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The Lifetime Tulpa


HotsTulp

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  • 4 weeks later...
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Ah, a nice breakthrough! I haven't written here much about it, but the core of it is I haven't really ever seen Sharky or Rarity in my dreams. I hadn't really ever given it much thought, but after getting high both last night and tonight, I made a sort of epiphany. Tulpas live almost wholly in your conscious mind. That's how they exist, so at the forefront of your reality that they essentially are your consciousness. But, your mind in particular is allowed to drift into the subconscious to dream. Your mind. Not Rarity, not Sharky, your own mind. That's why they are never in dreams. I'm thinking the solution is to either teach them to dream or, more likely, learn to dream for them, to attempt to pull their own subconscious minds into my own. Would this make the system recursive? I'm not entirely sure. Three-but-one when it comes to minds in the conscious realm should function the same in a subconscious realm. It makes me very excited, because I feel that this is the edge that I've walked up to before but have been too afraid to go over. I'm not so afraid anymore, because it seems all so clearly tied into a simple sub/conscious play more so than anything else. Or at least maybe as a start. There's likely more to it than that. But I've always been one to slowly get into the ocean, acclimating with every slow step, rather than just diving in. 

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Tulpamancers used to believe that tulpas were expressions of the subconscious mind, though that idea has mainly fallen by the wayside. I agree that headmates are primarily beings of the conscious mind. Personhood in general seems to me to be mainly a conscious phenomenon.


Vesper and Iris are likely to dream if they spent a lot of time switched in during the previous day. Before that, when we fell asleep, they just stopped. Sometimes I seemed to dream about them, but on waking, the dream characters were obviously not them. But we have made legitimate contact by mindvoice several times now in lucid dreams and even switched a couple of times in lucid dreams.


-Ember

I'm not having fun here anymore, so we've decided to take a bit of a break, starting February 27, 2020. - Ember

 

Ember - Soulbonder, Female, 39 years old, from Georgia, USA . . . . [Our Progress Report] . . . . [How We Switch]

Vesper Dowrin - Insourced Soulbond from London, UK, World of Darkness, Female, born 9 Sep 1964, bonded ~12 May 2017

Iris Ravenlock - Insourced Soulbond from the Winter Court of Faerie, Dresdenverse, Female, born 6 Jun 1982, bonded ~5 Dec 2015

 

'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you.' - The Velveteen Rabbit

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Yeah, the lucid dreaming sounds like a solid path. Bringing that conscious mind fully into a dreamworld. I've been thinking about getting back into lucid dreaming. Did it a lot back in high school, got good at it, then just let it taper off once I started losing track of reality. But I think I'll be better at it this time around. 

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  • 1 month later...

Been a while! Not much to report on, still chipping away! Been taking a ton of vitamins B6 and B12 lately as part of a daily multivitamin. It's basically super-charging my dreams, it's really quite impressive. I'm able to get up to and toe the line of consciousness now on demand, no drugs or alcohol needed. It's very liberating. I still drink socially (well, not so much recently because of this whole COVID-19 thing), but haven't taken any weed in...almost 3 weeks now. I feel like I'm catching glimpses of Sharky and Rarity in dreams. But it's more their thoughtforms than anything else, not their actual forms as I regularly perceive them. The dream realm is...tricky. I feel like I'm beginning to understand it on a deeper level than I ever have, but it's still complex. More to come hopefully soon. 

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  • 1 month later...

