Can you switch with a character just like with a tulpa?

[Luminesce]

There's no problem at all with learning to switch with Rena to try and learn from her, in fact I highly encourage that because it's helped me a lot. That's somewhat different from hoping  your tulpa will just fix your entire life for you, though. Tewi has done countless things for me, but all these years later I still feel bad for relying on her to do things - I still have to change, too. But she has helped with temporary things like say doing lots of schoolwork in college

 

Oh, and you can't really do the same as you do with a tulpa with a random character, because you'll just be placebo'ing yourself to want to act certain ways, but without any of the mental workings supporting that way of being. It'll be very shallow and unhelpful. The process of creating and developing a tulpa gives switching substance.

Edited January 18, 2021 by Luminesce

[TB]

I see. I don't really feel good about asking her to do anything, either, though, but is having Rena go through the motions to get a job so we can both get out of here the equivalent to having her fix my entire life for me? It seems like a minor casual step that just happens to be for whatever unfortunate reason currently inaccessible to me, and if accomplished would be a big deal. I feel like from a standpoint of a normal person, it is a fairly quick and embarrassingly easy thing to do (minus people with external circumstances that makes finding a job hard, like none existing), but if it doesn't get done, things will likely continue to stagnate. And from her point of view, if my ability to discern such is accurate, it isn't something she minds, and is happy to help with so that things can get better. Ultimately, continuing to attempt remedying the situation entirely on my own, failing, and us being stuck here, is likely far more suffering for her than her just taking control, and dragging me out of the house for me, which honestly from her perspective, seems like not suffering at all and perhaps a novel opportunity. It isn't what I want to have to have happen, but it seems preferable to continuing with what is current, I think

 

Edit: I didn't see last sentence before. Well that's interesting. I guess there is particular mental workings created when a tulpa reacts to an experience in the physical space, as opposed to a character who is trained only to experience and react to imagined experiences?

Edited January 18, 2021 by TB

[Luminesce]

2 hours ago, TB said:

is having Rena go through the motions to get a job so we can both get out of here the equivalent to having her fix my entire life for me

 

Lol, well I guess one particular action could be seen like that, but that's not at all what I meant. Basically just don't stop fronting to leave everything up to your tulpa for basically ever. You should also do what you can to support, even if your tulpa is willing to do all the hard stuff - it's the least that you can do in return to some day take back over doing those things yourself.

 

2 hours ago, TB said:

I guess there is particular mental workings created when a tulpa reacts to an experience in the physical space, as opposed to a character who is trained only to experience and react to imagined experiences?

  

Well, yes and no. Absolutely yes in the case of tulpas gaining experience while switched or possessing, but otherwise.. There's a reason characters so often accidentally become tulpas. They are similar in how you develop them as people. However, only in-depth roleplaying a character would really equate to the kind of development a tulpa gets from just being a tulpa, interacting with you and whatever/whoever else. But yes, there are some key bits to a tulpa that are more practical when it comes to say switching, because they're making connections in your brain associated with actually doing and thinking.

 

So I guess I won't gatekeep by saying roleplay personas couldn't reach similar results, but.. All the "switching with a character" discussion from before applies.

Edited January 18, 2021 by Luminesce

[TB]

8 minutes ago, Luminesce said:

Lol, well I guess one particular action could be seen like that, but that's not at all what I meant. Basically just don't stop fronting to leave everything up to your tulpa for basically ever. You should also do what you can to support, even if your tulpa is willing to do all the hard stuff - it's the least that you can do in return to some day take back over doing those things yourself.

 

I agree. That's the plan, don't worry.

 

11 minutes ago, Luminesce said:

Well, yes and no. Absolutely yes in the case of tulpas gaining experience while switched or possessing, but otherwise.. There's a reason characters so often accidentally become tulpas. They are similar in how you develop them as people. However, only in-depth roleplaying a character would really equate to the kind of development a tulpa gets from just being a tulpa, interacting with you and whatever/whoever else.

 

I see. I guess the thing I wonder is to what degree in-depth roleplaying characters are forced to become tulpas or not, as a couple of my characters might have more raw experience in stimuli+reaction to stimuli than Rena does, from sheer age, the difference being it was fantasy to me. They are the characters I have had weird experiences with, but it is rare. To my understanding though, I guess just saying "nope, not tulpas" is enough for them to be stuck characters even if the latent potential is there, I think. Still unclear situation to me though, but something I've mentally put aside as it is stressful to think about.

