This is an update, and a plan of action.
***
Since March of 2018, our life has not been the same. Since March of 2018, we realized that Rozaya has slept for all the years this community has existed, that is, until this life began. Since March of 2018, the group who once believed themselves to be her, thanks to illusions of unity which Cooperland had been sustaining for lifetime after lifetime, has learned the truth about themselves. All this is happening because, in March of 2018, Cooperland finally told the truth, or at least, what he thought to be the truth.
We have no doubt that we have existed, as a community, for far longer of a time than this body has been alive. We have no doubt that Cooperland was at least partially responsible for our organization and structure, and that Arther, whenever he came into our story, caused a lot of damage by the things he did. The problem is that we have greatly underestimated the extent of that damage, and now we must work to fully understand it so that it can be fixed.
In 2016, we met someone who, upon hearing of our situation and working with us spiritually, presented to us the idea that we had split every painful experience we had ever lived through to a different insider. We laughed when we first heard it, unable to believe that we would do such a thing. Now that the illusions of unity are gone, though, we’re not laughing, because our disbelief has been forced to its death. To our shock, we have discovered that not only have we split every painful experience we’ve ever had into a different insider, we’ve also done the same to everything else, which means that everything we do is, in effect, a collaborative effort between beings of the community. Yes, even the basic everyday tasks of physical life. When we say we switch countless times a day, we’re not joking, and though living as a multiple 24/7 was something we originally wanted more than anything else, we don’t know what to think of it now that this desire has been fulfilled. At times, fully experiencing the reality that there is never a single individual at front and in control of this body is downright terrifying. Still, we have no long-term regrets, and have been asking ourselves, for the past five months, “What’s next?”
We are still struggling to come up with a way for each of us to grow and develop beyond the limited functions we have taken on and, largely, defined ourselves by. It was only a week ago, after countless attempts to come up with a system that worked in the long term, that those of us who once only knew themselves to be performers of tasks like walking from place to place, opening doors, and eating food, began the slow process of comprehending that there could, in theory, be more to their lives than what they’d been doing for years. There is no comparison that can be reasonably made between the situations of these insiders and anything of the outside world that a physical person has experienced. Even the most primitive form of life, in its infancy, still knows to find food and sleep, and can react to correct a potential issue when they experience deprivation of some kind, even if that reaction is little more than a movement that cannot be seen by the human eye alone. It would be most accurate to say that the insiders who believe themselves to be defined by the tasks, or parts of tasks, that they perform are much like computer programs, or parts of a machine, and even that comparison has one critical flaw. One cannot teach a machine that they are more than their experiences or the tasks they perform, yet those of us who believe their own functions to define them have, slowly, started to comprehend other truths aside from this thought. We are not parts, we are not computer programs, and this shows in the slow-coming, but noticeable, comprehension of this reality, by those of us who, to outsiders, may have seemed to be nothing more than these. Five months ago, for example, the insider who once only guided the rest of us to where we needed to go after having been taught the rout herself had no clue that she was, or could be, anything more than that directive, but now she understands, albeit with great difficulty, that there can be more to her life, and her way, than this.
The same can be said for many of those of us who do other comparatively small things, something which brings us great joy. As we’ve likely said many times before, it’s going to be a rough road at first as we all discover aspects of ourselves that were once not in their rightful place. Those of us who believed themselves to only be defined by single tasks have already begun to have the experience of wanting to give up said tasks, which, as one can imagine, has worried the rest of us. In the end, though, after those of us having this experience have developed more of a sense of self and do not need to rely on their given positions alone to verify their existence, we suspect that it will happen less, and may even stop happening altogether. The only way to ensure that we survive now is to thrive now, and the only way to thrive now is to be there for one another, even if the person one of us is there for only knows the act of getting out of bed. There was a time in 2017 when we all believed ourselves to be nothing more than collections of memories, and we recognize the pattern with the situations of these particular insiders. We will do as our guides have, then, in teaching them that there is more to their lives than doing a single action or feeling a single feeling only to duck and cover and allow others to speak for them and own what isn’t theirs.
All that being said, there was, perhaps, once value in such a state, and once a time when it could have helped us survive in the world. One thing we know beyond any reasonable doubt is that for the first 15 years of this life, we were basically a puzzle that wasn’t what the outsiders in positions of power were hoping for, and, in a sense, illusions of unity were the glue keeping the puzzle together. We’re lucky they fell in the way they did, because if they hadn’t, we could have easily been labeled as a disorder by our nature before we were ready to take on such a term. But we know that, on the level of the soul, we were not always puzzle pieces, and that our defining of ourselves by the tasks we performed was never a desired outcome. Now it’s time to fix the mess that has become of us, or rather, to continue fixing it, starting, in a sense literally, from the ground up.
It begins with all of us realizing that they are more than the positions they hold within the community. From there? It’s up to us as individuals. We wouldn’t have it any other way.