Second, don't try to determine for yourself if you are a walk-in or not. This isn't a check list. It takes a really deep scan of someone around Black Belt level or above to be able to tell if you have actually had a walk-in or not. Simple yes/no scans are not reliable. It is not a "cool" thing, and you are not more (or less) advanced or spiritual if you've had one.
Third, a walk-in is something that happens by itself, only when and IF you are ready. Don't worry.
Usually, we don't talk about it much at all, because it is a topic that scares a lot of people and that is in no way relevant for your own spiritual development and growing awareness. You don't need to know this. Feel free to skip this post unless it is actually relevant to you. Especially to younger students I would recommend just skipping this one. However, we've had quite a number of people walking in the past few weeks, and it can be a very confusing thing. I am writing this up to pool the experiences, difficulties and advice on the topic that I and others have gathered over the past few years. Maybe it will help some of you.

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==WHAT IS==
Very simply put, a walk-in is a case where the original soul has departed the body and has been replaced by another.
Here's a more extended explanation.
Your are much more than a body. Aside from the body (which includes the physical body, the emotional and other energy bodies), there is something that many would call the "soul" or "spirit". It is who you are in a deeper sense, the part of you that continues to exist after you die and that continues on to have other lifetimes.
Normally, a soul comes into a body somewhere before birth, and stays with it. Along with genetics and environmental influences, the soul determines how you respond to situations, what your hopes and dreams are, what drives you and what bothers you. It comes to do a lifetime for a reason, usually to have a certain experience. It is NOT to learn something, Earth is not a school that you need to do well in and graduate from. It's more a theme park where you can do certain rides that interest you. Sometimes you bring your friends, because theme parks are more fun with friends around. When the soul is done getting its experience, it moves on to what's next, and the body that housed it dies.
In case of a walk-in, most of the above still goes. The only difference is that the body doesn't die when the soul moves on. Another soul takes the place of the previous one.
==LIKE A CAR==
You can think of it a lot like selling your car. Perhaps a driver has reached his destination, or has seen the sights he wanted to see. Perhaps he feels like getting a new car. Perhaps a friend really wanted his car. So the driver leaves to go do something else, and someone else takes over his car.
Another metaphor we've used is that of selling your house. The house can be in a really nice area that is very popular, or have a great layout, or have interesting neighbours. A new person can take over the house if the previous owner for whatever reason is moving out. They may want to re-decorate, or introduce themselves to the neighbours, or clean the place out.
Both metaphors give you a little framework within which you can consider walking in.
==WALK-INS ARE SUPER RARE==
Um. About that. : )
I do think that in the average population, walk-ins do not happen very often. It simply does not seem to be how the game is played. Most people buy a house for life and settle in it, and when they are finished, the house gets broken down as well. However, sometimes people want to change houses sooner in, for whatever reason, and someone else takes over their house. Usually people like this have a walk-in at a very specific point in their life, where they have just done something majorly important, or where a soul feels very unhappy and wants to move on.
Then there are some people who have more than one walk-in. You can think of them a little like rental cars. These also may be very rare - but we have seen quite a number of them at Elfpath. Is this strange? Perhaps. But it makes sense for rental cars to be surrounded by other rental cars. It may just mean that they're coming from the same rental company : )
Either way, thanks to the things you are learning here, the self-awareness and meta-intuitive gifts you are realising, any soul has a much greater chance of experiencing what they wanted to experience than in unaware people who respond mainly from their gutmuck and social constructs. It is possible that old-you already did everything they wanted to, and rather than dying the regular way or hanging out for many years more when they really didn't have the drive anymore, old-you decided that someone else would love the opportunity to be in your position. Consider it a gift, an opportunity to experience something amazing.
==PERSONALITY==
One of the biggest things that changes with a walk-in is yourpersonality: the way you walk, talk, respond to situations, the things youcare about and are passionate about, the way you relate to people, the lengths you are willing to go to in order to get what you want, the amount of things you will or will not put up with.. everything.
You will probably find your handwriting change, your style of talking, perhaps your accent, the sort of words you use, your mannerisms. You may suddenly prefer a whole different style of clothing, or want to wear different colours. Your sexual orientation may change.
During this process, "I"s are very confusing. Who is "you" all the sudden? Is "you" the person you thought you were before you walked in? Is "you" the new person who just walked in and who you don't know at all yet? Is "you" the collection of memories and constructs and emotions that come with your physical and energy body? You will find yourself talking about "you" funny. Comments like "Last month I went swimming" suddenly sound wrong, or don't scan, because it's not you who did it. Phrases like "I like bananas" may not make sense anymore. "I like this new person" is also really confusing. Who is this I?

