Alright, back. Sorry for the delay. ^_^; What was I going to write about?...
Ah, right. The fact that I tend to freaking forget that I'm plural and that I'm sensitive...hence not everything that is acting through me *is* me. However, I've tended to stay away from places that would validate this belief, being that the largest one I know of has ties to a questionable cult.
Bell was the first one of these other "selves" I was conscious of. Recently there's been Snakey (she still doesn't have a name); and as I was reading over what I wrote last night, I realized that the being I recognized (at least at one time) as a deity may be another who was largely active in the past, and helped me get up the will and drive and passion to live. This would be the being I wrote about in "Love and spiritual lessons" over in the Demon subforum, though I didn't realize until reading over my earlier writings tonight that he could have been influencing my own state. That is, not only did I sense him, but he acted through me and (knowingly or not,) influenced my thoughts.
...which seems oddly intimate, but whatever.
Earlier, I was talking with my dad about how today I was preoccupied with identity, temporality, and reincarnation, if I'm recalling correctly. It was a fairly deep discussion on my end, though I didn't continue to press... I'd also been talking separately with Mom earlier, about wondering whether DNA was a sentient molecule. <!-- s

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--> Which bridges off of something I wrote earlier where I was saying that the body has no self-form, but had to qualify that as not speaking about DNA. Whereupon I realized that DNA is the closest thing a body has to irreducible self-form.
The DNA question has been reached as I've realized that Buddhism, to me, is more of a philosophical and psychological approach and exploration and possible healing method, than it is a religion. This becomes very clear to me on finding that the greatest use of my Buddhism study is to help those who are afflicted with pain or obsession, and to clarify when someone is caught in
duhkha. I've been getting the point that Buddhism is a healing technique and not inherently a religion from multiple angles, though it didn't really strike me clearly until recently.
I've also realized -- a gift that has come from Shakyamuni not talking about metaphysics in the "after-life" sense, is that there has been no codified orthodoxy within Buddhism as to what to believe about metaphysics (if I'm using the term "metaphysics" correctly). Which means that everyone is free to believe what they believe, on that level. The lack of defined orthodoxy isn't a flaw, it's an opening for the flourishing of many ideas, some of which may be right. On that note...
...for a while I've had the experience of thinking that spirit is a field. A field that we move through, without which we would all be P-Zombies. (This parallels Archer's description of darkness with different "textures", but to get into a discussion on that right now would break the flow.) A P-Zombie (Psychological-Zombie) is a being who acts just like a normal living being, but who is internally empty. I don't mean empty in the sense of
shunyata (everything being preceded by a cause, therefore there being no true "self"), but empty in the sense of...lacking anything beyond physical functioning, despite being fully physically functioning. The question can be asked as to whether that's even *possible* -- whether it is possible for all the signs of consciousness to exist and for there not to be consciousness; or inversely, whether it is possible for a qualitative consciousness to exist without the physical signs of consciousness -- and I think the question is probably quite important, though asked in an occlusive way. That is, it's asked in a way which probably isn't getting at the core nature of the phenomena (as, in my view, it focuses on the individual and not the system which includes the "individual"), and maybe we need a workaround via a more effective question.
So in my current hesitant paradigm, spirit is a field which we in some way move through. I'm not entirely certain how it is that certain concentrations of "spirit" appear to me, but I know that they do. They may be self-generated: my own projections, or they may be objectively existent in some way which we don't understand yet, and may not be able to understand with our present equipment (the human brain and all its tools...I doubt we're as smart as we tend to think we are).
So anyhow...the question that is asked, both in the group I mentioned in the introduction, and faintly in my own mind: once the other spirits are stripped away, what is left? Who am "I"? Am I a vessel who retains memory, always filled with spirit of some form or another as I move through the field of spirit; just occasionally (though now more frequently) noticing sets of puzzle pieces which look like they're from different puzzles? Am I a hub who lets through spirits, some of whom I know are not the same one? Am I actually a medium? Is *everyone* a medium, and I just notice it -- or they have more or less permanent spirits who speak through them, while mine share time? Is *that* why there's the gender confusion? And the confusion over my core nature, and the reason why I seem to change so frequently, and not have a stable (even from day-to-day) idea of who I am, what I like, what I want?
This has been edited down. <!-- s

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--> Yes. Really. If you have any thoughts on this that aren't hostile, <!-- s

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--> it could be an interesting discussion, for me, too. (And yes, I do realize that the thread strayed from "classic monsters"...)