So, today, I broke my hippie sterotype once and for all after meeting a cool couple who looked like hippies but actually showered and took care of themselves. The girl actually commented on my high heels and I told her where to get a cheap pair, I knew she was my new friend. I decided that my entry as of today would start with not just channeling my hippie side, but my gypsy side.
This entry is about reading people's auras. Didn't everyone see Baby Mama (which could have been a whole lot funnier)- the scene where Amy Poehler was reading Tina Fey's color? While a lot of this psychic, gypsy, hippie, new age crap (the guy who always conveniently forget his swim suit when he goes to the hot springs and is of course the last person you actually want to see without a swimsuit because he has elephantitis of the balls with a shriveled cornichon for a shaft- I digress, but you catch my drift) is simply what it is, crap, there are small pieces of it that may have relevance. Again, I am not talking about the men who grow gray, Michael Bolton style ponytails and sit in bookstores in the afternoon telling you how to read the I-Ching and what to consult it about. No, those people are usually just interested in picking up a hot barely legal chick to celebrate their midlife crisis and talk about the fact that they are so liberated that they divorced their wives and children of 16 years and decided to find themselves, not to mention the fact that they aren't wearing underwear today. I'm also not talking about the hippies who go to retreats in the middle of the woods and eat vegan food that's been blessed by snails or whatever wicca wood goddess happens to be their rabbi for the day. You wonder, is she done with ripping on hippies? Sure, I can get back to it later, there are so many fun jokes about hippies! So, to finish the sentence that I started before I got totally carried away in my fun rampage, it is possible to have gut instincts about people and places and be able to read auras. In fact, it's important to do so.
Disclaimer: This morning, I had a revelation about hippies. I like some hippies, many of my friends are hippies. They are just not the hypocritical non-showering types. The hippies I met this morning, one of whom had dreads down to her butt, were clean and she was a runner and snow boarder. While she was environmentally aware (while not a total environmental terrorist), and adhered to some of the stereotypes, she did not have the holier than thou approach that most hippies hold towards “normal people”. So it's possible to look like you fit a stereotype, but not embody it. I never said it wasn't . I love stereotypes because they help us make fun, make light and make sense of the world. If I couldn't say that all Mexicans are short or all Germans were meticulous and controlling, or all Jews were neurotic and insecure, how much fun could I have? But one of my favorite things is people who look a certain way but are something else entirely. My first cue that the hippie I met this morning was not actually a typical hippie is when she told me that her “psycho uptight lesbian boss” wouldn't let her carry a box in high heels. I loved her immediately.
Back to gut reactions. A while ago, Malcolm Gladwell
released a book entitled Blink which talks about the different ways that we make sense of the world through colored lenses. He starts out the book with a vignette about Greek sculpture that surfaced. Experts were trying to determine if it was a Classical Greek Sculpture or a modern copy. On first impulse, all the experts believed it was a fake because, “something just didn't feel right”. Continuing to investigate the statue, the details suggested it was real. After endless investigation, a test came back to reveal that it was a fake and the initial impulse was correct. Gladwell suggests different ways to access this split second (actually 1/8th of a second) judgment in order to go with our gut feelings. Some people happen to be better at this that others.
So, reading auras or going with the gut can be helpful. For SOME people. I think that some people have the innate talent of making an accurate snap judgment of someone's reality. I would like to proudly say that am one of those people. I'm sure that you think you are one of them too, but you're not. You have to be born to a Jew and German in order to possess such talents. I am totally kidding, but not really. It's sort of like how Paris said in her book, How to be an Heiress that you have to choose your parents. Some of these talents that we might possess are genetic and there's no way to explain them. Not that Paris really has any talent...
