Dark Power: Why Powerful Men do Terrible Things

A lot has been revealed about dark power being used in the upper echelons of the old boys’ club: sexual abuse, terror, vampiring other people’s energy for the hit of power. It’s shocking and gross to learn what has been happening under the cover of darkness.

But is it surprising?

I don’t think so.

And before anyone starts wriggling in their seat, explanation does not equal excuse. There is no excuse for abusing kids, terrorizing people, or taking from the people who trusted you.

If we refuse to look at the energetic reason these patterns keep showing up around distorted power, we stay in the cycle of being shocked every time the same rotten structure reveals itself again.

One of the terms I use for this is projection load.

I work with a lot of leaders. Some celebrities, some extremely wealthy, many just very influential and all of them dealing with a lot of this projection load.

People care about the minutia of their lives. Where they were. What they said. What they had for breakfast, and especially what they wore (eyeroll).

They’re adored, hated, wanted, resented, worshipped, criticized — imagined into roles they never actually agreed to hold.

All of that carries energy. It lands in their field.

And when these guys become so big from the projection load, from the hero worship, from all the ego fluffery, their energy body can get puffed up with stuff that is not even theirs.

Hopefully that person has someone to check them - a mentor of integrity, a spiritual director or therapist, real truth talking friends, a strong spouse… someone they respect who can keep their ego from taking over. With grounded support, they can find their center, their wisdom, their integrity. They can learn to ground all that energy. They can surrender what is not theirs. They can let real life humble them before their field gets too inflated and distorted.

But when someone starts believing the projection, relaxing into their fluffed ego, things can get dangerous.

They may start feeding on the worship, or even the disdain. They feel bigger than life, entitled to all the special attention, and then terribly desperately hungry for MORE. They grow to feel special in a way that starts separating them from humane accountability.

That is where the hunger takes over, becoming a desperate egoic search for energy to take, to steal, to harvest.

It’s too easy to demonize this sort of vampiric behavior, imagining it only happens in the upper echelons, and in the most egregious ways. But it’s not completely unfamiliar to the best of us. We humans know more about feeding on the energy of others than we like to admit.

Even on the playground, we learn the tiny version. You sneak up behind a friend and scare them. Boo. They jump. You get a little hit, a little juice. They may laugh, but they also feel the loss for a second.

It is the tiny playground version, sure, but the body still registers it.

Now imagine that same power dynamic inside extreme wealth, fame, secrecy, protection, and ego fluffery.

Projection load without stewardship can puff the ego until the person starts believing the field around them. Then they want more. More worship. More control. More proof they’re untouchable.

Desperate hunger for energy paired with righteous entitlement and ridiculous amounts of resource to take from others.

That is where feeding can become abuse, and even communities based on this vicious harvesting of pure energy - of the young, the pure, the beautiful.

Evil. Yes. But not nonsensical. There is a process happening here energetically.

This is why integrity-based leadership cannot just be about making more money, getting more visible, commanding higher prices, or becoming the name in your industry.

More visibility means more projection. Higher leadership means you have to steward what is coming at you instead of letting it puff you up, distort your field, or quietly convince you that being adored makes you spiritually exempt from accountability.

Because that appetite is real. And anyone who is adored on stage one day, who then feels depleted lonely and hungry the next day, can tell you the hunger for a new thing to fill us is real and surprisingly strong.

These energy transfers affect us all. You can be doing good work and still have an adoration-hangover after being in the public eye. You can be deeply gifted and still get puffed-up when too many people hand you their power. You can be spiritual as hell and still need a mentor or partner who can say, “Nope. Uh-uh. Come back to Earth, Fancypants.”

Please have those people. And please, become one.

The leaders we need aren’t the ones hoarding all that projection until it curdles into overwhelm, ego, hunger, or harm. There are people who can hold influence without letting it inflate them, who can let all that extra energy open their channel of genius instead of puffing up the false self.

But that does not happen by accident.

It requires grounding and humility. It requires a relationship with spirit, earth, and body, and the willingness to surrender what is not yours instead of stuffing your field with other people’s fantasies and resentments. Dude, it’s a practice. And in a world where we are not tracking these invisible movements of energy, it can be hard to understand what’s going on. We have the wise words of “stay humble” and such, but I think it’s time to track the energy transfer and learn how to balance it out before it creates more damage.

Can we be done pretending power is neutral? Can we talk about projection load before it turns into ego fluffery, hunger, and harm?

And can we please help people with wealth, fame, visibility, and influence learn how to steward what is coming at them, instead of letting it overwhelm them or using it as permission to feed?

The world does not need more giant egos taking from the people who look up to them.

It needs leaders whose influence opens their channel so they become truly genius, instead of inflating their ego until they become monsters.

This is the work I care about most: helping powerful, intuitive people hold more energy without losing themselves.

If you are stepping into bigger leadership, bigger visibility, or bigger responsibility and you feel the weight of what is moving through you, this is the territory I love exploring.

Reach out. Let’s make sure your genius expands faster than your ego.