Mooooooore skeptism
Aug. 9th, 2005 02:31 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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multiplicity_archivesPlease bear with me. My boy, Max, posted here a while ago, in regards to me, and he's trying to push me more into having conversations with others about my own doubts with multiplicity.
When I was young, I began studying other religions, and I really became interested in spirituallity. Along the way, I discovered two others living within. Really, this is just background information, so no know thinks I'm trying to troll or rag on the community. I've been aware of my own multiplicity for a number of years. I also see my multiplicity as a means to my own personal spirituallity. That is, I don't have a set religion, but I see the presence of and communication with my system as being a self-enlightening, holy experience.
I see this huge resurgance of multiples on the internet, and it makes me skeptical. NOT, because of the fact that their multiples. I wouldn't call someone out on being a "fake". But, the way some of these systems carry on, it makes me wonder how they can reasonably function.
I'm going to point the finger at soulbonding, because it seems to be the means of multiplicity that houses the greatest number of loonies. I can accept, per se, that another has entered your system, and is a bad influence, and perhaps is forcing your body and system down a bad path. I can not, however, accept that this entity causing harm is, say, Sephiroth from the Final Fantasy games. That, is insane. Final Fantasy is fiction. It may very well be an entity that projects images OF Sephiroth into your mind, but part of gaining some feasible aspect of functional control over yourselves, is seeing through the bullshit.
I have trouble with people who play INTO that bullshit, by extension. Not only do they seem to be the loudest group of loons, but they're also impossible to have a reasonable discussion with. Everything boils down to "it's different for everyone", which is great for upholding any kind of deluded fantasy that you might have, but really, isn't productive for conversation.
Especially...if you're attempting to learn something, or see if they have a reason to act the way that they do.
Are there any rational, sane soulbonds, here? If so, do they honestly believe that they're fictional characters? This seems to be the most levelheaded community about plurality on LJ that we can find, so I figure it would be the best place to start.
When I was young, I began studying other religions, and I really became interested in spirituallity. Along the way, I discovered two others living within. Really, this is just background information, so no know thinks I'm trying to troll or rag on the community. I've been aware of my own multiplicity for a number of years. I also see my multiplicity as a means to my own personal spirituallity. That is, I don't have a set religion, but I see the presence of and communication with my system as being a self-enlightening, holy experience.
I see this huge resurgance of multiples on the internet, and it makes me skeptical. NOT, because of the fact that their multiples. I wouldn't call someone out on being a "fake". But, the way some of these systems carry on, it makes me wonder how they can reasonably function.
I'm going to point the finger at soulbonding, because it seems to be the means of multiplicity that houses the greatest number of loonies. I can accept, per se, that another has entered your system, and is a bad influence, and perhaps is forcing your body and system down a bad path. I can not, however, accept that this entity causing harm is, say, Sephiroth from the Final Fantasy games. That, is insane. Final Fantasy is fiction. It may very well be an entity that projects images OF Sephiroth into your mind, but part of gaining some feasible aspect of functional control over yourselves, is seeing through the bullshit.
I have trouble with people who play INTO that bullshit, by extension. Not only do they seem to be the loudest group of loons, but they're also impossible to have a reasonable discussion with. Everything boils down to "it's different for everyone", which is great for upholding any kind of deluded fantasy that you might have, but really, isn't productive for conversation.
Especially...if you're attempting to learn something, or see if they have a reason to act the way that they do.
Are there any rational, sane soulbonds, here? If so, do they honestly believe that they're fictional characters? This seems to be the most levelheaded community about plurality on LJ that we can find, so I figure it would be the best place to start.
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Part One
Date: 2005-08-10 03:50 am (UTC)But when someone says imaginary friend they start being afraid that people are going to think they're childish or disbelieve them. That's where the ideas of alternate dimensions and different realities and astral travelling comes in. It's a way for people to convince themselves and others that the character is Real. We've seen people who couldn't accept the voice in their head as long as there was any possibility that the voice could be part of their imagination or originated from their psyche but as soon as they latched onto the idea of the voice being great awesome character who walked in from another universe then everything was fine and dandy. Then the soulbonding community met the multiple community and found a whole new type of real that they immediately wanted to attach to their soulbonds as well. (Funny how you find a lot of soulbonders who claim their soulbonds are just as real as the people in multiple systems but you never see them claiming that the soulbonds are just as real as their neighbor Bob who lives across the street.)
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-10 06:30 am (UTC)I'll claim such until the cows come home. Then again, my view of 'Reality' is a lot more fluid than most people's, and I'm about as sure of my own existence as I am of Bob's or anyone else's - system member, soulbond or not.
