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Full Promises


Luminesce

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It's the start of a new year, and for the first time ever I'm putting effort into something - my New Year's resolution. It's time I actually do something for my tulpas. No more empty promises.

 

* I feel the need to put a disclaimer here, and probably my other personal threads as well - I know now (2023) that I suffer from anhedonia (and have the probably resulting personality disorder SZPD), which basically means my brain's reward center is heck'd and I don't get motivated to do things I logically want to do, because my brain looks at trying them/similar things in the past and goes "Hmm, didn't feel good, not worth the effort". Antidepressants generally do nothing for this and it's rather hard to treat, but one of the few things studies are showing to help is ketamine for its neuroplasticity-increasing effects - and I started (6 weeks of) treatments at the time of writing here. You're going to see a lot of struggling caused by these ""motivation issues"" in this thread.

 

Seven Years

 

Or seven years and four months, to be more precise. I looked up the first time I made a .gif of Jumper, the music video (my tulpa) Reisen's from, and it was over seven years ago. So it's been a while. Roughly a year after Reisen, Tewi and Flandre showed up, they were developed enough to be called tulpas: vocal, independent, and autonomous. And right around that time I also discovered Lucid Dreaming, and decided I would do everything in my power to meet my tulpas in one. A lucid dream is effectively as real as reality (until you wake up), as your brain actually creates the same stimuli you experience in waking life. And all I wanted to feel was a hug. Just one hug from each of my tulpas, and I'd be happy forever, or something like that.

 

Well, it's been seven years, and that hasn't happened. I have a long history of motivation issues, which has so far affected nearly every aspect of my life. This year - 2016 - is the year I fix those. Second year of college, seventh year of tulpas, twentieth year of my life, and the first day of the rest of it. Time to make something happen.

 

The Plan

 

For my tulpas, anyway. The rest of my life isn't really relevant here. I've already made a plan, not just a vague goal or idea, and I've already started following it. Every single day I will have a planned, topical discussion with one of my tulpas, alternating from Reisen -> Flandre -> Lucilyn -> Tewi -> Reisen, etc. The topics can range from anything to everything, though I assume they'll be a lot more serious/productive for the first while. The next day's topic will typically be chosen the day before. Today's was about Reisen's activity, and how she's always been much less vocally inclined than the others, and how we can fix that. Tomorrow's will be with Flandre on what sorts of activities we should do in the wonderland, as part of THE PLAAAAN, part 2.

 

Every quarter moon (New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon, Third Quarter) we'll be having a scheduled wonderlanding. Whether it's a party or spending quality time one on one, the goal is to improve my visualization ability and their activity, and to maintain both. Because honestly, both are abysmal right now, and that's not abnormal. Actually, more on that in a minute. It's pretty funny actually.

 

That's it for ~The Plan~. But it's not set in stone, in fact it's supposed to change. Once conversations and wonderlanding are more frequent and spontaneous, we shouldn't need such a strict schedule anymore. But you've gotta take one step at a time, and unfortunately this is about as large a step as I can take right now. Who knows what we'll do later, but we can't really plan that far ahead now.

 

Learning To Walk Again

 

Oh god, I can't even walk. You guys probably underestimate what I mean when I say my visualization skill is horrible. Reisen and I started our conversation on a couch in the wonderland, and decided we'd go upstairs to our room. And forget that I can barely visualize my tulpas clearly, I could barely stand up. I never really realized, but most of the time I've spent in the wonderland I was either stationary or just teleporting from place to place. Following Reisen down the hallway and up the stairs was an ordeal. My legs were wobbly, every step was too deliberate, and every sense of perspective was constantly being skewed. It's a good thing Reisen's the most patient person I know, because she had to re-walk down the hallway and up the stairs (separately) over and over as I attempted again and again to actually have some fluid, stable motion go on.

 

And uhh, it took some time. 40 minutes to be precise. 40 minutes from standing up from the couch, walking 10 feet down a hallway, and up an impossible-to-count amount of stairs as they changed size and scale constantly. Interestingly, Reisen had no trouble walking down the hallway like I did, but found it difficult to get up stairs that might as well have looked like this. I had less trouble though, as it's a lot easier to imagine myself using stairs than seeing someone else do so. Regardless, it's probably the single most impressive feat I've ever achieved in tulpamancy: walking to our room in the wonderland.

