, etc and etc.
To sum up: One Love for all words and their opposites preserves and rebinds the inter-binding intrinsic in words, and helps us to see the probelm in the solution and the solution in the problem.
Having in mind Love for one set of words mixed with Hate for the opposite set of words is the wrong programming that automatically re-leads to all the problems in the my personal world and in the world at large.
How is that so far?
please ask any questions and give any comments for or against.
love and r,
iloveu
This is really interesting and helpful. I’m not perfectly clear about the hating the hate of other words or whatever… But I see what you mean: There’s love and hate, ying and yang, to use the cliche or whatever, and you have a choice to love or hate yourself? But we’ve been taught indirectly, or directly to hate ourselves, and thus, we hate everything else? Because to chose hate inferrs that you chose to hate all opposites and therefore THEIR opposites?
Yes to each question.
Sometimes the phrase ‘the hate of other words’ is defined as the word sin!
So all we are saying then we say " hate the hating of any words’ is hate sin!
It’ll all come to you as you think more of it.
And guess what? the word opposite just means enemy!
So when you lvoe you as all words and their opposites,
you are loving you as your own best friends and your own worse enemies!
To hate me as ny word means that I will hate you and everybody else as that word too, and teach all others to hate me as that word too!!
So hating self is the most self-defeating thought.
Askj more q’s.
gotta go for now, but i will be back later.
Remember, feeling good and feling bad go together. So don’t sweat it if an uplifting feeling is followed by a depressed feeling! Just love u as uplifted and as down-pressed or depressed, and u WILL feel better auto! since the real problem is hating you as depressed: there is NO problem in feeling depressed! hating you as depressed mmakes u feel as if there is simply NO reason to feel depressed, and just makes u depressed about feeling depressed and it gets worse. Loving u as depressed makes u feel better and shows you that there was a reason for feeling depressed in the first place, and your hatred of u as depressed just made it worse!
see?
Love is your reason for being: so Love gives u the reason for everything and so helps u bear it.
If u know WHY, you can bear any how!
And u can know why when u love u as all words!
see?
simple!
Too simple. smile
love and r,
iloveu
Thanks a lot! I’m thinking about it.
Dear iloveyou,
I have seen some of your posts (I just registered on this site today) and find them very interesting and supportive and uplifting. Your philosophy of psychology appears to be that: steeped in philosophy. I agree with a lot of what you write, which puts a more esoteric and history/philosophy-backed face to the matter than do unfortunately trite (yet 100% true) comments such as “you have to love yourself before you can love someone else…”
My question is, I see in your profile that you are a counselor, so I wonder how you apply your philosophy to your clients. For instance, if someone came to you with agoraphobia, would you convey your philosophy of love/hate (which appears to be at the crux of your writings), would you try to promote self-(and other-) love through a Rogerian/client-centred approach, or a combination (while also combining, say, CBT or REBT, etc)? I am very curios. I have been trained in numerous orientations, ranging from psychodynamic (including interpersonal and “Lacanian light”) to CBT to client-centred (with numerous related sub/other fields) to emotion-focused, and thus have developed quite diverse philosophies of human functioning (though I’ll admit that my knowledge of “classic philosophy” is sorely lacking).
Accordingly, my approach to treatment is eclectic and, quite frankly, sometimes I am torn among the underlying philosophies when trying to effectively apply different treatments for each client. So I was thinking about some of the things you have written and was wondering how you would apply such concepts to your therapy. Of course, I wouldn’t expect a treatise in this forum, but I was wondering whether your philosophy was just a “guide” and you strive to enhance self/other-love through a supportive/empathic working or therapeutic alliance, or whether you try to teach these concepts more directly.
Of course, it does take a certain level of intelligence/language/other aptitudes to follow some of those concepts directly (even though they actually APPLY to everyone). And from what I’ve seen, when you patiently and empathically convey them here, they seem to resonate with some people and have some effect. Thus, I was curious about how you apply them in your actual practice.
Cheers