Recently, driving down the street, I spotted a hunched up little old lady, dressed in a heavy overcoat, using a cane, making her way down the walk, pulling a shopping cart.
Ooh la la, I said to myself.
That was my ooh la la meditation practice.
My old lady utterance was an attempt to balance out the accidental, spontaneous ooh la la that had risen up in me a few blocks earlier. A lovely young blond at a stop light looked over, saw me watching, smiled
then looked away. I suspect I reminded her of her grandfather.
On seeing the blond, ooh la la, or non-grandfatherly words, images and energies even more guttural spontaneously rose up in me without my bidding. It happens less and less these days, but it does still happen.
I’m a householder monk, and Senior Librarian at Heart Mountain Monastery. Being ordinary dudes, we monks experience as much of the inner sexual predator as the next guy—maybe more. That’s one of the reasons we gravitate toward monk-dom, daily meditators, clumsily working to help evolve the species, particularly the male half. We monks just want to give ourselves, and the ladies around us, a little breathing room. A little decency. Ooh la la indeed.
Our Abbot suggested that particular ooh la la meditation practice to help us become more aware of our inner predator conditioning. And maybe let some of it go. “We need to be equal opportunity ooh la la guys,” he suggested. Thus, my ooh la la for the little old lady.
In regards to this inner predator conditioning, I’m innocent, as are we all. As we males come into adolescence we are taught to make the ooh la la (predator) response when seeing a pretty lady. Sometimes shortened to, “ooh, ooh”. We learn it simply by hanging out with older guys on the block and watching how grown men act. Ooh la la has been the common ground with other guys since cave men days.
We – or least I– learned the ooh la la response even before I had a clear grasp on what ooh la la might actually lead to, or even meant. I was conditioned before my inner hormones had awakened. I didn’t understand why I should relate to ladies that way.
As I matured, of course, I did learn. My inner hormones did awaken, as did my curiosity. The “other sex” was no longer just a nuisance, like the tattle-tale girl Mary Alice who lived down the block. The other sex might become a wonderful friend, like Linda Duke next door, or someone to play jacks with, like Robin Norton, another neighbor.
As I moved deeper into adolescence, a delicious mystery arose regarding these ladies. How are they different, and how are they the same as we guys? Obviously, there was—there is– a difference. Not only physically, but also in the way we think and feel and play life games (like the game of being a monk.) But we’re also the same. How strange, how mysterious, how wonderful and curious this is.
But, alas, in contemporary culture, the primary sexual conditioning for adolescent boys might best be summarized by a 2005 book written by Neil Strauss entitled, “The Game—Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists.” That book details how professional pickup artists, some of whom charge $2500 and up for a weekend seminar, view finding a beautiful woman to have sex with as a game. Secret tricks, tips and strategies can be learned, and shared. The winner of this game is he who has sex with the most women.
For most adolescent guys, that seems like a pretty cool game. Ooh la la.
Thankfully, just as we were learning The Game, in response to such misogyny and the culture of the times, came the feminist movement—a widespread, non- hierarchical awakening of the “equal rights” of women. So Robyn and Linda and even Mary Alice started talking to us about the way things were—are—and should be. And Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinam (“a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle”) and the National Organization of Women gave political, intellectual and historical depth to the need for a change in consciousness, a change in what we were thinking. A change in our ooh la la conditioning.
And we also had the war, and Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary and the Mamas and the Papas —the experience of ladies and men who stood as equals at the barricades, against the violent idiocy of the times.
And then I got married, and had both a son and a daughter who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s. I had to learn all over again what it meant to be a man, a woman, exposed here in this new millennium not only to the idiocy of the old ways but miraculously the delicious, inescapable goddess energy now flooding—and rebalancing– the planet.
Come to find out, The Game was—and is– selfishly played mostly to impress other men. And it consistently, inevitably, viciously creates lose-lose types of relationships. It’s a sad, violent, ignorant game.
The good news was—is—that ooh la la does not arise from our deepest self. Our deepest self is already content, at peace, fulfilled. Our deepest relationships with other people are always based on sharing that peace, that contentment, that inherent joy.
More specifically, when we go beyond our conditioning we discover we are consciousness itself. The biggest surprise, and the deepest intimacy comes in experiencing that single door that opens between two minds. Not a similar door. A single door. We are the same consciousness. The same being.
When we move beyond our conditioning, we simply experience each other as differing expressions of this single being. It’s a wonderfully penetrating experience which can be shared quietly, harmlessly, anonymously with a stranger on the street, even a little old lady pulling a shopping cart.
Ooh la la, mademoiselle. Pleased to make your acquaintance.
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This essay way first published in the anthology, “Lust: Seven Deadly Sins: Vol 1“
