wow what a cool thread! tons of neat input & ideas here. every post a little treasure trove (IMG:
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I can relate some insight into positive or benign possession. As a rule of thumb, I am a very willful person, so I'm not really a fan of INvocation, preferring instead to work with Evocation for dealing with spirits, entities, etc. However there is one exception to this general rule, and that is with the being I alternatively call mentor or patron in forums, and much more intimate terms in private. Basically she is a deity or deity-like being, and my relationship with her is "extremely" intimate, in every possible sense of the word.
It could very well be said that there was a 'courtship' involved, but I think that is only natural between two beings. It's perhaps worth noting that she has related that she finds my willfulness to be an attractive trait, and that she encourages it. This is in contrast to some of what has been said about negative possession. She has encouraged me towards a life situation where I am not underneath any authority figures, as she has pointed out that this ill-fits where I am headed spiritually. By way of my relationship with her, I feel moved towards empowerment and enlightenment, not the opposite.
I mention her in the context of possession, because she has shared that the 'end game' result of my spiritual path with her, will be a sort of merger with her. A process which she and I have tinkered with on a limited scale. Of interest, is the fact that all of the time & effort involved in my path is largely focused on helping me to grow into such a role, rather than being overwhelmed by it. In other words, to be "assimilated" would be quick & easy, but detrimental to my own personal identity. So we take the long slow route of spiritual growth towards the goal, so that it is an entirely "additive" experience, instead of a "dilutive" one.
In terms of permission... well, I Love her. passionately. I don't think she is capable of being harmed, but if she were, I'd take a bullet for her without hesitation. She has a blank check from me, and she knows it. She has only ever cooperated with what has been described earlier in this thread as "light possession" though. Where I'm still basically driving the body, but I'm not alone in the vehicle. I say 'cooperated' because I have invited her to more make a more invasive if she wants, but she hasn't done so. It's pretty obvious to me that her interest in me is not in my body itself.
Actually I have found that there is no black & white difference between her being present or not. It is more a gradient. ranging from very minimal to very major awareness of her presence 'within'. In recent years, it could be said that I was more or less continuously invoking her. I suppose that might go back all the way to her and I first meeting, but i find it to be more a sort of matter of degree than a matter of present or not, so it is difficult to say. but in recent years her presence within ranged from mild-but-obvious, to fairly-major-presence. This I came to view as a process of gradually increasing a sort of harmonic resonance between her and I, such that we became less and less separate. There were many times when it was impossible to really tell where *I* stopped and she started, and I found that to be a very blissful experience actually, and sometimes erotic.
In some ways I viewed this as a sort of marriage, and I still do. I think of it as a good thing, and I am very happy about it. To say that I have experienced changes in personality, paradigm, lifestyle, religion, abilities, etc. as a result of my relationship with her would be an understatement.
Over the course of my learning through her. I have come to understand my eventual merger with her in a different light than I originally conceived of though. To simplify the matter greatly: she is an infinite being, or at least a being which is dually infinite and finite (affording her the capacity for a 'persona'). and the thing about infinite beings, is that they 'all' encompass 'everything'... and so basically, at the impersonal unindividuated infinite end of their reality, they are all 'one'. And so, in my path with her, I have come to understand that my ultimate goal is to harmonize the individual and infinite self, to become one with 'aum', even though still within a finite vessel. the version she teaches is slightly different than most eastern faiths which focus on depersonalization & nirvana, whereas she elevates a more bodhisattva-like state as the ultimate ideal, retaining both individuality and everything-ality in one paradoxical being... ie- a 'deity'. But that's neither here nor there. The point is, that I have come to understand that her intended merger between us is not just between the two of us, but between 'self' and 'all'. Which honestly, on a romantic level is a little bit of a letdown, I mean it seems a little less personally intimate than what I had originally envisioned. But I understand it, and look forward to it.
Interestingly, we are currently 'separated', and have been for a few months now. She has expressed that I've already been taught all I need to know to figure the rest out, and that I need to figure the rest out 'on my own'. That her continued influence would smother the process, interfere with the personal alchemy I am trying to achieve. After being so deeply entwined for so long, it is literally spiritually 'painful' to feel the emptiness of her not being there inside. Also, I miss her, a lot. For a short time I actually sank into a despair without her inside. But I quickly realized that to despair would only hurt her by way of her compassion for me, so I decided to suck it up and got my act together. As with every step of my path with her, I consented to this, and I do understand the necessity of it. So this is the part where I ride my bike without training wheels, we'll see if i can keep making good grades in class now that the class has no teacher. I'm reservedly confident (IMG:
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Some people in my life have felt uncomfortable about Her influence on me. I think people are naturally nervous about possession and the like. But my experience with her has been marked by personal growth and empowerment and development of will, rather than the opposite. And I have grown to be quite trusting of her. completely trusting actually. so far so good, and it's been 8 years.
