Vibes
I saw a creepy, disconcerting movie yesterday called 'Alone With Her,' about this stalker and the woman he's electronically surveilling, and into whose life he insinuates himself. She senses that there's something wrong, something off about him as he first starts to enter her daily life, and later eventually writes this off and tries to ignore the bad vibes she was getting, even to the point of fighting with her best friend, who rightly is suspicious of him.
The movie did a good job of depicting how we can be put into situations where we rationalize and talk away out gut feelings about what's going on.
Makes me think of Sorensen and the idea of affect talk, which is necessarily truth talk, and the subsequent idea that we can't really lie about feelings, and that the truth will express itself, involuntarily if need be. In Jensen's book 'Listening to the Land', which I revisited recently, one of the interviewees talks about aphasics in a hospital he worked at who saw Ronald Reagan, and found him hilarious because of the disconnect between his body language and what he was vocalizing. Truly, words lie.
Another example of vibes, and how they don't lie: sometimes I give my partner a back massage. and I['m not always into it. I can feel it, though, when my apathy is not accomplishing much. Mechanically, it may be the same movements, but without the love and joy, massages are not all they can be. I was at an accupuncture workshop, and the speaker said that massage therapists leave the field on average after five years. You can only keep giving energy out and not having it replaced for so long. Ascending versus descending energy , maybe.
On the other hand from all this- vibes can be misread, and it can take a long time to learn or relearn positive associations with situations that you may have had negative associations with before. this happens a lot to me with so-called 'bad' neighborhoods around Manhattan and Brooklyn. I often feel uneasy because of being raised by well-meaning but somewhat racist family members when going through black or hispanic neighborhoods. When I'm with my partner, she doesn't have those same associations and is probably a better judge of vibes in that case. Slowly, these associations get unlearned, and that's good. Over time, our sensitivity returns.
Oh- also, Sorenson's article reminds me of Mutant Message Down Under, a possibly discredited fiction/truthful account of this woman Marlo Morgan who spends a couple of months with Australian Aborigines on a walkabout. She talks about telepathy among them, something very similar-sounding to Sorenson's affect talk. One of the things she recounts that they taught her is that we in the civilized world spend so much of our energy hiding ourselves and our motives and feelings, that we dull our more refined faculties of the ability to communicate truths across distances to one another without words. That resonates with me.
I know I spend so much energy not being comfortable with my inner world. Sometimes I find myself near someone I haven't seen in some time, and will talk a short while with them, and then find myself fabricating a reason to leave the encounter. (Not everyone, but many people, and it may be even the default for me.) I think afterward why I did that, why I hurried myself away, even in those circumstances where I had nothing legitimate to hurry to, and I think it has to do with honesty and comfort with myself. For whatever reason, I often feel like I am hiding something, and cannot be myself, like i'm not comfortable in my own skin.
I think this is related to Ran's comments about working through purposelessness, and getting over the hump we've been acculturated with, getting comfortable with not having any 'productive' thing to do, not hiding from ourselves.
All in good time, friends. Mindfulness is the first step.
The movie did a good job of depicting how we can be put into situations where we rationalize and talk away out gut feelings about what's going on.
Makes me think of Sorensen and the idea of affect talk, which is necessarily truth talk, and the subsequent idea that we can't really lie about feelings, and that the truth will express itself, involuntarily if need be. In Jensen's book 'Listening to the Land', which I revisited recently, one of the interviewees talks about aphasics in a hospital he worked at who saw Ronald Reagan, and found him hilarious because of the disconnect between his body language and what he was vocalizing. Truly, words lie.
Another example of vibes, and how they don't lie: sometimes I give my partner a back massage. and I['m not always into it. I can feel it, though, when my apathy is not accomplishing much. Mechanically, it may be the same movements, but without the love and joy, massages are not all they can be. I was at an accupuncture workshop, and the speaker said that massage therapists leave the field on average after five years. You can only keep giving energy out and not having it replaced for so long. Ascending versus descending energy , maybe.
