A Few Questions (sentience, parroting, vocality)

[ThatOneStupidIdiot]

First off: I think she's sentient, though I guess I technically don't know. Even if she isn't, I'm assuming she is (i'm doing the "assume sentience from the start" thing). Her responses are sort of halfway between me speaking for her, and her saying things by herself. It feels like I'm generating the responses for her, but doing it slightly faster than I can consciously think about. I've heard the "if you're worried you're parroting, then you're probably not parroting" thing before, and if it's true, then I'm in the situation it tends to describe where I'm definitely not making a conscious effort to do it.

 

But anyway: There are a few things I'm confused about. For one, I can imagine her sitting somewhere (as a side note, she DOES change positions and such without me thinking about it), and then she moves across the room, but it's like she's simultaneously across the room and still sitting down where she was, like my subconscious can't decide which action she actually decided to do. As in, I can still feel a presence back in the original spot even though she isn't supposed to be there, but at the same time there's still a presence in the new location. It makes me slightly worried about sentience. Is this tulpa superposition normal near the beginning, and will it go away, or is it a sign that I'm doing something wrong?

 

Another, slightly related thing is that sometimes I imagine her doing or saying something absurd that she wouldn't do on her own, and it feels the same as when she responds normally. Like, I can imagine her flinging herself against a wall for no reason, and it sort of feels like it's happening faster than I can consciously think it through; it isn't obvious parroting, it's something I'm thinking about before realizing what I'm thinking about. I'm talking about stuff that happens because you thought about the concept of something, like instinctively imagining an apple without conscious input when someone told you to picture something red. I'll read about someone's tulpa standing on a ceiling or something equally impossible for mine to do, and then accidentally imagine mine doing it in the physical space of my room. This has the same "happening before I even know it" feeling that I get when she speaks. I don't really have a specific question here, I'm just confused and wondering if someone could explain what's going on so I don't have any doubts about her sentience.

 

Lastly, she only exists when I'm focusing on her. She never does something or says something when I'm not expecting her to, and she's never appeared in any way at all outside of the times that I'm actually focusing on her and imagining her with me. When I forget about her, she's gone. So my next question is: How can I make her more vocal? By which I mean, how can I make it so that she suddenly speaks up outside of forcing sessions, without me even thinking about her? I want to be totally enveloped within a tv show only to have her suddenly yell something before I even remember that she exists. I haven't really read anything about this in a guide before, so if there's one that gives instructions on this kind of thing then I'd appreciate a link. I'm not using a wonderland, and I haven't really thought about "where" she should be when she's not in the real world, but I kind of want her in the real world for most of the time, even if she's just sort of sitting there while I'm busy with something else.

 

(also sorry about the unnecessarily long post i kind of have a problem with briefly describing things)

[waffles]

- Is this parroting?

It might sort of be, but it's a step on the road anyway. You can forget about concerns over sentience and it'll sort itself out over time anyway, so there's no need to fret now.

 

- Tulpa duplication?

That does tend to happen with some people. What you should try to do is force yourself to accept that your tulpa is in one position, and ignore the other one completely.

 

-Possible puppeting?

Well, yes, that does happen. Truthfully, your tulpa might not be so separate from your own will right now, being not so developed. You might be unconsciously passing a cue to your tulpa to do it, or you're imagining what you're reading happening - like your example with an apple - and this makes your tulpa do it.

As with most other sentience questions, it'll sort itself out over time. You could also try 'resetting' your tulpa to where they were before the action each time.

 

-Constant presence?

That's going to be a problem if your tulpa's just pushing sentience. But...

 

>outside of forcing sessions

This phrase implies that you don't narrate. By 'narrate' I mean talk to your tulpa all the time, everywhere. Building up this habit early on in the process would be helpful for this. It reinforces the idea that your tulpa is always with you and such, so I'd suggest starting narration of a sort of you haven't already - obviously if your tulpa can respond then that's great; that makes narration easier when you can hold a two-sided conversation. In your case you should do it anyway.

 

Don't worry about actually 'forgetting' about your tulpa. That's completely normal for anything, because you're not thinking about anything completely non-stop. However, if it's your tulpa, then you can write something on your hand, or another kind of reminder, to remind you that your tulpa is there and you should engage with them. Interrupting is a tricky one, but work on a hallucinatory voice further down the line and that should be possible too.

