#i've actually run lessons and courses on teaching people how to connect with and talk to animal selves and animal parts aslkdfjsadfsa

[i-left-my-room-tidy]

as a fellow reality shifter, can you recommend studying philosophy?

[thanks for this ask!]

apologies for the late reply! i wanted to answer this only once the semester had ended, so i could kind of have a feel of what one run of the course was like before i gave my opinion.

before anything else, i just want to put a reminder that I'm not putting any 'spoilers' about the course itself, so to speak. just some general stuff I've observed for myself.

- - -

honestly, it really depends on how you look at it, and how you do go about your studies. i suppose the amount of interest you have in it contributes to the perspective and the experience on it. i chose to study philosophy because of genuine interest and a need to find my own niche hobby. when i realised i could use it as a reference for some shifting topics, then, all the better, in my opinion.

theoretically speaking, i would recommend it. the timelessness of the knowledge you gain makes it worth it. there's always a way to connect it to reality shifting, demands as a science be damned. when i had a quick philosophy class in twelfth grade, i found myself hooked onto each of our lessons because i found that i could link two of my passions together. when i entered the first month of college, i thought, finally, a way i could formally argue in defense of shifting.

personally, most of the downsides I've observed are circumstancial.

you can't just freely speak about shifting, even with regards to philosophy as a course. you need to be ready to defend it. it differs from what, say, theology would teach, obviously; but for instance, if you were to discuss the origins of shifting as a means to discuss the concept of reality or something of the sort, your ideas might(?) get shot down. that's only speaking from my own experience, though.

granted, people might be more open to talking about the phenomena of reality shifting, even with philosophy. the course literally demands impartiality and mental flexibility. it's supposed to be an environment for free thinking. but the chances of finding someone who would be actually know about shifting and be interested in it are likely low.

philosophy is still fun for me, even with some bad experiences with professors. i like making essays no matter how long they get and i like defending my own arguments. i don't always think of or incorporate reality shifting when I'm doing my work, but it's definitely an exciting avenue to explore.

[not-poignant]

There's an essay on lithub by an author who had an octopus talking to her in her head as she wrote a novel about him, and I thought you might enjoy it. Shades of stupidhead. It's called lessons learned from a year listening to the fictional octopus in my head

Hi anon!

I've been sent the link to this a few times already (a lot of people know I love cephalopods, and that I do work with spiritual and non spiritual animal teachers - I literally run and write this website about animal meanings and animal teachers)!

I found it interesting, though I didn't really connect specifically with the article (I had more of a detached 'oh neat this is something I've seen a lot of people do before' reaction).

I think it's really cool that the writer was able to have these processes and this experience, and was able to talk to an aspect of themselves - it's a thing a lot of people (especially people who work with animals on a spiritual level) have experienced and do, whether it's an inner wolf, or snail, or spider etc. It's pretty cool, 100% not a unique phenomenon, but it's just awesome that we got a cool article that markets a book about it. :D

It reminds me a lot of Internal Family Systems parts work, where you can - among other things - sometimes let a part take on a voice, or it does it anyway, and then you have literal conversations with aspects of yourself. Those sorts of internal dialogue systems are awesome, and it's a great phenomenon for self-communication, and doing it through the symbolism of an animal avatar can be really powerful, because you can ascribe characteristics of that animal to your inner voice (or it can self-ascribe), and sometimes make the voice more appealing or at least understandable because of it.

I have an inner wolverine that's been leaving commentary around the place in my life for easily over 15 years. In that sense, it can even be used as a deliberate technique for self-communication, esp if you have a fragmented sense of self. It's why some people are super drawn to spiritual animal work, they just have always connected to animals better than people, and then realised they could communicate to themselves through animals, even in their own heads.

Anyway, tl;dr, very cool article, I'm happy for the author and her self-acceptance as a writer, and that she can share that (and her book/s) with others too. :D