 

16 minutes ago, Luminesce said:

But yes, there are some key bits to a tulpa that are more practical when it comes to say switching, because they're making connections in your brain associated with actually doing and thinking.

 

Yeah, it seems most agree that switching makes development sky rocket. Though the first switch is going to be with a tulpa who hasn't had that opportunity yet. I don't know if said development with a character/roleplay persona would also involve becoming a headmate unavoidably or not. Maybe it is something that hasn't been tried specifically like that

 

I think I may have mentioned just how much time I've spent as my characters in my head essentially living a second life growing up, though. I would not act out their behaviors in life, nor would I talk to them as myself, but from my perspective in my mindspace window, I was them for many unknowable thousands of hours, waking and dreaming. I wonder to what extent that is an equivalent to switching when it comes to development. It seems theoretically similar, the main differences just being it is exclusive to mindspace. So a lot of doing and thinking, just in a different world (the mind)

[Luminesce]

52 minutes ago, TB said:

I guess the thing I wonder is to what degree in-depth roleplaying characters are forced to become tulpas or not, as a couple of my characters might have more raw experience in stimuli+reaction to stimuli than Rena does, from sheer age, the difference being it was fantasy to me. They are the characters I have had weird experiences with, but it is rare. To my understanding though, I guess just saying "nope, not tulpas" is enough for them to be stuck characters even if the latent potential is there, I think.

 

Basically, yes. Even with tulpa-worthy roleplay characters, there's still the one last bit - that you need to treat them as a separate person, in your mind, who would be able to think and perceive on the same level as you - that's pretty important.

 

Tons of people's imagined characters do this on accident, of course, but if that weren't a clearly defined point then tulpamancers would be unable to have characters of depth anymore. I straddle that fine line very well when thinking about the concept of possible inhabitants of my "dream Gensokyo" knowing they're in a dream. I also play out their characters a bit in my mind to shape how they'd generally act (and so I know what to expect whenever I get to meet them in dreams), and that's exactly what I did in the week leading up to my creating Lucilyn, too. I'm just able to maintain a "Nope, not a tulpa" thought-action to prevent them from accidentally becoming tulpas, ie gaining any awareness or autonomy outside of the scenarios I imagine them in.

 

This is a skill of an experienced tulpamancer, though. I don't imagine that line is as easy to ride and enforce for newer tulpamancers. 

Edited January 19, 2021 by Luminesce

[TB]

57 minutes ago, Luminesce said:

gaining any awareness

That is an interesting word to use, though. I have been thinking about what awareness is, and I realize it is perhaps another word to describe what I very long ago would call consciousness, but eventually changed to the word subjectivity, since I felt consciousness may not be communicating what I intend to all people who read it, and unfortunately subjectivity seems to also be a word people do not understand what I mean when I say it. As it turns out, awareness might be the appropriate word... but I do not know how others use or interpret it

 

Anyway my point is, one of the main things I've learned on this site is that tulpas do not have their own consciousness/subjectivity/awareness separate from the host, thus do not develop or gain such a thing. They are just a thing that occurs inside of awareness. I suspect you are using the word in a way I don't intuitively understand, as I don't think you believe they gain any sort of awareness of their own by my understanding of the word, unless I have been wrong all this time about your beliefs

[Luminesce]

2 hours ago, TB said:

one of the main things I've learned on this site is that tulpas do not have their own consciousness/subjectivity/awareness separate from the host, thus do not develop or gain such a thing.

 

I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that so surely. It's not how tulpas work by my understanding of them/humans, but many systems claim that is how they work, and I'm not remotely sure enough about how others work to say how it doesn't work for them. It's likely more commonly claimed outside of the immediate Tulpa.info community. Whether there's anything to those claims though, I don't know.

 

2 hours ago, TB said:

I suspect you are using the word in a way I don't intuitively understand, as I don't think you believe they gain any sort of awareness of their own by my understanding of the word, unless I have been wrong all this time about your beliefs

 

Aehhh.. You're making this confusing. What would you describe the perception of reality as other than awareness? The way you say that makes it sound like you think my tulpas are just puppets or something.

 

I don't think tulpas have their own separate consciousness, no, but I think all of their consciousness fits perfectly fine within a single shared consciousness model. The fronter gets primary control over the mind's focus and all, but I still consider my tulpas conscious - just within the same consciousness as mine, one we share. And even then, some mind-wizardry is going on even utilizing the same overarching consciousness to separate their beings from mine, in various ways. It might just be our way of looking at it that says it's only one consciousness, because certainly if all other systems work the same way as us, they're seeing it as separate consciousnesses, and that's not hard to see for me.