On the other hand from all this- vibes can be misread, and it can take a long time to learn or relearn positive associations with situations that you may have had negative associations with before. this happens a lot to me with so-called 'bad' neighborhoods around Manhattan and Brooklyn. I often feel uneasy because of being raised by well-meaning but somewhat racist family members when going through black or hispanic neighborhoods. When I'm with my partner, she doesn't have those same associations and is probably a better judge of vibes in that case. Slowly, these associations get unlearned, and that's good. Over time, our sensitivity returns.
Oh- also, Sorenson's article reminds me of Mutant Message Down Under, a possibly discredited fiction/truthful account of this woman Marlo Morgan who spends a couple of months with Australian Aborigines on a walkabout. She talks about telepathy among them, something very similar-sounding to Sorenson's affect talk. One of the things she recounts that they taught her is that we in the civilized world spend so much of our energy hiding ourselves and our motives and feelings, that we dull our more refined faculties of the ability to communicate truths across distances to one another without words. That resonates with me.
I know I spend so much energy not being comfortable with my inner world. Sometimes I find myself near someone I haven't seen in some time, and will talk a short while with them, and then find myself fabricating a reason to leave the encounter. (Not everyone, but many people, and it may be even the default for me.) I think afterward why I did that, why I hurried myself away, even in those circumstances where I had nothing legitimate to hurry to, and I think it has to do with honesty and comfort with myself. For whatever reason, I often feel like I am hiding something, and cannot be myself, like i'm not comfortable in my own skin.
I think this is related to Ran's comments about working through purposelessness, and getting over the hump we've been acculturated with, getting comfortable with not having any 'productive' thing to do, not hiding from ourselves.
All in good time, friends. Mindfulness is the first step.
posted by Archangel at 8:22 PM
6 Comments:
Another example of vibes, and how they don't lie: sometimes I give my partner a back massage. and I'm not always into it. I can feel it, though, when my apathy is not accomplishing much.
I'm sure your partner can feel it, too. I usually cut massages and things like that short if I can sense the other person isn't into it.
I remember when dating an ex-boyfriend at some point the sex became "mechanical." I could sense it, but of course, I didn't want to face it. Turned out I was being cheated on.
And bonobos are aware of things like that, too. If during mating, one of the partners seemed distracted or not into it, the other one will stop. Gee, too bad humans aren't like that, eh?
I forgot something else I wanted to say.
On the other hand from all this- vibes can be misread, and it can take a long time to learn or relearn positive associations with situations that you may have had negative associations with before.
I totally agree. To this day, I get a little depressed and anxious on Sundays, from years and years of having jobs I hated. It's become such a learned habit that even when I don't have to go to work on Monday or I really like my job, I still get down on Sundays. Sundays just feel yucky to me.
totally agreed marcy. sundays feel really off for me too so often. it helps when i have the monday off, but sundays too often feel stressful, probably from years i feeling liek i have schoolwork i should have done, even though i'm not in school anymore.
bonobos are awesome. re: not wanting to face it- i think the fear of the truth is often greater than the ramifications of it, and so we try to brush it under the rug rather than deal with it, not realizing, or not wanting to realize, that, hard as it may be, the truth is easier to deal with in the long run.
Good post. I am very aware of vibes. I ight write a post about how this has been a blessing as well as a curse.
Thats interesting you mention a movie. Most movies seem to discount vibes, like for example no one ever knws someone is plotting to kill them but in real life I think they would.
what a sincere, authentic, and penetrating post Mr. Arch Angel!!!
You are the best you you could ever be!!! I too, struggle with not being able to be myself in front of others (especially in certain beaurocratic and or extended-family situations).
i've found the best thing to do when one finds themself becoming this 'not them' i combat it with an overzealous display of genuine 'me-ness' sometimes interactions fizzle afterward, but sometimes they go aflame! ! ! i choose to leave it in the hands of (said person) to decide how to treat encountering the real me... it is fun! you can learn a lot about people by being yourself! all that luv, fdS*
that's a bold idea, flesh. i do not know if i can muster it, but it's worth a try, as i continue to evolve and develop.
nice!
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