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Dear Soul Arcanum:
I don’t have many friends, for I choose them carefully. At the moment, I have two women in my life who could be described as psychic vampires. One is an internationally respected healer/teacher. My intuition is growing more and more refined, and I was shocked when the manipulative, calculating, dishonest energy I was picking up about this healer was confirmed. I realized I had given my power away by putting her on a pedestal and making less of my own gifts. She tried to discredit the healer I currently see, and suggested one of her students start treating me while she supervised my case. I’ve decided to keep my distance from her and not leave my current healer, who has helped me tremendously. This is clearly a case of professional jealousy. The other friend is also very spiritual. I feel she’s a little jealous of me, and sees me as somehow better off than her in many ways. It’s like she thinks I have some secret to the universe and wants a piece of it. Why am I attracting these energy vampires? I don’t have that many friends, and at this rate, they are dropping like flies! Thanks, Soul Arcanum!
Sitara
Dear Sitara:
I’m not sure the friends you’re describing are really energy vampires. Energy vampires are people who can’t get all their energy needs met directly from Source, so they try to feed on other people’s energy. To determine if these friends are truly stealing your energy, ask yourself how you feel when you’ve been around them for a while.
Do you feel energized and uplifted or down and drained? Do you feel like there is balance in your relationship in terms of give and take, or does your friend talk endlessly about herself? Are you doing all the giving? Do you find yourself constantly feeling like you should do something to help or save her? Does she make you feel better about yourself, or does she put you down or compete with you in order to feel superior?
If none of these really fit, odds are good that you’re not dealing with energy vampires so much as you are ordinary people with egos and human weaknesses and faults, just like the rest of us.
People who are highly spiritual like we are tend to be very idealistic. We want to believe in people, see the best in them and love them with all our hearts. It can be very disillusioning when we meet someone who seems to be everything we’ve ever wanted in a friend, and they turn out to be a mere mortal instead of the demi-god we’ve been worshiping.
There are a couple of dynamics worth mentioning here, given the relationships you describe. First, the more we tap into our own personal power, the more we evoke deep issues in other people. If there are buried issues that need to be brought to light and healed in our friends, then our dynamic energy will tend to bring those issues to life in some way. This is especially true if we’re devoted healers and counselors. In personal relationships, the interactions may not be overt; instead, they tend to come out in subtle ways through the ever changing dynamics of our connection. We thus spark things for the people around us without knowing that we are doing so simply because our main intention is to help others heal and grow.
Also, as we develop intuitively, we begin to psychically pick up on all sorts of stuff that people tend to hide. Nearly everyone hides their shadow side, so it can be shocking to sense these hidden truths, and difficult to make peace with living at this level of awareness. Everything is naturally perfect, of course, for once we attain this level of awareness, we’re ready for the deep lessons in unconditional love that psychic awareness evokes.
Your spiritual teacher friend is clearly insecure about her wisdom and abilities. The wisest and best teachers always are, by the way, for they constantly question themselves. Having you see someone else for healing and that person apparently being able to truly help you has brought her insecurities up. While her behavior is disappointing, we must strive not to take anything personally, and simply be the best person we can be with everyone we know and love. As I see it, if a friend disappoints us, our job is to reach for a higher, more loving road in order to nurture good things in that relationship. Maybe right now, this relationship is not about her meeting your friendship needs, but about you giving her something important such as an opportunity to work on her ego issues, learn a lesson, or observe you setting a shining example of love and wisdom.
I like what you wrote about putting her on a pedestal and discounting your own wisdom and abilities. I think instead of expecting her to be the spiritual leader in your relationship, you should step forward and reach for a higher level of love and wisdom yourself regardless of what she says or does. Then you can become a source of healing both for her and your relationship. You might do this by recognizing with compassion that her ego is kicking up, and she perhaps is worried that she is not good enough or that she will lose your friendship or respect and admiration via your experiences with this other healer.
Similarly, instead of viewing your other friend as someone who is trying to steal something from you, it would be wise to stay in a very high vibration and view her admiration as a positive thing. The more we align with a high level of life experience by working with the law of attraction and cultivating a high vibration, the more we attract people who want this for themselves like moths to a flame. Sometimes these people do want to suck our energy, but sometimes they just think we’re wonderful, and they want to study us so they can emulate us.
The higher we go in terms of quality of experience and vibration, the harder it is to find peers. Then instead of journeying through life with all our classmates, we naturally become teachers. In a typical schoolroom setup, there are way more students than teachers, and it’s the same on our spiritual journeys. As you evolve, you will be surrounded by more people who are in position to learn from you, and you’ll only know a few other teachers, who will often be off in their own classrooms, doing their thing.
You’re wise to ask how and why you are attracting friends like this, but it’s more important to figure out how you can manifest a higher level of experience. I’ve had great results with working with the law of attraction to manifest good friends. For example, years ago I told the Universe very clearly and with all of my heart that I wanted to meet a friend who was <q>just like me.</q> I ended up meeting a friend in a most unusual way who practically IS me! The ways we are alike are astounding. This experience taught me that we all have many kindred spirits in the world, and we just need to work with the law of attraction to draw them into our experience.
In summary, I encourage you to stop expecting your friends to be free of faults. Our goal is not to find perfect people, but to learn how to love everyone around us despite their imperfections. We all have our issues and everyone is doing spiritual battle with their egos every day. Do keep choosing your friends carefully, and when they disappoint you, examine your experiences for how you can use them to work on yourself and become an ever brighter light wherever you go. Also, remember that we have the power to manifest what we want in our lives, and we can use the law of attraction to both bring out the best in people and draw wonderful new friends into our lives.
Soul Arcanum