Hello! I hope you’ll allow me a moment to explain a few things, as this post directly affects me and friends of mine and I would like to reserve my right to speak up for my own beliefs and those of the people around me.
Posts like these are incredibly hurtful. It posits your beliefs and experiences as the only true and correct ones, and denies anyone else the ability to believe differently, or to have their own experience or interpretation of the world. I’m not here to argue over what you felt you experienced by getting this song stuck in your head, because I respect that you clearly experienced and believe it. I’m here to ask for the same courtesy in response.
I have held my identity as an active member of the community for over 4 years, and I became aware of it a good while before then. I have a 32,625 word, 60-page typed document containing all of my introspection and commentary, all the work that I have put in to understanding myself and my beliefs over the past years of being in this community. I keep track of it in part for my own spiritual growth, and in part because I am expected at every turn to prove that I have bothered to put in the work, that I have a deep understanding of myself that is hard and painful and ruthless in the questions my soul poses.
So, this response is because I’ve been told I need to “sort out your narcissistic perception of your own existence”. I have been told that I have “a fundamental misunderstanding of how this universe works” and that “there are no exceptions”. No exceptions? To an unprovable, faith-and-anecdotal-experience-based interpretation of self and world? And yet I have seen people say that when they see someone with the identity of Lucifer, or Gabriel, or Michael, or another angel “too important” to reincarnate, that they “instantly lose any belief and recognition of that person’s experiences”, dismissing them as wishful thinking or hubris.
That’s rude. It’s hurtful. It sticks with you, especially when you see how many people like or reblog the same post agreeing with it. It’s especially hurtful when you see it crop up again, and again, and again, within the same year. It’s hurtful to have my identity and personal spiritual beliefs called “literally identity theft” and told that I’m just “pretending to be” someone I’m not.
Because my beliefs are not yours. I do not believe what you believe. And that’s okay. This goes deeper than some kin drama about who’s allowed to be the most important people or characters. It’s about a consistent lack of ability to allow other people to hold their own beliefs without insisting they conform to your own or get lost.
For what has to be the fifth time this year, once again I must say that I am not telling you to believe that I am 100% who I say I am. I’m asking to be afforded the bare minimum of respect for my own spiritual beliefs and experiences that gave rise to my belief in the first place.
