Personality Trait Theory, My Therian Experience, and Mysteries of the Soul

After much thinking about what makes someone a therian, I've come to believe this theory.

Feeling a connection or feeling like you share things in common with nonhuman things is a universal human experience. The only question is what things and how strong. This is both a nature and nurture thing, and it applies to many more things than just animals. It can be music, weather, geology, plants, astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, and many other things as well. For some people, these connections and/or feelings are extremely strong. We may fantasize about wanting to be more connected with the things we cherish. For someone who feels a connection like this with a species of animal, they may fantasize about being that species, and the fantasy can be so strong that their mind manifests mental and sensory shifts. But I don't believe therians/otherkin are any less human than anyone else. Mental shifts are a universal part of the human experience. Think of a gamer, musician, artist, athlete, or just anyone working at their job getting in 'the zone'.

As someone who once called myself a wolf therian, I struggled with accepting the part of me that made me feel those strange feelings I didn't understand. Yes, I know the feeling many therians describe as something just 'clicking'. I was afraid of it for some time, and then I embraced it, but I found the explanations that other therians gave me either inadequate or incompatible with my faith. It gave me a lot of anxiety, and I was influenced by people online to think of wolves and humans as enemies. This turned into intrusive misanthropic thoughts. After some time, I learned what wolves were really like and these thoughts went away. As a Christian, I know that the natural world is marred by sin in the same way that we are. There is beauty and their is ugliness and cruelty. The same is true for the human race. Out of all creatures on this planet, we are capable of both the greatest good and greatest evil. It's important to keep a grounded perspective and try to understand both of these extremes and everything in between.

I was able to think of humans in a more friendly way after understanding these concepts more thoroughly, but it wasn't enough to put an end to my confusion. I was happy, but I still felt like I needed answers to why my feelings were so strong and came out of nowhere. Here is my attempt to explain them.

I think when God creates a soul, they aren't just an empty slate. Think of Adam and Eve, for example, but in a more vague way. We may not created with knowledge of the world like they were, but I think that God 'wires' our souls to gravitate towards certain things. For me, it seems like one of these things canines, and especially wild canines. In my current situation, it is not feasible to have direct connections with wild canines, but I can and have with dogs and wolfdogs. But I also have insight into the eternal perspective through the Biblical prophecy. Human sin and the harshness of the natural world will no longer act as a barrier for connections one day. I think I will spend much time with wild canines in the vast scope of eternity.

But I don't think that this should be seen as a limiter on who I can be. I'm still human and can have an impact of human society, hopefully positively. These types of experiences where something clicks so strongly are not common events in the course of a mortal human life, but I am confident I will find more throughout eternity. Probably with things that aren't animals and probably with more animals than just canines.

And as I've been writing this, I realize that I cannot possibly know the intricacies of souls. What I do believe is that they are neither matter, nor energy, but directly emergent from God's will. I believe our individuality is born from our limitations(finiteness) and our limitations allow for free will. Because we can never be infinite in the same way God is, we will retain this individuality for eternity.

I don't believe that I should consider my soul non-human, but I have been wondering something. Maybe it's not wrong to consider myself lupine on some level either, at least in part. This being true doesn't have to mean I'm somehow less human. After all, every human is different. But I suppose that some things are hard to accurately describe with words because there are too many unknown variables and the meaning of words can be too vague for things like this to have a yes or no answer. This is part of the beauty of life, though. Not everything is binary.

Either way, I think that a part of me that was meant to be awakened got awakened, and I don't need a yes or no answer to what I've been pondering in the last paragraph. All I need to know is that it is tied to both the unique way my soul was created and the experience I've had on earth. I don't need reincarnation or a non-human soul in a human body to explain it. I no longer define myself by the label of therian because as I said before, words can be too vague to describe spiritual and psychological phenomena.

And I know that God was with me the entire time. Even though I was confused about who I was, He still stayed the same. He tamed that part of me like I asked Him to, and I no longer feel anxiety about it. When I am upset about life, it's because I'm tired of the harshness of this world, both in the wild, and with man. Even then, God helps me to trust Him again when my mind strays too far from His love and promises.

Since this appears to be a theory/explanation of therianthropy and is not related to spiritual therianthropy I've moved this thread to the Explanations of Therianthropy board.