Do you have a place inside?

[kaylonanastazja.livejournal.com]

We've been a part of multiplicity for a while and as such, we've seen our share of entries scroll by on our Friends List. Something I've been wondering about for a while, is (and I'm not attempting to discredit anyone's multiplicity - I never would, I'm just curious) how multiple systems work when they can't see each other inside, where they don't even have an actual 'residence' inside. It's never been that way for us, and I just can't fathom not being able to walk up to the others and ask them a question, give someone a hug, feel, hear, taste, see, and smell things. I don't understand how systems exist without an actual... world, I suppose, inhouse. Without being able to use all five sense. I don't understand how communication works that way, either.

But then, I suppose, how am I meant to understand something I've never experienced? I think it's just a thirst for knowledge. I'd like to know how these other systems work. But then again, doesn't everybody? I feel bad for single people who don't experience life as we do, anyhow. Although, in some ways they probably feel the same for me and mine. Just different ways of life I guess, just as we differ from single-minded people, we also differ from these different types of systems.

-KA

Comments

[kaylonanastazja.livejournal.com]

Having a central place amongst you does seem like it would make for an easier time of things. :) But then again, that could just be because it's our way, as well. ::shrug::

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

'I'd like to know how these other systems work. But then again, doesn't everybody?'

Almost certainly. On the subject of which... how 'solid' is your residence? How aware are you of the physical world and the physical body, and why/how?

To answer the direct question posed by your entry: communication within my system takes place in the form of words, voices, though often with... agh, cannot remember the phrase. Though often accompanied by emotions directly. All attempts to portray or construct physical representations are fragile, erratic, frayed. 'Reality' distorts from one moment to the next, communication is hindered rather than aided, and it has not been possible to cease being aware of the constant flow of sensory input from outside.

*thinks for a moment* ...images... static images--as with verbal thoughts--can be conveyed, but with no great usefulness apart from the conveying of information or of meaning.

Gotcha

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

Makes sense to me. We've got some semi-static areas, but that's mostly because we are both practiced at generating it. Little details will shift, especially unspecified features. At least, this is how I percieve things. Our perceptions of how things work internally aren't by necessity universal. She's much more spiritually inclined than me, and it effects her language on the topic. Whether the differences go beyond language is anyone's guess.

It actually can be difficult nonetheless and often it's more efficient to communicate using other means.

There are situations it's at the very least useful, if not necessary, to utilize those areas.

--Me

[etana.livejournal.com]

we are quite similar as far as the communication more than touch....I at least cannot touch anyone else, that might just be....me......and since I don't pay attention to anyone else inside's reality I don't know.

but yeah.

anyway. peace

[gryphons.livejournal.com]

for a long time I couldn't see the others inside.. I had my room and I stayed there.. but could only hear other people.. we did little things to get communcation and then I found a way out of my room . The world was always there.. thought it's changed over time.

for most of us.. talking, now ... is sorta like mindspeak in the Heralds series.. thoughts,feelings, overlay whatever words come across.

How we work: a tidbit

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

Our internal "landscape" is rendered. Compared to a lot of the landscapes others have, it would seem surreal, or downright discomforting. Rooms open into nothing. Think Nightmare Cafe.

In theory, one of these locations is a common area, so it could be equated with the concept of a residence as you've described it. However it is not necessarily where we are when we are not fronting. It's something we can access and modify, but it is far from the only way we communicate internally. It's also not the most common, and depending on our mental state it can become more difficult to do so. We mostly communicate by thinking at each other. It's not terribly different from how telepathy is portrayed. We can direct sensory input to each other, and stuff like that.

When we have trouble communicating that way, we had a habit of using external communication methods. Cofronting doesn't always mean that we can catch what each other is thinking at each other. If we can both hear or see the outside world, however, we can cheat, by effecting the outside world in a way that communicates a message to the other.

