Rena & Byakko notes++

[TB]

8 minutes ago, Reisen said:

It's always been a bit odd to us that you talk about distractions and negative stimuli as "getting in the way" of meditative achievements/benefits - obviously, that is what anyone will directly experience while working on it, but - even we had it pretty drilled into us that those ARE the things you're trying to overcome. "I could be an enlightened monk, if only the world wasn't full of annoying and upsetting things!" would be such a silly thing to say, you know? Yes it's easier to feel good or focused when stressors and distractions aren't present, but, I don't think the Buddhist path was ever meant only for people who could make their external lives nice and perfect, it's specifically to help them deal with the parts of life that aren't

 

Some quiet meditation time is surely always required, but we've really always seen it as personal internal achievements meant to be brought to the rest of life, to make human existence easier and eventually frictionless

Things that get in the way or make it harder might still do that, sure - but I just think you should be thinking about it like we do, and not like the very things you're meant to overcome are "in the way" of progress

i don't expect things to be perfect and know that meditation is a way to better handle life's difficulties rather than something to do after impossibly solving life's difficulties, but some circumstances are so bad it makes it difficult to progress. i am not perfect and could not productively meditate while actively being abused and neglected and not having many needs met while also suffering severe mental illness and i dont think buddhists expect anyone to succeed in similar conditions either

 

samsara can be seen as a metaphor for different possible situational conditions humans experience in life, and only those in human realm are supposed to be best equipped with potential for enlightenment because beings in heavenly realms have too much pleasure and peace to seek enlightenment and those in hell realms cannot reach enlightenment because their suffering is too heavy

 

Meditation, concentration, sensory clarity, equanimity etc are all skills that need to be trained like any others, and awful and traumatic material conditions are like heavier weights. i was a novice at meditation when my mom's health was failing physically and mentally before my eyes and i felt helpless to help her, and i was struggling with tena's existence because i didnt think she was vocal because i misunderstood what vocality meant, and my dad got a girlfriend that got him into hard drugs and he stopped being able to always buy food and utility payments.

 

it's like going to someone who wants to be a weightlift champion and their only weights are like 500 pound ones and they can't lift it and then you say well arent you supposed to be strong? isn't that the point? but they cant get strong because they cant train with that and need to start lighter

 

I'm vastly disadvantaged at handling even normal levels of stress but it seems my situation in life was worse than i thought and not as common or normal. meditation can also be far more difficult or even dangerous for people with trauma, which im not sure how to know if i have but multiple people have told me it sounds like i have cptsd

 

also why do you think monks are monks? they deliberately drop the responsibilities and stress and drama of daily life to focus completely on spiritual development. it is possible to become an enlightened lay person, but it has different challenges, and even lay people will usually have to find a way to set up their life to allow their practice to advance

 

to enter a jhana, you have to not be experiencing any of the 5 hindrances, which are desire, aversion, laziness/lethargy, worry/remorse, and doubt. it is difficult to not experience worry/remorse or aversion when you work in a warehouse 5 days a week, sweating buckets every day, in full body chronic pain 24/7, and afraid to even take showers because there is a demented family member who will scream at the top of their lungs like theyre being murdered if they hear water running because you just stepped in the shower and the water has been on for 15 seconds, but then will also become angry saying that you smell, among many other things, and not let you drink bottle water from the kitchen because it is hers, but will not allow you to keep your own bottled water in your own room, so anytime you want to drink something you will get screamed at, every single day.

[bunnymustdie]

Hello TB. The degradation you mentioned you noticed in your tulpas is related to stress and negativity. The way one's mind can work is that when you're really upset or traumatized, beyond what you're usually capable of dealing with, the upset gets sort of quarantined in the subconscious where it can potentially fester in there. The quarantine process is not perfect and part of what gets created as a byproduct is a cluster of negative beliefs, such as "I deserved to be punished", "all wrong deeds deserve punishment", "I have done wrong" or "No one will accept me, I'm an outsider", etc, almost like a split off of your main consciousness.

