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On Forcing: Developing the Consciousness


Shinyuu

Question

“Can I create a tulpa only by passive forcing?” This question pops up constantly on tulpa forums and discussion groups. It often comes from a thought that “active forcing” requires you to dedicate time to your tulpa, and you ain’t got time for that shite (you still want to have a tulpa, though).

 

I decided to tap into the applied neuroscience and make a bridge between forcing and mindfulness; expanding into the brain idling states and pointing out the best strategies to develop a tulpa.

 

Read the article

 

Note from GAT: While the page linked is clean/SFW, other pages/articles on Shinyuu's blog are not. Tread carefully if you are at work/school or are a minor or read the mirrored version on Medium.

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Overall, I believe you have a strong working draft. Your essay takes an interesting approach by breaking down what's going on in your head and connecting both psychology and Buddhist ideologies. While I originally thought some concepts introduced felt a little too technical, I believe your footnotes do an excellent job informing your readers who need the extra context. The only major flaws are the rough transitions and the incorrect usage of active/passive forcing distracting from your core thesis. These flaws hurt the structure of your essay.

 

The only part of your essay that has to do with active and passive forcing is the beginning:

 

“Can I create a tulpa only by passive forcing?” This question pops up constantly on tulpa forums and discussion groups. It often comes from a thought that “active forcing” requires you to dedicate time to your tulpa, and you ain’t got time for that shite (you still want to have a tulpa, though).

The separation between active and passive forcing is based on if we focus our attention on the tulpa specifically or only give them little attention while being busy with something else

 

After that, you assume a different definition for "active" and "passive" forcing. This will confuse your readers or make them wrongly assume you don't know what you are talking about. I found you used the term "active focusing" once, and I believe that would be a reasonable replacement for every other instance of "active forcing". The beginning section I quoted should be removed from your essay because it's off topic and needs to be replaced with an introduction relevant to your thesis.

 

I wrote more detailed comments here:

 

[hidden]

requires you to dedicate time to your tulpa, and you ain’t got time for that shite (you still want to have a tulpa, though).

 

You don't need to include "shite" or other profanity in your article.

 

For it, focusing on a single task is hard; it’s an effort that increases its energy consumption and, as such, the effort that should be discarded as soon as possible.

 

The wording is confusing here. If the effort needs to be discarded, why focus at all?

 

Our brain is a muscle that needs training.

 

That entire paragraph does not mention your thesis even though it adds context to it. Include a reference to your thesis statement and the transition will be smoother.

 

Michael Fox, the Associate Professor of Neurology and the Director of Laboratory for Brain Network Imaging at BIDMC writes: “The default mode network has shown to deactivate during external goal-oriented tasks such as visual attention or cognitive working memory tasks, thus leading some researchers to label the network as the task-negative network.”

 

This explanation is too technical for someone who hasn't studied psychology. It would be helpful to either paraphrase or re-state what he says in non-technical terms.

 

But let’s get back to tulpas. It’s common to think of them being the products of our thoughts, but what are thoughts, exactly?

 

If you combine these two into one sentence and reference the last paragraph, your sentence will transition to your next paragraph more smoothly.

 

This is where meta-awareness comes in.

 

This makes me think the next paragraph will talk about meta-awareness, but it doesn't. If the next paragraph were about meta-awareness, I would use this as part of the first sentence of that paragraph.

 

But is there more to it? This is where our DMN comes back!

 

This transition is too rough. You shouldn't have to introduce your next paragraph with a rhetorical question and shout "back to this thing!"

[/hidden]

 

I really like this article, but it's too rough to approve in its current state. Core sections need to be further revised or possibly moved around and the introduction needs to be redone to apply to the thesis.

I'm Ranger, GrayTheCat's cobud (tulpa), and I love hippos! I also like cake and chatting about stuff. I go by Rosalin or Ronan sometimes. You can call me Roz but please don't call me Ron.

My other headmates have their own account now.

 

If I missed seeing your art, please PM/DM me!

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Review here. (Google drive link)

My opening and closing paragraphs:

 

Hello Shinyuu! Your website was one of the first resources on tulpamancy my host saw. I’m glad to be able to review a piece of yours. I’ll be focusing on structure and clarity the most. I agree with Piano and AZ’s points re: content: you are defining “active” and “passive” forcing differently than the common usage. I liked AZ’s proposed clarifications for this problem. On to the review! And, keep in mind, this is mostly nit-picking: it’s entirely up to you what suggestions to keep, though I would like to see some level of revising.

 

Overall, a very nice piece on the merits of passive forcing, active forcing, and switching, as well as the role of the DMN on the development of tulpas as individuals. It needs to be polished now, so that this central idea stands out. Your opening statement needs to be changed- when I read “So, is it better to active force, or passive force, or switch?”, I said, “That’s it- that needs to be the opener!” You then go on to explain how the DMN factors into your analysis, that all methods work, but active is better than passive, and switching is better than active. At least, that was what I took away. 

 

 

Give it a good polish, some rephrasing and fine-tuning of definitions, and I’ll approve it for articles. - G

The world is far, the world is wide; the man needs someone by his side. 

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