--Me/Us

[spazishness.livejournal.com]

Until I was about 13, we had no 'inside world'. We could hear eachother, yes, but that was about it. Eventually, I could see blurry images in front of me and I could drift in and out of the 'black space' that was our world. It grew until the black space WAS our inner world, and it could be growing into an actual house and city soon. I think that when you grow with your system more and more, the inner world grows more and more detailed and real.

[saturniakitty.livejournal.com]

That's how our system works - I can only see the others in dreams, though I can hear them talking sometimes. I'm always at the front - whether I'm fronting or just watching - so if we have an inner world, I've never been there.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

We're a gateway system with a homeworld in a parallel dimension. We write about it on worldswithin and beyondthegates. We know there are systems who don't have subjective places, including some on this community, we also wonder how it works that way, although we assume that in smaller groups, people who aren't fronting or co-running/ co-present just go to sleep.

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

It can be that way for us, and as I've mentioned a while ago to you, it has. I can sometimes achieve and alternate state of awareness, which is not exactly like sleep, but more like unconciousness. It's not always that extreme. Generally, it's more like being left to one's own devices in a less than fully physically concious state. I can't really explain it. It can be thought of analogous to sleep, but it's not exactly like it.
We also can sometimes quite literally fall asleep, complete with dreams, although it takes work not to forget much but the vagues details later. This is the case when we wake up too fast anyway, and I suspect it's due to a quick shift in brain state. We'll feel rested when we wake up, and front, presuming we got a decent amount of sleep. Depriving the body of sleep this way has repercussions however. A body needs physical rest and sleep, a fact we haven't found a perfect workaround for. No superinsomniac powers for me, it seems, only subinsomniac powers. ;)

--Me

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

heh yeah :) pretty much the same here. We need to write down about how dreaming is for us sometime.

Moon Princess COFFEE CUP!

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

we don't go to sleep if we're not fronting, it's just that our conscious mind isn't able (yet, we're working on it) to wrap itself around the front and the back at once...as individuals, we each know where we've been, and what we've been doing, but it's sort of "behind the scenes".

and time moves differently inside the honeycomb, so i can go to my room, and watch a 2 1/2 hr movie, and come back, and it's only 5 mins later on Earth. but there's no recollection for the body of what i've been doing, unless I tell "the mind".

it's difficult to explain, but I think I did it.

cubbie
Pack Collective

[wishingdolphin.livejournal.com]

No... we don't have an inside place. Perhaps it is because my system is so simple it doesnt warrent the need for such things. I find it more like the feeling of having someone watching over your shoulder all the time... at least when Sarika and I are cooperative front runners... though I find I havent been able to be anything BUT a frontrunner... whilst she can dissapear or something... I could assign a place to where she goes... but I dont imagine it as anything more solid than what its like when you sleep... perhaps that is what she is doing.
Jadaira

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

We actually don't have a 'place inside' either, although some people have very strong images of the places they say they originally came from. Frequently, we actually visualize ourselves interacting in the earth world (i.e. the physical reality around us). For instance, if Shiu is walking around with Anthea and Ruka near the front carrying on conversation with them, he'll 'see' them (in the mind's eye, not literally) walking next to him and talking, even interacting with the environment in some ways (for instance, picking up objects and looking at them). When we 'see' ourselves interacting with one another physically, it's often in the physical location surrounding the body.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

We don't have an "inner world". Actually, I guess one could say that I sort of have one, in the sense that I sometimes visualize or imagine my brothers and myself together in a fictional place of my own creation. Kír is very quick to remind me that it is entirely my own creation, however, and that he doesn't perceive it or take any part in it. As far as I've ever been able to tell, Crist-Erui doesn't either, although a lot of things are hard to tell with him.

Crist-Erui and I were apparently born here together, so I've never been without him - therefore the way he communicates seems perfectly natural to me. Say, for instance, he wants to go visit 'his' puppy, who lives at our friends' house - what Kír and I get is an intense (and often very persistent!) emotion of longing-for-puppy and impulse-to-go-see-puppy-right-now. It's not in words - he does speak enough English these days to hold a conversation, but he seldom speaks it to us - it's just the feeling of must-have-puppy. Crist-Erui can't drive, and our friends' house is far enough away that he can't get there unless someone does drive him, so he'll keep up the emotional barrage until either we take him there or manage to distract him.

