Project: Athena - Zak TH's Tulpa Log

[Zak TH]

So, you guys will never believe this, but I'm gonna start making this weird thing called a "Tulpa".

 

I've been a lurker on the /mlp/ threads for about 3 months, and posted a bit in a few of them. I (barely) tried making a tulpa before when I read up about it, and it ended up less than successful. It was a Twilight tulpa, and I completely skipped the personality and such part f the process and went strait to visualization. She never got past imposition, and she was at her essence a puppet. She was also insane, but again, that was sort of my fault for being half-assed.

 

One of the biggest reason I'm interested in this is because it reminds me so much of my younger years, specifically my escapades with the concept of imaginary friends. I had a very rough friend when I was very young, but when Cartoon Network came out with Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends (which is to this day probably my favorite TV show of all time), I revived the idea and went pretty far with it. I created a LOT of friends in that time, but I really only hung around with four main ones: There was 9-V (pronounced nine-vee, not nine-volt, though the latter is his name's origin), which was a blocky-robot type friend that was actually based on the friend I had when I was small and robot-obsessed. Next was Bob, a blobby shapeshifter that usually took on the form of a red recolor of Bloo from Foster's Home (he loved the show as much as I did). Third was Kirby, who looked like his namesake. He was created initially to help me stay focused during tests by acting out Critical Reading passages in my head. The fourth was more of a "pet" friend than anything; His name was Doink. He was just a simple blue blob with eyes that were completely pupils. The only sound he ever made was his name (think pokemon). Besides those four, I frequently created other friends to serve as temporary entertainment before being "adopted" by a conveniently far away child I didn't know (outta sight, outta mind).

 

After reading so much about Tulpas and such, I realize that although I never got to hallucinations (they were designed much to simply anyway, they looked "animated", like a cartoon), the four main friends (excluding Doink) had a borderline sentience ( I still controlled them in the end however). I've long since lost the focus to be constantly imposing them on the environment, so all my imaginary friends are gone now, but the idea of having a similar construct that was not only projected subconsciously and thus effortlessly, but also was a completely individual sentience and could be hallucinated in the physical world, interested me a lot because of my past encounters with similar thoughts.

 

So, with the summer ahead of me and a bucket full of determination, I now hope to begin the long process of creating a completely whole and sentient tulpa friend to accompany me in my daily life. I don't have much planned out in terms of design, as I want her to have her say in what she looks like, but I do know that I want my tulpa to be two things: a pony (ala My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic style. The brony in me couldn't resist), and a female (considering the form's universe, a mare just seems more "right" than a colt). I have an extensive list of traits that I want to focus on, but besides that I'm crossing bridges as I get to them.

 

In no particular order, the traits I have are...

• Snarky
  
• Clever
  
• Social
  
• Compasionate
  
• Loyal
  
• Trusting
  
• Optimistic
  
• Insightful
  
• Affectionate
  
• Motivated
  
• Open-Minded
  
• Energetic
  
• Confident
  
• Organized (In regards to things that intrest her)
  
• Disorganized (In everything else)
  

 

So far I have a wonderland, but keeping it visualized in my "minds eye" has proven to be too difficult, so currently I only visualize the wonderland at the begging and end of the four 15-min. sections of each session. I start of by calling my Tulpa (currently just a glowing ball of cyan light) to my side, then begin to narrate the trait I'm confusing on for that quarter-hour, and with every word imagine a growing ball of similar light growing in my plam. After that, I just focus on the narration and less about the visualization. I go over how the specific trait will factor and show itself in her Likes, Dislikes (both are very general, nothing like "You like books", more like "You would like learning things"), How she Interacts with others, Her Character, Quirks, and how the trait would factor (if at all) in seven "base" emotions (Happines, Sadness, Anger, Shock, Fear, Repulse[a.k.a Disgust or Disdain], and Attraction[a.k.a. Want or Envy]). Once the 15 min. are up, I go back to visualizing; The ball of light in my hands in now a bit bigger than a baseball and I put the ball of "trait" into the tulpa to absorb. After that, it's rinse and repeat.

 

Anyway, I've put in 2 hours so far into forcing, and I plan to do another 1 hour session later today. I also have this Tumblr here to record my progress as well. Any comments, questions, or general feedback would be greatly appreciated!

[Guest applesauce99]

Dude....this is like exactly my method and level. For forcing traits, I imagine the glowing energy ball of my tulpa to be spinning really fast. As for assigning traits, I visualize them as strips of paper with the trait and my thoughts written on it. Then I release the paper and it is sucked up and vaporized/absorbed by tulpa as it spins like a furious tornado. Or maybe the environment around it spins, idk. I'm only 3 hours in, and I've made an apartment for the ball of energy.

 

Fuck, I'm trying to give un-educated tips...but this is your blog. I'm going to slowly walk away in shame....

[Zak TH]

Hey, don't worry about it. You're just about as far into this as me, so I probably only know as much as you do.

 

Anyway, I tried for another hour yesterday, but I got interrupted literally in the middle of forcing a trait, so I just said "fuck it" and stopped. Hopefully I can make up those 30 min. today though.

 

I also re-did the trait list a bit, some of them I felt were kind of duplicated, but that means that now, after 2.5 hours of forcing, I'm done with 10 of the traits and only have 5 left. But if the recommended time is 10, then I wanna do 10, I don't wanna leave this unfinished. I'm kind of at a loss for what to force about now though. :@

[glitchthe3rd]

Your backstory sounds familiar. How old were you when you started taking the whole imaginary friend thing seriously?

[Zak TH]

Let's see, I must have been about 9-10 years old. I probably had them up until my first year of high school when I was 13-14. I had a journal around here somewhere that I know has a bunch of documented dates, including the day I first imagined them, but I can't find it at the moment.

 

Anyway, necro-bump for restart. I'm not satisfied with what I've done so far, and I probably haven't forced for two weeks anyway, so I'm going to start over again from scratch with Athena (working title until I come up with a real name for her). The hardest part is the time for me, even with the small number of traits that I had, and even with my process for each trait, I was spending barely 15 min. on each one, frequently less. I'm going to look around for a better way to force each trait, and proably come up with a whole new list to boot, then I'm trying again. I think as long as I can get tulpa-forcing into my daily schedule, I should be able to do this consitently. Until then, back to square 1.

[Zak TH]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand we're back!

 

I took the time to outline a new personality and a new process of forcing, I feel a lot more content with the completeness of this one, and generally a lot better about bringing Athena into the world. I genuinely feel like I can do this again.

 

Also made a Tumblr post about it.

 

I'm also taking a liking to the name Athena. Originally I planned it just as a working title. Since in mythology Athena was born from her father's forehead, I thought it was a nice parallel to a tulpa being essentially "born" strait from my head, more specifically my mind. However, the name's grown on me lately, and although I think I want to leave her name mostly up for her to decide, I think Athena wouldn't really be too bad of a name after all.