Awakening
by Jarandhel Dreamsinger
This is a rewritten version of an essay that I posted to the Otherkin Resource Center in 1999. It has been updated to reflect my current understanding and interpretations of the experience of Awakening, from a more mature perspective, and with the benefit of hindsight. The original article is archived at the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
When I first Awakened, it seemed like another stage in a process that had been ongoing in my life for years. Five years before I came to realize that I was otherkin, I had my first experience with perceiving and manipulating subtle energies. A couple of years after that, I started to accept that magic and ritual were methods of working with this energy. And about two years after that, I finally accepted that Christianity was not the only valid religion, and began to walk a pagan path. Learning about otherkin, and awakening to the fact that I was one, seemed only another stage in an ongoing Awakening.
Now? I can say with some confidence that while I started working with subtle energy in the summer of 1994, I did not actually begin to Awaken until May 1999. Awakening is a specifically otherkin phenomena, and to use it to refer to other consciousness expanding experiences dilutes the concept. While it may occur in tandem with such experiences, or in short succession, they are separate phenomenon.
For me, it started with a few fragments of visual memory... the clearest one of me helping to clear out a stable when a beautiful girl walked in, her face framed by hair as golden as the sunlight streaming in behind her. Then, other fragments surfaced... more impressions of things I knew/remembered as facts than real memories of how I learned those things. I started talking with someone else online, a woman from England whose writings about her memories stirred something in me when I read them, and our conversations started to trigger additional memories in us both. We found ourselves talking about things the other remembered but had not yet mentioned... sometimes even filling in gaps in each other's memories. That was when I first started to really believe that I wasn't just deluding myself. Two people separated by an entire ocean, not even of the same generation, whose memories of another life on another world matched to that degree? And that was only the beginning. Over the years I've found others whose memories match up with my own, and each time the experience has been just as intense and satisfying.
One thing I should make abundantly clear, however. This isn't the story of a past Awakening, as the word has come to be commonly used in the otherkin community. I don't believe in the black and white division of Awakened and Unawakened. I'm still remembering more... still on the path of Awakening... still learning from my memories and integrating what I learn into who I am here and now. As time goes by, often my interpretation and understanding of the facts change... and that's part of Awakening too.
For instance, when I first wrote my original awakening essay for the Otherkin Resource Center, I believed that my elven life ended here on earth... that I had been killed after traveling here and that's why my spirit was now stuck here and incarnating into human bodies. Now, I'm not so sure. I do remember gating to a world that feels very similar to this one, energetically. I don't remember how my trip ended, and there is a certain abruptness to the way those memories end. But at the same time, I now have other memories that as best as I can presently determine seem to come after those memories, in which I am on Alorya. I'm still trying to figure out the full timeline of events, and I hope to learn much more and find the answers to some of my questions as I continue to Awaken.
May you find whatever answers you seek, as well.