It’s an interesting thing, this “me” business. Has anyone noticed an overwhelming trend lately of “self love” exercises, mantras, self help books, seminars, step by step guides, sayings, classes, songs, rituals, proclamations, life coaches, and more? Has anyone else noticed a trend of people telling other people things like this:

“I love myself!”

“You should love yourself!”

“Don’t you love yourself?”

“Learn to love yourself!”

Or speaking about someone in a negative context by saying things like,

“He doesn’t love himself…”

or, “She just does not know how to love herself…” to explain things like depression, sadness, or self-destructive behavior?

Hmmm…………..

To go out on a limb here – I am going to ask a question. Why does everyone accept these things without analysis or scrutiny? Because it sounds good to say “love yourself”.

Whats wrong with love, right?? Who on earth could be against love? Love is the greatest thing ever created! Love is the most revered thing in the world!

Well… here’s a question. What if, things that we call “love” are not really love?

When someone says, “love yourself” – what do they MEAN by that? Do they mean take care of your body? Brush your teeth at night? Buy yourself nice things? Hang around with nice people who treat you with kindness?

It seems to me that many people seem to believe that they are at a deficit of some kind – and that unless they do very very specific things – that it means they don’t “love” themselves. People stand in front of the mirror doing exercises where they look at themselves and say over and over and over for 5 minutes – “I love you.” As a way to condition their own minds? Or to hopefully slowly rebuild something that they are missing? Wait a minute…

No, seriously – just wait a minute…

Why is this valued and held as such gospel? Is it really that bad to not think incredibly highly of yourself? Honestly! Because the last time I checked – that was called HUMILITY. I’m not talking about self hate here. I’m talking about humility. A state where you start at a kindergarten level by acknowledging that *you* are not the center of the universe (I know, a radical thought this day in age…). That YOU have many many flaws and likely always will! Why is this important? Because it is the opposite of narcissism.

Narcissists refuse to see their character flaws. They may pretend to see them…but they never actually want to change. If they could live their entire lives being the center of the universe where everyone around them caters to their personality, desires, and demands…or even better, where people worship them – they would! Now, how does this relate to us? Oh, yeah, the whole self-love thing…

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with loving. If that means we love ourselves, great. But when we start spending all of our time OBSESSING over “loving” ourselves, thinking that learning how to do this is the entire purpose of life, paying a life coach hundreds of dollars for their E-Book, and figuring out all of the ways in which we can put ourselves first (?), do everything for ourselves first, set aside time every day to repeat mantras to neurolinguistically program ourselves into a state of “self love”…

Is that edging closer to the slide that goes down into the public pool of narcissism, so to speak? Is that time we could be spending doing something nice or helpful for OTHER people? And if we chose to do the latter, how would that affect the overall state of things?

Similarly to how, when you say you love yourself – it doesn’t really matter what you say, if you aren’t DOING things that reflect that statement… When we say we love other people – if we aren’t DOING things to reflect that, are we really being true to how we say we feel? Is that love?

These are all just questions…

Mostly meant to encourage us all to really take a look at what we are spending our time on. What we are spending our focus on. What our goals are for our activities… Are they all self-serving? Or are they positioned to serve…?

Is one of these better than the other…?

Thats a question you’ll have to ask yourself…and then pay attention to the feeling in your gut that happens immediately following your answer.

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I liken driving (especially a long distance) with a dirty windshield to what its like to live a life under an unhealthy influence of alcohol.

Yeah, you can “see” out of your windshield. But during the day your view is through rounded streaks of dirt, smeared bugs, and fogged dust collected that just gets spread around when you try to spray your windshield cleaner. At night, lights bounce off of the streaks, creating a glow that won’t allow you to see clearly down a dark road. Ironically, at night – when your windshield is dirty – the more lights that pass by you or are around you – the less you can see!

How is this like problematic alcohol use? If the two were genetically related, they’d be fraternal twins. When you use alcohol to numb your feelings, to cure boredom, to qualm emotions, to feed cravings, to adapt socially, to escape – you are creating a shield over your eyes. It is a very subtle shield, and you can see through it – but it filters and skews your vision. Most people don’t realize this when they are in its grip, whether they be chained to it with heavy industrial steel links – or simply tied to it by a feather light, sterling silver jewelry chain – alcohol’s trophy wife or husband. This chain is deceptively binding, though it will convince you over time that not only is it easily breakable – but that you’re not even wearing it at all.

