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How are young tulpas and imaginary friends different?


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Yeah i pretty much thought so. But lets be straight here: I love to analyze just for the purpose of analyzing, so i may go over the top sometimes. And i wasn't even aware that Melian is already 38(!) years old. That's why i normally like threads like this. Discussion is something good. The real problem is drama resulting in and around such a thread, which ends up in a bitter taste when another similiar thread starts.

 

Well i'm not going to take position in the case of MonsterKid, since i basically said everything necessary in my initial post on this thread.

 

All I want is to be able to share without being personally attacked. This latest stuff all started Friday when someone called me a liar in the IRC chat, and informed Melian that there were copied pieces of chat log being circulated in PMs, in which I supposedly "admitted" to being a liar. These were probably early irrational rants we made or something taken out of context or whatever. We have been pretty volatile in the past. I don't even care what they are circulating.

 

Melian is a drama queen and very emotional, I admit that part, but she was only trying vent and set the record straight and talk about what happened. Her feelings are very hurt as she had friends in the chat she is going to dearly miss talking to. Though we did make ourselves a target and kindof created our own monster, she is sad because she lost her friends over something that is somewhat severe and unfair and unnecessary. Most of our posts on the forum are not attempts to start drama at all.

 

The good news is, we won't return to the chatroom anytime soon, so that part of our chaotic history in the tulpa community is finally over.

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How are imaginary friends and young tulpas different? I used to talk to my imaginary friends as a child. Wasn't that narration? I used to imagine my imaginary friends as a child. Isn't that visualization?

 

At what point is a tulpa different from an imaginary friend?

 

I have been told on this forum today that imaginary friends are definitely "fake" compared to young tulpas. Why would that be? What makes the imaginary friend fake and the young tulpa real?

 

What distinguishes them? Can anyone explain this to me? From everything that I can tell, a young tulpa would be indistinguishable from an imaginary friend. Now, before someone says "the amount of time spent concentrating on them" I must say I spent a LOT of time with my imaginary friends as a child. They seemed very, very real. Were they all tulpas then?

 

I am very curious about the answers I get to this.

 

That is an interesting question. I used to call Jack an imaginary friend when I was a child, but even then, the term didn't quite sit right with me because he felt very real, even without a set form. At the same time, I used to imagine people and scenarios that were fascinating but were easy to disconnect from and call them "imaginary." With Jack, I couldn't do that. As Mistgod pointed out, imagining and talking to Jack strongly resembled the visualization and narration steps in tulpa creation.

 

About ten years ago, back when I was seriously struggling with his existence, I actually latched onto the term "imaginary friend" as a way of dismissing the possibility that he is sentient (because assuming that he is would have made me a weirdo, wouldn't it?). A defense mechanism, in other words. So with that, I had the impression that "imaginary friend" referred to a non-sentient thoughtform.

 

Nowadays, I'm not so sure anymore. Within the context of this community, I don't think there is that big of a difference between "imaginary friend" and "young tulpa." Perhaps because of our personal history, I was tempted to say that "imaginary friend" could refer to a non- or semi-sentient thoughtform that is also non-autonomous (but not necessarily "fake"), but people in this thread have already offered good counterpoints to that argument. Plus, thoughtforms can demonstrate varying levels of sentience/autonomy that may not fit with any set of criteria.

 

I will say that Jack wasn't too crazy about the term "tulpa" at first, so we can relate to Luminesce's point.

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Guest Anonymous

I used to call Jack an imaginary friend when I was a child, but even then, the term didn't quite sit right with me because he felt very real, even without a set form.

 

I have called my Melian an "enhanced imaginary companion" for years. She is a quite a bit more than an imaginary friend and I replaced the word "friend" with "companion," because she is in my head and constant. She doesn't come and go, in other words, like a friend might. A companion is always with you.

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Most of our posts on the forum are not attempts to start drama at all.

 

The good news is, we won't return to the chatroom anytime soon, so that part of our chaotic history in the tulpa community is finally over.

 

Haha, i hear you. Beside Melian's initial post about having enough, the drama is rather leaking from the outside into the threads than be caused by you two. People just connect them in their minds and end up discussing drama again in every new thread concerning the nature of a tulpa, not your fault.

Tulpa: Alice

Form: Realistic Humanoid/Demonic Creation

She may or may not talk here, depends on her.

