Stage Three
Developing Empathic Awareness
In the previous lesson you passed through stage two of your training in Dreamtongue. You are on your way to becoming a fully actualized Empath, which in it's full realized form, is called an "implicate."
Beta is the first level of the empathic language. This stage introduces you to plugging your five primary senses into available empathic information. Remember the sleeping empathic within you is functionally separate from your conscious mind and does not normally use your primary senses. To the empathic within you, Beta is the outer world, the surface world, the outermost regions of your psyche.
For all practical purposes Beta is everything that is perceived by your eyes, ears, nose, taste buds, touch, etc. You are in a Beta state when you are awake and alert. A Beta state occurs as you are generating an abundance of brain wave cycles per second. The more active you are the more brain waves you can generate.
You might want to call Beta the "nonempathic" level, but don't. There is no such thing as a nonempathic level. Empathic phenomenon occurs because of an innate connectedness between all things, especially living things. Due to the fact that your primary senses are active in Beta, your brain has been conditioned to rely on those senses for survival.
Your primary senses are your outermost senses but they, too, have deep roots in the unconscious. Through the Beta stage of your training you will learn to use what your outermost senses provide in order to interpret empathic information.
Beta is you as a whole solid entity with mass, density, weight, etc. The empathic part of Beta is actually your eyes, ears, nose, etc.; empathic because these organs take signals in to your interior world, your psyche. They are essentially gateways to your inner world. These gateways are limited by their physical dimensions but are very practical tools.
The limitation of those senses is represented by the yellow square of Beta . The yellow is light, awareness, boxed in on four sides. The four sides indicate an orientation to the physical world by representing north, south, east, and west in their respective places.
All of this information sounds very fundamental and elementary – and it is. But if you make an effort to learn it you will be prepared for more complex courses that provide truly amazing insight into empathic functioning.
Since information from the primary senses is dominant at the Beta level for most people, information from the innermost senses hides behind the conscious mind. As you will learn, the innermost senses are Alpha, Theta, and Delta. The omniscient Gamma mind, which you possess, cannot really be described as a sense.
At the Beta level information from your primary senses floods your brain on a continuous basis, keeping your awareness busy most of the time. Direct empathic information, information that is not apparent to your primary senses, is typically drowned out by all the activity in your waking mind. All the activity in your waking mind is a form of "mental noise," which is almost always louder than your dream voice. The dream voice is always present and always available.
Your dream voice is simply your empathic awareness at the Beta level. It is the connecting point between your innermost and outermost senses. Beta is then, the vehicle for the entire process. This makes Beta VERY important: not something to avoid, skirt around, or ignore. Instead Beta is your key to powerful empathic functioning.
Now let's wrap the previous two paragraphs together. Beta is the vehicle for the entire empathic process and that vehicle is your full body/mind system. Beta is the receiver and the sender of information. The Beta senses are constrained by physical limitations but are rooted in the deeper senses, which have no physical constraints.
Your body is your Beta level. Your waking mind is your Beta level. Other than empathic dreaming, much of your empathic work will occur while you are in Beta, or are awake. To become an active empathic, you must connect your normal waking state with your empathic nature. You do this by understanding the nature of Beta and by understanding that empathic information is available through sensory information.
To understand how empathic information is available through sensory information requires rethinking some more beliefs about empathic abilities. In working with students to open their own empathic channels, I often have them do an exercise where one class member stands in front of the group while the rest attempt to retrieve empathic information about that person.
Frequently students express concern that impressions they have come from what they can see and are therefore logical conclusions or guesses. Usually they spend so much time trying to avoid sensory information and guessing that they do not tap into their empathic impressions. The point of understanding the Beta level is that you can take any Beta message (sensory input) and follow it like a thread until you go to deeper levels and discover empathic information.
For example, a woman once stood before the class who had several qualities that some people in the class associated with being a nurse. They said that her shoes, her haircut, and her overall demeanor somehow made them think that she was a nurse. The people who were arguing within themselves that this conclusion was the result of obvious signs as well as guessing, could get no further information. They were putting too much effort into resisting their primary senses.
There were others who followed their sensory information and traveled into deeper territory. Someone saw a yellow sweater, even though she was not wearing anything yellow. Someone else saw fire all around her and two small children. After the session she told us that her and her two siblings were rescued from a fire when they were young, and yes, she received a yellow sweater as a present only days before this class.
