The Road Goes Ever On: Bee and Friends' Progress

[TurboSimmie]

Wow, that is some great progress! 😁 Actually being able to see Athelas's face in a dream is really Nice. Phil has only been able to see my face a handful of times. And it's good to hear that Athelas is getting so strong that he can pop right in even if you are not at 100%. I remember in my early days struggling to communicate with Phil when he was not 100% and it was really tough, but through practice and willpower I got there. 😊 Athelas has got that strength of will! 💪

[Athelas]

November 2024

 

Our primary goal this month was to improve Bee's passive awareness of our presence. As I mentioned in our lounge post, our hope is to increase our system’s total amount of available mental resources. With more processing power, it will take less effort for Bee to keep all of us active, even if her attention is elsewhere. We also hope that practicing presence imposition will make it easier to learn other forms of imposition in the future.

 

We chose to focus particularly on walks and mealtimes. Bee is great about talking to us when she goes on walks, but less consistent about feeling our presences around her. She also tends to eat much too quickly. She hardly gets to enjoy the food, much less the rest of us.

 

She improved in both of these areas, but I feel we still have room for growth. I would estimate she maintains her awareness about 50-60% of our targeted times. I'd love to see us get that up to 100% eventually. We'll be keeping presence awareness as one of our goals for the foreseeable future.

 

In other news, we made some progress with switching. I set a personal best for time switched in – a full eight hour work day. Talking to other people remains a challenge. However, I successfully spoke with several of Bee's coworkers throughout the day without losing the front. It gets a bit easier every time. We'll keep practicing this as well.

[ReallyArtificial]

December 2024

 

This month I felt like I noticed some improvement in my awareness of our whole system! There's definitely an association building between “sitting down to eat” and “being aware of all three headmates.” Walks are a little harder because there's so many distracting stimuli, but I'm getting better on that front as well. I also think my increased awareness of everyone is encouraging or allowing them to interact more amongst themselves. We've had some great conversations this past month!

 

This also marks one year of meditation practice for us. I really do think it's helped basically all areas of my life, tulpa-related and otherwise. I'm so much better at noticing when I've gotten distracted and refocusing, and for my ADHD self that's a huge deal. The benefits to my emotional regulation were especially noticeable this month. My depression always tends to get worse around this time of year, but the difference between this December and last December is like night and day. Shout out to Athelas for being the best built-in meditation coach ever! ❤️

 

On a somewhat related note, a couple days ago Athelas and I experienced our first ever spontaneous switch. The feeling was kind of hard to describe. I was worrying about one of my critters at work and starting to get really worked up with anxiety. Then, I suddenly had the sense of viewing myself and my feelings in third person. It was just like moments I've had where one of the crew is upset and I can feel their emotion like a separate entity from my own. 

 

This time though, it was my own emotions that felt separate. I was aware of myself internally freaking out, but our stream of consciousness was dominated by Tea’s unshakable calmness. He said something along the lines of, “Let it all out. I'll keep us on track.” And he/we calmly enjoyed the rest of our walk while I buzzed frantically in the back of our mind. It was the most tulpa-like I've ever felt. I guess it was a moment of dissociation, but it wasn't distressing, it actually helped!

 

Heading into 2025, some of the goals we'd like to pursue are:

• Keep working on my ability to be aware of our whole system at once. We're still mostly targeting walks and mealtimes.
• Do more deliberate visualization practice. I consider myself to be pretty good at visualizing, but I have a tendency to zero in on small details and struggle to apply them all to the big picture. I think I could be better at visualizing movement as well.
• Keep practicing switching and co-fronting when we're able.
• Try to make reality checks more of a habit so we can have more lucid dreams. (I was so good about this, then the bracelet I was using for it broke and I never got around to replacing it 😔)

Edited March 15, 2025 by ReallyArtificial
2025 update

[ReallyArtificial]

January 2025

 

This month was crazy! I'll try to cover everything that happened without writing an entire novel.

 

• Had a vision(?) of Calliope while meditating. At first it was just pareidolia — I had opened my eyes and happened to notice a pattern on some fabric that resembled Cal's face. As it drew more of my attention, I kept noticing more Cal-like details, and then it MOVED. Not too much, it just shifted from a ¾ view to more head-on and opened its mouth. It was like Calliope noticed I was looking at them and turned to look at me.