Don't worry about it too much. Things will settle in a little while. Test out all the cool new things you may suddenly like. Don't take anything for granted, and experiment.
==MEMORIES==
Remembering things from before your walk-in can be difficult. Some memories may be completely lacking, others you can remember but they feel distant, like you are watching a movie of someone else's life. You can tell that they are not your memories, especially if you compare them to memories you made after walking in.
There will be things that do not feel familiar to you at all. Perhaps things you wrote before, a job you used to do, people you used to know, will feel distant and strange. You will look at them as if looking at the life of a stranger.
This is normal. You keep all the memories from the previous person, they just feel a little strange. The detachment actually helps you settle more into your new personality.
==RELATIONSHIPS==
This can feel especially strange with relationships: parents, friends, partners, neighbours, anyone. You feel like you have never seen these people before, but you have memories. You remember doing things with them, but you don't care for those things anymore, or it feels like someone else did these things with them.
This can be awkward at first, especially if you pretend to be the same person as before. In that case, it's awkward primarily for you, because you try to keep a relationship going from behaviours, attitudes, emotions and habits that someone else used to have. You are playing a role that feels fake, and it is uncomfortable. If you relate to them from the new-you, it can be awkward as well, and they will have to get used to some changes, but at least you have integrity with yourself.
==META==
~ Cleaning house: you may find yourself suddenly confronted with rather large issues all the sudden just after walking in, or with a huge number of issues coming up all at the same time. Think of it as the new person cleaning house. You get a new car, and you find some candy wraps from the previous owner still in there, and the windows could use a wash, and there's this thing about the gear that the previous owner never got around to fixing up... so when you get your new car, you do a round of maintenance on it. It's usually fairly easy going, as the new person has a cheerful, determined attitude about it of "Alrighty, lets get this stuff out of the way so we can go go go!"

~ Core Archetype: You'll have to re-do this.
~ Your purpose is dependent on the experience your soul wanted to get by coming into this life. Different life, different purpose. You'll have to re-do this, too. Fortunately, this is easier close to the walk-in.
~ Past lives: Obviously, these will be different as well. You may have to go back and clear things out all over again, but you also have access to a whole new store of information and experiences that can enrich your life.
~ Gifts: It seems that there needs to be a certain compatability between the soul and the energy body in order for the walk-in to work well. Your meta-intuitive gifts are likely wired into your genetics and your energy body, and so may not change very much. However, the way you use your gifts and how you express them depends on your personality, who you are deep inside. After your walk-in, you may start using your gifts in different ways, or through different methods. You may also bring in some new skill sets that the new soul had experience with. (Results may vary on this, we are lacking data to make statements with certainty here. This is hypothesis.)
~ Darkness: check for more attention from ghosts and other entities for a while. It is possible that you picked something up during the walk-in process. If you need help with this, have an orange belt or higher check on you.
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==FIRST THINGS=
In the first few days after walking in, you will probably hit a number of symptoms. Some are hilarious.
~ Start up list: You may find your new self going through a sort of "start up" list, like a pilot would do before taking off with the plane. "Engines, check!" That sort of list. New-you may evaluate the body it walked into, going "Health: well, decent. Needs exercise. Hair: I LIKE IT. Skin: Works. Muscles: Doing their job. Eyes: What, they're green now? Stomach: hungry." etc.
~ Gender: You may remember being of a different gender. If the feeling is strong, this is both very confusing and gives you an unexpected window in how the other sex thinks and feels. It doesn't mean that your new soul is of that gender, and that you have to start identifying with it, though. Souls don't do gender, at most some can have a preference for playing one role or other. The strong feeling you were male/female just means that you wore a male/female body in your very last life. Now, you're wearing your current body. It can lead to situations like "Omg, I'm missing parts!", "HEY BOOBS!", "Huh I'm much too big now" and "Wow, hips." Get used to it.

~ Exploring: You may find your new person exploring this world, especially if your last life wasn't on this planet. Examples: "Oh, wow, they have SHOWERS here! There is hot water coming out from above! That's amazing!" or "I'm on a bike. I know that. I remember that. Why is the thing not gallopping!" or "The dogs look wrong here, the only have 4 legs. Poor things."
~ Food: You may stick food in your mouth and be surprised at what it tastes like. You expect to like something, and you don't. You expect something to be boring, and suddenly it's delicious. You find yourself combining strange things, or looking for foods that don't exist in your culture/planet.
~ First exercise: The very first time you exercise after walking in (and perhaps the second or third) is very interesting. You are getting used to being in your new body, testing what it can do, how long the legs reach, what the strength is in your arms, etc. If you do a certain sport, you may find yourself forgetting the most basic things, or subconsciously doing everything right that you had trouble with before. Your attitude may be different, jumping in where you would have waited or the other way around.
==TO DO==

