***How To Spot An Empath, With Aura Readings Of Natalie Portman

Beautiful Natalie! Is she really a skilled empath and great role model for other empaths, as suggested by Anita in our earlier thread? Let's explore.

Reading aura databanks along with me, you might find it helpful to use the photo reading technique explained at length in "Read People Deeper."As a supplement, many of the techniques in "Aura Reading Through All Your Senses"would be helpful as well. One click away, you can find FAQs about aura readings here.

Thinking about background that might be useful for you, I've just had an Aha! The way I've developed of seeking out empathic gifts -- I guess that I never have explained to anyone... exactly how I do that.

So here's a little theoretical interlude to include you in the small group of people in the world, so far, who know how to locate specific empathic gifts in my particular way.

HOW TO BE A TALENT SCOUT FOR EMPATHS

What is an empath, anyway? By definition, an empath has at least one significant (trainable) gift for directly experiencing what it is like to be another person.

Unskilled empaths suffer, because they instinctively take on the fear, pain, and other STUFF of people they have contact with. This stays inside the empath's aura indefinitely. By contrast, a skilled empath learns to turn the built-in circuitry OFF most of the time, using consciousness.

This effortless turning OFF protects the empath; it is also great preparation for using techniques to turn empathic gifts ON, doing this on purpose and safely. (As you probably know, I introduced both types of technique in Empowered by Empathy.

If you're curious about sampling it, you can hear a good-sized sample from my audiobook edition by clicking here,then scrolling down to the audio link.)

Undoubtedly you know of many popular misconceptions about being an empath. Yesterday's blog conversation addressed the "born to suffer" idea. An equally common misunderstanding is that being an empath means an emotional way of connecting to others.

You'll find this, for instance, in Karla McLaren's book about being an empath. I do find it fascinating that both of us independently came up with the term "skilled empath," despite approaches that are otherwise so different. For instance, I don't share her recommendation that empaths need other empaths for support because our lives are so hard. Also, unlike Karla, years after writing for empaths I haven't repudiated my work and become an outspoken anti-New Ager!

As I researched what it means to be an empath, I found that empaths can have very diverse gifts. If you have any one of them, it will show up in the chakra related to that gift. In the reading of Natalie that follows, I'll check out every chakra that can be related to a gift, so you'll get the idea of how to do this type of research on your own. On anyone, in person or by means of a photograph.

RESEARCHING YOUR OWN GIFTS AS AN EMPATH

I recommend two different approaches as the best way to find out if YOU are an empath and, if so, just which gift(s) you have. A third approach can be mentioned, as well.

1. Self-Recognition, Paying Attention, Giving Credit Where Due

In "Empowered by Empathy" you'll find definitions of many different gifts, followed up by examples about practical benefits and problems that show up as a result of having that particular gift. Each chunk of description was carefully designed to help trigger recognition if you have that gift. Or not trigger it if you don't.

You can trust your reaction. If you can relate to a gift, as described, don't second guess yourself with nasty little interrogations like, "But am I absolutely-tootly positive? Is it obvious to everyone else in the world? Ooh, horrors, might I be bragging?"

2. Aura Readings

Of course, information about empathic gifts is encoded in aura databanks, just like any other gift of your soul.
Need you be an empath to tell if someone is an empath? Not at all. Having read thousands of auras, I don't need to possess all those gifts in order to read them. Same goes for you.

Reading auras is a form of literacy, an essential survival skill in the 21st century. With regular literacy you can read about qualities you don't have as a person, as well as qualities that you do have.

Aura readings of databanks in Natalie Portman will follow.

Okay, 3. The Other Option

Yes, you can have a phone session with me where I read your aura and comment on your empathic gifts.
Since these sessions go by intention, you can simply tell me at the beginning of a session that you seek this kind of information. There will be time left over for cutting a cord of attachment or Thrill Your Soul research, or other kinds of Aura Transformation session.

Obviously I can do this for you. It isn't my first choice, or even second choice, because (as you may have noticed) I have an agenda as a spiritual teacher. Here are some hints:

*"The Power of Face Reading"
*"Empowered by Empathy"
*"Heal Yourself and Others (with Energy Spirituality)" -- which is the subtitle of "Cut Cords of Attachment"

Yes, as these book titles attest, I'm really into empowering you. So I'd recommend that you have me validate your experience of gifts, if that helps to give you confidence, only after you have given you a chance to do one or both of the other methods.

RESEARCHING EMPATHIC GIFTS ON NATALIE PORTMAN

Okay, all is nicely framed now. Let's use Empowered by Empathy. this photo of Natalie.

PRESENCE ENTERING THE ROOM databank at the Root Chakra

This is always a revealing databank, and useful when scouting for empathic gifts. Here I look for gifts like these:

•Environmental Empath
•Animal Empath
•Physical Oneness
•Physical Intuition

Even if there aren't any, at this databank you can tell if someone's empathic nature is allowed to show as part of that person's personality. Sometimes empathic gifts are hidden.

