emmengard

Hello all,

A lot has been happening lately. The Plural Positivity World Conference happened. It as amazing. We did a small talk on art and the importance of seeing yourself in the art that you engage with. It was abit of a whirlwind. We found out about it a little late and we have never recorded a video before, but we managed. :)

The conference put us in contact with a lot of amazing systems. We learned a lot, and had a lot of fun.

One interesting thing that happened was it got some of us talking and some of the wheels started turning, both during and after the conference. One amazing system we got to know is the Trashcan Collective. 

The Trashcan Collective invented the terms "endogenic" and "traumagenic" five years ago. We personally have never been a fan of the term "traumagenic." To us it felt like it was throwing our trauma in our faces. It was never something we felt comfortable using to describe ourselves. We very quickly started calling ourselves an Adaptive System, but unfortunately, no one knew what we were talking about, except for our close system friends.

With our friends we often discussed potential replacement terms. We felt that as there were only two terms to describe the plural community, it seemed limited, especially when  compared to the variety of plural experienced we were seeing. We even wondered if the fact that there were only two categories was reinforcing dichotomies and conflict. So, we came up with a few new descriptors for the types of system experiences we saw, terms that we thought could be a little more fluid and more immediately understandable for newer system: Adaptive, Created, Spontaneous and Mixed. We added Unknown later, as it seemed quiogenic was filling a needed gap in available terminology.  We conceived of these terms as being compatible with one another and not as exclusive. They could overlap with one another, just as the experiences we saw in the community can and do overlap. 

After the conference, Trashcan Collective started looking for alternatives to the term "traumagenic," and so we put our descriptors out there, and they really liked them, which was lovely to hear from others who are such fans of words and the importance they wield.

Shortly after explaining the terms to Trashcan Collective, they pointed out that the terms would work well with the interlocking ring symbol for plurality, with the center standing for mixed origin systems. We immediately started experimenting with our watercolors and this is what we came up with:



Symbolism of the colors:

Yellow: Unknown. We placed it at the top because that is where a lot of us start off, and some end up staying there, content to embrace their experience without being particular about the categories.

Green: Adaptive. We see green as a healing color and for us we feel like that is what is really central to the Adaptive experience: adapting to, overcoming and healing from trauma and adverse experiences. 

Blue: Spontaneous. We just sort of felt like blue was a Spontaneous color...? I actually don't know why, but when we thought of the word Spontaneous we imagined a clear blue sky.

Red: Created.. honestly it was the left over color xD I'm sorry! Though in our system our most imaginative members like the colors red and pink, so to us it still made a sort of intuitive sense. Also red reminds us of a fiery Creative mind. They do call it the spark of creativity, perhaps that idea of the spark is what makes me think of red.

The middle with the mixing rainbow colors is for Mixed Systems. However, all the spots where different catagories overlap would also be Mixed.

The orientation of the colors is due to pragmatics of how colors mix, and our desire to have the the overall finished graphic be bright and vibrant, like a rainbow (we were trying to avoid making brown). Though, I suppose if you were an Adaptive system with some Created members, the mixed color would be brown.. OR one could identify as a Christmas System! I actually love red and green together. That is one of our favorite color combinations

[Random painter tip: to make a nice deep green, like the shadows on leaves, temper the green with a little red. Green can also temper red to make a darker burgundy shade.]

After finishing the graphic, we sort of want to be Cyan (Adaptive/Spontaneous, the blue-green color is so lovely!), but really we have no idea if our system predates our trauma or not. Some system members insist we were a we before trauma.. but memory at age three is really unreliable. All we really know is that we were significantly shaped by our need to adapt to trauma and adversity growing up, which makes us pretty solidly green (sort of a kelly green...). BUT since it is arguably unclear, we might actually be chartreuse (yellow green), which is another lovely color. 

