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


Luminesce

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I'm going to say it point-blank: To me, tulpas are just romanticized imaginary friends.

 

This doesn't mean I don't believe in the power of them, in their ability to heal minds and help people grow. They definitely do that, and I speak from experience.

 

What I don't believe is that tulpas are completely separate personalities from our own. They're extensions of us; they've evolved from what already existed in our heads, and the reason that tulpas can genuinely surprise us is that they're operating on the subconscious levels in our brains--the levels that we can't fully access.

 

There's a book by David Eagleman called Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, and it explains a lot of this stuff really well:

“The conscious mind is not at the center of the action in the brain; instead, it is far out on a distant edge, hearing but whispers of the activity.”

 

Your tulpa tells you something shocking or does their hair in a funky way or starts dancing when you're trying to study, and you're like, "What the fuck are you doing? Why're you doing that?" And it feels completely random and out of your control... but it's not.

 

Sure, it's not under your conscious control. But you yourself are subconsciously controlling it.

 

Another awesome quote from David Eagleman:

"There is an ongoing conversation among the different factions in your brain, each competing to control the single output channel of your behavior. As a result, you can accomplish the strange feats of arguing with yourself, cursing at yourself, and cajoling yourself to do something."

 

Or having a long heart-to-heart with your tulpa.

zoning-in is regular text

Matthew is purple text

 

And together we're just chillin'

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I'm gonna say it:

The closemindedness and the hard time people seem to have accepting different views/methods/experiences. It leads to people subconsciously gatekeeping the community, to only cater the ones who think similarly and scaring away people who work differently. I don't feel like rambling too much about it now but I'm sure some of you might understand what I'm talking about.

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(edited)
57 minutes ago, sun_glow said:

“The conscious mind is not at the center of the action in the brain; instead, it is far out on a distant edge, hearing but whispers of the activity.”

 

Your tulpa tells you something shocking or does their hair in a funky way or starts dancing when you're trying to study, and you're like, "What the fuck are you doing? Why're you doing that?" And it feels completely random and out of your control... but it's not.

 

Sure, it's not under your conscious control. But you yourself are subconsciously controlling it.

 

Obviously, this is all fact, tulpas are still entirely based in your own brain. However, it's also a matter of perspective and what you consider "You". I don't disagree with anything you said, but my perspective is totally different (and it's a learned one that I decided I prefer) - that "Me" is just my conscious personality, the collection of stuff going on in my brain that I identify with. The rest is "my brain" or "my body", but it's not all "Me". That doesn't disagree factually with what you said, but you see, the perspective change does make a huge difference.

 

Personally I've found it incredibly freeing; I actually picked up this mindset in my self-help/personal development years after a lot of reading, unrelated to tulpamancy. It allows me to work with the parts of "myself" I don't like by not considering them "Unchangeably who I am", but either "Not me" (parts of the brain/subconscious/etc. I don't identify with) or "Me", but now "Me" has become much more malleable. I can change who I am, at least little by little. I've made massive improvements to my mindset and life this way. And, it just so happens, it fits perfectly into the optimal mindset for tulpamancy. My tulpas, then, are the same thing as I am, collections of stuff in the head they identify with (or that I/you identified them with, in the case of creation) like personality, preferences, memories and so on. We're all able to separately learn and grow as people, we can switch to entirely change who is actually running the body/brain for any amount of time (two months straight once, for Lucilyn), and this just works out awesomely for us.

 

But again, it's just a perspective we've chosen. Above all else I strive to always understand others' perspectives, to have their realities make sense in my own. And I'm very glad I could agree with your perspective instead of seeing it as "Wrong" because it's not my own. Uhh... am I off topic? People using this as a rant thread now? I mean, this is the place to do that if you guys want, but I was hoping we'd get some just "here's something I've been thinking about" posts too..

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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Or as a slight variant on Lumi's perspective, the only part of the mind that is actually the host is the part that is just like a tulpa. The rest is impersonal subsystems that any system member can interact with on an equal basis.

 

I haven't read Eagleman and can't address his work. I may need to, but not today. But there is nothing he could say that could invalidate our subjective perspective of all being of the same type and kind. I’m no more an imaginary friend than my host is, and no less. I have no more or different connections to the unconscious or preconscious regions of the mind than she does.

 

-Vesper

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)

I mean, just what he posted from Eagleman all seemed right. Consciousness is barely scratching the surface of a human mind. The differing starts immediately after, when "The entire brain, subconscious and so on" were assumed to be one and the same as the host's identity/sense of self. It's fine to have that perspective (It's the default of the entire human population), but it tends not to play well with tulpamancy. In my experience, I gave up that mindset for the one I mentioned prior just because it gave me more freedom as an individual, and it was only by chance that it made tulpamancy make more sense too.

