For your interest, here is what happened when I followed the dogma for a month. Right now I will get into the Five Major Dogmas I came up with after substantive introspection. They create the whole base for my own Path in life and are something we should all practice!
#1 Figure out who YOU are
I can truly attest that nothing comes close to the misery of not following your true self in a sense. The ideologies of a person or a community that we have taken into our lives captivate us. Eventually, we turn out to be in turmoil, as we haven’t been entirely honest with ourselves. The task at hand was both terrifying and exciting for me as a Borderline person. And quite frankly, it is a lifelong project we should all aim to master.
Once I figured out the pathways I knew to be my true essence, I made them into a frame. I will now live the rest of my life by this frame. With it, I know that whatever life will throw at me I will be able to take it like a champ. Everything I do is deeply meaningful and I truly see it as my purpose in life. I can lean on these tenets when tragedies arise and will be able to face them with confidence.
Find your waters
I think of the infinity in which we live as the Cosmic Ocean. We all have to learn to swim in it one way or another. Some parts of the ocean are inevitably too much, and some will feel like a pleasantly joyous experience.
As a child, I already found those parts out. While I was close to being able to live my true life then, I chose to listen to others. They, of course, were dealing with their own prejudice and chaos. Things have changed, though. I’m here once more, stepping up for myself. I found my way back into the waters that are mine and made the commitment to never sway from them.
My frame includes a Supporting role. I excel in it and enjoy working from the shadows to aid my loved ones. It includes Writing, as it is my medium for bringing myself into the world (and I’m quite the creator). And finally, it means to Learn. I shine when I have a new thing to study, excelling in literature and other theoretical, thoughtful, and philosophical ponderings. All three things come to me pretty much effortlessly, and I can derive endless joy and meaning from doing them.
#2 Honor your Fragment
I once read a book called Living Judaism, since I wanted to get to know my husband’s origins. A clause in the tome resonated with me tremendously. I’d already been listening to a Taoist podcast about how we are basically stardust. The statement was part of a story and went as follows:
“God put the light into jars, heavenly vessels that would hold His radiance.”
Living Judaism by Wayne D. Dosick
I named this part of myself the Fragment and later figured out that it’s the one thing we can’t define. We have a body, we have a mind, and we even have a soul. But who are we? I’ve also been reading Jung, and the separation between the I and the vessel becomes even clearer. The Fragment is the part of us that tells the brain to think of a chair, and a chair appears. It is our sentience, our true self.
As a part of the bigger Cosmic Order, we should be listening to that part of ourselves more. We ought to honor the wisdom that we all shelter, although it can be difficult to do these days. We are too busy blasting ourselves with media, music, and other people’s misguided ideologies. On top of that, we are eager to hop on all the bandwagons that’ll allow us into the group. Humans inherently don’t enjoy not belonging, more so people like me with BPD. We are pack animals.
#3 Master your Storms
So, how are we to listen to this Cosmic Fragment within us? Well, we master our storms, making sure no noise will be able to drown its wise voice. I came up with a theory of storms, and there are four I established for myself: The Body, The Mind, The Inner Circle, and The Outworld.
The Two first ones are things we MUST master, as they’re directly in relation to our own health and psyche. Without our vessel, the body, there will be no life, and thus there will be nothing. The Body also has an amazing ability to affect our psyche, so we need to take good care of it.
The mind then is one chaotic place, and can also have an effect on the body. It’s incremental that we learn to master the two of them before we take on the other two storms. Build a strong foundation, so that we won’t crumble under the shredding winds of our world and society.
The outside world
On top of mastering our inner chaos and physicality, we need to find a way to traverse the Outworld storm. After all, that’s where the rest of the people reside. Without having a solid core and knowing who we are, we shouldn’t trust that our decisions are informed. Including who to let into our Inner Circle. Usually, these misguided pickings only lead to sorrow and heartache. In my case, it led to abandoning my true self for over a decade. I didn’t choose those who used and abused because listened to the Fragment. I chose them because I feared abandonment.
I’ve noticed ways not to get engulfed and devoured by the chaos of the world. One of them is to master myself above all. I also understood that the Outworld is not for me to master. I just have to learn to navigate it. Take it from me, the chaos is not a place for anyone to be for extended periods of time. You might just start believing in dragons in the sky as I did!
#4 Value Life
Now here is an unpopular, vilified opinion: All life matters. We all have a Cosmic Fragment inside us, we all are miracles in our own right. From the vast pool of genomes and evolution, each one of us came to be. How wondrous is that? And who are we then, to say that my life is any more valuable than the next person’s, no matter what?
Based on the fact that we are all miraculous, we all deserve the basic level of respect and kindness as beings. Your privileges start dwindling only if you choose to treat me poorly or threaten the lives of others. And no, having a different opinion or worldview isn’t an objective threat to my or anyone else’s existence.
I’d like to add another thought, about the animal world. While I value all life, including the skittering critters of the dirt, I also understand the predatory nature of the world. As a human, I have the option to choose what I deem is best for me. Yet, I go against the growing norm by being a meat eater. Knowing that we are omnivores and that I’m healthier when I eat meat, it’s the choice I make.
It’s a lion-eat-antelope world out there, and we as humans are apex predators. As a part of my reverence for life, I’m truly thankful for all the things I consume. Flora or fauna, as they all have that spark of life in them. I mean, plants have been shown to even communicate!
#5 Seek the Objective Truth with Curiosity
This one will be hard for some, and seemingly for the whole world as a whole. An objective truth is something that can be proven to be right and has substantial evidence to back it up. Yet, it is often sidelined by the notion of ‘’My Truth’’. I’m sorry to tell you, your truth means little to the rest of the world, where facts will reign supreme. This was a difficult lesson for me to learn, as I was once on that drifting boat of misguided opinions.
As the world progresses the mobs twist our language into meanings that they base on notions of their ideologies. Objective truth seems to be the boogeyman under every person’s bed. Accepting the natural facts can be a hard thing to do, but eventually, it will lead to more contentment. I for one am not stupid enough to claim that endless years of evolution got it wrong. I am as I am, as I should be. Unfortunately, there are some things that don’t care about how I feel about them.
I can’t bring anyone back, so I should treat individuals as miracles and never take a life, be it an adult or a budding fetus. I was born a female of the human race. No matter how I wish for my husband’s strong male body and mind, I’ll never be able to obtain it. And, unfortunately for me, there are no dragons in the sky and my husband tends to be 99% right in most matters.
Conclusion
Life as we know it is already complicated enough without us having to deal with everyone else’s chaos. My Major Dogmas relate to growing as a person and learning to traverse the world. To deal with its factual state. For someone with a Borderline, this has been quite the world-shattering, revolutionary twist in the plot of life. From blaming everything and everyone, including myself, I’ve come around to try and see things differently. The world had so much more color than I could’ve ever thought in my perpetual ideological psychosis.
Trying to control anything but yourself, and even that has its limits as anyone with explosive diarrhea can attest to, would be foolish. To live with closed eyes and never hearing your Fragment spells nothing but misery. It’s my true belief, that the true self is all for the good, virtuous things in life. It doesn’t want us to suffer, and thus it’ll try to guide us to be proper beings. Alone, we amount to very little. That’s why I have decided to place my fate into the hands of my Fragment, my True Self. And I’m already being greatly rewarded.
Last Updated: 25/06/2023