 

Sometimes these things have a way of snowballing and spreading in your subconscious for whatever reasons. You might bump into a similar situation as the original upset, the original emotion and set of negative beliefs get activated again, you become "triggered", i.e, almost unreasonably upset by the new situation, and the situation you otherwise could have taken care of normally instead gets handled badly, and becomes a new upset in your subconscious linked to that older upset. There are likely other reasons why they spread, but they're not as important right now.

 

When there's a lot of these things in your subconscious, i.e, undigested bad emotions and negative beliefs, they color your world a different way and drag you down. You end up seeing and experiencing things differently. For example, if you play the same prank on two different people, one may laugh it off while another may become very angry. Trump may go from an just an annoying politician who will be gone in a few years to someone whose very name can cause a triggering effect when you hear or think of it. A white dude giving you an odd look as you walk by may be perceived as a racist. I've experienced similar things so I can kind get an idea on what's going on. These subconscious junk have a way of creating a lot of stress out of situations you otherwise could handle easily, and generally create a lot of stress and bad vibes in the background of your mind.

 

It's like... if you're angry because you feel you've been wronged, that's normal. If you hate because you've been abused, that's normal too. Fighting or trying to repress these feelings when they have somewhat legitimate reasons to be there is bound to be mentally exhausting. These emotions are valid in their existence, but they are likely partially, or even mostly, responding to the negative beliefs and undigested upsets in your subconscious that's described above, and not entirely to the external things in the world such as politics or ICE.

 

You probably already are a positive person, just badly influenced by these subconscious complexes. Metta and positivity training do help in their ways, but they are essentially helping you "tank" the stress and negative vibes coming out of your subconscious, helping you better endure the "punches" it's throwing out, as it were. When you switch, it appears to me, your tulpas are "tanking" the punches for you, and hence the apparent "degradation". Anyone would degrade and wither if they're constantly attacked and abused.

 

Rather than continuing to tank the punches, or trying to learn different ways to become better at tanking, what would likely help with the situation a lot is removing the source of the punches to begin with. I had really good experience with this book, which did just all that for me - the technique it taught removed all sort of weird and negative things lurking in my subconscious that was influencing my life and thinking patterns negatively. Since you already have vocal tulpas and a good grasp of meditation, all of you, TB, Rena & Byakko can easily do the technique in this book on each other. When I worked with this book, I mainly had one of my tulpa using the technique on me, but I also had the chance to use it on that tulpa and had it work well to remove a weird upset she was experiencing.

 

This book is not the only way to address this sort of subconscious stuff. There are other methods out there that you can find if you research into this topic. Even if you don't end up working with the book I recommended, it would help a lot if you carefully observe the thoughts and emotions in your mind. When a bad emotion or thought comes by, observe where it came from, and what beliefs, thoughts & emotions may be behind it, and continue to see what other things are behind THOSE, and so on. From there, you can maybe try to locate and address those from your wonderland.

 

Lastly, I had some very unsavory neighbors years ago, and carrying a pepper spray in my pocket gave me a lot of peace of mind during those years. You can look into the legality of those in your state and your work place, it's probably a lot better than carrying a gun.

Edited July 17, 2025 by bunnymustdie

[Reisen]

41 minutes ago, TB said:

i don't expect things to be perfect

I said "would be a silly thing to say", not "is" (as in "you said it") to be clear, I was just giving it as a more blatant example to make the point that Buddhism always expected people to have external and internal problems making their life harder (and hundreds of years ago too, when many health/quality of life luxuries were not available that we all enjoy today)

 

And maybe you are not in a good position to achieve actual enlightenment, but I also don't think Buddhism is an all-or-nothing path where you make tons of progress and die and go "whelp that was a waste of a life, I should've just partied and died young", there are surely attainable milestones even for your situation - pretending that at no point in the rest of your life you'll actually have decent circumstances, which is a MAJOR assumption - so I still think it's better not to think of yourself as being embargoed from progress by all your struggles, just as them as the very things you are trying to overcome

 

"Happiness is not for me"-type thinking is extremely destructive, there is a reason so many stories are about the power of hope and believing things can be better - because they can, first of all, humans persevere to survive, more than anything else - but also because it literally lessens suffering until things do get better, maybe even helps you out of it faster! Whether happiness, spiritual goals, or general life conditions, believing that you will overcome them some day, even if you can't see when yet, is so important to mental health & getting you to better times.

