"Now I Become Myself" by May Sarton

TODAY I enter my 7th Decade.  And this Poem by May Sarton seems entirely appropriate.  Circling around, I have found,  "There is time and Time is young."

Now I Become Myself

Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
‘Hurry, you will be dead before-’

(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)

Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.

All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.

Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

May Sarton

                          

Psychic Vampires, Empaths and Energy Theft

I've come to believe, experientially  more than conceptually,  that mind is more than the physical body and brain, and that we are far more connected with each other, and our planet,  than we can imagine. We are  very permeable, indeed we have to be so, because we are constantly exchanging life force with the planet and everyone who has ever lived with every breath we take; exchanging energy and information with each step we take and every word we utter. The exchange and negotiation of energy is the fundamental dance of life.

Most people value empathy, the ability to sense and often emotionally experience, or resonate with, what others are feeling.   Empathic individuals are usually compassionate people, sensitives who often become healers, teachers, and profound listeners.  Highly empathic people have excellent "antennas" - if they have experience and discernment, they can scan the emotional and psychic environment  and determine what is going on beneath the surface.  If they don't, they can  absorb energy that is not their own unwittingly.   I believe this skill of discernment takes time to mature, and an empathic child or unskilled person can often become overwhelmed.  Because being empathic can also be detrimental, overwhelming, and even life threatening, and is one of the reasons sensitive people often become alcoholics or recluses in order to "tune out the noise".  Highly empathic people, what Dr. Judith Orloff calls "intuitive empaths", can be like velcro - everything sticks to them.  

People are always discharging emotional energy. Children scream in anger, cry in frustration, and laugh with pleasure when their needs are met, and so do adults, if not always as obviously. Sometimes it's absolutely necessary to tell our stories, to have our pain witnessed by compassionate others in order to change, to "fore-give", to let go of the trauma and move fore-ward in our lives.  But some people have become addicted to dumping negative emotional energy on others, and they can leave an empathic individual drained, or feeling scattered and crazy from absorbing their energy.  This can be true of collective energies as well. 

I don't like the term "psychic vampires" because of its judgemental terminology.  It implies that dreadful, inhuman people are stalking the streets, ready to suck up all of your lifeforce, when the fact is, most of us have at various times in our lives been draining or exhausting.    Sometimes people are energy draining because they are, in Buddhist terms, unskillful in their understanding of how to manage their own energy systems, in how to manage their thoughts and social interactions in other words.  Many people are energetically exhausting because they have become addicted to complaining, or have adopted a "victim" life stance, which can be addictive as well as socially supported.   Carolyn Myss spoke about what she called a "culture of woundology" as a related issue.   

Some people have learned, as children, negative ways of achieving attention, which is a form of energy theft if it's not willingly given.  I had an acquaintance I worked with who could be absolutely relentless in demanding attention, to the point where otherwise calm, poised people would "lose it" around him.  Including me.........one day I found myself screaming at him at the top of my lungs.  It was at that moment I noticed he was smiling blissfully - and I painfully saw, briefly,  a small child who had found the only way he knew to get attention. 

And many people are just plain worn out, ill, grieving, troubled by misfortune,  or elderly, and haven't got a lot of personal energy.  That doesn't make them "vampires".  That often makes them people in need of a little understanding and kindness.

True psychic vampires are rare.  Most of those are people who emotionally or physically can't generate their own energy.  Only a very few are conscious psychic vampires, people who have learned to gather the life energies of others.  These people are addicts.

About 15 years ago, I broke my leg, and was confined to a wheelchair for 4 months.  It happened that I was offered a couch in a friends studio, which was in a lovely complex that had other studios, a few shops, and a chiropractor's office, so people were always coming and going, which I enjoyed.  But because so much of my energy was going into mending my broken bones, and I often felt weak, I became quite sensitive to how interactions with others affected me.  Some people were like bright lights - I felt enlivened when they entered the room.  Most were neutral.

But there was one woman I'll never forget.   Although she was a fascinating woman, who ironically was a practicing psychic, every time she came by to visit  I'd be flat on my back afterwards, sometimes all day.   I don't know if I would have realized her "vampire" effect so clearly, had I not been in a sensitive lowered energy state because of my healing  recovery.   What made her like that?  I can't possibly know, although I would bet it arises from some kind of traumatic childhood.   I have also met, only once, a very rare conscious "psychic vampire", who knew what he was doing and practiced a form of energy theft consciously.  But that is another story.

                                            

Excerpted from:   Psychic Vampires by Sarah Biggs

So why is it you keep attracting these soul suckers?

