Imaginary Friend Or Tulpa?

[Jozyne]

Hi, I'm really new here. And I have a few questions I would like to ask. But I'll just start with one for now. Over my life time as a kid and older I have had an imaginary friend by my side all the time. As time passed on these would fade and I would get a new one. Eventually I stopped forcing these imaginary friends into being. But my subconscious had other plans. I started making friends in my dreams as a lucid dreamer. One of these friends I met his name is Strynex. What I am really confused about is I don't know if he is a tulpa or imaginary friend. As he is present even in my waking time. I have known him for four years now and have learned all about him. Don't ask me how I came up with his name, one of my other friends from my dreams told me. He is very real to me...and he even gets mad when he feels like I am forcing him to speak and say what I want him to say. He is there most of the time, but leaves at his own free will. He lives in my dreams and has a job there...but I think he started as something imaginary...but considering he came from my dreams...I am unsure. Help?

[Guest Anonymous]

Does it even matter what Strynex really is? To be honest, I very much doubt any one else can answer such a question, whether or not he is a tulpa, better than you can. I think if you feel he is a tulpa than he probably is. It comes down to how independent he feels to you and how important he is to you.

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It wouldn't be the first tulpa to have started out as an imaginary friend or a lucid dream character.

[Jozyne]

I think he's a tulpa...and he's extremely important to me...I'm just wondering what stage he is at...is he only part Tulpa or full tulpa? I know I can't control what he does...I just wish there was an exact way of knowing.

[Guest Anonymous]

There isn't an exact way of knowing! Even people who have been in this community for a long time and created their tulpa from scratch have doubts sometimes. If it helps, he sounds like a "full tulpa" to me. I think most would agree with me from how you described him. But it really isn't up to any of us to tell you. We can only make informed guesses. You will read a lot about the power of belief on this forum in creating tulpas. The more faith you have in your tulpa being autonomous and independent, the better things are likely to work. My advice is to decide he is a tulpa, if that is what you want him to be, and have faith that you created one! Congratulations!

[Linkzelda]

He is there most of the time, but leaves at his own free will. He lives in my dreams and has a job there...but I think he started as something imaginary...but considering he came from my dreams...I am unsure. Help?

 

Eva kind of started through a similar circumstance as yours. She would show up whenever she felt like it, and wouldn’t come at my beck and call like any other dream character, especially dream guides, that I would be pursuing. And when I tried to label her as a potential dream guide, there’s barely any luck. But, those few experiences with her in the past vs. now in dreams were memorable. Memorable enough to where they had more value than countless dreams prior.

 

Transitioning from someone that shows up in your dreams, and as an imaginary friend in waking life is just a change in mentality. You’re used to these interactions as being an imaginary friend, but at the time, you weren’t aware that there was actually an ethic for them to be treated as sentient. And when you come to the forum, you realize the philosophy behind “treating as sentient.” You could state that this one of several distinctions between a tulpa and imaginary friend.

 

The imaginary friends you had would come and go, and this one seems to have been sustained within your mind for a long time now. You could state that maybe something about them allowed you to hold onto the narrative of them being capable of doing things at their own free will. The narrative with treating him as sentient isn’t really that different.

 

And the narrative could be this – it’s a narrative, the treating as sentient, were one feels it can be capable of creating future scenarios. So, with the experiences you had with Strynex for four years, or so, would naturally make you receptive to him having a sustained existence in the future. Those other imaginary friends you had before, you probably didn’t see any future with them compared to Strynex.

 

I would say that the origins don’t really matter, and it’s not something to foam in your mouth over. Eva started out as a dream character, and I even did methods akin to tulpamancy, but through a different forum that talked about unconscious and subliminal thoughts a lot. You could say that the more the person wants to cling onto those narratives that have a home in the future for the host, the less concerned they’ll feel about the authenticity over their existence.

 

And that’s the strange thing – we acknowledge that we are sentient beings, and that this sentience is exclusive to us. But when treating a tulpa as sentient, even if they started out as a dream character, or imaginary friend, we learn how to accept the potential of an “other” that can be part of that capability of sentience we thought was exclusive in our own subjective experience. Whether or not it’s a delusion in the end, it becomes questionable, IMO, for more advanced methods, e.g., possession and switching. If they end up sharing those competencies similar to us, shrugging it off as imaginary sets up a lot of questions of the authenticity and confidence we have of ourselves.

[Solune]

I think he's a tulpa...and he's extremely important to me...I'm just wondering what stage he is at...is he only part Tulpa or full tulpa? I know I can't control what he does...I just wish there was an exact way of knowing.

 

From what you've described I'd say your Tulpa is fully realized.

That being said, you can always work together to improve skills such as imposition/possession/parallel processing/switching etc.

Tulpas, like us, never stop growing. Melian is right to caution you against labels.

Contrary to popular opinion, I tend to think of Tulpamancy as more of an art than anything.

Science only takes you so far, faith takes you the rest of the way.

[Faemon]

Oh well if you want to be pedantic, nobody on these forums who is not also Tibetan Buddhist mystic could possibly have a tulpa!

 

Insofar as the interactions go, though, you might find similar experiences with how other people interact with their whatever-you-call-thems, so for that it could be worth sticking around. If you feel Strynex is more like a soulbond or spirit guide, there are communities for that too.