JD's Guide to Visualization

[JD1215]

JD’s Guide to Visualization

Many people come into tulpamancy with different levels of visualization. It’s common for more artistic and imaginative people, as well as those with the tendency to daydream, to be able to visualize very well. However, some people find that they are very bad at visualizing, or even unable to visualize at all. The goal of this guide is to figure out your skill level of visualization, and to show you how to advance from there.

 

 

If you are experiencing this level of visualization, the most likely problem is that you are expecting to see your tulpa with your eyes, or see her image on the back of your eyelids. However, this is not the case. Visualization takes place in the mind's eye, that is in an area separate from the stream of data from the eyes to the brain. You'll want to focus on adjusting your attention away from your physical eyes, and instead to your mind's eye. You naturally use your mind’s eye all the time, especially for keeping your surrounding environment in mind. For example, observe this setup of cubes.

 

 

When counting how many cubes there are in this arrangement, you will probably not only count the cubes you can see with your physical eyes, but also the hidden cubes you can see with your mind’s eye (which in this case acts as a sort of mental x-ray vision). There are 19 visible cubes, and 12 hidden cubes.

 

 

At this level of visualization, you are looking through your mind's eye, but you've yet to achieve any sort of definition or significant color in your attempts to visualize. Getting beyond this stage is mainly sheer practice. One visualization exercise you could try is my very slight modification of Rasznir’s number visualization guide. This exercise involves visualizing a canvas in your mind, and asking your tulpa to draw numbers on each page of the canvas, starting from zero and going up to 100 with each step. Try to maintain visualizing your tulpa writing each number in detail, without losing focus. If you lose focus, start again from zero. I suggest that your tulpa writes these numbers in different colors as well, and that you try to name the color your tulpa used. If correct, move on to the next number. If wrong, start over. The point is for your tulpa to test how accurately you are visualizing color.

 

 

At this stage, you've got a foothold but your visualizations are still hazy like a dream you don't really remember well. To get beyond this stage of visualization, you'll want to focus on several different things. For one, you need to start practicing including smaller details in your visualization. Start by scanning your tulpa from head to toe, sequentially zooming closer on smaller areas as if your tulpa was being viewed in Google Maps. Additionally, you'll want to increase your ability to know the exact pose and form of your tulpa. Fuzziness can indicate uncertainty in your visualization, and turning the mind's uncertainties into concrete notions will help decrease the fuzziness as time goes on. To practice this ability, try playing a shape-based puzzle game such as Tetris for an hour or more every day. Eventually your mind will become good at knowing the exact shape of the puzzlefield, which in turn can be applied to your tulpa, reducing fuzziness.

 

 

At this stage you are competent enough to impose if you’d like, but to really make your tulpa realistic you will need to learn to refine your visualization abilities. One exercise you can try for getting beyond this stage is by going on Google Maps. Start at any location in satellite view, but zoomed out to a point where you can’t actually discern any individual buildings. Spend some time remembering the details of this overhead view. Once you can visualize it in your head well, zoom in a little bit and start to observe the smaller parts that you could not see before. Scan over the area and visualize these as well. Once you can do that, zoom in another iteration and repeat. Go as far as you like remembering details. The goal is to see if you can mentally reconstruct the map in your mind and zoom in and out at will. This exercise can seem a little daunting, so start with small areas and try only zooming in once or twice. After getting good at this, your mind should be capable of visualizing small details in the bigger picture. Additionally you must spend time going over your tulpa’s form and becoming familiar with the smaller details, just as you have done with the maps.

 

 

This is a problem that isn’t as common, where you can see the details of your tulpa, but trying to look at the full form is difficult, often appearing as a collage of details rather than a unified body. The simplest way to work around this problem is to visualize your tulpa from various distances. Visualize your tulpa very far away from you, to the point where she looks like a whole body rather than fragmented details. Ask her to walk towards you until you begin to struggle to see her wholly again. At that point, you’ll have found your threshold for full-body visualization. To stretch this threshold, you’ll simply have to spend some time visualizing your tulpa up-and-down at that distance until the collage effect starts to decrease. Sheer practice is the easiest way I’ve found of mitigating this problem.