:)

Please forgive us nerdy painters for geeking out on color names and our general silliness.  I hope you like the graphic and the terms.  The terms are not to divide us. They are to bring us together. To celebrate our strengths, our similarities and even to celebrate our differences.. The terms are there to give our community the words they need to understand and describe their experiences so that we can all better understand one another and connect with each other across the entire plural spectrum (Oh snap! that's why it is a rainbow! Cause it is a spectrum! Ooooooohhhhh!!!!!)  

The rainbow rings are one step beyond the original plural rings, they are to signify acceptance and support across the entire plural community. The terms we made are from that same place of love. They are just words, but words are powerful. We feel more powerful when we tell people we are an Adaptive System, because our strength is who we are.  We chose the other terms with a similar goal in mind, to celebrate who we all are, to celebrate creativity, spontaneity, courage in the face of the unknown and our diversity of origins. We are stronger together. So lets have words that celebrate our various strengths.   

Lastly, we wanted terms that for new systems are immediately understandable, and which they already fit into. Wouldn't it be so much nicer if newer systems were not pushed to find a category immediately upon discovering they were plural and entering the community. That was how it was for us personally. We didn't even know there were different types of systems and they wanted to make sure we were a certain kind. It was oppressive, and destabilizing. 

Wouldn't it be nice if new systems were greeted gently and told not to worry, they were already a part of our symbol, a part of our flag, a part of our community, by default? Wouldn't it be nice if they  were told that it is simply okay to not know, and if they change how they identified later it was okay too? Wouldn't it be nice to give them that moment to allow their own system, their own truth, to unfold to them in its own time? Furthermore, if a system decides that they are beyond those sort of identifiers, perhaps unknown or categorized would best suit them and what they are comfortable with long term. And that is okay too. The terms are meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. 

The rainbow rings and the terms aren't just for all of us who are already here in the community, its for those who have not yet discovered themselves, or even for those future community members who haven't yet been born. What kind of community do we want to welcome them to? I am hoping for a really loving and supportive one, because being different is hard enough on its own. Being plural, regardless of how you got here, is hard enough on its own. This is easier together. So lets do that. Lets stand together. Lets seek to support and understand and learn from each other. 

Thank you for coming to our Ted Talk,



Ariadne (& Bran)

 

Hello,

Posts lately, especially on the plural subreddit,  have been pretty positive, and I think maybe it leads to a rosier picture than is completely honest. A lot of the times we will draw a bunch of cute stuff just to distract ourselves, like animals with fairy wings.

We drew and colored so many over the holidays.  (I will collect all the fairy winged animal drawings and post those next time).

But we also did a bunch of little bad feels. We have a tiny sketch book, and when we feel bad we draw out the bad feeling as a tiny little sketch.  

A lot of the feels are about feeling worthless, or even toxic and burdensome. We feel empty and adrift, self loathing and hopeless. We think, people are never going to understand. Or we think we are never going to be enough. We let our fears chase us around and around.

It is a really boring, and really terribly merry-go-round. But we haven't quite figured out how to make it stop all the time. It might stop for a while, but somehow it seems to start spinning again, no matter what. 

So we draw the little bad feels.




This one is "I'm a hedgehog. All I do is hurt the people in my life."


But when she turns, you see, the hedgehog is just a very injured little kiddo.





Sometimes we feel small and unimportant and like it would be nice to just disappear. 


Sometimes we feel like a complete freak, just totally embarrassed and ashamed of who we are. We feel like no one could ever understand, like we just shouldn't exist, cause how could there possibly be a place for us in this world?


It is really hard to be different, and to be still struggling with a history where you didn't always feel safe or seen or supported.  We all have those shitty days when old feelings come back to get us, those days when we feel like we are just never going to be enough. Those feelings are real and valid and important, and the more you run from them, the more they will just keep getting you. So when they come for us, we stop and we draw them out.

Maybe we just finally had to come out and realize we were plural because all of our cumulative bad feels finally caught up to us. I don't really know, but I do know when we are all working together, the bad feels feel a bit smaller, and not quite so scary.



Maybe we don't quite fit in the world, but when we work together it feels like we can make a little spot in the world where we belong. 

