Tulpas and the Unconscious

[fennecfoxx]

To start: We reject the notion that the unconscious is some mystical entity largely cordoned off from the conscious mind, accessible only through symbolism or psychoanalysis or whatever else. The unconscious mind is just everything not presently within the conscious mind, whether repressed or simply outside of present awareness. To quote Jung:

 

Quote

Everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all the future things which are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness; all this is the content of the unconscious.

 

Our understanding of how we as a system function, in Jungian terms, is that we share one psyche and thus share one conscious and unconscious mind (albeit with differing complexes) but have distinct egos.

 

Like this, but with up to 1-3 egos (as we're a trio) present in "consciousness" at any given time, with varying levels of prominence. (Image source)

 

(A note for those not versed in Jungian psychology: Jung did not define "ego" and "complex" the same way Freud did. Look up his model of the psyche if you want, but it isn't super relevant here. Just know we aren't talking Freud here.)

 

(Second note: This isn't exclusively a Jungian thread. We're talking about nebulous concepts everyone understands and talks about differently, so I want to be clear about our understanding of the mind and the definitions we're using. I encourage others to be similarly clear about anything that may cause confusion.)

 

I don't think it's controversial to say that, following this model, a tulpa (secondary ego) is directly connected to the unconscious. When not active, the tulpa resides entirely within the unconscious (though not consciously, as there's only one conscious mind). It can enter the conscious mind (when called upon or spontaneously) and may bring thoughts and feelings into conscious awareness the primary ego (host) normally would not. It can also influence how the mind thinks and how the overall person behaves; this may be perceived as anything from the host being aware of the tulpa's thoughts to the tulpa displacing the original ego and dominating the conscious mind entirely (a.k.a. switching). In the latter case, the host ego is pushed into the unconscious (this does not necessitate blacking out, only a lack of conscious activity associated with the host ego).

 

Our (=my) personal theory aside, I've noticed some pretty interesting things, especially with Kayleigh. She has said that tulpas are more in tune with the host's subconscious by nature. That, of course, assumes the subconscious belongs to the host specifically and the tulpa is a sort of mental houseguest, but to reframe that using the Jungian model, parts of the unconscious not readily accessible to one ego may be accessible to another. This can be minor things, like how her memory is better than mine (if we argue over some detail we remember differently and are able to verify it, she's usually right), or bringing to consciousness what the host ego has refused to see.

 

An example (tw: dissipation):

 

Spoiler

There was a time when I convinced myself my tulpas didn't exist. For several years, I suppressed every thought of them and didn't interact with them once. (Shame on me, I know.) Of course, that which is suppressed or repressed inevitably finds a way to manifest. I never decided to become a system again. The very idea was unthinkable. Yet, after seven years of swearing up and down that I was a singlet and always had been, Kayleigh reappeared one day. I feared a demon had taken her form to deceive me (it seemed plausible to an ego determined to deny her existence).

 

Adjusting to life together again was as rough as it was exciting. The three of us (she decided to bring Alex back to life with her, which we are both grateful for) had serious conversations about what went wrong, what we've learned and can yet learn, and how to move forward. Alex was content to focus on where we go from here, but Kayleigh had a harder time handling the shock of how much things had changed during her absence.

 

There are times when my mind's wandering and it drifts into introspection. Several times in the weeks that followed, the internal monologue would shift to her voice in those introspective moments, and I'd find her psychoanalyzing me. It was never dialogue, just her reflections. It was her way of understanding and coming to terms with how I'd changed without her, worked out in a state of shared consciousness with zero regard for my ego defenses. It was as eye-opening as it was uncomfortable.

 

I don't have as intuitive an understanding of the unconscious side of her as she does of mine, but Alex does. He denies he knows her better than I do. I don't believe that.

 

Another interesting thing about Kayleigh is how our personalities are pretty opposite, yet we've always had a tight bond (certain neurotic years aside). Because I'm a typology nerd, I'm not stopping there. In MBTI, which was built on Jung's theory of psychological types, I'm an INTP, and she's an ESFP. Now, what's fascinating is the INTP function stack is Ti-Ne-Si-Fe, leaving their inverses, Te-Ni-Se-Fi, as the shadow functions. Guess what the ESFP function stack is? Se-Fi-Te-Ni!

 

Our Enneagram types reveal the same duality. Her type is 8w7, probably with dominant sexual instinct (which, to be clear, is not just about sex). As a Five, I integrate to Eight and disintegrate to Seven; in layman's terms, my potential best and worst selves are echoed in her. My instinct stack is so/sp (social/self-preservation), meaning my blind spot is her dominant instinct.

 

And we vibe well. Somehow.

 

That isn't to say a tulpa and host will necessarily be complementary opposites. Alex and I are much more similar, and he's the oldest after me. Though it is may be worth noting both were originally daydream characters and Kayleigh was more clearly autonomous than any other character I'd imagined, to the point of rebelling against any attempt to control her well before we knew about tulpamancy, plurality, or any such thing.

