Benny and Happy Tune's Walls of Text (8/15/13 2:03 AM)

[Benny]

Yep, I'm another ponyfag. What? They're cute! If that offends you, for whatever reason, just move on, please.

 

I'ma use this moreso as a journal of sorts to help organize my thoughts and to chronicle the process than to really share my thoughts with you guys, but any comments or suggestions or anything won't be ignored or anything. Really! It won't! I've got this thing sent on email notices and everything.

 

Change Log

 

- 8/2/13 1:50 PM -

Reformatted all the entries to their own individual posts.

 

8/1/13 1:27 AM

A lot of these will probably be timestamped this late.

 

This'll probably be the longest entry, because I've gotta cover everything that's happened from Sunday night (6/28/13) up until now, as well as introduce you, per se, to my tulpa, Happy Tune.

 

Okay, so, I frequent the MLPlounge subreddit, which from what I've heard has had some bad blood between the tulpa community, but I don't know anything about it. It was before my time, though I still vaguely remember some off-handed, derogatory comments about tulpas. Whatever. Anyway, those comments led me to investigate whatever the hell a tulpa was, which brought me immediately to here. After a little browsing, I joined the chat room and things really escalated quickly from there. I mean, things really got outta hand.

 

I told myself I'd wait until Wednesday night to start, to make sure I didn't rush headlong into things. Well, Tuesday is kinda like Wednesday, isn't it? So, yeah, I started Tuesday which makes this less than two hours into Day 3. Hashtag shrug.

 

Tuesday I decided I would try and force for the first time. Nothing super heavy or anything, just some introductory narration while I burned trash. I figured that burning trash was always relaxing when I did it before, so it seemed like the perfect couple of hours. Notsomuch, because apparently when you're outside and you're trying to "be quiet" and "mind your own business" and "focus" you become the goddamn Queen Bee. Seriously, they're freaking everywhere out there! But I digress.

 

In the end I spent a couple of hours narrating in between swinging my hat at pesky insects (two of which were my dogs). I talked about how I was basing her off of a super obscure fictional character (I'll talk about that later) because that character is just popular enough to have some fan art, but so ancillary in nature that there's little to no personality to speak of, so that there's basically nothing for Happy Tune the tulpa to have an identity crisis over. Regardless, I've still probably had that talk with her a dozen times over by now. It's important. Also, I talked about my pets. I basically had enough time to go over all the dogs and cats I've had in my childhood, and whatnot. All in all I probably had about an hour to an hour and half of narration. Pretty "meh" for the first time.

 

Later Tuesday night, despite being a little bummed out about getting so distracted earlier, I decided to try and force again. I was pretty in the zone. Anyway, I talked about the piece of fan fiction that her base character was from (and doing so led to me going over "the talk" like five more times), and then some other stories I'd read that I liked. After that I decided to build a wonderland, or a mindscape, or whatever you wanna call it. I modeled it after my aunt and uncle's house which I house sitted during their honeymoon when I was sixteen. I'm not one for mental escapism or a happy place or anything (that's what video games are for), but if I had a happy place this would be it, because it was the first time I was away from my family by myself for an extended period of time. It was glorious. But I digress again.

 

I didn't and don't plan to count hours or anything, but the sun was up when I started, and down when I finished, so I figure that's a step in the right direction.

 

Then a few hours (re: many hours) later I forced a bit more before bed. This time I focused on visualization in the wonderland, which is pretty easy in part because of how familiar the wonderland is but mostly because of the fanart I mentioned earlier. I'm not sure if this is how most of you guys did it (at least, I've never spoken in chat to someone who's said so), but I imagined her skeletal structure, then organs, then muscles, then skin, fur, eyes hair and tail. I like to think it actually did help with visualization. When I imagine her moving it seems a lot more gritty and realistic than cartoony. Like there are actual bones and muscles at work, go figure.

 

In the wonderland, I imagined carrying her up the stairs towards the back yard where I had an obstacle course of sorts set up to help visualize her doing different movements and such. I had planned on just picking her up by the barrel (I spend too much time in pony subs 'n' stuff; I know what a barrel is) and carrying her over my shoulder like a log, but then all of a sudden I found her jumping in my arms and having me hold her like I've held my cat for years. Now, everything up until than had to be explicitly imagined by me, down to the last detail of her movement, and there was almost, like, a slight delay. If that makes sense. But I didn't do that for this jump. Instead it just kind of happened in a split second with no prior thought.

