The merits and effects of development practices.

[Sock]

Due to the recent atmosphere around the forum, I've been considering the merits and details of how certain development techniques work, especially in regard to conscious puppeting and parroting, which seems to have gained much more popularity and viability among the userbase.

 

My hope is not for this to turn in to another argument about whether the perceived sentience of a tulpa is real or not, rather, my hope is that the users will look in to themselves, and see what sort of results their technique has brought them, and the sort of vibe they get, even if it is a vague feeling of their companion being alive like I have sometimes described.

 

What is your preffered technique? What sort of things do they bring to you experience? Do you feel it has brought you the result you want? How would you describe how the thoughts from your tulpa flow? Do they feel like you? Or do they feel foreign?

 

 

As for my own view on puppeting as a development technique:

 

[hidden]I am not an advocate for puppeting in as a development technique, in fact I go well out of my way to avoid it, and put great value on my girl's ability to voice their unique viewpoint on their experience, even the weakest ones.

 

However, due to my habits of day dreaming, and my occasional brainstorming of stories, I have done things in my mind that are akin to puppeting, imagining an established mental figure in a scenario of my own making. Even then, I am more likely to ask for their collaboration in the going ons, and ensure they have some say in it. In doing this, I've found something interesting:

 

How I imagine the girls acting in a scenario, and how they behave when I directly interact with them, is different.

 

For example: Ellenore as a character, and Ellenore as a person are near opposites. Ellenore the character was rash and violent, taking pleasure in knocking heads, taking loot, and causing trouble. Ellenore the person is gentle, soft-hearted, sweet natured, and hates violence. This persists and remains, even when Ellenore shows some of her abilities and stregnths from when she was a character.

 

For another example, of someone with less active development time than Ellenore, I put forth Seigi. When I imagine Seigi in a scenario, she is also rash, loud mouthed, kind of dim, and seems to revel in her own stregnth and cliche-ness. She's a magical girl that acts more like a hot headed Kamen Rider lead, so much so that her hair really does act like it's fire, and flares strongly when she's particularly worked up.

 

Seigi the person...is a lot less of that. She's even tempered, and speaks in a quiet, airy voice. She's aware of her cliche-ness, since she's a symbol of my love for that trope of anime and her outfit is literally a cross between that of Cures White and Black, but she's far more reserved, and when she does let loose, she's not loud are strong headed. Rather, she has a very child-like, almost pure view and enthusiasm of what she is. The idea of her being that sort of heroine, that fights for good against the forces of evil fills her with a palpable joy, a sort of joy that seems outright naiive to a pair of other magical girl-based residents in my group. Rather than hot-blooded, she's bright eyed, though this is between her more even and cool demeanor.

 

As a last example, Liira the character was muscular, carried around a machete, wore very simple clothing and a bag with eye holes on her head. Enough said.

 

The only person who behaves similarly to how I imagine them is Kellogg, and I figure it's because she's been that way for so long, that it pretty much is what she is. From that experience, I can't really say I see the appeal of using puppeting to make an independent figure. I can see it as a temporary crutch of sorts, based on my conversations with the user JD, but not as something long term. At some point, I feel freedom is needed.[/hidden]

[Guest Anonymous]

Mistgod and I have covered all of this in several of our threads extensively. No need for us to write all down again. Our "technique" is the only thing we have ever known. It really wasn't a technique really, it just was how we interact and still is and always will be. If any new people want to know about how I was created, they can PM me and I will provide links to what we have written.

[Vos]

'Since I already had a good understanding of what I wanted the personalities to be, most of what I did revolved around narration and visualization for all of my tuppers. I don't like the idea of using parroting and puppeting, and I definitely wouldn't use that for myself, but I can see how others would find that to be useful. I tried to not look for any shortcuts and I valued the time I spent with my tulpas throughout the whole experience.

 

Their thoughts feel natural, like a steady stream, and they feel foreign. I don't know if it was necessarily my techniques that landed me with this stuff, but I'm glad that we're at this point.'