The point is to not discount sensory information. It is the beginning of a train of information that is available to you. Remember that empathic language works through association. You can follow sensory information by first acknowledging it, not by resisting it. Then allow associations to form around those perceptions.
If you see someone slumped over and visibly unhappy, then recognize that conclusion as a Beta message, the first level of empathic language. Associations and impressions will then begin to form and as you examine those associations you are following that information down into deeper levels of perception.
What we have established so far is that: A Beta message is any signal picked up by your primary senses. In the same way that your body is your Beta, the vehicle for your entire empathic process, a Beta message is the vehicle for an entire empathic message.
If you are into highlighting, highlight the sentence you just read. It is a place to focus your awareness, and that focus acts like a magnet attracting associations. Those associations act as links to deeper senses. When you make associations and observe the impressions you get from them, you are following information to deeper levels. You are traveling into your unconscious, where your awareness is the flashlight.
When you see a person who is visibly sad or feeling bad in some way your first impression is the Beta message. At this point you may make an association of someone breaking up in a relationship. That does not mean that the sad person has just broken up with someone, although it can. What it means is that you have started a flow of associations. By starting that flow you begin to connect with that person empathically.
One of the most important points I can share with you about empathic perceptions is that they are more likely to occur when there is a specific need for them to occur. If the sad person who you saw was in significant distress and needed help that you could offer, your flow of associations would rapidly take you to that conclusion: to help. If you know the person and they are significant in your life, the chance of getting specific information is greater. The need is established by the relationship or by the level of distress.
The use of divination tools is another form of Beta messages. The use of tarot cards, for example, is a way to utilize your Beta abilities. The cards serve as visible objects where you can focus your mind and make empathic associations.
You will learn more about the use of tools in lesson seven.
At the Beta stage it is important to be alert, aware, and observant. The greater your ability to concentrate and focus, the greater your mastery of Beta will be. Pay attention to details without getting hung up on them. Take in your environment with open awareness.
Here is a personal example of how I have used Beta messages for my own situation. Once when my daughter was about two years old, my wife and I had taken her to a park. While my wife was pushing my daughter on a swing, I did my usual "Beta sweep" of the park, concerned about any potential safety problems, in a park that occasionally has transients hanging about.
With heightened awareness I simply did a gradual 360-degree turn, taking in everything my senses could determine. I looked at the people, the trees, the cars, anything that came into vision. In my sweep I saw a woman walking on a distant sidewalk. From the visible level she appeared to be a fairly young, well-dressed, average woman walking through the park. But that Beta message was filled with something else. I began associating negative or unusual feelings to her.
From the visual level there was nothing wrong with her appearance or her activity. Still a red flag went up inside of me once I caught sight of her. She was far enough away that I could watch her without being rude. The negative feeling inside of me kept getting stronger, like a radar signal that was strengthening. I watched as the woman walked around the park and then turned, heading straight towards us. At this point my dream voice was saying "red alert, red alert," but there was nothing obvious to go by.
The woman walked right up to me. Once I could see her eyes I saw that she appeared distressed, confused, and possibly very unstable. Her body movements were slightly distorted as she pointed to my child in the swing and asked, " Are you the father of that child?" I simply answered, "Yes, I am." She did not appear to believe me for some reason. She asked, "Are you sure?" I reassured her that I was the father of that child.
She made an odd face and then marched off to another couple with a baby. We never did know for certain what she was up to or what was wrong with her but received ample warning to be on the alert for her. It is my educated opinion that empathic abilities work best when there is danger or urgency involved in a situation.
I shared this example with you to illustrate how a Beta message, something I saw with my eyes, led to a deeper message (alpha). The more you are aware of what you see, hear, smell, and touch, the more you will be able to link your senses to your empathic awareness.
Don't wait for some mysterious message or feeling to emerge in order to retrieve empathic information. Simply look around you. Feel the environment around you with your eyes. Do not put sensory information in a category separate from empathic information. It is all one and the same, it's all information. Empathic information can be enhanced by sensory information and sensory information can be enhanced by empathic information.
At times sensory information and imagination act as a form of mental noise that makes it hard for the beginning empath to process empathic information. Strong emotional states can interfere with empathic reception. Imagined fears and intense desires are also at work within your psyche.
This type of interference, or mental noise, is discussed in Lesson Five. Learning how to discern empathic impressions from mental noise comes from practice, experience, and increasing the connection with your inner empathic. Now, on to deeper levels of Beta.
Beta relates to empathic activity expressed through the physical body. Not only through the physical senses but also through physical states. These states can be electrical, chemical, or nuclear.
