THE PARTS MODEL -- 2

A Part's function is  to remind the Conscious Self of the particular Truth it contains, so you can react appropriately to similar situations without having to go through the whole learning process again. 

Some of these Parts are quite handy: the Part of you that contains the directions for how to get to the store, the Part that holds all you've learned about managing social situations, that knows all you know about how to drive, cook, or walk...  Those Parts of you get those things done, while you go on using your active, conscious mind to think about other things. 

Some Parts, however, through being full of information that you no longer actually believe, make your reactions painfully inappropriate to new situations, creates obstacles to change, or limits the choices you allow yourself. This is because, when you create a new Part to hold a new belief, a new understanding, a new Truth, the old ones don't go away.  

This, by the way, is why the practice of "affirmations" does not actually work, to change a behavior: If you lay new carpet over stinky old carpet, sooner or later, the smell is going to permeate the new one, too.  

Some Parts might be aware enough of your process of growth to go along with it: your new information reaches them, updates their belief systems, and appropriately alters their central Truth.  But many are closed systems: they are dormant, perhaps, or so adamant in their Truth, that no new information is going to induce them to change anything! 

Parts know what they know: besides the Truth, and all the evidence that reinforces those beliefs, because it is a holographic fragment of a whole person, it contains also the emotions and sensations, the opinions and self-image: the personality of that person, at the age it was created.  It is, in effect, a smaller 'person.'  And we all know how stubborn a person can be! 

So, Part of me wants to go because it's adventurous, and Part of me wants to stay because it's afraid, and Part of me wants to go back to bed because it hates deciding, while another Part of me wants to go eat, because food is so wonderfully distracting...! 

This whole personality, created in the image of the original, has the significant difference that it is a copy, and not, in fact, the original.  If a Part is really out of touch with the Consciousness it sprang from, it may not have grown at all since it began. It believes itself to be the Self, it has forgotten that you exist.

Consider the ramifications, if this model is true.  Consider how it reframes your own relationship with your ambivalences and confusions and self-limitations.  Consider what it implies about your choices and free-will, and habits you deplore but seem unable to change!

THE PARTS MODEL

First of all, this was not my idea. It is a model that comes out of cognitive psychology and neuro-linguistics.  I learned about it through Core Belief Engineering, a therapeutic technique for changing behavior through changing deeply-held beliefs.

Parts:  Each part of our consciousness, sub- and aware, that helps us process and balance our lives, is a fragment of ourselves held in the deeps and shadows of memory until called for.  Each such Part contains at its center, a truth,  along with all the evidence that proves it, the strategies that protect and support it and an alarm system to shove it into the forefront when Reality throws us a situation in which this Part's central truth holds a key to our success, well-being, maybe even our survival.

But wait--There's more!  And this is where it gets really interesting: A Part is actually a fragment of the Self, which is holographic in nature.

One of the things that this means, is that when a bit of a hologram flakes off, so to speak, that bit is not just an odd corner or a random-looking crumb; It is a tiny replica of the whole.  It takes a bit of the energy of the whole--Imagine the light of a hologram being the same amount as was contained in the whole, but is now shared also among its fragments--but the image is complete in both the original and the bit. 

That's what happens when you break a hologram. And so, that's what happens when a fragment breaks away from the Conscious Self, the Mind: a Part is a replica of who you were, the moment you decided that something was true.



(to be continued)

Defining Terms: SOUL MATES

What is a soul-mate, and how we can recognize one?  It seems like it should be easy, being soul-mates and all, but with all the perceptual filters of hopes and fears we all have, and the general fuzziness of spiritual terminology, it's by no means a sure thing to get it right.

There is no single, official definition for such terms, and that's why we need to compare notes, to be sure we are on the same page.  

Here's how I understand the concept of soul-mates:

In the earlier post about Past Lives, I mentioned Jane Roberts' novel, THE EDUCATION OF OVERSOUL SEVEN which describes an Oversoul that has several lesser Souls attached to it, like different fingers on one hand.  Each Soul is busy living its one individual life in its own place, its own piece of time. Each soul is experiencing and learning in their classroom in the School of Earthly Reality. The Oversoul, coordinating the knowledge acquired by each Soul's set of life-experiences, grows and learns as they do.

I define 'soul-mates,' based on this model, as the different 'fingers' of the 'hand.'

We recognize each other because we are made of the same stuff, we vibrate on the same, or very close frequencies, and whether we come together as friends, lovers. parents and children, siblings, or even as adversaries, there is an ineffable bond that we know is there.

Just because we meet up with a soul mate, it doesn't mean we will continue down our lifetime's path hand in hand to the end.

Sometimes we meet because we need to check in, to give or get reassurance and encouragement, or to share information.  When the need is answered, we can go on along our own paths again, focusing on our own particular lessons. Or maybe, it just happens that our paths intersect, and we share a moment of recognition over a cuppa, and then go on our ways.

Soul Mates may match with us, but they do not and cannot complete us: One of the lessons we are here to learn is that we are whole already: Incompleteness, like Loneliness, like Death, is an illusion. Convincing, but still illusion.  

Simply saying this and accepting it intellectually doesn't mean I never feel overwhelmingly alone, abandoned, walking about with great gaps in my Self...  But if I am paying attention when such feelings arise, it is within my realm of choices to remember what I believe is true, and to recognize that it is some fearful, lonely Part of myself that is expressing itself.