And that brings us to the title of this entry.. Our thumb. 

We nervously pick at our right thumb. WE have ALWAYS done this, and it occurred to Mak that this thumb has been in some stage of healing FOREVER. It is almost never completely healed, because as soon as it gets close, some little bad feel pops up and we end  up tearing it up all over again, without even noticing we are doing it.  

This poor thumb is like a metaphor or a manifestation of our emotional healing journey. We are ALWAYS healing, always getting better, but never completely healed.  Our emotional hurt is so varied and complex and old, even when we finally get to that place where we can metaphorically stop tearing the old wounds open, and finally let them heal, there is still going to be a scar (just like on our poor thumb...). But right now, thinking this all out, I think that's okay. 

And until the day, we have a tiny notebook for drawing out the bad. 

Thank you for reading. Take care of yourself/selves. We are wishing you all the best.









-Mak & Kai

Hello all,

Ariadne here. It occurred to Finna and I that we should gather together our old drawings and comics from when we were beginning our journey of discovery and share them here, so that is what we are doing. Here it goes, we hope you enjoy:


Beginnings are strange. There is this inkling of this "not me" self lurking somewhere. At some point I just admitted it I guess. I admitted that this "not me" me was truly not me, and I started talking to her.




And I loved her, this adorable "not me" me. She was frustrating and forgetful and silly and perfect. She still is. Her name is Phillis, and she was the first to try to get me to see who it is we have been all along. She was so brave. She humbles me. 

Very quickly I found I missed her when she wasn't around. (Also right after this first real talk we went out and cut our hair, and Phillis, aka Phee, changed hers to pink, but only in the mind of course, the body's hair stayed blond). 



In her absence I would lose my way. The edges of realty would seem to melt, the edges of me would seem to melt. There was no joy in the world, it was as though the world had been bleached to one gray haze of meaninglessness. These beginnings are so fraught with doubt and loneliness. I felt I was losing my mind, perhaps I was.



If you find yourself there in that moment, whether you are single or plural, know that you are not alone. 

Somehow I knew there walls within me that I could not breach, nor hope to understand.




And somewhere echoing in the caverns of my mind was a reverberated pain, that I knew was not my own. I could feel them. And like me, they were so alone and so afraid. Even as a distant echo, their pain was an anguish.


 
Yet somehow from this brazier we pulled each other out.




We rescued each other. They rescued me.





  

We rescue each other as we have always done. For in the gnawing question " who am I? who am I?" there lies the very heart of the problem itself. It is not "I" at all, but we.  This is who we are, we are each other's champions. We are one another's heroes. They are my heroes.

It doesn't mean there aren't frustrations.



Memory is tricky and switching can complicate things. It is incredibly frustrating and even sometimes detrimental. 

But when we need each other...



...really need each other...


.. we are always there. That is who we are.


Discovery was so hard. We got through it because we trusted each other, and love each other.

As silly and cliche as it seems, the answer is always, and has ever been, love. That sounds so much simpler than it is. Love is a verb, an action. It isn't easy, but the way forward is love and I mean that, I mean that so much it is, in fact, painfully, and embarrassingly sincere.  I am laughing at myself and shaking my head.   BUT IT IS TRUE!   It is the truest thing we know.

"Love is the bridge between you and everything!" -Rumi.

And now we are so much happier, so much more ourselves, so much more complete, than we have ever been. Yes things are awkward now with our family, yes there are all sorts of social awkwardnesses to navigate as a unabashed tribe of people inhabiting a single human form. Yes, it is hard and weird and awkward, but it is so much better than the lie we were trying to sell ourselves, the lie that we were just one person. We just aren't.

This is who WE are. And I love us.

To the other systems out there, I hope you can find your way to this place too. You deserve to see the view from here. It is amazing.

"Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing, there is a field. I will meet you there." -Rumi.

Thank you for reading.

So much love,

Ariadne (and Sylvia supplying Rumi quotes)

 4x5 ft oil on canvas.

