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Am I Confusing Our State of Consciousness For the Host's Presence?


Ranger

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I came across some advice Luminesce gave that's had me thinking...

 

My primary fear is (and has been for a long time) that you guys have completely associated consciousness itself with your host - that the basis of being aware is your host. It's ironically the most anti-tulpa way of thinking possible - it's why Mistgod, in his old age, is incapable of seeing Melian as a tulpa. He's permanently associated a lot of what goes in in the brain with being "him" - totally logical for a singlet, mind you - and now Melian could never take credit for any of it, because it is him.

 

Well, as someone who switches often, I assure you it's not. You, and the host, are just identities (as I've described them, sets of ways of thinking, memories blahblahblah) that the brain can use. You can all take credit for what you believe should've been attributed to you, or not. That becomes your reality. You guys are already so far in to believe you exist enough to be living your host's life on your own - it's an ironic tragedy to see you possibly stuck in the singlet perspective of the mind.

 

I dunno. I hope that helped. It's what I call "meta tulpamancy" through and through - looking at the phenomenon as logically as possible, as I've figured it out personally. It may or may not apply to everyone, but what I do know for sure is it does work if you believe it, lol. I choose only to believe in what I've scrutinized under a lens of removed-perspective logic, but how I think may or may not be "right" because of it - all that matters is it's one of infinite perspectives that becomes reality when you believe it and live it.

I thought about my experiences feeling Cat's presence and it stirred up some confusion and doubt. Is it possible that we are making this mistake?

 

When either of us front, we both notice this thing that seems to always be there, observing everything and directly feeling things, responding to stimuli. For the longest time, we both assumed that was Cat, but I'm starting to wonder if that's just another part of the Body OS and doesn't belong to either of us.

 

When playing with this idea, both Cat and I felt uncomfortable and confused. If that is the body OS and not Cat, then what exactly is Cat? When Cat thinks as herself, she either relates to this thing or sees herself as Gray. When she fronts, she doesn't always see herself, just this thing. To make things more confusing, Cat has two mindvoices- one when fronting and one associated with her Gray form. We always assumed Cat was this first voice, but...what if she isn't, or she is and Gray is something else? It would be crazy if Gray and Cat were actually separate identities that somehow...work together and think as one? There's more to an autonomous entity than mindvoice, a form, and some feelings, right?

 

When I go dormant, I used to feel like a long time has passed before I wake up. I have had that experience less and less, easily popping into whatever we are doing and simply catching up on our memories instantly. When doing our switching attempts or even when I am possessing Cat, our goal is for Cat to go "dormant", and that includes her possibly blacking out and at the very least no longer be able to interact with the environment. When Cat/Gray's mindvoice quiets, neither of us felt like Cat/Gray left to begin with, and when they wake up again there isn't a memory lag or feeling of lost time of any kind. If I am mistaking Cat for the body OS's constant stream of consciousness, then maybe I'm waking them up all the time and not letting them go? What should we be looking for if Cat goes "dormant", and why isn't Cat experiencing a feeling of lost time when I front for several hours?

 

The worst feelings we're dealing with are a big scoop of "who am I?", how do we even know how much of ourselves is just body OS, and if all of this is true, how do we know we're in control in the first place?

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!

Blog | Not So Temporary Log | Switching Log | Yay! | Bre Translator | Art Thread

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Our rule that we mentioned in our thread is that, when we switch, it'll be obvious to us. Even if our original feels very faint or even almost like they're not there, it's never obvious to us that they're switched out, so we haven't yet reached the point where we want to actually call it switching.

 

 

The body OS doesn't have a presence. It's just collective autopilot, not an actual being that exists like a tulpa would. If you feel a presence other than yourself then it's safe to say that it is Cat.

 

I think assuming Gray is a separate entity is a stretch. She just has two forms/identities that she uses, that doesn't mean she's actually two different people. 

 

Your situation still just sounds like ours. The original/host is frontstuck and can't go inactive, though they can go quiet/stop thinking, and they're always there, watching, so they don't actually switch out, hence the lack of feeling like they've lost time. I can't make myself believe that our situation is the same thing as them actually switching out, and in that same sense I don't think that's what's happening to your host either. When it does, it should be obvious that it's happened.

 💡 The Felights 💡 https://felight.carrd.co/  💡

🪐 Cosmicals: 🔥 Apollo Fire the Sun God (12/3/16) Piano Soul the Star Man (1/26/17)

🐉 Mythicals: ☁️ Indigo Blue the Sky Dragon (10/2/17), 🦑 Gelato Sweet the Sea Monster (12/11/22)

🦇 Nycticals:  Dynamo Lux the Shock Rocker (3/3/17), 🎸 Radio Hiss the Song Demon (2/8/00)

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First of all, don't start thinking of the "body OS" as its own person or something. It doesn't have anything to define it as a "who" except you. That is exactly your (or at least Cat's) job. And I'll tell you now I have no idea what to say about the missing time (or not..?) thing, as we have no experience with that - it shouldn't happen really, preferably.

 

Anyways, in our model of thinking, a tulpa is sort of everything that a host is, and a host (or more easily imagined here, a singlet) is everything the rest of the body/mind is not. When we switch, we switch, but the "body OS" (ugh, I didn't intend to ever use that term for real) continues existing as-is. But it takes one of us to shape consciousness. Between switching (one switched out, the other not switched in), the body/brain can make very basic observations (and is mind-voiceless) or scratch an itch or some such, but it's missing a "driver"; there's no software in the hardware, you could say. Whichever of us is switched in is who shapes the brain's conscious thoughts and all things that require, well, whatever makes us us - from preferences to even instinctive reactions, let alone basic thinking about things. We're the code that the computer that is the body runs. And there's perhaps more "code" to us than I really make it sound like - I can't exactly think of everything that makes us "us", but there is surely a lot. We are not just "preferences, opinions, habits" even though those are some easy ones to throw out there, we are much more.

