Under what conditions do healthy relationships exist between people? Looking at scores of studies from empirical psychology to the practical experience of professional people helpers and faith leaders, one condition tends to rise to the top of the list—empathy.

Carl Rogers (1980 as cited in Rogers 1959), the psychologist we owe much of our contemporary fascination with empathy, famously defined empathy as being “completely at home in the universe of the patient. It is a moment-to-moment sensitivity that is in the “here and now,” the immediate present. It is a sensing of the client’s inner world of private personal meanings “as if” it were the therapist’s own, but without ever losing the “as if” quality” (pp. 210-211).

The crucial moment of that definition is the “as if” part. Some misunderstand empathy as simply “feeling the pain of the other person.” For sure, if you open yourself up to the point of trying to understand the perspective and emotions of another human being, you may find your own pain runs in parallel to their pain. At other times, you may even misread the other person’s pain as your own! But this is not really empathy. Empathy is more about getting out of your own ego long enough to prevent “you” from getting in the way of making a genuine connection to another’s thoughts and emotions, eventually you also begin to understand the shape and form of meaning in their life as well.

How do you cultivate this way of seeing other people? One answer to that question comes from the thousands of years of spiritual discipline spanning time and all parts of the globe and human societies. These time-tested strategies are sometimes referred to as contemplative practices, but they have reemerged in the various meditations movements in western society from transcendental, to mindfulness, to loving kindness meditations.

Sometimes these contemporary movements are firmly grounded in their spiritual heritage (centering prayer) or they are re-contextualized from their original tradition to western secular society (mindfulness). Regardless, one common finding across meditation practices is that they appear to help people to varying degrees become more empathic and compassionate toward others by helping them become less determined by the whim of their personal desires and agendas (what Buddhists call emptiness). This is consistent with a teaching in my personal tradition (centering prayer) where we say that the fruit of the prayer is not found on the meditation mat, but the time outside of our meditation. It is also similar to the way that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. understood the concept of church, not so much as a place you “go to” but the place you “come out from.”

Contemplative practices, much like church, are no panacea; when you get up from the meditation mat you still must go out and live with people who are sometimes frustrating, sometimes loving, sometimes easy to understand, and sometimes distressingly opaque. People, when you really get to know them, are almost always a mixed bag! In this way, empathy, much like forgiveness, can be a kind of social lubricant that prevents a potentially never ending cycle of conflict based on one-upmanship and tit-for tat relationship dynamics from spinning out of control. That’s why contemplative practices are almost always paired with contemplative communities to help foster such predispositions towards others—what Jesuits call “contemplatives in action.”

One final word. You may have read this and thought, “Sure, that sounds easy. Meditate, empathize, and empathy will flourish.” Now if you also thought, “Real life is just much more complicated than that!” I wholeheartedly agree with you. And the reason it is more complicated than that is because people are autonomous and no single person can complete a network of empathy and compassion by themselves. Everyone must eventually recognize that offering a gift of empathy and compassion for others is not always reciprocated.

However, in some cases it could create the conditions whereby the other person may experience the warmth of your non-defensive presence and reciprocate in kind. Some traditions hold that the outcome isn’t really the point, but the offer of genuine empathy and compassion is an end it itself. When all of human society is capable of offering that gift is ultimately a mystery, but one worth pursuing with commitment. A contemplative practice, paired with a caring community, often helps to make that happen—at least in part.