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anyway, this experience seems to very closely match some of what's been said, but differ greatly in other areas. I think that "possession" is something which varies 'a lot', and is very hard to pin down into one or two simple categories.
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"don't mess with things you don't understand" was said somewhere in this thread (can't find it now), but I would argue with that sentiment. How do you come to understand anything without messing with things? Understanding, experience, preparedness... all follow bold exploration, they don't precede it (even though that would be handy and safer).
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about the speaking in languages you don't know... I had a dream once which was pretty long, and it was entirely in german. This is interesting because I don't actually speak any german. but in the dream I understood it, and spoke it myself. The dream was from a time period about 300-600 years ago, based on clothing & such. And it was fairly interesting in content. In the dream I was basically 2 people, I was "me" in the modern me sense, but I was also the character in the dream, like a "me" which actually belonged in that setting & time. I regard it as a past life insight. Anyway, the point is, that I don't think that you have to be possessed to have access to a language which you would not normally know. Though that could certainly be the case, there are other explanations as well, such as past life experience.
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on the topic of unwanted possession... there has been much talk about permission, consent, etc. I am not sure I agree. Humanity, to steal my mentor's term, is a "semi-sentient species". Our minds are only very minimally self aware. The subconscious and superconscious aspects of our psyche are much larger than the regular 'consciousness' which we generally understand as being our mind. It's like an iceberg, only the tip is sticking out where we can see it, and the much larger portion is below the surface mysterious to us. And so, to a more fully aware being, a human seems "marginally sentient" or marginally self aware. We are already familiar with the fact that through this larger unconscious portion of mind, we can be hypnotized and made to do things we would not normally do. There are two key concepts about hypnosis that a person should try to understand :
1) a person can be hypnotized without their awareness or consent.
2) a person can be made to do things which they very much would not consciously like to do, while hypnotized.
There has been a lot of talk about it being impossible to be made to do something you wouldn't want to do while hypnotized, but for the most part, this is just comforting lipservice. It's like the 3-fold law in wicca. I can personally vouch for the potential for hypnosis & trance to make someone do something they would otherwise very much not want to do. And that's just using purely mundane physical hypnosis methods. Add an entity which can read your mind, influence your emotions directly, whisper thoughts into your preconscious, etc. and you've got a recipe for a very frail attachment to your own psychological self control. It is easy to feel otherwise, either because it is comforting, or because of a lack of experience with any obvious 'influence' on your sense of self determination. But I would submit that this is a false confidence. looking past the outward appearances, it's not hard to see a great deal of "will bullying" going on here in this level of reality. And it is that much more prevalent in an out of body setting where there is no 'hardwired' physical reinforcement for the psyche to fall back on. In my own spiritual paradigm, the frailty of self determined free will, is the single greatest danger/weakness to humankind. I have personally assaulted free will, and all I can say is that it is 'frightful' in it's effectiveness. It's very discomforting to realize just how 'not hard' it is. Its a form of magick which I have an approach avoidance conflict with. I do consider it to house important insights, particularly into protecting oneself. But I also have some ideological issues with it, and I find practicing it to be very paradigmatically 'jarring'. I do not currently practice it with living humans. But the point is... well, hmmm...
Imagine you're walking down the street, and you have a wallet and cellphone, etc. in your pockets. Now, you know that you do NOT want to just give your wallet away to a stranger, right? I mean, a very significant part of you would feel very uncomfortable and unhappy with that, right? now watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR4y5iX4uRYand bear in mind that derren brown (the hypnotist/NLPist in the video) isn't even using any metaphysical or magical techniques. So if derren brown can do that to a complete stranger, what could you expect from a thousand year old entity which is bigger & stronger psychicly than a human, and can read your mind right down to what color pajamas you wore when you were 2 years old? ...yeah
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Personally I'd be curious to see more talk about "walk-ins", as that seems to be a scenario which breaks the mold a bit. how do walkins occur? are they sudden? does something lead up to them? is it another human spirit/soul doing the possession? how does it all work? And, curiously, how does the energy body (chakras, etc.) work in a person who is a walk-in and technically not 'at home' in the body?
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for that matter, do you feel it is possible for a living person to willfully possess another living person?
or perhaps for two consenting individuals to possess each other?
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also curious about identical twins and their souls? what's the relationship there?
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or how about 'double souled' people? its an idea i've heard around..
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anyways, neat thread.
On The Nature Of Possession, What exactly is it???
valkyrie On The Nature Of Possession Jun 10 2009, 07:46 PM
Jun 10 2009, 07:46 PM