 

Anyways, an imagined character has no awareness that it's in your brain, that there's any context other than what you're imagining for them - and a tulpa does. Granting that awareness to an entity in my mind is effectively creating a tulpa, as I see it. Though from there they still need to develop as a tulpa in various ways, that's nonetheless the start, and it's how Lucilyn started out.

Edited January 19, 2021 by Luminesce

[TB]

11 hours ago, Luminesce said:

Aehhh.. You're making this confusing. What would you describe the perception of reality as other than awareness?

 

That is how I would describe it.

 

11 hours ago, Luminesce said:

The way you say that makes it sound like you think my tulpas are just puppets or something.

 

I don't think I would say that. Though the issue is complicated

 

11 hours ago, Luminesce said:

I don't think tulpas have their own separate consciousness, no, but I think all of their consciousness fits perfectly fine within a single shared consciousness model. The fronter gets primary control over the mind's focus and all, but I still consider my tulpas conscious - just within the same consciousness as mine, one we share.

 

Hmm... Is consciousness and awareness the same thing in this context? If I assume so, it sounds like you are saying there is a consciousness/awareness (thus perception) within its own self. I am not quite sure what that looks like or if it seems that is the case based on information I've gathered over there years and talked about in my thread in December. (Addition: I've gone back through and read your posts several times trying to understand. You really are saying there is one consciousness (which I assume is interchangeable with awareness). But at the same time, you say a tulpa gains such a thing, that seems to have to imply there is another, new one, and that it separates them from being just an empty character. That would follow there is one inside of the big overarching one, which makes me circle back to the multiple but together model. I am stuck somewhere)

 

11 hours ago, Luminesce said:

It might just be our way of looking at it that says it's only one consciousness, because certainly if all other systems work the same way as us, they're seeing it as separate consciousnesses, and that's not hard to see for me.

 

Here, it really seems like it can't possibly be meaning awareness, if awareness means perception of reality (sensory phenomenon including the mind sense) because that would mean different experiences are happening that are disconnected in some way, which if someone claims this, it is usually stated to be confabulation I believe.

 

11 hours ago, Luminesce said:

Anyways, an imagined character has no awareness that it's in your brain, that there's any context other than what you're imagining for them - and a tulpa does. Granting that awareness to an entity in my mind is effectively creating a tulpa, as I see it.

 

Earlier you mentioned consciousness fitting within a shared consciousness, and here you say awareness that is in the brain, and I wonder if you mean the same thing. I don't mean to nitpick, but this subject has been the biggest deal for me with tulpamancy for the past several years, so I am careful to get it completely right. My transformed understanding of it is source of a lot of my troubles and disillusion.

 

From what I seemed to gather over the past couple years, and what seemed to be confirmed to me even more over the past month or so, is an understanding that there is one awareness period. Awareness is the overarching thing, and it can't exist within itself. Moment by moment, there is a snap shot of what is going on in the mind, around you, all that there is, and it is the only snap shot there is, and each moment it shifts into perceiving different content, creating the stream of experience we are going through. In tulpamancy, you aren't creating any new awareness, and that is why I am deeply saddened and disturbed. From how it seems to have been explained, a tulpa is just a personality, which is a manifestation of thoughts and behaviors of particular flavors of traits, and that this is what is happening for what would be called the host as well (which that part of the explanation seems like it is supposed to be the comforting reveal, but it is not comforting). (I word it that way, because it feels better to say as host I am my personal awareness, and my tulpa would in theory be the awareness they developed, but I thought this was not how it ultimately works, unfortunately) That said, in my experience and to my knowledge, that is all that happens for a character, too, though one can question if the complexity is more or less there, and depending on the development and interaction, it may manifest into awareness in different ways with different ideas of what is going on, but it is still just sensory phenomenon organizing itself like this to emulate a particular behavior more or less, and all of it is seen at the same time all the time, with different aspects of it highlighted moment to moment. It isn't like there is something else inside you seeing something different from you in any capacity, there is just the one seeing going on at all times. I was under the impression that the idea of there somehow being anything different to that was considered meta or magical thinking.