[bunnymustdie]

I've gotten the impression from reading Jung's stuff that he treats the unconscious as sort of an ocean. There are shallower parts that are probably easier to reach, but also really deep parts where symbolism or mythology are very helpful to access. There are parts in it that overlap so it's hard to tell precisely where one thing begins and another ends. This is just how I understood his stuff and how I think it also works for me.

 

I have noticed similar trends with my tulpas being more in tune with my sub/unconscious, and being able to tell when I need to do work to address issues in it a lot better than me. When I have weird emotional funk or persistent moods that I simply tolerate and soldier through, they tend to be the ones to speak up first and nudge me to work on them.

 

12 hours ago, fennecfoxx said:

The unconscious mind is just everything not presently within the conscious mind, whether repressed or simply outside of present awareness.

... I don't think it's controversial to say that, following this model, a tulpa (secondary ego) is directly connected to the unconscious.

 

I've observed things that correspond to the above, though I'm not sure about whether they are directly connected. I was tempted to respond to an online discussion thread when Verres informed me that the original poster had a pretty dismissive attitude toward people with views that they disagreed with, and was only friendly to the responses they liked. I reread the thread and that was indeed the case, which my own consciousness failed to notice initially. I refrained from commenting on that thread per her advice. 

 

On a similar occasion, she observed that a person (possibly the same one as in the previous example) have asked for advice again, but cannot even bother to use the word "please". Their thread title simply had a command of "advise", instead of a request of "please advise", and that was another detail that my consciousness failed to grasp. On both occasions she declared the threads' OPs as entitled and not deserving of my time.

 

I'm not as familiar with the MBTI, but my type is INTJ, and Verres is ISFJ. Her behavior in the above examples matched her type, where she saw small, immediate details and their emotional impacts. Me, on the other hand, failed to do so because I was focused on the bigger picture (discussion threads) and the more objective sides of them (exchanging information).

 

My other tulpa, Saeya, is INFJ. This is perhaps shaped by the therapy technique I've asked her to do often on me, where she has to see bigger trends and how they impact my emotions and mind.

 

They're not nearly as close to being opposites of me as your tulpas are, and Verres is fairly old by these forum's standards. She seem to have just developed into what she is.

Edited June 4 by bunnymustdie

[The Incans]

We have a vast inner world and our Insiders exist and continue to have their own lives without external host consciously thinking about us and imagining what we are doing inside. 

Three of us are fully co-conscious for running the system together ...so always know what each other are doing but sometimes so it's not too distracting when they are busy in outside world (or external people are around) we can temp 'block' the stream of information ..but then when we come to the front and blend they are 'updated' so to speak. like being sent a media file but direct to their brain (without needing to get it from a 'real-life' text/email). 

Our Twins ('littles' - Sam & Lily) also have telepathic abilities with each other so one can be inside while other is upfront and they know what each other is doing they have seamless switching with no dissociation between switches. That is natural between them they've always just been able to do it where it took host some years of practice and experience to become co-conscious with Kitty & Jess (and them with her)

We believe there's more to life than can be proven by science or 'seen with your own eyes' kind of thing! 


 

[bunnymustdie]

28 minutes ago, The Incans said:

We believe there's more to life than can be proven by science or 'seen with your own eyes' kind of thing! 

 

Jung himself acknowledged that there are some things that can never be proven empirically, i.e, with measured numbers and reproducible experiments, and that it's best to keep an open mind on them. He's also commented that with a lot of materialist views, like the idea of consciousness being purely based in the brain, there are no ways to proving them as 100% true with science either.

 

Just like how a few hundred years ago the dominant view in the west was based on religion and everything was attributed to being of a spiritual nature, the dominant view of the modern age is heavily materialist, with a lot of materialist views being assumed to be correct or "normal" before proven wrong, even though there are little basis for many of them.

 

It also doesn't help that words like "science" and even "psychology" have had their meanings shift to be the equivalent of a vaguely materialist world view by a lot of the general public, even though they weren't such things to begin with.

Edited June 4 by bunnymustdie

[Abvieon]

13 hours ago, bunnymustdie said:

 

Jung himself acknowledged that there are some things that can never be proven empirically, i.e, with measured numbers and reproducible experiments, and that it's best to keep an open mind on them. He's also commented that with a lot of materialist views, like the idea of consciousness being purely based in the brain, there are no ways to proving them as 100% true with science either.

 

Just like how a few hundred years ago the dominant view in the west was based on religion and everything was attributed to being of a spiritual nature, the dominant view of the modern age is heavily materialist, with a lot of materialist views being assumed to be correct or "normal" before proven wrong, even though there are little basis for many of them.

 

It also doesn't help that words like "science" and even "psychology" have had their meanings shift to be the equivalent of a vaguely materialist world view by a lot of the general public, even though they weren't such things to begin with.