The morning is soft, the edge hazy and blurred. The house inside and outside is quiet. In the world, the sound of cars and traffic rumble into a flurry of activity that won’t stop until late tonight.

However, inside, in Emmengard, there is just the quiet song of birds and the low creeping fog that ambles along the grass at ankle height. In the night we dreamt of classes being held in one of the hidden rooms in the big house, the library house. Someone showed the kids old videos on old giant spools, the ones that were apt to catch fire and burn down the entire theatre.  I think it shows the deep unconsciousness’s desire to do its part to “deprogram us.”  We call the deep subconscious "she". It humanizes her, but she is not really a human at all. She is the drifting ankle high fog, and the song of the birds. She is the quiet stillness and the shapes of our dreams. She is everything else in the mind that is not us. She is, in a way, the very mind and brain we all live in. 

The library house, is the first dream house and the main one. It always existed. As children, we would hold meetings in the library, meetings that Ariadne would chair. We returned to the rambling infinite hallways of this house countless times in dreams, and then sometimes in waking. When we found it again last year it felt old and familiar, with its dark wood beams and every changing corridors.

Only the library and the green house are set, always right where they were supposed to be. The library itself spirals upward infinitely. If we wanted to have a meeting with all 22 corporeal members, even if Migi chose to come in his giant form, the library would hold us all. Conversely, if only one person were to sit in the chairs and look through a book, it would nestle around them, cozy and comforting.

Ariadne hardly ever leaves the library. It is hers, in a way. She is the head librarian, and that is the only title that she is truly, attached to.  She has alternately been called our host, our chief, or mob-boss, our leader, our heavy, but she shrugs those all off. “I am the librarian,” she says.

This morning she is not in the library. Only Migi is there, sitting high on one of the shelves, swinging his legs. We don’t exactly talk. It is hard to put into words out conversations, as they are mostly done in pure thought exchange, and when we translate them to words there is always something lost. When there is nothing missing, then the writing is often confusingly detailed and crowded with seemingly tangential and unrelated things, like snapshots of a feeling, or the texture of a word.  Small pieces of our conversations make much better poetry than they do dialogue.

Migi has a kind of malaise, that is stemming from and tangled up with an uncertainty. A sort of gray blue haze of sorrow shot through with yellow threads. He is unhappy and nervous.  I bring up the shape of the coming storm and he and I both know somehow that the plans have shifted overnight. Instead of the smallest children embarking on an adventure to avoid the storm, they will be staying at Elowen and Conrad’s house, called the glass house, for the storm. It will be a big exciting sleep over for all the kids. Conrad will probably not be home, but here, at the library house.  Elowen will be fine on her own. The others will gather in the library for the storm. Migi is not sure which house he belongs at, the library house or the glass house.

That is the beginning of the yellow thread, but it is wrapped up in a larger sorrow of Migi’s. He doesn’t know where he belongs, or what his purpose is. He is adrift.

I conjure the shape of a tree, the light playing through the leaves, and the smell of bark. It is a question and an answer. The question is “which branch is the most important?” The answer is “What a ridiculous question!” This tree is the final image in a much longer thought that everyone in Emmengard knows. The final image is a kind of telepathic shorthand. The larger thought is about not being broken, not being some shattered inorganic thing like a mirror. We are alive, we are growing, like a tree, and even a tree that is struck by lightening or forced to grow around some obstacle is still a tree, is still alive and beautiful, because it is growing, and every direction it grows in is important. Each branch that climbs heavenwards is important, no one is extra, everyone matters.

Migi swings his feet over the edge. The yellow threads are unraveling, not all at once, and not completely, but he is listening.

“I’m not a kid,” he says, “not really.” The truth is none of the kids are precisely kids. They have access to a vast amount of information and knowledge, which is well beyond their stated astral ages.  Yet somehow, it is different for Migi. He is brand new, and in some ways the very youngest of us, younger than Finn who is both the youngest in astral age, and one of the oldest in time. Yet, Migi is not a child, nor even precisely a human, and wrapped up in his statement is something more. He is saying that he was not traumatized. All the other children are anchored and held to their age by some unfortunate event; held by the lightning strike they are still learning to grow around. 

