I had just arrived at the gym—stretching, weight training, more stretching, and then a five-minute meditation. As I finished, a woman about my age nearby asked me, “Are you a disciple of the ‘Grateful Master’?”

“No,” I replied. “I follow Osho.”

“No,” I replied. “I follow Osho.”

“You meditate quite well,” she said. “Personally, I’m afraid to meditate. I’m scared of being invaded by ghosts or spirits.” This idea of being “invaded” while meditating is a classic piece of Taiwanese folklore. I told her, “No, don’t be afraid. If your consciousness isn’t drifting outward looking for spirits, it won’t happen. It only happens when you abandon yourself.”

“I see,” she said. “Exactly,” I added. “Fear itself is the attraction.”

“Exactly,” I added. “Fear itself is the attraction.”

This reminded me of a former client who practiced “Spiritual Mountain” (Zou Ling Shan) rituals; I heard she had been institutionalized three times. People like her have a specific pattern: they start off polite, humble, and heap exaggerated praise on you, but slowly they begin claiming they are incredibly powerful—like they’re higher than the heavens.

I still remember her clearly. For a while, she came for Tarot readings every day. Eventually, she told me she knew a bit of Tarot and could help me. She put me on a pedestal and brought many friends to see me. Strangely, she also started reading Tarot at a nightclub owned by a friend I had introduced her to, yet she still showed up to see me every morning.

Then, she started saying she wanted to “slap my back to remove bad luck.” I didn’t suspect her at the time and let her slap my back every day. Later, my friend from the nightclub told me, “When she’s here reading Tarot, she tries to ‘change the luck’ of the customers. She slaps them and claims she’s slapping away their misfortune.”

It felt strange, but I didn’t want to meddle too much. One day she visited me while I was at my desk. I saw her frantically slapping my workstation. When I walked in, she said, “I’m slapping away the karma from your studio. You have too much karma here.”

I spoke to her with my usual gravity, but her motions looked like she was trying to shake energy off her own hands. She introduced another friend to me, and while I talked to that person, she sat there kneading a piece of paper, smiling at me with what looked like kindness. After they left, I found that crumpled paper on the floor—it was radiating a massive amount of rage.

She returned the next day. I asked her directly, “You seem to have ill intentions. Why do you keep coming here? Yesterday, you weren’t ‘clearing’ karma off my desk, were you?”

She burst into a huge laugh and said, “I’m slapping my own karma onto you! You wear a cloak of black energy—you’re a natural-born ‘negative energy scavenger.’ So, I’m dumping my negative energy onto you.”

Stunned, I said, “What did you just say?” She replied like a maniac, “Cleaning negative energy is your job! No one is better at it than you!”

Realizing she had likely lost her mind again, I said, “You are never to show up here again. You are not welcome.” “Why are you angry?” she said. “This is your job. I’ve done nothing wrong. Driving me away won’t help; I’ve already placed a curse around you. You’re nowhere near as powerful as I am.”

“Get out!” I shouted. “Don’t ever come back.”

Afterward, I did a top-to-bottom energy clearing of the environment. It was insane. These people obsessed with spirits are rarely ever stable. Once you drive them away, you’re left dealing with the lingering infection. In spiritual work, you often run into lunatics; there’s simply no way around it.