What do possession and switching feel like?

[Apollo Fire]

Please refrain from telling people who is allowed to respond and who isn't. That's incredibly unwarranted and not the kind of attitude anyone wants on tulpa.info.

[Guest]

Please refrain from telling people who is allowed to respond and who isn't. That's incredibly unwarranted and not the kind of attitude anyone wants on tulpa.info.

 

 

It was a request, thank you for correcting me, i would prefer people with experience for this particular posted question. That's why I stated it, but i withdraw my question.

[Luminesce]

Bear, all you had to do was say "A question for people who switch", without the "Don't reply if you don't" part. Imagine someone asking a question about possession but disallowing my system (who doesn't practice possession) from responding even though we can probably contribute to that topic just fine?

 

Also, oh boy, this thread's become the new "What is Switching like?" thread, just like the old days. I'm definitely up for that.

 

Hypothesis:

The body has a consciousness of it's own, and the one who is switched front has access to it. This is the 'main consciousness' perhaps the only one useful or understood one in some systems.

 

Then any further experience you have switched out is handled by a peripheral portion of that consciousness, or a separate consciousness.

 

I noticed a couple things that are kinda not what I've read on this forum so I don't want to muddy the water to mention them, but perhaps this model could explain the situation where the fronter has all or most of the processing power, yet the non-switched can observe and experience along with them, or can just sit there like a lump, but can also 'be like a tulpa' and co-exist for systems that co-front.

 

In this scenario, either the tulpa has their own consciousness or a portion of the consciousness available to them. It's not parallel processing or multitasking necessarily, it could be serial polling or fast switching like the peaks of a sine wave at an unnoticeable frequency.

 

Co-existing is what we do (Bear system) that's the experience anyway, so as non-fronter I experienced the 'aware of what's happening' or 'don't think and just watch' scenario. I also experienced 'the fronter blocked my thoughts'. I also kept 'falling asleep' but would instantly dream and I would wake myself up either with no one fronting, or me back in front but disoriented, or me in front.

 

There were times when I couldn't think, or strong willed myself not to, while my fronter (Dashie) took control and handled the situation, but I was aware of her and it didn't feel a whole heck of a lot different than just letting her handle things (like possession or even proxying), though there were times that even when I wanted to I couldn't 'think' for myself. Especially the time she was talking and I 'forgot how to speak'.

 

She also hasn't really wanted to front so if there wasn't a task for her to do she didn't front. (part of the back-seat fronting mentality). To add to that, I believe the 'back-seat fronting' may be in fact conditional switching. After a few weeks of practicing that, we could do it instantly and when they're handling a situation, in that state, I am completely mute emotionally and mentally, they handle it completely and even set my mindset for my return to be like they were, completely unaffected by the subject. I can even just ignore what they wrote and not think about it, like it wasn't me at all. Dissociated didn't really play a part, I can do that too, but I basically don't filter the response through my own personality or perspective.

 

Anyway, please pick this apart and

 

Posted more or less the whole quote, but I'm just replying to the hypothesis part.

 

That is how our system's model of thinking on the matter works, yes. We call it the "conscious workspace" or "primary consciousness" or other such things. We have every reason to believe that's how tulpamancy and the brain work. It fits so many experiences together so smoothly, and makes things like learning Switching much easier in my opinion and experience. Thing is, I learned to think like that independently of tulpas from self-help/philosophy books. Learning to switch confirmed and cemented the concept in my head - that I am not my entire mind but only a part of it - and also proved my tulpas were just as real of people as I am, not that I was necessarily doubting, but always wanting to explain everything.

 

Breaking down how we explain switching to its simplest sense, it's literally moving my "identity" (that's the word we chose to use to represent everything, for example, "me" that isn't just my overarching brain/mind - but it's easy to misinterpret it, so you don't have to use it if you don't want to) to a tulpa's position, and having their "identity" take over directing the primary consciousness. I've explained this part of the mind before as the part that works out complicated math, and many many other things, though few are as easily pronounced and observed as doing math.

 

I suppose I haven't said it in a while because the impact has faded over the years, but I used to say that learning to switch made me really believe my tulpas were real, separate people just as I am, albeit with a shorter life of gathering experiences that make them up. I had three tulpas accidentally years before finding out about .info (4 years before finding it, 2 years before it existed), and naturally trying to explain everything there was a lot of conflict about what they were and weren't. Up 'til that point I had been mostly using my promise to them and myself that they were more important to me than logic itself so it didn't matter how they did or didn't work, they were still people to me. But switching - and having in my memory their very different experiences of life as they literally thought differently than how I did - filled the logical desire to explain them, and since then we've been pretty much at total peace as a system.

 

So you see why I'm so attached to this model - it makes a whole lot of things make sense, basically. I'd be relatively lost without it. But I also developed it on my own through real experience rather than just talking about it on the forum or hearing it from others. It's one part of my overall model of explaining how tulpamancy works, which we rarely get to talk about on the forum as few people these days are very interested in how tulpas work as opposed to how to make them. Which is fine. But anyways, this was a long-winded way of saying "YES!" to your hypothesis, Bear.

 

I guess I'm willing to discuss it if anyone's got arguments or questions, but more than anything I'm just happy the concept's even been presented by someone other than my system.

[Guest]

I just came up with that theory because it felt that way. Being in my tulpa's place, i had a taste of what it was like, the way they think and live. It was pretty cool. It wasn't like i felt like i didn't have my own consiousness though, and the fact that i could separate myself so completely that i didn't even know what Dashie was doing doesn't sound like something i've heard before, but yeah, the main consiousness could be part of the mainframe body/brain.

 

Thanks Lumi, we have some important overlap here.

[Ember.Vesper]

We call it the "conscious workspace" or "primary consciousness" or other such things.

 

We usually follow tulpa001 in saying "body OS", though that includes a whole mess of subsystems in addition to just conscious awareness. Though I suppose your conception of "workspace" might be broader than "awareness". We came to similar conclusions about it over the course of weeks of frequent switching.

 

Non-fronters also connect into some subsystems, which is why for internal use we mainly refer to first position (fronter), second position (active companion), and third position (passive companion). Changing between second and third position feels just as much like switching as changing between first and second or first and third.

 

-Ember

[Guest]

Bear system feels like this:

First position (fronter)

Second, third, fourth, + + + i've had a whole room of active thoughtforms (all active/passive/present/alive/ready to interject/whatever) they all feel the same, i don't know what the limit is which makes me think it's a polling thing and if the whole system slows down or not or drops framerate, i can't tell.

[Luminesce]

and the fact that i could separate myself so completely that i didn't even know what Dashie was doing doesn't sound like something i've heard before

...

Thanks Lumi, we have some important overlap here.

 

Ugh.. Yeah, overlap is better than nothing. But "separating yourself so completely you didn't even know what Dashie was doing" is either parallel consciousness or a concept similar to memory confabulation where you convince yourself you can't hear each others' thoughts when you really can. I dislike both concepts - one because it's proposed parallel processing but has a much easier "fooling yourself" explanation, and the other because it's.... I don't like it. It's rare these days but was a little more common some years back.

 

Anyways, either explanation aside, it's something I've heard before at least.

[Guest]

Well, welcome to my head.