CIIS Public Programs Podcast

transcript

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This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. Through our programming, we strive to amplify the voices of those who have historically been under-represented. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.  
 
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May: Hi Anita, it's so nice to see you here, and I would just like to start today by extending a really warm welcome to you from CIIS and Public Programs. And I'm really looking forward to our conversation tonight and that will be based mostly around your new book that came out yesterday, that's really exciting. And the title of the book is Sensitive is the New Strong: The Power of Empaths in an Increasingly Harsh World, and it couldn't be more timely, you know, increasingly harsh world right? Over this last year with the pandemic, you know, and so I just want to start by checking in with you and see how your year has been? How has you know, how has this pandemic, how has Corona changed you? You know, how was this year for you?  

Anita: Well, thank you, and first of all, it's wonderful to be here and thank you. So, the last year has been interesting…I have you know, and I’ll be speaking a little bit more about it, what it means to be an empath and I'm sure many people watching will relate, is that it's not just the pandemic on a physical level that affects us but more on an emotional, energetic level. It's like, even if we have spent the year being somewhat healthy and not, not actually getting sick or anything. I'm sure it's affected so many of us emotionally, mentally and in all levels. So, for me the last year, because I'm aware that I'm an empath, and interestingly very timely, I was already working on this book about what it means to be an empath and I was on the tail end. I was literally finishing it in early 2020 and then the pandemic hit and then I just made a few tweaks because I started to learn more deeply about the effects of the pandemic on empaths. And so, I did add a little bit to the book during 2020 and it was so timely because I started to utilize a lot of my own learnings which I was uncovering as I had been writing the book. I was utilizing my own tools to get through the last year, had I not, it's so the timing was just incredible. Had I not been working on this book, had I not gone on this journey to discover what it means to be an empath, then I think I wouldn't have been as well equipped to deal with this last year. So that's been a blessing for me in a way. 

May: So timely for you and timely for all of us, the offering from this book, thank you. So, I mean, I'd like to start by just saying that your overall message in your writing and in your talks is always to encourage us to shift our focus from disease to health, right? To shift by focusing on increasing wellness rather than focusing on eradicating illness, right?  

Anita: Yes 

May: And I'd like you to talk about this message, specifically as how you came to this message, how you came to this knowledge and this was the, maybe there are many people in the audience that are not aware of your extraordinary journey and story. So, I would love to start us tonight also by hearing how you came to this wisdom and message.  

Anita: So, my journey started or this part of my life this, second half of my life I call it or second life, started back in 2006 when I had a near-death experience, but four years prior to that in 2002 I was diagnosed with lymphoma. And over a period of four years my health deteriorated, and it deteriorated to the point that by the time it was early 2006 the doctors told my family that I only had three months to live, and I had tumors the size of golf balls from the base of my skull all around my neck, under my arms, in my chest, and all the way down to my abdomen. And this lymphoma because I had lymphoma that had spread throughout my lymphatic system and I had fluid in my lungs. My lungs were always filled with fluid my body stopped absorbing nutrition. So, my muscles completely atrophied so I could no longer walk. I weighed about 85 pounds. I looked like a skeleton, when I would lie down, I would choke on my own fluid because I would because the fluid in my lungs would get in the way of my breathing. And because I couldn't walk my mobility came in the form of a wheelchair, and then on February the 2nd, my organs started to shut down and I went into a coma and that was when the doctors told my family that these were my final hours and that I was dying. 

And I went into a coma and unbeknownst to everyone around me, even though my physical body was in a coma and my eyes were closed, I was actually aware of everything that was happening around me and I no longer felt attached to my physical body. I had somehow expanded, I didn't feel a moment in which I came out of my body, but it was as though I was suddenly just aware that my body was lying there on the hospital bed and that there was all my family around me and the doctors and they were telling my family that I was dying and I could see, hear, and feel everything that was going on around my body, even though my eyes, my physical eyes were closed. So, it was more like an awareness, it was like I had 360-degree peripheral awareness and I could hear their conversations and see who was speaking. But the thing that sticks with me the most is how I felt, I felt incredible. Like all the pain was gone because I was no longer in my body, all the fear, the fear of the illness, the fear of death, the fear of the treatment, all that fear was gone. It was just the most incredible feeling and it felt like I was enveloped by this feeling of just unconditional love. It was the most incredible feeling that I don't remember ever feeling this way in my physical life before. Just like a feeling of as if I was worthy and deserving of love without having to do anything and I had spent my life, my entire lifetime trying to win everybody's approval in order to be liked, let alone loved and so this feeling of "wow, I don't need to do anything, I am just loved" it was just the most incredible feeling I felt when I was no longer in my body. 

