Understanding The Difference Between Psychology and Soul
As you learn to see yourself and others with discernment, you will recognize that every person has two distinct selves: a psychological ego and a spiritual soul. The psychological self has many fearful and hurting parts, but the soul is already whole. We often feel emotionally lacking and concerned for our physical survival in our psychology. However, from the soul, we will feel fulfilled and willing to give.
When you look through your psychological eyes, you will often see the faults and weaknesses of others. Looking through your spiritual eyes, you will see what is uniquely beautiful inside every individual you meet.
Yet, although every human being has unique soul beauty, they may not consistently make choices to express their highest and best character. People are the sum of their light choices for creating love and empowerment and their dark choices for creating harm and disempowerment.
Depending on how many aspects are split away from the light, people can seem complex and confusing. But, if you really look at any person, you can learn how to sense into the particular kind of heavy human conditioning sitting on top of their unique soul's light. Once you can see clearly, the choice then arises: How do you wisely relate to the light and the dark in the people you know and meet?
Mastering Discernment
It can feel like a miracle to glimpse the soul shining through a difficult person when her/his behaviours are mostly unkind and self-serving. Some empaths I meet greatly confuse psychology and soul because even though the soul is the authentic self, unhealed aspects of the personality can greatly obscure and override the goodness of a person's spiritual essence.
Since all people are innocent and good in their soul nature, does this mean you should stay in loving connection with people who are disrespectful, unkind or even cruel to you from their unhealed personality aspects? I think the answer is no. It is very important to know that you will not be able to love people more than they love themselves. Trying to "over-love" someone who is making negative choices is draining to you and invasive to them.
Shadow aspects of the personality block love in all forms. So, if a person is connected to their soul's light 10% of the time, it is only possible to genuinely connect within that 10% window. The other 90% of the psyche in shadow will block a genuine love connection. For this reason, being sensitive to how much love another person can receive is a form of respect.
Witnessing the Interplay of Shadow and Light
When you are genuinely self-loving and therefore do not feel emotionally needy for love and connection, you will better be able to see people in their shadow percentage and their light percentage. When you develop spiritual discernment, you will also be able to see people in their nuanced multidimensionality instead of "all good" or "all bad." You will also realize when you are holding up the light for someone who is not doing it for themselves.
All people have dark shadows to love and heal. Witnessing people in their evolving facets of darkness and light is fascinating. It is heartening to see how much a person's light can be amplified by focusing on it, speaking with it, and building a connection with it. However, if you are an empath, the real test is determining whether a person can hold their higher character beyond your soul-seeing gaze.
Some empaths do not realize their power to amplify soul qualities in people who have not yet built the strength of character to do it for themselves. So, with spiritual discernment, you will know how to relate to each person you encounter by sensing to see if they can hold their soul's higher character apart from keeping company with you. In this way, you can engage with whatever good is available in each person and trust that you can step away when someone is not ready to match your love and light.