 

When you talk to your tulpa, your tulpa doesn't have an experience of you talking to them, there is only the one experience that has just happened as it happened and nothing else, and you beared witness to all there is (to my understanding). This is why I feel alone now, but I am trying to learn to deal with it. I use to really like to think there was another awareness inside somewhere in the brain, to catch what I threw, and then throw something back to me (this is a metaphor), but in reality it is more like throwing something with the left hand and catching it with the right hand, not another set of eyes and hands waiting to catch something (that can still exist in just the mind). Both hands are controlled by this one brain, maybe a different set of habits with a different label moves one of the hands (everyone is okay with this because of how they are comfortable to define what constitutes a different person). I preferred the idea that in my interactions, I was giving an experience to someone, and they gave one to me, but I thought that the harsh reality was it is just an illusion (but who cares because it is in the mind) and that it is just one experience (though with multiple theoretical angles (as in opinions or takes, not experiential perspectives) processed in real time, albeit linearly I think) and I am the one active here having a hard time swallowing it. You saying tulpas develop an awareness, and characters do not, seems to be more in line to what I use to think before my investigation, and implies something substantive that tulpas have along with you, that somehow an equally complex but differently considered set of personality traits does not have (a character). How is the reality not; "there is just awareness, and within it, the perception of tulpas and characters occur (also "you" occur in here, too)."?

 

I desperately want to believe there is some instantiation of an awareness stream other than my own personal one within my brain that tulpas somehow gain (their ability to see something I don't, anything different at all), but I want to know the truth more, and it really looked like where the investigation with myself, others, and this site lead to, was that there is just one awareness (it has no substantial owner ((in my opinion, it is awareness that owns things)), and I thought that was what a large number of others here thought was the case, too.

 

 

 

 

I just caught your response as I was about to go to bed, so was tired and originally I was going to respond to it tomorrow, but after reading it, I found it so incredibly important that I could not wait. I hope I composed my thoughts clearly. Thank you

Edited January 19, 2021 by TB

[Luminesce]

One consciousness, the brain's. Consciousness being much more vast than simply awareness, it encompasses all of the possible conscious thought (and probably a lot that seems unconscious) in your mind. I believe there's only one consciousness, the body/brain's, and that it "runs" the host like a program, even if they're a singlet, and also any tulpas. Host and tulpas interact within that consciousness, but the one consciousness that is above any of them individually is what all of their individual experiences are sorted out by.

 

If anyone's been using "consciousness" to mean "appears to perceive things from their own point of view" then they've been woefully underselling what consciousness is, but also were correct that tulpas of course have "their own consciousness". Because by that definition, anything else would mean tulpas were puppets. Tulpas are only "puppets" if you yourself - INCLUDING AS A SINGLET - were a "puppet" of your own brain.

 

This is all part of my "model of identity" I've developed to explain all this stuff, honestly a lot outside of tulpamancy, though experiencing switching added a lot to it.

 

 

Also, while this is all immensely helpful to tulpamancy, I really did develop most of this framework independent of tulpamancy, from western buddhist ideas mostly (and mostly Eckhart Tolle in that). I learned to separate my sense of self from the rest of my thoughts, though I was often told the true "I"/"me" was my sense of consciousness itself and that any identification at all was illusion/ego... Guess I gave up on that idea, huh? Or rather, I embraced that my identity was a person I didn't mind identifying with and that's how I wanted to experience life. Anyways - the acceptance that your identity is not all of "you" is still very important in my model of identity. It's what supports saying tulpas are everything a host is, just less experienced and not default (though they can become default fronters, lol). If you continue considering yourself as everything in your mind all the way up to consciousness and the brain itself, as most singlets (ie normal people) do by default, then having a tulpa without doubts becomes significantly harder. Maybe that's why people like to say tulpas must have their own individual hidden consciousnesses ie entire separate minds, which would basically be another brain - because they're too attached to the idea that everything going on in the brain must be them. Surely, it's hard to make any room for a tulpa with such a model.

 

Quick note that personally my tulpas' thoughts still happen sub- or un-consciously, including my own from one of my tulpas fronting's perspective. There is no conscious thought leading up to what a non-fronter says in our system, it just appears to happen. Clearly thought goes into it, but it's not consciously visible. And judging by our inabilities to think complex thoughts like doing math and such, I'm not at all inclined to say they occur in "our own consciousnesses/minds/brains" - I just call them sub/unconscious. Because solving or working with those types of complex thoughts is exactly what "consciousness" in a human evolved to do, so if we can't do it, it's likely just not happening in consciousness. Which... sounds sort of self-evident, when you consider the phrase "We're not conscious of those thoughts".

