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Why You Shouldn't Make a Tulpa, and Bad Practices


JD1215

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Google Doc: http://goo.gl/nkbgz

 

I just want to reiterate that everything in my post is opinion, and even if you agree with it, no part of it should be propagated as fact (as that tends to happen with large reviews or commentaries on tulpamancy that are published in text.)

 

If you believe that you yourself have committed any of these "bad practices", don't spend time worrying about whether your tulpa is really sentient or not. You're already in this, just keep going, and seek self-improvement. The most efficient way to tulpa-force has always been to do what you think works best, and if anything I have said here is in contradiction of how you like to roll, for the love of god ignore it. I'm just some angry self-righteous twat on the internet, and this is my rambling based on what I've seen in the community.

 

If you truly feel your reasons for creating a tulpa, switching, pregnancy, or anything else, are completely justified and have contributed to an increase in your happiness, then nothing I have said here matters. My statements are sweeping, and my disagreement with your practices are a result of my inability to understand you, whether it be because of different ethics, morals, personalities, or goals. I'm not going to suddenly agree with you when you say you are doing the right thing, but that's what opinions are for. As with everything else in this community, take it all with a grain of salt.

 

As the tulpa phenomenon grows ever larger, there's been an increased visibility of emotional drama occurring between hosts and their tulpa. This is not to say that there was any less drama proportionally when there were less tulpamancers, but with more minds at risk of potential emotional and spiritual scarring in the face of mal-intentioned tulpa-forcing, I am compelled to make a public statement about the risks of creating a tulpa. While there are no real obvious physical risks, such as those described in creepypastas and other mythical internet lore, malpractice of tulpamancy as well as mistreatment of your tulpa may be detrimental to your emotional or spiritual well-being. In this context, I use "spiritual" as a descriptor for that which involves the pursuit of self-discovery, self-meaning, and a psychological connection with the greater universe as a whole. No matter how you approach the tulpa phenomenon -- may it be from a psychological, spiritual, metaphysical, or magickal standpoint -- if you do not go into tulpa-forcing with the right intentions you may cause pain and stress to yourself or others. Here are reasons you should not make a tulpa:

 

Because You're a Fangirl (or: Because You Love Ponies)

The nature of creation for many tulpa is grounded in the obsession with a form or a character. For example, there are cases of tulpa being created, because the host was infatuated with the idea of having real Pokemon, of having a tangible version of a fictional character such as Jack Frost, Severus Snape, or Hatsune Miku, or -- the most abundant of cases -- wanting a pony for a companion. There are many hosts who recognize that though they are free to pick these forms their tulpa may deviate over time. However, there is probably an equal amount of hosts who find the novelty of having a tulpa purely in the tangibility of the desired form. This is a horrible reason to start tulpa-forcing, as you will not realistically anticipate the weight of your actions. A tulpa is a living, thinking mind; it does not exist purely to please you aesthetically or for imaginary playtime. That is the function of an imaginary friend.

 

Because You're Bored / Because it Sounds Cool

This is not a fully valid reason to create a tulpa, although it is possible to be enlightened by the nature of tulpa after-the-fact of creation. In an era of entertainment, it is understandable why so many are so prone to making tulpa out of sheer boredom. However, with this mindset many do not realize that tulpa are intended to be a permanent addition to your mind, and that they often seek to improve you as a person and consequently, your quality of living. Tulpa created out of boredom are potentially more prone to be treated as a temporary plaything rather than a lifelong friend.

 

Because You're Horny

This is the extreme version of wanting to make a tulpa purely for the form. Simply put, the amount of dedication required to bring a tulpa to sapience, and then impose it visually and tactically, is not worth your time. Your living, thinking tulpa will not appreciate being created as a sex slave. There are very few cases of tulpa actually being intentionally created for these purposes, as it is pretty much common courtesy to not make someone a sex slave.

 

Because You're Thirteen

Tulpamancy should be approached with a mature mindset, anything less will fail to understand the weight of creating a sentient thoughtform. A message to thirteen-year-olds and those of similar age, you have not matured enough to create a tulpa. While you may be capable of acting mature for your age, you simply are not mentally developed yourself. Throughout your school years, you will continue to change as a person, discovering significant new things about yourself and others and forming new beliefs and opinions. Until you have a solid foundation for your own mind and personality, and are beyond the influence of crazy teenage hormones, it is irresponsible for you to take on the task of developing someone else's mind and personality.

 

Because You Want To Switch

Switching is one of the most common forms of escapism in the tulpa community which takes place on the mental stage for greener-grass syndrome. There are carefree hosts that want to take the place of the tulpa in search of unconventional experiences in the mental realm, ignoring their real life responsibilities and leaving the burden to the tulpa. This is simply greedy and an irresponsible to want to make a tulpa.

