How?
The best way is through meditation. Studies show that when people meditate, the parts of the brain associated with empathy light up. There are certain meditations designed to help open the heart chakra (the heart energy centre) in order to help develop compassiona and unconditional love. Drunvalo Melchizadek in his book, Living in the Heart gives an excellent meditation to connect with your heart. Many of us, particularly those who are university trained, are taught to downplay emotions as inferior. We are taught that reason trumps love. But this is not true. In fact, science has now found that it is the heart which emits far more energy (electro-magnetic) than the brain and the heart even has its own brain cells. This gives new meaning to the Biblical quote "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
The consciousness scale calibrated by Dr. David Hawkins puts fear near the bottom end of the scale at 100 compared to love at 500. What is the difference? The real barrier according to Dr. Hawkins, between fear and love is courage. It is having courage to conquer your fear that allows you to move past negativity and get into the upper positive spectrum, where love and reason reside. Reason , at 400 on the scale, is obscured by fear and reasoning needs a certain amount of courage and a willingness to let go of preconceived ideas in order to arrive at logical conclusions. Past reason is love and above - joy, peace and even enlightenment. Food for thought! Perhaps it is time to turn off the newscast?