 

I just kind of shrugged it off and moved on, until we were halfway up the stairs and she nuzzle my cheek. Again, without any of the explicit imagining, no delay, no forethought. It just kind of happened, out of the blue, and then it was gone. I shrugged it off again, and we went out into the yard. But then I got tired, so I just called down a bed (I call shit down from the sky in my wonderland, it's awesome) and we just lay down. Then I "left" the wonderland and went to sleep.

 

On Wednesday I approached forcing the way I was raised.

 

I procrastinated the shit out of it. I didn't get around to it until late in the day, and when I did, the house was loud and noisy and distracting, and the forcing session wasn't terribly productive. I asked some yes or know questions and tried to quiet myself and listen without stifling thoughts that might be hers (a la Kiahdaj's and Pruria's guides). Couldn't really detect anything for a while, but eventually, after asking a question, I could feel vague, non-specific feelings which I'd *like* to think were emotional responses. But it feels too early. But they tell me not to disregard anything. It makes my head hurt.

 

Looking back, I think it may have been some kind of weird anticipation. I dunno.

 

Then later, during my next forcing session, when the house was quieter, I would do the same thing. Instead of the vague, non-specific feelings that may or may not have been weird anticipation, I would finish my question ("Do you mind your form being based of a preexisting character? Do you like having brown, shaggy hair? Do you care about being a pony?") and then immediately get a really quick "yep", or "eh". It felt like parroting, but they yelled at me in the chat when I told them that. Not really, but they did tell me (again) not to disregard anything.

 

Okay, so here's the part where I tell you about where I got the form for my tulpa, and the non-bronies and bronies alike judge me for it. I just hope I've seemed normal enough so far that it's not *too* bad. Here goes... "HappyTune"isanancillarycharacterinalesserknowngrimdark/clopfic.

There. I said it. And I have mixed feelings about it. I'll defend that grimdark/clopfic till the end though. It almost made me cry, it was that good. To this day I'm not a hundred percent sure what seemed so ideal about Happy Tune's character, anyway. That might take a level of self reflection and discovery I'm not sure I'm comfortable with.

 

Anyways, like I've said, I've gone over it at least a dozen times with Happy Tune the tulpa that Happy Tune the character is no role model and that there's not really enough personality in a background character to get into an identity crisis over, anyway.

[Bin]

I'm pretty curious about that clopfic

 

Don't worry bro, we're pretty chill here, no need to feel judged.

[Benny]

I'm pretty curious about that clopfic

 

Don't worry bro, we're pretty chill here, no need to feel judged.

 

You sure? It was pretty heavy.

[Bin]

pass it here brp

bro

[Benny]

pass it here brp

bro

 

http://www.fimfiction.net/story/35866/raritys-garden

 

You asked for it. That's the first one in the series.

[Progressive Rock Otaku]

Yep, I'm another ponyfag.

 

*BROHOOF*

[Benny]

8/1/13 6:22 AM

 

Just read Phi's copypasted contribution to the "May The Force Be With You (GUIDE)" maybe twenty minutes ago, and spent that time retroactively doing the greeting stage. I was kind of rushed it and I was, if this is the right word, forceful about it. I didn't really stop and listen while I was doing it, I just kind of went about it like I was reading a script. Not sure that was the best way to go about it, and I'm not sure that doing the greeting stage after a few hours of forcing that skipped the greeting stage will change anything. But I don't suppose it hurt anything, I guess.

---

8/1/13 6:42 AM

 

I've decided that I haven't been spending enough time visualizing. Sure, I *think* it should be easier because I have a couple of pictures for reference, but I'm both having doubts about the validity of that and I feel like I haven't been visualizing enough even if the pictures do make it easier. So, I'm going to devote all the active forcing I get done today to visualizing.

---

8/1/13 4:52 PM

 

Argh, for fuck's sake. I give up trying to active force during the day, there's just too many loud and inconsiderate people in the house. Seriously, the TV does not need to be that loud. Ugh. I sat down in the basement an hour and half ago and I've only been able to get maybe forty five minutes or an hour of good, solid visualization practice.

 

Not too much progress in that regard, either. I followed Rasznir's canvas method for awhile, but could only get up to the teens before getting distracted by an intrusive thought, missing a breath and then seeing the canvas blur out of focus. However, when I was in the zone and visualizing the canvas pretty well, around the tenth page or so, my visualization was great. I could see the number clearly, and there was a breeze (for some reason) that caused the numbered page and the used pages that were flipped up to the back of the canvas to ripple. It was cool.