If you are paying close attention to the changes and your own reactions, you can get a very interesting experience out of it, and learn important things about who you are and why you came here. It is much easier to look for it at the very beginning, when everything is still fresh and obvious, than if you have to figure it out after the initial clarity has started to fade - which usually takes a few weeks. Commonly, people get sick for a few weeks when they are walking in. If you can do it with awareness and guide your own process, there's no need for getting sick at all.
In addition, being consciously aware of your walk-in helps you integrate faster and more smoothly.
~ Take some extra time to sleep. The process of walking in may be very disorienting on your body and mind, and you may be extra tired, confused, dizzy. Don't worry about it too much.
~ Intentionally spend time getting to know the new-you. Do some alpha work, or just pay attention to what is new and embrace it. This goes much easier if you consider yourself brand new, and figure out anything and everything you can about this new person and try to hold those energies as much as possible.
~ Do some alpha work on finding the purpose of new-you while it's still fairly easy to access.
~ Do a deep alpha Inner Council. Get all your inner people together, put the new-you in charge, and introduce them all to the new management. Show them new-you is good to work with. Then re-make your decision to walk on the light side. Go over your entire Inner Council and make sure everyone is on board. Put the Holy Child energies in your 1st chakra, and look for an Evil Child to boot out. This one's important. You may also want to check if your inner people are still on board with your chosen spiritual path. You can do it together with the previous and the next point and make it a few hour alpha-project.
~ Check your inner meta-circ. Preferably from the 1st chakra all the way up to whatever you've had online before. You will want to especially check up on your Joy Centre. It was decorated in a way that made old-you happy. New-you may need something else. And then of course you want to connect your new Joy Centre to your Root Centre and up into your guts. As with everything, keep checking up on this for a week or so to make sure it stays the way you want it to.
~ Look for a new Core Archetype. Perhaps also a new name.
~ Journal. Anything and everything. You'll forget a lot of this later.
==FAILING==
Some people will have an odd sense of failure, like the old-you somehow gave up, ran away, didn't do all the could do. This isn't a useful way of thinking about it.
You don't sell a house because you failed to make all your dreams come true in it. Maybe you found another house that you like better, or you were simply up for a change. Maybe a close friend of yours really wanted to live in your house or your neighbourhood and you wanted them to have that experience.
It's possible that old-you did everything it came for, finished, done, mission accomplished, experience had. If you really want to know, you can do some intuitive looking and ask it. It didn't just fail and run off, you can be sure of that. You didn't "let them down". They WERE you. And now you're a different you.
Often, walk-ins are somehow related to each other. Perhaps they are old friends, soul family, or have some other connection. You don't leave a bad house, a bad life, to family. Therefore, your life isn't bad, your setup isn't bad, you're not a recipe for failure. You're an awesome chance that someone was very excited about.
==INTEGRATING==
Once you have taken the first few steps as described above, it will take you a little while to settle in. If you're paying attention to your process, it may be a few weeks or so. It can be a really fun, exciting time where you explore many new things.
==RECONNECTING==
Part of integrating involves reconnecting to the people around you, they may feel strange or unfamiliar for a while. Sometimes, you find that you don't have much in common anymore with people you used to know for a long time. They may feel like strangers initially.
In some cases, new-you just doesn't feel much affinity for some people you used to know. That doesn't mean you should just walk away from friends, family and relatives. It is entirely possible to start a new relationship with them, but if you do so, it needs to be based on the new-you having a relationship with them, not continuing a relationship with a person who doesn't exist anymore.
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==WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR FRIEND WALKED IN==
For this, let's assume that your friend/relative/loved one knows they walked in and told you about it. How do you deal with it? How do you help them adjust, and at least equally important, how do YOU process the enormous change in someone you used to know?
(If they don't know, and they are not higher level Elfpath students, be very careful about telling them at all. They may not need to know, and it may really upset their life if you tell them and they are lacking the meta-skills to deal with it well. Things will eventually settle for them too.)
~ To make it easier on them, consider them a new person you've just met. You don't have to explain much about you, they already have the memories. But you may want to give them some extra time to explain or show to you who they are now. Let them talk about the experience, because they won't have many people to talk to about this. And they may tell great stories.
~ Try not to act too much from habits between the both of you. See if there are things you would like to do that the old-them didn't much care for. Find out what you still have in common, and where you can look for new things to do together.
~ It can be strange to see the body of someone you knew, but it's not them inside. You may feel like they stole your friend. If that is the case, don't hold it against the new person. They did not take your friend or relative away from you - they are likely a friend of theirs to begin with. If you feel angry at having lost someone, don't take it out on someone who is brand new here. Instead, deal with your own emotions the way you've learned, and don't let the fear get to anger.
~ If you were very close to the person who walked out, you may experience a period of grief. You see this new person, and they're just not the same. You miss your old friend. It's alright to mourn them for a while. If you can, though, try not to exclude the new person. If you need some space from them, communicate with them, let them know what and why and that it isn't about them personally, that you just miss the previous person and may act strange because of that.
~ Consider this an opportunity to make a new friend. Tell them Hi!



