Mindfulness and Tulpamancy?

[CloudAurora]

So I do a lot of mindfulness, as in, daily mindfulness meditation for almost two years, with other mindfulness stuff featured (walking, eating, body scans etc), to the point of having experiences bordering the psychedelic in intensity ("being so present you kinda stop existing and feel everything at once", for lack of a better description), and I notice as I further engage with this practice, my dissociation radically declines. I used to have heavy depersonalisation-derealisation disorder and was very "unintegrated" as a person, like I lived in a very foggy state of mind and my sense of self was fragmented and discontinuous and I maladaptively daydreamed, whereas now things feel more real than they ever have, and I can make sense of myself as a person, although there's still work to be done. I do have a tulpa per se, had her for a few years, but since a major breakdown two years ago, she's been in er, "low-energy mode", and has regressed substantially, and until now I've not had the time or space to really resume practice more than a "5 minute maintenance".

 

Hence my question: is mindfulness practice anathema to tulpamancy, and/or vice versa? Given it drastically reduces dissociation, and tulpamancy may augment it. On the other hand, did not the concept of Tulpas arise from Buddhist practices, of which mindful breath-focus meditations are a staple (Vipassana, Jhana etc)?

 

Has anyone out there got experiences with both of these things? Are they reconcilable? Like, am I just cancelling out the tulpa with mindfulness, or invoking DP/DR with tulpamancy?

[ZenAndTheSloth]

I can only really comment on the practice of mindfulness as it relates to tulpas, rather than DP/DR, so keep this in mind, but I'll at least comment on that.

 

What I would say is that the skills involved in the two practices of mindfulness and passive forcing run extremely parallel to one another. Focus and awareness are the key skills of passive forcing, as they are for mindfulness, only it's bringing your attention repeatedly back to your tulpa rather than you. If you can turn that awareness of yourself towards the awareness of the general presence of a tulpa, you're essentially good to go and hypothetically you could just make them this way just by talking to them continually - no visualization or dissociation is technically needed. That said, mindfulness itself as a practice, like a lot of Buddhist-style meditations exist largely to cancel out stray thoughts, or make them meaningless. Just as the skills associated with it can be turned towards a tulpa to help actualize them, they can be turned upon your own state to drown out all stray thought and essentially prevent development, as you surmise, though only as long as you are actually in the state of mindfulness. Practicing mindfulness itself won't remove your progress with tulpamancy, though, but ignoring your tulpa for large periods of time will. Do not be tempted to attribute the regression of the tulpa to the mindfulness itself, when the reality is that tulpas just need the majority of your time to become fully realized and ideally after that should continue to spend a lot of time with you. It's a symptom of your focus being on something other than the tulpa that it is regressing, not that the something is mindfulness as a thing.

 

On the point of Buddhist meditation, tulpamancy is usually associated with visualization-style meditation and the intentional focused activation of the mind, whereas mindfulness is generally to quiet it. I may be pulling this out of my ass but if memory serves tulpas are related loosely to the practice of deity-visualization in Buddhism. In a general sense visualization meditation is active forcing. And it's all about trying to reach that ideal dissociated near-hypnotic trance state where you are entirely submerged in an image. It's notable that the skill here is in rapidly attaining dissociation and complexity of the image, not actually continually experiencing it, which is not generally possible for most whilst maintaining a sense of your surroundings and interacting with the world. Imposition doesn't include any need for dissociation, nor does the open-eye visualization it's generally based on. In essence, the two practices are opposed, but only in the sense they are entirely opposite skillsets, so it is not impossible to for most to learn and integrate both of them into a routine outside of the considerations of your own mental limits. Practicing one does not weaken your skill with the other, though.