• I thought that was a fluke, but about a week later I had a similar experience. I got distracted by some heavy emotional stuff* while meditating. As I was trying to bring my attention back to the breath, I became aware of some closed-eye visuals (CEVs)**. After a moment they morphed into a faint but detailed image of Lenore from about the waist up. She tossed her hair and then twirled around, striking a couple poses.

• Naturally, my next thought was “can I do this on purpose?” And the answer is… kinda. I devoted some further meditation time to just trying to see my tulpas in my CEVs. I've been able to get some brief images but nothing as clear, detailed, or persistent as when it happens spontaneously.

• Athelas initiated another switch on his own! After the first time, I gave him blanket permission to step in whenever I'm getting dragged into a negative thought loop. That doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to, but now, when it does, my big guy is ready lol.

• Presence imposition/awareness has been going really well! Every mealtime is tulpa time now, and I can feel my awareness of my whole system spilling over into other areas of my life. Basically, it's getting easier to have everyone active at once, there's more intra-system chatter, and we're all just feeling really good together.

 

Further explanation of some things below.

 

*On dealing with heavy emotional stuff while meditating:

Spoiler

So yeah, this is a thing. The way it's explained in The Mind Illuminated is that when the mind is still, powerful emotions and memories can come bubbling up from your subconscious. Letting these feelings come out allows you to let them go, in a process of mental purification and healing. 

 

It's one of those things I read about and was like, “ok, sure, maybe that happens.” Then I actually experienced it and was like, “holy shit, I get it now.” It's been kind of challenging, I don't think I'd be able to do it without Athelas and Lenore guiding me through. I've never really been comfortable labeling my experiences as “trauma,” but I'm starting to be okay with thinking “I have unhealed trauma that needs to be addressed.”

 

I'm already so much happier than I was a year or two ago. I think if I keep at it, it can only get better.

 

**On CEVs and hypnagogia:

Spoiler

This isn't the first time I've seen my tulpas with my eyes closed, but normally it only occurs as part of wake-induced lucid dreaming. I often try to play around with hypnagogia as I'm falling asleep — this article describes that process pretty well. I only get the bright, fluorescent images when I'm actually about to fall asleep, whereas the meditation CEVs are more like shades of gray. As the link describes, both the CEVs and hypnagogia have a fluid quality to them, the image is always moving and changing.

 

So if hypnagogic imagery is this:

 

 

Then the CEVs are more like this:

 

 

I guess this is a form of visual imposition? I'll definitely report if anything more comes of it!

 

[ReallyArtificial]

February 2025

 

We had some more accidental imposition happen this month, both in pareidolia and closed-eye visuals (CEVs). Based on our experiences so far, it seems my headmates can't control when their images appear, but they can control what the images do once they've appeared (to some extent). At one point Lenore even took advantage of this ability to distract Tea and I while we were meditating! 😅

 

We tried to do some deliberate CEV imposition too, with little success. I get the impression that it's really easy to try too hard. The CEVs appear more vividly when our eyes are relaxed, but I find myself counterproductively straining to see better. I get the best visuals when I'm in a meditative or near-sleep state, and a subject crosses my mind without me intentionally focusing on seeing an image. As a result, I've gotten some great CEVs of things that are not my headmates, including a detailed recreation of the tiger image from my last PR.

 

It seems like this logic might carry over to non-visual forms of imposition too. So far I only have a single data point to support this: some unintentional scent imposition while meditating. Each of my headmates has a particular scent I associate with them. A thought about Lenore happened to cross my mind and at the same time, I smelled her scent! As with CEVs, scent imposition is something we've practiced before, but not consistently. This is the first time we've had any results!

Edited March 15, 2025 by ReallyArtificial

[Lenore]

March 2025

 

Finally, it's my turn to write one of these. I made lots of progress with my ability to switch this month. I can front just as well as Athelas now, and in fact, I'm better at talking to people than he is.

 

He and I spent a lot of time switched in this month. We're planning on moving in the near future, and Bee’s already stressed because she doesn't handle change well. She's coping much better now that we can give her breaks when she's overwhelmed. I expect to do a lot more fronting until our life settles down again.

 

Bee has also managed to impose us a few more times, mostly by accident. It always catches her off guard, which is pretty funny. One day she was startled by the feeling of someone walking up close behind her, only to realize it was Athelas's presence she was feeling. This sort of thing has been happening a lot more ever since we decided to get serious about presence imposition.