Indigos and Empaths are innate healers and are drawn to those in need.  
Newsflash: Energy Vampires don't want to be healed!! They don't want to be saved.It's the attention you give them when they have a (usually self-created and unnecessary) problem that they crave.  They are survivalists. As long as they have a food source - you, they have no incentive to heal or take care of themselves. The more you try to solve their problems the more problems they are going to have.

Energy Vampires often serve as a mirror to your own self-worth. 

You open the door to Energy Vampires through your insecurities. You may have your own feelings of victim-hood or powerlessness. You may be approval seeking. Co-dependence issues is their golden ticket to ride.  It's possible that you may only feel good about yourself when you help others. You may feel unworthy of love or friendship unless you do something for it. You may feel guilt for having good fortune when so many others seem to be down and out.

You may have an addiction to Energy Vampires. Do you like being needed? Do you have the need to please? Does being around an Energy Vampire make you feel better about yourself?You may be an Energy Vampire yourself. When you allow yourself to be drained by an Energy Vampire do you turn around and drain somebody else? Do you only get attention when something negative is going on?

The truth is, you have to vibrate on the same level as an Energy Vampire in order to attract one into your life. Your thoughts and your core beliefs are what creates your vibration. Your emotions are your indication as to what vibration you hold.

No protection technique is going to save you from an Energy Vampire.

Staking Energy Vampires:

Commit to doing what it takes to be happy. Raise your vibration so high as to not be a tool for an Energy Vampire. Don't live your life based on others expectations of you. Meet your own needs. Set boundaries. Saying NO does not make you an asshole (though they will certainly try to make you feel that way). Being a good person is not determined by how much you self-sacrifice. 

Be a vibrational match to the kind of people you want to be around. If you want to be around respectful, competent, and well adjusted people - you need to project those qualities from within yourself. Root out any negative core beliefs about yourself that attract the people you don't want in your life. Transmute those beliefs into positive ones so that positive people will show up accordingly.

Realize that Source is an infinite energy. We all have our very own stream of Source Energy. So, it is actually impossible to give away your energy or to have it taken from you. It's just that Energy Vampire's actions cause you to have negative thoughts that pinch you off from your own Source. When your Source Energy flow is restricted you start to get physical symptoms of exhaustion, confusion, depressed, etc.

Make feeling good a priority. Get your Source Energy pumping by doing what you love and what energizes you. Love yourself enough not to be liked by those that exhaust and bring you down. You don't owe anyone anything. You are worthy of a reciprocal and respectful relationship without having to serve and provide your life force energy.  

You can hold thoughts that allow Source Energy or thoughts that resist and restrict it. It's up to you. Consider doing Shadow Work to uncover your resistant vibrations. 

Sara Biggs Website is:  https://www.honusapien.com/about.html

http://www.honusapien.com/attracting-energy-vampires.html
                                     

ASTARTE in the Desert

With age,

I’ve learned to watch my feet.

I’ve become cautious of falls,

the honest frailty of bones,

and equally fragile,

the choices found at every crossroad.

Time, I’ve discovered, makes us bend -

we learn the habit of looking down.

I was blessedly nowhere,

At a truck stop off I-40 falling off the edge of the world.

A nameless little desert town,  disappearing

into a sweet black halcyon midnight

I was blessedly nowhere,

just between “here” and “there” after a summer rain,

the smell of diesel and chaparral, 

black reflecting  pools
on hot asphalt beneath my feet

when You

made your gracious, puddled descent:

     Luminous Orion,

     and faithful Sirius, the dog star,

     Antares, the Scorpion’s tail,

     The Pleiades dancing forever

     in Indra’s shining jewel net,

     And the Big Dipper

     offering, offering forever

Looking up, I heard you singing:

"Wait for me, Wait for me"

Lauren Raine

2005
from "Aphrodite in Brooklyn and Other Mythic Voices"

Everything is Waiting for You............

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

......David Whyte*

https://youtu.be/MgQf5tx1hi4

*https://www.davidwhyte.com/river-flow-new-and-selected-poems

River Flow: New & Selected Poems

Whether writing of his Yorkshire childhood, trekking in the Himalayas, youthful partings in the mountains of South America, fireside talks on a Welsh far with a friend with a passion for Blake or the Ireland of his mother's heart. David Whyte's poems have their feet planted firmly in the natural world, simultaneously inviting us to join him on the path and admonishing us to get down on our hands and knees in the thicket and find our own way.  RIVER FLOW contains over one hundred poems selected from five previously published works, together with 23 new poems, including a tribute to an Ethiopian woman navigating her first escalator, and a cycle of Irish poems that convey his deep love of the land and lifelong appreciation for its wisdom.