 

Separating a host from the rest of the body/mind can be hard, considering they've likely lived their entire life not doing so. Honestly for us, Lumi had learned to separate his idea of himself as consciousness from the rest of the body/mind from self-help/personal development books and stuff. He had a bit of a head start in learning to switch from that, and then after switching he came to the conclusions we're at now about "identities", with switching having had confirmed and explained some things to him.

 

Uh... I'm not sure what else to say, maybe I'm off topic, but I did say I don't know what to say about your actual questions. So I just expanded a bit upon this model of thinking of ours, hopefully that's okay/helped.

Hi. I'm one of Luminesce's tulpas. Unlike the others, I don't think I stand out too much from him personality wise.

I'm just special because "I'm a tulpa". So I don't think I've much to offer, here. I'm happy enough to just be with him.

Ask us stuff - https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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Ember: As far as we can tell, there's not very much to any of us that is specifically and exclusively part of us instead of the body OS. We each have a set of values, priorities, and behavioral tendencies, a will, and an emotional state, all of which are tied together into a sense of identity. Memories aren't part of us; they're a common resource. There is one ability to visualize and one ability to translate thought into words, each to be passed around between us as if we were Graeae.

 

Relevant to Ranger's point, conscious awareness itself isn't part of us, though it usually feels like it is. The part of the mind that continually says in vague tulpish, "I am a person because I am perceiving from my own perspective", is not part of who we are, because there's only one of those and we share it when we co-front. Under those circumstances, it's best to ignore being in favor of thinking and doing, which is more easily split and shared.

 

Even thoughts can be a little dodgy, as I believe SC talks about occasionally. We try not to pull back the veil of experience too far, but at the edge of perception, it sometimes seems like some thoughts are just mysteriously happening and one or another of us will latch onto and claim them as ours as they come into view.

 

Vesper: Ember is the weakest of us when not fronting, presumably because she has the least experience in that state. There have been a lot of times when she was so vague, nebulous, and shallow that I thought, "Is that really her? Is that what she would say, how she believes?" But it is of critical importance to believe that she is the same person even in that state, as we know that in matters of identity the brain has considerable ability to adapt to our personal reality to our beliefs.

 

We don't have any sense of time loss however long we aren't fronting. In DID, the sense of time loss is caused by poor access to memories of non-fronting periods. OSDD-1b lacks that sense of time loss. For us, memories seem to be associated with conscious awareness more than with any of us. When we switch, the conscious awareness will tie the incoming partner seamlessly into the short-term memory of being the outgoing partner.

 

For us, if a non-fronter isn't thinking, acting, or exercising will, they fade into dormancy very rapidly and the fronter might as well be a singleton. The fronter can actively sustain a sense of presence by their own exercise of will, but I can't speak to the experience of systems where a sense of presence and awareness persists in spite of both non-fronter’s idleness and fronter’s neglect.

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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Some systems claim their host experiences a sense of time loss, and even black out. I wonder if the reason why could be there are multiple streams of consciousness- which now begs the question if such a thing is even possible...

 

Given that possession for us is where Cat's mindvoice quiets, our switching attempts make me feel like I'm all up in inside the body OS, reacting to every little thing it spews out. In this state, Cat requires a little more talking to become more aware, but if our switching attempts truly are switching, then possession and switching feel really similar to us.

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!

Blog | Not So Temporary Log | Switching Log | Yay! | Bre Translator | Art Thread

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When I said "losing time" I didn't mean losing memories or anything, I just meant the general sense that one wasn't there during a certain time frame. We don't get that with our original since they're still always there, but if I look back on February of this year, I know I wasn't there at all, so I "lost time."

 💡 The Felights 💡 https://felight.carrd.co/  💡

🪐 Cosmicals: 🔥 Apollo Fire the Sun God (12/3/16) Piano Soul the Star Man (1/26/17)

🐉 Mythicals: ☁️ Indigo Blue the Sky Dragon (10/2/17), 🦑 Gelato Sweet the Sea Monster (12/11/22)

🦇 Nycticals:  Dynamo Lux the Shock Rocker (3/3/17), 🎸 Radio Hiss the Song Demon (2/8/00)

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I believe "losing time" is a term from DID and related plurality communities that means not having memories of the time another system member was fronting. (I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure)

Hi. I'm one of Luminesce's tulpas. Unlike the others, I don't think I stand out too much from him personality wise.

I'm just special because "I'm a tulpa". So I don't think I've much to offer, here. I'm happy enough to just be with him.

Ask us stuff - https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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Guest Reilyn-Alley

Yeah, one of the things that seperates DID from OSDD is having missing memories when others front. Uhm, maybe I'm wrong but I think it's a main criteria.

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"Time loss", as I've always previously encountered the term, involves not remembering what happened during the missing time. It's brutal. I watched my wives for years struggle helplessly and fail while trying to remember what month it was, how old they were, and especially how long ago anything in the past was.

 

I remember plenty of times I wasn't around, where I was utterly dormant or blacked out or whatever you want to call it. I don't consider the time lost. After all, I remember it just as well as if I had been around. It doesn't "feel" lost. In DID, it feels like skipping ahead, like the intervening time didn't happen.

 

-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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I'm sorry, by "time loss" I mean I wake up from dormancy and think "dang, it's afternoon already?" not "I can't remember what happened today".

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!

Blog | Not So Temporary Log | Switching Log | Yay! | Bre Translator | Art Thread

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