Acquisitioners

An Acquisitioner is a person who has only passive power. This kind of dependent person feels she must acquire power from her external environment and from or through someone else. She thinks, consciously or unconsciously, "Alone, I am nothing." Such a person seeks to acquire power through money; social status; political, social, military, or religious authority; and relationships with influential people. She does not directly express her own needs but becomes skilled at tolerating or manipulating unsatisfactory situations.

In the human energy system, our individual interactions with our environment can be thought of symbolically as electromagnetic circuits. These circuits run through our bodies and connect us to external objects and other people. We are drawn to power objects or people, or "power targets," so that we can draw their power into our system. Our connection with a power target, however, draws some power away from our own field and into the target.

The targets to which acquisitioners connect their energy circuits are people or objects to which they have surrendered their power - specifically, the power to control them. When a person is unaccustomed to making empowering choices for themselves, they get tied into a pattern of releasing their energy into the hands of others. This puts healing out of reach because the power now exists outside the boundaries of that person's physical body.

It is not the mind, but our emotional needs that control our attachment to our power targets.

Since healing is nonnegotiable, acquisitioners find healing a more formidable challenge than people who have a sense of active power. Healing is, above all, a solo task. No one can heal on behalf of another person. We can assist others, to be sure, but no one can, for instance, forgive someone on behalf of someone else. Nor can any of us cause someone to release the painful memories or experiences that he needs to release in order to heal. Because the very nature of passive poser is "power through attachments," it runs contrary to an acquisitioner's entire biology to release or detach himself from targets that are draining his energy.

from: Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss