Naughty Beasties -- or -- Hold the Boundary

Let's start with an entry from my dream journal:

I'm Not on the Menu ( November, 2002)

(towards the end of an afternoon nap in bed next to my then-girlfriend "K")

I'm coming up out of sleep but get to a certain point close to waking and do not rise any further. I can hear sounds but can't open my eyes. In fact I cannot move my body at all. I become aware of a presence close to my energetic body. It is mature, powerful and neither friendly nor inimical. I'm seeing it as anthropomorphic, featureless and a pure matte black in color. There was no physical sensation but energetically it felt as if it was running its hands over my etheric body, trying to find a way in, a way to get *at* me. I'm not afraid, just annoyed that it's trying to mess with me. I fight to move my body but can't -- not even a flicker of an eyelid. At this point, in a dialog without words, we communicate. It tells me it's not letting me move and I get the impression it's trying to scare me. I respond, essentially, by saying I'm not going to frighten, whatever you are. I may be paralyzed, but *you* can't get in, so f*** off. [pause -- it continues looking for an avenue of ingress...my sense of being safe does not waver] F*** OFF! At that moment, K moves next to me in her sleep and her arm brushes against mine. The physical contact breaks the paralysis and I come fully awake and move.


I immediately forgot the entire episode (which is why the entry in my dream journal only has the month and not an exact date). It was several weeks later when I read a thread about psychic attack/energetic vampirism in an online forum that the whole memory of it came swimming back -- intensely so: the sensation of the black entity attempting to get *into* me, my sense of safety snug in my energetic shell, and my righteous anger at the attempted intrusion.

One of my mentors and I had a conversation about the whole thing, and he had two main thoughts: 1) the black entity was attached to K and thought perhaps I'd make an interesting/tasty co-host and/or 2) these sorts of beings are part of the larger ecosystem. They live, travel and feed entirely on an energetic plane. The more aware we are of our energetic body and the attachments thereto, the more likely it is that we'll know when somebody/something is trying to get at us. (And, parenthetically, how interesting that I forgot the whole thing until my memory was jogged. Maybe these sorts of entities can induce us to forget their feedings [the way tick's saliva numbs us while it feeds]. Why would a farmer bar the henhouse door if the fox can make him forget his chickens keep disappearing?)

The first suggestion didn't resonate to me. I'd been intimate with K for months by then and if she'd had something like that glommed onto her (or stopping by regularly for an energy snack) I feel like I'd have sensed it. The second idea seemed likeliest. These beasties are out there, and we're part of their food pyramid. It thought maybe it could get lunch, and if it could scare up a side order of paralytic fear, all the better. But I held my boundary/shield, didn't panic, and I either drove it off or it figured I was more trouble than it was worth.

I offer all this up merely to make a few important points. 1) There are Naughty Beasties out there, and they can be genuinely evil in their motivations/actions or merely look upon us the way we (most of us) look at cows: food. We won't meet them on the streets or at the supermarket, but in dreaming we may cross paths with them. 2) If we can't defend our energetic boundaries, they will take advantage of us. Just think: if your personal boundaries are soft or ill-defined, plain ol' people have a field day running roughshod over you. Do you really think a creature that looks at your energetic body and sees a nice warm bowl of soup has better manners than people? 3) Not every naughty beastie you come across is necessarily dangerous. Many put on fearsome masks and lay on the thunder'n'lightning to fool us into being afraid [see my next point] -- but underneath the bluster they're pipsqueaks trying to trick us into giving away our power. [I once dreamt that a man in a business suit {complete with devil-tail hanging out of the back} had me cornered in a dark passageway, looming over me. In an imperious hiss he said "Everyone's soul belongs to someone and *yours* *belongsssss* *to* *meee!*" For a moment I wavered. Then I reached up and tore his suit in two from side-to-side, leaving him standing in stripedy-hilarious long underwear. I then conjured into my hands a six-foot-long wooden spoon and smacked him right in the ass. He shot about four feet straight up into the air and ran off clutching his heiny. Never got a lecture about who holds the title to my soul from him again...] 4) Courage is of paramount importance. Fear undermines our confidence, drags the mind down to an animal fight/flight state, and saps the energy we would use to defend ourselves. 5) When confronted with a potentially scary situation -- call on the Light, or deity or angels or however you conceive the divine. We all have helpers available 24/7, in dreaming and in waking life. They are there but we have to ask for help. They're ready to help. They *want* to help. That's why they're with us! Get your helpers on the scene for support and get righteous with whatever it is that means you harm. And righteous does *not* mean holier-than-thou -- clearly, when I was trying to get the naughty beastie to scarper off, I was expressing my righteous anger by using the f-word. No points for me in the eloquence category, I guess, but full marks for vehemence! And being safe is far more important than etiquette, no?