And I felt myself kind of expanding and going deeper into that realm and I became aware that I was dying and I was aware that I was surrounded by beings, many of them familiar to me from this life. Like my dad who had died 10 years prior, my best friend who had died two years prior. It was like they were there to help me through this process of crossing over into the other realm and I just felt their unconditional love and like they were supporting me right now and it just felt really amazing. There was a lot that happened in that realm and as I continued to travel in that realm, I had this experience, this incredible clarity where I understood how it was that I came to become ill and came to be lying on that hospital bed dying on that day. And I reached a point where I felt I had a choice as to whether to stay in that realm or to come back into my physical body. No part of me wanted to come back because it was so beautiful over there and I had been suffering with the illness. My family was suffering taking care of me, so I didn't want to come back, but I felt that my dad and my best friend were telling me that your work isn't done you haven't completed your purpose yet, you need to go back. And they wanted me to know that my purpose was linked with my husband's purpose and that I had some gifts waiting for me here, and I needed to go back. My dad also wanted me to know that now that I understood, in this state of clarity, who I am, meaning that I am loved unconditionally, that I don't have to keep winning people's approval, that we're loved just because we exist. He wanted me to know that now that I knew this truth, that if I chose to go back, my body would heal, and it would heal very quickly. And so, it was in that moment that I made the decision to come back into my body.  

And as soon as I made the decision, I felt my father saying to me, "now that you know, the truth of who you really are, go back and live your life fearlessly" it felt as if that was all I needed to do was to live my life fearlessly. I wouldn't need to figure it out, like I wouldn’t need to figure out what is my purpose? What do I need to do? I just needed to go and live my life fearlessly, which to me meant be myself fearlessly. Because I had never allowed myself to be myself, I was always a people pleaser trying to win people's approval. So as soon as I made this decision to come back, that was when I started to come out of the coma and my eyes started to open and I'd been in the coma for about 36 hours and when my eyes started to open and I saw my family around me and I was still very much, like I had one foot on each side. I was still very, you know, like groggy…very, very groggy. And so I started to say things like "Dad is here, Dad says it's not my time, I'm not dying" and so my family were first of all, they were elated that it looked like I was coming out of the coma, but they were trying to make out what I was saying because I was saying” Dad is here” and then they called the doctor to come in and then I started telling them conversations that they had while I was in the coma and that's what shocked them.  

That's when they realized something had happened. And I said to my family “isn't that the doctor who said that I was in the last stages of dying and that I wouldn't even make it through the night?” And they said “how did you hear that? He didn't even say that in the room. He said it outside.” And so they realized something had happened and then within five days, those tumors started to shrink by about 60%, 70% and within three and a half weeks the doctors were struggling to even find any tumors or cancer in my body. They were determined to continue looking because they said it's impossible. They were confounded. They said cancer doesn't just disappear like that. We have to keep looking until we find it. In the meantime, I just had to keep building up strength. I was having physiotherapy and getting the use of my legs back and I started to eat proper nutrition and I was gaining strength again. But after five weeks, they could find no trace of cancer and they let me go home and live my life and that was 15 years ago. It was March 2006 and it’s now March 2021.  

May: Yeah. Wow, that's such a powerful story. I mean, I can only imagine after you've shared the story, maybe how many people are now coming up to you wanting to know more like, how? Tell us more and you know, I'm really appreciative that you are writing these books and you are sharing. You know, how you healed and what happened. So, I see that this book Sensitive is the New Strong as kind of, in that trilogy after Dying to Be You, right? Sorry Dying to Be Me. Yeah. Because I am, yeah, taking us deeper into this space of empathy, you know. Really kind of delving into sensitivity and empathy and giving us kind of a guide on how to, how to be healers as empaths. How to bring empathy as a gift to the world, right? Instead of a crux to the world, that might make us ill. Also, there's so much in that book so much insight and so many like "how to's", you know how to do this that I really appreciate it. So, to start us off maybe the question to ask is well, who is an empath? How do you define an empath? How would I know if I was an empath? What are some common traits? Yeah.  

