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Maybe. I guess there would be a couple questions for me - like, Are you a specific part of the plant, or what? and, Is there any chance that you just feel a very strong draw towards the plant species, like a protectorate?
I'm a mean cynic, though, 'cause I don't really trust people on what they self-identify as.
I'm on the side of skeptical, though, because of two beliefs of mine: that there's a difference between soul-energy and a soul; and that there's a definite, intentional process between gathering the former and shaping it into the latter, i.e. soul-energy changing into an actual soul doesn't happen on accident. Usually.
A lot of things have energy, sentience, etc., - like the ocean, but I've talked to the ocean and have never found it to have consciousness rather than awareness, with that awareness (insofar as it forms into a personality for my consumption) being distilled into the shape I perceive from something inside of me, rather than inside of it. My bean plants, no matter how much I love them, are somewhat more transient than mice, who have souls: their essence is more like the essence of a musical instrument, which I have also felt.
Obviously, this is just my point of view, and you needn't get upset at it if you dislike what I'm saying.
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UPG? I've heard that somewhere before. :P Is that the whole thing where someone decides that Appeal to Tradition is not actually a logical fallacy, and that it's been around longer, therefore it is righter?
Hmm. Interesting. You can go ahead and take my comment with a bit of salt, anyway - I know, off the top of my head, two people I've met in my life who identified as, uh... "vegetable kin". Specifically, one identified as an extinct ancestor of the dandelion, and the other as a trumpet flower vine. Given that the former, at least, always felt "planty" to me and I had a couple dreams about them (wherein I encountered them for a couple seconds) where they were a) a wise, magical vine creeping up an inset wall-fountain (or at least they knew about what I was looking for - ooh! special! :P), b) a tree with a birdbath inside of it and c) lichen all over this singing forest thing, I don't... really have any reason to question them. Especially as I dreamed these before they told me. I tend to be convinced with corroboration.
Then again, I tend towards disbelief for anyone who follows a stereotype of a creature and also claims to be Kin of that creature; I'm sure angelkin exist, but I haven't met any. I'm certain that kitsune-kin exist as well, but... yeah. Similarly, I don't believe people who tell me they have shaman blood in them from the Cherokee.
Just to be facetious:
Are Aspen-kin part of multiple systems?
Do Sunflower-kin get a sunburned nose often?
Are Prickly-Pear-Cactus-kin lesbians REALLY sweeter???
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Heh.
Yeah, I dunno. I think it's interesting to explore this topic from a point of view of skepticism. It's really interesting when a nugget surfaces, like your dreams before corroboration. By and large though, for me all the 'kin stuff is just a mental framework for puzzling apart really confusing experiences. If someone told me I'm not a such and such, then two things come out of that for me mentally:
a) I would definitely listen if they had alternative ideas, because why not? My understanding is evolving and it can't do that if I get too hung up on one idea. I might still reject them and say that I like my previous ideas better, but it's always worth a listen.
b) A person's comments and thoughts on my internal processes are really about that person and not me, so I'm not going to get offended and internalize them or whatever. If I say that in some way I'm "angelic kin" and someone who identifies as angelic kin tells me I'm not, what can I do but shrug? Point back at #a above. But ultimately if I get some value out of identifying that way, I'm going to do so.
Do I have any idea what it *really* means? Nah...
The pithy comment I thought of last night (and I was too tired to write this response then :) was that: I really enjoy having a full, clicky macros down to transistors understanding of computers when I use them. But I don't really need it. I know when I do X, the computer will do Y, and I don't really need to understand all that stuff to get on with my life. So if I obtain the understanding, that's awesome! But I'm not going to back up and stop what I'm doing in order to wait for proof. (And I do think that all of us who are a bit more aware have more important things to do than categorizing what we are.)
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And I do think that all of us who are a bit more aware have more important things to do than categorizing what we are.)
Oh, you mean like... life? What? HERESY! Nobody told me that I'd have to live my life once I reincarnated! AFTER ALL I AM A MIGHTY SERVANT OF AKUBOOBOOBRAYNCALZASETISIS! Living is so below me, you know.
...
I digress.
