Empathy is non-judgmental. As soon as you start judging someone—labeling them good or bad, right or wrong, should or shouldn’t, and the like—you have ceased empathizing. The point of empathy is simply to understand someone, no more, no less.
Empathy cannot be about you or your opinions or how you would do it. Like you, everyone has their reasons for doing what they do, reasons that have built up over time. Decades of habits and experience that have led us to this very moment. A true moment of genuine empathy must encapsulate a whole lifetime.
If you think about it, it’s brave to leap out of our narrow self-focus into the pure unknown beyond our own psyche. If you are curious and open enough, for one transcendent moment, you can actually feel what is to be in someone else’s heart. You can only truly understand someone else so deeply that you actually feel what they feel if you are willing to let go over your own agendas, your schemes, plans, memories, history, and desires.
If you can do it, that leap of empathy leads us to an awareness that widens our world, enlarges our understanding, and expands the heart. The full act of empathy is what the mystics call transcendence.
Emerson described transcendence like this: “all mean all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent Eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.”
Try it yourself. For one transcendent moment, be nothing. See all. Perhaps you too can feel the pulse of the universe through the heart of another and be grateful.
This post is part of my Gratitude Project 2025: The Magic of Empathy — a 30-day exploration of empathy and gratitude. Visit the hub to follow along or catch up on past reflections.