Anita: So, I can give you some simple things, now in the book itself I ask about 34 questions and the more of these questions that people answer “yes” to the more they are on the empaths spectrum. But one of the key questions or the key things that I say about empaths is empaths actually feel the emotions of other people in their body. That's what differentiates them. So, you can have empathy, many like, most people unless they're really on the sociopathic end of the scale. But other than them who are very, very few. Most people have empathy at some level or other but what defines empaths is for empaths, they don't just feel empathy as an emotion. They feel it as something physical in their own body and I did not know anything about empaths until the last five or six years. I did not even realize that I was an empath but as I did this exploration like when I discovered the work of Elaine Aron and also Judith Orloff and I discovered their work for me, it was like a breakthrough. It's like that explains it, that explains why I am, why am the way I always was. Because in my first book I didn't even know at that time that I was an empath and I explained why I believed that I had cancer and I explained how I had suppressed myself, how I had been a people pleaser, and how my body was wanting to express itself. But I had suppressed it from expressing itself. And on the one hand, even though there were tens or hundreds of thousands of people who related to what I was saying. There were also people who were debunkers who were debunking me and who were saying. “Oh, are you saying that if you just do this or if you if you were just positive thinking or if you don't indulge your emotions or whatever that you can cure cancer?” And so, there were people who were also attacking what I was saying, but yet there were hundreds of thousands of people who were relating to what I was saying and who said who said “wow, your story helped me to deal with my illness.”  

So, over the years, I started to realize that there are some of us who are empaths and we empaths will relate to that more than those who are not. So, I realized the people who had been debunking me don't relate to it because they're not empaths. They don't feel the emotions of other people in their own bodies. So let me just clarify this a little bit more. So as an example, when I was a kid, I had no idea this was happening but very often when I would watch something on TV, I would feel faint, or, you know my family just thought that they never associated it with things that I was seeing or experiencing. But I remember one time watching a movie on TV. And then while we were just sitting in the living room, I suddenly started to feel faint and what we didn't associate was there was a scene on TV where this woman was in a car crash and she crashed, and she flew through the windscreen and she had all these cuts and all over her body and on her face and that impacted me, and I felt it as if it was happening to me. And so, it actually impacted me, and I started to feel faint. Nobody made the association that it was because of what I was watching that I took it on in my body and so they just thought oh my gosh, she's feeling faint. That's maybe it's low blood sugar. Let's give her something or do I need to take her to the doctor tomorrow? I was like 15 years old, but I was fine a little later, but that scene stayed with me for a long time.  

Fast forward to much later in life, the other thing that empaths do is that they've because they feel the emotions of other people in their own body, they feel them as if those emotions are their own. So, this is different from normal empathy, normal empathy is you know what the other person is feeling so you're able to help them. An empath feels the emotions of other people as if it's their own and they have trouble separating that person's emotion from their own. And so, then they feel oh my gosh, why am I feeling so down, what is wrong with me and they start going and searching for ways to help themselves, you know, like they'll go for therapy. They'll read self-help books and so on as if this is their issue, but actually their only issue is that they are an empath and they're absorbing everyone else's issues. [May: Right, yeah.] And so, I had this tendency to do that without even realizing it and so I then started to understand more deeply in the last few years why I was so susceptible to maybe something like an illness like that. But again, I share this not to scare people who are empaths because once you are aware of it you do not attract the illnesses, it's just about being aware of it, right?  

May: Yeah and thank you for bringing that. This reminds me of a conversation you and I had right before, about whether one is born an empath, or one can develop empathy and you just spoke to that distinction. One can develop empathy to kind of feel with the other person, but one is born an empath which is what you are describing. You know, that feeling that physical feeling of someone else's pain. 

Anita: Exactly.  

May: Yeah. It's very interesting.  

Anita: Exactly. So there really is a fine line that if you're an empath that you cross that line because empathy can be developed. It can easily be developed by giving people life experiences. Kids can be taught empathy by, you could tell kids that I want you to pretend that you are a paraplegic for two weeks, you're going to navigate the world in a wheelchair, and they are forced to do that. They will develop empathy for people who are confined to wheelchairs. So, empathy can be developed but being an empath is something you are either born one or you're not.  

May: Right, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And in the book, you speak about both the pain of being an empath and how that can harm you and also the sort of blessing of being an empath and how that can heal you and heal others. So, my question is what are some ways that being an empath can actually cause you harm and maybe make you ill? What must you be aware of if you're an empath?  

Anita: So, you have to be aware that you have a tendency to absorb the emotions of people around you and mistake them as your own. And also with empaths, because they feel other people's emotions, if someone isn't feeling good, an empath needs other people to feel good so that they can feel good because we're feeling their emotions. So, empaths have a tendency to be people pleasers. And so, they want everybody around them to feel good because only when everyone else feels good do they feel good because they're feeling everyone's emotions. So, you need to be aware you have that tendency so that you allow yourself to, you allow yourself the space to remove yourself when other people are feeling very, very low so that you don't absorb their energy. Of course, it’s great to help people, but you need to help people from a place of awareness and strength as opposed from a place of feeling down yourself and feeling "oh my God, I need to do this to feel better".  

