Later on, I will post an article about what happened when I followed my own dogma for a month, but right now I would like to take this moment to talk about the doctrines themselves. In this post, I will go into the Five Major Dogmas that everyone should follow in my eyes, as they create the whole base for my own Path in life.
#1 Figure out who YOU are
I can truly attest that nothing comes close to the misery of not following your own true self in a sense. Whether we are wrapped inside the ideologies of a person who we have chosen to be part of our lives or even a whole communities principals, we will eventually turn out to be in turmoil, as we have not been entirely honest with ourselves. For me as a Borderline Person, this was both terrifying and exciting to do, and quite frankly it is a lifelong project we should all aim to perfect.
Once I figured out the main pathways that I knew to be the true me, my essence so to speak, I made them into my frame. By this frame, I will now live the rest of my life, knowing that whatever life will throw at me I will be able to take it, as what I am doing is deeply meaningful and I truly see it as my purpose in life. I will deploy my frame as the basic component on which I can lean when tragedy or problems arise and I am confident they can be resolved within the frame.
I like to think of the infinity in which we live as the Cosmic Ocean in which we all have to learn to swim in. Some parts of the ocean are too much for us, and some will feel like a pleasantly joyous experience. I found those parts out, and while I was really close to being able to live my true life when I was still a child, I chose to listen to the people around me that were dealing with their own prejudice and chaos instead. Now that I am here for myself again, I found my way back into the waters that are my own and made the commitment to never sway from them. My frame for life is to be in a Supporting role, as I excel in it and enjoy working from the shadows to aid my loved ones. It is to keep Writing, as it is my medium for bringing myself into the world (and I am quite good at typed creation). And finally, it means to be a Learner. I shine when I have a new thing to learn, and I excel 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 was once reading through a book called Living Judaism to get more familiar with my husband’s origins and a clause in it resonated with me tremendously. I had already previously been listening to a Taoist podcast about how we are basically stardust. The clause was a part of a story and went as follows:
“God put the light into jars, heavenly vessels that would hold His radiance.”
I started to call this part of myself the Fragment and later figured out that it is the one thing we can’t really define. We have a body, we have a mind, and we even have a soul. But who are we? I’ve also been familiarizing myself with Jung’s work, and the separation between the I and the vessel becomes even clearer to me these days. The Fragment is the part of us that can tell 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 really be listening to that part of ourselves more. We ought to honor the wisdom that we all harbor inside us, although it can be incredibly difficult to do that these days. We are too busy blasting ourselves with media, music, and other people’s misguided ideologies and we seem too eager to be hopping on all the bandwagons that will allow us to be a part of 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 this theory of storms, as I do being a bit cooky and creative, and there are four that I found for myself: The Body, The Mind, The Inner Circle, and The Outworld.
The Two first ones are things we must learn to master, as they are 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 minds and psyche, so we truly need to take good care of it. The mind then is one chaotic place, and can also have an effect on the body. It is 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 will not crumble under the shredding winds of our world and society.
On top of mastering our inner chaos and physicality, we need to find a way to traverse the Outworld storm, where all the rest of the people reside. Without having that solid core and knowing who we are, we can’t really be trusted to make informed decisions on who to let into our Inner Circle – usually these misguided pickings only lead to sorrow and heartache. In my case, it lead to abandoning my true self for over a decade while being used and abused by people I had chosen not because I was listening to the Fragment, but because I was desperate to not be alone.
I’ve noticed that one way to not get engulfed and devoured by the chaos of the world is to master myself above all and to understand that the Outworld storm is not for me to master, but nonetheless, I must learn to navigate it. Trust 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 is valuable. 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 better than the next person’s, no matter what their conviction or opinion is?
Based on the inarguable fact that we are all quite miraculous, there is the sentiment that we all deserve the basic level of respect and kindness as fellow lifeforms. In my eyes, your privileges as a human being will only start dwindling if you should choose to treat me poorly or threaten the life of others objectively (and no, having a different opinion or worldview is not an objective threat to mine or anyone else’s existence).
I would like to add another thought, about the animal world. While I value all life, including the skittering critters of the dirt piles, 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, and knowing that we are omnivores and that I personally am healthier and better off being a meat eater, that is 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 am truly thankful for all the things I can consume, flora or fauna, as they all have that spark of life in them. I mean, some plants have been shown to even feel pain on certain levels!
#5 Seek the Objective Truth with Curiosity
This one will be hard for the wokemob, I think, and seemingly the whole world as a whole. An objective truth, a thing that can be proven to be right and has substantial evidence to back it up, preferably from multiple sources, has often been sidelined by the notion of ‘’My Truth’’. I am sorry to tell you, your truth means very little to the rest of the world, where facts will eventually reign supreme. This was a hard lesson for me to learn, as I was once on that drifting boat of misguided opinions.
As the world progresses the very language we use is being twisted into meanings that are based on whatever notions the ideology deems fit. 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 and understanding. I for one am not stupid enough to claim that endless amounts of evolution leading up to me being manifested would’ve got it wrong. I am as I am, as I should be, and there are some things that don’t care about how I feel about them.
I can’t bring anyone back to life, so I should treat each individual as valuable and never take life away, be it an adult or a budding fetus. I was born a female of the human race, and no matter how I’d wish I had my husband’s amazingly strong body and mind (or his general male functionality), I will never be able to obtain it as we are built differently. And, unfortunately for me, dragons are not flying 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 and 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.
To try and control anything but yourself, and even that has its limits as anyone with explosive diarrhea can attest to, would be foolish. To live alive with closed eyes and never hearing your Fragment spells nothing but misery. It is my true belief, that the true self is all for the good, virtuous things in life. It does not want us to suffer, and thus it will try to guide us to be proper beings since alone, we amount to very little. That is why I have decided to place my fate into the hands of my Fragment, my True Self. And I am already being greatly rewarded for it.