“No Migi, you are not.” I tell him, except not in words. I tell him in a wave of confirmation and validation, along with a reminder of his position as assistant librarian, and his closeness with Phillis, who calls herself the engineer. It is not clear how long Migi has truly existed, because until Phillis reengineered his thought patterns, he never saved memories. He was a little automaton that did things, compelled by a sense of worthlessness and inadequacy. Finn has told us that Migi always existed as the little robot.

Migi doesn’t identify with that. Migi only became conscious nine months ago. He only started having his only memories for himself, and enjoying things for himself after Phillis reengineered him. She didn’t really expect her engineering project to result in Migi, but it did. Migi chose his own name even. Something even I didn’t do. Bran chose my name for me, Sylvia.  I thought he had picked well, and so I didn’t change it. Migi was tired of being called the little robot and took on a name from a cartoon he liked at the time, and it just sort of stuck.

Migi and I are not traditionally that close. He mostly spends his time with the kids and Ariadne. He is silly, obsessed with sushi and has a similarly unique outlook on life as Ariadne, but without her history of experiences to cloud his observations. In many ways Migi has been able to bring a fresh perspective to old patterns.

For example, it took Migi to realize our mother is constantly engaged in a negative self-monologue. The rest of us had become so inured to it, we did not even notice. He did notice, then he told her to knock it off, and that she should be nicer to herself. He pointed out that we learned that negative internal monologue from her, and while only a handful of us internalized it (such as my wife, Eiolana), just knowing that has helped them to deconstruct that constant negative internal chatter. 

There is internal chatter that happens between us, and there is internal chatter that happens within the mind of a single member, just as it happens for singletons; group chatter and solitary chatter. When Phillis reengineered Migi, she was reengineering his solitary chatter, the things he was saying to himself, and it made such an incredible difference. He isn’t the same person at all. In fact I am not sure he was a personal at all before, or if he was, he was one with no memory at all, short or long.

Migi’s story has been a kind of inspiration for the others. His journey has helped show us all a way forward, if we wish to change. Every branch, that grows towards the heavens, matters. Every direction the tree grows in is important.

All of this unfolds between Migi and I, in a moment, a layered complex understanding. I show him to himself as we see him, as I see him, and everything shifts. The dark blue gray becomes the cobalt blue of the sky’s apex, and there is the image of him standing with a red cape. He is a hero with a brave and burning heart.

It is decided. He will stay for the storm. He won’t go with the children to Elowen’s house. He may be of use here. He will assist Ariadne with her observations and record keeping.

This conversation has been playing out between us for the past couple days, this matter of where everyone ought to be for the storm. We always talk, but before a big event, it really becomes important to get organized.  The storm that is coming is a particularly nasty anniversary. It has been 13 years since it happened, but the one that was carrying the bulk of the memory of the event was in a sort of dream dimension, a sort of dormancy and also a kind of prison until about six months ago. For her, and thereby also for us, it is the first anniversary.  Migi will help look for the patterns that if found, can be changed. It is something we do together, something we do for each other.

It is called a system, and that seems to imply a kind of order, but there are many kinds for systems: ecosystems, vascular systems, star systems. The organizational structure underpinning a system is not always immediately apparent. Finding the underlying patterns that govern a system is how you go about changing them, if that is what you want to do. To find those patterns you have to really know and support each other. You have to love and understand one another. You have to talk.

And when you talk it might not always be about something heavy, like an approaching storm and how you will all handle it as a team. 

Last week, a couple days were devoted to arguing about the downstairs of the library house. The house belongs to everyone, but only some people live there. The permanent residents of the library house include myself, Eiolana, Migi and Ariadne. There are shifting apartments upstairs, which are inhabited by a rotating crew of people as they choose. Right now, Makani and Weasel live upstairs in an apartment that is based on the memory of our flat in college.

