Psychological well-being and empathy

Empathy is having its moment. The ability to feel what another person is feeling, from that person's perspective, generates lots of press as the ultimate positive value and the pathway to a kinder, less violent world. Schools across the country are teaching empathy to children, and myriad books explore it from every possible angle: how to get it, why it makes you a better person, how its absence can breed evil. Empathy is exalted by thinkers from Zen Buddhist monk Thích Nhâ't Hąnh to British writer Roman Krznaric, who just launched an online Empathy Museum where you can virtually step into someone else's shoes. Established scientists like primatologist Frans de Waal and developmental psychiatrist Daniel Siegel explore the deep roots of empathy in animals and its essential nature in humans. Even the business world exalts empathy as a way to ensure the success of companies and their products, with design firm IDEO leading the charge. We are exhorted to examine our empathic capacity and instructed how to develop it in ourselves and in our children. July 7 Robin Stern and Diana Divecha;  University of California – Berkeley. http://www.sott.net/article/299309-Psychological-well-being-and-empathy

The Last Quarter Moon of July 8 took place just a day after the above news. At Berkeley, the luminaries are on the angles highlighting  the Uranus-Pluto square and the Mars-TNP Hades-Neptune trine.  Neptune in Pisces is about empathy for others reinforced by Mars  in Cancer, the sign linked to deep feelings. Since Neptune indicates a permeability of the ego,  there are indefinite boundaries between what is self and what is the “other” and the presence of  Hades can bring a further decline to an insecure sense of self as compassion interferes with discrimination.  So the combination represents a dilemma – should one care for others (Cancer) at the expense of one’s own self-interest (Mars).  And  this is exactly what the article points out:

Overly empathic people may even lose the ability to know what they want or need. They may have a diminished ability to make decisions in their own best interest, experience physical and psychological exhaustion from deflecting their own feelings, and may lack internal resources to give their best to key people in their life.

Completing the picture is the star Alpheratz, alpha Andromeda which conjoins the Moon. About this star Nick Fiorenza writes:

Alignments with Alpheratz can also express as being caught in the power plays created by the arrogance or denials of others. Alpheratz can also indicate our vulnerability to the emotional and psychic delusions of others, especially those in our genealogical line or karmic past—often manifesting as elaborate emotional dramatics. Alpheratz asks us to get un-entangled from the human psycho-emotional drama, or accept a sentence of bondage not rightfully ours.