Energetic Vampires and Awakening!

Vampires...So hot right now!! Have you noticed recently how popular this "vampire culture" has become lately? Ever since the instant cult hit Twilight came out 2 years ago (Its already been 2 years!!, yes folks its 2010!!) there has been a swath of vampire mini-series shows on television, including the popular True Blood series on HBO, and many many more on television. I have to admit I myself have always loved vampire movies, in fact my favorite 80's movie is Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys, I dug the Blade movies, the popular Russian film Nightwatch, and the Underworld movies (Kate Beckinsale could have something to do with that) and of course who isn't addicted to the teen fantasy Twilight movies which have essentially re-vamped (no pun intended) the genre.
Now, Vampires have always been a popular mythological figure in history, media, movies, stories, what have you, and I would like explore here a theory I have about why we humanoids find vampires so seductive and why we are seeing them everywhere as of late.
Firstly, I am approaching this from a spiritual perspective, so keep that in mind here, as there are an infinite number of perspectives one could take on any topic. Like many things in mythology and in legends and in wisdom traditions of humanity there are often parables, or metaphors to explain something that is hard to conceive of or is even unexplainable. Words are of course "forms" and so they can often only point to spiritual truths, and thus that is what I believe the concept of vampire has been utilized throughout the mythologies and stories of the past to emphasize and explain a commonly encountered phenomenon that is ultimately non-physical.
I would like to introduce the concept that vampire as I am speaking of it, is not the literal vampire as we have come to know them, as half-human monster that has sharp fangs and drinks blood for food and who is adverse to sunlight; but that in fact that these are a physical world symbolic depictions and metaphors for something that is actually an energetic form that many spiritual traditions of history have referred to. Don Miguel Ruiz, in his book Voice of Knowledge, does an amazing job of outlining this phenomenon, as it has been passed on to him from the Ancient Toltec wisdom of his ancestors, and he terms it the "parasite." Eckhart Tolle also refers to it in his books The Power of Now and A New Earth as the "ego and pain body," which they both claim exists both at the individual and collective levels of humanity.
Now, when I look up the term "parasite" on Dictionary.com, I get the following responses:

1)an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known as the host, from the body of which it obtains nutriment.
2) a person who receives support, advantage, or the like, from another or others without giving any useful or proper return, as one who lives on the hospitality of others.
3) (in ancient Greece) a person who received free meals in return for amusing or impudent conversation, flattering remarks, etc.


Now looking at the first one, it does sound a bit like what we speak of when we talk of vampires. Of course in modern story-telling, which is films, we give them super-human powers, virtual invincibility, immortality, cool latex outfits, and narly tattoos. They also get to do all the fun things all of us mere mortals don't allow ourselves, such as have lots of sex, party all night, sleep in all day, lead adventurous lifestyles, have exclusive memberships to all the coolest clubs and digs, and the only real downside is that they have to consume human blood, but even that is made out to be akin to some radical drug-high for a vampire. Thus, it has been glamorized a bit, well, just a little. These Hollywood vampires are of course physically earth-bound beings (not superheroes, which is another article in of itself), but also not necessarily the energetic versions I am speaking of.
My question with this article is, "what is it in us that finds vampires so entertaining and seductive?" Of course one could say that its the superpowers, exclusivity, and all that jazz, but I think there is something spiritually profound in all of this. I am suggesting here that humans are drawn to this for more than just the glamorous reasons mentioned above, but that there is a part of the human experience that resonates with the essence of "vampire." That of course being what Ruiz calls the parasite, and what Tolle terms the ego and pain body in their individual and collective forms. In fact when I look at what I outline on Vampires above, they are almost exclusively absorbed in form, in the things of the world, be it power, money, sex, drugs, fancy clothes and cars, mansions, and they lack any sort of spiritual life that doesn't involve egoic gain on some level, and in stories they are always in some sort of conflict with humans or other vampires as all of their own energy is completely absorbed in having more (almost akin to a drug addict, and maybe that is another perspective on the whole thing). Have we seen happy vampires who live in peace and balance in our myths? Maybe I've just missed them.
The entity that Tolle and Ruiz refer to is a parasitic entity that is not physical, but rather exists at the mental/emotional levels of the human being. After all in the physical world there are all sorts of parasites that inflict wounds and cause problems in the physical body, such as tapeworms, or roundworms, or leeches, or ticks, etc.. So it is not all that much a stretch of imagination to think that there could be such a thing as a "psychic tapeworm" that exists in humans and is the same entity that Tolle and Ruiz are referring to. In fact Don Miguel Ruiz refers to it as a being that creates emotional drama, conflicts, wounds, and lives off of all the poison and negativity produced from them; and thus it feeds on conflict and drama in an individuals life, and at the collective level of the collective mind it feeds on such things as global conflicts and wars. In fact, Tolle says essentially the same thing in his own style and way. I would highly recommend reading of both Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth and Don Miguel Ruiz's Voice of Knowledge to understand more deeply what I am referring to here. As they say, what is needed to heal the emotional wounds and to eventually dissolve this "psychic parasite" causing them is to "shine the light of awareness," on them. I think it is interesting that the vampires in stories also dissolve in thin air when in sunlight, or when they are brought out of the shadows and into the light, so to speak. And of course in stories there is also whats called the dark-side of humanity or the shadow-self, or the unconscious self. All of course which is only countered with metaphorical awareness, and of course consciousness, that is becoming aware of something that was unconscious and thus making what was previously unconscious...conscious.
What am I on about? Good question. I think that the rise of popularity in this "vampire culture" and the increased obsession with material things, is forcing humans to bring the collective light of awareness onto it. Tolle says that the Ego/Pain Body becomes more dysfunctional as it is threatened with dissolution, much like a caterpillar becomes more an more dysfunctional before it transforms into a butterfly. People are aware at some level, maybe not fully conscious yet, but at some level that they resonate and relate with this addictive vampire culture and find it seductive. I reckon that its about a collective spiritual awakening of humanity; and a bringing of the light of consciousness to those unconscious aspects that hide in the shadows and cause much suffering on both individual and collective levels. I propose that this is the beginning of collective healing process, and that this rise in popularity and identification with vampire culture is leading many people to examine their own unconscious aspects, of which they have previously been so fearful to uncover and confront. Well its a theory anyways...Cheers Everybody!