The Power of Empaths in an Increasingly Harsh World
Another excellent work from Anita Moorjani, who had a life-changing experience that gave her a heart-based perspective of reality beyond the three dimensional, externally focused world, we inhabit. Leaving that story aside, she now shares more insights that assist those who already relate a little or a lot to this perspective.
I have read both her previous books Dying to Be Me and What if THIS is Heaven? and I have listened to her speak, it is here where she is fluent, spontaneous and highly relatable, her most authentic and resonant. I love her books, but listening to her YouTube series Tea With Anita (this episode on empaths) and this one on Forgiveness, has for me, been life-affirming.
Become Aware, Develop Appropriate Resources
Here, she focuses particularly on the experience of those who are empaths, no matter where on the spectrum of empathy they sit. It explains and supports how they feel, expanding awareness and helps them understand how to cope with certain situations and why it is important that they play a larger role in our societies.
Having listened to her speak on the subject, I’m aware there are different categories of empath, depending on certain characteristics. Some people are highly sensitive but may not be as affected by the energy of other people in their presence, or some may have already learned coping mechanisms.
Anita Moorjani shares her experience, which is unique and sees the gift in being this way, identifying some of the ways to mitigate the negative effects of what an empath absorbs and suggests ways to focus on their own well-being.
She writes of appreciating the gift and beauty of our sensitivity, seeing the strength in it, recognising the responses and behaviours in our society that may have contributed to it being devalued.
The Beauty of Your Sensitivity
“Your sensitivity opens up six sensory world. It’s connected to the other side. If you block your sensitivity, you block what’s coming in from the other realm. The thing is to be aware that you’re giving your power to the outside world, and to start giving it to your own inner world or to your higher self.”
And the consequence of suppressing it:
“It’s when you give your power to the outside world that you lose your connection to your inner sense of knowing, and your life starts spirally downward.”
To make the most of the gift of sensitivity, and to develop one’s intuitive capacity, it is necessary to quiet the noise coming from external sources.
Dealing With Sensory Overload

Photo: Taryn Elliott, Pexels.com
Each chapter provides a short mantras and a meditative text that specifically address the aspect encouraged in that chapter, so that it becomes not just something theoretical, that we read and understand, but something with a practical aspect, an action one can take, something that many who are inclined to read this, will no doubt already be practicing.
“The outside world is loud and demanding so the first step in honing our powers is learning to deal effectively with sensory overload. We have to identify and manage the things that jam our inner guidance system. And that involves turning down the volume on the outside world so we can hear what’s going on inside.”
There are also practical ways to protect one’s energetic body, to recognise the impact negative influences have on it, and a variety of ways to protect it. This is something I encounter frequently talking with other practitioner’s, how to proactively protect oneself from unwanted energies, and in a case where we have absorbed something, what to do immediately afterwards to remove it and to remember to prevent it in future.
Protect Your Energetic Body (Aura)
1. Carry black tourmaline with you.
2. Smudge your aura with white sage (especially after being in and around groups of people)
3. Strengthen your aura by using colour and learning how to expand and contract it, learning to contract it, helps avoid picking up unwanted energies.
4. Keep your body healthy – drink plenty of water, exercise, go outside (clears energy, centres you)
Connect With the Web of Consciousness
One of the best rewards of dealing with the imbalances and disequilibrium is the creativity that awaits expression, something that is there within, buried beneath layers of issues that once addressed, reveal potential.
“As with Michelangelo finding his angel in the block of marble, we need to strip away these layers and chip away at the false beliefs, thought patterns, fears and unnecessary pressures that jam our internal radar and hinder our connection to our inner mystics.”
Ego and Conscious Awareness
Ego often gets a bad rap. Anita Moorjani puts it in context by considering it one of two elements required in balance, ego and conscious awareness – that it is only when one or other are out of balance with each other that problems arise. If the ego dial is on high and conscious awareness is low egocentricity results. Likewise, raised conscious awareness with little or no ego, results in an ability to act or change. A healthy ego and conscious awareness aligns us with our purpose and brings meaning into our lives.
“Ego serves a huge purpose. It offsets a tendency to second guess oneself or give power away.”
Imagination Unveils a Calling
“A clue to finding one’s purpose is to use your imagination. When I set my imagination free, I connect with something that is exciting and beautiful: for me, it’s my sixth sense, my intuition, and my higher self.”
Giving the example from her own life experience, from within one of the cultures within which she was raised, she shows how each culture puts upon us a set of differing beliefs, that are often in conflict with each other, which adds to our confusion. And shows how suppressing one’s inner guidance and giving our power away to an authoritative cultural figure can have a detrimental effect.
“Death taught me that I had to recognise my own divinity first before I could be or do anything of value to others.”