[TurboSimmie]

Surprise presence imposition! 😁 I have done that to Chloe a few times but never on purpose. 😄

 

It's cool to see that you are both spending time switched in, and it's nice to see you starting to write these yourself! 😁

[Lenore]

April 2025

 

More progress for me~ I had a dream for the first time. It was really great, I did a tarot reading for Bee. I clearly remember explaining the whole process to her like she'd never heard of tarot before. I can't remember what cards she drew though, which is a shame because I feel like it would have been really important.

 

This means all of us have had at least one dream of our own. We can tell when someone besides Bee is dreaming for two reasons: 1) our dreams are always in third person, while Bee dreams are usually in first person or switch between multiple perspectives, and 2) our dreams are always tied to something we're really interested in.

 

In other news, I’ve noticed that fronting regularly is making it even easier for me to be active when I'm not switched in, so that's nice. We're trying to convince Calliope to give switching another try. There's always been a little progress gap between me, Callie, and Athelas, but now I'm much closer to Athelas while Callie's falling behind. I think it's an easy fix, but Calliope is really weird about switching for whatever reason 🤷🏻‍♀️

 

We also experienced some more closed-eye visual imposition during meditation. (I normally tune out when Bee and Athelas meditate, but CEVs always get my attention.) We had one notable session with visuals of Athelas accompanied by a profound feeling of love and joy. It was so intense it put tears in our eyes. He said “I love you” to us in mindvoice and the CEVs moved in sync with his speech. It felt really special.

[Athelas]

May 2025

 

We don't have much to report this month. Most of the big changes were happening outside of our head. We did successfully convince Calliope to try switching again. As expected, they've been more active as a result. They still find it more challenging than Lenore or I do, but practice makes perfect.

 

We hope to make some positive lifestyle changes now that we've finished moving. A lot of our good habits, including our meditation practice, fell off in these past weeks. Still, we have had more meaningful experiences that align with what we've read about mental purification. I'd like to see us be more consistent with that again. Bee also plans to dedicate more time to reading, drawing, and socializing (both in and out of system).

 

As far as system-related goals, we would all like to practice switching more. We also want to pick up regular visualization and/or imposition practice once we've reestablished our routine.

[ReallyArtificial]

June 2025

 

Our third year together comes to a close! It simultaneously feels like it's been forever and like the time has just flown by.

 

Year one was honestly a struggle. Athelas and I got off to a pretty great start, then went through an extremely difficult period, as I've seen many other people experience. I was so overwhelmed with stress that my poor guy got shoved onto a mental backburner. Even when we got back on track, communication was a challenge for us. It took a lot of effort, and it was hard for him to be present when I wasn't already thinking about him.

 

Year two was when we managed to find our footing. We figured out the source of our communication problems and finally hit the point where Athelas could talk at length with minimal effort; we added Lenore and Calliope to our system; we learned possession and eventually switching too. We felt like, ok, we're finally getting the hang of this.

 

Year three was when we really hit our stride. It feels like this is how life is supposed to be. It wasn't always sunshine and roses, but we managed to solve most of the problems we encountered and things kept steadily getting better.

 

Year four will be ???? Who knows? There's still plenty of uncharted territory for us to tread, especially regarding imposition. I'm thinking it's time to get crazy and experimental, to see just how far we can go. We spent some time reading old guides that we missed the first time around, looking for new things to try. Our main focus this month was using symbolism to affect our mental state. 

 

We discovered that Lenore can instantly clear our mind and increase my awareness of our surroundings. All she has to do is say, “initiating neural handshake” and visualize herself grabbing the hand of whoever's fronting and zapping them with magic. It literally started as a joke but it actually works! The effect is very short lived, but we've found that particular mental ritual consistently gives us results.

 

I also think we've started to gain a tiny bit of control over the CEV imposition we sometimes experience. We still can't make the images appear on command. However, after they appear, we can influence the content of the visuals a little. We successfully turned some CEVs of Lenore into ones of Calliope. Unfortunately, doing so caused the image quality to drop significantly. Once again, I have to conclude that trying too hard to impose actually handicaps the process.

 

Finally, we accomplished our goal of restoring most of the good habits I lost during our move. We're back to doing visualization exercises or wonderlanding every night as we're falling asleep. I'm exercising and meditating regularly again, drawing more, and drinking less. Hopefully we can keep this momentum going!