43. Othel

It might be him

We are absolutely exhausted this morning. Wondering if this has been the cause of our “depression” lately. It’s been very difficult getting out of bed these days and we have had dreams of being attacked, controlled, and pursued often lately. What does it all mean? Well we could go on guessing for a while but maybe it doesn’t matter. Our body (Raven (3)) is clearly saying I’M TIRED. So we will listen to it and just rest today. Went to the library yesterday so Ariel (1) is quite happy to read and read and read.

We were thinking earlier about all the different projects Othel (1) has done over the years. If he doesn’t have a project to focus on every day he’s not very happy and that affects many of us. We tend to feel a bit depressed then. But it never takes him long to find something to do. Let’s see – he has worked on enneagrams (personality types), calligraphy, biology, algebra, weaving (well he does the designing and recording parts), music theory, climate change research, research on multiple personality, bookkeeping, gathering and organizing information on each of us, and many other projects that we can’t remember. It’s been fun, that’s for sure. And it does really keep us going. When we have had jobs, it’s him at the helm as well. Often in the evenings before bed, we ask him “So, Othel, what are we working on tomorrow?” And he lays out the items we will be focusing on.

There have been times when Othel has struggled, when he has felt we don’t spend enough time on a project. There have been times when he has wanted to work for hours and hours. There have been times when he has panicked because he was afraid something would come and snatch away his project. Projects are his shield. They have been since we were about 10 years old. They protected him from our stepfather, from thinking about him, worrying about him, worrying about the abuse.

His very first project was with a deck of cards. He would shuffle them, then turn up one card at a time. He had a sheet of paper with a list of each number. If a 2 of clubs turned up, the 2’s would get a checkmark. If the next card was a 10 of something he would give the 10’s a checkmark. And so on. The first number to get all of its cards turned up was the “winner”. He would imagine these numbers were people. He assigned points to the top 6 winners. So if the 2’s won they would get 50 points (or whatever, he doesn’t remember), the 10’s might get 25 if they came in second. And so on. Then he would play the game over and over. The best part for him was the statistics. That’s what he did the game for. He would have another sheet of paper that would track the points for each number.

Othel is pretty good at numbers. Loved algebra. Loves bookkeeping. His most amazing achievement has been the Coefficient of Power (CoeP). A mathematical formula that calculates how many “points” each of us has based on the Levels each of us can function on. (A description of the Levels is in our post #28 Jan 29). There are now a total of 18 levels. The formula is this (and we don’t expect you to totally understand it. we just want you to see what it looks like): for every level each of us can function on we get the “depth”. that’s the number of the previous level times 2. Then the total number of levels we can function on is included – it’s called “the span”. The “span factor” is the highest level we can function and that’s the highest level number times the span times 0.5. The final number is the Coefficient and it’s the depth times the span factor and all divided by 1000. One more thing. If you can function on levels in sequence, so no skipping any, you get a higher number. Got it?

So, Baby Sarah (8) could only function on levels 2, 3 and 6 at first. So here’s how it goes. She could have gotten 0.004 for level 2 and 0.012 for level 3 (making a total of 0.016) for those two levels. But because 2 and 3 are in sequence she got 2 to 3 which is 0.024. We have more knowledge if we can function on levels in sequence. Somehow it makes sense to us but don’t know how you dear readers are doing with it. Back to Baby Sarah. She had 0.024 for levels 2-3. She also got 0.192 for level 6. So her total Coefficient was 0.216. It has changed since then.

Another example: The Controller (2). At first he was able to function on levels 3, and 5 to 12 so he got a coefficient of 246.620. Whew. Big difference between him and Baby Sarah but that’s the beauty of it because The Controller did, and still does, know a lot more than most of us. It changed for him back in 2003 and he was then able to function on all levels from 3 to 16, which gave him an even bigger number à 7,390.032 (Othel just loves those decimals).

Anyway that’s essentially how it works. The more levels we can function on represents the more knowledge we have about us, about our past, about who we are, and about how much power we have to make the important decisions in our life. It’s cool and it works really well. At first we felt a little embarrassed about it, afraid people would think we were totally weird but a few comments from friends and we began to feel okay about it. And now it doesn’t really matter what other people think. Whether it’s self-indulgence and navel-gazing at its best or what, it describes our inner world in a very exacting manner. And there’s probably many multiples out there who have all kinds of strange and wonderful descriptions and details about their internal world.

And that’s what Othel loves to do. He’s the one who keeps our blog organized. He keeps track of what topics we have written about and which alters we have mentioned and where. His passion is organizing stuff. He’s the one who sees the forest, not the trees. He’s the “big picture” guy. Like the executive director or CEO of a company. Others of us do the detailed work. Guess we’re the trees.

It’s fun a lot of the times and gets us through some of the worst times. Gives us purpose and structure in our life. We’d be lost without him.

Here’s to Othel.