It's always worthwhile to take a "skeptical" point of view - not to the extreme; I don't want to be irrationally disbelieving in the face of evidence anymore than I want to be gullible. I just try to keep the standard that I shouldn't believe something because someone else tells me it's true (or because many people do), unless I have previous experience with their trustworthiness... ya know?
a) Can I give a piece of advice... ? 'Cause I agree. It's boring to stop evolving your conceptions and beliefs about the world. I stopped at one point, and it was pretty awful, mentally and emotionally. I think that integral to your enjoyment of life has to be a sense of wonder, awe and mysticism: even if you come off as fluffy, so what? Pretty sure I come off as fluffy most of the time. But hell, at least living my life is FUN!
Until I stub my toe on the dresser again. Fuck.
b) Exactly!
I'm a very judgmental person; it's one of those habits you pick up when you don't have certain societal structures (house, money, car, etc.) to protect you from other people. You learn to read people but fast.
BUT! I never assume that my judgment bears on the other person. Christianity taught me that if you want to keep yourself relatively free from resentment and stagnation, you can't see the universe as being supportive and in agreement with your views, but not theirs. It makes you mean and malicious.
So I view it as better for my health, if nothing else, to reject the temptation to believe that if someone doesn't agree with me, they'll get punished/hurt for it.
The people identifying themselves as angelkin, kitsune-kin, and Cherokee shaman can go ahead and keep doing that (although I may call the last one on racism for the hell of it).
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lol :P
For the Cherokee shaman... well, it's simple: the Cherokee do not have shaman.
The reason it's racist is that it strips an underprivileged people (Native Americans) of more of the heritage and culture - most of which has been completely annihilated by the same people stereotyping them. The Hopi have shaman; the Cherokee do not. Of the hundreds of tribes within North America alone, the vast majority of them differed hugely on spirituality/religion, ethical standards, and social norms - similarities were usually because of syncretization.
Also, extremely few tribes ever believed in a monotheistic or "one creator/one energy" spiritual structure. That was late-coming, after the Europeans. However, the misunderstanding is still perpetuated, as it is with present-day "Kemetic Orthodoxy"; it was post-Cult that Wesir began to be defaulted almost all of the death/passing duties and, despite the KO claims of "monolatry", individual gods were seen as individuals rather than as facets or aspects (aspects being a rather uselessly abstract philosophical point that came later rather than something an actual Kemetic believed).
The whole Cherokee Shaman thing, to me, is like believing all Asians are Buddhists. It's pretty goddamn fucked up.
/rant-about-history
Angelkin and kitsune-kin are basically one reason: they're so stereotyped (specifically glorified!) in popular culture that I don't believe anyone can be an angelkin or kitsune-kin. The contemporary mythos is 2D and surreal, but again, it's glorified - so I think that: a) true angel/kitsune-kin won't even know that's their kintype most of the time (because the myth is so unrealistic), and/or b) even true angel/kitsune-kin will get deluded by that shit.
Especially with kitsune-kin - since I'm more familiar with kitsune, and have met a couple of them not incarnated - I know this is true. There's no better way to insult a kitsune than to tell them they're "dignified", and they're... playful. They're tricksters, you know? In my view, most people take too much from human records, and they don't take it in context: the Japanese were/are a society that saw emotional reservation, cool dignity, and (for lack of a better word) "haughtiness" as royal (or royalty-worthy) attributes - as do the Europeans (for example, see Irish tales of sidhe). I believe that the combination of industrialization (of Japan, mainly), the progressive loss of information that has been happening especially in the last five decades, and the weirdness that Euroamericans have about learning about Asian cultures (minor and major) has led to a complete lack of accurate information about kitsune, and a whole lot of inaccuracies.
It's a long explanation, so TL;DR: I take the opposite stance of the typical "UPG" one - the longer something has been around, and the more people believe in it, the more likely it is to be false, at least with spiritual matters. But a lot of that is just my own bias against inheritance-learning; I lean towards the experiential because I dislike the idea of believing something just because generations of humans have played a game of Telephone with it.
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That would make sense - from what I've been told, "angel" is more like a... profession? Than a species in and of itself. (Never said I didn't believe in them. :P)
And yeah, I do single out angelkin/kitsune-kin, but not because I have a special peeve or anything - those two kintypes have just come to represent the epitome of the "Popular Culture-Kin" to me, especially since there's been sort of an explosion in the past couple years. At least, from what I see.