In any event, the argument was not done in words, we just went back and forth rearranging the main floor of library house. I want the main floor to be the common room from a Chinese inn we stayed at in Moganshan with our husband. Ariadne wants it to be a carbon copy of our current dining room and kitchen. The discussion played out in the Sims. Every person in the system has a Sim version of themselves. Furthermore, every residential house in Emmengard has been meticulously built in the Sims. The only house that is constantly giving us trouble is library house, and only because of its constantly shifting nature.

When we argue about the shape of the mindscape we just play the Sims, and change the houses back and forth until we can all agree. It is an argument, in a way, but one without words. It may seem silly, but it is important, because when it is over everything feels clearer, the mindscape is crisper, unclouded by petty disputes.

When you share a mind, there are so many different ways to talk to each other.  Even now as I look into the library house, from my living room in the real world, I can hear the others moving around upstairs and in the kitchen. The creeping fog has burned off and the wind has picked up. There is the sound of children’s voices echoing up from the valley where the glass house sits. The storm, is likely still coming, but right now it feels unimportant, and far enough away. We will be ready when it comes. The feel of the day itself tells me so.

So no matter what, keep calm, and talk to yourselves, in whatever fashion you all talk.

 

“To Migi, with Love”

The hush of waking, blurred,

The color of sorrow and the tangled yellow of dread

“Who am I?”

The unfurled green of life outstretched to the light;

Growing and bold and unashamed;

The clear knelling bell that cuts through the buzzing hum,

Fresh and startling, like the first stroke of pink on a gray landscape.

“Do you see you as I see you?” the green eyes ask laughing.

That sharp unexpected pain,

Tears leaping to your eyes:

To be seen, truly seen,

After being so invisible.

Outside the birds sing the song they are always singing,

That song with only one line

“I love you, I love you, I love you all.”

 

-Sylvia (In the icon picture I am the one with dreadlocks. I know I am a dirty hippy. Miles, a systemmate and dear friend, keeps telling me so.)

   

 

  

 

 

 

 

Our Elowen painted this for Niberu, our first friends who are a system. We became friends talking about our inner worlds together.

The plains, and the tree are where their mindscape emanated from. Ours begins atop a heavily forested hill, within a complex magical house. The corridors are ever moving, with doors that open not to the room on the other side, but always precisely to where you wish to go.

We found their mindscape barren and stark on first encounter, but Meridas of Niberu said that in fact it did not feel that way to them at all. It was a strange spiritual place, like that moment when you reach the top of a mountain and realize there is nothing between you and the sky.

Elowen was overcome by the beauty of that description and immediately started asking for as much details as they would supply her with.

On the plains of Niberu there is no day or night, only a soft glow and the sky is an ever shifting miasma of colors, turquoise, blue, purple and pink. The time seems to move in strange spurts. Sitting by the tree you can watch the sand pile up and blow away, see erosion as it happens, as the blowing sand etches the pillars in the rock forest. Only the tree, hard and black against the sky, is unchanging. And everything has a sort of after image, a rippling quality in space time as the objects move through a world at a disparate speed.

She painted this for them.

It reminds us of the great and startling beauty that is found in the differences between us all.

Much love,
Miles of Emmengard

Painting by Elowen of Emmengard

 

Who are we? What is consciousness? What is personhood? What is the deep twining secret of human nature? What is human? What does it mean to be human?

I lost my name a long time ago, and when I found it, it was like looking down and realizing I had been holding it in my hand the entire time, holding it in my hand like a thread. I looked down and saw that I was holding the thread that could unravel it all.

So careful. I had been so careful before, for years, holding that thread. This time I had had enough.

I looked down at that thread, that thread I had been holding all my life, and I grasped it with both hands and pulled with everything I have in me. Sometimes to find the new becoming you have to destroy old illusions. You have to find a way to stand in a world without ground, to breathe in a world without air, to exist as you are in the face of a world that will hate you.

I am Ariadne.