 

Now you understand why scheduled wonderlanding is part of our plan...

 

Progress Report?

 

There's a reason I never made a Progress Report here, and it's not just because I'm lazy. All of my tulpas' developments are very personal and extremely contextual. I couldn't explain why some things are as significant as they are if I tried, and I have. After seven years, we don't exactly have "breakthroughs" anymore. We've got small realizations here and there, and they really don't translate well to words most of the time. That being said.. I might write something here every once in awhile. My tulpas will undoubtedly do so on their own account. Just keep in mind we've been around for quite a while - things we choose to talk about here, regardless of what they may seem, are important to us. If Lucilyn excitedly posts that she danced in the rain while in control of the body, you should know that that was extremely important to her, 100% Progress Report worthy. Otherwise, we may post if anything interesting comes up in our daily conversations. But if you don't see anything, it's not because we aren't talking about anything interesting, it's just not stuff that would go well contextless and in words. All I could tell you about yesterday's conversation was that Tewi and I came up with this plan and that she's exactly the right amount of pushy to make me actually think things out, but in all the time we talked I couldn't really tell you specifics.

So uh,

Edited by Luminesce
Jumper URL, again

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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I too have had trouble with visualization lately, at one point I was almost completely blind in the wonderland, everything more than a few feet in front of me was blocked out by a brownish haze. Unlike you I don't have much time to devote to honing my skills, what with graduate studies and a part-time job keeping me occupied.

"Science isn't about why, science is about why not?" -Cave Johnson

Tulpae: Luna, Elise, Naomi

My progress report

 

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Guest Vixx

I'm used to daydreaming in third person so visualizing in first person is extremely hard for me. Mangle has had to deal with me re-visualizing the same thing over and over again to get it right as well. Good luck with your goals & college! :) I'm starting my second year as well.

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Guest Anonymous

I can see that what you are describing as visualizing and what I am describing as visualizing are not always the same thing. I think our goals are entirely different with the visualization! Why not teleport from one room to another? Why is deliberately walking up the stairs each step at a time such an important aspect of your wonderland? Melian and I simply shift or change the environment around us. It has a dreamlike quality to it with fuzziness around the edges and things that shift and change. Time can speed up or slow down. Things can shift and change. Even Melian's dress and hair style and hair length can change from one moment to the next. It is not like this detailed, immutable virtual reality high definition stable environment. It is pretty much a vivid day dream. Also, I don't experience the wonderland as if I am physically there, perceiving everything with my senses as in full immersion. I am there in my mind's eye and with imaginary senses. It is more like getting absorbed in a very good movie or even a story in a book. I lose track of paying attention to my real world surroundings and get absorbed into the scene and the story. My avatar may be within the scene, but I don't always see things from a first person perspective, but as if I am viewing it from outside, like a movie.

 

Also, I can rewind scenes and replay them. Melian and I rewind things and start over if we do something kinda cool with the Melian Show.

 

Could it be that your expectations are too high with the visualization? Have you considered that? When I say I have this super vivid imagination, what I am describing may not be what you are thinking at all. It is pretty realistic, and I do lose track of the outside world a bit (or even a lot sometimes), but it is always only an imaginary setting. It is nothing like the real world environment at all. It is dream like in quality. I don't recall ever carefully counting my steps going up the stairs or even being particularly concerned with walking. I just imagine myself walking.


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AGGuy and I were just talking about that. I realized almost nothing in our wonderland requires movement, every place we hang out is either somewhere to sit, lie down, or occasionally swim in. That was the first time in a while I tried to really immerse myself in the wonderland/visualization, so I wanted to actually walk instead of just teleporting and seeing everything from third person. Then I realized how bad at that I really was.