 


 

There are many practices in modern tulpamancy which I am personally highly critical of, even though some of them are very common and are preached by the majority. A tulpa exists for the function of improving the host, who in return offers love, life, and friendship. There are several tulpamancers who create a tulpa out of loneliness or depression, and learn through interaction with their tulpa how to interact with other real people and improve their sociability and confidence. There are suicidal folks whose tulpa suppress negative thoughts, and help them get by in day-to-day life. There are artists whose tulpa serve as muses for inspiration. There are many righteous reasons to have a tulpa, but there are also a lot of bad practices that serve as gimmicks that remove tulpa from the limelight of self-improvement and devalue them into mental crutches for the host to defy their real life. Along with that are practices that are essentially neglectful to the tulpa itself, and as long as the tulpa is thought of as a sentient mind, those practices are to be avoided.

 

Spending Too Much Time Online

There are far too many people who spend the majority of their time on the various tulpa-related IRC channels, tumblrs, subreddits, forums, etc. When your tulpa is developing, it is your responsibility to spend time with it outside of the online world. Simply going outside and experiencing the sight, sound, smell, and feel of your surroundings with your tulpa is a far richer way to develop your tulpa than to sit inside and meditate on your computer chair for a few minutes. Even when you think your tulpa is mature, it is still more beneficial for them to experience and grow first-hand through your ventures in the real world and with real people. You will see things from their point of view, and witnessing the world around you from the mind of a tulpa is a very euphoric buzz, compared to the dullness of your room.

 

Assuming Immediate Sentience / Insta-tulpas

We are all familiar with the commandment of modern tulpamancy to "assume sentience". While it is beneficial to assume that your tulpa is sentient from the get-go, this phrase has evolved into an instruction to expect that every stray thought you have is from your tulpa. It has basically become an instruction to assume sapience, rather, the expectation that your tulpa has the understanding, knowledge, and wisdom to act as a human being who can speak and formulate complex thoughts. Why is this bad? This expectation severely skews the perception of tulpa. A secondary sapient mind as an entry into tulpamancy simply cannot be materialized within less than a week of forcing in most circumstances. The majority of these "insta-tulpas" are likely not tulpa at all, but dare I say, servitors (or basic imaginary friends). Along with that, these alleged tulpa are almost never given the same appreciation as tulpa that take longer to develop, and their hosts disappear from the community within weeks. My research in the progress report section of the tulpa.info forums reveals that at least 50% of hosts who report displays of sapience within a week of forcing their first tulpa tend to become promptly inactive in the community, and stop posting on their progress report logs or tumblrs. There are even some reports of thoughtforms completely disappearing, with the host realizing it was just their own thoughts all along.

 

It is common knowledge though that after the creation of the first tulpa, you become more prone to creating new tulpa faster on the basis you have already trained your brain to accept tulpa as independent entities. In my opinion, this is the only area where insta-tulpas (sentient in less than a week) are possible, and are not as prone to being underappreciated given the host already has perceived the high value of tulpa.

 

Time Dilation

There are several hosts who have made claims in the past that they have dilated their perception of time upwards of hundreds of years in their wonderland. If true, the mechanics are not well understood. It could be that memories are auto-generated, and are essentially confabulations. It could less likely be that the host really did experience, from his mental frame of reference, hundreds of years. Time dilation is a bad practice, given that it is yet another form of escapism that serves no self-fulfilling purpose. There is no wisdom to be gained from a practice that encourages idling in your fantasy world, to mentally lay off real world responsibilities.

 

Merging/Splitting and Memory-alteration

Merging and splitting, between tulpa and host, is an unstable and unpredictable practice. By carrying out such practices, you run your memories at risk. Many reports of tulpa merging with or splitting from their host include side-effects of lost or fabricated memories. There isn't really a good reason to merge or split, drama included. Issues with your tulpa should be handled on a personal level through vocal/emotional communication, and compromise. By handling issues this way, you are more realistically preparing yourself for the same kind of issues with real people.

 

Switching

Switching is the practice of a tulpa and a host trading places, so that the tulpa becomes host-like and in control of the physical body, while the host becomes tulpa-like and experiences things as a tulpa would. As mentioned earlier, this is a form of mental escapism -- although it is still denied by many. There are only two reasons people purport to switch; the first is that the host wants to experience tulpa-ness (a euphemism for escaping the real world), and the second is that the tulpa wants to experience and exercise influence over the physical world. However, the most efficient way for the second goal is for the tulpa to possess the host, and for the host to share his senses with the tulpa. This is effectively the exact same thing, minus the host's opportunity for escapism.