While under the spell of this “chain” – your eyes see things not as they are. Your perception views things through the lens of alcohol – even when you’re sober! This is a very hard thing to describe, and may be hard to believe – but once you’ve been back and forth on either side enough times, you begin to see. Your windshield is not clean. Why? Because you’re driving and you’ve collected gunk? No… Its because your wiper blades need to be replaced. (Ok, you can laugh at this last sentence, but it is true!).

Even borderline problematic alcohol use degrades your wiper blades, cuts them, depreciating them instantly so that no matter how many times you try to wipe – they simply will not clean the windshield. They swipe back and forth, creating further streaks and lack of visibility. But by that time, the alcohol has made you too lazy to get up, drive to the auto parts store – and buy a new, fresh pair. You’ve been stung – lightly paralyzed, complete with background audio telling you – “Oh no, its fine. You can see ok! Its dirty but…I don’t want to get up. I can’t get up. Its so far to the store. I’d rather sit here and use my old wiper blades.”

And so you stay. You stay where you are – too paralyzed to move, too anxiety filled or tired or whatever the alcohol has convinced you that you are to prevent you from getting up and changing the record. Its got you. And it doesn’t take much.

How are your decisions affected by this? Well, for one – in many cases you think that you want completely different things than you would if you did not drink alcohol. These can range from small life decisions, to relationship and friendship choices, to the activities you choose to fill your time with, to what you spend your money on, to making larger more big picture life goals take on a much more faraway, vague and less thought out version of themselves. Secondly, you are willing to put up with many stagnant and/or unhealthy things, behaviors, patterns and people than you would if there was no drinking. But the most dangerous one, in my opinion, are situations that we completely convince ourselves are ok over long periods of time through the numbing of our true gut feelings over and over with either small or large amounts of alcohol to the point where we actually start to believe the lies that we tell ourselves because we are scared.

I think that any situation eventually will untie itself that is not meant to be, no matter what we do to try and hold it together – but regardless of this – there is still all of that time that we wasted in that situation. Again – its all a lesson, and it can all absolutely be turned into good… But what if we could just take that giant leap and make the right choice? It will likely feel no less terrifying than solo base-jumping off of a cliff for the first time (with a parachute!) – the difference being our jump off of this mountain built by lies, self-medication and delusion will be by far less risky. In fact, it may be the thing that saves our life.

Stop. Get up. Be afraid. Stand up. Take that risk. Make that decision. Step off that cliff. Get in your car. Drive to the auto parts store. And buy yourself a new pair of wiper blades. And clean your windshield.

Ohh life is so much more authentic with a clear view. Imagine what you could do if you could really see! And how much differently you will enjoy the ride.

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When I was a little girl, about 5 or 6 years old – I remember being in a group of children at a time where we were doing a gift exchange. Each kid brought a “present” for someone in the group – wrapped, and not addressed to anyone in particular. The teacher assigned us all a turn, and when it was our turn, we reached in and picked out a gift to open.

It was quite the pile of gifts, all shapes and sizes – but one gift stood out in particular. It was the biggest one.  A giant box that dwarfed most of the others and was wrapped in shiny polka dotted paper.  “There MUST be something good in there!”, we all thought, of course.  It gave the kind of appearance that would probably contain something expensive, valuable, or some hot toy that was super sought after by all of the 5 year olds at the time!

One of my friends was called first to choose her gift – and immediately her eyes rose to the fancy package and she stood up hurriedly to scoot over and swoop up the coveted box as fast as she could!  I remember feeling a little bit disappointed, thinking “Awe.  Denae got the good one…”.  I sat and watched as one by one, each of my peers had their turn and stood up to pick up their gift and take it back to their seat.

I couldn’t believe I had to wait all the way until the end, being the last one chosen.  When it was my turn, there was one package left.  The one no one wanted – a tiny, oddly shaped object wrapped and taped as only an oddly-shaped package can be – without much visual appeal!  I picked it up and held it in my hand, kind of wishing the game could be over so that I could go home and eat lunch.