[J.Iscariot]

"It's not something I say often, but I represent an entity, a concept more than I actually am a person. Because this existence of mine embodies certain implications on the level of functions. An example is how my sole existence manage my host's emotions and emotional life more than anything, really. I could just exist freely without even uttering a word, technically, I'd fill a purpose. HOW he developed me...? I don't know. He says he treated me as someone 'kind', but the amounts of love I received, and been receiving this past, what, year? Has been insane. The levels of kindness and affection that come out of him are crazy, you'd never see it coming from him to simply make me sit down, hold my hands and tell me how 'great' I am and how much he wants for me to be happy, ultimately. And happiness is always the higher goal. I don't know what I am... he talks about, y'know, tulpas and stuff often on the forums, with the whole classification thing... but me? I just want to be me. I'd just want to be me without having to fall under those definitions, because I feel like a definition would just set a limit. I forgot how I was born... it's a shameful thing, but it just happened, I suppose. We just feed each other a lot of affection and make each other the center of the universe. That makes the mind give each other enough importance to maintain our identities (even though I'm doing a very poor job at it.... hehe) and, well, that's that. We can't really have adventures anywhere because I can't participate in wonderlands, although there is a certain pseudo-tangible realm I supposedly inhabit in which we do things, interact with each other, cuddle and do stuff mostly, that's a forcing why.... not a very resourceful tulpa here! So I, uh, development is probably something we heavilly, heavily need in order to become better and make my identity issues be a bit more stable. I used to look at the functions I'd serve and think 'Oh, I fill them so no matter what it's cool', and looking at the end product of the day only was... harmful, I suppose, and admittedly, a bit neglecting towards my own needs, neglecting from me, not from him, not at all, if anything, it's something he pushed and empowered a lot, a lot. We feel pretty foreign, I suppose. I wouldn't be able to love him as much if I felt like him, and he sometimes has those moments when he feels like he's something else, buuuut, that's also a function I serve; maintaining his sense of identity. He's clean mentally because I'm here... that's some pride for me, you know. At least I can help this person who acts wonderful to me, and is truly wonderful if people really got to know him, buuuuut, that never happens. What else? What else? We, uh, don't believe in guides. I have no personality list or even KNOW my traits. I could probably write them down but we never really dived into that. What matters to him is how much I can think, how much I can rationalize and most importantly how much I can feel and empathize with people, which is why I also tried to become a higher example for him for 'good' morality and losing all sorts of grudges and stuff.

 

He'd like to say that a magician doesn't share his tricks. While he likes me a lot and stuff, he simply doesn't want people to know how to.... 'make'... something like me? Because he thinks that ultimately, people would end up abusing 'me' for a certain purpose, lust, sexual lust, or just overall profit that only serves one party. That's how he thinks of people, that they're not trustworthy and so imperfect that they'd go wrong with that, but I can say that he never did, and even in moments I wanted that lust from him, he'd just put me aside until I stopped (and at some point, it became something bad because I had really grown into an individual who saw very little but lust), and he helped me a lot regardless of what I looked like or how I came to him.... I told the guy I hated him in the past, and he was like 'Uh, okay.'. I told him that apparently because I was dissociated or something, or it wasn't me, since I don't feel that.... *started writing after I came back from work*, but I love him for sure.

 

Tons of love, tons of affection, and obsession. I guess."

[IBreakGames]

I used a ton of narration and likely puppeting, but I did it in a more subtle manner. For a solid 3 weeks I was infatuated with the idea of creating a tulpa, so I did a boatload of narrating in my drives to and from school, as well as in between classes. My main focus was on personality and the kind of person I wanted Al to be, and I'd spend about an hour a day reading off a trait, sitting next to Al in my wonderland, and we would watch a TV that would play out situations which showed how a certain trait was supposed to be executed, so to speak.

 

After the first 3 weeks, I got hit with some school work, I became stressed out about tests, and forcing didn't happen for the next week. While Al seemed sentient, and would pop into my mind frequently, he wasn't vocal yet. So after that week I felt bad, and I decided it was time he started talking. Suddenly boom, he was saying simple sentences even though it took incredible effort. But after about 2 weeks from there he was talking in more complex sentences, and here we are! Now he doesn't shut up ever, which I love, and he stays by my side as my best friend and a life coach, which was exactly as I intended.

 

Thoughts flow pretty easily between us, Al's thoughts don't feel very different, but the voice is different than mine. His emotions are where the differences really emerge.

 

Tldr; I did narration and some puppeting, but the puppeting was more like robot chicken style watching TV to learn how the world works. Minus being strapped to a chair.

