We can consciously cultivate a capacity for empathy: with practice we can refine this awareness and recognize the subtle reality that we are fundamentally connected. We have this ability – to know one another directly – with no prior experience. There exists within us a “wisdom of knowing,” - a system in which ”self” is not experienced as separate from “other.”
“As Giacomo Rizzolatti, the Italian neuroscientist who discovered mirror neurons, explains, these systems ‘allow us to grasp the minds of others not through conceptual reasoning but through direct simulation; by feeling, not thinking.’” (as quoted in Sandra Blakelee, “Cells That Read Minds.” New York Times, January 10, 2006. p.C3). Goleman, 2006, p. 43.
“This triggering of parallel circuitry in two brains lets us instantly achieve a shared sense of what counts in a given moment. This creates an immediacy, a sense of sharing the moment. Neuroscientists call that mutually reverberating state ‘empathic resonance,’ a brain-to-brain linkage that forms a two-person circuitry….” Goleman, 2006, p. 43.
“Stern concludes that our nervous systems ‘are constructed to be captured by the nervous systems of others, so that we can experience others as if from within their skins.’ At such moments we resonate with their experience, and they with ours.”
“We can no longer, Stern adds, ‘see our minds as so independent, separate and isolated,’ but instead we must view them as ‘permeable,’ continually interacting as though joined by an invisible link. At an unconscious level, we are in constant dialogue with anyone we interact with, our every feeling and very way of moving attuned to theirs. At least for the moment our mental life is cocreated, in an interconnected two-person matrix.” (Goleman, 2006, p. 43.)
References
Blakelee, Sandra. (2006, January 10). Cells That Read Minds.” New York Times, pp.C3.
Goleman, Daniel. (2006). Social intelligence: The new science of human relationships. NY: Bantam Dell.
Stern, Daniel. (2004). The present moment in psychotherapy and everyday life. New York: W.W. Norton. p.76.
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References
Blakelee, Sandra. (2006, January 10). Cells That Read Minds.” New York Times, pp.C3.
Goleman, Daniel. (2006). Social intelligence: The new science of human relationships. NY: Bantam Dell.
Stern, Daniel. (2004). The present moment in psychotherapy and everyday life. New York: W.W. Norton. p.76.