You need to have and hold your own personal Power on the Spiritual Path, and this Blog explores some of the issues.
When the sort of individual who is called, in the language of shamanism, a ‘Power Stealer’ leads a group or a centre or a spiritual Order, you need to leave! There are various control dramas to notice and be aware of. And you need to be aware of these in yourself, too, of course. Indeed, this is the gift of the ‘Seer Rite’ in the wonderful Nine Rites of Munay Ki shamanism gifted to the West by Alberto Villoldo. The Rites need, of course, to be germinated and fully developed, or otherwise there could be failure to observe one of the central ethics to treat others kindly.
Spiritual knowledge and practice is nowadays often transmitted through groups or Orders in the West, so when the sort of individual who is called, in the language of shamanism, a ‘Power Stealer’ leads a group or a centre or an order, they will gang with aggressive peers and at the same time feed off weaker people, even people who are not very well, and this is so dangerous. Power Stealers are a huge danger in the new spiritual development of our times in the West, where so often spirituality is shared through groups, centres and orders. Power Stealers do this because of lack of connection to their own personal power. Usually they don’t have the needed connection to their own power because of dysfunctional parenting. So, Power Stealers purposely steal others’ energy and use other people for energy. It is dangerous to even be in their company or be mentally connected to them. The whole point is that in healing work, the spiritual teacher, the healer, etcetera is not the one that is doing the healing: that comes from connection to the infinite. What the spiritual teacher/healer has to do, is to create a safe and sacred space: a conduit where the infinite can be channelled to do its work.
So, on the spiritual path, you need to develop your own true power, and contact your own true power, and work spiritually within your own true power. This is crucial.
In his book The Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield describes some of the control dramas we may be subjected to – and it’s very important to recognise our own, too.
I’ve mentioned Power Stealers, but spiritual groups can also fall foul of other control dramas.
There’s the person who flips between ‘Poor Me’ and ‘The Intimidator’. Poor Me gets sympathy and drains power from her listeners. The Intimidator crushes the other person psychically, verbally or physically. And the person who feeds on others for power can flip between the two.
There’s also ‘Aloof’. Aloof is the person who creates an area of mystique around them, then draws on other’ energy by drawing them into the sort of ‘energy vortex’ that Aloof creates, so that other people give their energy to that person and try to find out more and become paralysed and severed from their own true power within the vortex.
Then there’s ‘The Interrogator’. The Interrogator diverts attention to themselves by asking questions: questions that are asked for the sake of the energy they will suck from others, not because they want to know the answer. Or they create diversionary tactics to deliberately high-jack others’ energy.
It is so important in the spiritual path to get nourishment and power from your own connection to Source, from your own connection to the Divine, from your own connection to the Web of Life. Those connections make you feel adequately empowered to choose and walk your own spiritual path and feel uplifted; this is because, in this scenario, no one is coming from a place of incompleteness or need.
It is so important to notice in the spiritual path what the Control Dramas are in the groups from which you are trying to draw spiritual knowledge and nourishment. The more that you notice that an interchange is depleting you, the more you will come into your own true power.
Power Stealers so often have similar associates, but then surround themselves often with people who have little power and who will even give that little power away, who even may have draining chronic fatigue states etcetera.
But the more you notice the control dramas and come into your own true power, the more you are nourished and feel good.
This Blog is an excerpt from my book ‘The Backpackers Guide to the New Spirituality 2014’, which is due out imminently.
There are wonderfully supportive and empowering Certificated Distance Learning Courses linked to the book that are featured on the website www.earthstarweb.com.
For example, Shamanic healing methods that deal with entities such as Power Stealers are covered in the linked Distance Learning Course on Shamanism.
Maggie Pashley and Michael Conneely are exceptionally widely qualified initiators into the nine rites of Munay Ki Shamanism, see: www.munaykiempowerment.org
Email michaelconneely@gmail.com
Tel: 07799296821