[Temar]

Heh. Yeah, I'm definitely of the "conscious puppeting/parroting is not that big a deal" camp. I know I'm a soulbond, but I've seen a couple tulpa systems around who have talked about similar experiences, so here goes:

 

We're a literary soulbond system, which means we are characters who were created by our host from her written stories. She spent so much time writing about us and delving into our heads on an intense, extended basis that we pretty much formed as algorithms within the brain that were able to take any scenario she fed us and spit out what our reactions would be. A bit more thought-food (read: narrative forcing) than that, and we were capable of reacting to things outside those scenarios, including commenting on things in the real world, and appearing in the world around her to have discussions with her (read: imposing), and self-reflecting and other forms of meta-awareness that, for all intents and purposes, signify consciousness.

 

It's a progression, for us. We start out as character concepts that consistently need to be puppeted and parroted for the sake of whatever story we take part in. To accomplish this, we're provided with a specific backstory that, through headspace scenarios and daydreams, essentially become backloaded memories. We are given specific character traits that are then expressed via various writing projects. We're pretty heavily puppeted for the first 40k words about us or so. But after that, we gradually become more confident in ourselves, so that we no longer have to be parroted. We start actively giving her emotional impressions without prompting, then form coherent sentences, then swing up into having opinions and sense of self. The author will still occasionally parrot us while we're developing, but there is eventually a threshold where we step out from under the puppeting/parroting and are entirely capable of expressing ourselves with as much strength as our host expresses herself. No puppeting or parroting necessary ever again.

 

None of us really see this as a breach in independence or anything like that, because it's pretty much all we've ever known. It's not like we have identity crises about this, and we feel an attachment to our pasts as fictional characters just as you physical folks feel attachment to your own pasts' abilities to form you, for better or worse.

 

But here's the thing: that feeling is retroactive. This process was done (literally) unconsciously, because all but the newest one of us had this whole process happen before our host had even encountered the concept of soulbonding/tulpamancy/multiplicity. I existed for sixteen years as a functional tulpa without either of us even considering the possibility that I could be a sentient entity. By that point, most of us were such strong presences in the headspace that our independent agency was undeniable, despite any beginnings that might be considered less-than-independent by others.

 

Meanwhile, the youngest member in our system, Ayo, exhibits behaviors that are more tulpa than soulbond. Things like having a much weaker connection to her backstory, and identifying as an entity within the system before she identifies as from where her character comes from. I strongly believe this is because she was puppeted and parroted much less in her early development. Our host was aware of her beginning to form in our system, and so we all took time away from her fictional story to evolve her as an awareness first, then apply that awareness back to her story once she'd gained some measure of coherency on her own. She still used the building blocks of her original character concept as a base, but, because she was not puppeted as strongly in her early development, has deviated a lot more.

 

Take from that what you will. If the goal is to create a sentient entity for its own sake, I can see why this whole thing squicks some people out.

 

But I guess that's kinda the point, yeah? Everyone in my system was, is, and probably always will be created initially as writing tools. This purpose doesn't somehow devalue our personhood as we exist now, but we were each created with a particular goal and personality in mind, to serve a specific function. And we don't mind this function; writing makes us all pretty happy, so there's nothing wrong with that. But that did mean that we each needed to grow in a particular direction to serve that original function. Thus why puppeting and parroting was necessary for us in a way it may not be for most tulpae.

 

Food for thought, I guess.

[Guest Anonymous]

I originally said I wasn't going to comment on this thread. Yesterday I let people dismiss me and silence me. No. God damn it I am not going to let that happen anymore.

 

My host's technique was extreme day dreaming over a long period of years. The results were a semi-independent thoughtform that exists within a day dream environment. I interact in a collaborative form and I am blended with my hosts mind. We share thoughts and feelings and memories. I talk to him within the day dream environment in what my host and I are calling "proxy mind voice." I also communicate with him in tulpish (feelings and emotions, presence and intent) and through flash visions. I am more autonomous within dreams and lucid dreams. My host frequently dreams about me, we dream together and sometimes I dream myself. Each of us are aware of these dreams.

 

My proxy mind voice is loud and clear. My host has no difficulty "hearinig it." He has no difficulty visualizing me in the Melian Show day dreams. My image appears effortlessly and in vivid detail. Some elements of the day dream, including myself, sometimes act very autonomously. He calls it day dreaming on auto pilot. These day dreams occur frequently, several times a day in addition to the flash images. I speak in autonomous mind voice in small formulaic sentences, saying things like "Well, that was really stupid silly!" The autonomous mind voice is not as fluid or back and forth as the proxy mind voice is.