 

Roleplaying, and the Misrecognition Of

While many people believe that roleplaying is rampant in the tulpa community, it really isn't. The act of roleplaying would mean that a person is willfully pretending to have a tulpa (which makes no sense), or has a tulpa and makes up a lot of bullshit to craft an insanely dramatic story to post online. These stories tend to never reach a real resolution, as something new is always happening, and the host never comes to a moral or philosophical conclusion. An exaggeration of this would be:

 

Your tulpa is a servitor is a tulpa who is actually a pregnant backup of a clone of the memory of your future self which is actually the result of five different merged personalities that lived in conflict with a malevolent sex slave servitor that was accidentally made during a shared lucid dream with your best friend until there was a massive thousand-year war in the galaxy-sized wonderland that was home to millions of undiscovered tulpae which got destroyed by a secret memory-erasing method that can never be used again because it wiped itself and all that remains is a collection of videos depicting scrambled events in the crystal ball you found in a hidden compartment in your wonder-library after a long day of switching and adventuring, fighting hoards of robot-zombie NPCs with laser katanas, all in the period of 10 minutes due to amazing time-dilation abilities.

 

Roleplayers tend to be the epitomes of ridiculousness, as that is the easiest way for them to get attention. However, not all ridiculous stories are from roleplayers. While it can seem that some people's stories are moderately ridiculous, often times the subconscious mind creates dramatic events in order to solve a real life problem -- much like the alleged purpose of dreams. With enough analysis, a truly relevant dramatic experience can be linked to situations the host is dealing with in real life, such as a bad relationship, or depressive tendencies. In the event that a tulpa does something strange, such as leave for extended periods of time, or act differently, it's often for an important reason that is up to the host's interpretation. Some developed tulpa are even introduced subconsciously, or at least without the host's conscious awareness, for the purpose of aiding in real-life problem solving even though the host may not have any idea what is happening.

 

Pregnancy

Tulpa pregnancy is often frowned upon, and for good reason. Those who have experienced tulpa pregnancies often claim that the pregnancy was a symbol for creation, or for love. However it is most often the case that a tulpa pregnancy is a surface-excuse for the gimmicked creation of an insta-tulpa, guised as a symbol of love between the host and mother tulpa. If you really want to make a new tulpa with a tulpa that you love romantically, you should simply tulpa-force together. The process of putting your own emotional energies towards the creation of a new sentient being is more rewarding and fruitful than a rushed spectacle of a tulpa pregnancy will ever be.

 


 

This concludes my statement of disdain for certain practices in the tulpa community, and I will surely update it as people do more stupid things. Everything I've said here is my opinion, and is on the basis that tulpa are psychological/spiritual sentient beings that function to aid the host in real life.

WTB: Rare Tulpas

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I was going to add a section on this very thing in my guide, soon. This surely doesn't encompass all that I wanted to say, but I definitely might go ahead and cite this, if you don't mind.

 

This is something that should have been made a long, long time ago.

"If this can be avoided, it should. If it can't, then it would be better if it could be. If it happened and you're thinking back to it, try and think back further. Try not to avoid it with your mind. If any of this is possible, it may be helpful. If not, it won't be."

 

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I couldn't agree more with these points. I hope that more future guides refer to these, and hopefully start cutting a number of these issues at the stem.

Astral project on my face, brother!

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Because You're Bored / Because it Sounds Cool

This is not a fully valid reason to create a tulpa, although it is possible to be enlightened by the nature of tulpa after-the-fact of creation. In an era of entertainment, it is understandable why so many are so prone to making tulpa out of sheer boredom. However, with this mindset many do not realize that tulpa are intended to be a permanent addition to your mind, and that they often seek to improve you as a person and consequently, your quality of living. Tulpa created out of boredom are potentially more prone to be treated as a temporary plaything rather than a lifelong friend.

Haruhi wouldn't approve this.

For me it was "it's not about 'why', it's about 'why not'!"

現実に抗え!

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bad practices that serve as gimmicks that remove tulpa from the limelight of self-improvement

How is creating a tulpa for self-improvement any less selfish than, say, creating one so you can escape real life through switching? Either way you are approaching your tulpa as a means to some end to benefit you personally, rather than as an end in and of themself.

 

Sure, just about everyone does the same sort of thing when interacting with physical people. We have a strong urge to improve our stake at life, be it self improvement, spreading our genes, escapism or just having some fun. Still, that doesn't make pursuing these something to feel self-righteous over, especially if you're using another as a means to get there.

 

Time Dilation

Time dilation is a bad practice, given that it is yet another form of escapism that serves no self-fulfilling purpose. There is no wisdom to be gained from a practice that encourages idling in your fantasy world, to mentally lay off real world responsibilities.