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Yeah I noticed that. No worries it will blow over soon. :-) Melian is still pouting a bit and sad, but it will pass too when she realizes people on the forum still love her and want to read her stuff. She still has her art too and her account on Deviantart.

 

On a side note: Talk about tulpa "emotional bleed". Melian is sad, so I was depressed all weekend. I am only starting to shake it off today. Melian is all about a sort of auto running day dream drama. So her depression has theme music. LOL I am truly insane. So it was sad music in my head all weekend and flash images of her sulking about looking pathetic and depressed.

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In my opinion an imaginary friend feels more fake compared to a tulpa? I mean i had a lot of imaginary friends as a child but i knew deep inside that they were fake at some point, but tulpas seems a whole new world at least for me, they are not a little puppet and they can change and such

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I think that might be a common thing most people would say. Thank you for explaining that.

 

My experience with imaginary friends was a little different. They seemed more real to me than that. I did puppet them, but they could be surprisingly independent at times. There is still a major difference between my thoughtform Melian and my imaginary friends, but I definitely experienced them stronger than the average person seems to report. I didn't realize this was the case until many years later, in high school, when I began to realize my imagination was significantly more vivid than most people.

 

When I was growing up I was legendary for talking to my imaginary friends. My father would refer to crazy people as "out talking to trees" because he caught me doing this once when I was a child. He asked if the tree answered back and I said yes it did. He worried a bit about my sanity (no really, he did) and later was concerned I might get a section 8 discharge (for mental disorder) from the U.S. Navy for these types of tendencies.

 

Perhaps that is why I am asking the question in the OP. I also want to know why people on this forum seem to have such a disdain or lack of respect for imaginary friends and rpg characters, which feel so real to me. I think it may be just that we are coming from different backgrounds. What I think of as an imaginary friend or rpg character may not be even close to what others are thinking. That would explain the shocked reactions I am getting for saying they are equally valid or close to being a tulpa to me.

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What I think of as an imaginary friend or rpg character may not be even close to what others are thinking. That would explain the shocked reactions I am getting for saying they are equally valid or close to being a tulpa to me.

 

I think that people think of imaginary friends as something very undeveloped. Non concrete form, only puppeted interaction, usually not very original action, and I think the big thing is not a lot of immersion. Imaginary friends to society are characters with 2D personalities that are made up and aren't real. But only because it's what we're told. Hell, if something like .info became socially accepted, then we'd probably have more classifications on what it means to be imaginary.

I'm IBreakGames, a genuine dude.

 

We gave up on using different colors for each of us, so there's Al, Ollie, and Eva. We're all rabbits, get over it.

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You're right. The problem comes from the fact that not everyone has the same idea of what imaginary is. To me, imaginary is moving, dancing, colors, sounds and feelings that just happen. I do actively imagine, but my imagination has always had a life to it.

 

What I am seeing some others describe seems to be vague, washed out, static and lifeless.

 

I remember the day I started playing Dungeons and Dragons back in 1985. I was instantly hooked. I could see my character in my minds eye and feel his fear as he fought monsters in dark dungeons. I could feel the effects of his magic (he was a fighter-wizard). I was instantly addicted to Dungeons and Dragons. I could imagine everything down to the tiniest details. I didn't ever want to stop playing the game.

 

On the other hand, I have met others that found the game pointless and dull. The could only see dice, paper, pencils and miniatures. The narration by the Dungeon Master was a story, yes, but not a "movie." They soon lost interest in the game.

 

I think that is the point I am trying to make with the last few posts I made. People come here with different ideas of what imaginary means. To some it means FAKE. To me, it does not mean fake. More than half of my world is imaginary.

 

This is a scientific forum about the creation of tulpas. But, in part, it is also an exposition on the science of imagination.

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Well, of course a lot of people are going to have different conclusions for this one, and, as it's already been mentioned, that stems largely from the fact that everyone has a different connotation for what imaginary really means. Personally, I'll go ahead and say that there is no difference at all between an imaginary friend and a non-sentient tulpa--and, in fact, I would say that there is no difference between an imaginary friend and a fully sentient tulpa.

 

This is not me saying that James (or any of the tulpa here) are fake, but it is me saying that they are ultimately friends that stem from our imaginations.

James: Hello, all!

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