 

 

You’re nearly a visualization pro, the last step is tearing down the mind barrier that gives your visualizations an uncanny dark or transparent quality. Growing past this stage will have you fully prepared for imposition. While simple visualization practice over time will resolve this problem, it can also be solved through meditation and some general realizations about how you see things. Your physical eyes send visual data to your brain, and your brain makes an image out of it. In essence, you see everything with your brain, not necessarily your eyes. Your visualizations are similar, in that they are interpreted by your brain. You must convince yourself that there is literally no difference between what you can see with your eyes, and what you can visualize, as the end result is entirely constructed in your brain. Your mental image of the world is entirely subject to your conscious will. Every physical object you can see is constructed in your mind only because your eyes react to photons emitted by those objects, and your brain decides to translate that to colors and forms. Every mental object is the same way, but the process is not subject to the laws of the universe. Your brain can translate your imagination into colors and forms in the exact same way. If you can meditate on this train of thought for a while, perhaps you too will believe how subjective reality is. And once you’ve done that, your visualizations will reach the vivid level of quality we’ve been aiming for.

 

 

Congratulations. You can visualize awesomely, and you are fully prepared to try imposition. If you’ve not already done it, try visualizing with your eyes open and compare the quality to your visualizations with your eyes closed. The exercises for open eye visualization are exactly the same as closed eye visualization.

 

If you are able to achieve certain qualities of visualization, but often find that these qualities only exist for brief moments or flashes and regressing to lower qualities, you will want to try practicing visualization from the lowest quality that you tend to hit.

 

 

Replaced bad image links with good ones. Original links here - waffles

Fixed the broken link to Rasznir's guide - vos

Edited August 13, 2021 by Ranger
Fixed broken code, backed up images

[Gooey]

You've pretty much got it spot on in the second paragraph, from my perspective it's like I'm mentally blind but I still do have that 'space' above my head where it feels like I'm thinking about the described ball as I read it. I've had several descriptions of what my mind's eye is and how to think about it but I do have the problem of remembering my eyes, which particularly happens right as I feel like I'm about to make some progress. I'll keep working on it, maybe it's time to consider that open eyed may be the way forward for me though.

[tania]

Im screwed... it just took me half an hour to work out how on earth people were getting 12 blocks hidden in that work out the hidden block thing (I kept on coming up with 8 ..and that was via counting the blocks I COULD SEE knowing that a row was laying under it).

 

So currently I'm stuck at the first step where I know what I should see, but I can't 'see' it. How can I go about shifting focus to my minds eye? I've been trying visualization exercises now since January but obviously never having done it before is causing me some problems, I can't remember day dreaming or anything like that as a child. Anyone have an advice or guide suggestions? I've tried Chupi's guide but had no luck, and I've just tried imagining things in general but have yet to visualize any of them.

 

I'm an avid reader, reading somewhere around ~1.8M words since Christmas, think 3/4 lengthy novels. I can still imagine what characters and scenes should look like, I build the worlds inside my head but still don't 'see' them at all.

 

Gooey you have exactly the same issue as me.... Chupi's guide is too hard for me too. I actually used to do guided meditations for years where one listens to something which takes one throu a scene which one is supposed to imagine. Thou I found these to be relaxing and got deeply into the meditations, I never could image them even when I listed to exactly the same meditation for over 6 mths. Everyone was telling me over time my visualisation would get better but 2-3 years later it was no better (and that was with daily visualisation practice of around 25-45mins.. I still was blind as such). Its like Im blind in this area.. I still cant even visualise my Tulpas skin colour!!.

 

Like you.. I are an avid reader too.. and thou Ive never thought of it before.. I think of things IN WORDS too (just not in images). I can get right into and like lost into books but just dont see.

