There is an unpleasant group of people you should stay away from for your own sake. I call them “energy vampires.”

Energy vampires are those perpetually pissed-off party poopers (don't you love alliterations?) who will suck you dry if you spend more than 15 minutes in their presence.

You can tell you’re with an energy vampire when you...

• Develop a splitting headache when you hang out with them, and/or
• Feel more and more exhausted as the meeting drags on, and/or
• Catch yourself getting increasingly negative the more time you spend with them

​Energy vampires constantly complain and feel like the world owes them a debt—a debt it refuses to pay, which embitters them greatly.

Due to that bitterness, they love to gossip in the nastiest way about other people and feel like everyone's out to get them. If they're your friend or a family member, often they will subtly put you down every time you report a great success or are enjoying yourself too much for their taste. 

You may even compelled to chime in on their miserable world view when you're with them. You may feel like they bring out the worst in you.

Stay away from those folks as far as you can. However, there's a good chance you already have one or more people like this in your life and don't know how to get rid of them. You don't have the heart to just blow them off, but you know this can't keep going on. 

One thing you can do is try to de-manifest them. Here's how I managed to do this several times in my life.

Realize that the energy vampire reflects a part of yourself back to you that you don't like.

Your "external" life is a reflection of your "internal" life. Whether you believe that or not, just assume it's true for a moment. 

That means everything that shows up in your outer reality mirrors something inside you. Everything in your world is there to teach you... including those people whom Carlos Castaneda's teacher Don Juan called "the little tyrants."

The little tyrants (part of which are the energy vampires) can be your greatest teachers because they reflect back to you a flaw in your own character that you either can't see or don't want to see. It's a part of what famous psychologist Carl Gustav Jung called your "Shadow."

When you work on looking at, integrating, and thereby resolving that part of your "Shadow" self, the energy vampire will go away because he or she won't find anything in your reality to attach to anymore. 

Your friend who's draining you energetically and emotionally might move to another town or even state. Your nasty coworker might change jobs. Your family member might take up a new hobby that's extremely time consuming. 

Ask yourself: What is it about this person that bothers me the most?

Name the one character trait that the energy vampire embodies for you. Is she a drama queen? Is he a miserable penny pincher? Is she always blaming others for her misfortunes? Is he convinced that the whole world is against him?

Pick what you like least about this person. Now take a good, hard look at yourself. Can you see the same trait in yourself?

As soon as you'll be able to acknowledge and transform this part of yourself, the "outer world" energy vampire will leave.  

How do you transform it? By becoming aware and consciously stopping yourself whenever you display that trait.

• Do you tend to talk in negative terms about your life? Stop yourself when you catch yourself doing it and replace the negative words and thoughts with positive ones. 

• Do you tend to feel sorry for yourself and blame others or "circumstances" for everything bad in your life? Start taking responsibility not just for your own actions but for everything that happens to you.

There's much more to this, but I don't have the space here to go into great detail. I could write a whole book about this (and probably will at some point). 

If this sounds esoteric and weird, just try it for yourself. Every little change in yourself will cause a change in your outer reality... but you will need to stay aware and "awake" to realize what's happening.

You may be amazed how well it works... and you're doing yourself a double favor by inviting more peace into your life and working on your own spiritual development.

My friends in Sedona called me the "manifestation queen." For years, I could manifest anything I wanted… except for money.

Even though I knew better intellectually, I was inhibited by the limiting beliefs around money that I had learned in my childhood. “Money doesn’t grow on trees” was one of the sayings I constantly heard from my parents. So it was difficult to believe that anything but hard work could get me money.

And, of course, there was the bane of many spiritual seekers, New Agers and otherwise: The ingrained belief that you can’t be spiritual and have or make money at the same time.

After all, even the Bible says that money is the root of all evil, right? (Actually, it doesn’t… it says “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Huge difference.)

And this belief is reinforced by people who don’t hold back telling Reiki practitioners and other healing-touch workers and spiritual teachers that it is despicable that they take money for their services if the energy they channel comes from God.

Those are the spiritual freeloaders you often find in New Age circles, but unfortunately, all too often, they just confirm what the practitioner herself was already fearing, which creates a vicious cycle.

So I was pretty much stuck in the same pattern… until I moved to Vermont and started to work for a publisher of investment research. I edited and proofread the investment newsletter we sold, and I saw the emails we got from deeply grateful subscribers.

One older lady said she was nearly destitute when she followed some of our stock recommendations and made enough money for a comfortable retirement. She wrote, “Now I don’t have to ‘inherit the earth.’ Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

That woke me up to the fact that money in and of itself isn’t anything to be afraid of or to despise. As with everything, intention determines the outcome.

Once I realized this truth, manifesting money became easy… from multiple raises and promotions, to having money flow in from unexpected sources when I needed things that weren’t in the budget, like an electric in-ground dog fence.

I do believe in moderation, though. I call it “sustainable manifestation.” That’s why I don’t advocate trying to win the lottery or manifest frivolous things like a million-dollar yacht. Instead, I suggest you focus on your dreams, those things that will make your heart sing… as well as your own soul evolution.
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In my opinion, one perfect affirmation is, “I live up to my highest potential.” Growing to be the best version of ourselves that we can be is a pretty darn good goal if you ask me.