Now, some people who should not rely on their instincts are people with no street smarts. These people will not only get eaten for breakfast and taken for every cent they're worth, but they'll most likely get killed. For some reason, I tend to believe that many of these idiots managed to get themselves into social work. I recently started reading a book called “On being a therapist” by Jeffrey Kottler. He is one of the rare people who talks about a person as a therapist (not a Scientologist). He suggests that therapists who are unwilling or reticent to bring their personality to the therapeutic relationship are most likely just trying to protect themselves from being affected by the client. It is easier to remain aloof and unattached than to show you are affected.
Kottler reveals his own weaknesses and rebuffs critics who say that all social workers are wounded and trying to gain validation through being a therapist. He admits to the fact that he came to the profession as someone who was looking for external validation. I share his beliefs that this is not necessarily a negative thing- I am a person who relies heavily on external validation and have a talent for helping others. He also implies that anyone who becomes a therapist who does not admit to weakness either has nothing to bring to the table, or nothing to talk about. Either one making them unsuccessful or not helpful to anyone.
In my experience, most people in the profession are unable to admit to weakness. A bunch of insecure, neurotic people in denial putting on the facade that they are utterly and entirely in control of everything around them. Anyway, people who lack this much insight are definitely not able to identify let alone follow their instincts. Furthermore, there is evidence that people become disconnected when they burnout because it's easier than continuing to care. How do they possibly think they could rely on instincts if nothing is going on in their heads or hearts!? It's like a hollow ceramic Mickey Mouse statue from Disneyland. It looks creepy and it's hollow.
Okay, I realize that this is one of those tangents that is not healthy because I am more invested in it than I am in celebrity news. So I actually had to stop reading Kottlers book for this reason. He says things that I agree with too much. When I see that no one but me is actually thinking of therapy in this sense, I decide that I want no part of it until synchronicity leads me back to the field of therapy and shows me that it needs me to be a part of it again. Right now, I'm finished with therapy and I'm finished with that book!
Wow, that was a tangent. So regardless of the fact that there are many who don't know how to follow their guts, let's talk about what's really important, ME.
So, here's an example of how I might use snap judgments. Actually, it's more to brag about my own talent. But I'll come up with a point other than bragging later. My husband has a friend who works for an environmental agency, he's laid back, he's mellow and he probably used to be a hippie. He always wants to do something on the weekends, but he usually has to check to see if his wife will be home or what the plan is because he forgot. I told my husband after meeting him twice and hearing about his wife that she's either a total hippie and just doesn't know what's going on, and they really do have to talk, or she is one of those uptight, Type A, environmentalist terrorists who is in charge of everything. I told him I leaned towards number two. He did his usual, oh don't be so negative. Of course, a week later, my husband met her and said his friend was a totally different person around her. I thought this shit was funny and he gave me some much needed props. I love it when I'm right about this shit. I don't know why but it's like this explosion of dopamine, "you were right!"
Another time, I went to a wedding which was outside in New England. The woman's family was bible beaters from the South and the groom's parents were Jews from New England- so you've got drama already. Everyone was there and the bride's parents hadn't showed up. They were now a half an hour late and the rain clouds were threatening above us. We heard thunder in the distance. It was at this point that I decided to start taking bets about what was really going on. I had a few glasses of champagne by then while I was waiting for the festivities to start. I started betting my husband and his friends that there was a family drama ensuing and most likely something really funny would happen during someone's toast later than night. I said that the bride's parents were intimidated and most likely not happy that their daughter was marrying a dreydel lover, or someoe who didn't grow up needing tim buckets to be placed at various spots around the house to make sure the roof leaks didn't cause carpet damage. Or someone who could afford Sam Adams over the blessed Silver Bullet. You don't know how many people tried to defend it to something as simple as a made the wrong turn thing. I'm sorry, but you don't make a wrong turn which had been announced when the parents were late in the first place, on a wedding day! Plus, they had been at the wedding site before and they even had a driver. This story is about as believable as a meth addict telling you that they couldn't get to treatment because their girlfriend came after them with a shotgun and they ended up in the ER for the third time this week. Oh wait, actually that story is MORE believable.
