Category: energy vampires

Post-Apocalyptic Adventures in the Big City

So many random things to talk about! I’m kind of bored of the deep stuff, so I’ll tell you a tale about the dating scene in NYC.

I will get a teensy bit serious for a moment, though, to say I’ve been sick for four days with a sore throat and sore tongue (?) that is now kind of drifting into a mild cough. And I am convinced that it is purely a mind/energy disturbance.

Fortunately and unfortunately, I live in a city where there is always something happening and I work in the center of those happenings. I bartend one night a week, I book rock shows, I manage a gallery with openings every month. There’s always some new and usually fun social obligation. I love having dinner and brunch with friends, I receive a lot of invitations and have many people I want to see. I also, when possible, want to include new or outside people who are eager to be included. I grew up lonely and insecure and I know how hard it is to live on the edge of the party. But sometimes it becomes an entourage of insanity. And because of my mom energy and co-dependent tendencies, boundaries get blurry. I find myself counseling needy nutbags at midnight, feeling pressure to answer long emails from people who want a private response to their opinions on my blogs, or fending off advances from women who think that making out with me will make them feel wild and free. Some of these moments are harmless, some rewarding, some draining.

And since adding the very popular Sam to the mix, things can be even more intense. So without getting into detail, I’ll merely say that one night last weekend was a giant clusterfuck of some serious soul-sucking in which both he and I walked away feeling violated. It was as if one person was a bird of prey: tapping, pecking, clutching, snapping, sleeve-pulling, needing the very core energy of both Sam and myself. If it wasn’t so stressful it would have been fascinating. When I protested I was met with tears, so I backed off and allowed myself to be emotionally manipulated to the point of exhaustion. And now I am sick. I honestly believe that my throat and tongue ache because I did not allow myself to speak up for myself out of fear of drama, of hurting someone, of being perceived as mean, etc. In the end I felt so grossly violated that I woke up the next morning feeling angry. I burned sage and frankincense and myrrh into a great billowing smoke fog in my apartment to fumigate myself and my surroundings.

The end lesson for me is the same as usual with these things, I simply have to walk away and/or say no more often. I have to protect myself the same way I would a friend.  It’s really not that complicated, just another aspect of learning self-love. I’m mentioning it not because I need any more advice on energy vampires, more to simply state to the Universe that I am no longer allowing my fear of being disliked to keep me in the muck. Enough is enough.

Now, on to the dating tale.

I have a friend who is really good at dating. She attracts wealthy men like I attract clingy maniacs. Last time we went to a show we were seated at a group table and within ten minutes some yachting mogul was sharing his French fries with her. It’s really fun to watch.

She met a wealthy, attractive, fun, professional guy on Tinder, and although she wasn’t intent upon being exclusive, thought that he could be a good possibility for down the road real boyfriend material. They went to dinner a couple of times, had little daytime adventures, slept together after a few dates. It seemed like a nice fit. He booked a vacation for the two of them on a tropical island. She was happily working on a mental packing list when she got this via facebook:

Lord.

Since the message came in at three am, my friend wisely waited until the next day to answer her. The girlfriend, a nurse from a sexy South American country, called her immediately and said that she had suspected him of cheating for some time, so she put a pill in his drink (!!!) and went through his phone while he lay comatose.

“Nothing that would hurt heem, Dahling, just to make heem a teensy bit drowsy, you know…”

I have done my fair share of suspicious girlfriend sleuthing throughout the decades, but I doff my fascinator to this crafty woman for taking it that extra mile. I might also mention that I have a hot-blooded friend from this particular part of the world, and I would say don’t mess with these sassy beauties unless you’re willing to experience some excitement. And, it seems, an occasional dosing.

The girlfriend went through everything, taking screen shots, charting out names and dates, places and times. She put it all on a calendar. She knew about the vacation, she knew where my friend and the man sat in a particular restaurant, she knew the address of the apartment he held his trysts.