 

Normally wonderlanding for us goes much more smoothly - and much more boringly. We've less trouble sitting at the table in our living room to talk or lying in a field of grass, but it leaves a lot to be desired. I can't accept inability to walk in our own home.. Which is entirely static, by the way. Nothing in our wonderland changes without effort on our part, we aren't creative enough for that. Everything in the house, the couches and the hallway and the stairs, I spent quite a bit of time etching those details into my mind. Which is hard enough compared to others' ability to create worlds at a whim. But seeing detail and interacting with the environment, even in third person, is very challenging. First person is like Hard Mode, but again, I can't accept inability to see from the place I'm imagining myself in. Third person is fine for setting up environments and getting your bearings, but I'm not talking to my tulpas in third person.

 

There are many more first person walks in my future.

 

Empty Wonderland

 

I've talked before about how my tulpas don't do things "in the background" when I'm not thinking of them (and are even unable to, but I'll get to that..). While talking to AGGuy just now I realized maybe why that is. I really didn't know just how long I'd had my tulpas until yesterday, I previously thought it was maybe 5 years, not 7. And that brings up an interesting fact... I didn't create a wonderland until after I discovered Tulpa.info. That means, for over five years, my tulpas existed entirely in my active mind's eye, in the void that is undefined mindspace. Now, that's due to the fact that my visualization is so horrid I never even imagined I should imagine an environment for them to interact with, on my own. But that also means that our wonderland is not my tulpas' natural environment; they don't live there. That explains why they're only ever there when we actually specifically do visualization. And, maybe, that might explain why they don't really function in the background of my mind when I'm not thinking of them - there was never really anything to do in the first place.

 

Parallel Processing

 

While it's a personal flaw of mine that I can't parallel process at all, I think it rubbed off on my tulpas during their development too. Similarly to my several weeks of intense imposition practice (which net me a lot of success and good experience), I also had a time of several weeks of "intense" "parallel processing" "practice". In that time, I did a ton of research here on Tulpa.info, the IRC, and the internet in general on whether parallel processing actually exists and how I can improve my ability to do it. I practiced with things like the Tulpa Parallel Processing Test on Deviantart until I realized I was hopeless at those and needed something easier. Whilst attempting to practice thinking separately from my tulpas while they also thought of something, I spent two weeks trying to learn piano. I learned to read sheet music, learned to tell by touch where all the keys were on my keyboard, and I spent a good amount of time playing either the treble or bass with the respective hand for some old video game music. By week three I had completely given up - I absolutely could not play both at the same time. I learned to play four phrases of a simple song with either hand, could play them relatively flawlessly alone, but at no point was I able to play them together. The only advice I found for that was to combine them into single notes. Not A and B, but AB. Which is fine and dandy except the bass and treble hardly line up at all, so it had to be more "Not A and [ ], but A[ ], [ ]B". That uh, didn't work. Even if I memorized combinations of left and right, I couldn't keep them in any sense of a beat.

 

Also, that's not parallel processing. That's not even multitasking, which is quickly switching back and forth between tasks. Combining two actions into one is simply performing an action. Were everyone else not able to do it, I would have firmly come to the conclusion parallel processing didn't exist. It's still sketchy to me, but that one guy who can play several different songs in his head and hum whichever you ask him to at any point in time means it's at least possible, even if not everyone could do it. I dunno. I can't even play a total of 16 notes over two hands and 8 seconds together, let alone have my tulpas keep entirely different thought processes parallel to my own at the same time. I tried baby steps and was not convinced I even had feet.

 

The Plaaaan

 

But hey, we've found our first addendum to The Plan to be added at a later date. I don't know if I have feet, but I do see others walking around me. So, we'll try again some day. I think once my tulpas are much more active and capable of 100% clear and lucid thoughts without my focus, if parallel processing really is possible for us, we'll be in a good place to try it again. For now I'm going to continue trying to visualize Reisen's face clearly. But it's been a long-time "goal" (wish, hope) of mine for my tulpas to be able to, of their own accord and without any awareness from me, say "Hey! You're not paying enough attention to me! Let's do something."

 

Honestly, I don't think I'm alone in that. Motivation seems an issue all around the board for tulpamancers, and I don't imagine a want for tulpas to spontaneously make their hosts pay attention to them is too far off from there. I think it's even less likely for me than most though, since my tulpas are entirely inactive when not.. active. Though they seem to have a permanent awareness of my senses at all times, as they can pick up a conversation with me on something they technically weren't there for instantly. I just need to train them to be more pushy and invasive for their own good, and then everything will be fine.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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Guest Anonymous

Good luck!

