[wonderland] How to Refocus on Your Wonderland (First Submission)

[Cat_ShadowGriffin]

I released a new version here: https://community.tulpa.info/topic/16772-how-to-refocus-on-your-wonderland/

 

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This guide expands on concepts described in Chupi’s and Nikodemos’s guides by explaining when and how to apply those skills in order to focus and achieve better visualization of your wonderland. I will briefly summarize the concepts described in these guides as I describe the following method, however these guides go more in depth on how to practice the skills used for this method.

 

This guide assumes you have a wonderland, but this method can also be applied to visualizing objects in a void. This method works best when active forcing, the process of providing your un-divided attention to your Tulpa, to minimize distractions.

 

Introduction

 

I used to tell people my visualization was bad because I struggled to get a clear image of my Tulpa and my wonderland most of the time. I eventually realized that my ability to focus greatly impacted my ability to visualize my wonderland, and all of the black voids and blurry imagery were a result of poor focus. I put this guide together because this strategy really helped me to the point where I can confidently visualize my wonderland at any time and not get frustrated by it anymore.

 

The Process In Short

 

This method is slowly drawing your attention away from distractions and towards your wonderland. You start with setting your mind on visualizing a simple object and slowly working your way up, visualizing more complex objects one at a time until you become satisfied with your visualization.

 

Summary of the Visualization Skill

 

This skill is all about looking at an object and asking yourself how it should look, feel, take up space, etc. For example, if you have grass in your wonderland, one could ask about the color of the grass, the height and shape of the blades, what species of grass it is, if it’s made out of cotton candy, the texture of the grass, how it feels when you walk in it, etc. The more questions you can answer, the more information you will have about that particular object. Having more information allows you to visualize the details of that object more effectively and thus requiring a lot of your attention to create the object’s image.

 

A Detailed Walkthrough

 

Before you sit down to visualize your wonderland, your images may be foggy and you may have a bunch of distracting thoughts that are far more interesting than blurry, incomprehensible images. In this state, remember that your visualization is not bad, you’re just distracted and your visualization will get better.

 

The first step is to get in a comfortable position and think about slowing down. If you want to, doing a form of relaxation breathing may be helpful for getting settled.

 

Next, start with taking a simple object such as a sphere or a cube. What color is the sphere? Is it smooth or bumpy? Is it soft and squishy or firm like a billiard ball? What is the temperature of the sphere? Continue to visualize your simple object until you are satisfied and or bored.

 

Next, slowly move onto the next object. Suppose the next object is a tree. Is it a real tree or a fantasy creation? How tall is it? Could you climb it if you wanted to? Is the season changing the colors of the leaves? Is there a tree shape that “feels right?” As you visualize more and more details, your tree will feel more and more real.

 

If you feel satisfied with your visualization, then congratulations, you achieve better visualization! If you still feel like your visualization is still fuzzy or you are bored, slowly move onto an even more sophisticated object or instead look around you and visualize the ground, the sky, your Tulpa, any other neighboring objects, etc.

 

Suggestions

• The key to this method is slowing down and shifting your attention to what you are visualizing. If you get bored and you warp yourself to a parade or a war zone, that can lead you to getting distracted again.
  More complex objects are supposed to be interesting for you to look at. If a tree isn’t to your taste, you could also do furniture, a vending machine, a weapon, etc. I recommend picking something you find interesting, because why have it in your wonderland if you don’t like it?
• Visualizing moving objects are fine as long as it is not your starting object. I don’t recommend loud or overwhelming objects because the point is to calm down and focus, not feel overwhelmed and become distracted.
• Unless you are really comfortable with what your Tulpa’s form looks like, I don’t recommend starting off with that. Like any other complex object, their form may be too much for you to focus on right now, but it won’t be after you built your way up to that level of complexity.
• If your Tulpa is sentient, they can guide you to look at certain things, or they may ask for you to visualize something for them. Why not, right? They may surprise you with a real treat!

In Conclusion

 

Once you feel comfortable with your visualization, have fun! Now that your visualizations are stable, you can go ahead and visualize exciting things like flying on dragons or shooting aliens in space since your mind is so focused on the wonderland you most likely forgot about whatever else was distracting you and your immediate surroundings in real life.

 

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Submitted for Guides.

