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I'm very new at this, having started in early August. As far as thoughtform creation itself goes, it gone incredibly well- I have three headmates, including two walk-ins. My first headmate, Amber, has been sentient and vocal for most of those three months. In other ways, it's gone less well. We struggle to communicate. Heck, our communication is actually worse now than it was when we started. Not great. Working theory is that my anxiety disorder started putting up barriers between us. 

 

What I wish to discuss in this thread, however, is how we experience consciousness in relation to each other and how we can expect that to change as our system develops. Of yet, they can sense everything that goes on in my mind. But, because our communication is bad, we don't experience the reverse. Their minds are closed off to me and it's hard to relax enough to let their words flow. (Trying to talk to them makes me anxious I'll fail which causes me to fail.) It's been the basic expectation that as our system develops this would change and I'd have access to their minds. That we were a "monoconscious" (as the term has now been introduced to me) system that just hadn't quite gotten their yet. 

 

While this two way access will probably occur as expected, there are some reasons to doubt it will be as simple as us sharing a collective consciousness. For one, neither I nor Amber were aware of the walk-ins, Atlas and Aura, before they purposefully made their existence known. They were having their own conscious experiences separate from ours. But, again, this could be a mere artifact of our system being under-developed. 

 

More pertinent is how the three of them have now told me they interact with each other in co-consciousness (haven't started on a headspace). They say that, while they can talk to each other, they can also keep their thoughts to themselves just fine, and, aside from some unintentional emotional bleed-through, they get to choose what speech/emotions/etc. they share; there’s a filter between them. 

 

There's an asymmetry here. When we accomplish switching, could we find that non-fronting members have separate consciousnesses (are "polyconscious") from each other but share a consciousness with the fronting member?

 

And what will switching be like? In some systems it feels like you "become" your headmate- suddenly your thoughts/feelings/attitudes/tastes suddenly become different to match those of the newly fronting member.  In other systems, it feels like someone else taking control of the body while you watch from the sidelines. I'm naturally very curious as to what co-consciousness will be like for me. One can assume it will be the same for me as it is for them, so what's it like for them? Do they feel like they “are” me? The answer, as they’ve told me, is a clear no. Despite the lack of a filter, they feel that they’re watching me, and not that they are me. While they do associate with the body, it remains an outsider's perspective. If they felt they were me then Amber couldn’t, for instance, hate cola when I drink it, because she would be experiencing the taste from my perspective, and not have her own opinion of that taste (if I'm understanding this right).

 

I rather like the idea that in co-consciousness I could relax and let the fronting member handle things.

 

I'm to understand most tulpa systems are monoconscious- multiple different minds/people sharing a body with no dissociative barriers. As such barriers are typically a trauma response, this makes a lot of sense. (Though this is a little confusing on another level, as the identities themselves obviously have to be dissociated from each other. Otherwise, you're just a singlet. I guess we're talking about different kinds of dissociation.)

 

It's looking to me like our system won't fit cleanly into either the monoconscious or polyconscious categories.

 

What do you all think of this? What can we expect going forward? What am I perhaps misunderstanding? 

 

Wherever we do fall, I'm utterly excited to be plural.

 

 

11 hours ago, Dovetail said:

I rather like the idea that in co-consciousness I could relax and let the fronting member handle things.

It is kind of like that, but everyone experiences slightly differently and how we experienced it 4 yeas ago is a little different today, there's even more separation.

 

11 hours ago, Dovetail said:

with no dissociative barriers

 

Well it feels like there are but the consious mind is linear and built for one; however, in the subconscious mind, based on using tulpish or pure thought, it's either way faster like 6x or more or parallel.

 

11 hours ago, Dovetail said:

the identities themselves obviously have to be dissociated from each other

 

Oh yeah, that's what I thought you meant. Yes, that's called independence and it gets better over time even after 5 years.

 

I don't think you're misunderstanding anything, you have it right on intuitively. It's a guessing game until it happens. Good luck!

 

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