Meditating with your tulpa

[Gloomynoon]

Maybe I don't understand what I'm asking about.

 

In the "42 1/2 things to do with your tulpa" there is this one that says "Meditate with your tulpa." I'm confused, I only really know about breath meditation (clearing mind) and zen stuff. Could someone give me examples of meditative type things that could involve my tulpa?

[Neptune System]

So, Meditation doesn't have to be zen stuff and what not, but it could jut be focusing on a object and describing it in a very detailed way and maybe how it might feel, taste, or smell. 

[Luminesce]

There are lots of different kinds of meditation. "Empty mind"/zen meditation is just one of them (though pretty popular). MY personal favorite meditation is the kind where you sit and "clear your mind" only in the sense that you're not actively thinking of something on purpose, and then you let thoughts come to you. You give them as much attention as seems productive, and then stop and let the next thought(s) come to mind.

Depending on your goal, you could basically just think about things that require thought, planning, or consideration in your life for productivity's sake, which is only kind of meditation but honestly the most objectively productive. Or, you could just be acknowledging very vague thoughts that come to mind like "I kind of want pizza" and "The view from my window looks nice" and such. That is for sure a type of meditation, and it can seriously help declutter your mind and reduce your overall stress if you lead an otherwise busy life where you're always thinking about something.

 

 

It's also pretty common to do centering/grounding meditations where the goal is simply to focus your mind better. We do this very (very) briefly before switching, but it's applicable to most things in tulpamancy and, in this case where we're talking about meditating with your tulpa, makes the most sense as the answer here. Now, it's not some fancy zen ohhhmmm meditation - it's literally just sitting down and focusing your mind, with or on your tulpa. You could focus on them, or you could simply do the focusing while also aware of your tulpa's presence, it doesn't matter. Just sharpen your focus, while aware of your tulpa to whatever extent you'd like. I'd consider this a sort of priming activity to enhance the clarity (well, and focus, if you tend to get off track) of whatever activity you do with your tulpa next, talking being a fine one.

 

 

And lastly, I don't think it's a big problem to do empty mind/zen meditation with awareness of your tulpa also doing it, or sitting imposed beside you, or whatever have you. They may take up a little bit of your awareness in an otherwise thoughtless-intending meditation, but there's nothing inherently bad about that, and it could easily be a positive experience. As with most kinds of meditation it should also leave you in a good place to have some better-than-normal clarity and focus if you choose to do any activities with your tulpa.

 

And while the goal is still empty mind/zen there, you could just go full forcing mode and make the meditation about focusing on your tulpa as Trinity said. I don't know whether I'd call it meditation or not - depends on if you're just passively thinking about your tulpa (meditation), or actively focusing on details about them (not meditation, but good forcing). There is (of course, as there's very many) a kind of meditation that works by hyperfixating on one small usually visual detail, like a flame, or if you can visualize well then a simple object or geometric shape in your mind - perhaps you could meditate with your tulpa as the object of your visualization, though I think you'd need to already have some relatively vivid/clear visualizing ability before you could "meditate" like this. For me, whose visual clarity sucks, it would be more of an active struggle to create the details. Which is good forcing and visualization practice! But, I wouldn't call it meditation, as you don't reach any particularly interesting mental state through that.

 

All that said, you don't have to be meditating to be benefitting from whatever you're doing. All sorts of internal experiences are productive for tulpamancy. Meditation is just any that involves reaching a certain mental state through those internal experiences.

[TurboSimmie]

I love meditating with Phil but we're super bad at it. 😄 Basically we sit across from each other on the floor cross-legged (imposing one another in front of ourselves) and one of us leads the count up to 100. Usually this is my job because Phil's mind is always racing and it's up to me to keep him on track. We can't get rid of all outside thoughts because that's impossible for us but we do try and focus on each other, sometimes reaching forward and touching each other's faces and bodies. We talk a little bit; sometimes we go over the plan for the day during these sessions. Sometimes I lead us on a little prayer. The sessions never take more than 15 minutes and are usually less than 10. I know there's far more we could be doing with meditation but these little sessions are actually very helpful and I feel a lot more present in the mind on days we do them.