 

After a while of that I decided to use Rasznir's other canvas guide and visualize Happy Tune writing the numbers and flipping up the page. I didn't get all the way into the teens with this method, because before I could even get to ten, I imagined Happy Tune turning her head back at me with a goofy smile and completely lost my focus. She's trolling me. >.>

---

8/1/13 9:21 PM

 

This is, what, the fourth update in the same day? The first day I started the progress report? Granted the first one was at, like, 1 AM, but still.

 

Anyways, so I've applied King of Vandenreich's Prism a couple of times today. I did it once or twice earlier, and again a few minutes ago.

 

Earlier, I went into the wonderland with Happy Tune, and I put the prism on her nose, then balanced the feather and started puppeting it like a teeter-totter, as per protocol. At first, her eyes were looking up at the feather, the way you do when someone sticks a prism on your nose, but then they looked down at mine and we made eye contact for a second before she looked back up at the feather, all while I was focusing on moving the feather. I disregarded it as me somehow subconsciously puppeting whilst consciously puppeting the feather because I'm stubborn and it still feels too goddamn early.

 

Then maybe fifteen minutes ago, I was in the IRC chat and it was fairly dead so I decided to apply the prism again. I went through the steps, prism, feather, teeter-totter, and then she did the same thing again, looking at me and then back up at the feather. Instead of just shrugging it off again as has become my habit, I kept moving the feather and asked "If that was you, do something different?" She responded by wiggling her ears.

 

It was exhilarating, to say the least. On the other hand, I still feel that this is way too much progress for way too little time spent forcing. On the OTHER hand, I'm worried... well, actually I'm pretty sure my doubt is being disappointing to Happy Tune.

 

So, I gotta ask, once and for all, now that you have all the prior information from below. Is my progress too quick to believe?

---

8/1/13 11:22 PM

 

Well, that was certainly awesome. I spent the last hour in a forcing session with Happy Tune, which was only interrupted by one intrusive thought(!).

 

Anyways so I think what caused the almost total lack of intrusive thought was the preforcing habit I've picked up the last couple of days. Some people do breathing exercises, some people have a mantra, etc. Personally, I just go straight into narrating for a few minutes before hand. Narrating in my mindvoice always sounds awkward to me at first, the same way talking out loud does, but after a few minutes the awkwardness slips away and I get some quality forcing in, whether I'm visualizing or just narrating or whatever. So I get put "in the zone" by repeating the greeting stage ("Hi, Happy Tune, I'm Ben. On the internet, people call me Benny. You can call me whatever you want. What we're gonna be doing is...") and then repeating "the talk". I'm pretty sure by now she is painfully aware that I don't want her to think she has anything to live up to, but you can never be too sure. Mildly interesting side note: instead of saying "you're based off of a character", I've taken to saying "I'm stealing this character's name and form and giving it to you". I feel like that more appropriately fits what's actually happening.

 

So, in this forcing session, I went "there". I narrated about my family. Ugh. I'm extremely passive towards my family. There's really no emotional bond between me and any of my family members except maybe my dad and my sister, and I'm fiercely independent whereas my siblings have been the opposite. It's a bit of a touchy issue for me, but I shared the emotions with Happy Tune, and that's when the intrusive thought struck, and it jogged me out of the forcing session with the intent to immediately relate here what had just happened.

 

This intrusive thought was both immensely positive and a bit a nuisance.

It was a bit of a nuisance like all intrusive thoughts, but the subject of it was awesome. I'm going to a movie tomorrow with my older sister and my dad, the two family members I'm not completely passive towards. By extension, me and Happy Tune are going to a movie tomorrow, which is awesome! Sure, I've had the opportunity to watch movies and shows and stuff with her this whole time, but a) I frequently forget to passively narrate throughout the day, it's a lot harder than I thought it would be to remember, and b) I think there's something just innately more powerful and interesting about going to a movie than just watching one at home.

 

Alright, so here's the kicker. This intrusive thought took place over the course of, like four or five minutes, and the whole time I was just completely ecstatic. I really think it's gonna be awesome to go to a movie with Happy Tune.

 

But then it hit me. The whole time I had been freaking out about it, the muscle in my left thigh had been twitching. Now, I've gotten muscle spasms like before, but it's always been in my cheek or my bicep. I have never had a muscle spasm there before.

 

I'm certain it was her. And that's amazing.

[Benny]

8/3/13 12:37 AM

 

So, I saw The Conjuring with Happy Tune a few hours ago. It proved a lot more difficult to focus on her sitting in my lap, especially during the suspenseful parts of the film, than I thought it was going to. I was constantly having to remind myself, but I did get to spend some quality time with her which is always good.

