I think there’s been some reluctance in the online Sayuneldi (Otherkin) community to point fingers at anyone for being self-deluded, because a) we’re all considered deluded by the average person on the street; b) we’re afraid of scaring off the newer folks on the lists or the ones just Awakening to something real in themselves; and/or c) in times past there had been cases of back-lash when someone dared mention someone might need to do some further self- exploration or seek help. I’m not excusing the reluctance, just trying to give some background. I am all for questioning one’s self; questioning one’s sanity can be fun :). I just think there needs to be a balance between acceptance and well-intentioned, mature questioning.
Sometimes someone says something that sounds utterly ridiculous to me. I’m opinionated enough that sometimes I’ll say something about it. That’s OK. If I say it’s absurd or someone else says it’s gospel, it’s just an opinion. No one is required to believe everything that gets written or said. It’s OK to agree to disagree. Question everything.
I’ve wondered internally about the people who say they are angels. What service are you performing for what god/dess? That is part of my definition of angel. Sometimes it’s seemed that angelics were the next “Otherkin fad”. We’ve had others in the past; elves, weres, vampires, hosts and unicorns have all had turns at being the hot new race of Otherkin, where a bunch of people were discovering they were that race and talking about it all at once. I don’t know that all the angelics are or are not what they think they are, but that’s for them to figure out as individuals. I’m saying it’s OK for me to question, because it doesn’t affect them being what they really are inside, and they are free to disagree with me. We are free to disagree with each other.
Someone had once asked “How can you claim to be ‘X’ and ‘Y’ if both ‘X’ and ‘Y’ are in opposition to each other?” Now, people have mentioned having past lives as opposing things, but that’s different than claiming to be two things that are in opposition. I’ve also been things in past lives that conflict with who I am now, and been a vampire I’m not real proud of in my current incarnation. I don’t call myself an elf-vampire because the two were and are in conflict for me. When I was a vampire it resulted in the elf being completely forgotten. After I died, and my soul had the blinders taken off (as happens sometimes after death), the dissonance between who I had been as a vampire and who I had been as an elf caused so much internal conflict that it caused my soul to split. The personality bits that had been associated with the vampire were flung far and wide.
A variation along those lines: I think there’s a difference between saying I was something in a past life and that I am something. For instance, suppose someone once was a unicorn. How much applicability does that have in the here and now? To my mind, a unicorn is a being that represents Truth, unyielding fierce aggressive Truth. It’s near impossible to be pure anything, much less pure Truth, in this physical realm. It’s the nature of the realm. So while I could see someone saying they had been a unicorn and had some aspects influenced by it, I’ve had a hard time swallowing someone being a unicorn in this life (and that’s a topic that’s near and dear to my heart). Similarly, if I was a rock, a frog, or a stellar dust bunny in a past life, how much of that applies here in this world, in this form, with this mortal consciousness?
An excellent set of questions for anyone is “Are you better off now that you know about your other identity? Has it helped or hindered your life, balance, health and well-being?” For myself, I can say that it’s been a great thing for health, balance, and self-confidence. And ultimately it’s a question we only answer to our own satisfaction.
It can be fun to question your sanity, to explore yourself, your entire world, to experiment and grow. I speak from experience. Having the carpet of my reality yanked from under my feet got much more fun after I realized that I didn’t have to fall and flail – I could fly….