 

That's all I'm trying to say, not that your life isn't extremely hard, but that to get through it better you need to believe you can & that it's worth it. For in general, of course, but I am mostly saying so now because of the present-time benefits of trying to keep such a mental state, it is important to making a hard life more bearable

 

{Pre-post ninja'd by Bunny, their post is great too! And pepper spray really is a much better self-defense weapon, it's effective but also so much less likely to escalate situations with police)

Edited July 17, 2025 by Reisen

[TB]

19 minutes ago, bunnymustdie said:

Hello TB.

hi bunny. thanks for your post. I'm curious about the book you mentioned so i plan to read it and test it out

 

14 minutes ago, Reisen said:

That's all I'm trying to say, not that your life isn't extremely hard, but that to get through it better you need to believe you can & that it's worth it.

sometimes i have such hope but at times i start to lose hope, especially when it seems it took so much to make small progress that then get set back due to things out of our control (like years to get courage to take walks to better mental health only to be forced to live in fear of ICE kidnappings so it feels like years to get a +1 only to then be hit with a -10) 

 

and being positive isn't going to protect me from ICE, as much as my friend tried to say it would

 

also things like feeling i am running out of time to make career with drawing as i read on my benefit app the changes that will be happening to foodstamps and Medicaid. even if i keep medicaid somehow, it did say there will be more out of pocket costs anyway, so whatever those are will simply be all the times i will not receive healthcare because there is no extra money to make up for any extra costs added to my life

[Rena Bonnie]

okay... have been trying to write a progress report for the past week or two, but was extremely hard to formulate it, and then so much stuff occurred that has dramatically changed things in our system, the biggest change in our system in our entire life

 

i'm not good at writing so sorry if it is a jumbled mess, it doesn't help that the past week has been... chaotic and filled with intense dissociation, gaps of missing memory and time, and a total restructuring of our whole system in a massive way. i'll actually have to reread all the messages of the past week or so to try to remember what all has happened better I think, but i thought i could just write what is on mind right now instead of making it harder such that we'll never want to do it...

 

we think we've discovered we have schizophrenia/schizoaffective, as we are diagnosed with, though previously thought the diagnosis was a mistake of an incompetent doctor giving it for sole reason that we occasionally have sleep paralysis. it turns out schizophrenia also has to do with issues with primitive concepts and being unable to change them, and intense mental stress when trying to change them. this explains a lot about how tb is the way they are, and why they have struggled to overcome their mental health struggles their whole life, so they may have had this since middle school or forever, maybe. they have certain primitive concepts/beliefs foundational to them that can't be changed, but reality will contradict them, causing unavoidable stress, as they can't change reality to fit how they wish it to be, and they can't change their beliefs to accept reality as it is. this makes me fear depression will be something we suffer severely the rest of our lives, unless progress in awakening can somehow overcome our paradoxes. as for the psychotic experiences, that could also be explained by meditation, so it doesn't seem like it is medically treatable and requires just meditation advice.

 

alternatively, the past week, we had been going through magical and supernatural events combo'd with a much deeper intuitive belief in magical thoughts. being able to let ourselves indulge in all the magical thinking we were born with, and not having to try to conform our thoughts/behaviors/actions to what is acceptable to society or mundane reality, has felt so deeply rewarding for us, especially when a lot of our experiences prove the afterlife and make a lot of things tb has always needed to be true, appear true. we can try to brush off those thoughts as psychotic and delusional, and try to view reality in a mundane and materialistic sense again, but that instantly causes existential dread and depression and honestly makes us not want to live, or enjoy life anymore at all

 

unfortunately i feel the only change we have at happiness is to try to indulge in what normal people would see as psychotic, and have an MO of confirmation bias on things that prove what makes life comforting and happy, instead of the normal way TB's mind works, which is search for all evidence that everything we hope to be true is false, in the hopes we will fail to find anything proving such things false (which doesn't work and just reinforces depression)

