I do feel our personal sense of spirtuality is important, it's clearly an important part of our humanity as it has always been present. They have actually studied what happens in the brain of ANYONE who is engaging in whatever form of religion they practice and in each case regardless of the religion, they did notice a specific area of the brain lighting up and becoming very active. While it can be very positive and uplifting, it can also get out of hand and cause problems too. That has also been seen throughout our human history.

What I have done in my own response to sarahsweet's question is that there is an association of "empath" with some sort of supernatural, sciencefiction, paranormal ability. We see a lot of that in movies and programs about ghosts and the supernatural. And that's what sarah presented when she looked up the dictionary meaning of the word empath. Yes, many embrace that as being what an empath is.

However, there is another kind of "empath" that isn't supernatural or having special powers or is of any kind of paranormal. And it's different from being empathetic. That is what a professional explained to me about myself. I am not claiming any sort of special powers at all. Some get a sense of joy in tearing another down, need to feel superior, that's nothing I gain any pleasure from myself. I prefer to see someone embrace their own potential, and feel good about themselves without choosing to create suffering in others to do so and even choosing to embrace deception in order to gain some sense of power over.

I watched my older sister embrace ghosts and illusions and become more and more self deluded where she believes her own lies and delusions. I watched her become so mean and bossy and all the while embracing some kind of supernatural paranormal delusion. It's very, very sad and deeply troubling. In all honesty, it's as though she embraced the devil and evil instead. It's been very, very toxic and even embarrassing to see how it has affected so many different people so negatively including myself. She is a paranormally deluded drama queen who drains others with her endless emotional vampire behaviors. Only SHE has special powers, only SHE is superior and only SHE is an empath in the sense of THE supernatural science fiction BS. It's bad and sickening, and her world is nothing but lies and manipulations because of it. She cannot or refuses to see truth and realities, it just makes her angry and lash out and punish others in some extremely twisted and disturbing ways. And she doesn't really understand WHAT an empath is, and it's certainly not due to her being SO EMOTIONAL and needing her own emotions to stand out the most because she needs to feel superior in some way. Truth is, it's all about her feelings, not how others feel at all, she decides that for them, which has not been healthy at all or based on truth.

I think one has to be careful when it comes to embracing the idea of having some kind of paranormal supernatural powers. I have seen how destructive it can get.