Being Your Authentic Self, Empowered Within
“Good teachers help you believe in yourself, rather than cultivate a belief in them. They teach you to connect to the divinity within you.”
There is so much I highlighted throughout the book that I could share. If any of this resonates, I highly recommend reading it, the messages are reassuring, it’s a book I have already passed on to another with whom I have discussed these issues.
One way empaths deal with the effect of this characteristic is to share stories and methods to resolve the associated dilemmas we face, to empower each other, to overcome the obstacles, because the reward of being able to use that quality as a strength is not just beneficial to oneself, but to all we come into contact with, a quality we need more of in this world.
“Accept that your inner world is real. It’s real and you have to empower it.”
Anita Moorjani
I’d not come across empaths before – I had to Google it. I’m not sure this book is for me – I doubt if I have the necessary sensitivity. It’s probably one that has to cross your path in the right place at the right time, but I’m glad it works for you.
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Yes, it’s a book written by someone I follow and more of a ‘spiritual well-being’ genre, that is helpful in life and in my line of work, quite different to my taste in fiction.
I have a separate tab for these kinds of books and often enjoy going back and rereading my impressions of them, they’re also books I return to and reread, for their bites of wisdom.
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Claire, thank you for this. I’m starting at the beginning and have just ordered Dying To Be Me and I’ll read my way to this new book you’re talking about. I was hospitalized last August and while I didn’t end up in a coma having a near death experience, the results certainly could have been better — but the lessons I learned were very profound and meaningful — and its caused me to look at the situation in a positive light. So I can’t wait to read this book and I will listening on YouTube as well. Hope you and your son are well Claire, and your family back home as well.
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Hi Fransi, I hope you are feeling better after your hospitalisation and have had time to take on some of Anita Moorjani’s excellent suggestions. Have you read any of her books yet? She’s great to listen to as well, so genuine and unpretentious, just sharing what she has come to know and understand given her own wake up call.
We are both well here Fransi, life is very different than it was, but we live with a much greater appreciation of each other and the quiet period we are all living suits us well. I’m pretty good at checking out from the noise of the external world and am fortunate that my work hasn’t been too affected by the changes, bringing well-being to people is quite in demand in fact.
Wishing you all the best Fransi.
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I am reading the book, Claire, and love it, not just because of her wonderful storytelling and suggestions, but because it has so much meaning for me. I can so relate. And of course the fact that you wrote your review and I discovered this book at this particular time in my life — which, as you know, may seem like a coincidence, but it isn’t. I am glad you and your son are doing well. I think about you often. These quiet times have worked well for me, too, I have to say. And I, too, am grateful I have still been able to work and write. Be well Claire.
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This sounds like good reading for a sensitive soul. i’ve recently finished reading the father and son team of Perlmutters newish book, Brain Wash, and I found the statistics and consideration of the relationship between excessive social media usage/dependency and empathy really interesting/curious. The book itself focuses on a number of different topics (everything from mindfulness and meditation to nutrition and exercise) but the parts on empathy were the parts that I couldn’t resist reading aloud to Mr BIP.
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That’s so interesting, the Brain Wash consideration of the effect of social media on empaths. And also interesting given my review coming tomorrow on Riane Eisler’s book Nurturing OUr Humanity, which is all about the effect on our brains of the ‘domination system’ of society that we have been living under for many years.
I think its not just social media, but also reading material and films, I recently suggested that I was on a “reading diet” as I noticed that a couple of books I read where the characters had a complete lack of empathy made me feel really out of sorts. It’s an effect, that it seems, will affect the brain or mind even when we know it is fiction. I can rationalise and tell myself something isn’t true but a part of my brain reacts as if it is. So I can’t watch horror or thrillers or anything that is designed to frighten or scare. And maybe it is also because after a long time of being on such a diet, the effect when you do go back to something outside that safe place becomes even more pronounced.
Thank you kindly for leaving such a thought provoking comment, I hadn’t been on my blog for a while, so I’m just catching up with some of the older messages.
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it doesn’t look like that Riane Eisler is in our public library system in Toronto, which is disappointing, but my search reminded me that I still haven’t read her book about revisioning the concept of wealth, so I’ve “saved” that to my library list in the meantime (one step away from a hold). What an essential read though. And obviously connected to her landmark The Chalice and the Blade.
I know that “out of sorts” feeling well. We have a neighbour who periodically (presumably in response to an email or a text message) erupts in a couple of very angry sentences hollered so loudly that I can hear each word distinctly. She’s not angry with me, she doesn’t relate that way with me, I know that even if the person she’s “yelling at” was there that she wouldn’t yell at them that way…but I can’t intellectualize away the physiological effect, which lingers like a stone in my shoe. Mind you, I can and do watch and read both crime and horror occasionally, so I’m contradictory on that count! Heheh
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