[Thunder]

Who really knows what MLC is?  With mental illnesses people behave in a certain fashion.  Like with shcizophrenia, they hear voices, them become delusional and paranoid.  They can act like 2 difference people. All seem to have basically the same symptoms.

If you look and MLC, isn't that pretty much also true?
We talk about the script all the time.  ILUBINILWU, I need space to figure out who I am, infidelity, personality change, the rewriting history. 

They all seem to do and say the exact same things.  Even in different parts of the world in different languages.

So who's to say with any certainty that this isn't a form of mental illness, even if temporary?

As far as I know there are some mental illnesses that can only be diagnosed through observing the behavior.  There are no blood test that tells the doctors that's what it is.

I'm not saying I believe that but it is food for thought.

I personally think my H's was hormonal. but I don't know that for sure.  Just my guess.

Sorry V, went off topic but BB got me thinking.   

[Thunder]

nah, you're creeping me out.   

Yes, those black, dead looking staring eyes.  Very scary to look into.
I'm glad I'm reading this during the day.  lol

[Slow Fade]

If you have never read "The Screwtape Letters" I would say that they are a very interesting theory on demonic influence as written by a Christian author. Fiction, but plausible I would day.

Satan's mission is to kill and destroy and he will use any weakness in order to accomplish his goals. Destruction of the family is high on his list and he seems to be working overtime in this area.

Does it rise to the level of "possession"? Maybe not, but definitely takes advantage in the vulnerabilities of mankind.

JMO........  

[Velika]

While I hesitated to start this topic, I'm finding this discussion interesting and fruitful. My personal opinion is in line with what BB wrote, that this is a form of poorly understood mental illness. I think the neurology thread is actually one of the most informative on the board. But, like BB — and maybe others here — I do have moments where I feel that MLC transcends all this. Just like I can't say, "This is a normal breakup," I also don't feel like I can say, "This is a normal breakdown." Sometimes this feels like a fairy tale or a myth.

Nah, what you wrote is so true and so important to my own experience. (But before I address that — the stiff walk! I know exactly what you are describing.) It almost felt, as soon as the wheels of MLC set in motion with bomb drop, all the other people in my life, as if propelled by another, benevolent unseen force began almost guiding me along as if they were working together. To this day, if I piece together just the things others have told me, said to me, that helped me — I can't help but feel that there really are very powerful, collective forces in the world, even "angels." I often feel that MLC pushes into the realm of the symbolic and even mythical at times, but it's important to remember that the opposite is also true. There are different forces at play.

I was researching a little last night and found some of what Jung describes very applicable to this thread. In a post titled "Are We Possessed?" by Paul Levy, there is a lot of insight reconciling the physical mind and the idea of demons and other archetypes.

I am not someone who has studied Jung, and while I'm not familiar with the author of this site, I found this article incredibly interesting and relevant.

C. G. Jung, the great doctor of the soul and one of the most inspired psychologists of the twentieth century, had incredible insight into what is currently playing out, both individually and collectively, in our modern-day world. He writes, “If, for a moment, we look at mankind as one individual, we see that it is like a man carried away by unconscious powers.” We are a species carried away — “possessed” by — and acting out, the unconscious. Jung elaborates, “Possession, though old-fashioned, has by no means become obsolete; only the name has changed. Formerly they spoke of ‘evil spirits,’ now we call them ‘neurosis’ or ‘unconscious complexes.’” To condescendingly think that we, as modern-day, rational people, are too sophisticated to believe in something as primitive as demons is to have fallen under the spell of the very evil spirits we are imagining are nonexistent. What the ancients call demons are a psychic phenomena which compel us to act out behaviors contrary to our best intentions. To quote Jung, “…the psychic conditions which breed demons are as actively at work as ever. The demons have not really disappeared but have merely taken on another form: they have become unconscious psychic forces.”

“Possession,” according to Jung is “a primordial psychic phenomenon” that “denotes a peculiar state of mind characterized by the fact that certain psychic contents, the so-called complexes, take over the control of the total personality in place of the ego, at least temporarily, to such a degree that the free will of the ego is suspended.” Though the possessed might imagine they have free will, their freedom is an illusion. They are unwittingly being used as an instrument for some “other” energy or force to incarnate and express itself through them. Having complexes is not necessarily pathological, as everyone has them. What is pathological, however, is thinking we don’t have complexes, which is the precondition that makes us most vulnerable to possession. Jung clarifies, “Everyone knows nowadays that people ‘have complexes.’ What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.” The more complexes we have, the more we are possessed. We don’t need to get rid of our complexes, rather, we need to become consciously aware of them. What is important is what we do with our complexes.