Edited January 19, 2021 by Luminesce

[TB]

I am painfully confused. It appears to me you kind of have some fusion of my old model and current understanding, or something

 

1 hour ago, Luminesce said:

If anyone's been using "consciousness" to mean "appears to perceive things from their own point of view" then they've been woefully underselling what consciousness is, but also were correct that tulpas of course have "their own consciousness".

 

I agree that not all of consciousness is viewable at the same time, and thus the word isn't as useful to use in that way. However, if we were using awareness to mean that definition, then it would be accurate to say you believe your tulpas have an awareness separate from your own, which I thought was something you didn't believe. I am struggling to understand what this other awareness (perception) is, and how it is different from the other going ons happening in the awareness that is seen. You specifically say characters do not have this thing, but to my understanding, there can't be anything different between an advanced character and tulpa that isn't just a matter of how they are treated and the emotions associated with them

 

1 hour ago, Luminesce said:

Because by that definition, anything else would mean tulpas were puppets. Tulpas are only "puppets" if you yourself - INCLUDING AS A SINGLET - were a "puppet" of your own brain.

 

Yes, kind of. This is part of the painful conclusion I have had to recently come to and am currently still trying to process because it is painful. Saying puppet is a particular way to describe it and there may or may not be a better way to say it, though. The thing is, people here seem to consider themselves to not be the ability to perceive, but to be a certain grouping of what is being perceived (the personality they identify with (it is very difficult to describe in words as there is paradoxically not a "they" anywhere to do this, but it is the way we talk)). The personality they identify with does not have its own awareness, it doesn't feel anything. It is the thing that is perceived and causes feeling in the first place. You seem to be saying personalities do perceive something, and it is because tulpas have personalities that can perceive on their own, that they are different from a character (a personality that can't feel or perceive anything). The thing is, awareness (the overarching one that appears to be all there is as far as I have understood recently until now) can indeed perceive the personality of a character and feel it in all the same ways a tulpa can be (it can generate thoughts and emotions from stimuli, real or imagined), and the difference appears to be a label, and the construction of internal systems that stops a character from always being allowed to react to everything. I guess the difference is like a metaphorical leash on what is allowed for them. As a result, tulpas are bestowed label of personhood, but as far as I could tell, it is more so because it feels good and allows for immersion. (Something I am not good at when knowing the truth (assuming I have it) but it seemed like others just are good at)

 

This is all exacerbated by the fact I can ask Rena if she has her own awareness (perception) and I get a discombobulated incoherent response of "No, I don't know? ???????? -shrug-"

 

Me: "Is there anything over there, that isn't right here?"

 

Her: "?????? -shrug-"

 

Me: "Is this all there is?"

 

Her: "It seems to be...?"

 

I feel it would be easier for her to say there is something for sure if she can see it, and I can kind of feel within myself the question may be appearing because of an internal refusal to accept it as truth due to the painful implications it has for me.

 

Anyway, I thought I had finally figured things out, but what I figured out caused a tremendous amount of depression. Now I am back to where I was a bit ago and experiencing paranoia again, though still depressed.

 

1 hour ago, Luminesce said:

Quick note that personally my tulpas' thoughts still happen sub- or un-consciously, including my own from one of my tulpas fronting's perspective.

 

This seems to imply they do not have an awareness, though. I am not sure that in this unconscious space where your tulpas think from, that there is any awareness in there, which is what I've searched for with my own tulpa, and seem to struggle to find it. At best, a tulpa's perspective can only be revealed when they are switched in, but as a consequence, the host's perspective vanishes, all that said in view of giving those labels to personalities. As such, one can view the perspective of a character all the same, I think. If one is using perspective to mean an opinion attributed to a particular mental phenomenon (but not experienced by the phenomenon itself) which I suspect happens frequently, then the word doesn't make sense to have anything to do with awareness. I am using it to mean an actual experience that is different in some way from a tulpa and host (using tulpa and host this way implies they are something more than personalities.)

 

It is a difficult thing to talk about because subtle but dramatic changes in what is meant by a word turns the conversation upside down, and it is difficult to keep straight because language wasn't built to talk about these concepts or view things these way

Edited January 19, 2021 by TB
Had to fix a CRITICAL wording mistake that ruined meaning of an entire paragraph because there needs to be a vocabulary list with definitions and vocabulary lists for words in those definitions aaaggghhh I am consumed