So just to give a story of something that happened to me is that when I was unaware that I was an empath many years ago, and I had a best friend who was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of cancer. And when she was diagnosed it came as a shock to me. It was a shock to the extent that it was as if it was happening to me and I felt her pain so much and I felt her fear to the point that I wanted to be there and help her alleviate it as if it's my own. This is another thing that empaths do, they feel other people's emotions sometimes stronger than their own emotions. And so, in my desire to constantly want her to feel better, I felt all my problems were nothing compared to hers. And so, as her health deteriorated my commitment to helping her continued to increase because it meant so much to me. I felt her emotions stronger than my own. My body kept sending me signals and wake-up calls that it needed my attention, but I kept dismissing it, thinking nothing is as bad as what she's going through. Nothing is as bad as she's going through. I've got to help her. Until I got my own diagnosis of cancer and I was diagnosed at stage two. Interestingly, even though it gave me a jolt and I felt fear there was a voice inside a part of me that felt “ah now I get to take care of myself.”  

This is one of the things I want empaths to know. That you do not need an excuse to take care of yourself. You do not need an illness to take care of yourself. You need to know your true worth and your value and this is why in the book I talk about the gifts of being an empath because the world needs you here. There are so many gifts and empaths don't know their gift because they drown in the emotions of the world and other people, they never get to the point of discovering their gifts. And so, this is the thing that I want empaths to know, that you have a tendency to do that, be aware of that, now shift the focus to your gifts.  

May: Right, and you do. The rest of the book after you tell us how empaths, what they need to be aware of to not cause their own illness or cause an illness for themselves. The whole book is kind of giving us steps and ideas and awarenesses to sort of recognize those gifts and to embrace those gifts, you know? At the beginning of each chapter, you start the chapter with a mantra to kind of focus what the chapter is about and I wanted to ask you about one. In chapter three you say, the chapter is called "How to Live Life More Optimally as an Empath" and it starts with the Mantra. "I'm like water both gentle and strong". Can you say more about that Mantra and what defines what you define as the key power tools that allow empaths to embrace their sensitivity and, in the process, discover their strengths, you give some tools in that chapter that are incredibly useful.  

Anita: Thank you. So, I may not remember the exact tools from that chapter, but as a generalization what I mean even by that Mantra that you, to be like water. The thing about empaths, is that empaths seem to, many empaths seem to believe that they are weak. They seem to believe that they, many empaths become doormats because they are trying to please people because they need other people to feel good. So basically, what I want empaths to know is that their gifts, the gifts they have which go unrecognized in this world are far stronger than anything they have been led to believe.  

One of the gifts is that empaths are way more connected to what I call source energy. We can call it God, the universe, your higher self, your soul. It doesn't matter what your spiritual belief what your religious belief. That's irrelevant. But basically, an empath is far more intuitive than someone who is not, someone who is further down on the empath spectrum. On the empathy or sensitivity spectrum. So, the higher up you are on the spectrum, the more connected you are, the more connected and this is why you feel other people's emotions because you are connected. So, if you imagine for example, like animals, I want you to think about this, back in 2004 of 2005. There was a tsunami in Asia in Indonesia, and a lot of coastal towns were wiped out and a lot of tourist resorts and people, tourists visiting from all over the world from the US and Australia and Europe. They succumbed to the tsunami; families succumbed to the tsunami. One of the things that they discovered much later is that there were very, very few animals who passed away because animals sensed something beforehand, and they all climbed to higher ground. Why would animals sense it? Because animals are natural empaths, because they are connected. So, what does it mean to be an empath? An empath is connected, an empath is connected to nature, an empath is connected to other people, an empath is connected to animals, an empath is connected to the Earth, to the universe, to the all-that-is. Those who are lower and lower on the end the empath sensitivity whatever spectrum, they are less connected and they and if you believe for example in the chakra system, we have the chakra system of the lower chakras the base chakras, which come from survival, fight or flight and you have the higher chakras which are like the crown chakra which is connected to the higher worlds. Empaths tend to feel more comfortable, living up there and so empaths are very, very connected.  

But where empaths lose their way is because we live in what I call a world created for five sensory people. Empaths are very six sensory, but we suppress ourselves and dumb ourselves down to five sensory in order to fit in with everyone else because we want other people to feel good and other people to feel comfortable. So, we suppress ourselves and squeeze ourselves into a five sensory box. And that's how we lose ourselves. That's how we allow ourselves to become sick. We take our messages from the five sensory world instead of the six sensory world with which we are so connected we suppress that we tell ourselves that’s "Whoo, Whoo" that's our imagination. We push it out of the way and then we take all our information and messages from a fear-based world of survival, which are mostly living from the root chakra and that's how we lose our way. Whereas if we knew the gift we had, we would be so connected.  

