There is in every person the possibility of an integrated Soul Personality. However, normally the average person is split to a greater or lesser degree, dependent upon the amount of pain, trauma and undigested stress in their lives and dependent upon the amount of work they have done to integrate their personalities by means of therapy and meditation.

Therapy and psychology allow intellectual appreciation of the problem in ourselves and others. It takes meditation to heal the splits and integrate the separated selves.

Charles Tart and others have used the symbology of the very nature of cyberspace as acting as a sort of "universal solvent" to break up our long cherished notions, myths that everyone is a monolithic self.

The ease with which we can take on new Split Personalities and new connectivities in the virtual domain implies an average self which is multivalent, fluid and de-centered-- a self which often operates in parallel, in different modalities and different capacities.

I propose that a model for the average unintegrated person, this new, postmodern, postrationalist, cyberspatial self can be found in the cluster of psychological manifestations currently known as Splitting - or Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), and formerly and more popularly as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD).

But I also propose that Shamen and Enlightened Saints have provided a higher model of Personality integration in the concept of the Soul Infused Personality and integration with the Higher Self.

The average person lives in a more or less completely self-constituted world, where fragments of personality are imbedded in a matrix of delusional projections. It is a world where inner-driven states are substituted for any kind of consensual reality, and a world where it is almost meaningless to talk about having "personality" at all.

The task of Deleuze and Guattari's happy schizophrenic is to harness this condition of non-referentiality to the use of forging a new kind of self, in an essentially linguistic transformation, free of the moral and psychological despotism of Modernism.

Schizophrenia is very different from normal and average Splitting only in degree.

The concept of dissociation

The concept of Multiple Personalities has evolved over not just centuries, but millennia, and throughout cultures as varied as nomadic hunter gatherers of the sub-arctic to contemporary industrial societies. At its core, this concept involves the inherent capacity of the human psyche to dissociate or split.

Colin Ross defines dissociation quite simply: "Dissociation is the opposite of association...For definitional purposes the psyche may be reduced to a collection of elements in complex relationships with each other. Psychic elements include thoughts, memories, feelings, motor commands, impulses, sensations, and all the other constituents of psychic life. Any two psychic elements may be more associated ... or relatively isolated and separate, which is to be dissociated." (Ross, 1997, p 116).

Dissociation is an important factor in normal psychological functioning, allowing for a degree of mutability and adaptability which would be impossible without it. In the absence of healing the painful event causing the split personality it is true that the only option of the average person is to have amnesia of the causing event which again causes all these symptoms.

It is probably best to think of dissociation on a steadily worsening continuum of split personality symptoms, from ordinary daydreaming, through such phenomena as forgetting where one is going on the freeway, to the particularly florid manifestations of dissociation which are commonly labeled as Multiple Personality. Although the phenomenon is usually thought of as purely psychological in nature, it can actually be either biologically or psychosociologically driven, as given by Ross (Ross, 1997, p 116):

Symptoms of the Split Personality 1.Normal biological dissociation-- Forgetting that you got up in the night to go to the bathroom. 2.Normal psychosocial dissociation-- Daydreaming during a boring lecture. 3.Abnormal psychosocial dissociation-- Amnesia for incest. 4.Abnormal biological dissociation-- Amnesia following a concussion.

An integrated soul personality is always there, solid, not lost or daydreaming.

These biological aspects of dissociation reinforce the notion that it is an entirely normal process in the average person.

Dissociation due to encapsulated pain is the only resort of the psyche which does not have the ability, through meditation to ground and heal that encapsulated pain or energy blockage.

Grounding the encapsulated trauma and pain centered in an energy blockage will obviate the necessity for the split and indeed heal any split which has occurred.

Shamen and the Guru as trained Healers. The earliest known references to dissociative phenomena are to be found in Neolithic cave paintings, in which Shamen can be seen entering into dissociated parts of their clients symbolised as animals and spirits. Jung used a similar methodology.

In fact, throughout the long march of what we call pre-history, such integrated psychic power abilities had great survival value, by enabling a connection with the interior worlds of spirits and animals, with which split humans coexisted. Persons adept at such entering the psyche of the split client for the purposes of integration were given positions of considerable power and respect in "primitive" societies.

Shamen and the enlightened, though, always had the ability to enter, heal and then come back. Split Personalities are lost, they are still searching for the road home, searching for Integration and healing.

The shamanistic tradition has survived almost to the present day in the circumpolar regions of Asia and North America, and study of these cultures provides our best view of how shamanism operated over tens of thousands of years so it is illustrative to examine this incredibly ancient and successful tradition.

Most shamen, as near as can be determined, seemed to be healthy and not suffering from mental disorders. They were integral members of their societies and often went through long periods of training to become adept, all of which argue against any sort of pathological component to their craft. The Shamen of the far north rarely, if ever, used hallucinogenic plants, relying instead exclusively on self-hypnosis and meditation. They were, in effect, rigorously trained professional psychics, priests who functioned variously as weather forecasters, doctors and conveyors of the oral tradition.

An example of the training given to Shamen is available in a 5000 years old text called, "The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali." In there a meditational methodology for integration with the soul has been extant for millennia. However, always the Guru Shaman who has walked the path was considered essential to the process of soul integration.

The healer, Shaman, Enlightened through much training, always have the ability to come back to themselves, to re-integrate after helping the integration of a client.

However, the cure for split personality for everyone is integration of the splits by grounding all the negative energy created by traumatic experiences which sustains the splits. As we ground all the negative energy through meditation, so the splits disappear and one integrated soul personality becomes in charge..

Start your integrative Process by learning how to meditate and then speed it up with the advanced techniques of Energy Enhancement based upon the thousands of years old ancient effective techniques of Taoism, The Kundalini Kriyas, The five elemental circulations of the Qi of Chinese Alchemical Taoism, The Guided Meditation of the Emerald tablet of Hermes Trismegistus encapsulated in VITRIOL and The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Satchidanand, Director of Energy Enhancement, is one of the leading teachers of Meditation!

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