Complexes are the psychic agencies which flavor and determine our psychological view of the world. To quote Jung, “The via regia [royal road] to the unconscious, however, is not the dream…but the complex, which is the author of dreams and of symptoms.” Thematically organized (such as the power-complex, savior-complex, mother-complex, inferiority complex, etc.), the complexes are the vehicles that flesh out the rich repository of contents of the underlying archetypes, giving the formless archetypes a specifically human face. Complexes are the living elemental units of the psyche, acting like the focal or nodal points of psychic life, in which the energy charge of the various archetypes of the collective unconscious are concentrated. An emotionally-charged complex acts like the epicenter of a magnetic field, attracting and potentially assimilating into itself everything that has any resonance, relevance or is related to itself in any way. This inner process can be seen as it en-acts itself in the outer world when we come in contact with someone who has an activated complex and we find ourselves drafted into their process, picking up a role in their psyche. This is an outer reflection of how a complex can attract, co-opt and subsume other parts of the environment, both inner and outer, into itself. Complexes, when split-off from consciousness, can potentially engulf and possess the whole personality.

“Possession” is an interesting word. It conjures up immediate associations of the Devil, who, mythologically speaking, is the one who “possesses” us, in the demonic sense of the word. Jung, however, differentiates his meaning of the word “possession” from the meaning associated with the Catholic Church, for example, when he writes, “The Church’s idea of possession, therefore, is limited to extremely rare cases, whereas I would use it in a much wider sense as designating a frequently occurring psychic phenomenon.” Possession, psychologically speaking, is to identify with a complex of the unconscious, and become taken over by it such that we act it out in, as and through our lives. Who among us hasn’t done this? Who among us shall cast the first stone?

You can find the full article here: http://www.awakeninthedream.com/are-we-possessed/

Just thinking again of what Nah wrote, but I think there is a powerful lesson in this for the LBS. I described this on my own thread, but when this all started, my young son was watching a space documentary on NOVA. He took my breath away when he suddenly told me that he had a theory of why the universe was expanding. He said he thought that if dark holes were taking in galaxies and planets, something must be coming out.

Maybe our lesson as LBS is to see, can we identify and harness the forces around us? Can we see that when the black hole is taking something in, it is pushing something out? Carl Sagan even speculated that dark holes were in fact light on the inside. Do we always know what is created and what is being destroyed?

Yoko Ono said, "Power is power. It's energy. And if you get big, big energy you can use that in a good way."

[KeepItTogether]

Then days later when he walked out the door for the last time, he looked straight at me with what I have described as a "demonic stare" and said, "I don't love you".  He was so stiff, I remember being more horrified with his look and walk, something I have never seen him do in 30 years, then the words he spoke. 

Nah--that look. That stare. My H had it for at least 8 months. And when he said my name--he used my whole name instead of what he normally called me, it was almost as if he were spitting it out.

[Velika]

Another great quote from the article I posted:

When we “see” a demon, we know its name, which helps us to get a “handle” on it. Naming is exorcistic, as it dis-spells the demon’s power over us. Jung says that “The act of naming is, like baptism, extremely important as regards the creation of personality, for a magical power has been attributed to the name since time immemorial. To know the secret name of a person [or a demon] is to have power over him.” Elsewhere, Jung writes, “For mankind it was always like a deliverance from a nightmare when the new name was found.” Finding the name is an act of power. Jung comments, “The moment you can designate the lived archetype by its symbol, you feel relieved, that is a good and positive moment even if it is horrible…Therefore old Egyptian medicine consisted in giving the thing the right name…A new name always produces an extraordinary effect; we cannot rationalize these things, they cast a spell, they are symbols, they really do influence the unconscious as the unconscious influences us.”

It is very important for us to re-introduce the words “demon” and “possession” back into our vocabulary, minus the fear that we will be seen as being primitive, crazy or even possessed ourselves if we use such words. We need to expand our psycho-spiritual fluency to enable us to navigate the living waters of our inner and outer landscapes. Being “possessed by demons” – taken over by unconscious, psychic forces – is something that happens to all of us, and it is to our great advantage to be able to properly name our experience. Finding the name empowers us to creatively engage with these parts of ourselves that are emerging from the shadows “in the name of healing.”