Empathic energy, or internally generated energy (innergy) is always present within you. This energy can impact your physical, emotional, and mental state. It can also impact the physical, emotional, and mental state of another person.
Whenever you extend your empathic energy outside of yourself to another person or an object, this activity is called psychokinesis or telekinesis. Psychokinesis is intentionally sent Beta energy. The origin of that intent can be either conscious or unconscious.
Unfortunately, movies and television have imprinted on most people the image of psychokinesis (PK) as lifting large objects with the mind and flinging them across a room. The dramatic portrayals of PK as superhuman and supernatural make it seem to be the most unlikely of all empathic abilities. Yet it is very human and very accessible by anyone.
The best application for PK is through what has been popularly called empathic healing. If you concentrate on another person you can send your own empathic energy to that person. There are many people in the world who have devoted themselves to the idea of healing and helping others. They have trained and conditioned their empathic energy to work with thoughts of repair, regeneration, healing, love, and compassion.
When a healing empath concentrates on another person she is sending Beta messages of healing, love, and compassion. For a healer to do this, their own body fills up with the healing energy, their Beta state, with energy of love, healing, and compassion until it over flows and transfers to another person. Which leads to another important point.
Can empathic energy be used to generate harm or negativity? First, look at how the process works. The sender would have to first fill up with harmful and negative energy until it overflowed. They would then have to be capable of directing that energy to another person while consumed with the negativity.
Who would be the first victim of such an attack? You guessed it, the sender. It is not impossible but the sender pays a great cost and is consumed by the energy before being able to send it.
Generating a Beta Message
To generate a Beta message simply requires an action. Every action you take, no matter how small, generates a Beta message. Your physical presence in a room generates a Beta message. Beta energy is something you generate all the time to move your body.
You can learn to generate Beta energy in more creative ways. Symbolic gestures associated with specific intent can be very powerful Beta messages. For example, each time you want to send healing energy you can touch your heart with your hands as you focus on the target of your healing. Some people like to touch their forehead as they concentrate on receiving empathic information. The classic images of witches and magicians gesturing with specific intent certainly comes to mind when considering ways to generate Beta messages.
Observe your own body language and expressive gestures to see how you are already performing this empathic act. The type of gestures and movements you associate with specific empathic functions should be unique and meaningful to you personally. With practice you will find creative and meaningful movements which will evolve from your own empathic practice. I have developed a system of hand gestures that communicate dreamtongue messages; I call this system "xenchi" (zen chee), which is a course unto itself.
Beta is the foundation for creative action or "ritual." Hand gestures, for example, are Beta messages. If your hand gesture contains within it an Alpha message, or association, regarding relaxation and calm, then you can send Beta energy to calm and relax someone.
Creative actions or rituals generate a theme of Beta messages for specific goals: healing, restoring, protecting, connecting, celebrating, sharing, etc. For example, an empathic healer moving his or her hands over the area around someone's body to generate healing energy, is what I mean by ritual. The moving around of the hands is not really necessary but it acts as a Beta channel.
The most exciting action you can take to send a Beta message is one we normally take for granted: The act of talking generates Beta messages. The power of the human voice carries Beta signals. This also works the other way around. When someone is talking to you they are sending you Beta messages.
Remember, Beta messages contain other messages within them. When someone speaks to me, I get empathic impressions from their voice and their choice of words. This is an area you can grow strong in as you advance in your development as an empath.
Last, but definitely not least, what you could call the "most empathic" level of Beta. It is only the "most empathic" level in the traditional sense of what we think of as empathic or even "psychic". Since Beta is essentially your body/mind, messages that originate from within your unconscious, from the inner empathic, are felt within your body. This form of Beta message takes the form of physical sensations and changes. Empaths are all about feeling: not just emotionally but through physical states as well.
These Beta messages can be through: an increase or decrease in body temperature, an increase or decrease in physical tension (such as around the stomach area), specific sensations on the skin, tingling or pain in the body, an increase or decrease in sense of weightiness (suddenly feeling heavier and slower, or feeling lighter and faster), and so on.
Beta is the level of "gut reactions," bodily responses to empathic perceptions. You may not be consciously aware of what your body is responding to at first. Many years ago I was at a Laundromat when this man walked in and sat down in a chair. There were plenty of other people there and I had no response to them. But when he walked in my whole body suddenly felt very heavy and slow. My stomach was tightening and my whole body suddenly seemed to be rebelling against me.