May: Right, yeah. I mean, I thank you. Thank you for that amazing answer. I was going to ask you about the sixth sense that you talked about in this book. And so, I appreciate that you brought that up and you brought up the significance of a spiritual connection for empaths and how strong that is for them and yet you also write about how that has been switched off right? And that there are filters that don't allow empaths to look inward to find their inner mystic, you know, what switched it off like what is…you know why is it switched off for so many people? That kind of adds on to what you were saying.  

Anita: Yes, it's this desire to fit in, we actually sacrifice our sixth sense to be liked, to be wanted, to please other people. It’s in a way it's our survival mechanism to survive in our community, in our societies. And I want to say here that I'm not trying to say empaths are better than other people. I'm not trying to say other people are lesser-than or anything. What I am trying to say is that empaths have always felt lesser than other people they've always been in historically, the underdogs the ones who have been bullied because they are the ones who give of their hearts and wear their hearts on their sleeves.  

So, my work is to empower them so that they stop being like that and to realize their gifts and so the reason why they have allowed these filters is because they have been suppressing that sixth sense to fit in and the other thing that happens in our world, in our reality for example, is that I'm going to just use an example for from our own recent times here in the US. As you all know, Marianne Williamson, for example, she was running for president in the 2020 election and she's and I love her. She's a friend of mine, but it doesn't matter what your political beliefs are whether you're on the left or the right, so I don't care about that. But one of the things I noticed is that Marianne was attacked because she brought in some spiritual beliefs into her arguments, she talked about love. She actually dared to talk about love, which I thought was very courageous of her in this world that worships five sensory views as opposed to six sensory views, but she was attacked for it and people made her feel that she was really dumb and stupid, and I noticed. And what kind of message does that send to all of us empaths who feel the same way? And again, I'm going to say this is not about her political views, if it was about a political views people can argue about her political views, but I am talking about something more fundamental is like when she brings in concepts like about the importance and the value of love in a community and a society it is, the person gets treated as though they are "Whoo, Whoo" and out there. So, this is how empaths have been marginalized. [May: Right, right.] And this is what drove me to write this book.  

May: Again and again in this book you talk about the importance of self-love, love, and self-love right? And being unapologetically authentic, right? 

Anita: Yes.  

May: You stress that our capacity for self-love is what will change the conditions of the world, right? So can you say more, you actually say I wrote that down because it didn't that it's selfish not to love yourself, you know you always hear it's selfish. You have to love others or you're selfish. But you say it's selfish not to love yourself, right? And that through loving yourself you can change the world. So, I would love to hear more about that.  

Anita: Sure. I love talking about this topic and there's several reasons why it's selfish not to love yourself. One of them is that you are a facet of the divine, we all are, you are, I am, we all are, we are facets of the divine. We are spiritual beings that have come forth to express. We came here with an intention, we came here with a calling, a purpose and we came here to fulfill that. When you don't love yourself, you don't allow yourself to be all you are. So, what does that mean? That means you are not allowing that facet of the divine to express itself through you. You are actually suppressing a facet of God from expressing itself through you when you don't love yourself because when you don't love yourself, you don't feel yourself worthy of having a voice or of expressing yourself. You don't feel worthy of being heard when you don't love yourself. When you don't love yourself, you don't feel worthy of actually of being recognized or making change in the world.  

So that's why I say that it's like what right do you have to prevent or to suppress the divine from expressing itself through you? So, it's selfish to not to love yourself. And so that's really the big reason why I say it's so important to love yourself. The other reason is, we are all connected, all of us. At our consciousness level, at our source level we're all connected. Our essence, our consciousness is all connected. And so even though we are, as physical bodies we feel separate, our consciousness is all intertwined like a cosmic web. And so, when you feel unworthy and when you judge yourself and talk yourself down and dislike yourself, that's what you're adding to the cosmic web. But when you love yourself and you allow yourself to find joy, and you find lightness in life and you have fun and you allow yourself to let go of your fears and just live from a space of love and joy, which comes with self-love, that is what you're adding to the web of consciousness. That's what you're adding to everybody because we're all connected.  

May: Absolutely and that therein, like you change your internal self, you love yourself, you change the world, you know? Start from the inside out.  

Anita: Yes, and if I yes and if I can just add one more thing is that when you are filled with love and when you are feeling joyful and happy and living a fulfilled life, your very energy touches other people all the people around you. You don't even need to say anything, but other people are just uplifted by your presence.  

May: Yeah, it's beautiful. Thank you for that and still speaking about the self and self-love. In this book, you know, there are many sentiments and ideas that you express that seem to contradict what we normally associate with being spiritual or being empathetic. For example, contrary to spiritual approaches, that as you write, view the ego as the archenemy of enlightenment and spirituality. You insist that empaths need a strong sense of ego. It's not what we always say, you know some spiritual approaches say no ego, right? So, what role does the strong ego play in supporting empaths, in particular in strengthening and developing their spiritual connection?  