Believe me, though - I am just as skeptical of vampires, tigers- and wolf-kin, dragon-kin (though less so, just 'cause there's 77741298576324265337 species of dragons - sort of like deer!), elf-kin and fairy-kin, gryphon-kin and snow-leopard-kin and etc.
lol, to me, the more certain you are of what and who you are, the less trustworthy you are. The less certain of who and what you are, the more trustworthy you are. I think it's just because, the more certain you become about yourself, the more likely you are to think you're right about everyone else! But I am an interesting mess! :P
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You're welcome. :) I liked it too.
My thoughts on the explosion of angelkin are different because of my own perception of angels, so they wouldn't really be of any use to someone else, lol. It's why I'm basically not worried at all that it's particularly serious.
By the by - maybe nothing you'd be particularly interested in - but I've been trying to cultivate a latent "gift" with plants lately. I can find plants that are ill, and if they can be saved, improve health (I guess). I'm not so much trying to heal the sick as I am trying to improve general health, but... lol. It's resulted in a cherry tomato plant that, after a month, measures 4' by vine, and really big pole beans!
I initially started noticing because massive amounts of trees and bushes in the area have just been - getting sick. We have a maple outside that's... I don't know; malnourished, I guess. You know how humans get pale and ashen and colorless when they're malnourished? Trees... do the same thing. The maple leaves aren't yellow, and it's too early anyway for that; it's that they're this sort of unhealthy spring green, no chlorophyll at all except at the veins. And chlorophyll is also apparently something like melanin in humans, because the pale leaves in direct sunlight are getting burned... holes with a halo of brown, dead leaf, like someone took a match to it.
Been happening with the locust trees, too, and the aspens, and the junipers. The junipers have been getting yellow the same way. I don't know what it is - it's disturbing me, that there are so many plants getting sick and dying, not just in my immediate area... The cherry tree's been having it too.
Anyway, not to be a downer! Again, don't know if you'll be interested, but I wanted to preen about my beans. I love my bean plants so much! They're so cute!
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*sigh* I have noticed the plant thing and have even been writing about it on my journal a little. It's definitely not just yours. :( I think there's something wrong with the world these days that's not as simple as a bit of greenhouse gases or whatever.
But right on, on the plant-healing and tomato growing though. :D One of those things that always made me scratch my head on the idea of me being some sort of angelkin is that I have a really strong connection to nature, and angels are not exactly well known for that in lore. I explain that on my userinfo page with a quote from the Talmud (about blades of grass and angels :) but really, I think it's a bit deeper than that.
Anyway, I do talk with plants and trees on some level, and I am often able to figure out .. how much water they need, if they need more / less sunlight, need fertilizer, whatever. Heck, we got a plant at Ikea once that seemed healthy, then inexplicably went down and down until it was dead. I mean, no living leaves remaining, all plant matter above the ground looking brown and toasty. That same plant is now next to the sink in our new house taking up a significant amount of space. Over a foot tall, big healthy leaves sprouting everywhere. It pretty literally came back from the dead one day and hasn't stopped. We have good luck with plants that way. :)
...all of which was not to try to brag or something (I'm not convinced it's my doing :) but to say: go you, and we need more people who can do this!
...and ;_; on the trees again. We had to have two cherry trees cut down at our old house because of some pretty serious trunk rot. And after we moved, our neighbor here had the same issue with one of his trees. It's .. ugh.
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Oh and distilling. Sorry, I forgot.
What I mean by "distilling" is that my own preconceptions, moods, and biases tend to shape what I receive from an "awareness" like the ocean. e.g., the ocean is gender-neutral/gender-fluid to me (instead of female, like most people I've known perceive it), and I have this... thought-style that means I see water as definite to the point of overwhelming, and blankly honest, without a whole lot of trepidation, so I always "talk" to it and get responses in that vein. Other people I've met see the ocean as soft and whispery, or stormy, but always sort of... wise in a tricksy, not-revealing-everything kind of way.
So like, I take what I receive and distill it in a form that I already believed in. Ugh, I don't know if I make sense. Sorry. It's late.
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