Is empathy a virtue or an emotion? Not really either, but it is an essential ingredient in forming any of the virtues related to the ability to love. “Empathy is the intellectual, emotional, and imaginative apprehension of another person’s situation that takes place without experiencing it. It is learning through identification, through entering that special matrix where one encounters the unifying co-humanity of self and neighbor”[1]. So when is empathy a virtue? It depends, Miller in his research article concluded, “Empathy as a virtue is dependent on other virtues. It can’t stand alone; it’s insufficient. It needs to be informed and disciplined by other virtues such equity, judgment, and fairness[2].” However, empathy is much more than an emotional or cognitive connection. It is the ability to feel what someone else feels, and when these feelings involve the higher self, they become a call to action and become a virtue in themselves.

Empathy involves the ability to relate on body, mind, and soul levels. The emotions are the domain of the body and the old brain. When we experience and absorb the sadness or grief from another, it activates the amygdala resulting in our own experience of sadness including tears and the lump in the throat sensation. The call to help involves the workings of the mind. We evaluate the best way to support the other person, whether it be a hug, a word of encouragement, or just the silence of a good listener. If the cause of the person’s grief relates to our own experiences, there is a mental and emotional connection. We feel bonded through our sadness. Our soul, or more correctly, our spirit, experiences their soul energies and will begin to resonate with the same vibration with the goal of bringing the other soul back to the natural vibrations associated with love and joy. This ability to experience the emotional, mental, and spiritual vibrations of another is truly a remarkable virtue, one that we all have the innate ability to practice and experience. It is one of the basic foundations of love.

When it comes to sex, our body goal is orgasm, the mind goal is self-gratification, but the unspoken goal of the soul is to empathize or to seek and resonate with the love and joy vibrations of another.  If we are feeling down, we will seek another, usually a love partner, to help us regain our love-joy vibrations again. This is empathy in reverse, but it is still empathy according to our definition. This is more than an emotion, it is the ability to connect, not just for orgasm and sexual self-gratification, but for the ultimate goal of reaching and sharing the vibrations of love and joy. However, we have to be careful with whom we mate, because empathy means we absorb the emotional and mental vibrations as well as the spiritual. The goal should always be seeking the love-joy connection, so we can experience enriching feelings of higher vibrations.

Five application for bisexuality:

1. We are a sexual body. It is sometimes okay to seek orgasm for the sake of orgasm as long as the other person is seeking sex for the same reason. And as bisexuals we can seek copulation with either men or women.
2. We also have a brain or a mind, and we should use it. We will be forming a mental and emotional link with another human being. We should evaluate whether or not we wish to form such a link with the individual involved.
3. We should also be seeking more than just orgasm. Anonymous encounters provide orgasm but nothing else and usually leave us with a hollow feeling, or even guilt, or shame. When we seek a sexual partner, we also have an opportunity to exchange thoughts and feelings with another human being. We have an opportunity to form a friendship and to share emotions and other feelings as well as orgasm.
4. We can view sex as a soul experience. If we just experience sex and a physical and emotional experience, we have missed or deliberately chosen to bypass the greater sensation of joy. We can seize the opportunity to form a spiritual link which will lead to the wonderful vibrations of love and joy.
5. We can remember that we are higher beings with a higher inner self. We have an opportunity to experience love and joy continuously. Sex can be a bridge from the mundane world of crying and striving to the fields of Elysium. We can choose a partner to help us walk the path with the enormous boost to joy that sexual experiences can provide.

[1] Virtue, First Foundation –

[2] Miller, Richard. Research IU Bloomington. 2013. http://virtuefirst.org/virtues/empathy/