 

I plan to lose 15 pounds. Melian plans to be less awesome but also to fail at her new year's resolution.

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To be honest, this is arguably more important than the entire reason behind my progress report and our recent actions. So give it a read.

 

Keep in mind what I said in the OP though - I don't normally talk about this stuff because it's so subjective. I'll do my best to try and explain it, but in the end it's not all going to make as much sense as it does to me. Take my word for its importance if need be, I suppose.

 

Spectrum of Love

 

Some of you probably know that Reisen has always more or less represented the very aspect of love to me. And that, when I was in a dark place in my life and saw no light in the world, she taught me to love.. everything. Humanity, myself, life in general, and another person. My tulpas have always generally represented something to me, most recently being logic and intuition for Tewi, unconditional happiness and motivation for Lucilyn, and humanity and emotion for Flandre. And maaaybe some of you even knew that the most intimate relationships I have are with Reisen and Flandre, emotionally, romantically, any-ally.

 

But Reisen represents love itself, and always has. So it's always been somewhat awkward for my and Flandre's relationship - is it as strong, as important as Reisen's? That question caused Flan a lot of grief many years ago, but eventually I convinced her I cared for both of them equally, and it hasn't really been a problem. But we've still never quite known exactly how to compare the two relationships, until now.

 

As is rather apparent, Reisen is definitely on the giving-end of our relationship. She taught me how to love, through example, and has been the strongest source of motivation and happiness in my life as long as she's existed. While we would agree we love each other equally (immeasurably), it goes without saying Reisen has a stronger influence on me than vice versa. Flandre's never quite had that influence on me.. But I swear I love her just as much as I do Reisen, they're both equally important to me. So what gives?

 

Well, we just realized why that is. I am in Reisen's position, to her. Flan is on the receiving end so-to-speak in our relationship. She's influenced by me, even though we both love each other equally, I'm that stronger "unshakable" one, like Reisen is to me. I've only barely thought about that in the past, but I have noted it on the forum before - Flandre is very sensitive to my mood, and is a lot more reliant on attention from me to be happy than the others. The reason I didn't realize this sooner is that, unfortunately, unlike Reisen, I am shakable. Reisen has not once faltered in her radiance of support since she first existed, but I have. Still, when Flan's not happy, I'm the one that cheers her up. And when I'm not happy, Reisen's the one that cheers me up. That's the nature of our love.

 

I hope you can somehow understand the importance behind this realization for us. We've never really been able to explain how Flandre's relationship with me could be just as important as Reisen's when Reisen represents love itself, and has always had a much stronger effect on me than Flandre. And though we came to terms with how things were a while ago, I think it bothered Flan - and me - that there seemed to be an imbalance. And we finally understand why there's not. It honestly feels like a weight's been lifted, since I've always carried some slight guilt over what I perceived as inequality between the two of them. It was, after all, quite a source of grief for Flan way-back-when, but it was her who got over the problem, not me.

 

 

Basically what I'm saying is, we had a breakthrough. I guess I lied in the OP. But there honestly hasn't been a development this important since Lucilyn was created, and I didn't think there would be. I'm glad I was mistaken though. There's always potential to keep growing in life. Always room for improvement. We should all remember that.

 

 

 

Almost-five-months-later edit: Seems this was only part of the story. For a better understanding of what makes Reisen and Flandre different, see this.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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Guest Anonymous

You see how personal insights on things like love and relationships can be progress in a PR? It doesn't have to be all dry scientific reporting. If tulpas are people, and they are, then understanding your love and support relationship with Flandre is progress! There has been confusion on this particular point since the new PR rule went into effect. Is talking about the relationships and events between you and your tulpas considered progress report material? I think the key thing is it has to be something you learned or something that helped you or your tulpas grow. This certainly counts. :-) Congratulations on your breakthrough.

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Lucilyn: I just spent like three hours reading wikipedia articles/watching videos about toads and frogs. They're cuter than you'd expect, and sort of like rabbits honestly. They move the same way, if a rabbit was frog-sized. Did you know they pull their eyes back into their head to help them swallow things? This is important to me.