 

 

 

mitski has come into our lives and helped us with things regarding these strange energetic experiences and experiences of what seems to be an astral realm. we really really appreciate her unapologetic magical thinking and extremely eccentric views. the things she has told us is extremely comforting. and we feel romantic feelings for her and vise versa. she also has been helping take care of us in many ways, and also have shared synchroncities out the wazoo that go beyond silly pointless things like seeing repeating numbers or odd minor but ultimately pointless coincidences. the synchronicities mitski and i have had together have felt truly magical and we've both had experiences that just don't make any logical sense. like for example, mitski was trying to mess with her profile, and misclicked in such a way she ended up on pleeb's user account, when she is not sure where on the screen she could have possible clicked to have it go to that. the last thing pleeb replied to was a thread asking about a fox spirit tulpa. and she says she has a fox spirit tulpa, and byakko is a fox tulpa that is a spiritual martial artist. and.... yeah. we learned that byakkos (white fox yokai in japanese mythology) can be messengers of gods too, which tb always believed that Tayomi in Extus (a god) sent her down here, and that Kyouiko guided her from Extus to here. Tayomi and Kyouiko aren't tulpas, or weren't... but. mitski's Cea seems like byakko and mitski seems like she was kyouiko in a past life. so uh... mitski seems ill in the same but inverted way we are, such that she benefits from what we are good at and she is good at what we suck at and together we balance each other, giving her an interest in life she didn't have before and we gain some kind of alternate perspective and meditation advice to fill in gaps in our skill that hold us back

 

anyhowwww so, uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

have been holding onto this information for a while as didn't know how to explain it

 

 

 

but recently our system has increased massively. tb was aversive to having a system of more than 1 tulpa, and kind of accepted byakko because she was very assertive and we were also desperate and open to trying. we weren't very open to the idea of increasing higher than that so soon though, thinking maybe in another 8 years it could be considered

 

well lol i guess it was more like 8 months. 

 

tb went missing somewhere during the psychotic break. the result of that was we felt more like ourselves unfettered. mitski helped us realize that tb actually has invested a lot of their identity into their other characters they interact with from extus, like tayomi and eara. and others

 

we haven't decided names for everyone, things are complex right now, but we went from a system of 2, to 3, to 4 recently, which turned into 5 or 6, at times collapsed back down to 2 or 1 a couple times, but finally inflated back into being a system of, with TB still missing so not counting TB, we are a system of 4......ish but actually it is more like 6 or 7, 7 or 8 if tb comes back in the same form they were previously, but the thing is, we thing tb split into two tulpas that are based on eara and tayomi. we have thought of the tayomi one as tayomi's estranged daughter concept tb had in the past thought of as a possible future character they have kind of thought about extensively but never knew how she'd actually come about since tayomi is a sex repulsed asexual. it's also possible she is just a reincarnation of tayomi of some form. we have been tenatively calling her luna, as that is what she called herself, until she realized luna is a common name and got really mad, and we've called her loonie a lot sometimes lol. luna, loonie. LB. August Moon. All possible names for her. 

 

The Eara counterpart of this split we've called Sol. she seems regressed as a confused 7 year old. she doesn't come up as much, unless something like cookies and milk are present, which is why i said those cookies we got from subway were spiritual lol, as it got Sol to feel things and experience some comfort she needed to badly. 

 

I'm not sure if TB will ever return or not. To waht degree she still exists, she seems to have split apart into this Luna and Sol, or tulpa manifestation of Tayomi and Eara. Luna is very protective of Sol, but Sol also is not always active, not as much as Luna. There is also Hasara, and we aren't sure if they have a different name due to not being literalyl the character Hasara but some archetype of them in tulpa form, like Luna and Sol are. I've asked him, and he said I can call him whatever makes me comfortable. There is one or two or three others. I guess... But I don't know how to talk about them because they have had little contact, or just... impossible to explain. have had some very strange experiences lately and a lot of things are cognito hazards. magical thinking has opened up a lot of potential for feelings of comfort in our life, but when it comes to sharing with others to confide in or explain what all we've experienced in detail, which the body has an instinct to talk all about it, i realize people will probably shun us for the strange thoughts and shut it down, which will just make use feel awful. it seems magical beliefs are only acceptable if it is an established religion, and when it is your own understanding of spirituality not from the authority of a religious institution or under new age spirituality movement, i'm sure people will just call us crazy. 