-L.
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-10 07:44 am (UTC)Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-10 03:05 pm (UTC)Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-10 05:05 pm (UTC)So thpppt at you too.
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-10 10:43 am (UTC)Sometimes the soulbonder is actively creating this character, sometimes the character's existance is tied into a writing process, and sometimes the character is just there. There is no reason why someone's imaginary friend or the voice in their head shouldn't be a fictional character.
Bingo. What some people forget is that like multiplicity, the soulbonding experience isn't the same for everybody. Constructs or walk-ins, or something else; just because it's that way for one system doesn't mean it's the same way for everyone. I myself am a walk-in, and the only reason I don't fit into the category of "soulbond" is that I haven't yet finished writing my 'autobiography' and getting it published. One day, one day. Then what? When my story's on the shelves of a bookshop, it becomes public domain, then I'm a soulbond? Nothing will have changed for me.
Funny how you find a lot of soulbonders who claim their soulbonds are just as real as the people in multiple systems but you never see them claiming that the soulbonds are just as real as their neighbor Bob who lives across the street.
Maybe you're not reading in the right places then. Everyone in our system, whether they're soulbonds or not, is as real as our neighbour Bob across the street. I'm not the "original" person in our system, but still I am the one who deals with most of the practical side of life, going to work, paying bills and so on. I'm as real as the person who sits at the next desk at work. The only difference is that I am using someone else's body in order to do it, and I have to answer to a name that's not my own. The soulbonds in our system are no less real than I am.
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-10 03:09 pm (UTC)Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-10 05:06 pm (UTC)Seriously, there's no need to be so damned rude.
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-10 06:24 pm (UTC)Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-10 05:04 pm (UTC)Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-10 09:19 pm (UTC)The multiple community is full of the idea that we're self-contained singular entities, aka people, and that's sad?
Maybe I misread you here.
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-10 09:35 pm (UTC)What I think is that people, and identity, can be far more complex than we ourselves credit for, and that sometimes the definition between 'self' and 'other' is a shady one at best. I consider myself a singlet, and I know there are parts of me that don't fit neatly into my identity, which I interact with as 'other.' My soulbonds, for one. They are not "people" in the sense that they are the aforementioned self-contained singular entities who have their own lives, but they are an important part of my psyche that aren't part of my core identity. Does that make sense?
My issue is, here, that because a multiple's identity gets questioned so often, they (quite understandably) balk whenever they're reduced to mere elements of one single identity. That's good, insofar as they're defending themselves against misconceptions, but the mind's a multi-faceted thing, and I really don't see what's wrong with being an element of a single identity. I don't think it necessarily reduces someone to a puppet or anything "lesser." And a lot of soulbonders seem to think that because only multiple-type presences are "real people," that their soulbonds have to be so, too, to be valid, just as they think that in order for their connection with fiction to be valid fiction has to be "real somewhere."
Blah. I'm not explaining this well. I'll try to make better sense later.
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-11 12:32 am (UTC)*nods* I think I understand better now. I think my personal problem with the concept of being viewed as elements of a single identity is that when people do so, they tend to single out one particular person as being the real or original identity from which all others are created or which they represent aspects of, and then unconsciously treat everyone else as being less real, valid, and important. Possibly, we've just heard, and seen too many friends who heard, people expressing the opinion that it's overly weird for 'alters' to want to be treated as separate people, or explaining matter-of-factly that they were going to go on viewing you as one person with a lot of aspects because it was too confusing to think of you as many people.
On the other hand, I don't want those experiences to lead me to deny that there really are people who see themselves as a single aspected identity, or that there are people who split and wish to be integrated, for that matter. The aspected-identity setup seems more like how some people have described the 'median' experience.
I should probably mention at some point that I don't think it's necessary to use gateways or other realities to explain people being in a system without having split off an original. If someone says they are, I'll take it at face value, but it's also possible to create someone from scratch without needing to detract from what already exists-- you're not necessarily cutting off a part of yourself to make a new person, just giving them some genetic material, so to speak. Though I'm also not sure if an original person, providing there is one, is necessarily less created-- in a sense, everyone, even single people, creates themselves.
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-11 03:54 am (UTC)Though I'm also not sure if an original person, providing there is one, is necessarily less created-- in a sense, everyone, even single people, creates themselves.
I totally agree. All of this ties into this value judgment people tend to put on created things, as if they're somehow 'less real', which really annoys me.
