*** Note to readers: this post contains extensive talk of concepts that may be overwhelming and/or triggering. These have to do with the nature of reality, what is and isn’t possible, as related to plurality, and the practical applications of some conclusions that are relatively far from the mainstream understanding of what is and isn’t real. If you have a difficult time with these lines of thinking, please avoid reading the article that follows. Thank you for your attention. ***
I was looking at previous blog posts tonight, and wondering how in the world I was going to address them all. Time and time again, I came back to the following conclusions…
It’s a relief to not only experience, but see evidence of, the progress we’ve made since living on our own and unbinding ourselves from frameworks that defined us by our pain, or by our behaviors, over and above anything else. The contrast between our old posts and our current circumstances highlights that relief, along with a feeling of freedom we had not known in relation to plurality, or our imagination, during this life until 2021, when we met someone who spent months encouraging us to surrender to plurality as it was, and as it wanted to be. From the nuances of this encouragement, we learned that there could be space for anything and everything on the inside, and that there was no true limit to what we were allowed to do there because our imagination and our inner world were linked so foundationally. We recalled that the first others I was aware of started out as my creations and that I had imagined them into being until they began to act independently of that control, and those of us who wanted to and were ready to reclaimed that ability. We carved out a place in our shared experience of autistic thinking for the idea that nothing on the inside had to be set in metaphorical stone, and I rebuilt my way of looking at CommunityBelonging based on that concept. Before we did any of that, though, and even as we did it, we took in, and reenforced, the feeling that all of these processes were safe to begin; we were not leaving anything behind by allowing anything and everything to exist at once there, and in fact we were welcoming previously rejected elements of ourselves, our histories, and our truths as we allowed this to become our new inner reality. When I finally understood that, everything changed and I found myself actively wanting to include the others in my life, not out of a sense of obligation but out of a desire to engage with as much of it as I could. What’s more, I found myself able to act on that desire, because I had no reason to resist whatever experience of plurality I was having; I could care for someone who had experienced trauma from this life one minute and then interact with someone who had come from another world or an inside ritual or any other context the next, without panicking, because I finally understood that as far as this community goes, everything that happens inside is not only OK but entirely non-harmful.
That extends to everything from origins to apparently conflicting memories to the fact that sometimes, we don’t know where one of us ends and the others begin. That also applies to fronting, insofar as my experience of it, in that I’ve had to accept the fact that for me, others taking control of my physical body sometimes involves me feeling as though I become them, while other times it feels more like I’m surrendering control to a force I can’t sense in any way familiar to me. Beyond that, it also covers the experiences I’ve had of community members making their presence felt by me as though they were close to me in the physical world, and the tendency we have to use the concept of every being having parts of self for a wide range of purposes, from births of new community members to reconfigurations of existing ones to the full expression of an emotion on the inside in the name of letting all parts of a given being have their say. In short, in learning that when it comes to the inside world, nothing is off-limits because there is no harm to be experienced accept the harm we think will happen, we’ve grown, and been able to do so, we’ve made fear about our inner world’s happenings nearly unnecessary, and we’ve reestablished the reality that it’s safe to be ourselves without filters because nothing and no one will force us or pressure us to be anything else. The thing we haven’t done yet is explore from this new perspective, and that’s what I want to direct the blog’s content toward, because I, personally, find myself needing to put things into either the verbal or the written word in order for them to take root in my long-term memory and my understanding of the world I helped create but don’t know much about. We are a community and it’s time we start living like one, beginning right here and right now.
We know now that none of us are confined to a single perspective about anything; we are free to have as many points of view about something as will resonate with us, collectively, individually and with each of the parts of ourselves. In the name of expressing and making the most of that freedom, I, as the main fronter of this community and the one who is responsible for bringing us to this life as it is today, have decided that I am no longer going to attempt to settle apparent conflicts between community members, nor will I move to correct information I feel is inaccurate as it relates to their perspectives on their own development, their involvement with this world, etcetera. Those are their conflicts and their histories, not mine, and there is nothing saying that I am required to own them; by the nature of the concept we’ve detailed above, we are all allowed and encouraged to do what feels the most right to each of us, and to me, trying to make everything make sense before I have all of the information I’d need in order for that to happen feels anything but. It’s much easier to let things be what they are and use whatever works to help us live as much as we’re able to in any given moment. That’s not to make things sound fragile, because in many ways they aren’t; I’m saying that there are different levels of need we have for many things, and that those change constently, so an equally dynamic approach in meeting those needs works best. That was and has always been the case, but I’ve reached the point where I am content with it, and am no longer fighting it as I used to do from 2015 to 2021.
I made a commitment in 2019, by the creation of that infamous contract of correction, to allow the others of this community to be themselves. I may have taken things way too far, and made the original vow in a set of circumstances that were not the right ones in which to do so, but I still stand by the concept, and, as I said above, I am going to use this blog to follow through on the plan it has inspired, and required. I cannot promise that I will be perfect in allowing all that needs to be allowed all of the time, but nobody can be perfect at anything all of the time; that’s a condition of living in this world. What I can do is continue trying, starting today, to let whatever happens be as it is, including my reactions to said happenings. Oh, and I can keep writing about it like I meant to do the whole time I’ve worked on this blog. I’ve said often enough that I’m trying to embrace us all as we are. Now it’s time to start going public with the results of those words.
I’m sorry to those of you who think of us as a fake system, because the direction this place is about to take isn’t going to help that idea. I won’t try to convince you of our truth, because it is ours; we will live it always, wherever and whenever we are safe to do so, nothing more and nothing less. Those of you who have followed us for a while may also be surprised at some of the things that are published, and some of you may even think we’ve lost our minds or become psychotic as you read. I assure you, we have not. We will simply be describing a reality that, though not reflected or actualized in the material world in which you are most likely reading these words, is just as vivid and important to us as the physical realm with its events is. Some of what you will see from us going forward probably would seem better contextualized as fantacy, because to the physical world of Earth, it is. But the same can be said for religion or spirituality, if one looks at these from a purely scientific perspective, and that hasn’t stopped either of the two from continuing to exist as realities and even comforts and identities for the people who are actively involved in them. Why, then, should we stay silent about our inner world, which, in a lot of ways, is a basis for much of our spirituality and, in some cases, our religions? I cannot find an answer to that question that has satisfied me, so I ignore it. I’d rather spend my time allowing others of this community to have theirs in the world around me, and them, and when I’m not doing that, I’d rather spend it living, and enjoying, the experience of being a human being on a planet that I know we have precious little time on.
With all of that being said, I leave you with this: Everything everyone does, whether the action is carried out in this world or not and whether the person is in a physical body or not, has an impact. How far or wide the impact is depends on an uncountable number of factors, but the impact is present nonetheless. I want the impact of these posts to be a positive one, though I realize nothing is ever that simple and that I’m bound to make someone somewhere have any number of discomforting reactions by the things I publish. I feel badly about that, but I’m still going to follow through on what I said I was going to do here, because the plural community – that is, other bodies in this world and beyond it who share the experience of being plural – needs as many voices in support of their cause as they can get, at least here on earth, and most likely other places too. As a plural myself, I am going to be one of those voices, and I’m going to talk about things I don’t see discussed much, if at all, in any detail.
Let’s begin.