 

In short, the majority of your time with the tulpa is actually spent, ideally, in a state similar to mindfulness where you are focused on the tulpa continually. The state of dissociation is essentially only desirable when doing active forcing meditation, likely in a wonderland, or if you're switching with the tulpa or otherwise attempting to cede control of the body to them in some way. Indeed, since that's the case it would be entirely possible to avoid dissociation as a state entirely by only doing open-eye visualization with the tulpa, and focusing on those mindfulness aspects to the practice.

[Ranger]

5 hours ago, CloudAurora said:

Hence my question: is mindfulness practice anathema to tulpamancy, and/or vice versa?

 

We have practiced some mindfulness meditation on and off over the last 2 and 1/2 years. We have used a body scan, sometimes Gray (my host) will visualize something, observe his thoughts, etc. We never practiced enough to the point we achieved a psychedelic effect.

 

Gray observed that mindfulness meditation causes him dissociate rather than associate. Using the body scanner, wonderland immersion, eating imaginary food, etc.

 

The exception is looking around our environment and paying attention to what we are experiencing. We use call this associating and we use it to help ground ourself while switching in.

 

5 hours ago, CloudAurora said:

I notice as I further engage with this practice, my dissociation radically declines.

 

If all mindful meditation produces this effect, I'm wondering if we're not talking about the same dissociation or we have different experiences with the practice.

 

5 hours ago, CloudAurora said:

I used to have heavy depersonalisation-derealisation disorder and was very "unintegrated" as a person, like I lived in a very foggy state of mind and my sense of self was fragmented and discontinuous and I maladaptively daydreamed,

 

We had issues with derealization, but not depersonalization or maladaptive daydreaming. Gray felt fragmented as a "person" because he created multiple tulpas thinking they were both "characters" and "clones", not because his sense of self was thrown out the window.

 

Our dissociation never became an intense enough experience to become a dissociative disorder. If you had that level of dissociation, I'm assuming mindfulness will help you enjoy a more normal amount of dissociation or help you ground.

 

I also wonder if being more experienced with mindfulness meditation also creates a different effect. We never came close to practicing it once every day for at least 20 minutes.

 

Overall, tulpamancy and mindfulness meditation tend to overlap, but your situation may be different enough it complicates that connection. I believe if you can run around in wonderland, you will be just fine. Your experience with meditation may make forcing and wonderland immersion easier.

 

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5 hours ago, CloudAurora said:

Like, am I just cancelling out the tulpa with mindfulness, or invoking DP/DR with tulpamancy?

 

Tulpamancy is definitely not derealization. When Gray is derealized, he feels like everything around him in real life is fake and there's a sensory fog between him and the world. In the back, I try to calm him down and encourage him to associate. While derealization sometimes amplifies my mindvoice, it's not an ideal state for forcing given a panic attack is typically a precursor to an episode.

 

While not quite derealization, Gray can experience another foggy state while overwhelmed in the grocery store. I usually take advantage of my thoughts being clearer than his and my amplified mindvoice by telling Gray what he needs to do. I call this back-seat fronting, even though this can be done in other situations without dissociation.

 

The only time I think we came close to having depersonalization is Gray feeling disconnected as I was possessing the body and felt like he was completely removed for a second. While Gray normally feels a little weird observing my possession, this experience stood out as more extreme than normal.

 

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6 hours ago, CloudAurora said:

and I can make sense of myself as a person, although there's still work to be done.

 

I don't know if it's a good idea to play with tulpamancy right now. Tulpamancy naturally challenges your sense of self, so having a shakey sense of who you are to begin with can create more problems down the road. I think one of the reasons teenagers tend to have trouble is they're establishing their sense of self and tulpamancy messes with that.

 

That's not to say tulpamancy can't be done, that's how we came about. If you do want to try tulpamancy again, I highly recommend informing a professional or at least having a professional monitor where you are and if you're doing okay.

[BearBaeBeau]

I have not had derealization or depersonalization, but I practice dissociation regularly to experience mindspace as a refuge and place of introspection. This is anti-grounding, it literally brings fantasy into the memories of reality. I think it strongly supports having headmates and spending time with them.