Because as it turned out, this man lived with this girlfriend. And the pad that he had called his own, that he had brought my friend, was an apartment that he and a male friend rented for this particular use. Like something out of an old movie, The Apartment without noble Jack Lemmon keeping things from getting too sleazy.

My friend was flummoxed. She is no dummy or naïf. She did get a little suspicious when he first suggested renting a hotel room, but when she refused he came up with this apartment on the next date. So her spidey senses were assuaged. She really like this guy. He seemed normal, honorable, attractive, responsible. He had an ex-wife and kids that he saw regularly. He had a dog that he loved. He even placed a dog bowl in a conspicuous spot in the apartment to make things look more natural.

The day after she spoke to the girlfriend, she received this from him:

Both the man and his girlfriend hammered her with messages for days, each claiming the other was lying. Some quick facebook sleuthing backed up the girlfriend’s version. My friend wisely bowed out and told them to work it out between themselves while she sadly mourned the real loss–that romantic tropical vacation.

This was a couple of weeks ago, yesterday the girlfriend sent her a text to say hi and ask if she had heard from the man. I told her to block their numbers.

There is no moral to this story. I just think you’ll find it entertaining. Men, if you’re prone to cheating, don’t do it with passionate women with access to drugs. Ladies, it appears it’s still a jungle out there. Check the closets when he goes to the bathroom.

Still Thinking About It…

As mentioned in the previous coupla blogs, I’ve been having a lot of email conversations with my mom lately about energy. One of the things she has mentioned to me is that people who are addicted to drugs or alcohol can open themselves up to lower energies, which can, in some cases, take over.

I don’t often get into conversations about this, primarily because I have no expertise on the subject, and secondly because I don’t really want to talk to people about “entities” or that kind of thing. It gets into weird territory and it can be interpreted in strange ways. And I don’t want to shoot my mouth off and propagate any untruth.

I do want to tell you a couple of tales though, because I got to see it in action recently, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Lately it seems that as soon as I ask about anything the answers come to me. It helps to have a mother that I can go to for information, but I can also see that the Universe is waiting for us to ask of it right now. We just have to be clear about what we want, or what we want to know.

Anyway, so here are my stories. I’ll try to keep them short:

Many years ago I dated a lovely guy with a terrible heroin habit that he was trying to kick. He got clean while we were together, but it was short-lived, although I don’t know where he’s at with that struggle today. At that time he had a lot of trouble sleeping, and would wake from terrible nightmares in which he said he could feel black, shapeless beings trying to pull his soul out of his body. He woke up freaking out all the time and I felt very bad for him, he was genuinely terrified in his sleep.

The other thing that would happen to him is that often, as soon as he drank a shot of hard alcohol, he would become an entirely different person. His face would change into an unrecognizable snarl and he behaved as if he didn’t know any of us. This extremely gentle, soft spoken person would become an uncontrollable maniac that threw himself in front of cabs, picked fights with random strangers, and pushed people out of his way on the street. It was really bizarre and it was so impossible that even his closest friends would leave him stranded rather than risk taking the tasmanian devil into their home.

I asked my mom about it and she said that the years of constant drug use had probably opened him up to a vulnerability to negative energies. This seemed a logical explanation to me. I am in no way implying that he was “possessed”, but there was definitely something “other” going on with him. Suffice to say that romance was short-lived, although I still think he’s (when sober) one of the nicest people I’ve known.

More years after that, I went on one or two dates with another guy on the scene, equally soft spoken and gentle. It went nowhere and we drifted into different crowds and I didn’t ever run into him again. Then I heard from friends that he had developed a crack habit, gotten into santeria, became homeless, and had just gone to jail for strangling his grandfather to death.

Yes, right now you’re envying my innate ability to pick the good ones, aren’t you? It’s a gift. But everyone who knew him was deeply shocked. It was just so strange, especially as in the past he had made it clear that he loved his family. I felt very sad for him and for his family, and I checked around online and found a couple of articles about the crime, but not too much information. I went to bed feeling very sad and wondering how this bizarre turn of events had unfolded. My last thought as I dropped out was of this guy sitting in a cell somewhere.