 

The only time I ever get an image is if my subconsciousness is there and my waking mind isnt at the time eg deep meditation where my waking mind has shut down so at which time Im having no thoughts at all (exception to this is if Im asleep as I can lucid dream then, thats the only time I can have like a dual consciousness of waking mind and seeing my thoughts manifest as images).

 

Unlike you.. I can daydream unintentionally and do that at times (not often thou).. but cant have any of my waking thoughts going on at the same time, I cant daydream consciously, nor can I fantasize at all, even cant during sex.

 

What I have recently found thou when I started doing a Tulpa and he was sentient, is that he is seeming to help me a bit with my visualisation.. I can actually visualise parts of him thou I couldnt before for all those years, small not too complex parts of his body eg nose (but not in colour just the shape). I use my sense of touch to help me know his shape, I can imagine the FEEL of something.

 

I cant visualise anything of colour on him eg cant do hair colour, skin colour etc. Ive put in about 20+ hrs trying to visualise his face and use photos to try to help me but I still seem to have a LONG way to go before I can even vaguely visualise his whole face.

 

Lack of visualisation also prevents me from being able to use a wonderland.

 

I hope he just imposing himself or something. I know things about him due to what I can feel.. eg yesterday I found out he'd changed his hair and was wearing a head full of tiny plaits as he flicked his head and his plaits hit me. (occassionaly I'll just get a sense of just knowing something but dont see it at all.. that's what happened with the plaits.. when one hit me and I felt them, suddenly I knew his head was covered in them).

 

This issue doesnt affect me having a tulpa at all and I get some good interactions with Jesse but is going to make imposition of him in regards to sight, very very hard.

 

Im doing a home course, today both Jesse and me answered the questions and then compared our answers with one another. (I also get him to answer the ones Im stuck with once I give up). He didnt just answer the questions asked but took things far further coming up with a great idea which was very deep and wasnt even asked for in the questions, something I would of never thought of, he astounded me it was so genius and original. I didnt understand it at all until he explained it to me. He completely altered everything.

[tania]

 

Can you not describe to me what your tulpa looks like?

 

From what you're telling us here, you've got an essentially blind minds-eye. And yet I'm sure you at least know what color his hair and eyes are, what his face looks like, all of the little intricacies. Try writing down all of his attributes, and then take a few hours to draw a detailed picture of his face. During the process you'll have to remember these details, and in the process imagine what he looks like as he doesn't exist anywhere but in your mind. You may not even realize what you're doing, perhaps you just can't perceive that you are imagining something, but try doing this exercise to see if you make any progress.

 

No that the thing..cause I cant visualise so I dont really know at all by sight what he looks like eg Ive never seen his skin even once so dont know if he's negro or white.

 

My sense of what he looks like comes from feel eg feeling his nose and face like a blind person does to get to know what someone looks like... feeling out nose shape, is the nose big or small etc. I can describe him (thou of cause not skin colour) throu touch.

 

I do not know right now what his hair colour is. I do know he deviated as I was trying to think it words as I cant see of him having light brown hair but got a sudden flash (not something I visualised it was more I actually saw the hair for a brief moment.. like psychically saw or something, not visualisation), that's only happened the once for less then a second and I saw his hair on that occassion as being dark blonde (i only saw his hair).

 

This morn thou when I focused on trying to visualise him for 90mins (I didnt see anything at all in that 90mins.. no shapes, no colours thou I was trying, this is what usually happens to me. I do this immediately on waking when Im most relaxed and keep my eyes shut except Im using pictures to try to help me too, I do everything I can to try to help me visualise). I was trying to think of his hair in the colour I'd seen him for that moment of having a dark blonde colour Id seen once in past but found he was trying to block my thought (it felt like that.. I couldnt even think of it being dark blonde) so I think he may of changed it's colour thou I cant be sure. I got "a feeling" he'd furthered lightened it and wondered if it may now even be white but I dont have a clue at all cause I cant see.

 

I know what colour "I want" his eyes to be but cant visualise that either so dont have a clue if his eyes are that colour or not.