[ThatOneStupidIdiot]

Alright, thanks. No, I haven't been narrating; partly because I forgot I was supposed to, and partly because the idea of it sounds exhausting to me (though i guess that doesn't seem like too big a price). I'll try to get on that.

 

While this thread is here I might as well ask some other things for the future:

I'm basically just now finishing the personality stage (i've been doing sentience and "presence" imposition on the side), so I guess now I'm ready to move onto full sentience, and I suppose then I'll work on her voice, and then all the other sense visualizations, and then full imposition. Is narrating/talking the only thing I need to be doing for sentience?

 

Also, how will I know when to move onto voice work and auditory hallucinating? I've read conflicting ideas for when a tulpa is considered fully sentient. In guides like Methos's, for example: "You will literally hear the voice from outside of your head and your tulpa may or may not say something completely unexpected." That sounds like a legitimate audio hallucination right from the get-go. But then there are others saying that they're sentient pretty much from the start and you just need to work on being able to hear them. Since I'm assuming it's largely up to the tulpamancer which is correct, and I'm following the second option, there isn't really as much of an obvious indication as to when I'll be ready to move on. How much further down the line are you talking about until I can work on the hallucinatory voice?

[QB2]

You don't have to do it in any particular order, it's not like parts of your tulpa suddenly become "locked off" if you go do something else. "Steps" are just to keep people from getting confused.

[waffles]

To address a few things:

Yes, narration alone is enough for sentience. Certainly it will be where you are, having done personality and all.

 

As far as I know, most hosts hear their tulpas first in a sort of 'mindvoice' - like the voice you think in, but not you 'speaking'.

 

Truth is, you can move on whenever you want. If your tulpa is talking somehow then that's enough to work on voice, and if you can visualise your tulpa well then that's enough to start imposition - although most don't until after sentience.

 

As for when you actually achieve auditory hallucination, there's no reliable guideline. It's unlikely to come without some work, but keeping an open mind is the best thing for it.

[ThatOneStupidIdiot]

Ok, cool. I'd like to work on voice as soon as I know for sure she's fully sentient. She's a character that I've had for years before I decided to do this, and I've imagined scenes with her in my head for a long time, so I've done enough parroting of her in the past for her voice to already be distinct and clear. So right now I just need to have her talking completely by her own will, and then for her to be able to speak to me as if I'm actually hearing someone in the room. I haven't seen many guides on doing that; most of them just assume that it comes automatically with sentience, which doesn't usually seem to be the case from experiences I've read. I've read about using white noise (i think it was in fede's guide) to start hallucinating the voice, but nothing besides that. Does anyone know of any guides for that? I know what to do for the time being, but after I'm done with narration and before I begin visualization I feel like I'm going to be lost with voice work.

 

Actually, thinking about what QB2 said, I'm not sure if I should really be focusing on only doing these things one at a time. I suppose I should at least do visualizations while narrating whenever I'm able to focus on that kind of thing. I've been imagining her presence in the room whenever I talk to her, but I haven't actually attempted any sort of mental visualizations of her yet.

 

... Ok, one more question, unless I'm forgetting to ask something. I sometimes draw things as a side hobby, and although I'm not amazing, I'm good enough for my mental image of her to basically be in the same style I draw in. Except, I kind of suck at picturing things as being 3-dimensional, and as a result, certain parts of her (mainly her hair) I just plain do not know how to imagine at different angles. It only makes sense in two dimensions, it's like in cartoons when they just flip the character horizontally rather than drawing their hair differently to reflect the new angle. How do I get around that? Do I just modify her hairstyle until it becomes something that doesn't generate spatial paradoxes? Learning how to draw things that make sense at any angle doesn't seem like the kind of skill you need to make a tulpa.

[waffles]

-There are a couple of guides related to that, but as far as I know only Fede's guide has a but about white noise.

 

-Don't worry about that. There are no shortage of people with pseudo-2D tulpas here. Think about your character rotating in their source material; despite being thoroughly 2D, there is a consistent view all around. The truth is that as long as you can visualise your tulpa from any one angle at a time, you're fine for imposition. You don't need to have a 3D tulpa to impose them.