That night I dreamt that shapeless, almost cartoony black beings were shooting in and out of my body and pulling at me to get me out of my body. I woke up with a start and was so freaked out by how real it felt that I didn’t go to sleep for a long time. The next day I mentioned it to my mother, who told me the same thing, that if this person was doing drugs and in a dark space for a long time, he’s probably opened up to some fucked up things, and my empathetic concentrating on him so hard had brought me a small taste of what was happening with him.

All of that was years ago, but because of my energy vampire blogs and conversations with my mom and friends about this and other issues, I am paying more attention lately to energy and the way it moves through a room.

I went to a show last week and had a really good time. I was very excited to see the band after not seeing them for many years, and was happy to support my friends who play in the band. The music is very heavy, and the crowd is pretty masculine for the most part, not unlike the crowd CSFH used to get actually. We got a lot of meatheads, which makes for fun when you’re onstage, but not so much fun sometimes if you are in the crowd.

There was a pretty good pit going and I stood up on a banquette to get out of the line of fire. I never like being in the middle of mayhem and found a great position to view both the band and the audience from above the fray, and it was pretty interesting.

The majority of the crowd slamming into each other were male (as usual) and were cheerful and not out to harm each other. They pulled people up when they landed on the floor and held each other up when stage-diving. They brought each other beers and shouted along with the choruses and banged into each other happily like your standard dumb dudes at a metal show.

But it got dark. One girl in the crowd stood out because her energy was different. She was obviously drunk, and very aggressive. She led with her fists and purposely hit people while moshing in the crowd. She grabbed onto people’s shirts and pulled them into other people, jarring everyone in the vicinity violently. Her face was a mask of hate and it really did feel like there was a dark energy swirling around her. I could see the others reacting to her attacks in different ways. Some shrugged it off and others looked at her with angry reaction. All decided to leave her alone, it was truly her own trip, but it subtly penetrated the others and the pit got creepily more aggressive.

A light went on in my head and I thought “Oooohhh, this is what we’ve been talking about.” I am watching an “entity” or maybe “pain body” takeover in action. Whatever you want to call it, it is a dark energy taking over someone and dictating their behavior. This energy was emanating off of her so palpably and filling the space around her so completely that it almost seemed strange to me that people continued on with what they were doing rather than stop the entire show to take in what was happening.

I have no doubt in my mind that this girl is different when sober. She might still be an asshole, but with all that alcohol in her she was on auto-pilot. She probably didn’t even remember it all the next day. I am a drinker and have stepped into my own dark territories when under the influence, so I can’t sit back and say I’m any better than her. I probably focused on her right away because I recognized parts of my own self in her behavior.

I don’t have much more to say about it except that I am continuing to think about ways to keep myself clear and focused and protected from that energy, and I find these observances very interesting. I don’t want to give up heavy metal or partying with my friends, but I do want to remain “in it but not of it”. I will keep you posted on the progress and welcome your stories and thoughts as well.


And on a completely random side-note – we saw the Mike Monroe Band play at the Varvatos store in the old CB’s space last night. Thank you John Varvatos, for spending your own money and time to bring great rock shows to New York. This particular one blew everyone in the room away. Mike is in incredible, marathon running form; he never stopped moving and his voice was strong and pitch perfect. He hit his head on a monitor and continued to play the sax, bounce around and belt it out with blood running down his forehead. The band was completely on point – Sami, Ginger, Steve Conte, and a killer new drummer just hit us over the head with it. My voice and ears are blown today. So if you have a chance to see them, run, don’t walk. You won’t be disappointed.

Energy Vampire Redux

I received some very nice emails and facebook messages about the last blog, so thank you for that. Turns out many of us are thinking about new ways to deal with the energy vampire I described in the last blog. My mother, God bless her, reads my blogs regularly and had the following to say about it. I don’t ordinarily share her emails so I hope she doesn’t mind on this one, in this case it is information that I felt should be shared with my tiny reader-base. Plus I get the bonus of a brand new blog without actually having to write anything!
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I wanted to comment on your Energy Vampire blog. By the way, Eckart Tolle is working on a very high level, I am really happy you have found him.


