The Influence of Others!

We have or have had people come into our lives that seem to have been put there for the sole purpose of making you miserable. They seem to inspire shame, guilt, self-doubt. They encourage self-deprecation, feed off of your low self-esteem and they never seem to tire of pointing out why you should feel bad about yourself.

Yes, despite all of your supposedly horrible habits and apparent worthlessness, they seem want to continue to be around you. I could spend all day talking about the kind of mind that ends up as an emotional vampire but I would much rather show you how to become free of their influence. Why is it we just don't seem capable of negating their assertions? As my teacher Mooji likes to say, "The best salesman in the world can't sell you if you don't buy." How do we negate these folks who are so good at finding and pushing just the right buttons. The answer is mindnumpingly simple.

Deactivate the buttons. It is useless to try to get the shark to become a vegan or the scorpion to become a pro-life advocate. So instead, I want to focus, not on the salesman, but on the buyer.

“Wanting to reform the world without discovering one's true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.” ― Ramana Maharshi Something within you agrees with the vampire's assertions or it could not possibly land and stick. The skilled vampire knows how to find and exploit these energetic weaknesses in you. They find the button that will compel you to give them what they want, even against your conscious will. Bear in mind that they too are quite unconscious that they are doing it. They have just gotten used to getting what they want, have become oblivious to the needs and feelings of others and have learned no moral repugnance for this behavior that would put an end to it. Just as an aside, this is the real nature of politics.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the only way out of this is to know yourself as you actually are. The emotional and psychological vampires can only feed on you when you don't know that all their assertions are false. When you know who you are, their assertions become utterly laughable. You see them for what they are, a mirror of their own self-hatred, projected on anyone who will accept it as their own. Moreover, the more you know who you are, those same unfortunate creatures simply won't be drawn to you. They instinctively recognize their prey and you are no longer that. Then quite naturally, those who are desirous of genuine communion and intimacy will be drawn to you. And that is, of course, what you are really wanting.