Atlanta Vampire Alliance [AVA]

[Maloryn]

Here's one for both the new and experienced vamps to see how well your "pattern" is holding up to energy pressures. Apologies for the "lecturing" tone.

I generally recommend doing this in a very crowded place, like a mall on a weekend or a movie theater on a friday night.

Find your center and pick a neutral image, but one that can be easily influenced. Preferably, this should be an image in motion or one that changes easily. I tend to think of smoke from a fire, but clouds in a blue sky or shadows on a window shade would work equally well.

Get a very firm starting image in your head of what this image should look like before going into the crowd. Try not to actively draw energy while moving through the crowd, but don't "push" or "cloak" either. The point is to allow the ambient energy to flow over and through you without "drawing" too much.

Now, look around for three or four of the most animated people you can find in the crowd and meander around them, try to circle close and then away and then close to another.
Pay attention to how your mental pattern changes as you get closer and then further away from them. This is normal.

Now, do the same with others who are less animated, or even seem withdrawn and compare.

Next move into the area which seems to have the best balance of energy, while remaining in the crowd.

Now, try to remember what your image started as exactly as it was. Take a deep breath and push out with more energy than you pulled while in the room. Again, visualize the starting image and note if it has changed between what you thought it was a moment ago before "pushing" and now.

Now step completely away from the crowd and center a final time, bring the image wholly back to the front of your mind and think about the changes that went through your pattern as you were in the crowd. Have any of them seemed to "stick"?

Feel your own aura around you, pull it inside of you for a moment, then push out with your own energy, making the space around you your own. Notice if anyone in the crowd suddenly looked up when you did this, this could be an indication of either energy sensitivity or some tenuous energy link that either of you inadvetantly created which may have just been severed.

The purpose of this exercise is to be mindful of one's pattern and both the effects upon it and the effects it may have on others.
We are all influenced to some degree by the energies of others, be we vampire or not. The awareness of such influence is one of the things which most clearly seperates the morally ambiguous vamps from the more ethical ones.
Keep in mind that one of the easiest ways to influence someone is to change their pattern over time. Vampires are best known for doing this to others, but few will admit that vampires are some of the easiest to influence in this way as well.

---Mal

P.S. I use the term "pattern" where some would use the term aura because of the many definitions of the term, some of which would not be appropriate for this exercise and because I've no wish to debate definitions

[Kotori_Distari]

It's also a good exercise to keep an individual aware or mindful of links that are formed with consistent practice. One can't walk though a mud puddle and expect to emerge without any trace of mud, water or other residual matter unattached to them from their passing. Odd analogy of sorts, but the point I was trying to make is that the ambient energy will still carry traces when passing through crowds.

Emotions are one thing that perhaps are a bit more prevalent when exposed to in public. You may not be paying attention directly, but if you end up picking up on some level someone's emotion -- it affects you to a point. Unless you filter out a lot of outside emotions constantly to the point that it barely phases you, then you may not notice. That individual standing at the check-out lane yelling at the cashier about an item being mis-priced may not be of your concern, but the emotional energy can be picked up on and make you feel it on some level. I hope my rambling made sense.
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"It is by no coincidence that we run into certain people throughout our wanderings in Life. The reason we do so is because we are meant to learn something from them -- good or bad we learn."