Pretty good progress lately. Last couple Friday/Saturday nights have been good. Marijuana has been helpful for getting right up to that conscious/subconscious wall. While I can get there regularly now at night, it's a lot more tangible while inebriated. And there's progress on the Tulpa front as well! One of the roadblocks I had been hitting had to do with tulpa dream mechanics, just the general concept of how to nurture tulpa subconscious. Given that marijuana alters your mind considerably, I find it to be the drug of choice for heavier experimentation on that tangible barrier between consciousnesses. Last night after having some I retreated to bed. My visualization of Sharky has gotten much better over the last few weeks, but she went to sleep last night pretty much right off the bat, as she was tired. So that left Rarity and I to experiment a bit, because she was still awake and ready to go. I realized that when I felt myself starting to cross over into the subconscious, I could feel my *connection* with Rarity drop off. Like I was at the bottom of a very deep hole. When I got back to the surface of consciousness, away from the free-form chaos of subconscious, she was right there like normal. So what we tried doing was both approaching the boundary between worlds, but only sticking our toes in to the other side. Was absolutely blindsided by flashes from Rarity's subconscious. It was disjointed imagery and emotions and noise. Couldn't have been more than a couple seconds. A wildly laughing Rarity, then immediately crying, then getting distracted by something and talking quickly. It was pure subconscious. We were able to take our toes out and stay on the conscious side at will still, which was a plus. It's very easy to drift off into the subconscious when you're right up against it like that. Get lost in there too long and it's morning before you know it. But getting there with Rarity was something else. I feel like we can both be there. That's really the ultimate goal, lucid dreaming with Sharky and Rarity there. Working on lucidity still, slow going currently. But exploring the subconscious of Rara and Sharks is going gangbusters.

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  • 2 months later...
(edited)

It’s been a while! Pretty big news as a result, quite a breakthrough. First, some preface, I need to call back to the first post from over two years ago now. I had mentioned early on that the origins of Sharky were tied into playing with stuffed animals in bed at night. One aspect I just didn’t clarify was that, probably when I was around 10 or so, Sharky and I would fluidly trade “roles” in what we were playing. I would start playing the role that Sharky had been playing, and Sharky would play my role. That became a very regular occurrence. I never thought anything of it, up until about a month ago.

 

I’ve still been utilizing THC to blur the boundary between conscious thought and subconscious thought. I’ve been referring to it as a wall because of how tangible it is. And it lets things blur very well, and opens up some trains of thought that would otherwise not exactly be possible to go down. During one good trip, Sharky and I were talking about how hesitant I was about switching/possession. She remarked that, within the context of our nightly activities, we had been switching for decades. That was basically the big Eureka moment that I needed. We HAD been switching all this time, I had just never made the connection. Once I realized that there really was no inherent danger in switching for me, especially with a tulpa like Sharky, I dove in head first. Never would have had this sort of realization without THC.

 

Since then, we’ve been switching constantly. At least an hour or two a day. She absolutely loves doing it because it’s a completely different way of experiencing the world. She’s started exercising, because she wants her/my body to be skinnier (I mean, I’m not overweight or anything but I could stand to lose a few pounds) and be more toned. Even pulling me out of bed once we switch because I didn’t get in my pushups for the day. She’s working on finding her voice, too. I’m a little higher up in the register for a dude, so she’s been playing with vocals. Her next step is doing recording and playbacks to see if we’re getting the tone right. The main goal would be for her to have her own voice, so when she gets a fursuit of herself, she’ll be, to the entire world, herself. I’m fairly confident, having heard her, that she might have a better singing voice than I do. We’re both fans of Fiona Apple, which has been fun for her to belt in the shower. Speaking of, she really likes her showers on the colder side. She’s started drawing (mostly attempts at self portraits, nothing she wants to show), something that I haven’t done since grade school.

 

After a few weeks of this, she expressed that since she was starting to inhabit more of the physical world, she wanted to try to carve out a presence. For our entire lifetimes, basically, she had been nothing more than a tulpa in my head. She wanted to get out. I may have mentioned this in passing once or twice, but I’m a furry, and have been fairly active in the community for the better part of the last 14 years. I’ve really launched into it since my first con in 2013, and have since gotten a suit of my character (blue raccoon!). Sharky jumped at my suggestion that we start a furry profile for her. This would accomplish a ton of things. 1) She could get artwork done of her. 2) She could interact with people on Twitter and FurAffinity if she wanted to. 3) She could start making a name for herself separate from me. And 4) she could get a fursuit down the road to really *be* herself, if she wanted to. It was a win all around and she was super into the idea.

