Empathy

Empathy has many different definitions that encompass a broad range of emotional states, such as caring for other people and having a desire to help them; experiencing emotions that match another person's emotions; discerning what another person is thinking or feeling; and making less distinct the differences between the self and the other.It also is the ability to feel and share another person’s emotions.

Compassion and sympathy are two terms that many associate with empathy, but all three of these terms are unique. Compassion is an emotion we feel when others are in need, which motivates us to help them. Sympathy is a feeling of care and understanding for someone in need.

Altruism

Altruism or Humanitarianism is the behavior of Service to Others that has a capacity to feel empathy and compassion for others and is aimed at benefiting another person, group or the planet. Egotism is a behavior that is acted out for personal gain or Service to Self.

Since empathy involves understanding feelings or the capacity to feel the emotional states of other people, the way emotions are characterized in one's personal experience is how the emotions will be characterized for others having similar experiences. The ability to imagine oneself as another person in their position and be able to feel what they may be feeling in those circumstances,(standing in another persons shoes) is a sophisticated imaginative process which develops Compassion.

Humans seem to make the same immediate connection between the tone of voice and other vocal expressions and inner feeling. Empathy is distinctly different from sympathy, pity, and emotional contagion. Sympathy or empathic concern is the feeling of Compassion or concern for another, and the wish to see them better off or happier. Pity is feeling that another is in trouble and in need of help as they cannot fix their problems themselves, often described as "feeling sorry" for someone. Emotional contagion is when a person (especially an infant or a member of a mob, group consciousness) imitatively "catches" the emotions that others are showing without necessarily recognizing this is happening.

The goal of spiritual development is to be fully present and aware to emotional states and to choose the emotional states one expresses, in stead of being at the whim of the undisciplined emotional states generating from the Pain Body.