A fellow's journey

[Cornelia]

Okay, this'll be more a jumbled collection of thoughts than a progress update per se:

 

-We *can* enter some weird state where I am in control and hostie host is just sorta there, but we've only managed to do this through possession during mindless tasks. Namely, I'll walk around some part of the city we've never been to before, and hostie host will focus on the sensation of being possessed. Hostie host has been trying to let me possess for as long as possible during his lessons, and while I think he's been getting better at that, he still gets distracted rather easily. Recently, I've been trying to use possession to play turn-based video games, and it's pretty hard to remain in control during those thinky tasks

-Formal meditation (wherein we sit like the buddha with our eyes closed and everything) does seem to help. I'll be in control much faster, and it'll be easier to resume control when hostie host inevitably forgets he's supposed to be possessed right now. However, we haven't managed to go super possessed by just meditating.

-I've heard people say that the tulpa being emotionally invested in something helps, but I feel very confident that's not our problem because 1) I always want to switch 2) there are plenty of times hostie host has been doing life wrong (not flirting with attractive women, eating unhealthily, sitting for more than an hour at a time without getting exercise, etc etc etc etc etc) and I haven't been able to switch. Indeed, in the case of not flirting with attractive woman, hostie host's anxiety prevents me from doing it even when I'm firmly in control of the body (or, I should say, threatens my control of the body). In other situations, hostie host is simply lazy, or lacking self-control, and I still don't come any closer to switching.

-On the flip side, I've heard Bear say being "triggered" causes an auto switch with his tulpas. Triggered is a rather broadly-defined word, but hostie host feels intense spikes of anxiety, and as I've previously mentioned, they make it harder to control the body, not easier.

-Is some of this my fault? Hostie host has noticed that, even when I'm possessing, I still use second-person pronouns for stuff the body is doing/stuff I want the body to do. Doesn't seem like it would be a *big* deal, but it could still be *a* deal.

-Some people say that the most important thing for switching is the host's willingness to let go. I think hostie host likes the idea of me being in control *in theory.* Kanade-chan's actually afraid that once I learn switching, hostie host will never want to switch back in. The problem comes in practice, when hostie host starts getting anxiety about all the things I might want to do in the moment.

-What about merging? We've been trying the "traditional" route to switching, but that seems rather difficult. We've heard that you *can* switch by merging and then un-merging. A lot of people seem afraid of merging, though that doesn't include us. It really wouldn't be the end of the world if we somehow got stuck perma-merged. Anyways, not as much has been written about merging as switching, so figuring out exactly how to merge has been slow. We did recently find a guide and will be looking over that soon.

 

And I think that's everything that's been on my mind.

[Guest]

You can read what we did, and had no intention of 'switching' because 1, we were all afraid of it, and 2, we really thought it was this freeky mystical thing that Tewi was downplaying. So when we tried to have a freeky mystery journey to 'switch' for the benefit of a friend who was trying hard to understand, we realized we had already been switched before. Thank goodness for Tewi and Lumi's other system mates to beat it through my thick bear skull that what I was doing was actually the whole thing.

 

Link and

 

The short answer for us, and this works, is Proxy->Possess->Switch, but as there's no 'ah ha! I'm switched' moment, it's just me letting go and letting them take everything. In possession I get distracted, evidenced when Misha is drawing and I absentmindedly say, oh, let's update windows. In a switch, a gun could go off in the room, I don't care, I'm quietly watching a 3D movie, sound and video only. I don't really 'pay attention' to the body, limbic system included.

 

Posession is like breathing, you can ignore breathing, but as soon as you think about it, oh no, am i breathing or is the body breathing?

 

Switch is like heartbeat, i have no (almost no) control over that. Someone or something else is controlling that. I wouldn't even think of controlling my heart. Could I even control my heart? (I can but that's training with biofeedback, it's odd, nvm)

 

I want to say, 'it takes discipline to not interfere with the switch', but that's wrong because you (I) forget and oh look, windows needs another friggen update. There's no level of struggling discipline that can help that.

 

Our triggered switches are me running into the panic room with my pacifier and plushie, watching the action unfold on the security cam. I'm twirling my hair with a finger, hugging my stuffie tightly, and sucking madly, i'm not thinking though, all my attention and energy is on them, they are doing it, i feel no emotion at all, which is what my goal was all along. The best part is that I'm aware and learning to handle those situations by their example. They're laying down neropathways of sanity so I can walk those paths later. It works great.