Anita: So first of all, the ego helps you to identify yourself. So, on the consciousness level as I said without our bodies, we are all connected. But while we're here in the physical, we have a role to play in our bodies. Now why do empaths feel the emotions of everyone else? It's because empaths still have one foot in this cosmic web where they are feeling everybody else. Whereas people who are not empaths are able to feel the separation of everyone else. What is the ego? The ego is but that separation from everyone else the ego is what separates us.  

So, what I tell people is that if you are an empath and here's the other interesting thing is, empaths gravitate towards spirituality. They are really attracted to spirituality. But if you are an empath you need to learn to embrace your ego. If you are not an empath then sure you can learn to drop your ego because people who are not empaths are very aware of their separate self, but empaths a still stuck in this space of feeling everybody's emotions. You need to identify what is yours and what is someone else's. So, when I was growing up the spiritual teachings that I was involved in taught me to let go of my ego, to release my ego, suppress my ego, get rid of my ego and spiritual teachers would tell me that all the time and so I did. I beat my ego up I suppressed it, I buried it, I killed it. You know what that did as an empath, it made me invisible. It made me like every time I had a desire, I would kill it because I would say that's my ego. Every time I wanted to do something for myself or love myself or take care of myself, I felt no that's my ego and I always believed it's better to give than to receive. It's selfish to love myself to the point that I became invisible, I neglected myself, I became sick. I was in service to everyone except me and it killed me. I literally died from killing my ego. And so, I tell empaths that for you as an empath. You need the opposite message because the world needs empaths. And the other irony was that all the people in these big spiritual gatherings or seminars or wherever the teacher up at the front that would be they're telling us to suppress our ego, that person usually was the one that had the biggest ego in the room. You need an ego to be able to stand, I need an ego to be able to share this right now with you. I wouldn't have the courage to share it if I didn't have ego.  

May: Right, yeah, and I absolutely want to pick up on what you said that empaths are constantly giving, right? Giving, giving, giving there's no boundary. So, what would it take, and you write about that a bit, for an empath to say no without feeling guilty? So excessive giving, yeah. 

Anita: So now an empath has to start by asking themselves am I giving and giving and giving because I fear losing their approval I fear disappointing them or am I giving from the space of it actually brings me pleasure to give? And if the empath says it brings me pleasure, it actually brings me pleasure because I'm so abundant, I want to give, chances are that that empath, to be able to say that, that empath has an ego and has a healthy amount of self-love. When they don't have a healthy amount of self-love and they don't have an ego, but they are still someone who is giving and giving and giving, what you will find is that it is because they fear that person’s disapproval or they fear disappointing that person. And those are the wrong reasons to be giving and giving and giving.  

And so I say to them, if that's the reason you're giving I want you to imagine this. Imagine if everyone who's been giving to you and doing things for you and taking care of you or gifting you, imagine if every single nice thing that was done for you was done because the person, the giver, was afraid to disappoint you or was trying to win your approval as opposed to doing it because they loved you or doing it from the heart. How does that feel for you? That's when they go. Oh God. That doesn't feel really good. I'd rather they didn't do it. And then I'm like then why do you do it?  

May: So, it's, so for empaths. It's just as important to also be able to receive right?  

Anita: Yes, yes. 

May: From others and you actually have a whole chapter, you know, that where you talk about money. Again, something you don't expect maybe to be connected to spirituality or empathy to actually say that, no it's very important to receive and it could be you know, people you can charge there…you know money is a medium of exchange and there's a really, a quote that you have in there that gave me pause that I would love to share with everyone. You say that “corporations that control money and empaths who don't charge money are two sides of the same coin”. Yes? So, you know empaths that say it's unspiritual to charge money and corporations who control the money are two sides of the same coin so if you can say more.  

Anita: Absolutely, so money is a form of energy and in actuality, there is no limit to the amount of abundance there actually is no limit and even when people challenge me and say what do you mean that there's no limit. What about all the people in the poor destitute countries and I say that is the fault of the beliefs of our planet where corporations are controlling the money, corporations are controlling it and not allowing it to reach those people. But in actuality there is an unlimited amount of money, but it is our people that are controlling it.  

