The Hoochie-Mamas (Page 1 of 3)

Boys will be boys......Girls will be girls!

Most of us have been in the same situation dreamosis noted in his bar outing.  I am not trying to justify superficial behavior such as the one being discussed here but these are just kids learning and trying to enjoy live as they perceive it.  There is always time to giggle, holler, shout, have a beer and yes there is time to meditate.  Most of us journey through life learning and sometimes re-learning the same lesson.  Some of us awake and others never do.  Some of us were born awake (I was not!) and some of us zig zag through life doing stupid things and then awake.  But, isn't that the purpose of the journey to finally awake after much stupidity?  Let the boys be boys and the girls be girls.................They will awake at one time or another and then......maybe not!

Lyra, there are still millions of good people out there.  People with humble hearts and beatiful souls such as you and the NR membership.  Go for a drive to a small town and talk to the locals.  People will use the word "please", "yes maam" or "yes sir".  All is not loss yet.  The good souls stay in the background, they do not make much noise........they do not want to be noticed.

I am sure that bars serve a good purpose for some people--a place to gather and share camaraderie. I stay away from them myself because I'm uncomfortable in noisy, crowded places and not much of a drinker, but I sometimes feel I may be missing out on a colorful aspect of 3D life.  Ah well.

I would not be too quick to judge those college kids and their behavior.
Most of them are still finding themselves and trying on different roles.  If you spent time with them one-on-one I'm sure most of them would show a deeper side than is apparent in the bar scene.

Anyway, hope I'm not being presumptuous in answering for dreamosis, but I'm guessing he goes to the bars because his wife and friends do,  and because people-watching can be fun.  The spicy chicken wings might be a factor also.  Yum! 

It is very rare--maybe once per month--that I go to the meat market-type bars.  I never go without an invitation, and usually I go only for an occasion like a birthday.  My friends know that bars (and liquor) and I don't blend well.     

For a long time I struggled with my wife, and friends, over hanging out at bars.  A few years back they were sure that if I "tried harder" (drank more) I'd like them.  After taking a couple of months of meditation classes with me, my wife understood what I was talking about about bar-energy.  After that, bars bothered her, too.  But then she began using the meditation techniques to "keep her space" and she got over it.  I do that, too, but I find easier to simply stay away from places that resonate with me. 

Basically, my wife has a lot of bar friends.  And she's in an "I'm getting old" crisis right now.  Her friends look up to her, too--she's the fixer, the mom, the wise one.  Oftentimes she goes out to bars because somebody is "having a breakdown" and they "need" her.  She knows she has vampires for friends and that she's outgrown most of them, and bars.  But she's also addicted to the attention and validation that comes from being the super-maternal day-saver.  I've told her that to her face, and she's said, "I know, I know," (shaking her head) but it hasn't changed.  (It's a big point of contention for me, right now.  It subtracts from our time together.  I'm facing the dilemma of either learning greater patience or baling out on her...I can't see a third option...)

The vampire charm doesn't work on me, though.  And most times--in those breakdown times--I know our bar-friends are glad that I don't come out much because I would only reflect their problems back at them rather than hold them and rock them.  I ask hard questions like, "What does your heart say?" and so most of our friends don't come to me for advice.   

My good friends--the ones who are committed to awakening--all seem to live out of town.  I have maybe two in-town, and when we're together, everybody stays back.  It's funny like that.  Even if we're talking about something inconsequential, others are convinced we're having a "serious" conversation.  I think it's just the energy level we create...
   

...Half the reason I posted this post is because I wanted to talk OPs.  My observation about the "hoochie-mamas," et al, was that their hearts were shut down.  Whether they (some of them) actually didn't have heart chakras isn't a big concern to me--if they aren't using their heart chakras, they might as well not have them. 

Back in 1998 (I've written about this before) I met a Navajo who told me that the souls of most white people are dead.  And, in fact, the souls of most black people, Asian people, etc.

I believed him.  It shocked me--because I believed him, but I believed him.  ...I remember trying to talk to my party-friends about it later, and I suppose I expected to have a kind of intellectual debate about it.  But to my surprise, everybody freaked and told me that I shouldn't hang out with that Jimmy guy anymore and that he was crazy.  It was mean to say that people's souls are dead and how could he know?  And how do souls die?  He actually told me specifically that my friend Meg was "dead," and I (thinking, in some way, I was helping her) passed that onto her.  She was the one who freaked and led the campaign against my new friend.   
 

I've pretty much always tried to avoid the labels of "awake" or "asleep," or "real" and "fake" (soulled, non-soulled, etc.). 

But I'm coming to a point again wherein I see the wisdom in it.  It saves me harrassment, heartache, and confusion.   