When I looked at the man or was near him the feeling intensified. From the immediate Beta level, what was visible to my eyes, he did not appear to stand out from any of the other people in the Laundromat. Nevertheless, I could not stand to be around him. I grabbed my clothes out of the washing machine and took them home wet. I did not know why I had to leave but knew enough to trust what my body was telling me.
A week later I was driving down the road when an unmarked police car pulled me over. I wasn't speeding and didn't have a clue why they were pulling me over. A detective came up to my car window and mentioned my name and address, and asked if I was that person. I said that I was. He then pulled out a photograph and asked me if I had ever seen the person in the picture. Guess who it was! You got it, the man from the Laundromat!
It turns out that he was waiting in the Laundromat to get up the nerve to rob the bank right next to it. He was armed and dangerous. You might be wondering how the detectives knew I had been at the Laundromat. Could they be Empaths as well? It turns out that I had thrown away some mail at the Laundromat, which of course, had my address on it. They had gone through the trash after the robbery looking for clues.
The moral of the story is: your body is just as much a part of your empathic mind as any other part. Pay attention to feelings and responses within your body. When someone is intending to do harm or has a strong potential to do harm, they are sending out intense Beta signals.
Beta messages through the body are especially strong when there is danger or imminent threat near you. I personally believe that empathic abilities are natural skills primarily developed for the purposes of safety and protection. Eventually our culture will recognize that and we will develop greater means of protection and security.
Although Beta messages through the body tend to be uniquely patterned around the individual, there are some general patterns for you to learn. The most consistent pattern deals with feelings of expansiveness versus feelings of contraction.
Feelings of contraction, drawing in, closing up, tightening, usually occur in response to a negative or harmful influence. It can be from the presence of danger or from the presence of something or someone you just do not like. How your body responds to your environment is determined by your perceptions, beliefs, and general feelings.
Feelings of expansion, opening up, relaxing, usually occur in response to a positive or pleasant influence. Some people begin to feel "giddy", restless, or excited before receiving some good news or encountering a much-desired event or person.
Areas of empathic sensitivity vary from person to person, but common areas for Beta body messages are the
- temples & forehead,
- the back of the neck,
- the throat,
- the chest,
- and the stomach.
Pretty much down the center of the body following the path of the spine. The spine carries the central nervous system down from the brain to the rest of the body and serves as the pathway for empathic information.
Some empathic traditions of yoga have identified seven empathic centers in the spine. These seven centers have been called "chakras." The way people tend to receive Beta body messages along the center of the body appears to correlate fairly well with the idea of the seven empathic centers.
The Tattwas, like the for example, are said to be geometric shapes that are genetically programmed into the central nervous system that stimulate the empathic centers. Visually focusing on a given Tattwa or visualizing a Tattwa, is said to stimulate the particular energy of that shape. The yellow square is related to Beta energy, which is how empathic information is generated externally and received internally through the body.
At this point you should have an initial understanding of Beta, the first letter of the empathic alphabet. Remember, you are learning the alphabet first. As you learn the other four empathic letters, your understanding will grow as you see how they combine and interact to form the empathic language.
Through Beta you can see that your very environment speaks to you in Dreamtongue, a silent language that forms from the actions, events, and objects around you. To an empath the movement of the world itself is poetry, is a language far beyond words and ideas.
I have talked to you about getting signals from the actions and words of people, but the fullness of Dreamtongue comes from looking at a beautiful sky, a sunset over water, a field of wild flowers, an intense thunderstorm, etc. When you begin to observe the world around you, listening to what it is saying to you, you will begin to hear the language of Dreamtongue.
In hearing the language you will also feel it. In feeling the empathic language you will learn to interpret it and to speak it. I wrote the Book of Storms in dreamtongue language and continue to be amazed by the power of it.
Stage Three Review
1. The goal of stage three is to understand what Beta is and what forms a Beta message can take.
2. Beta is the body/mind as a whole unit, the container of the entire empathic process.
3. A Beta message is any information that can be perceived through the primary senses.
4. Beta energy is empathic energy that is generated by a person and is normally called psychokinesis, or PK.
5. Beta energy or PK can be used for healing or influencing objects & people.
6. A Beta message contains all the other levels of empathic information.
7. Internal empathic impressions form external Beta messages in the body through feelings and sensations.
8. Understanding Dreamtongue begins by learning to observe and listen to the world around you.
Stage Four: Developing Empathic Sensitivity