When he wants something he can get on his own, without our help, he tends to just take form ('front') and... go for it. This can be bloody inconvenient when what he wants is to go out at 3:00 AM in the pouring Winter rain and walk ten miles - we can remonstrate, cajole, attempt to distract him, offer alternatives, and sometimes this works, but often it doesn't. What we can't do is stop him from going if he's bound and determined to go, because he's got the over-ride.

When he's corporeal, he 'shares' - this means Kír and I can see, feel, hear, smell and taste; the only thing we can't do is control the body. When I'm corporeal, all Kír *gets* is sight and hearing - we don't know what Crist-Erui *gets*, but apparently not enough to suit him, because he's got a habit of "flickering in" to corporeal form, seemingly to check out what's going on for himself. He does this very fast and very subtly, so it's not generally noticeable to an outside observer, but I notice it, you betcha, and it can be pretty annoying.

Kír has trouble with corporeality - both physical discomfort and philosophical reservations - so unless he's got something he has to do by himself, he prefers to 'ride with' me or his brother. He and I 'hear' each other talking, though it's not 'hearing' in the sense that it could be mistaken for an external voice. I get on his nerves at times, because according to him, I subvocalize almost constantly: whatever I'm thinking gets 'translated' into words he can hear - that's a really hard habit to break, and a lot of times the best I can do is change it to singing, which is at least slightly less irritating.

Kír doesn't 'talk to himself' at all, as far as I can tell. He does sometimes sing to himself, most often when he's unhappy and trying to stop himself from thinking. Crist-Erui both talks and sings to himself and/or to us, but not in English - we've never been able to determine whether his speech is really another language, or just glossolalia. I incline to think it's probably glossolalia, because in all these years I've made zero progress in translating it - I've never even been able to isolate one definite word. However, Kír disagrees; he thinks it is a real language, or the remnant of one at least. *shrugs* It's pretty-much a moot question anyhow.

I can sometimes go to sleep when I'm incorporeal - especially if I've 'backed off' to give Kír a little privacy in which to have his conversations without me hanging over his shoulder, as it were. Occasionally I wake up to find that one of my brothers has been awake and corporeal before me, but not that often, because physical motion tends to wake me up pretty fast. Kír says he cannot sleep while this body is awake, but... I dunno, maybe he doesn't technically 'sleep', but there's time he surely does seem to be 'resting his eyes'. Crist-Erui, it's hard to tell, but I'd say he cat-naps quite a bit - not necessarily unaware, but not participating in whatever's going on.

[laurenthemself]

I knew you'd get a lot of comments about this if you posted here!

I think you may already know a little about my inner world (Shaendaena) from previous posts on my journal, but I plan to make a much more extensive post about it soon.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Put it on beyondthegates

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

hey.

we have a honeycomb. each of us has a room in the honeycomb(each room is octagonal), and there are lots of empty ones. there's a "fronting" room, where the main screen out of the eyes is, and the couch you have to sit on to front. (Liz made it a couch, so we could co-front.)

we also have another common room, that each of our rooms has a door that leads to. except things are shifting lately, and instead of being octagonal, it's more decahedronal(is that the right word for 10? i'm too young to remember much geometry).

everything is really dark, like someone turned the lights off, but it's warm and cozy for us. creepy near the Girl's rooms(she has three "tiers" of them, because of the screaming), but nice out here.

also, in our individual rooms, we can have anything we like, and decorate however we want. We're visual inside, but not aural/auditory, so we can watch movies, or read books, but it's harder to listen to music.

anyway, i guess that's it.

cubbie
Pack Collective

[kiya]

I'm having a hard time figuring out how to even answer this question; it's rooted in experience that I just don't have any context for.

(The best answer I've got is, "Why would I need an innerworld? We're all right here!" Which is probably AC's.)