I thought about medians after I'd posted that, and really that does go a ways toward explaining what I meant. Though honestly, I'm wary about using it because although it comes close, it doesn't quite hit the nail on the head, for me. The closest thing I've heard that describes my own experience is 'personification' as discussed by some Jungians.
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-11 06:01 am (UTC)Do you mind if I add you to my Friends List? I think we have some interests in common.
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-11 06:20 am (UTC)"The 'I' is legitimately written with a large letter, not because it is the capital person of the psyche, but because it too has a particular mythic part to play in the dramatics of the psyche—as the one personification whose necessary perspective is to take itself as literally real."
I posted a few more quotes here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/1101/45078.html). Other people have more quotes here (http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2004/06/polytheistic-psychology-part-1.html) and here (http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2004/06/polytheistic-psychology-part-2.html).
...I love how a philosophy built on viewing things as continuous rather than as opposites describes itself as 'non'-dual. It's so ironic. :p
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-11 06:38 am (UTC)"Nondual" = a double negative? Or a triple negative, rather, since there are two opposites, negative to each other, plus the negation of that negation. Almost Hegelian, no?
Mind if I add you, too?
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-11 06:48 am (UTC)Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-11 06:20 pm (UTC)Ohhh yes. My young friend-with-benefits said that very thing when I first told him about my 'brothers' - big mistake, because he thereby placed himself in Kír's category of "people who are not to be trusted with personal information". Kír's attitude was that he doesn't wish to associate with those who don't acknowledge him as a person; however, this is his house and he wasn't going to hide from my little boyfriend.
This means that when said "little boyfriend" would come to visit, there's times he'd encounter Teh Warrior... who would greet him courteously enough, him being a guest, but wouldn't converse with him, and wouldn't identify himself. LOL, Kír doesn't have to identify himself; he doesn't even have to move or speak for people who know him to know he's there, and people who don't know him to get uneasy because they sense the difference. (My kid says his aura's different, which Kír finds a little unnerving because he doesn't really *believe* in auras.)
Anyway, the "aspect hypothesis" broke down under the weight of evidence - my friend finally acknowledged that it was ridiculous to keep trying to pretend that we're all one person. He and Kír even have sort of a friendship now, or at least cordial acquaintanceship, formal and intellectual though it is.
LOL, and Crist-Erui? He loves it when our young friend comes to visit; snuggles him, plays with him... there again, 'weight-of-evidence'; Crist-Erui's quite a bit stronger than me, and also not ticklish. Hard to explain how one 'aspect' of a 48-year-old woman's mind wrestles like a 20-year-old guy, and keeps winning....
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-11 05:44 am (UTC)I, too, have noticed how people often post things like, "I'm not sure if it's real or only part of me," implying that real is equivalent to separate. By that logic, a person's arms and legs wouldn't be real, either.
And a lot of soulbonders seem to think that because only multiple-type presences are "real people," that their soulbonds have to be so, too, to be valid, just as they think that in order for their connection with fiction to be valid fiction has to be "real somewhere."
In my understanding of this, thoughtform places have their own kind of reality, just as do thoughtform people. This can exist on a collective level. A thoughtform world that has influenced the minds of many people, like Tolkien's Arda (of which Middle-Earth is a continent) develops into a collective gestalt. In occult terms, such collectively-created places exist on the "astral plane", and can be accessed through dreams, astral journeys, or remote viewing.
Now, I think that a person who creates an outsourced Soulbond can forge a link between the construct they are creating and the source-reality, so that the Soulbond is created with the "imprint" or "template" of the original character. It's like going to a public stem cell bank and making a clone. The character is both part of the individual creator and of the collective thought system. "Inside" and "outside" are just terms of convenience, in my opinion; I don't believe that there is a real division between them.
Individually-created thoughtform worlds also exist. One of my friends in college had a highly-detailed inner world with millions of inhabitants, and, although she described it as "fictional", she experienced it as a literal place. I (Marlana) have an imaginary country -- I prefer the term ideal country insofar as it is an abstract representation.
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-11 09:07 am (UTC)Those are the kind of experiences I call subjective-- regardless of whether or not it's real in a literal and verifiable sense, it's a reality to you. I'm generally of the school of thought that "what does it mean?" is a less important question to ask than "what does it mean to you?"
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-12 11:44 am (UTC)Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-10 09:46 pm (UTC)I don't think multiples are aspects of one identity. At all. I just don't see anything wrong with aspects to one identity, is all, or for another presence in the mind to have them.
Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-10 10:47 pm (UTC)Re: Part One
Date: 2005-08-11 12:24 am (UTC)