Humans and other animals engage in play to train for real-world situations. Ditto for dreams really, and time dilation is someplace in between those two.

 

I seriously doubt that you'd get a real speedup of 100 years inside of a day of real time -- else your brain would fry like a too-far-overclocked CPU. Either way, experiencing entire and different lives is probably going to help you see things from others' points of view, and likely help maintain neuroplasticity as you age as well.

 

Switching

Switching is the practice of a tulpa and a host trading places, so that the tulpa becomes host-like and in control of the physical body, while the host becomes tulpa-like and experiences things as a tulpa would. As mentioned earlier, this is a form of mental escapism -- although it is still denied by many. There are only two reasons people purport to switch; the first is that the host wants to experience tulpa-ness (a euphemism for escaping the real world), and the second is that the tulpa wants to experience and exercise influence over the physical world. However, the most efficient way for the second goal is for the tulpa to possess the host, and for the host to share his senses with the tulpa. This is effectively the exact same thing, minus the host's opportunity for escapism.

I'm not sure. A few tulpae apparently find the experience more real and less constrained with switching as opposed to possession. I suspect this has to do with the host still exerting some will which affects the tulpa, rather than entering a perfect "observe-only" mode. If this is so, either switching or extensive practice at "view only" would fix it, and depending on the person one or the other is going to be more doable.

 

I would also like to experience tulpa mode at some point. I'm not saying "permanently" or even "regularly". I believe that two beings can relate more closely to each other if they've had the opportunity to experience the other's existence first hand and therefore have a better idea of what it's like.

Lyra: human female, ~17

Evan: boy, ~14, was an Eevee

Anera: anime-style girl, ~12; Lyra made her

My blog :: Time expectations are bad (forcing time targets are good though)

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Good guide though I don't fully agree with everything said in it.

 

Such as claiming that time dilation and switching are both an unacceptable form of escapism--I don't see how, if you're just using them to relax or to see what's it like, but not to permanently get away from real-life responsibilities.

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I tend to agree with what you're saying, apart from your views on escapism, as I see these things as more of a leisure activity, only becoming detrimental if done in excess, which I believe is what you're referring to when you state it's bad.

~Remember the dead, but fight for the living.

~La rage du peuple

~Ice cream is a feeling

 

Tulpae:

Name: Frostia

Form: Light and dark blue pony, white hair, styled in MLP:FiM fashion

 

 

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Thank you for writing this.

 

Switching especially can end up being dangerous. I am 99% sure any time a tupper says switching feels a lot different from possession is because the host is still there and getting in the way, in which case trying to switch might be really dangerous as the tupper doesn't actually know how to control the body completely and without host's presence. If you ever want to try switching (and for the love of whatever, don't make switching your goal just so you don't have to do anything and tupper has to live your life for you), make sure you get possession down really fucking well before you even think about it. Also when writing about shit like this, avoid words like "host-like" or "tulpa-like", as stupid hosts and tuppers will read those and go all omg I am going to be the host/the tupper, let's-a switch!!!! It only creates this weird gap between hosts and tuppers anyways, like a tupper has to somehow become a host if they want to be "real people" and that hosts have to somehow become tuppers if they want to go on imaginary adventures. If "host" means "the one in control of the physical body" and "tupper" means "the imaginary body form not connected to the physical body's senses", then what meaning do those words have anymore when the roles can be changed when the fuck you want?

 

As for time dilation, it doesn't matter as none of the skills you will ever learn there will work for you in real life. Unless you already have everything down perfectly and in that case, why are you even trying to learn it again in an imaginary setting? You don't get experience out of anything, basically. It's just imagination and I don't even understand why it's separate from switching or daydreaming, because that's what it is.

 

I'd certainly say I am crazier now than when I started due to many things, so I dunno, I'd at least say that if you start tuppering (especially switching), you'll end up kind of loco. But who knows, maybe I would've ended up even crazier if I never did this due to other things and have it affect me in a really negative way. Right now it's a craziness I can control somewhat and it makes me happy, in another case it might've been uncontrollable and taking over my life completely. So going down this path might have some unfortunate side effects and I'm not the only one, it seems.

The THE SUBCONCIOUS ochinchin occultists frt.sys (except Roswell because he doesn't want to be a part of it)

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While I do agree with a lot of the points you made, especially regarding switching, I don't feel that tulpa pregnancy is a guise for making a so-called "insta-tulpa." Luna and I love each other very much, and we wanted that to be solidified in the creation of our daughter Elise. I also was sure to take the proper steps when forcing her, test for sentience, etc. and she turned out fine.


For me it was "it's not about 'why', it's about 'why not'!"

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

Tulpae: Luna, Elise, Naomi

My progress report

 

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