How to Reconcile Multiple Personalities with Non-Duality?

[RendHeaven]

Extremely informative and eye-opening video.

It seems that when shifting through identities, these people have a sort of amnesia that "resets" their memories.

I wonder what spirituality work would be like for these people? Is it possible to awaken? Does it even matter if you get "reset" the next day?

It's so interesting that when asked "how many identities do you have?" they all give a concrete number such as "16" or "9."

Would ego death eradicate all of them into pure awareness at once? Would they all understand oneness? Or would it be that "ID#1 awakes" while "ID#2 sleeps?"

 

 

Of course I speak of these people as though they were separate from me. I also speak of various states as though they were different things. I don't feel particularly awake right now, so entertain the relativity of my question for now please

 

[Forestluv]

Multiple personalities is intriguing to me. There are some good documentaries. 

We all have multiple personalities along a spectrum, yet most of us aren’t aware of it. Once a meta awareness to the personality structure appears, the mechanisms can be observed. Yet this transcendence is a form of “ego death”, even though the personality doesn’t die - transcendence can feel like death. There is a strong survival instinct for the continuation of Immersion, identification and attachment to the personality as “me” continuing through time. 

The mind is amazingly good at assembling self-referential thoughts into a “me” that is continuous through time. At a physical level, this is the function of the brain’s default mode network. This allows the human to make sense of its reality and function/survive within that reality. 

Questioning the illusion of a singular personality can lead to an existential crisis, feelings of insanity, anxiety and panic - which I’ve had more of my share of. Yet with meta awareness of personality, things get very interesting. . . 
Each of our minds have many appearances of self-referencing that goes under one category of “me”. We might be indecisive about a decision and have conflicting thoughts about what to do. We often have debates and arguments for n our own minds causing inner turmoil - similar to debates with “other” people. There are also “other people” in the mind, yet we don’t categorize it like this. A person would say “*I’ve* been debating what to do”, not “three personalities in my mind have been debating what to do”. We could easily categorize like this. Yet there is pressure not to do so. We are conditioned to group all self referentIal thoughts and feelings into one “me”. This allows easier functioning in society in some respect and allows one to be perceived as “normal” by their peers.  Yet its harder to function in other respects. Trying to maintain a single illusory “me” through time causes an immense amount of pressure, stress and turmoil on the mind and body. 
 

 

[fridjonk]

@RendHeaven A sub-personality is an I that won't become a "me/mine". And thus either remains embedded in the central "I" as fixation or splits off as a sub-"I" or subpersonality (dissociation), both of which are unconscious, or not proper object of awareness (that is a subject at that stage that fails to become an object of the subject of the next stage, and thus distorts and tears the developmental process itself, keeping parts of the "I" arrested and attached to the elements of the earlier stage, and ripping off parts of consciousness that should be continuing their "transcending and including" growth and development to even higher and wider stages of awareness). 

In this situation, either the "transcend" or the "include" part has become busted, broken, torn, or misnavigated, leaving only roadkill in its wake.

-Ken Wilber 

An Ego death would certainly awaken all of those identities, where one would become aware of all of these shadows and stages.  

 

 

Edited March 6, 2020 by fridjonk

[RendHeaven]

@Serotoninluv Interesting! Sounds like you are proposing that we (as egos) are all on a spectrum of unity and fragmentation?

Though, I wonder how the amnesia plays a role.

Literally forgetting your memories seems to be the crux of this "disorder." Maybe forgetting is the very thing elucidating that "oh, it isn't just me in control of this body!"

That's not something that "normal" people deal with.

 

(I use the terms "disorder" and "normal" for the sake of communication. Personally not a fan of this dichotomy)