KIT, whoa, I hadn't thought of that in a while, but the way my husband said my name in the wake of bomb drop was so creepy and cold. Odd, the similarities.

[bipolared]

Your post was very interesting, Velika.  Kind of puts me in mind of 1T's talk of positivity.  This is a great thread.  This and the psychic thread has me reading about positive/negative forces and spiritual things;  very informative and it's a great distraction!

[nah]

Just thinking again of what Nah wrote, but I think there is a powerful lesson in this for the LBS. I described this on my own thread, but when this all started, my young son was watching a space documentary on NOVA. He took my breath away when he suddenly told me that he had a theory of why the universe was expanding. He said he thought that if dark holes were taking in galaxies and planets, something must be coming out.

Maybe our lesson as LBS is to see, can we identify and harness the forces around us? Can we see that when the black hole is taking something in, it is pushing something out? Carl Sagan even speculated that dark holes were in fact light on the inside. Do we always know what is created and what is being destroyed?

Yoko Ono said, "Power is power. It's energy. And if you get big, big energy you can use that in a good way."

I'm so glad you did start this topic and your son sounds much like mine.

I have always had a strong, instinct, intuition, gut feelings, or whatever you want to call it.  Sometimes I describe myself as a witch and people will laugh, until I predict things again and again and again.  My son (but not my daughter) has the same thing, again, whatever you want to call it.  Sometimes we have had the same dream, on the same night, one was about husband dying within a few years.

I can't really say BD was a huge surprise, I mean yes it was like a punch in the gut, but I knew something was up, I was just afraid to face it.

It took awhile, I had lost myself for awhile but my fears are now gone.

It was hard to pick a quote, V, there is so much I agree with what you have wrote.  I love the idea of harnessing one's powers.  I agree with your son, there is a push and a pull, a ying and a yang, creation and destruction. 

So why do we focus so much on the MLCer and their OP?  They are the darkness.  It's so hard to do, I did it myself, it takes time to get out of their way and let them swirl around in their own darkness. 

I'm not perfect, I confess there were many times I wanted to send "bad vibes" their way.  It was a constant internal struggle.  I had to remind myself not to give them any power by letting them into my mind.  I would advise on this forum to newbies again and again,...do not give that OP one drop of power, ignore, ignore, ignore.  I will always believe this is good advise, no matter what the reason.  My own reason was, if she seeped into my thoughts I would be tempted to send out bad vibes.  I didn't want the darkness coming back to me.  I wanted to work on seeking my own light.

The early days, I was in darkness.  Yuck, it was so heavy, everyone on here knows that feeling.  I worked so hard to climb out, and slid more than a few times.  When I met my boyfriend, I warned him, "sometimes I'm afraid that my demons will come back."  That was the exact phrase I used.  He thought I was a little crazy (maybe I am).  I'm not afraid anymore, my light is strong, I feel like I can take on just about anything now.

It's a great feeling.

[Anjae]

MLC involves depression, depression is a mental ilness. Stress and anxiety effects are also detrimental to mind and body, and MLCers suffer from both.

The stare/dead eyes of an MLCer are similar to those of some depressed people (it depends of the severity of the depression). When the depression lift, even if for a short time, the eyes become normal.

The psychotic episodes some MLCers have, that can lead them to become physically violent or do and say extremely bizarre things, are part, among other illnesses, of depression.

All signs MLCer show, including the most strange ones, fit with mental ilness/neurological issues.

So why do we focus so much on the MLCer and their OP?  They are the darkness.  It's so hard to do, I did it myself, it takes time to get out of their way and let them swirl around in their own darkness. 

For the same reason astronomers and astrophysicists focus on the universe, planets and black holes. To understand. But I think we end up focusing more on MLC that the MLCer and their alienator. At least, foe me MLC is more interesting than any individual MLCer or their alienator.

[whatthe????]

I remember the first time I saw those icy, black eyes.  It truly made me take a step back.  He was in my face and wanted to fight...he was daring me to say or do something.  I knew I was looking at pure evil; regardless of what Avenue it took to get to my h, it was in my kitchen and in my face.  I remember thinking oh hell no and kissed him on the cheek as I said good night.