Now empaths, not just empaths, I mean people who believe that it's not spiritual to charge money when you say it's not spiritual to charge money or when it's not spiritual for me to make money because I'm doing spiritual work. It comes from a belief that there's not enough to go around because if you knew that there was more than enough to go around you would have no problem receiving money, when you don't allow yourself to receive money because you feel guilty because you think it's unspiritual to receive money, then that comes from a belief that there's not enough to go around. Someone else is lacking if I take money. The greedy corporations who are hoarding money so that it doesn't reach the poorest among us, they're hoarding it and hoarding it and being greedy because it's the same belief. There's not enough to go around so I better hoard it. I better hold onto it and not share it with the people who need it because there's not enough to go around, two sides of the same coin. The minute we all know that there is plenty, I just need to receive what I need to nourish me and allow it to flow through me so someone else who needs it can have some. The minute we all know that the universe is abundant, you'll find that a very different flow starts to take place.  

May: Yeah, whole paradigm shift in the way we view money, you know and exchange. Absolutely. I want to shift us a little bit now to another part of the book where you write that when you had your near-death experience you realized that you weren't your body. You said that you weren't your image your race, your culture, your gender, anything else that set you apart. Right? And that through a spiritual lens, there's no biology, we are just spiritual beings.  

Okay, but my question is how do you hold the spiritual perspective when society and its lenses don't let you forget that we are our bodies? For example, I might hold that perspective. I can spiritually know that I'm not my gender, yet if I walk down the street, I might be harassed because of my gender. I might be harassed because of my race or any other aspect of my physicality. So how do we hold that tension of knowing that we're more than just this physical body, but yet in the here and now dealing with what the physical body encounters because of the system and the structures? 

Anita: Yes. Yeah. Yes. So that's a great question because that is really where the I guess the real lessons of the real challenges of life comes in because I often tell people that you know, people are having spiritual experiences all the time. I may have had a near-death experience in someone else's case, they could have another deeply profoundly moving spiritual experience and where they didn't have to die. They didn't have to get sick, but it could still impact them at the same level.  

So many of us are having spiritual experiences, but the challenge is not in having the experience. The challenge is in integrating that experience into this physical life, which has all these you know, where we are reminded every day that we are not a spiritual being we are a physical body as you said. And so, what I want people to know and what I tell people is that while you are here in this physical life, it is a balancing act and particularly if you are an empath, you literally do have one foot on each side and you have to realize you have one foot on each side and you have to honor both sides. So, when I say people are not on the empath spectrum, that means they are well and truly immersed in the physical. People who are well and truly immersed in the physical are the kind of people, they are not bad people, they could be very good people. They could be wonderful parents, be wonderful siblings, be wonderful parents to their children, or a wonderful spouse to their spouse, or wonderful teachers or whatever. But they are also the people who would also not be struggling with a lot of existential issues that empaths struggle with. They don't struggle the same, they would have no problem in hoarding money for their clan, their family for their generations. But empaths struggle with that. So, what I would want empaths to know is that you actually truly have one foot on each side. To me that is what defines an empath, because if there is somebody out there who is a healer, who is a musician like a real musician, an artist who is a clairvoyant who is a psychic, they are empaths. To be those things you have to be an empath.  

And so, you have to realize you have one foot on each side and you have to honor both sides equally. And in honoring both sides you have to love your ego and love your physical body, but you also have to take a break from this side to honor your spiritual side because if you are too immersed in one or the other side, the other side suffers. If you're too immersed in the physical, what happens if you get drawn into all the fears of this physical world and you start to get lost and you lose touch with your connection and that connection for you is so important because you are a sixth sensory being.  

So, you have to embrace that you are human and that you can stand up for causes that you believe in. You can be out there passionately talking about things that you believe in and so on and live in this world and earn money and everything. But at the same time, you need to always remember no matter what other people say, whether people will say its delusion or "whoo, whoo" you have to ignore that and give yourself time to connect to your higher self or the divine and unplug from the exterior, the external world, to allow yourself to receive messages. As an empath we are most connected when we unplug from all the messages and the noise from the external world, that's when we hear our messages and that's what gives us the guidance of what to do next in the physical world.  

So just to kind of close this up about this, about being in the physical world. Where empaths make their mistake is that we take our cues from the physical world as to what we need to do and what is our calling. We mustn’t do that, as an empath we must take our cues from the spiritual world and then go apply it in the physical world. Always do it that way, so take, so live from the inside out and not from the outside in. That’s how we juggle the two worlds.  

May: And this is why empaths make great spiritual teachers and healers right?  

Anita: Yes.  

May: Is this, is this the major gift of empaths to the world? Because is this that they can bridge those two worlds in this way? 