I was taught about energy vampires this winter, and I will share with you what I learned.  It is all a matter of energy frequency. If you are resonating on the same  level as the other person, you are connected (energy entrains) and they can draw on your energy.  If you keep your energy field clear and filled with light, they cannot. I was told that this is the difference between sympathy (aligning with the others energy) and compassion (seeing the issue, offering help, but not aligning with it).

This is what happened to me: A man I know well who is a really bad alcoholic totally drained me twice. I could hardly walk out of X store [Raffnote: she works in a new age book store doing readings]. Then he came into my reading room at X on another occasion, and I thought; “oh no, now what do I do?”  He tried every trick in the book to get me to align with him, he kept saying things like; “I am so bad, punish me, yell at me, I need help blah blah…”   All the while I was being guided to stay in a higher frequency. I said to him; “You know what you have to do, you know where the help is etc.” and I never aligned with him. Finally he left, and the guides said that was the difference between sympathy and compassion.

People with powerful energy attract those who want and need energy.  More often than not, they are not really aware that they are doing it. Often these people are being guided by low beings from the other side that want some sort of chaos to evolve because they feed on that (guy at bank). This is all part of the lower energy.

Keep your energy field clear by seeing the Light flow out from your high heart (above your heart) into the physical body, then the emotional body, then the mental body, and finally the spiritual body.  Your whole energy field is then filled with light.  You can set up something with your Guides that when you say “Clear” they will help you clear.  I like to see a burst of bright light fill my energy field with the intention to clear.  This always keeps you in an energy that the lower frequencies cannot enter.  It doesn’t mean you can’t help someone who needs help, but you do it from your level and not theirs, that is you don’t enter in to the drama  of the whole thing.

I am always aware of staying clear when in crowds etc.  or somewhere where the energy level is low.  A good way to work with someone like the bank guy would be to send him light as you stood there.  You would probably feel it hit a brick wall, but maybe not.

The energy on the planet is getting very high, we are becoming more and more sensitive to energy. Those of the lower energy are feeling it also and many are struggling for their survival. The “old” is going down, Yay.

Love, Mom

Energy Vampires

I have been thinking a lot about energy vampires. Not so much the friends and family we all have that drain us with their crazy, that’s do-able for the most part because you can hang up the phone. I’m thinking of those true vampires that you collide with out in the world that cause you to walk away feeling abused, twisted out, enraged, shaky, hurt, anxious, etc.

I am a magnet for psycho. If there is a lunatic in a room full of a hundred people and I’m sitting in the corner under an umbrella they will spot me. This is partially my doing as I am usually the first one to engage with the lunatic and tell them to shut the fuck up or stop shaking the baby or whatever seems appropriate at the time. I am overly empathic and tend to connect very quickly to whatever is going on in the room, plus I don’t have much of a filter and carry a strong energy. So someone unable to manufacture their own energy/power will naturally drift in my direction to pull it or create a reaction. I’m sure many of you have experienced this phenomenon.

I am trying very hard in my maturity not to engage the crazy. When I see it coming I put my head down and swallow all of the retorts  that burble up and fight desperately to escape from my mouth. And sometimes I manage to escape unscathed. But it’s difficult to know exactly what to do sometimes because I also don’t want to be one of those New York assholes who stand there mute as some other innocent bystander gets abused by someone crazy or awful. Misanthropy aside, I am very much of the mindset that we need to take care of each other out there in the world. So I walk that tightrope between not wanting to risk expending energy and damaging my mood to still wanting to do the right thing.