 

It sounds like your mindfullness practice is strongly grounding. Though it sounds contradictory with psychedelic experience, it seems you have a technique that works for you.

 

Depersonalization and derealization are big issues for the community in general that I've avoided. It seems like tulpamancy decreases those strong groundings in reality and opens people up to a mild psychosis. This makes me wonder if the practice is safe for certain individuals, or at least it's not being done in a safe manor.

 

Given my experience in the community, I believe your intuition on this is correct. For some it might not be easily reconciled, and especially those who've had trauma in early childhood. Again I'm an exception because I did, yet I show no signs or progress toward dissociative identity disorder or psychosis. If anything, I've become more grounded over time with my headmates.

 

I don't know what the contributing factors are as to why some have these issues, beginning (or realized) even years after starting tulpamancy.

 

Good luck. 

 

In summary, I'm certain that tulpamancy is ungrounding in general. Meaning it would expose those prone to DR/DP.

[TB]

8 hours ago, CloudAurora said:

is mindfulness practice anathema to tulpamancy, and/or vice versa?

 

Not only do I not think it is an anathema, I think it may be one of the most important things needed to experience tulpamancy at its full potential. I am still working on it myself though, but I can only imagine the potential for experiences to increase as concentration does.

[Wray]

I have also had a mindfulness-of-breath meditation practice for a few years, though I've never practiced as intensely as you describe. I have less experience with tulpamancy, only a few months, so please take my opinion with a grain of salt!

My experience has been that mindfulness and tulpamancy have a strong synergy. The lessons mindfulness teaches about how to work skillfully with the mind apply to forcing, too. Active forcing with visualization seems to me like it has a very heavy meditation component, and even in passive forcing, the ability to quickly realize when your mind is wandering, appreciate that realization, and return to the task at hand helps a lot. Meanwhile, being mindful during tulpaforcing is still a perfectly good way of training your mindfulness, so you get to kill two birds with one stone. (Having a tulpa has also increased my motivation to meditate regularly, though that does not seem to be a problem for you! 😄)
 

On 1/22/2021 at 7:26 AM, CloudAurora said:

Hence my question: is mindfulness practice anathema to tulpamancy, and/or vice versa? Given it drastically reduces dissociation

I was not 100 percent clear in what sense you are using dissociation here--my limited understanding of dissociation as it relates to tulpamancy is that it means either the host does not identify with everything experienced by the body and mind (I think mindfulness might help with this part, as it helps you realize how much of the stuff you're used to identifying with is actually just happening automatically), or the host does not perceive sensory input anymore, maybe during a really hardcore switch (if being grounded in your senses is a strong habit for you, this might be difficult, but I don't think it runs totally counter to the goals of mindfulness meditation). I hope someone will correct me if I'm barking up the wrong tree here!

[Luminesce]

On 1/21/2021 at 11:26 PM, CloudAurora said:

Hence my question: is mindfulness practice anathema to tulpamancy, and/or vice versa?

 

Whaaa? Tulpamancy does not at all require dissociation/derealization or rejection of reality. I'd honestly say it's harmful for the people who practice it like that to do so.

 

Tulpamancy is a learned mental skill, and mindfulness can only help. At the very least it should improve your mental plasticity and make mind-based endeavors easier - putting yourself in a pseudo-coma in bed shutting out your senses is an awful way to practice tulpamancy (I once had to stop someone on this site from doing exactly that lol, and he later realized it was totally unnecessary). Tulpamancy is practically always recommended to be practiced in a meditative state, which is generally its own form of mindfulness.

 

You can meditate, visualize or whatever have you perfectly fine to develop a tulpa without any fear of being too grounded. Maybe keeping your eyes closed and/or lying down will help with that practice, but it's no different from most forms of meditation.

 

I'd say the main thing differentiating meditation and daydream/fantasizing is mindfulness, even.