Understanding Active Imagination.

[Biotechnology]

After exploring the dæmon community, it was found that their understanding of dæmons come from the work of the Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung. Active imagination is a meditation technique to transform your own unconscious mind into images and entities, it’s used as a bridge to join the conscious and the unconscious mind. Active imagination was used as a tool for use in psychotherapy, as it comes to reason that unconscious issues will appear that one could see and report back on. For example, automatic writing is a method of active imagination (future method to communicate with tulpa?). Active imagination with visualization is very simple and may sound very familiar to current practices of making a tulpa, to start, one must simply clear their mind and create a void. Inside this void, you prepare yourself to receive imagery. The number one rule here is to accept what you receive, and don’t edit anything. Once you have an image, the second rule is to follow whatever comes alive. If something starts moving, or someone appears or speaks, it’s your job to follow whatever comes to life. The idea is to do this daily for about 20-30 minutes and write down everything that comes to your mind, and the next day that you sit down to do this, you go back to where you finished the day before. After about 20-30 days of doing so, you should have created a stable environment with stable entities.

 

Originally it took FAQ_man 130 hours over the course of 2.5 months, working at it 2-3 hours a day, 5 days a week to make his tulpa. But FAQ_mans method is designed to create a totally new entity that doesn’t grow from the unconscious mind, Carl Jungs active imagination method just allows your unconscious mind to have a face. The two methods have different goals, one is designed to allow yourself to understand your own inner workings, while the other appears to be just to create a companion with your determined personalities built into it, which might be why it takes so long to create. The average amount of time it takes for a person creating a tulpa (which is more based of FAQ_mans ideas) and the average time it takes for a person finding their dæmon (most the community holds the idea that everyone has a dæmon as it is your unconscious mind) needs to be worked out. It would stand to reason that the dæmon community would find their dæmons before the tulpa community can create a tulpa.

 

Carl Jung and his imaginary friends (which would more appropriately be called dæmons) aren’t new news to the forum, in-fact Goldsmith created a thread about Carl Jung and his book Liber Novus (http://tulpa.info/forums/Thread-The-Red-Book-Liber-Novus). Illustrated by Carl Jung between about 1914 and 1930, the book talks about Carls experience with active imagination the entities that he created inside his mind. One of my favorite quotes from Carl Jung from when he was haunted by inner voices was that he was “doing a schizophrenia”. Sadly it appears that the topic was never followed up and the potential of active imagination was never fully grasped.

 

Active imagination provides a new way of creating tulpas and accessing the unconscious mind. There are some dangers with this method, as it may carry a person too far away from reality, but it seems that if one understands what is happening and doesn’t have a mental illness, then this risk is low. If one was to start creating a tulpa with this method, it should be understood that what will come out will be something that you would not have expected, as it is coming from your unconscious mind. I suggest using this method if you want to really find yourself, and resolve issues that are affecting your life (not to say that creating a tulpa that you designed can’t do that), it appears that it is a lot quicker than creating a pre-designed tulpa. If you want to create a companion that you know you will get along with and such, I suggest going out and designing your friend from the ground up. Then again, it might be possible to force your personality traits onto the entity created by using the active imagination method… But since it’s connected to your unconscious mind, it stands to reason that you might be changing yourself...

[Bin]

Actually I said this in chat. Tulpae aren't "companions" when you make them, you're funneling your unconscious thoughts into a static entity, and said entity soon develops to use, reject, and manipulate these thoughts.

 

UUUH BUT NO TULPAE ARE ABOUT LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP I'M A MEAN 'OL WITCH DOCTOR WITH A MASOCHISTIC TULPA

MAGIC GUIES IT'S ALL ABOUT MAGIC!

I have to make everything about me

[Purlox]

Interesting method, I would like to see what we can do with it. You should make a guide based on it so we can observe results.

 

Originally it took FAQ_man 130 hours over the course of 2.5 months, working at it 2-3 hours a day, 5 days a week to make his tulpa. But FAQ_mans method is designed to create a totally new entity that doesn’t grow from the unconscious mind, Carl Jungs active imagination method just allows your unconscious mind to have a face. The two methods have different goals, one is designed to allow yourself to understand your own inner workings, while the other appears to be just to create a companion with your determined personalities built into it, which might be why it takes so long to create. The average amount of time it takes for a person creating a tulpa (which is more based of FAQ_mans ideas) and the average time it takes for a person finding their dæmon (most the community holds the idea that everyone has a dæmon as it is your unconscious mind) needs to be worked out. It would stand to reason that the dæmon community would find their dæmons before the tulpa community can create a tulpa.

It doesn't seem reasonable to compare the speed of creating a tulpa using our slowest method, that has been found to have many obstacles, with a guide from different community.

 

If you wanted to make a tulpa based on your unconscious wants and needs, you could just talk to it (narrate), believe it will be created to fit your unconscious wants and needs and soon it will chose the most appropriate form and personality to fit your unconscious wants and needs, so Active Imagination isn't needed at all imo, but if you find it being a very fast way to make a tulpa, then report back.

 

Active imagination provides a new way of creating tulpas and accessing the unconscious mind. There are some dangers with this method, as it may carry a person too far away from reality, but it seems that if one understands what is happening and doesn’t have a mental illness, then this risk is low. If one was to start creating a tulpa with this method, it should be understood that what will come out will be something that you would not have expected, as it is coming from your unconscious mind. I suggest using this method if you want to really find yourself, and resolve issues that are affecting your life (not to say that creating a tulpa that you designed can’t do that), it appears that it is a lot quicker than creating a pre-designed tulpa. If you want to create a companion that you know you will get along with and such, I suggest going out and designing your friend from the ground up. Then again, it might be possible to force your personality traits onto the entity created by using the active imagination method… But since it’s connected to your unconscious mind, it stands to reason that you might be changing yourself...