What I am trying to discover now is how to live with this awareness (of awake vs. asleep) without falling into judgment or despair about it.  ...I'm a healer-type.  For a quite a while I was convinced that I could heal the lost and wake the sleeping.  I'm dis-illusioned about that now (the good dis-illusioned )  I know my limits better.  ...I'm a writer.  That's part of my purpose here.  It involves reclusivity, and that has solved much of my entanglements with the sleeping side.  It also involves being seen, though.  When I produce a play the process entails answering questions about the play and about my thought process...I have to deal intimately with both waking and sleeping types.  And that's involved opening myself up to criticism from sleeping types more than once.

...So I'm seeking a way to live with the awareness without judgment.

Perhaps these "soul-dead" people  are serving as reverse-mirror reflections, and we have created them in our world as a contrast, an "abject lesson" helping to lead us back to wholeness? And when we can "own" this creation, they will cease to be a problem for us?

I came upon the following online, while researching my study of the metaphysics of the Alice books.  (Can't find the URL, unfortunately.)
Although it focuses on our own inner and outer beings, I think it also applies to the reflections we see in otherselves:

That's a good point.  And when I reflect on it, though I used the words "shut down," that isn't what I really experienced from them. 

There are qualitative differences between the feelings I feel around persons with suppressed higher emotions, persons whose higher feelings are un-developed, and persons in which I feel no higher emotion at all. 

...A recent example I can think of of encountering a person with un-developed higher emotions is a conversation I broke in on a couple of weeks ago.  A person was complaining about the "liberal" response to the Abu Graib prison scandal, saying that American soldiers should be allowed to sexually torture Iraqi insurgents.  I broke in, asking him if he thought insurgents should able to sexually torture Americans then.  He replied that they already did torture Americans (the beheadings, etc.)  I asked him if that bothered him.  He said yes, but continued to say that if they didn't respect "rules of combat" that Americans didn't have to either.  I replied that codes of conduct only give us honor if we follow them, regardless of whether they're followed by others.  ...Then a change came over him.  He said something like, "I see what you mean."  He was literally considering, I think for the first time, that honor involves compassion. 

It was a simple exchange that's probably been had by many others, but I share it because I think of it as an example of a person who was capable of higher emotion but didn't exercise it until coached by somebody else. 

But I've had exchanges like that wherein I was told out-of-hand that I was stupid, or unworldly, or crazy and cowardly for suggesting that compassion could be a solution to the problem of war now.  In these people, there is both a feeling of extremely atrophied hearts and...that blankness.

Aside from "boys will be boys" behavior, there was a feeling of blankness at the heart level the other night.  I think the reason I wrote the post is because of the intensity of that feeling.  It's one thing to consider all this intellectually and another to feel it--not that one has to be dramatic about it. 

The blankness, to me, was evident in the energy of competition.  Not the fact of the competition, but the ease with which many of the bar-people competed.  In some of them there was a felt sense of anxiety, but in others, even the ones "losing," there was a seeming thrill in it--without a felt sense of anxiety. 

A person with (an atrophied) heart could thrill at putting another down, at dissing a girl, or at succeeding in gaining the approval of strangers through sexily performing for them, it seems unlikely that very young people would do this.  The hearts of the young can be shut down, but even if you were 21 and your heart was shut down by, say, early abuse, if you were at a bar picking up guys or girls, you would probably be seeking validation/relief/or at least a way to forget.

But there wasn't a deep or great sense of that.  There wasn't an overwhelming sense that the women or men were just seeking approval.  In fact, that wasn't my impression at all.  I know many choose to interpret the so-called meat market in that way, or chalk it up to the young sowing their oats, or the old trying to feel young, but that wasn't the impression I had.   

Certainly there was a "boys will be boys" playful energy to it, but the overwhelming feeling was of a non-mental, uncaring thrill of competition.  Not a seeking of validation, but a seeking to win (mate).

  Sorry!  Yeah, I deleted my post because I figured it wasn't that important or worth it, and I'm (trying in vain) to cease posting, but something always draws me back in it seems.     I deleted it about 2 minutes after I posted it, thinking nobody had even seen it yet.....but I was wrong!   You crazy NR regulars, you're on here day and night!  Nothing gets by you!!!    haha    To re-cap:  Basically, I had asked dreamosis what exactly it is he's looking for with this thread.   I'm confused as to what the core issue is.   Is it just musings and observations, so therefore, not really looking for anything in particular?  Is he looking for confirmation / validation?  Contradiction?  Theories?   Advise? Several of us have offered up ideas / theories / confirmations and validations that what dreamosis experienced is indeed a real phenomenon, (heartless people) but I can't get a handle on what he's looking for or what he believes based on his responses, despite how lengthy they are.  I'm still confused as to where he stands or what he's desiring. So, I was just curious, just wondering what he's ultimately looking for and hoping for with this thread....