There are moments in our lives when we feel exhausted, depleted of all vital energy, without knowing why this is happening or what we can do to change it. In my experience, the reasons are many, and they differ from one case to another. Here I will share two of them, described by Antero Alli – the creator of Paratheatre, a technique for connecting with the vertical dimension of life, where Spirit resides and where access to the second attention becomes possible.
According to him, the first way in which our energy is drained is the well-known “victim syndrome”, which destroys the individual’s will and can even turn a person into an energy vampire for others.
“This way of draining energy works through self-pity and through every immature refusal to accept one’s own weaknesses, inadequacies, and mistakes, combined with constant complaining and whining about not being ‘good enough.’”
The second way of energy depletion is what Alli calls “The Courtship Compulsion.” With this term he describes the process by which we abandon ourselves to fantasies in which we imagine meeting the partner of our life, or finally obtaining something we long for. Because of the unconscious way in which this happens, and because it involves the longing for wholeness together with all the projections of anima or animus onto the outer world, this form of energy loss is more difficult to detect. Usually, the only thing we become aware of is a feeling of emptiness and apathy, a lack of desire to do anything.
“Courtship Compulsion ravages the energetic body of the soul and its psychic home, the imagination.”
This more complex form of depletion (compared to the “victim syndrome”) occurs with every increasing emotional investment in the idealized image of the “dreamed-of beloved,” with every obsessive involvement in the search for “The One” or the “soulmate,” or with every psychic projection of intense emotion onto any external person who fits the image of the “ideal partner.” The entire process requires enormous psychic energy, beliefs, and blind faith in order to be sustained. And in most cases it happens unconsciously – we do not seek it deliberately.
“This complicated power drain occurs with any excessive emotional investment in an idealized image of the “dream lover”, and/or any obsessive search for “The One”, the “soulmate” or “twin flame”. When these projections are imposed onto any external person, who somehow matches that psychic image of the “dream lover” (what Carl Jung calls “the Anima” in men and the “Animus” in women), we can become as psychic vampyres merging with the energy of another in a misguided attempt at achieving “oneness” or some new age kind of “alchemical tantric unity”.
This power drain also taxes the imaginable faculties that might find more productive and creative outlets through Art, Poetry, Music, Dance, Theatre, Cinema, etc. Without creative outlets, all that psychic energy can naturally implode into a seduction of self-destruction. Courtship compulsion takes tremendous psychic energy to sustain itself and leaves us emotionally drained, always wanting, always needy. It’s a dumb-downing spiral of diminishing returns. NOTE: It’s not courtship itself that drains our power but the one-sided unrequited compulsion that occurs mostly in our own heads with very little to show for itself beyond the power loss it creates. .
Courtship Compulsion veils a sophisticated ritual of self-torment where love is always wanted but never truly found. The mass culture of advertising feeds and controls the Courtship Compulsion by the Beauty Myth oppressing every woman and man mistaking glamour for true beauty (see The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf). Glamour casualties are assimilated into a vapid world of appearances that drains the inner life of power and substance. A narrowing of consciousness soon feeds the negative spirits of Envy and Greed, the endless comparisons of oneself with others, resulting in a meaningless Hungry Ghost life.
Courtship Compulsion mythologizes unconditional love. When we seek and expect unconditional love from another person, it places them under pressure to deliver the impossible. What flawed human person can love unconditionally all the time? As this external projection of a need for unconditional love persists we can easily fall into the Poor Baby life where any kind of love we receive never measures up. Snagged in this web of self-deceit, we overlook how each of us may be love at essence. How radical an idea to be the love we seek from others? By realizing as much, we can enjoy romantic liaisons and endure long term loving relations — not from any desperate need or search for love but — from the offering of self as love. And where being in love – by inhabiting our essence as love itself — takes on new meaning.”
Antero Alli, On the Bridge Between Worlds
I decided to share this passage by Antero Alli in the category Lessons of Love, as a reminder of the vertical dimension of life – Spirit, the infinite source of energy. We enter this dimension by ceasing to think about external things we believe will make us happy, and by turning inward – sensing the body, releasing the mind from thoughts and ideas about how life should be, and allowing it to be as it is.
From this presence in the present moment, energy gradually begins to arise from within. It fills the inner emptiness and restores our strength to create on Earth.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