Finally, the teacher gave us all the go-ahead to open our gifts all at the same time.  As wrapping paper tore and tape was pulled – I watched Denae open her gift.  She grinned as she tore the paper from the large box, wondering what she would be claiming as her prize.  As the paper fell, suddenly the look of excited anticipation morphed into a slow look of disappointment…  She sat there and blinked at the box.  It was a giant cardboard puzzle of the United States.

Now, while that may be exciting to some history and geography teachers looking for fun, educational toys for their classrooms – a five-year-old who regularly has access to the toy ads in Target, Walmart, and Toys-R-Us in the Sunday newspaper once a week would not be so impressed.  I remember feeling surprise when I saw the result of what should have been the prize of all prizes in that room, and thinking something along the lines of “Wow, that is really interesting how the biggest gift turned out to be so boring!”

I focused my attention on opening my own gift, wondering what terribly boring surprise could possibly lie inside this tiny item wrapped in scrunched paper and tape.  I pulled the tape off and unrolled the paper to reveal a clear, heart shaped plexiglass jewelry box.  It was faux faceted and sparkled in the light.  On the bottom was inscribed, “pure Austrian crystal”.  I opened the box on it’s hinge and inside on a bed of black velvet sat two sterling silver silhouette heart shaped forged earrings, each with a small sparkling diamond-looking round Austrian crystal in it’s center.  I held it – stunned, as I had never received anything so pretty, let alone so seemingly valuable!

The classroom peered over my hands to see and ooh’d and ahh’d at the jewelry.  I sat quietly, looking at the gift, and even though I was only 5 years old – fully felt as though I were learning a powerful lesson.  I realized for the first time, right then and there – that there are times when our greed or our desire to be or have the biggest and the best quickly – can have a very different result than the times when we have to sit back and accept the smaller, more humble package that you would imagine would contain not much at all.  That sometimes the most valuable of all things come in packages we would not expect.  That the biggest and the best – though wrapped well and appearing to be of sizable value…is not always what it appears to be.

 And that sometimes, there is something greater than us that may choose for us – times where if we were the ones doing the choosing, our judgement would lead us to disappointment – and so we are called to wait, and then led to another thing that is instead given to us at the right time without our participation – by an intelligence that knows what is right for us perhaps better than we do.

This is again an interesting analogy when it comes to life.  We strive so hard and work so hard to get what we need and create the best life that we can.  There is competition, greed and ego to wade through in order to claim one’s “prize”.  Prosperity is a gift, in my opinion, and hard work is one of the best ways to get there.   But let us also remember that image is not everything… that patience, humility and knowing that we do not have all of the answers is a great place to start to allow some of these true gifts to come to us.

And in the end, it may be the most downtrodden – the most humble, the most kind, the most patient, and the most loving whose outer packaging and worldly successes may look nondescript… but because they treated one another with love and kindness and gave up selfishness – who end up first ahead of those who place all of their value in size, appearance and status.

I think it can be human nature to want to reach for the biggest, flashiest package…but I also think it is important stop and to ask ourselves “why”, and if we have the chance – consider what would happen if we just stopped, to wait.

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At an event the other night, I heard someone speak profoundly on the life they used to live.  It was full of things that many people can’t even imagine being involved in, doing, or seeing.  The type of stuff you would see on TV, in music videos, or in the movies.  Not fun, exciting, good things – but things that would traumatize you to watch.  Things that would make you cry to see happen.  But they do happen.  They happen every day, in our neighborhoods, out on the street, in the restaurants you eat at, in the high rise next door, you name it.

One sentence really stood out to me.  He said, “Some people ask me what I was like before this, how I changed – was I a good person before I did all of the things I’ve done?  The answer is yes – I was raised with good principles and values and wanted to do good in the world…but man, its the people I surrounded myself with.  Slowly but surely the way they lived, said and did really influenced my way of thinking until I started wanting the same things that they wanted.  And thats how it all began.”

This struck me, because I have thought about this a lot.  Were people who are out there in the world doing terrible things and living a destructive lifestyle, or using people for a living, or contributing to hurting the innocent and controlling reality for their own gain while others suffer under their feet “always” like that?  Have some humans simply been these types of people since very early on, or did many “used” to be good people with good hearts and worthy values who simply took a tangent turn in their lives and became immersed in a place where their major influences were people around them who were not?

