Category: Words To Live By

Have you ever heard of the saying that people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime? I know I have. And as much as I don’t like to admit it, I have found there to be some great truth to this cliche. Unfortunately, up until now though, it seems as if I’ve been drawing into my own life most that fall into the reason or season category, but rarely a lifetime and sometimes I have felt rather lonely because of it.

Currently, I’m 41 years old and other than my sister (who really doesn’t count because she’s my family), there is only one person in my life who could fit into the “lifetime” category. His name is Cedric and he’s stuck by my side through thick and thin as my closest friend since 1997. While our friendship has gone through its many ups and downs since then, somehow it’s sustained all of it and we’ve been able to remain the best of friends. There are times though that I have been wondering lately if those connections between two people which last for a lifetime are because of a will greater than ourselves making it so? Is it a Higher Power that somehow causes this to happen? I don’t have the answer to that, but I know that in my many attempts to carbon copy this friendship with others I’ve met, they’ve resulted in them only lasting for a reason or season and nothing more.

I’ve lost count of the number of people in my life that have come and gone who I once thought were going to be just as close to me for many years to come like Cedric has been. Over the years, there has been quite a number of people I have called a close friend, who I became inseparable with and where I thought they would last for the rest of my lifetime. Sadly, none of them have. I’ve come to accept that some were probably driven away by my own addiction prone behaviors, where others most likely left because I was often too selfish and self-centered. I also know a few most likely ended solely became they became too unhealthy for me to be around. But the hardest ones for me to accept have always been the ones that dissipate for no apparent reason and where I never get to find out why. Recently, this very thing has happened to me and it has caused me some pain that I seem to be having a hard time letting go of. This is actually my second attempt to write about this, as my first became a long and drawn out sob story that I found to be rather dramatic, so I’m providing a quick summary instead so as not to bore you.

The long and short of what happened is this. I met a friend at an AA meeting on a visit to my partner back in the spring of 2012. We connected very quickly because of the talks we had about God and he grew quite excited about developing a great friendship with me. And we did just that, by spending much time hanging out together both at meetings and with our respective partners doing things socially. Zoom forward 18 months later, and it’s been 3 months now since I have heard from him. All of my attempts to reach out and contact him have gone unanswered and the last time I saw him was back in June at a meeting that came after three consecutive days of him canceling plans he had made with me.

Because of my relationship with my Higher Power today, I always look at my side of the street to see if there is something, anything, that can lead to things like this happening to me. But in the case of this friendship, I know of nothing that I did which could have led to its demise. So the only solution I came to, in letting this pain go, was to turn it completely over to my Higher Power through prayer. So here it goes…

Dear God, I pray that you bless this friend that you know I am talking about right now. Regardless of the pain I have of losing yet another friend, I am grateful to you that he helped me to feel welcomed for a period of time in a city that I was totally new to. And I am grateful as well for all those moments he embraced me warmly and assisted in establishing my solid footing in an area that I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to do so in. I thank you for providing me a friend for that reason alone and even for the fact that it lasted for about a season. For now, I fully close the door to this connection and turn it completely over to you. Whether it should ever re-open is entirely up to you now God. Either way, I am grateful for whomever You should choose to be in my life from this point forward, regardless of whether it becomes a reason, a season, or a lifetime…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

I have wanted to talk about a topic since I started writing in here but have held off from doing so only because it’s quite hard to explain and even more difficult to understand. It’s something I’ve dealt with and experienced both on a giving and a receiving end throughout much of my life and it’s my hope after reading this, that you might have a better grasp of something called “energy (or psychic) vampires”.

Whether you realize it or not, there’s a good chance that you too have experienced this on some level or at some point in your life. But it’s probably best to pose some initial questions to you to begin my explanation into this…

Have you ever felt more drained or exhausted like you needed a nap, after spending time with someone, even when no physical exertion took place during your time with them?

Have you ever become more unfocused or felt a greater sense of sadness and depression after being around an individual?

Have you ever spent any time around someone in a pretty low place in their life where you became more energetic after being around them, but they became even worse?’