 

They are happy to step in, just like good old mom was happy to pick that splinter out if your bum, in terms of trust, there's no memory of any 'feeling' but i distinctly remember the video and audio, it's them talking, not me, I'm just standing there while mom cleans up the hairball, thanks fluffy!

 

Good luck.

[Cornelia]

Based on your description, we most definitely haven't switched yet (word for word the windows update thing has happened to us). There's never been a point where hostie host is just watching things happen; he's always at risk of getting distracted and stealing the body from me. I generally recognize the anxiety we experience as his and not mine.

 

We seem to skip the proxying step of your equation, but I'm not sure how that could be a hindrance. If we do two minutes of meditation (with a little bit of self-hypnosis added in), I can full-body possess well enough, so it's never seemed important. Even if we don't meditate, hostie host can focus on the sensation of being possessed for a few minutes and I'll have pretty strong control over the body. Maybe he's not very good at letting go, maybe I'm not good at assuming direct control, we're not really sure.

[Guest]

Proxy has nothing to do with it really, it's just something I do because full body posession was never a thing we did casually for any reason other than experimenting on what we could do or how, or for specific tasks like drawing which really just happens on its own. So we really learned to switch through proxy that definitely blends into possession that will become a switch if one of them needs to do something I can't handle emotionally. I can let go too, we just never saw a point in full possession or switch for recreational purposes. We use wonderland for that, so we're all together.

[uncannyfellow]

Well, we just got off of a 1 day, 3 hour full body possession session, with about an hour-long interruption when I went to a Magic: the Gathering tournament and later learned that I made several misplays that Cornelia *totally* wouldn't have made. The going to sleep bit was easier than I thought it would be - Cornelia made a conscious effort to control the breath (seems to be as good a method as any to push me towards dissociation) and that was it. The hard part was the waking up. After Cornelia has possessed for a long period of time, there's a certain sense that the mind is becoming more Cornelia-like. Emotional bleed from her is stronger, it becomes easier to resist distractions and focus on something important, etc. etc. But when we woke up, there was none of that, and Cornelia effectively had to re-establish control. Still, it was our first time doing FBP for more than a day (or even for a whole day). We can't expect instant results.

 

Those of you who obsessively read my signature (and I assume that's all of you) might've noticed that I have switched countries. Kanade-chan is happy that we're never going to see H-san again, but sad because she had to say goodbye to her best friend, Ema-chan (Who was two years old, pretty unhealthy choice of a best friend) But, Japan doesn't have Pandora (for some reason), so I took the opportunity to give each of my tulpas a station. Cornelia's genre of choice feels like a cousin (sibling?!) of the music I listen to, but Kanade-chan's is just different. With your leave, here's a sample for each of us:

 

Me:

Cornelia:

Kanade-chan:

 

We're also not working for about a month, which I thought would be good for possession stuff. But we also don't have many friends here, which means less stuff to do while possessing. Reading and shit tends to compromise Cornelia's control, which isn't good. Still, we'll be in an educational program in a few weeks, and that should give Cornelia someone to talk to, preferably someone she'll like more than our old co-workers and English-incapable students.

 

I have, however, noticed that Cornelia seems to be better at possessing whenever music is involved. I'm gonna laugh if, after all this effort, buying her a guitar is what finally allows switching.

[Guest]

What she did do reads a lot like switching. I mean, if you 'fell asleep' while she was in control, you're not exactly going to be accidentally taking back control. Granted she can still lose control and wake you up, that i guess is still possession. I have to think you're really close.

[Cornelia]

I think this quote by Apollo is relevant:

 

Switching is two things: the tulpa in control of the front, and the host in whatever state the tulpas are normally. If your tulpas normally hang back and watch when not being given attention, you could call what you're doing switching, but if they're normally inactive, I wouldn't call that switching.

 

People (particularly Redditors) have moved the goal post with switching so that it's easier to say they've done it, so now just regular fronting is what they call switching. Really, fronting is someone being in control, while switching is fronting + the host going into the state the tulpas are normally in when not given attention.