It is human nature to soak up what is around us, and we are very susceptible to influence and subliminal programming no matter where that is coming from.  When you hear something repeated enough times – even if it is something you do not believe or is completely opposed to what your heart originally values…you will find yourself eventually considering it, or even believing and following it due to the porous nature of our minds and how the subtle layers of neurolinguistic programming work.  This is why some people believe that we have to be careful what we listen to, hear, or surround ourselves with – because our minds, unfortunately are so susceptible to subliminal influence.

This is how mind control begins.  Whether that be in a controlling or abusive relationship, through television and music (both in consumer culture and counter-culture), social engineering, joining a cult, political programming, etc.  If you’ve ever gone to hypnotherapy, you can see how this works in live action.  It can be as subtle as hearing a friend make a statement about something – having that moment pass, and then hearing them say it again a couple of weeks later – the moment again passing.  

A few days later, you find yourself in a conversation with another person and you yourself make that same declaration or statement about something as though it were your own, not even realizing that you are simply repeating something that was planted in your mind subliminally simply by hearing someone else say it twice with confidence.

Again, this is how brainwashing and mind control begins.  Just the tip of the ice berg – but  it warrants the question – can this be used for bad?  Can it turn good people bad?  And can it turn bad people worse?  Is this how some people end up doing terrible things, in terrible situations that they would never choose for themselves if they could see outside of the box?  Or are there people who are inherently dark, sick, and twisted individuals who simply are that way, perhaps save a miracle?

I think the answer to both is yes.

The transformation I saw in this individual was beautiful, astounding, and amazing.  I believe that he was someone who was a good person, became heavily influenced by those he chose to surround himself with – and one day was rocked awake from his nightmare.  In order to change what he was doing and how he viewed the world – he absolutely had to move away from a lot of the people and things he was spending his time on and with.  A “sea change” requires the acknowledgement of what exactly it is that is influencing us.  Is it material?  Is is power?  Is it superiority?  Is it vanity?  Is is addiction?  Is it selfishness?  Has arrogance taken over?  Is it carelessness?  Do we care how what we do affects other people, or is it all about us getting to our end goal?  And who or what is influencing those thought patterns and ways of viewing the world?

Does it really matter who we hang out with?  Who we hear speaking?  Who we allow to influence the subtle waves and thought patterns in our minds?  Of course we can’t walk around with earmuffs on or put ourselves into a protective bubble 24-7 – but I think we CAN choose where the majority of our influence comes from…who we surround ourselves with, listen to, and take seriously.  Be aware and notice things.  Then make your decisions.

Those who begin with good hearts are clearly influenceable, but I believe they have a good chance at coming back from circumstances that caused them to veer off track if and when they take action during those moments of clarity.  And remain committed to making it through the detox that happens afterward.

Still others, will not do this.  Negative influence, programming, and trauma has such a hold on their minds and psyches that it has almost become a part of who they are.  In fact, I think many of them truly believe it is who they are – so the motivation to change is scant to naught.  Some of them seem to enjoy hurting and using others,  and the level of possession that it has over them seems impenetrable.  I think that these folks are in the greatest danger because their slide is already fully greased, and if subliminal programming affects us all in a similar way – these people will truly be influenced in a way that can heighten their sadism and negativity.  I don’t think that means there is no hope for them – but in my opinion, the answer is absolutely not to try to “change” them – for this is not something that you can change – but rather, something that they have to make the decision to do on their own.

I say this from a position of someone who has dreamed as big as the day is long that *I* could change a person (or two) who fell into this spectrum.  I thought that if I only led by example, reasoned with them, if I could just show them – and they would listen, and they would change.   Thats not how it works.  We can lead by example, and that is the best thing we can do, in my opinion – but we will never be the one who changes another.  It has to be their choice.  We may spend countless, fruitless hours mooring over how we can fix or change the situation, but this is simply a sand trap pulling us in deeper and closer to their own sickness – and it is in those moments that we have to decide for ourselves where that is going to take us.

While a lot of us don’t want to abandon others, and we do want to be able to shine light into dark places – we still have to be careful where the majority of our influence is coming from, and there is a fine line between ‘helping’ and allowing your energy to be syphoned from or compromised.

Food for thought…and while we cannot always control everything we eat – if influence is truly this dynamic – we have to remain vigilant in those moments where we do have a choice – to pick and choose our food as wisely as we can.

