Strange occurance

[seekeroflight]

So my husband and I were at target tonight shopping for shoes, we were walking down the isles looking for the converse section. It was located right on the end where there is a walkway between the shoe section and across from that is the clothing section. Upon turning the corner I see this couple coming toward us and they stop. When i first noticed them they looked present but within a few seconds I look over at them out of the corner of my eyes and see that they are "checked out", blank stares, no one is home kind of thing. I find what I am looking for and go looking for a place to sit down to try them on. We are gone for maybe 5 minutes and when we return they were gone.

any thoughts?

 

[Mrs. Peel]

So my husband and I were at target tonight shopping for shoes, we were walking down the isles looking for the converse section. It was located right on the end where there is a walkway between the shoe section and across from that is the clothing section. Upon turning the corner I see this couple coming toward us and they stop. When i first noticed them they looked present but within a few seconds I look over at them out of the corner of my eyes and see that they are "checked out", blank stares, no one is home kind of thing. I find what I am looking for and go looking for a place to sit down to try them on. We are gone for maybe 5 minutes and when we return they were gone.

any thoughts?

Um, maybe lots of weird people shop at Target?

 

[Meg]

So my husband and I were at target tonight shopping for shoes, we were walking down the isles looking for the converse section. It was located right on the end where there is a walkway between the shoe section and across from that is the clothing section. Upon turning the corner I see this couple coming toward us and they stop. When i first noticed them they looked present but within a few seconds I look over at them out of the corner of my eyes and see that they are "checked out", blank stares, no one is home kind of thing. I find what I am looking for and go looking for a place to sit down to try them on. We are gone for maybe 5 minutes and when we return they were gone.

any thoughts?

Drugs? Malnutrition? Maybe they lost a loved one or were depressed for some reason?

 

[obyvatel]

So my husband and I were at target tonight shopping for shoes, we were walking down the isles looking for the converse section. It was located right on the end where there is a walkway between the shoe section and across from that is the clothing section. Upon turning the corner I see this couple coming toward us and they stop. When i first noticed them they looked present but within a few seconds I look over at them out of the corner of my eyes and see that they are "checked out", blank stares, no one is home kind of thing. I find what I am looking for and go looking for a place to sit down to try them on. We are gone for maybe 5 minutes and when we return they were gone.

any thoughts?

The "checked out" thing happens quite commonly at least in my experience. Shopping is one of the times this happens a lot - specially at the big departmental stores. Observed myself and others in this state while shopping. Perhaps, parts of the mind start shutting down when overloaded with all the impressions that come from the environment. Maybe there is some technical stuff going on too - some low frequency music in the background etc.
Did you find this blank, "checked out" state strange? Maybe it will be interesting to self-observe and see if you can catch yourself in this state sometimes. Unless we are always self-aware and self-remembering, we may be in this state - osit.

 

[kenlee]

I see this couple coming toward us and they stop. When i first noticed them they looked present but within a few seconds I look over at them out of the corner of my eyes and see that they are "checked out", blank stares, no one is home kind of thing.

Living here in the U.S. I've noticed the same thing about that blank look on peoples faces that you describe. If I should go up and talk to them then the blanked out look pretty much disappears since they “wake up” momentarily and come to life. But after walking away they can often go right back into that lifeless hypnotic state, especially if there are a lot of other people around in the same state. P.D. Ouspensky talks about this in his book The Psychology Of Man’s Possible Evolution: He Says:

At this point, it must be understood that the first obstacle in the way of the development of Self consciousness in man, is his conviction that he already possesses self consciousness, or at any rate that he can have it at any time he likes. It is very difficult to persuade a man that he is not conscious and cannot be conscious at will. It is particularly difficult because here nature plays a very funny trick.

If you ask a man he is not conscious, he will answer that he is conscious, and that it is absurd to say that he is not, because he hears and understands you.

And he will be quite right, although at the same time quite wrong. This is natures trick. He will be right because your question or your remark has made him vaguely conscious for a moment. Next moment consciousness will disappear. But he will remember what you said and what he answered, and he will certainly consider himself conscious.

I think Obyvatel brings up some really good points, one of which is the technical stuff which I'm sure is a big factor. Maybe its one of the affects of the frequency fence (among other factors, such as diet and people just being generally dumbed down) that cause people to act this way. No one seems to notice how strange things are, especially here in the U.S. At least that's my experience.

So if I should ask someone if they are unconscious or hypnotized in this way then they’ll have to become a little more conscious just to answer my question and they might say “Yes, but of course I’m conscious"!. Or they might say something like (my personal favorite), “what are talking about, are you nuts!” But after they answer the question then, as they walk away, they’ll go right back to being unconscious again with that blanked out expression, especially if there are a lot of people around in the same unconscious state.

I feel the hypnotic pull also. Everyday I feel it and see it in the world around me but I’m aware of it and something in me always struggles never to give into it totally. Regarding this, the breathing program helps A LOT! It puts me in a more able state of relaxed vigilance so that I can be more relaxed with my critical mental faculties still (more or less!) intact. But the kind of relaxation I notice in the hypnotic populace around me is a passive relaxation that I think makes people completely open to suggestion and programming when they are in this unconscious “relaxed” state.

This reminds me of this excerpt from William Patterson’s book Voices In The Dark:

Questioner: I have ascertained a greater need to relax in life.

Gurdjieff: If it is thus, you have the inclination. It is only when you relax consciously, and when your head retains it’s role as policeman, that the relaxation has value. If you relax generally, it is weakness.

Questioner: I am conscious of being tense in general.

Gurdjieff: You must not relax unconsciously. Yet when you are in your state of awakening, you must relax consciously. When you sleep, everything relaxes without you—that has no value. It is your bondage.

 

[doublea1535]

So my husband and I were at target tonight shopping for shoes, we were walking down the isles looking for the converse section. It was located right on the end where there is a walkway between the shoe section and across from that is the clothing section. Upon turning the corner I see this couple coming toward us and they stop. When i first noticed them they looked present but within a few seconds I look over at them out of the corner of my eyes and see that they are "checked out", blank stares, no one is home kind of thing. I find what I am looking for and go looking for a place to sit down to try them on. We are gone for maybe 5 minutes and when we return they were gone.

It was weird how we and this other group were walking down opposite sides of the same row, walking at almost the same pace, and then exactly where we were headed, they stop. And they stopped right behind us, so as we are looking for shoes in a fairly empty Target, this couple is almost directly behind us. I guess they were waiting for their son to get back or something. I didn't feel any sort of threat, but I did look over at them at one point and the man especially looked like he had totally checked out.

Edit: I didn't want to say this before, because I thought it might sound weird, egotistical, paranoid, or some combo of those, but ... with incidents like this one (we have had a few), I think its either one of two things 1) weaker is attracted to stronger. the people we saw who were "checked out" did not strike me as energetically strong, and so may have just been mindlessly following a (small) group of people who seemed to know what they were doing and why or 2) they were activated by 4D STS as probes, monitoring us.

I also think that we should have DOne something about it, since it went on for a few minutes. I was feeling socially awkward and so didn't feel comfortable making any "waves" but I think we should have just left and walked around the store a bit and come back.