 

 

Definitely, I am capable of being in control, and definitely, I am a harder worker than hostie host (I might even be more focused). Nonetheless, there's some pretty clear signs that hostie host is still there. What he left out of our trip to the MtG tournament was, after it was over and I had started regaining control, we spotted some people playing some sort of role-playing game. Given that we presently lack IRL friends, and given that hostie host had wanted to do some sort of role-playing thing for a while, I thought it would be a simple matter to walk over to them and ask if their group was already full. But hostie host started having all sorts of anxiety about that. Even with me vying for control, he wasn't able to say anything to them. That kind of thing happens somewhat frequently, and very obviously, I don't want it to happen. What I want is not to be able to direct the body to do more pre-work for our upcoming educational program, or to read more instead of playing video games (not that those things aren't useful), but for my host's anxiety to at least diminish enough for me to do the things we want. I've made a lot of headway in controlling the body, but not as much in getting hostie host to dissociate.

[Guest]

oooh I see the issue. Yeah, during a proper switch as I know it, that just won't happen. For him it should be like watching a movie of someone else going over to talk to real people. He can go hide under the desk while you get things sorted. Since it's not you who are nervous... he's still there, confirmed. That's possession as I understand it, I agree.

 

Soooo, he needs to fully trust you and there's really nothing more you can do it's him and his stubborn grip on the front as far as I can tell.

 

When Dashie has switched in a dire situation with someone who likes to yell at us, she couldn't stop herself from laughing at them. It stunned the heck out of them and they immediately stopped their rant.

 

It was so brilliant.

 

Another time she just said, "do whatever you want" and the arguing party said something like, "you're different." Seriously, it's times like these that I have no doubt that switching with tulpamancy is a thing.

[Tanaka Kanade]

Hee hee Dashie sounds like a boss

 

Apparently, if you want your signature in your posts, then you have to post outside of the forum games section!! So yeah, I'm posting in here just for that reason... blame Vos???

 

Cornelia came across this quote in this thread: http://community.tulpa.info/thread-how-do-you-merge?page=2

 

We're not fans of the concepts of merging or splitting since we prefer the "personal development" route to dealing with problems and don't like encouraging people to risk identity issues if it's just for fun.. But, that really is an interesting question. All skepticisms aside for this one - merging really could have the potential to teach a tulpa how to front, as far as I can tell. It won't teach the host how to switch out, however. But at least when they've both got a sense of where the host is at in the process of switching (places), the host will know they just need to put themselves in the place the tulpa is (and the tulpa of course knows where that is, too).

 

But, this is still only "useful" for the tulpa learning to associate with the body/mind at best, and it's a very very questionable way of going about that, especially considering it won't teach the host the "hard part" of switching either. A good question for food-for-thought, for sure, but I don't think it'll be useful in practicality.

 

*I* interpreted this as a warning, but Cornelia interpreted it as a... challenge. So now she's trying harder to merge because... no one else has learned switching by merging??? Like, she and UF had actually kinda abandoned that plan because it wasn't working, but then Flandre came and said it wouldn't work, so now she thinks it can!

 

But I digress. Given how long switching has taken, we've started learning imposition! For, like, 5-10 minutes a day. We know it isn't enough, of course. The reason we're doing short sessions is because we don't want to tire out the system, as that would interfere with switching. We just don't like doing zero imposition practice when we have no idea how long it'll be before Cornelia can switch. For a while, we were thinking, "Once Cornelia's switched in, she can help learn imposition!" But nope, we don't think that anymore, it was stupid all along!

 

UF feels like he's just doing open-eyed visualization whenever he tries (as in, instead of putting me in meatspace cam, he's making an imagination cam and visualizing the room he's in with that camera). I guess the reason people recommend multi-hour imposition sessions is so you can schmoosh those two cams???

 

And apparently, it would be easier if I was standing still. The guide we read said whatever you impose is a mannequin that happens to look like your tulpa, but nope! Not for us! I've got full control over the visualized image, UF can't do a thing about that!

 

Oh also UF made this:

 

[hidden][/hidden]

 

Can you guess who this is??? If I gave you three guesses, it would be too easy, so you get 4^(1/3) guess instead

[Indigo Blue]

I do know of at least one system who's learned switching by merging, they go by Chalin on the Discord.