Dear Julia:

I'm clairvoyant, and for the past year I've been living with a friend and her cousin Renee, who has Multiple Personality Disorder. I can't even begin to describe the feeling I have when different personalities speak through Renee. Her aura totally changes, and I feel like I'm dealing with a different person. I'm convinced that these are spirits taking over her body, but I'd like to know what you think.

Lisa

Dear Lisa:

MPD is commonly attributed to disassociation due to psychological trauma, but all of the case studies I've read can also be explained by attached spirit entities.

MPD generally begins in childhood and frequently involves children who are the victims of physical or emotional abuse. Psychologists suggest that MPD sufferers disassociate from traumatic experiences by inventing other personalities more capable of handling the trauma. These personalities then take on a life of their own, and may come to the forefront whenever the person is under stress.

I agree with you, for I feel these other personalities are spirit entities that are attracted by the fear that children feel when abused. As negative emotions lower the children's vibration, their natural psychic defenses weaken and they become vulnerable to attachment by earthbound spirits. Feeling lost, alone, scared and confused also puts them in harmony with many earthbound spirits, and we all know that like attracts like. Further, any injury to our being creates vulnerability, so physical and emotional abuse can open up the aura to attachment.

It's important to note that not all earthbound spirits are malevolent or even negative. If a spirit feels sorry for a child, it may try to comfort or help it. As these two develop a deeper relationship, that spirit may then step into the child's body out of a desire to take the brunt of the abuse. As other spirits either rally to help or are drawn by the opportunity to be physically embodied again, more personalities would be seen to develop.

There are a number of reasons I believe this may be what's happening with MPD. First, it's interesting to note that most cases of MPD begin with an external imaginary friend, and over time, this imaginary friend moves into the body and takes up residence there. If we accept that imaginary friends are often spirits, and the personalities in MPD are first experienced as imaginary friends, it follows that the personalities of MPD are spirits as well.

There is also some dramatic phenomena associated with MPD that can't be explained by the conventional model, but which make sense when we consider the idea of spirits. For example, many people with MPD are able to speak foreign languages they've never learned when a certain personality takes over. There have also been cases where a person's physiology changes with different personalities. For example, from one personality to the next, a person's blood pressure may drop, their eyesight may grow stronger, or they may suddenly exhibit no signs of longstanding physical problems like diabetes.

In addition to all the logical evidence, we have to take into account the feelings of both the people who suffer from MPD and those who live and work with them. Like you, many people who live with MPD sufferers strongly feel that there are spirits involved.

The idea that a person can have more than one spirit in his or her body is by no means new or unusual, for it can be found in most religions and cultural belief systems around the world. In fact, the only real difference between spirit attachment and the work of a shaman or medium is the quality of the experience and the degree of conscious control one has over their own being. When a spirit is helpful and respectful, the situation is considered positive or healing. When a spirit pushes itself on a person, has selfish aims or refuses to leave when asked, it's considered negative. (If you think about it, we would say the same things about relationships with other human beings as well.)

Just like our relationships with other people, spirit influence can range from mild to dramatic. When at its most extreme, we say that a person is obsessed. This word both describes someone who can't let go of another person and is another term for spirit possession.

Whether we realize it or not, we are all affected by discarnate spirits all the time, just like we're affected by other people's moods and energies. Others' psychic influence on us depends on a number of factors: how strong our chi is in relationship to theirs, how strong a psychic bond we have to them, and how conscious we are in setting our own tone. The stronger their chi and their psychic bond to us, the more they will tend to influence us. The more we consciously set our own tone, however, the less vulnerable we are to psychic influence.

The same thing happens with discarnate beings. If we're not consciously setting a high vibration and paying attention to what's going on within and around us, we are easily affected by outside energies. Discarnate entities will try to develop a strong psychic bond with us to gain the power to affect us. If our own chi is relatively weak, we are vulnerable to being influenced by entities with stronger vital energy.

This sort of influence begins on a mental level with strange thoughts and dreams. As it progresses, we may begin to feel drained or depressed for no apparent reason, and in time, could experience physical changes or problems. Mild influence by a discarnate may just leave us feeling like we're not ourselves, while at the other extreme, the entity can totally take over our physical body and cause us to say and do things we would normally never do. Not all effects are negative, however, especially when a discarnate entity's aim is to help us.

Another case for spirit attachment is the fact that when nothing else helps, releasement therapy is often effective. Once the spirits have been released, many people experience dramatic improvement in whatever has been troubling them.

Many people have attached entities and don't even realize it, most likely because their chi is stronger than the entities', and they are consciously setting their own tone. They may only experience problems with attachment when their chi weakens for some reason.

This is sort of like getting an intestinal parasite. We are exposed to all sorts of bacteria and parasites all the time, but our immune system fights them off, and they pass through us. When our immune system is compromised, however, these infecting agents can get a stronghold on the body, and start to take it over. When that happens, we may begin to experience discomfort or malaise because the needs of the infecting agent are now taking precedence over our own body's needs.

When the infected agent is cleared, we experience well-being again. We may be exposed to that infecting agent repeatedly after that, but as long as our own body is strong enough, we won't become infected. This immune system analogy can help us understand why some people are plagued by such experiences while others aren't.

People with MPD have weak psychic immune systems. Since they can't fight off outside entities, they may have any number of astral parasites feeding off their auras. For this reason, treatment that includes both clearing the attached entities and boosting their psychic defenses is needed.

- Julia