 

This. I think, when seeing the extensive negative effects that organized religion has had on the world, many people in the modern era have swung hard in the opposite direction because they see the "opposite of whatever was harmful" to be the direction of progress and improvement. It is why we have so many of the toxic militant reddit-athiest types (even outside of just reddit) who see themselves as counterculture paragons of justice but do little aside from spending all day debating strangers on forums who won't listen. I don't think the solution to religion's damage is as simple as just trying to oppose it as much as possible. The opposite extreme, which is absolute materialism and the insistence that it is impossible for any sort of spiritual/metaphysical force to exist can be equally damaging, in different ways. It is an overcorrection. Both sides make preemptive conclusions about the nature of reality.

 

One side preemptively concludes there is a very specific god that wants very specific things (and that disobeying these specific rules will have you thrown into a pit of eternal torment,) and the other side preemptively concludes that not only does said specific god not exist, but also anyone reporting experiences with any sort of god, spirit, deity, or metaphysical phenomenon like astral travel or energy work are either delusional idiots or misattributing some mundane psychological process to something beyond. Sure, this way of seeing things is a way to cope for those who have suffered harm from religion, and I see how people can find solace in this way of thinking. When you've suffered as a result of believing in the christian god, for example, denying that and anything that even remotely sounds similar can be a way to heal from your experiences. But is it really the best that people can do? Is it the only way? I don't think so.

 

I don't think materialism is an ideal solution to the harm from religion because it discredits and puts down those who actually find benefit from or make discoveries in other spiritual beliefs or practices. Countless people do things that are very much "mystical" but are outside the realm of organized religion. I've experienced things I cannot explain. As a result - and this is just one example - my anxiety surrounding health and death, which used to be very severe to the point of giving me panic attacks, is now nearly nonexistent. Said health anxiety came from my previous belief that I was nothing more than my physical brain and body.

 

Yet, people with beneficial outcomes from said experiences and practices are so often gaslit into thinking it either wasn't real, or wasn't all that special and not worth looking into any deeper. Not only that, but this denial of anything beyond the material cuts us off from the avenues of someday further understanding and more reliably working with these forces. If we preemptively conclude "This is a psychological process, this is the placebo effect, this was just a hallucination, this is just an imaginary friend, the brain can only host one consciousness, etc." how are we ever going to fully understand it? Our minds have to stay open to other possibilities as the same time. We have to be pioneers.

 

I think people who practice 'chaos magic' and similar things have the right idea. Because - they don't deny their lived experience and acknowledge the existence of these forces we don't fully understand, but also do not constrain their practices with the limited framework that organized religion provides. For anyone unfamiliar, chaos magic is basically 'DIY ritual,' it posits that the "rules" in spell work and energy work are highly flexible, allowing for people to essentially create their own custom metaphysical systems through which they can get results. They basically throw aside any notion that you have to pray to a specific god or follow a specific set of steps set out by a book, and just do their own thing. This form of spirituality, I think, is very productive and progressive because it removes the fear, guilt and dogma permeating traditional religion while still opening the door to interfacing with parts of reality beyond the material world.

Edited June 5 by Abvieon

[fennecfoxx]

19 minutes ago, Abvieon said:

When you've suffered as a result of believing in the christian god, for example, denying that and anything that even remotely sounds similar can be a way to heal from your experiences. But is it really the best that people can do? Is it the only way? I don't think so.

 

My experiences with tulpamancy mirror that. Taking a reactive stance toward what you blame for hurting you feels like healing because you think you've freed yourself from it, but if even people's positive experiences and related things trigger a knee-jerk reaction, it still has a hold over you. Healing requires deconstructing your beliefs, understanding what actually hurt you and why, and constructing a new understanding in that light.

 

In the case of someone hurt by religion, it may look like learning that God is not who they were taught He was and that both the Bible and many Christians condemn misusing His name to abuse others. Whether they return to the faith or not, it means understanding faith is a genuine positive influence in many people's lives, not just some tool to manipulate and oppress that these people are too "dumb" or "brainwashed" to see.

 

In my case, it meant realizing how much of a role mental illness played in what went wrong and how reasonable this community's beliefs are compared to what we internalized. I don't know how much that's a case of the community changing over time versus us just having gone off the deep end in the past, but coming back to this site last year was honestly eye-opening. This wasn't the crazy cult I'd convinced myself it was. I wasn't some pariah in their eyes. The "I was brainwashed" narrative I'd believed for years fell apart fast.

 

I don't believe it's a coincidence that my tulpas returned shortly after I let go of my blanket rejection of all things tulpamancy/plurality. Kayleigh's return was conscious on neither my part nor hers. I just unknowingly dissolved whatever mental barriers were keeping her firmly confined to the unconscious, I guess.

 

14 hours ago, The Incans said:

We believe there's more to life than can be proven by science or 'seen with your own eyes' kind of thing! 

 

Oh, absolutely. Tulpamancy/plurality itself is proof of that.