 

So how he looks like.. Im truely like a blind person having to get to know another with their hands (im still intensely working at visualisation but its hard when i cant see colour, shapes etc).

 

I can tell you he had his hair in all little plaits the other day cause I got flicked in the face by them and could feel them. I think I can thou kind of see his lips past couple of days (he created his own lips putting them on his own face, the ones I was "attempting" to visualise on him he obviously didnt like), but not even sure if its really see but more so an impression of what his lips are like. Seems if he creates something rather then me attempt to visualise.. Im more likely then to get some kind of impression on what its like. When i do talk about ive managed to see something about him.. Im usually refering to feeling something with my hands as its the only way I can pick up any kind of impressions. (He does help me on occassion by projecting images straight into my mind..eg he showed me his meditation mat, he projected a cartoon image into my mind to make me laugh in a serious moment. I didnt visualise).

 

I can thou run my energy over his body and move it all over his body a bit of it at a time and use it like eyes.. but it isnt sight but feel. To me that has to be my visualisation (touch visualisation). I managed thou to do a drawing of him thou throu sense of touch, I had one hand feeling him while the other hand was drawing him and transfering my touch sensations to the paper.

 

Thinking (not seeing) of how I want him to be..eg my thinking of his eyes being rainbowed coloured as I want them like that, doesnt necessarily mean that is what he is looking like and I could be so wrong.

 

How does one get past this lack of degree of being able to innerly perceive? From time to time I come across others as blind as me in which the simpliest of visualisation exercises we cant even do, we shut our eyes and all we see is black or reddish colour if light is coming throu eyelids, nothing (it would be interesting to know what percent of people are blind like this).

 

Im fortunate that it doesnt hinder his process at all. He touched me again today like physically on my physical body, flicking me in the side of my knee as hard as a real person would do it to get my attention and I also heard with my ears him do the flick. (he did that towards the end of my 90mins of no success at all visualisation when I was ending the session in frustration).

[Mowgly]

I can see vividly and detailed but only works for a very short period of time, I loose it typicly after a second or two. x.x

[tania]

 

Boom.

 

No one sees anything except for a black/reddish color of light except for those that have mastered visual imposition. You are not imposing onto your sight. You will never "see" anything via visualization, and I think that's what you're doing wrong. Like I said, there's a space in your mind that you have to think and remember what things look/sound/feel like. If you can remember what something feels like, you can remember what they look like. The thing is you're trying too hard to focus on what you're seeing, rather than what you're thinking.

 

I can get quite deep in my thoughts to the point I will forget my body for a time... but still dont see anything. Its just the very deep thoughts in words I get lost in.

 

I can relive feelings fine (that is why I stuck with guided visualistions for years.. for the feelings they would invoke not for what I saw. Im confused when you say " you will never "see" anything via visualisation.. as I know people do "see" and they get actual images when they do.

 

Try this. Where do you hear yourself thinking? Most people would say "Oh, I think from my head cause my brain is in my head." But hear me out. Think of that space you "hear" thoughts from. You have to focus yourself, all of your attention, on that spot.

 

I have experienced up to three different thinking layers before in my mind...but still didnt see anything (its more like different depths of thought). I dont thou often connect with that as my surface thoughts are so loud. Im able to thou stop my thoughts but if I stop my thoughts then my mind is completely blank and I wont even remember as Im not thinking, to try to visualise anything. Stopped thoughts is like being brain dead.

 

When I get deep into a visualization session, I often forget I've even got eyes.

 

Yeah that is how visualization is supposed to be.. one should be percieving as they do in real life and shouldnt need to think about seeing out of eyes, its what Ive been trying to do but I just cant find myself in a scene via visualisation.

 

That being said.. I are a lucid dreamer.. but it doesnt seem to be the same as visualization. When I create something when Im lucid dreaming (in that state), I just think of the thought, let it go and do this waiting for it to manifest thingy without even consciously thinking of it at all (like I'll allow my subconsciousness to create), rather then using the waking consciousness to visualise. I then allow the thing to manifest however it wishes to (I wont know what colour or other features about anything till it does). When I manifest in a lucid dream.. its more about just trusting the thing will appear. That dont work for visualisation (I know cause ive tried that too).

