Visualization: Quality vs. confidence

[HumbleGlow]

Whenever someone asks on the IRC about how to improve one's visualization skills, someone posts the obligatory link to JD1215's guide. Indeed, JD1215 does a great job at explaining how to advance the visualization quality. I postulate, though, that there is some other skill that needs to be developed as well, which I call "visualization confidence".

 

My current theory describes four levels of visualization confidence, with varying levels of image stability and autonomy.

 

• On level 0, you cannot stably perceive any imagined object. The image falls apart after a few seconds of focusing on it, and/or you lose your concentration.
  
• Level 1 seems to be where most beginning tulpamancers start. You can imagine things (objects, environments, your tulpa) in whatever level of quality you can manage. But when you lose focus (or leave the wonderland, if you're working with one), the imagined thing vanishes into nothing. So when you want to see it again next time, you need to rebuild it.
  
• On level 2, the existence of imagined things becomes automatic. Most notably, the wonderland continues to be there when you aren't. And when a tulpa changes something in the wonderland, you will be able to see it, because you're using your mind's eye to perceive things, rather than creating them. The major limitation on this level is that you will only perceive things when you focus on them. When you look at an object, you will see the object, but not much of its surroundings. When a ball hits you, but you did not see it coming, you won't notice a thing.
  
• On level 3, perception becomes automatic (as in: happens subconsciously). As with your physical senses, you are aware of everything within your vicinity (or, for sight, field of vision), without having to focus on it. You might also be able to receive sensory input from your physical and wonderland senses in parallel.
  

 

I conjecture that level 3 is required for imposition and switching for most people. Since self-hypnosis worked extremely well for me to get from level 1 to 2, I'll give it another try to see if I can get to level 3 quickly. If that works, this will turn into a guide.

 

Research questions: How do you relate to this scale? Where do you stand at the moment, and have you progressed during tulpaforcing? Also, to test my hypothesis: Do you have imposition or switching?

[Linkzelda]

[*] On level 0, you cannot stably perceive any imagined object. The image falls apart after a few seconds of focusing on it, and/or you lose your concentration.

 

Yeah, this is what happens initially when people get the idea that they have to consciously create these sensations and visualizations by themselves. They try to override their unconscious' imagination with their conscious imagination (which is limited to only a few bits of awareness)

 

[*] Level 1 seems to be where most beginning tulpamancers start. You can imagine things (objects, environments, your tulpa) in whatever level of quality you can manage. But when you lose focus (or leave the wonderland, if you're working with one), the imagined thing vanishes into nothing. So when you want to see it again next time, you need to rebuild it.

 

Yeah, because like with my response to level 0, they made conditioned responses to where they have to learn at an conscious level rather than mixing it with unconscious learning so that they don't have to steadily rebuild the scenario.

 

 

[*] On level 2, the existence of imagined things becomes automatic. Most notably, the wonderland continues to be there when you aren't. And when a tulpa changes something in the wonderland, you will be able to see it, because you're using your mind's eye to perceive things, rather than creating them. The major limitation on this level is that you will only perceive things when you focus on them. When you look at an object, you will see the object, but not much of its surroundings. When a ball hits you, but you did not see it coming, you won't notice a thing.

 

Yeah, and because we're so limited to other options consciously, we are at loss for what to do now.

 

[*] On level 3, perception becomes automatic (as in: happens subconsciously). As with your physical senses, you are aware of everything within your vicinity (or, for sight, field of vision), without having to focus on it. You might also be able to receive sensory input from your physical and wonderland senses in parallel.

 

Although that seems plausible, it's not really about being aware of everything within your vicinity, since even with us being able to expand our awareness a bit more, we can't really have absolute awareness of everything, just a good awareness of the majority of things.

 

Think of it this way, our conscious is like us holding a torch in a large dark cave. We're limited based on what we can see and focus on, and the radius of the light the torch gives off makes us at loss of how to expand our awareness more.

 

But when we're adding tulpa into the equation, they become another torch, in fact, a larger torch than we are consciously, because they have easier access to the unconscious than we do. And presumably, the more tulpa we have to delegate with expanding our awareness of things and reality, the smaller the gap our limited perception of just us with our conscious is. Simply because tulpa adds more torches so we can see more of what's inside the large cave, or the unconscious.

 

I conjecture that level 3 is required for imposition and switching for most people. Since self-hypnosis worked extremely well for me to get from level 1 to 2, I'll give it another try to see if I can get to level 3 quickly. If that works, this will turn into a guide.

 

I encourage that you make a guide with this, seeing how self-hypnosis is really a gateway, or one of many routes to get the same result. But even with that, we do all tend to get ourselves into trances when we find our own ways to trigger a condition to where it eventually becomes ingrained into the unconscious (or sub-c if you want) that it becomes natural.

 

Research questions: How do you relate to this scale? Where do you stand at the moment, and have you progressed during tulpaforcing? Also, to test my hypothesis: Do you have imposition or switching?

 

I've used hypnosis to get a better grip on proxying for my tulpa, seeing how I can tell their language much better than I did months ago. I feel that because the rudiments behind hypnosis, where we have higher inward concentration to accomplish our goals, all guides for tulpaforcing are ways for people to conceptualize on one or few things (metaphors, symbolism, analogies, etc.) where they start making triggers that eventually become the work of the unconscious and/or subconscious, which is actually what hypnosis really is (and much more).

 

So either way, even if you do make a guide (which I still encourage you to make and wish you the best in making), it'll just be another way for people to view things and make triggers that eventually become conditioned and ingrained so it becomes more natural.

 

Whether it's JD1215's visualization that's more on quality, the concepts behind his guide is just one of many routes people can take developing unconscious learning to make unconscious triggers so that it's easier for the conscious. The triggers have to be practiced at first to get them eased into the unconscious. So while we feel we're not getting anywhere consciously, there may be those moments where the next day, things just come to us just like that.

 

And that's because the unconscious finds a way to make things work while the conscious (us), thought we were doing something wrong all the time.

But again if I try to falsify that, seeing how having faith and confidence sustains our tulpa's sentience and sapience, if the person lacks faith, they can try to tulpaforce, but because they don't shift themselves into the unconscious triggers that helps them focus more and have more success, they'll ultimately fail.

 

Hypnosis can be seen as entering a room (a state of being or mentality), you have confidence that the moment you enter this state, there will be tendencies for one to have a certain result. Kind of like how sports athletes generally do better when they go through their ritual of getting themselves into the mental state to win and only win.

[Guest]

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