Finally, the brides parents arrived looking distraught and the wedding started. Of course it poured down rain and they had to move the wedding inside. Now call me a rocket scientist, but I don't think I needed to be one to win my bet. Everyone was giving me props by the end of the night, especially when the bride's father in his toast told the audience that he hoped the happy couple would “accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior”. This is definitely not something you say in a room full of the guilt ridden Jews at a wedding. At this point, I was laughing. It was a beautiful night.
What I'd like to know is all the people, including my husband who are seriously taken by surprise by the turn of events, or by the fact that I was right. How did I know? What I want to know is if these people are sincerely surprised or just bullshitting themselves into thinking everything is alright. It's like those people who find out 8 years later that their husbands are having affairs and led a double life. Did you really not know or are you simply bullshitting yourself!?
Now, is this reading someone's aura, or just using common sense? I don't know. While I do have a lot of other weaknesses, I think it is a gift to be able to follow one's sense of insight and read people, places or things with this insight. It takes us through the more difficult times in life. If we learn to tune back into ourselves and find our natural instincts, we are more likely to feel better about ourselves too.
This is also a useful way to avoid shitty people in life. I think it would be nice if we were all endowed with an aura radar. So when we run into one of those people we can't stand, we simply see our aura radar which tells us to think on our feet and make some witty remark to wisely extract ourselves from the situation while possible.
Here's an example. One thing that annoys me to no end about the Jewish community is their ability to gossip. Being a proud member of the tribe, I hate running into that one person who knows what your cousin's new wife's dog is doing at that very moment because they just talked to them. Or the Jew with no tact who will say to someone, “your ex-husbands wife is a doll”. These people are also the kings and queens of questioning. They are faster with a personal question than Billy the Kid with a gun. And I'm not talking about Kiefer Sutherland in Young Guns.
They won't even wait for you to finish with your answer before firing again.
For some reason, probably something to do with childhood, I tend to reveal all these bits of information about myself that “in a court of law could be used against me”. Which is sometimes what it feels like being interrogated by one of these Jews. Well, they also have an amazing way of making you feel unbelievably guilty (trick of the trade?) after you have revealed these stories. Even if it's something basic like what you are doing with your life or where you are working, when you walk away from these people, it's like doing the walk of shame. Or it's like the morning after you got drunk and hooked up with some really unattractive dude. What the fuck was I thinking?
Where does reading auras come in? Well, it is important to develop a protective shield against people like this so that we don't develop the unconscionable sense of guilt after we talk to them. First off, why do we owe these people information? I'm sure that this is where some of my sense of the need for external validation comes from. These types of Jews are always looking for information to spread about all your achievements. When it's spread about you, you know that you are worthy and doing a good job. If people are talking about you, it's all good. But you notice, people are never talking about your general attributes. Oh, “she's a funny person with a great sense of humor and adventurousness”. No they're saying things like, “she's a lawyer with a BMW and a husband who works for the Bank of NY”. The more descriptives, the better. Just no personality traits.
The thing is that some people are not just Jews trying to talk about whose son or daughter is more successful. But some people try to use information against you. These people should set off the aura alarm and be a signal to us to put up our guard. I need to figure out how to access my objective inner instinct in crucial times where emotion is running free. It's important for me not to be open to people who don't offer anything in return. And it's important not to offer information to someone in order to try and get something in exchange. Just because someone asks you a question doesn't mean that you have to respond. You can actually make comments like, "no comment". Paris does it all the time. She says things like, "prison was neat. I had fun. It was great". See how well it works for her! We don't know a thing about her.
People are a lot smarter than they look. We need to operate from the premise that there usually is more than meets the eye going on or ulterior motive in the mix. Not to be paranoid, but we need to wise up. If we are stupid enough to buy into the story about how the bride's parents just took the wrong turn, we are most likely to get hurt and look stupid too. I guess I always veer on the careful and non-trusting side because I see that most people lie. While I might not lie, most people do and I don't want to be the idiot who had the wool pulled over her eyes. Once again, the importance of the aura.