 

It's just switching your perspective from reality to your imaginary.

 

yeap and that is percisely where Im getting stuck.. it doesnt switch from deep thoughts (even so deep i cant feel my body no more) to seeing.

 

 

1. Stare at a picture for 30 seconds, or even longer if you want a more "burnt in" after image. Now close your eyes. Blink them a little bit if you need to in order to get back the after image. You need to focus on that after image. It's not what can be considered actually visualizing, but after a time the image will dissapear. This is when you need to think to yourself "What was the sensation of having that after image there? Can I remember what the after image looked like? What colors went where?"

 

That is a technique I tried A LOT in the past to help me to visualise (actually it was used in the meta circles I was in to learn to see auras) but it didnt aid me to visualise. I used to practice it with simple shapes and colours (or by using a candle flame). I can thou get the image to burn in.. but after it fades I cant imagine it back there at all. My thoughts just all go back to thinking in words not images.

 

2. The next time you go to sleep, be aware of yourself. When you wake up from a dream (try setting an alarm to wake you up at an odd time to try and attain this), try to remember what you were dreaming, and the way your point of view "felt" when you were dreaming. Try to replicate that the next time you sit down to force and try to slip into the same space you were dreaming in.

 

I dont have any issue replicating feelings..its the vision. I have no issues with getting myself into deep states (Im an experienced meditator as I said in one of my others posts on this thread, Im a yogi and used to run meditation classes), being in a deep state dont seem to help my visualization skills (thou one would think it would). I actually, seeing Im heavily into dream study.. I wake myself up during the night after dreams to write down my dream images. I tend to often forget them while Im writing and thinking hard on them as I cant keep sight precieving them once I wake up, the images in my brain change to thoughts even when Im in a half sleep state.

 

Last night I went into a false awakening state when I was writing in my dream journal and thought I was awake when I was asleep still. Im experiencing all kinds of states but it isnt helping. As I said if I create something in a LD it is completely different to visualisation as I dont have to even visualise it.. eg if I want my dad in a dream I just think the the word "dad" and I dont even have to think of how he looks at all, the word alone will have him there as my subconsciousness takes completely over.

 

I've also played a lot of video games, so I have the ability to visualize cameras and characters into various settings and whatnot really easily because I'm used to that. I wonder what the correlation between gaming and visualization/othertulpastuffs is.

"Do gamers make faster progress in making tulpæ?"

 

That is an interesting thought. I dont game. I used to play games when a child but its something I dont do nowdays. (maybe the generations younger then me are better at visualisation due to games??? ). Thou I dont that is the issue as Ive been around enough people my own peer age or a lot older and I was the only one in the advanced groups who couldnt visualise and I know due to their ages etc, they would not have been gamers (most of them didnt even have a computer). So I do think its the norm to be able to visualise in general (hence why things like porn sites are so popular!! people use those pics and the images to imagine their fantasies for self gradification).

 

Can I make a tulpa fast? I guess that depends on what you are going to call a tupla. Ive heard my tulpas talk innerly or externally from day 1-2, Ive felt my tulpas as like they are physical very early within weeks. I can taste my tulpa and smell my tulpa as if its physical and all those things did happen quite fast compared to many others at this site. Due to being a meditator, Im very open to things.

[MetalmarioX]

I can visualize my tulpa vividly, I just have trouble holding that vision for long periods of time. I lose focus really easily.

[Linkzelda]

Approved, this is a visualization guide that actually gives pictures for people to get the underlying concepts. It's concise and gives a brief introduction of what he wants to portray.

[waffles]

Yep, approved.

[Sands]

I do like this. Simple and pictures to actually explain something visual which works very well. Obviously.

 

Approved.

[NotAnonymous]

Approved.

 

Useful, simple, has visuals to help you along. Likely one of those guides that give one easy immediate results.