Anita: The biggest gift they have is that they can bridge the two worlds and empaths are the most powerful healers. They are the most psychic. You know, if somebody is super psychic, they're an empath, if someone is a very powerful healer, they're an empath if someone is a very in touch, in tune musician or an artist, they are an empath. If someone is truly a spiritual teacher that is connected and is able to help a lot of people to find their own divinity, they are an empath. And so the world needs these empaths and that's why I encourage empaths to find their voice and to know, I encourage empaths to find their gifts so that their gifts can be shared with the world because the world needs empaths and the world needs empaths to take on leadership positions because empaths have a tendency to think of their traits as weaknesses and so we have a tendency to hide they find the world to be harsh and they have a tendency to hide and they have it because they're afraid of criticism and they're afraid of disappointing people. But if all the empaths were to hide what happens? Then the world gets taken over by the louder and more aggressive voices. 

May: Yeah. Absolutely. I have a lot more questions, but I just got the signal that we have under 10 minutes left. So, I'm trying to think of what do I really want to know, and what I really want to know, when I was first told that I would be interviewing you and I started to read your materials and your experience, I was so intrigued with this concept of living fearlessly, right? Because you know, many of us grow up with many fears. I grew up with a mother that had MS from a young age and so I grew up with fear of sickness the way you describe your fear of cancer before you had the near-death experience. What's a day of living fearlessly like? Is it possible to ask it that way? Does it make sense? 

Anita: It does, it does make sense. So now as when we live in this physical world, fear is thrown at us all the time because we live in a very fear-based paradigm. And this is, when you opened you said that one of the things I always say is to shift the focus about illness. I always say shift the focus because in this current physical world we live in we have been conditioned to live in fear instead of focusing on wellness, we have been conditioned to fear illness, you know, instead of focusing on being abundant. We have been conditioned to fear lack. It's like kids are taught fear of failure as opposed to a passion for learning or a passion for succeeding and it's always about fear, fear of not enough to go around.  

So, we have been conditioned with fear and fear of illness being a big one, fear of failure is another one, fear of being criticized, judged, fear of disappointing people. So, when I learned when my dad said to me go out and live your life fearlessly what he really meant was be yourself fearlessly, so to simplify be yourself fearlessly. And because I was not being myself the illness came even because I was suppressing myself, suppressing my ego, suppressing my truth suppressing who I am, believing that everybody else is more important than me. Everyone's problems are bigger than mine. So, living your life fearlessly, there will always be little fears thrown at you that will creep up but to consciously live your life fearlessly means, okay, so what does it mean for me? To be myself fearlessly in this situation or to be authentic in this situation. So, it's allowing yourself to be authentic fearlessly without fear of disappointing people or criticism.  

May: Yeah. Thank you for that. That's very, very helpful, in this situation how to live fearlessly. 

Anita: Yes, and how to be and how to be myself fearless here in this situation.  

May: Yeah. And this sits with me, you know? What, what is your message to someone who might be experiencing illness right now, like in the audience or you know some relative of someone in the audience or something. How can they, what's the first step to begin their own healing? What would you say to them?  

Anita: The first step would be to ask yourself what would you like to do with the rest of your life if you had a clean bill of health? And I would want to shift their focus from the illness that's in their body, from the disease that's in their body. I would want them to shift their focus to living a full life. Even if they physically can't do it. I would want them to start to build up a passion for life because if somebody is ill and they have no desire to live, like if they hate the life they have, if they're in a situation where maybe they feel trapped or stuck or maybe it's because they hate the job they have, or they don't have enough money, or they're not in a good relationship, or all these things, there is less incentive to get well because for them to get well means just going back to the situation they had before.  

For other people, for certain other people the illness may be serving something, it may be giving them more attention and love which they don't know how to get without the illness. The illness might be giving them permission to love themselves, which they feel selfish doing without the illness. So, I would encourage them to explore all of these things. I would encourage them that that you know, I would say you don't need the illness to live a full and happy life. You don't need an illness as an excuse to love yourself and to take care of yourself. And if you didn't have the illness, who do you want to be? What is it you want to do and be with the rest of your life, and so my role in somebody's life if they were dealing with an illness would be to really be the cheerleader for them to really discover a passionate life so that there is a desire to want to get well and to live.  

May: Yeah, thank you. I love in the book when you ask that question. Who do you want to be? How do you want to create your life? And then you add, who do you want to be, how do you want to create your life if no one's watching?  

Anita: Yes, that's important. 

May: No one's watching right? It's not about anyone else, it’s just about you. You know, that was very yeah, very informative. So, I just want to like really offer my utmost gratitude for the gifts you bring to us as an empath, all this knowledge and this awareness and this way of recognizing how to heal ourselves, you know, and we are really, really honored to have hosted you here at CIIS tonight. And so grateful to have met you and read your work.  

Anita:  Thank you so much May. It was such a pleasure and honor to be here and to work with such professionals and your questions were amazing.  

May:  Thank you so much.  

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS Public Programs. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Jason McArthur, and Patty Pforte. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 
 
CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities.  
 
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