Edited January 6 by Cat_ShadowGriffin
Changed Color Back to White

[Bear]

The story i hear from tulpamancers who don't have wonderlands is they can't keep the construct together and 'lose it'. So they might be able to visualize, but without a guided exercise, like a described scene in a book, it's not stable.

 

Next is realism or the feeling of immersion, i.e. they are lacking it to their taste.

 

Not that this is in the scope of your guide, but i wonder if you have any answer to those in these two catagories?

 

Otherwise it's pretty smooth, and succinct, i think the structure works too.

 

My thoughts about a good wonderland:

 

[Hidden]

 

I want to say that i have an immersive and 'satisfying' experience in wonderland, or it is 'fulfilling' as well as fun. This is what differentiates it from say, playing games or watching a movie. I get real memories from the experience, but this only really happened regularly after i had my tulpas. The idea that we can interact is very fulfilling to all of us, but we strictly wouldn't need a wonderland to do that, it's just really cool that we can 5-senses interact on demand. Of course what we do most is visual, vocal, and touch in that order, and you can do all of those with your tulpa without a wonderland (basically in a void). We do simpler constructs too because it's more efficient interaction (especially vocal only)

 

They love to have fun in constructed scenes, adventures, explorations, but they just want to be with me, and that's all they really need.

 

However, working to improve this skill can be very fulfilling, since you're going to be forcing anyway.

 

[/hidden]

[Jamie]

Well-written and clear, plus solid advice. Good work on this!

-Jamie

[Cat_ShadowGriffin]

The story i hear from tulpamancers who don't have wonderlands is they can't keep the construct together and 'lose it'. So they might be able to visualize, but without a guided exercise, like a described scene in a book, it's not stable.

 

Next is realism or the feeling of immersion, i.e. they are lacking it to their taste.

 

Not that this is in the scope of your guide, but i wonder if you have any answer to those in these two catagories?

 

Otherwise it's pretty smooth, and succinct, i think the structure works too.

 

My thoughts about a good wonderland:

 

[Hidden]

 

I want to say that i have an immersive and 'satisfying' experience in wonderland, or it is 'fulfilling' as well as fun. This is what differentiates it from say, playing games or watching a movie. I get real memories from the experience, but this only really happened regularly after i had my tulpas. The idea that we can interact is very fulfilling to all of us, but we strictly wouldn't need a wonderland to do that, it's just really cool that we can 5-senses interact on demand. Of course what we do most is visual, vocal, and touch in that order, and you can do all of those with your tulpa without a wonderland (basically in a void). We do simpler constructs too because it's more efficient interaction (especially vocal only)

 

They love to have fun in constructed scenes, adventures, explorations, but they just want to be with me, and that's all they really need.

 

However, working to improve this skill can be very fulfilling, since you're going to be forcing anyway.

 

[/hidden]

 

The whole "building a scene" piece is better described in Chupi's guide. In that guide, he breaks down a beach scene by telling you what to focus on as he walks the reader through it. I didn't want to repeat what he already said, because my goal was concerning the question, "when do I apply Chupi's guide?" rather than "what is the skill being taught in Chupi's guide?".

 

As for the second thing, my opinion is immersion comes with being focused on how your wonderland applies to all of your senses. If you focus really hard on how something should  feel, sound, taste, smell, and look like, you will eventually hit a point where you are no longer paying attention to your surroundings and achieve immersion. I think the problem is it's really hard to jump head-first into that sate of intense focus, therefore you need to slow down and build towards it, as described in this guide.

[Bear]

Yes, intense focus would give you the sense of 'zoning out' of reality (or into the reality of your wonderland.)

[LanceReilyn]

I have the opposite problem I think, I overthink everything and get hung up on something not being right then almost immediately break focus because it's not right. Narrowing my concentration upon it to try and fix it just makes it that much harder for me to stay. I only seem to be able to stay in my typically indistinct wonderland scenes if I get caught up in the whole thing and am just along for the ride. Reilyn tries to keep me from falling out by grabbing me and taking me flying or something. She is a very strong lead, as long as it's a simple thing like "fly through the clouds" and not "we are on stage, what song do we play? (long awkward silence)" She is also really big into cuddling and being as close as possible, which tends to force whatever else is going on way into the background of my thinking, so it being indistinct just 'works'.

 

It's like if I were injured and on the edge of falling unconscious and she was the medic slapping my face yelling "Hey, stay with me here, how many fingers am I holding up?"