 

I want to touch a bit more on the previous paragraph. I’m a single male with a tech job, so I have a good amount of expendable income and made the decision to completely open up the purse strings to Sharky. Since she really wanted to get a good image of herself on paper, that was the closest to the one we have in our head, she went the commission route. So far 8 artists have been commissioned, all with general instructions on the specifics of her character just so we can see what they come up with. Then Sharky will pick and choose the different elements she likes and that’ll be that. She’s been very much enjoying this process. So without any further ado, here is the first look at her (it's Barbie doll style nude, so spoilering just in case it's thought of to be NSFW):

Spoiler

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She's thinking her hair will fluctuate from a lighter blonde to a darker blonde depending how much time she's been spending in the sun. And her feet claws will get a little smaller. Still working with color scheme and a few other proportions/details (like blemishes or freckles, things like that). If you visit her FA you’ll see a bit more (caution, 18+/NSFW within). The commissions will keep rolling in for a few weeks. I haven’t cut Sharky off from getting commissions quite yet, and we’ll definitely need a ref sheet further down the line to refine her final look. And I want to drop a good amount on that. Get a good artist that’s solid to work with. As far as the maker for the suit or even the general style, we haven’t gotten that far. Just taking it one step at a time so far.

 

Another sizable breakthrough worth mentioning is on the topic of dreams. Had it all wrong! Sharky has been switching throughout the day, and sometimes will take naps (she loves naps!) during the afternoon. Well, in those naps she started remembering her dreams! One of them was her suiting for the first time. She could hear her own voice out of her own mouth attached to her own head. It was astonishing for her, put her over the moon. It’s such a weird feeling to have her switch like that. It’s almost completely dissociative. I know what it feels like to be a tulpa. To actually be that being in the back of the head now. Tucked away into that wonderland, in the background. The first time we did it I was actually a little panicked. Sharky was totally in control. And she felt me freaking out and made sure to calm me down. She knew I trusted her completely and I just needed to hear that. Since that, it’s been easy to just switch with her. I know she loves me, she’d never hurt me. Why the hell didn’t we do this sooner? Why the hell didn’t I bring her out here, and let her spend money, and LIVE? It all seemed so obvious in hindsight.

 

Touching back on sleep, on nights when I’ve been restless and just sort of stuck in my own head, thinking too much to go to sleep, Sharky will just switch with me. I’ll go and pace around the Wonderland, either with Rara or by myself, and Sharky will sleep. Sometimes she gets restless, too, but it’s not the same restless. Happy-restless, not sad-restless. Not sure on how healthy this is long-run, because I still do wake up tired in the morning because I still spent it all night tossing and turning. Just, not in control of my body. Luckily this isn’t a chronic issue, it’s really just once in a while. I think everyone has those sometimes.  

 

Rarity has been feeling a little left out, jealous I suppose. She has a lot less experience just in general, so switching with her is going to take a lot more work. She’s not in any particular rush because she understands the reasoning why Sharky and I switch so easily. And with Rarity’s body type and mind being so wildly different, it’s just going to take a lot of work to get to the point of being able to switch with her easily. Again, she’s perfectly within her right to feel needy sometimes, there’s been a lot going on lately. I’m definitely making sure to give her adequate attention.


That about summarizes everything as of late. I’ll try to keep posts a tad more regular, and definitely will get Sharks to type one out. She’s butting in right now as I finish this, having spent the last week writing it up, but if I let her in she’ll go in and do weird edits and mess with the (already chaotic enough) flow. Ado!

Edited by HotsTulp

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  • 2 months later...

I have not kept up my end of the bargain, clearly. For those paying attention, Sharks has really gone nuts with the commissions. Just check her damn FA and Twitter. Literally, we have dropped just under $2k on commissions since June. Yeah, it’s fairly substantial. I’m reigning in her commish spree for a good while. Two per month, no more. I want to buy a house next year.