Don't assume it is quicker to create a tulpa this way compared to pre-designed tulpa unless you have enough people that used this method to create a tulpa and unless you compare them to someone who didn't use FAQman's method, because it was found very slow by many people.

 

You will most probably go along with both a pre-design tulpa and with not pre-designed tulpa. Or do you have reason to think otherwise?

 

I don't see how changing the image created by Active Imagination can change your unconscious mind as long as you don't believe it can do so. It's like saying that by changing what is projected on a surface you change the image in the machine that is projecting it.

[Biotechnology]

It doesn't seem reasonable to compare the speed of creating a tulpa using our slowest method, that has been found to have many obstacles, with a guide from different community.

True, but it’s what I’ve dealt with personally so I feel more comfortable comparing it. Also I was under the impression that one of the main problems with his guide was that people were taking it too literal and following it word for word, while also believing that it will take a long period of time to create a tulpa. Anyway, I haven't seen many other methods that are mainstream other then a few whispers of a method that is in-development which seems to be creating tulpas in a few days (I remember hearing something about removing the belief that it will take so long).

 

If you wanted to make a tulpa based on your unconscious wants and needs, you could just talk to it (narrate), believe it will be created to fit your unconscious wants and needs and soon it will chose the most appropriate form and personality to fit your unconscious wants and needs, so Active Imagination isn't needed at all imo, but if you find it being a very fast way to make a tulpa, then report back.

That sounds plausible, but when active imagination comes to my mind, I don’t really think of it creating something that fits your wants and needs, I more see it creating something that shows your wants and needs that you can work on and grow from. I won't be trying out active imagination as my tulpa is so old already so I'm not sure how it'll work out.

 

I don't see how changing the image created by Active Imagination can change your unconscious mind as long as you don't believe it can do so. It's like saying that by changing what is projected on a surface you change the image in the machine that is projecting it.

I was more talking about changing the personality traits of the image created, not the image. You’re right; I don’t see changing the form of whatever entity appears causing any changes to yourself.

[Lolimancer]

Well, it's always possible not to do personality at all and see how they will turn out, regardless of the method (i'm of the opinion that a good part of tulpacreation consists in finding your own method for doing things). I also think there's no practical difference between "manifesting your unconscious wants and needs" (well, that wasn't particularly poetic or anything) and "dealing with them" - it just depends on your personal approach to the matter. As for letting the unconscious manifest itself, i guess i've ended up doing it to some degree with visualization too, and i'm probably not the only one - heck, i think you can't even get a tulpa to move and speak without letting subconsciousness freely intervene (at least to some degree). And i do agree stuff like opening yourself to your inner world since the beginning should probably make this faster.

 

What's a wonderland? A visual manifestation of your unconscious, peharps? What's a tulpa? Most likely, one of the many parts of yourself - though maybe one of the main ones? Either way, i've never seen creating a tulpa as a matter of consciously developing an imaginary friend as you would like one to be (deviation seems to be occurring anyway sooner or later). About the form, as you say, it's not really that important i guess. So yeah.

[Bin]

If you wanted to make a tulpa based on your unconscious wants and needs, you could just talk to it (narrate), believe it will be created to fit your unconscious wants and needs and soon it will chose the most appropriate form and personality to fit your unconscious wants and needs, so Active Imagination isn't needed at all imo, but if you find it being a very fast way to make a tulpa, then report back.

 

Pretty sure he's talking about the unconscious thoughts, the hundreds of random observations you make every waking moment of your life but aren't always aware of. Not so much "the unconscious" as seen as some kind of token ape man in us all.

 

Which, this I firmly believe in as that's what feels like going on inside me. Tulpae are beings that start to figure out how to use these thoughts just as we do. Though until they can do that, they can only use thoughts without modifying them and usually only use ones you're using, which explains where people got "puppeting" from.

 

This just feels like a quicker route is all if you "know" (though obviously this isn't a fact) what actually happens in the process of creation. Mainly the beginning, as to remove all doubt of "puppeting". Actually looking back I think realizing this got my tulpa more sentient.

[Purlox]

Pretty sure he's talking about the unconscious thoughts, the hundreds of random observations you make every waking moment of your life but aren't always aware of. Not so much "the unconscious" as seen as some kind of token ape man in us all.

I do mean unconscious mind. It isn't just thoughts like you think though, you have unconscious desires (which are technically thoughts too) and possibly more (I can't think of more atm). And no, I'm not mistaking this with the subconscious.

[Bin]

I do mean unconscious mind. It isn't just thoughts like you think though, you have unconscious desires (which are technically thoughts too) and possibly more (I can't think of more atm). And no, I'm not mistaking this with the subconscious.

 

Oh, yeah, I think I just realizing what we were talking about.

I thought having a "civilized" tulpa kinda meant controlling how deep it goes into these thoughts, but I guess "be civilized" could be an unconscious desire.

But, either way, if the tulpa is advanced enough, it doesn't have to work on "desires" just like we don't. That's kind of what I was trying to say.

[Oguigi]

"There are some dangers with this method, as it may carry a person too far away from reality"

 

unless your driving a car or doing something Important, Then I'd say the further from reality you are the better.

[Lolimancer]

unless your driving a car or doing something Important, Then I'd say the further from reality you are the better.

 

Agreed, reality is profoundly overrated anyway. Just a game of mirrors that ultimately points to your own internal world. Whether you realize it or not, or even want it or not, it can't be anything more than a place for your mind to interact with itself.