Sometimes they just can't be hidden. Sometimes they are even exaggerated.

And that last possibility is the case, I believe, for Natalie Portman. Strongly empathic, she has surrendered to her gifts. To put it another way, she identifies strongly with her consciousness, rather than her human identity.

In Natalie's case, I suspect that a contributing factor is what she has needed to do to herself inwardly in order to achieve the "anorexic ideal" for movie stars.

Really, if you didn't gasp with horror at the photo above, take another look. A camera is adding 10 pounds to what? If Natalie's gorgeous, glowey face and magnificent dress were changed to those of a starving woman, would those arms and shoulders look much different?

Many of today's movie stars are scarcely in their bodies, especially the women. Some are naturally thin, but how many people are naturally that thin? Natalie has been evolved enough to shift into identifying with spiritual awareness, rather than merely being cut off from a full experience of life, which is more common.

If you want to explore an example of this, check out the comparison photos of Lady Diana in "Wrinkles Are God's Makeup," where I fill a chapter with references to how much she changed in a few short years. Read her aura and you'll see how she shifted from being sensuous and grounded to becoming ultra-photogenic, thin and detached from her body.)

INTELLECTUAL CONNECTION TO OTHERS databank at the Solar Plexus Chakra

Natalie shows wonderful intellectual qualities: tenderness, refinement, and using her heart in conjunction with her mind. None of this is about otherness, however, so I wouldn't consider her an Intellectual Empath.

EMOTIONAL CONNECTION TO OTHERS databank at the Heart Chakra

Yes, here it is: Emotional Oneness. This is the emotional gift where an empath personally experiences feelings that really originate in other people.

Does Natalie also have Emotional Intuition? Not in my opinion. In fact, she has a psychologically oriented way of observing people's emotions, probably part of her upbringing, certainly habitual, and rather creative. Does this way serve her now? Not particularly. I suspect she is in the process of realizing she has outgrown this; it could limit her experience of people and her acting.

Now that I have found a gift, how does one research whether an empath is skilled or not? Just read around more in that databank. Is there pain belonging to other people? What else do you find out.

Granted, you might need a bit of experience reading auras, or healing, or doing empathic merges to have this more 3-D experience of walking around inside a person's aura databank. Having a fair amount of internal clarity (i.e., your own aura) But once you grow accustomed, I can assure you, it's easy as tasting the flavors in a bite of apple pie.

With Natalie, do I find her to be a skilled empath, reading around in that same databank as the gift for Emotional Oneness?
I'll put it this way: Portman is trained in the way that SHE would consider trained but not in the way I would consider trained.

What's her way? She takes in a great deal of emotional experience from other people. She takes it in without using consciousness to turn her gift OFF, so this is inevitable. She carries a significant part of pain belonging to others.

Yet, as it seems to me, Natalie believes in this kind of suffering and equates it with art. She sometimes explores how to look facially, use her voice and body to convey nuances of these emotional experiences. So her dedication to acting is part of the experience.

If someone told her that she could do all this better by being the kind of skilled empath that I train people to be... would she believe it? Would she dare to risk changing her ways?

There's an awful lot at stake right now. It would be very human to avoid changing something so intimately tied in with her life purpose, habits, artistic methodology, etc.

Come on, Natalie Portman. Give me a call. Then you can knock me over with a feather, or we can use feathers to tickle each other, your choice.

SPIRITUAL CONNECTION TO OTHERS databank at the Third Eye Chakra

Something lovely is going on at this part of Natalie's aura. She has a lovely spiritual connection, replete with Spiritual Oneness. Joy for others and sustenance for her own inner life are both flowing like a multicolored fountain.

Still, according to my reading, Natalie isn't consciously using this empathic gift as she uses the emotional one. She isn't conscious of her consciousness. When she does this, then she'll be able to make more use of all this.

Incidentally, the third eye chakra is my favorite place to go hunting for that rarest of empathic gifts, being a Molecular Empath. (Not present here.)

ROLE MODELING

If you have read along with me all the way to here, perhaps you have formed your own conclusion about whether you would consider Natalie Portman a skilled empath. Comment away with your insights and opinions!

Here's my opinion: Natalie wears her empathic nature as part of a winning, adorable, soft, and relatively sane personality. In that sense she is a great role model.

Here she is, empathically talented and intentionally going into her experiences without the benefit of training about how to have skill.

That sanity is really a feat, given her line of work and (not to be counter-culture unappreciative of the will strength involved) the vocational need to starve herself to the required degree to be a female star. I won't begin to list all -- or any -- of the show biz folks whose auras show they are pretty darned messed up, arrogant, self-absorbed, drug-dependent, sexually obsessed, etc.

So yes, I admire Natalie Portman. She's one beautiful empath.