are to your subtle bodies. Similarly, just as chronic bleeding
exhausts the physical body, so a leakage of etheric energy can
deplete your pool of life force and leave you depressed, tired and
sick, even if your doctor can't find anything wrong with you.
For instance, the company of some people leaves you exhausted.
Spend just half an hour or even less with them and suddenly you
feel tired and less joyful, if not semi-depressed. You were light
and now you feel heavy, you were happy and now you feel worn
out. It is very likely that a drainage has taken place, a sort of
vampirism of your life force. The whole process is really a waste,
because usually the person who drains you does not even receive
the energy that you have lost. It is more a dissipation than a
transfer that takes place.
The problem can become drastic for therapists, especially (but not
only) when physical contact is involved, as in massage, for
instance. Many people who learn massage and who are quite
enthusiastic about it in the beginning give it up after two or three
years of practice, simply because they are not able to protect
themselves and get too drained. Another high risk situation of
vampirism is whenever you have to deal with lots of people, for
instance if you sell train tickets in a station or bread-rolls in a
shop. The need for a technique to seal your aura is obvious.
How do you know when you have caught a negative energy? Well,
that is precisely one of the problems: most people do not notice
when it happens, because they are completely unaware of their
energy. You can therefore readily come to the conclusion that
perception and awareness are the first steps towards real
protection. If you are not able to sense what takes place in a room
on the level of energy, you walk through life as if you were
blindfold, trying to cross a forest full of swamps. So all the work
that is suggested in this book, from channel release to seeing auras
and dowsing earth lines, will be the first step towards gaining a
genuine protection. For instance, some houses that would have
seemed normal to you in the past will immediately be recognised
as suspect, as soon as you enter the front door. Then you can be on
guard, seal your aura and take any other necessary precautions.
18.3 Opening and closing the aura, introductory practice
An important skill to develop is the capacity to recognize how
open or closed your aura is, and later on to modify this balance at
will. For instance just after a night practice or a deep meditation,