Yesterday I was in the bank at the teller and there was a long line of five or six people behind me. The bank had a television on and Obama was speaking. The man at the very end of the line started shouting to his friend (who looked a bit like he got hijacked to this trip to the bank on the way to picking up his methadone) that he hates Obama, that Obama is a pig, that he would like to set Obama on fire, on and on and on and on. It was an aggressive and violent diatribe and the way he shouted out towards the back of people’s heads clearly stated that his purpose was verbal assault. People in the line were uncomfortable but stayed silent hoping that he would run out of steam, but he just kept going. It was really disturbing.

I knew if I even looked at the guy he was going to come for me, so I kept on with my transaction and just gave the teller a look. After a minute or two no one could take it anymore and people started turning around and telling him to shut up. And then he went into “OH, SO I GUESS THIS ISN’T A FREE COUNTRY WHERE A MAN CAN SPEAK HIS MIND! MAYBE SOMEONE WOULD LIKE TO SHOOT ME.” (Side-note, the man had an accent from one of the islands, so I don’t even think he was from the U.S., but whatevs.) A woman with a toddler (who had been happily giggling moments before and was now looking scared) asked him to keep his foul language down, and he lit into her – “I HAVE A RIGHT TO MY OPINION!” And in her defense a very big man got more aggressive, telling him to SHUT UP in no uncertain terms, so the shouting turned down in volume to a more mumbled litany.

I remained silent but was fully engaged mentally and glared at the offender during this exchange. The big man behind me apologized as I left the window and I said, “No apologies necessary. It’s him, it’s not you.” and then as I passed the asshole I said, “You are an incredibly rude man.” To which he responded with more bitching about free speech, but I kept walking to a desk at the front of the bank.

As I continued my bank business I realized my hands were shaking. Then the rep helping me explained that the bank had fucked something up that would entail more paperwork and another visit, and I flipped out on her. I was so angry and said, “What are you talking about? What kind of moron would set my account up this way? I can’t believe anyone would think this is good business!” That kind of thing.

She was very patient and sweet and said she would make some calls and try to fix the situation. And as I sat there waiting it dawned on me that I had completely mentally engaged with the asshole, given him my energy, gotten thrown off balance and now was transferring his negativity to the poor woman helping me. Maybe I was even sucking her energy now. This one awful person had purposely set off an entire room that was peaceful and cheerful moments before, completely shifting the mood to something dark, and he walked out satisfied while the rest of us dealt with our own emotional fallout. It was so horrible.

So I’ve been thinking about how a person goes about protecting themselves energetically from these kinds of vampires, and I remembered that I’d read about this in “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle. I highly recommend picking this book up, it’s dry and slow reading but there is so much interesting information about ego and energy that it’s kind of mind-blowing. 
He talks about remaining in “presence” and not having an attachment to the outcome of the situation, or to your own ego and “pain-body” need to control the situation, which will connect to that crazy person’s crap on a subconscious level. There is an unconscious pain-body drive to engage, even if mentally you feel that you don’t want to interact. I know this is true in my case, sometimes I can feel that there is a recognition with certain lunatics and that shit just clicks in, and we’re off and running in a death struggle. I’m not the asshole (most of the time), but I still become part of the equation, even if it’s just me walking away feeling shaky and upset.

I think the real key to self-protection happens when these people aren’t even around, and has to do with making sure that we are in a happy, centered state in our lives, healing the pain and releasing old energy. Then these people can’t find the trigger in us because it doesn’t exist anymore. 
But I know this is easier said than done so I looked around online for information from Mr. Tolle that specifically addressed this situation. His message is much deeper than a simple step by step how to deal with being in a room with crappy people, so I didn’t find anything that I could paraphrase for a blog. But I did end up spending a half an hour on youtube marveling at how so much information and entertainment is there for viewing. There are other people out there who address these situations as well–Dr. Judith Orloff is a good starter point, if anything I’ve written today resonates for you I would recommend checking her out as well. For today I thought I’d at least leave you with a ten minute snippet from Mr. Tolle that is not completely directed towards what I am talking about, but is still very interesting and does have to do with not connecting emotionally to scenes around us. I’m sorry the side of the video is cut off, blogger layouts and the huge side margins torment me.

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