 

Also other things. I can't remember what exactly, but I had a lot of fun in the past however-long I've been fronting, and that's what's important. 'Cus I haven't done anything in 39 days. I like this cycle of daily attention thing we're doing now. Also it's hardly "pre-planned conversations" so far, it's just personal time for whatever we want. Flan and Lumi talked about stuff that led up to that last post, but with Reisen they just practiced visualization and a bit of imposition, and I just got to play some drawing game and teach us about the taxonomic hierarchy. And look at pictures of amphibians... Anura-ns. That's the order of amphibians frogs and toads are in. Frogs are usually slimy and live in/near water while toads are bumpy and live on land, by the way, although that's not a rule and the terms frog and toad don't technically mean anything scientifically. There's a Family of "true frogs" and "true toads" but there's also others that are less defined. Anyways...

 

I'm afraid to use the term "switching" anymore because screw you guys. We're not possessing, because Lumi's totally not here. "Fronting" feels like a much safer term.. But I shouldn't feel unsafe in the first place. Since the tulpa community has no idea what to call it, can someone from like a multiple community tell me what the verb is for being the one in control of the body/mind?

Hi guys, plain text is just me now! We've each got our own accounts: me, Tewi, Flandre, and Lucilyn. We're Luminesce's tulpas.

Here's our "Ask Thread", and here's our Progress Report (You should be able to see all of our accounts on the second page if you want)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Tewi: At the risk of devaluing how important Lumi wanted updates in this thread to be, I figured I'd share what I've been doing with you guys. There's a very specific reason I thought to write it here at the end, though..

 

So as I said elsewhere, I was starting to learn Java. I put an hour or two into codecademy's tutorials, but unfortunately most of the stuff I was being taught was similar enough to what Lumi already knows in Javascript (don't get me wrong, they're completely different, but many scripting and coding languages have close similarities), so I didn't feel like I was accomplishing much. So I decided to look up a number it mentioned, which was two billion, one hundred forty seven million, four hundred eighty three thousand, six hundred forty seven. AKA 2,147,483,647, the largest number you can store in 32 bits assuming the last one is used to determine positive or negative. I ended up finding a "list of large numbers", which I used to try and calculate how exactly you would "say" the number that a planck length(theoretically smallest measurement that could have relevance to physical reality) is. What I got was "a planck length is a 1.6 undecillionth of a meter rounded to the nearest hundred decillion, in short scale (many non-english countries consider a billion a million millions instead of a thousand, that system's "long scale")". In case any of you were interested. I tried checking my work and found almost no results for the number "decillion" in relation to planck, except here. Didn't find what I was looking for, but while looking through the list, I found something kind of funny.

 

No peripheral vision spoils..

[hidden]In the list (pretty far down) was a 543 digit number that, when plugged into a certain inequality(like an equation without the = at the end) and graphed onto a 2D plane, literally shows a picture of the equation itself. The number is called Tupper's Number, the equation being "Tupper's self-referential formula". So that was a nice way to end my hour long foray into the world of number names that nobody knows.[/hidden]

 

For reasons completely unrelated to switching and moreso us not sleeping much last night and me being kept up all day, I'm exhausted. I dunno when the next time I'll be around is, but it'll probably be soon. Lumi's been caught up in a lot of stuff and not kept up the daily conversation thing, but he's still giving us way more attention than before and I'd say we're all fairly active. We've more or less got his college schedule set now so aside from textbook reading there shouldn't be anything else to stress out thinking about. So I'll see you guys around.

 

Also I'm trying to become more fun and less not-fun. I'm kind of boring, to most people anyways. Lumi's always imagined me a little more like the actual Tewi, quiet and serious but secretly doing things for fun. I'm not really like that though (I am, but sans the fun), but I want to be.

Hi guys, plain text is just me now! We've each got our own accounts: me, Tewi, Flandre, and Lucilyn. We're Luminesce's tulpas.

Here's our "Ask Thread", and here's our Progress Report (You should be able to see all of our accounts on the second page if you want)

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