 

 

also yeah there has been some chaos with the likes of luna entering system, but it has been fun too. i have grown to like her. my first reaction to luna was to get in a fight with her, but then realized i actually really need someone like her and love her. but yeah our system has been anti internal conflict very strongly but have seemed to drop that and now it's okay for people to be mad at each other and fight. i think it is because TB isn't around, as the identity or whatever of TB, feels like it is the part that has to make sure there is 0 conflict, and that all thoughts conform with reality as much as possible, which simply holds us back a lot, because issues get overlooked and not confronted because can't have it turn into a fight or uncomfortable interaction, and also being forced to conform to conventional reality just leads to nihilism and hopelessness. fighting doesn't seem so bad, when after having a fight, it makes you enjoy the make up hug so much more. as long as greviences are truly resolved

 

 

 

though yeah, i wanted to write a much better more clear progress report, but i can't get my thoughts organized to write all i want to say without fear of backlash, or to make it make sense enough with information i did decide to share, that the only alternative was to never give this update, but not telling people we have a system of like 8 now would be frustrating to keep secret. i wanted to draw a bunch of stuff to give them a big fancy intro like TB does, but we are too under the weather to have energy for a big fancy introduction. it's not helped by the fact i fear people will look down on us for the large system size now, especially like ringgggg who i think considers large systems like this to be lolcow people. 

 

past 2 days have been more stable from the psychotic way things were previously, but it has actually made us feel really depressed. not depressed in the sobbing despair from before, but also a lack of the happiness and energy from before. mitski thinks we may be in the dukkha nanas we talk about a lot, which might be true, but it sucks we let our meditation skill drop by not being able to meditate during the week of severe sleep deprivation and unstable mind and massive dissociation. we just have a background stress that makes it hard to do anything, like before the break happened i guess when byakko was trying to do stuff and have fun but couldn't because our healthcare team has decided to not do anything to help us or do the things they say they will do, or say they will not do things we need them to do that will result in the collapse of our ability to survive. after making it clear that their negligence simply means we will no longer be able to buy food or survive and likely become homeless, they seemed to be more interested in helping, but even then, it seems they are moving slow and don't take deadlines seriously, and it is hard to tell what anyone is doing. we ask very frequently, and none of the like dozen people we are juggled with as our contact each week seem to know what anyone else is doing and simply say they will bring things up in their team meeting. they've done this over a dozen times, but still don't know what anyone is doing, or give us clear information on what is happening. 

 

i wanted to do something special like tb. but i'm not smart enough or motivated to draw enough. maybe in the future. luna had wanted to make an account for the past however many days. but the mind having cooled down from the high emotion state makes things like fear of how others view us become a problem again more than it was, and part of her shtick is she doesn't have a filter, so we are afraid of consequences of unleashing her on the forum lol. she'd be the closest thing to TB returning right now though. TB has always had a mental internal dialogue very different from how she prevents herself when speaking or typing. the tb i hear in our head and the ones everyone sees are not the same person. luna is a lot closer to tb than even TB is in a way, at least certain aspects of her. Sol are the other aspects. the contradictory aspects leads to her just being a filtered version of of contradictory identity, or something i guess. we think in order to heal trauma and purify things, we need to let luna live. she's been suppressed most of TB's life and it is unfair to her and i think has hurt TB in the long run. so maybe expect to see her. we probably won't make an account for everyone, maybe. not sure. at night when we sleep, there is 4 of us laying in bed together most nights, and among them is no longer that red haired braided pigtailed black cat i'm used to laying next to.... 