 

Anyway, I will try this out, thanks.

[Cat_ShadowGriffin]

I have the opposite problem I think, I overthink everything and get hung up on something not being right then almost immediately break focus because it's not right. Narrowing my concentration upon it to try and fix it just makes it that much harder for me to stay. I only seem to be able to stay in my typically indistinct wonderland scenes if I get caught up in the whole thing and am just along for the ride. Reilyn tries to keep me from falling out by grabbing me and taking me flying or something. She is a very strong lead, as long as it's a simple thing like "fly through the clouds" and not "we are on stage, what song do we play? (long awkward silence)" She is also really big into cuddling and being as close as possible, which tends to force whatever else is going on way into the background of my thinking, so it being indistinct just 'works'.

 

It's like if I were injured and on the edge of falling unconscious and she was the medic slapping my face yelling "Hey, stay with me here, how many fingers am I holding up?"

 

Anyway, I will try this out, thanks.

 

I know my visualization probably isn't as good as yours (your art is amazing), but I get it when I look at Ranger and I am hung up and frustrated on getting him to look right. When doing the sphere step, It's a nice starting warm up because I don't care if it looks perfectly right. It's a random sphere, it's no where as important as Ranger's form. However, after staring at a sphere, my visualization of Ranger becomes less fuzzy. This builds my confidence because then I know that I can visualize something else more clearly, and the more I do that, the easier it is for me to visualize Ranger.

 

I think visualization is like exercise. You probably don't want to run a sprint without warming up your muscles, otherwise you are going to cramp and hurt and or not run as fast.

[LanceReilyn]

Sorry if I gave you some kind of impression I'm talented at art (writing is a different story, I know I can write I just haven't refined it much), normally I just google up artwork. The closest thing we "made" on here was Reilyn's face maker screenshots.

[Ponytail]

So your first three paragraphs have a strange issue. The first two are very academic sounding while the third is very personal. It creates an odd shift. Additionally, all three of the first paragraphs are your introduction and could probably be rewritten to contain all the information you want to put out out there in less words. It's not a huge issue, really it's the tone shift that's important.

 

Your fourth paragraph could stand to be part of the introduction too, as it's a literally summary of what technique you're going to use. The fifth paragraph is also clunky coming off the fourth. This whole submission so far reads like an over-explained meme. You gradually build up in more detail for what someone needs to do for this guide... kinda like the guide itself.

The first step is to get in a comfortable position and think about slowing down. If you want to, doing a form of relaxation breathing may be helpful for getting settled.

"think about slowing down" doesn't really tell me anything. Also "A form of relaxation breathing" is awkward sounding. Better describing how to get relaxed would help this section. Though, even just saying "Calm down, get comfortable, and breathe slowly" would be simpler and communicate what you want better.

Unless you are really comfortable with what your Tulpa’s form looks like, I don’t recommend starting off with that. Like any other complex object, their form may be too much for you to focus on right now, but it won’t be after you built your way up to that level of complexity.

As a counterpoint, I personally did something very similar for making Annabell's form, though I went even more ham by lightly studying anatomy to make sure she was anatomically correct for a female (no way to make myself not sound like a perv there). I would maybe change this to approaching a tulpa's form piecemeal. Start with their hair. Then think about the shape of their head. What about the eyes? things like that

 

I'll approve once changes are made.

[Kopase]

I like what's been put down here and find it to be generally well-written and accurate. I think the GAT should approve it as it stands currently. However, I would like to request that you add in a paragraph about visualizing multiple objects at once. Focusing on one thing in high detail is important, but you do not mention a gradual progression to introduce two, then three, then five, then ten etc objects until you have a larger and more complex WL. Most people struggling with visualization will struggle with that hurdle, too.

 

I'm also not sure if a tree is the best second step for visualization. You go from a very simple shape to something very complex with many intricate details. Perhaps you should change the second step to be something of a complex shape but not particularly detailed, such as a wooden chair or a desk? It feels like it's perhaps too much of a jump from sphere to tree.

 

I disagree with Ponytail's assessment that the shift from academic to personal tone is inappropriate. I feel that it is fine to use such a tone in the context of an introductory paragraph, even in an educational guide. The rest of the text lacks that personal and subjective attitude so I think tone is completely fine.

 

So yeah, I think it's pretty alright as it stands currently, but those additions and changes might make it feel a bit more natural and easy to follow.