Clarification, please?

What exactly is an "energy being?" The forum descriptor says "beings that lack a body", but surely no one who displaces air literally lacks a body.

I think the descriptor was something of a joke. Of course we all have bodies or we wouldn't be typing. Unless we were some kind of fancy AI...which incidentally might be an example of an energy being that we don't normally think of. But I haven't met any tech-kin yet, or cylon-kin, but maybe I just haven't been hanging out at the right forums. No wait, we do have one 'artifact' though I'm not sure that counts. (Random humor and idle speculation are things I use a lot, so don't go taking everything, or really anything, I say as absolute literal fact.)

Ok, instead of saying beings who do lack a body, how about beings who can lack a body. Spirits, angels, demons, AI's, ET's, and who knows what else. Maybe even plain old human souls would count if you're of the belief that they can exist separately from the hardware. Though I guess AI's would still need a computer on which to run, so maybe that does rule them out.

We came up with this section because there were those who didn't fit neatly into the celestial or demon categories, or maybe as a bridge where the two recognize that they're more alike than different. It sounded good in theory, but in practice, I see that this separate section doesn't have a whole lot of posts in it.

An "energy being" is one who, in their natural form, has no physical body: for example astral entities, spirits, all that jazz.

Archer Wrote:An "energy being" is one who, in their natural form, has no physical body: for example astral entities, spirits, all that jazz.

Exactly. Putting the "well we can never know" argument aside, if one were to have been a, say, wolf... or a cat, or a dragon, or an elf, etc. their "soul" or their "essence" or whatever it is that transferred to this body that makes them "otherkin" was still harbored in a corporeal body of some sort.

Energy beings never had an original "body" or "shell" and are just stuffed into this current human body, so to speak.

There's definitely some overlap between the two, as there seems to be with virtually any term in the kin community. And, of course, there are probably some angels, demons, etc, who had very corporeal bodies.

So if I get it right, whatever starts out without corporeal body is energy being, right?

Shailla Wrote:So if I get it right, whatever starts out without corporeal body is energy being, right?

More or less, but there are probably exceptions to that rule too. Ascended beings come to mind, those who started off physical, but through some sort of process no longer had need for corporeal shells.

I guess the trick is, which one do you identify with? The form with a body or the form without one? If you see noncorporealness as a resting place in between incarnations, then it's the body form you identify with and you probably wouldn't call yourself an energy being. If you see incarnation as an occasional thing done for a purpose, or accident, or fun, in between long stretches of noncorporeality, then you'd probably identify more with the energy being part.

Okay. First gotta figure out who/what is "me" in the first place then this.
Kinda helped, thanks.

I've never considered my physical body part of "me" & I find it hard to look at myself in pictures or mirrors. It feels really wrong. I don't have an internal image of myself at all. I very strongly feel like I shouldn't have a physical body.

I don't know if I would describe it as "energy" though. Maybe