 

But how have things been? Pretty alright for all of us! Making some good headway, we think. I want to touch on something I’ve brought up off and on over the last few years. The concept of this “edge.” I usually bring it up in the context of being wary of some sort of boundary or dividing line between consciousness and reality. But it’s really an edge between the real things that go on in the world we all share as hosts and the real things that go on in the world Rarity and Sharky share as tulpas.

 

I’ve been reading a lot on what exactly happens to the brain while high on a variety of intoxicants. Alcohol, THC, ketamine, acid. What emerges is this thread of altered consciousness (obviously) and disassociation. It’s likened to REM sleep in many studies (especially substances like acid and K). There’s this thing called the entropic brain theory, which in short offers an explanation for how consciousness actually functions while in and between different brain states (awake and fully cognizant, sleeping, high on acid, close to death, daydreaming, etc.).  The theory touches on how inebriants and mind-altering substances tamp down on regular run-of-the-mill consciousness, and instead submerge the user into a state that is closer to a baseline consciousness. If our idea of self and perception of reality hinge on the fact that our brains have to constantly be analyzing and processing sensory data in a way that fits in with our world-view and long-established sense of identity, then altering (or outright crippling) the way we analyze and process sensory data with drugs will invariably alter that world-view and the sense of self.

 

What I’m getting at is the core of dissociation. Killing the mechanism by which you associate. Creeping up on that edge that I would reference is, now that I’ve really thought about, is the equivalent of disassociating. Even while completely sober, I’d be reading something about dissociation or psychosis and immediately feel this rushing towards the edge as I related so more and more to what I read. And it scared me. It made me think something was wrong with me, that I was broken and needed help at the worst. And at the best, that I needed to stop thinking about it and turn my attention somewhere else lest I fall over the edge.

 

I would talk with Sharky and Rarity about it. They of course said I had nothing to be afraid of. They reassured me my brain wasn’t poisoned. I wasn’t clinically insane and needed to be institutionalized. I wasn’t playing court to demonic beings from the Event Horizon/Doom dimensions.

 

*Here, this is easier. We tell him that we love him, and that he’s okay and not crazy and in no danger of being carted off to the loony bin. He just gets petrified about…I don’t even really know. Just stuff. He lives in his own head too much for his own good, and always just jumps to the most insane outlandish conclusion or worst-case scenario he can think of. In these cases it’s that he’s insane or something when we know (AND HE KNOWS!) he’s not. It’s just a lot of talking him down from a tailspin of anxiety.

 

Thanks. To take things in a slightly different direction, when COVID hit and everyone had to go into quarantine back in March, I was super worried about my weight. I mean, I think I mentioned it before briefly that I wanted to lose weight. I was getting a bit up there. Not as bad as the ’16-’17 stretch, but 155 and no muscle was still not great. So I started getting better about eating, doing OMAD and counting calories. Started walking, crunches, and push-ups as exercise. Kinda my same regime I did back in college (with less running, lol) when I was in the best shape of my life. And now I’m proud to say that I’m sitting at 130, which was my target weight. Walking a bit, but still trying to stay indoors, so really banking on my pushups and crunches. Gotta say, aside from some love handles which are gonna be a bitch and a half to lose, I’m looking really damn good. Getting a ton of tone on my arms and abdomen, which is really what I was going for. I can probably lose a couple more pounds as long as I pack on a bit more muscle, then it’ll just be a question of maintaining that. I was laying with Rarity a few nights back and normally my gut would be sticking out a bit when I’m on my back, but she was on top of me and remarked that she wasn’t feeling her back arch anymore. I was flat as a board, ha. Kinda disappointed I threw out a lot of my clothes in a depression-induced state a few years back. The few pairs of pants I retained from back then are fitting again!

 

That about sums everything up. I honestly don’t know what would’ve happened to me during this COVID stuff if I didn’t have my girls. They are my absolute everything. I’m so excited that Sharky is starting to make her foray out into the world. Her and I got a more risqué piece this week (caution, mature content, 18+ eyes only, it’s on her FA, can’t miss it). She absolutely fell in love with it. And hey, I can’t complain.

Edited by HotsTulp

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