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Have you ever been in a conversation with someone with whom, no matter how hard you try, you simply cannot get out of the conversation?  They keep going and going, and looping and looping, and hooking and hooking the dialogue and topics until you’re forced to take either drastic measures or use clever tactics to exit that interaction?  How do you know the difference between people who just like to talk too much, are lonely, or are nice people just having a bad moment – and someone who really does feed off of your energy and the attention you give them in a way that can be problematic?

There really are people who do not have much intuition or don’t know how to take social cues, read body language, or have a general sense of how much time and energy they are taking from the other person in conversation.  Perfectly innocent people who, while frustrating for some, are not energy vampires.

Well what IS an energy vampire?  I like to think of energy vampires on a sliding scale or spectrum – grey being not so bad and black being “want to eat your soul” type of status.  (And yes, they are out there.).  They are people who get THEIR energy – from you.  The less intelligent or ones without much of a current “source” latch on to people overtly – more desperately seeking your attention, conversation, money, affection, social status, status of any kind, etc.  The more highly intelligent ones, or ones who are much less desperate for a source of “supply” (as in, they have several sources they are feeding off of already), will be much more subtle about it.  Their tactics will make you come to them, want to be with them, or seek to please them.  Both, once they have you standing on the X – will begin their game.

Sometimes it is just conversation – and again, you have to be careful not to confuse someone who just doesn’t know when to end a conversation with someone who is using you for their own gain.  Often, with more vampiric-like people, the conversation will be accompanied by an intense, piercing stare from them.  At times, almost a stare-down.  Often they will “lean in” and lock eyes with you as they speak in a way that feels uncomfortable…

A side topic to this stare is, communication practices where you are taught to stare deeply into the eyes of another person or use “intentional eye contact” (long staring contests) for the purpose of improving communication or furthering a “spiritual connection”.  These practices can borderline on or accidentally facilitate a form of energy vampirism, in my opinion – however, this type of stuff sits in a different room than the general red flag of plain old intense eyes when someone is trying to pull at you in a conversation or interaction.

Another major red flag is, when you are talking to someone and you can literally feel in your stomach or your heart, an almost anxious pull.  It feels like the more you talk to them, the more something is pulling from your body to them at your heart or your stomach.  It does not feel good.  Sometimes you walk away from the conversation feeling exhausted, or confused.  Or sometimes will feel almost a dull, subtle, sick feeling in your gut when you’re talking to them or in a situation with them.

When we’re tired – EVERYONE feels like an energy vampire.  Whoever we are interacting with will give us some of these feelings because we are already operating from the reserves of our gas tank.  If you are in this state, please don’t walk around thinking that every person around you is an energy vampire – they’re not.  In those moments, it is much more likely that its you.  Most people also have desperate moments where they might be extra needy temporarily, and exhibit tendencies that drain you – this IS a vampiric quality, but that also does not necessarily mean that someone “is” an energy vampire.

But, when you’re operating at normal levels or even high levels of energy and you find yourself in a situation where you feel like you’re being syphoned – you probably are.  Or if a person constantly drains you – it truly may be that they have a problem.

Where it becomes problematic is when a person is like this most of the time.  Of course, it can take time to figure that one out – but once you’ve dealt with some really major cases, you can often tell pretty quickly after meeting someone initially whether they have that edge to them or not.  If you’re not sure, then give it time.

The reason why this is all important is because the term “energy vampire” simply describes what is at the gate of a person who may have a problematic personality that can often (not always, but often) lead to much higher levels of manipulation later on down the road with them.  Identifying the action of energy vampirism is identifying what lies at the gate of someone who uses others.  They may use others for sex, for money, for social status, to climb the ladder, for basic needs, for time, for attention, for anything really.  They’ve lost their own connection, so they use others to feed themselves or to prop up and heighten themselves.

Of course there are exceptions to everything spoken of here – but these are just some basic things to help you know that you’re not crazy when you feel them.

It can be hard to know where a person is coming from, sometimes – but if you pay attention to the subtle feelings in your body and repeated patterns that you see…it may help you to avoid becoming too intertwined with an individual who, in the end, only seeks to take and no matter how much they get fed, will usually remain hungry for the power to do so.

 
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