Has anyone ever told you that you can be quite draining?

If you can answer yes to any of these statements, you may actually have dealt with energy vampirism.

I know this term probably sounds quite off the wall to you, only because of my use of the word “vampire”. So let me say right off the bat that my usage of it is not about the mythology that you’d read in a book or see on some television show or movie. Instead, it’s about the symbolism of what a vampire does, which is to feed off of another living thing to survive. Interestingly enough, while I haven’t been shown that those blood-sucking “vampires” exist in this world, I have found they do occur in another form, one where they drain the energy (or life force) out of another person.

All of us are made up of energy which has been proven for some time now by scientists. Every bit of our energy put together makes up our life force. And our life force is something which can fluctuate up or down depending on what we’re doing in our lives. Think of what it’s like when you’ve eaten a really healthy meal. Don’t you often feel more energized afterward? Many might feel that same increase in energy when they’ve done something spiritual such as when they’ve helped someone in need, prayed or meditated. There are many other things that can increase our life force too such as creating works of art, singing, exercising, and spending time in nature. But on the other side of the coin, there are an infinite number of things in this world that can drain our life force too. Any type of addiction that one falls prey to is a great example of something that can do this. Another thing that can do this is those energy vampires.

And there are people out there, whether they know it or not, that have become these things.

Usually, they are individuals who don’t practice much in the way of positive spirituality. They are often good at putting themselves up on pedestals and are quite proficient in constantly deflecting any negative spotlight off of them. They often suffer from an addiction prone personality and like to be the “actor” in life who likes to run the whole show around them. Any apparent selfless acts or moments of unconditional love they demonstrate are usually self-seeking. And it’s these people who find ways to energetically attach themselves to someone else who is usually in a much weaker place in life than them. Often this attachment process is done through some form of guilt or shame. And once that attachment takes place, the energy vampire slowly drains the life force from the weaker person.

Think for a moment of that umbilical cord which connects an unborn baby to its mother inside a womb. That cord shares vital nourishment from the mother to the baby for its growth and in return, that baby sends energetic feelings of love back to the mother. Now imagine for a moment, an invisible cord that can be connected from one human being to another that does a similar exchange of energy. For two people who become energetically connected together in a positive way, like that mother to her baby, this cord will equally exchange nourishment. But take for a moment, a toxic person who comes along and guilts or shames you into doing something you normally wouldn’t do. Maybe you end up giving that person some money as a result? Or maybe you end up listening to them drone on and on for awhile about the drama in their life? Or quite possibly, maybe you even end up giving a part of yourself away sexually to them? Whatever it is, there is an invisible cord that comes out of that toxic person and attaches to you somewhere on your body. It then starts to suck the life force out of you for the entire time you stay in connection with that toxic person, making you feel more and more drained and then more and more energetic.

As I mentioned in the beginning, I have been both on the giving and receiving end of this energy vampirism. Without even knowing it, I was once an energy vampire who constantly preyed on many weak spirited people. Many of my friends often complained of how exhausted they felt after they talked to me on the phone or hung out with me in person. And I believe today that’s only because I drained their life force by making them do a lot of things they didn’t want to do through my use of guilt and shame. So while they felt drained from being around me, I became more energetic from being around them. On the flip side, I’ve also spent just as much time being sucked dry by other energy vampires. Through their use of guilt and shame, I’ve been coerced into giving my body away sexually to them, draining my finances for their gain, or spending countless hours being put down or made fun of by them. These “attacks” often led me me to developing headaches, feeling more run down, or being more sad and depressed.

I know the idea of this might be very difficult for you to grasp, but in all honesty, it really exists. In fact, you hear about it all the time when people say “That person is really draining!” That’s a good indicator that the person being referred to is an energy vampire. Thankfully, God has led me away from being around them now and from acting as one of them as well.