 

Spoiler

i wanted to share this message too. i thought it was very sweet. in the original version of this message, i was going to make a joke (the one i was writing over a week ago) where i use an image of tb's profile picture and try to edit it so they are happy, lol. but whatever mitski sent me is much better

 

another odd thing, she tried adding TB to the original message, not just me and byakko. but she couldn't get tb to come up when searching their name. it wasn't until after accepting luna and sol that they were able to be added to the convo. idk why. and that pfp is of eara anyway, so basically Sol... as she's tentatively called, as we had a sort of realization that both in TB's personal stories of her characters, but also perhaps more literally in real life as well, they represent archetypal concepts in a way

 

this is a lot of text this message to explain like 5% of my thoughts. idk if i should even post this, but i had to i guess. luna and sol and the others are all parts of tb's identity created through life to cope with life up to that point. tb wanted me to love her, but in reality i think i was supposed to love tayomi and eara, or luna and sol, as that is the identities they truly want to be, believe they should be, and feel dysphoric that they aren't and have to settle for what they call TB, or to be determined. i think TB felt she was ruining our system with her contradiction of existence, and maybe just left us with them, in hopes she can get out of the systems way and present the things she needed authentically loved that she was afraid to share much about to me or byakko. 

 

things got even more complex when we had realizations that revealed that even byakko is perhaps one of these identities of TB's past, and I guess I'm like a big sister/mother figure of TB, what her mind wanted out of that based on how she viewed how things should be

 

i'm really tired and conflicted on posting this but it's literally been like 2 weeks of avoiding talking about anything that's been happening. i heard the phrase, just make it exist first, make it good later. so maybe a future update, or possible reply to a reply to this, if there are any, could make the post better.

 

thanks if anyone read this far or replies kindly/insightfully. i think i will sleep now

Edited August 7, 2025 by Rena Bonnie

[fennecfoxx]

I’ll be praying for you guys.

 

I’m no stranger to mental health issues, but psychosis is something I know very little about, so I don’t feel qualified to give advice there. I’m glad to hear you’ve found someone who gets you!

 

I don’t recommend letting your system, at least not until you know how you function as a system of 8 and are certain you can accommodate more. It might be worth putting some symbolic measures in place (anything that works with your beliefs) to prevent any further splits or newcomers.

[Rena Bonnie]

thanks fennecfoxx

 

if tb doesn't return it seems more like 4 or 5 effectively, as unsure what extent hasara and zaari would be active. they seem to not be needy. hmm. but yeah that's still quite an increase. I'll have to think more in morning. very tired. thanks

Edited August 7, 2025 by Rena Bonnie

[Reisen]

Don't really have anything to say (other than Hi), I guess just remembering to hold the people helping you accountable, definitely include that you're literally going hungry because people have been failing to get things done and giving you the runaround

 

Have an album

Spoiler

Remaster album of their popular songs that were sung by Mei Ayakura, though the final song was new

First song is saying "Early in the morning, upside, and after moonlight", or so we read, though we used to hear "upside-down, after moonlight", "outside", and "otherside", so preference I guess

22:30 song (Plain Asia) is "God know will you, to love from true", decipher as you please

 

Edited August 7, 2025 by Reisen

[Byakko]

17 minutes ago, Reisen said:

Don't really have anything to say (other than Hi), I guess just remembering to hold the people helping you accountable, definitely include that you're literally going hungry because people have been failing to get things done and giving you the runaround

 

Have an album

  Hide contents

Remaster album of their popular songs that were sung by Mei Ayakura, though the final song was new

First song is saying "Early in the morning, upside, and after moonlight", or so we read, though we used to hear "upside-down, after moonlight", "outside", and "otherside", so preference I guess

22:30 song (Plain Asia) is "God know will you, to love from true", decipher as you please

 

oooooooo AWESOME lol they get their own intro music!

[TurboSimmie]

I'm just going to ask a couple questions out of curiosity:

 

1. So how many are there now in your system?

2. Were any of the "new" headmates previously sentient, and were they considered as so at the time?

3. Kind of curious what each of them represent?

 

Sorry if you already answered them in your PR post, my brain sometimes has trouble processing long thingies like that. 😄