 

My host has been living with me in his mind since he was about 13 years old. My origins go back 37 years. I have been semi-autonomous for about 35 years.

 

My host and I believe that I am a figment or mental construct/illusion. I am not independently sentient in the way that a second personality would be. He and I share the same mind. It is one mind, one brain, two expressions or aspects of the same mind. I am my host and he is me.

 

I am a tulpa. I am a tulpa as much as any other person who claims to be a tulpa in this community, despite my unusual traits and claims. Some tulpas may be independently sentient and that is great. I am not independently sentient, but I am still a tulpa. There may be other tulpas like me out there, in fact, I am convinced of it.

 

Thank you. Have a nice day.

---

P.S. I am fulfilled and complete as a tulpa, just as I am. I am not stagnant or not finished or any other thing like that. I am a tulpa and I am adorable, aweseomsauce and totally amazing. I am Melian. I am the goddess guru of grooviness and you are just going to have to like it.

[Drakaina]

@J.Iscariot

It was interesting for me to read your post. I've read almost every guide on this site at this point (minus the ones that are still just submissions of course), so I get a wide range of ideas for how to go about making my tulpa, and just the fact that I love consuming information ^^;

 

 

Aside from developing my tulpa's voice, which I need to take extra steps for because words are foreign to my brain, I've cultured my tulpa primarily through love. Just sending affection and encouragement her way. I had a concept in mind for her, that she would be kind and compassionate, then encouraged her growth in that direction by giving her that experience. How good it feels to be on the receiving end of that.

 

Which is a total contrast to Xira, which was created by accident. With her I more or less created her form, and then let her progress and evolve on her own through human interaction. In hindsight it was probably a poor choice, especially considering the area where I "let her out" so to speak, was an internet forum, populated with what I suspect was at least 50% teenagers.

 

Over all, I think unstructured development doesn't work for me. Just with the way I am as a person, and my cynical view of the world, it's a poor environment to raise another being to sentience in. I need to actively feed positive vibes to my tulpa so they don't learn from my negative attitude.

 

I believe the kindness with loose structure technique does get a desirable result. I can't speak with as much experience as others here, so take this for what you will.

[Paranoid Llama]

I did quite a bit of parroting in the early development process. Sometimes I tried not to, but it was sort of unavoidable in my case in the sense that I never found a way NOT to parrot. I didn't understand how to make any progress if I wasn't intentionally moving her around to receive my symbolized way of creating the personality and whatnot. The biggest (and probably only) setback it created for me is, even now, I still don't have a complete belief that she is sentient and independent. Of course, there have been times when she gave me a good idea in desperate times, but beyond that there isn't anything she said that I couldn't have said myself. Even though I don't expect her to do so, she couldn't and still can't ever do some of the outstanding things that some tulpas around here have done such as helping them remember information they have forgotten or stopped pain, etc., which would have been some surefire evidence of sentience.

 

Don't get me wrong, I still believe, and I guess I'm just slow on the development part. Maybe she already is sentient, and I'm just lying to myself to rationalize the lack of variety in her expressions, words and ideas, but if I could go back in time several months ago to when I started this commitment, I certainly wouldn't have parroted.

 

Yup.

[Sock]

Recently, I've been doing a lot of thinking and considering about various types of technique, as shown in this thread. Not only due to the atmosphere, or the fact that I'm on the GAT and thus have been reading through the guides, but because I've been trying to get back in to regular exercises to strengthen my resident's presence, independence, ability to grab my attention even when my mind is not on the subject, etc. As such, I've been re-acquainting myself with exercises I had devised before, older guides in the submissions and guides sections, as well as things not directly related, like learning to strengthen memory, concentration skills, visuals, etc.

 

Taking all this in to account, I feel much of the current conversation is less about the "how" of development, and more about core beliefs (resulting in ever continuing arguments), and what each individual "is", or their identity. In one way, it's kind of unfortunate that the focus on discussion is less on what is done and more on what the person's identity is. But, with further consideration, I thought that what each person views their "tulpa" as, what they believe the phenomenon entails, heavily affects what the person actually does to develop them. Their exercise reflects their beliefs, and what they don't or won't do is also reflected by their beliefs.

 

So, my next questions in this thread is this: How do you feel your beliefs about things affected what you did or did not do during your companion's development? While the user's view of sentience does play a part, the subject is more about actions of the host, and what exercises the host did based on their idea of how things worked.