If someone feels worse after being around you or has ever told you that you’re draining, there’s a good chance you might be acting as an energy vampire and feeding off of someone else’s life force. And if you are feeling more drained yourself after spending any time connecting with someone else, there’s a good chance that person might be an energy vampire who’s feeding off of your own life force. In either case, neither is a good thing. The only solution I’ve found to break free from it all is to seek a closer relationship with your Higher Power. It is your Higher Power who can and will provide you with all the life force you’ll ever need, and at the same time, will protect you from all those who might ever try to take some of it away…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

I had to return something the other day to a grocery store. When I approached its customer service desk, there was a man in front of me wearing a hat and dark sunglasses pacing back and forth. He was shouting verbal obscenities to someone on the phone about needing some type of prescription to go through that wasn’t. At the same time, he was also yelling at the women standing behind the counter as if it was their fault for whatever the actual problem was that he was facing. Sometimes I wonder if people like him truly think they are going to get their point across by shouting and yelling their way through it?

Unfortunately, it seems as if there are a lot of people in this world right now who are just plain angry and because of that, its like the slightest thing will piss them off, as in the case of this man who sounded like he desperately needed this prescription to survive. Whether he did or didn’t, I felt bad for whomever it was on the phone he was talking to as well as the women behind that customer service desk. When he walked away, the woman who helped me apologized because it was taking her several minutes to collect her thoughts and take care of my return. I told her I understood why she was feeling the way she was and offered my compassion for the situation. After I left the store, that man’s temper left me pondering my own life’s experiences for when I’ve either acted that way or when I’ve been on the receiving end of it.

To put it bluntly, I don’t like shouting or yelling at anyone anymore. I can see now how it’s a very negative and unspiritual thing to do. Have I done it? Of course I have. I have lost my temper many times in my life, but more so in years past before I started working on living a more spiritual based life. In most every case when I did loose my cool, it really was never about that situation that was happening before me that was causing it. In reality, it was all the things that I had done prior to it that led up to my explosion. My ex partner, who owned and ran a bed and breakfast with me for several years, was an example of someone I once got into extremely loud anger bouts with quite often. Looking back, my anger was never about whatever it was that triggered each of those arguments. Instead, it was all the decisions and actions I had made with that bed and breakfast, prior to those arguments, that I felt powerless over. The truth was that I had gone into a business that I never really wanted to go into, and I had turned over most of the control of that business’s operations to that ex-partner. So when things hit the fan as they did all too often in that bed and breakfast, I screamed and shouted at my ex-partner and said some deeply terrible things to him. More than not, he would scream and shout back at me and say his own share of deeply terrible things. Neither of us ever felt better afterwards and no positive changes ever came out of that shouting and yelling. And each time it happened, it left another gash in our relationship until one day, we parted ways for good because there was nothing left to gash.

There are plenty of other examples that I could cite out of when I’ve lost my cool and shouted and yelled my way through something that was making me angry. But I don’t feel it’s necessary to give you anymore of them because there’s a simple truth I’ve learned that can summarize them all. My life choices and the toxic things I constantly did to my life are what constantly led up to each of those moments where that ticking time bomb within me went off. Sadly, I became a lot like my mother for a period of my life as she shouted and yelled her way through things as well. Being on the receiving end of that for much of my life with her and so many other people that I got close is most likely what helped me to eventually see how shouting and yelling was completely unhealthy for anyone. I’ve experienced a few moments in my current relationship where my partner has raised his voice at me to try to get his point across. The only thing it has achieved is me shutting down and him feeling worse. Rarely have I raised my voice back at him because I know that nothing good will come out of it. Not for him, not for me, and not for us.

I can’t speak for everyone else, so maybe there are still some out there who feel that raising their voice angrily does work for them to get what they want. But if you are someone like me who is trying to live a life of peace and serenity and follow God’s will as well, then I’d encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and hold back from doing any of that shouting and yelling the next time you feel like you’re not getting your point across to someone. The reality is that all of your increased noise is going to do nothing more than hurt your own spirit and anyone else’s that it’s being directed at. And also remember the fact that there’s probably a lot of things of your own doing that led up to this happening in the first place…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson