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Is there anything you've felt like saying about Tulpamancy?


Luminesce

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A thread for saying whatever's been on your mind that you haven't otherwise seen a place for.

 

Rarely, I see people (usually old members) say they've got differing views they don't think are accepted/welcome on the forum, usually in their PRs or something. And that means many more people feel the same way and just aren't saying it. I don't want the forum to feel like a place where reasonable opinions/views aren't allowed because they supposedly don't match exactly what the norm is. But understandably, there's not always a place to say that kind of thing if it's not a big deal worthy of its own thread. So hey, here's one for all of them.

 

This thread's not just for unpopular/out-of-the-norm opinions though, per se. Rather, if there's anything that's been on your mind about tulpamancy that you've wanted to say and just haven't had the time/place, that's what it's for. I actually have one or two of these myself, though I may have touched on them here or there in the past, I'd also like to go into more depth at some point.

 

A couple examples, you could write anything from "I don't like the term Tulpamancy, it sounds unscientific and I think it damages our reputation" to a whole textwall on how you think possession and switching get confused or blurred, it's up to you.

 

That said, surely discussion will come of these things, and that's fine - but please don't be afraid to create a thread specifically for the topic if you think it warrants discussion. The worst that could happen is that people disagree with you, it's not the end of the world. I don't mind a few posts of replies discussing something here, but once we're taking up a whole page to talk about just one subject, it should be made into its own thread just for archival/search-ability purposes if nothing else.

Edited by Luminesce

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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It feels like the quality of guidance for newcomers has drastically become lazier and more inefficient, usually boiling down to "just talk to yourself." Not enough time is placed into creating their tulpa and they tend to confuse their mindvoice for it. It feels like less effort has resulted in more "progress." I am in no right to say who has a tulpa and who doesn't of course, this is merely my own opinion of it.

 

You could probably consider me an old member as we've been around for nearly 7 years now. I don't like speaking about this because you usually get ganged upon and essentially get your dialogue shut down, which makes it hard to counter or be open about my opinions.  This is also highly notable due to the lack of old time members slowly trickling out and not pitching in to help newcomers if their views will be overtaken by what's more "convenient."

 

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I do think time to create a tulpa overall has gone down, mostly because we switched from "Yeah it's gonna take months, don't expect anything until then if then" to "It could take any amount of time-", to which I personally add "but even if you get responses, while it could be your tulpa, before they're decently well developed they might not really know what they're saying, and you shouldn't take anything you hear early on too seriously."

 

But some people cut that advice too short yes, and also it's not like I'm there for every single newbie to say the same thing again, especially if it goes on in PRs. Still, believing you've got a tulpa - even when you don't - is basically proven to aid in development speed. We rarely get members who go months on end without any progress anymore, and I always thought in those cases people were blocking progress by doubting anything short of pure alien, perfectly clear mindvoice could be their tulpa. Your brain has to start somewhere, tulpas don't just appear. Anyways, fair enough, we've certainly gone from too-strict to too-lax in some ways over the years. As for quality advice, well, getting people to be more active overall is always my goal.

 

I do miss the days around when, say, Amber was here, where no one person had to give that much advice because there'd be four to six other people posting after them to round out said advice. But getting more people to participate and give their opinions/advice on the forum is a big part of why I made this thread in the first place.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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There are things I would like to talk about, but I'm worried I'm part of the group of new people responsible for promoting some of the popular opinions in the first place. I don't mind re-evaluating my mindset, but I'm going to hold back and lurk for a bit, I don't want to scare people from posting.

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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Ember: If we believe something, we're bold enough to say it, even if we expect pushback or condemnation. So there's not much we can say that we haven't said before. But I'll highlight a few opinions that are worth repeating:

 

1. Plurality, including non-traumagenic plurality, is very common in the general population and is not horribly weird or exotic.

 

2. Parallel processing is an experience, not an explanation. And some systems take that experience to an incredibly advanced level.

 

3. Lots of systems have held back their most remarkable experiences or left the community altogether because they feel that their experiences will not be believed or accepted. This is a major problem. Even though I reject metaphysical explanations of tulpamancy, I want them to talk about their extreme and inexplicable experiences so as to promote wider attainment and better understanding of extreme experiences.

 

4. In-system conversation on the forum is harmless and doesn’t need to be restrained.

 

5. So far, as a user, I don't like Invision at all and find it worse in every particular than MyBB.

 

6. Despite everything, this is still the best plural community on the internet.

 

Vesper:

 

1. I hate being called a tulpa, especially by people who know I hate being called a tulpa.

 

2. Creating an intelligent being without providing them with a body is not a compassionate act. So I'm generally opposed to the intentional creation of tulpas.

 

3. I hate hearing systems say that they pretend to be just one person in public, and frequently even among family and friends. I'm always as much myself as I can possibly be. It is high time for the public stigma against plurality to be broken down by open and vocal activism.

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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(edited)

Jeez, apparently there's already people censoring themselves (by not posting what they were going to), lol. I didn't make this thread so you could post things that shouldn't be said.

 

Post things that you want people to see or consider. They can be unpopular opinions, or not, but the point is to say what you think should be said even if there wasn't a time/place for it. Consider whether "hard truths" are really going to benefit anyone (as in really "anyone", not "everyone"), and actually from my own experience, consider that having kept them to yourself, they might not be as fool-proof viewpoints as they feel. I've had quite a few things I had thought over plenty in life that turned out to be a little less surefire than I had in mind when I finally brought them up..

 

 

2 hours ago, Ember.Vesper said:

Vesper:

 

I hate hearing systems say that they pretend to be just one person in public, and frequently even among family and friends. I'm always as much myself as I can possibly be. It is high time for the public stigma against plurality to be broken down by open and vocal activism.

 

Eeeh, well, good luck with the cause. Our life is actually preferable like this, it's unimaginable that it could be what we wanted even if everyone knew and somehow accepted that we were switching. Like, perfect world levels of unimaginable. I still think we need to seed plurality's existence around a lot more (and we really do need to) before people start coming out as not actually being themselves en-masse. Eventually, hopefully, but one step at a time. Not "taking it slow" per se - go as fast as you want, but don't skip steps. Of course, for you guys, you've probably covered all the steps up to that point plenty, but I don't think most of us have.

 

Edit: Y'know what, it's probably because tulpamancy dynamics usually differ from more traditional plurality dynamics. Like yes, hosts share the body and mind with their tulpas, but tulpas don't naturally start out living the same life as their host. So you're only going to get a small portion of tulpamancers who feel the same way, because most of the time tulpas don't start out as having quite the same share of the body's life as some other types of plurality. If my plurality had been say traumagenic or otherwise started with unintentional switching, I would've told my family by now so they could respect my reality, and would consider telling the world at large. But as it stands, there's not much reason for them to know about my tulpas switching

Edited by Luminesce

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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I wish there was more debate on the metaphysical aspect of Tulpamancy. Even researching and striving to prove metaphysical theories through science. On Reddit too it's somewhat of a shunned topic, and although I'm glad that there's a logical approach to Tulpas' practice in our community, I can't help but think that some topics get dismissed too easily by the majority of people. I'd also love to have an additional space for discussing in depth Soulbonding and/or Fictives, Tulpas who are based on characters from fiction and still are attached to their original identities. There was a forum like that but it's unfortunately dead now. 

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

[progress report]

 

 

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I am a host, and from my point of view the purpose of creating a tulpa is to experience them the same way you would any other external person. The idea that it is perfectly okay for a tulpa to exist only when you think about them, for a tulpa to have no agency to ponder something or have emotions apart from their host, doesn't sit too well with me. A lot of people seem unsettlingly comfortable with the idea that their tulpa will never be anything more than a separate personality, or perhaps even a separate identity, that they don when it suits them to do so. The point of creating a tulpa is to experience them the same (or at least a similar) way to how you experience all the other simians in your life - your friends and family, your neighbor across the street, your classmates or coworkers. I've seen houseplants that are better qualified for personhood than a lot of tulpas out there.

There are a lot of tulpas out there who have no concept of this at all, and I don't think that's a bad thing by itself. It becomes a bad thing when you stop striving for separation, when you write it off as impossible or simply don't think it's worth the effort.

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My thoughts in this post are my own, and not reflective of tulpa.info.

 

Time of creation and accusations of roleplaying

Back in the day, tulpas took hundreds of hours to create, and before you even started narration, you spent significant amounts of time on form.  The end result was imposition, and possession was known as metaphysical roleplaying.  Actually, a lot of people were accused of roleplaying.

 

Back in 2011-2012 parallel processing was more or less the expectation, and you would ignore the mindvoice and only listen when they were capable of auditory hallucinations or at the very least a mindvoice with that "alien feeling."  Of course, anyone who put less than hundreds of hours into tulpaforcing were accused of roleplayers, so we decided to have an experiment: 

we did this: https://justpaste.it/1a1m

The result of that meddling without any frontloading?  This kind of thing: https://community.tulpa.info/topic/1705-me-and-serena-defying-faq-man-progress-report/

 

I think at that point it started being apparent that the personality aspect of a tulpa is directly related to narration ), not visualizing its form.

 

With all the heartache those quicker tulpas dealt with for being accused of roleplaying were justified in their cries, as it was indeed possible for a tulpa to be created much quicker, since people were just bypassing the steps that take longer.

 

I guess  my opinion that "a tulpa can be created much more quickly" is popular, but this time period set a precedent of "no doubting: ever" which can persist to this day.  I'm not sure that is healthy, but now you have a history lesson.

 

Effort

Now tulpas were being created even more quickly, and once people got to vocality they didn't seem interested in imposition or even working on form anymore-- they usually go straight to things like possession, switching, or just socializing.  Should that be all we're aiming to get to?

 

I feel like spending significantly more time on things like visualization can help develop the mind's eye in general--- meditation is good for the brain.  Before I started tulpaforcing, I couldn't visualize for crap, but after several 3-hour sessions of sitting with my eyes closed and visualizing Chess, I was able to get to the point where my mind's eye was as vivid as a lucid dream.  

 

I also keep hearing how there's people in the community who had a tulpa 4-5 years ago and no longer have them.  Does anyone know if those tulpas were imposed?  I could be dead wrong but but I'm wondering if taking more time, effort, and attention would be a factor.  This also goes into things like parallel processing: what is the correlation between tulpas who are able to "parallel process" and tulpas who are fully imposed?  Don't get me wrong, I think it's good to see more tulpas out there, but how many are capable of talking in the ear 3d of the host audio style?   Does it matter?  Maybe not, but for me personally I would like to see it more.

 

Nature of a Tulpas

I don't know how popular of an opinion this is anymore, but I believe that a tulpa is a separate and parallel mind to their host.  I don't think they're a part or aspect of the host, but a different person, and the only difference between a tulpa and a host is that the host was there first.  I outlay most of my rationale for that from observation touched on in my Neuroscience lecture many years ago.

 

Likewise I also believe that parallel processing is a thing.  Yes, there's a clear limitation on working memory (e.g. ones individual consciousness), but that limitation definitely does not seem to be a limitation of the brain (which seems to process basically everything, even at a high level, before disregarding it and sending it to the conscious awareness).  I can't prove this, so I'm not super vocal about it, but I'm pretty sure that argument can be supported with cognitive psychology if we play our cards right.

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There is a lot here- so much to unpack. Clo, has the guidance to newcomers fallen, or have we reached a point in guide making when a newcomer ask a question we have to wonder if they read the guides? I am certainly not saying dismiss questions- but some of us, maybe even me because I am not a 'teacher' or even always tactful, might respond in a way that might suggest annoyance 'did you read the FAQ?' One of the most difficult aspect of writing is crafting statements that increase the delivery of useful information while decreasing the potential for misreading emotional flavor. I would add further that most of us hate to sound repetitive, and so there is other aspect of communicating to a new folks. There may not be a way to avoid that.

 

Pleeb brought in the other part about this- about the depth and breath of effort. It takes efforts. serious effort and serious time, and it seems like many folks don't want to put in the time/energy. The post that annoyed me the most were the ones that essentially stated: "I have been following all the guides and I am not hearing or seeing anything and I been at it for like a whole fifteen minutes already...' There seems to be an increase in unrealistic exaptation of immediacy in terms of result acquisition. I am not pointing fingers. I am guilty. I think my results were due to being pig headed stubborn and not persistent over time, but I could have spent more time early on. And i had intermittent laziness. I would get results and I would plateau there, not just for being satisfied or genuinely lazy, but because I was exploring meaning and fears and hopes and do I dare take one step further into the rabbit hole. I have experienced steps in success, regression, followed by renewed effort and improved results. I almost wonder if there is normative range and i am like mid average, and outliers are rock stars or inept. That continuum doesn't mean aver or inept can't achieve, but where you are on that scale would denote how much effort, energy, and other unspecified attributes need to be implemented.

 

I suspect many here will relate to this: i have struggled to interact with others. I am just kind of odd. My oddness contributes to me being really good at my career. You would think that would translate into better social success, but we're complex beings and there is a multiplicity of colliding artifacts and we don't happen in a vacuum. I am saying that so when i saw that sometimes when I experienced public guidance or reasonable 'censor' for not following the expectation of community interaction, I got my feelings hurt. And that's great! That's going to happen with anyone. In the past, i would have just taken my ball and gone home. I didn't. I hung in there. In doing so, I discovered that the community has many facets, and all of it is designed to optimize interactions with a very diverse group of people. This is a solid thing for me: it was a confluence of artifact, maybe increased maturity, maybe I am super more analytical, or maybe I saw the benefits of remaining and learning of greater value- I don't know. But I wonder how much of people leaving or being quiet is simply because there is fear. I know of no way to soften that. Maybe we shouldn't even try, because sometimes genuineness can come across a bit harsh. That's evidence for boundaries. It's in the negotiation of boundaries that friendships emerge.

 

I like this thread. I like that we keep at negotiating terms and ideas and abstracts and forging our identity as self and group.

Edited by solarchariot
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