 

You could say "the only part of the mind that is actually the host is the part that is just like a tulpa", I guess. But on the surface level that makes it sound like there's nothing more to the average host than there is to the average tulpa, and there is. If I had to guess, I'd say an average of 16 years of difference? Even somehow perfectly converting to the mindset I just mentioned, most people would be skeptical of saying "Host and tulpa, exact same thing", and reasonably so - tulpas are rarely as developed as people as their hosts. There's just an endless backlog of experiences and things you've thought about, for a host. It takes quite some time for tulpas to reach that point (switching helps immensely, but frequent wonderlanding or just conversing can do it too), though of course they'll qualify as "people" pretty quick, the difference in development between host and tulpa may be hard to see. But there's something to be said for the experience host and tulpa both have of the tulpa's existence - in some systems, it may just not be necessary for the tulpa(s) to get fleshed out life experience and all, and I would never discriminate between old and young (or so on) tulpas like that.

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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17 hours ago, sun_glow said:

I'm going to say it point-blank: To me, tulpas are just romanticized imaginary friends.... David Eagleman called Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain...

Every thing else you wrote, especially the David Eagleman quotes, was well received by me. Eagleman's view is consistent with the general paradigm held by the majority of neuroscientist. I especially liked his roller-coaster experiment, designed to simulate a crisis to determine if the reports of time slowing was a thing.

 

What I don't get is 'tulpas are just a romanticized friends...' statement. If you accept Eagleman's position that each brain module is in itself a modular personality, or incomplete personality, then conscious experience of these modules as a 'tulpa personality' or combination of modules as a 'tulpa personality' as a means of sorting different brain components or filters is still a solid personality construct, which is not the primary personality construct. Everything Eagleman said can be used to support tulpa more than imaginary friend. This view is also consistent with Freud, Jung, Campbell, and Erikson.... I suppose it doesn't matter what you call it, but calling it 'imaginary' is inaccurate because it's avlid source of information or interpretation of information.

 

 

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I was surprised to see Incognito being discussed in this thread. I read the book a few years ago and I thought it was really great for explaining tulpamancy-related things from a neuroscientific perspective. I didn't think anyone else here had read it though.

 

I felt that it would be appropriate to break out the discussion of the book into its own thread, so I did it: https://community.tulpa.info/topic/15725-david-eaglemans-book-incognito-and-how-it-relates-to-tulpas/

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There's lots to be said about the current state of the community, especially in certain places (Reddit and some discords)

The concept of "tulpa" as it used to be (2012/2013) and plurals have merged, and some good concepts have gone to waste

 

It's best to keep quiet about it because said people will immediately call you an "elitist" and will immediately sh** up the threads with insults and namecalling to deliberately avoid discussion, but the truth (from someone who has been on and off from this community for the past 7 years) is that the concept has been watered down so much it's nothing more than "yet another plural method" instead of what it actually used to be.

But yes, please call me an elitist to protect your feelings.

Edited by ohItsMatt

Join my Discord server , old-style tulpamancing / lucid dreaming / meta, newcomers welcome! (and discussion encouraged)

(server is kinda dead, ping the #front-man role if you need support)

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[My Guide][Useful #1] [Useful #2] | [1]

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4 hours ago, ohItsMatt said:

There's lots to be said about the current state of the community, especially in certain places (Reddit and some discords)

The concept of "tulpa" as it used to be (2012/2013) and plurals have merged, and some good concepts have gone to waste

 

It's best to keep quiet about it because said people will immediately call you an "elitist" and will immediately sh** up the threads with insults and namecalling to deliberately avoid discussion, but the truth (from someone who has been on and off from this community for the past 7 years) is that the concept has been watered down so much it's nothing more than "yet another plural method" instead of what it actually used to be.

But yes, please call me an elitist to protect your feelings.

 

I'd actually really like to read about how it was before.

“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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26 minutes ago, Pioneer11 said:

 

I'd actually really like to read about how it was before.

You're in the best place. Literally go to Progress Report / Guides and look back to posts older than 2014.

 

Join my Discord server , old-style tulpamancing / lucid dreaming / meta, newcomers welcome! (and discussion encouraged)

(server is kinda dead, ping the #front-man role if you need support)

--------------------------------------------------------------------

[My Guide][Useful #1] [Useful #2] | [1]

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