 

Also, I read up on some sentience guide that I can't remember off the top of my head that explained what I experienced during my application of King of Vandenreich's Prism.

 

It was suggested, and I agree with it and believe it happened to us, that your tulpas first movements are, for most part, drawn from your subconscious thoughts. This would explain why it so often feels like puppeting, and what not. It would also explain my doubt (argh. I'm not supposed to be doubting. It's bad, Benny, bad!) when she looked at me and then back at the feather, and wiggled her ears. Well, my doubt is mostly gone now. It's at the same level as all my doubt, about pretty much everything. I believe it's real, I've seen evidence it's real, I know that it's real. But there's always something in the back of my mind that always asks, without fail, "What if you're wrong?" Ugh, I hate the back my mind.

[Benny]

8/3/13 9:41 PM

 

It has occurred to me, through a revelation in the IRC, that the amount of sleep I have been getting since shortly before starting tulpamancing (>5hours per night) is not exactly what you might call conducive. In fact, it may be detrimental.

 

So, I'm going to perform a little experiment of sorts, the easiest experiment I could ever imagine. Sleeping more. I'll use the previous entries in this log as a reference for what my progress has been like under the old sleeping habits, and everything from now on as a reference for how progress may be effected by the new habits.

[Benny]

8/8/13 4:03 AM

 

Long time, no post, but whatever. YOLO. (I'm a bad person for that, and I feel bad.)

 

I've honestly been considering deleteing this progress report because I don't know who, if anyone, is actually reading it and I don't know that I want to keep adding to it as some kind of remotely public diary, but, as of now, I've decided to keep going because, I dunno, I guess that's just how the winds blowing in my mind today.

 

We've made what I consider to be a significant amount of progress since my last update. Muscle twitches during active forcing and even, though to a much lesser extent, during particular focused and productive passive forcing sessions. However, unfortunately, she doesn't seem to be in control of the twitches, either, or I'm just not "listening" correctly. For example, I tried to set up a yes/no system where twitches on the left of my body meant "yes" and vice versa. When I would ask a yes or no question and pause to wait for an answer, I wouldn't get anything, even if the twitches had been going pretty much constantly for the rest of the forcing session.

 

Another noteworthy thing is that she edited the wonderland on her own for the first time, and it's kind of a biggun'. The stairs on the left of what used to be the top of the stairwell now go up, and the stairs on the right still go down. The new ones lead to a new, purplish bedroom with three dressers, a bed, a closet, and a wardrobe from "The Conjuring". She's sentimental, I guess. Also, on one of the dressers is the soda cup and popcorn I forced her during the movie. I wondered what happened to those, and now I know. And, finally, also an orange lava lamp. I have no idea either.

 

Now we get to the big update that was really the reason I actually took the time to sit down and write this out. The tulpa creation process has caused me to thoroughly and objectively analyze a part of my life, and what I discovered is not very pretty. It might get pretty NSFW from here on in, so be warned. Also, it's immensely personal and it's taking a lot out of me to actually share it with anyone, but I've seen people talking about self-harm problems and depression and other similarly heavy stuff, so I hope this is accepted as a problem worth sharing. Here goes...

 

I think I'm addicted to masturbation. Actually, I'm fairly sure I'm addicted. What I thought was just a hobby that everyone partook in from time to time has at some point mutated into something that I don't like at all. I realized this when it started to "get in the way". It caused me to procrastinate forcing, and I would always, always, feel guilty after the deed. I would sit down to some not remotely objectively praiseworthy stimulation, and go at it for awhile to a no longer particular pleasurable or enjoyable conclusion, and then feel guilty about it afterward. It's somewhere between an extremely common and hard to resist temptation and a really, really bad habit.

 

Well, I'm going to get help for it now, at least as much so as I can get from the internet (I'm not sharing it with anyone IRL. They don't need to know, and no one I share it with could or would give me any worthwhile support). I've considered it recently, and even lightly and curiously looked into it a bit, but never with any serious intention to go through with it. But I am now, and I know I am because I'm writing it down, I'm showing it to other people and now I'm vent/rambling. :/

 

TL;DR Tulpa creation made me realize I have a fairly debilitating addiction that I'm now seriously going to seek help for. A little over a week in, and she's already starting to change my life for the better.

 

Argh, can I stop talking about my feelings now? I feel... dirty. Blech.

 

(EDIT: If you know me from IRC, and are interested in talking to me about it ("why would they be?" asks the cynical part of my brain that is constantly reminding me I have no emotions or vulnerability and that no one cares), feel free to PM me or something. Objectively, it would probably do me more good than writing in a diary and having you read it.

 

Argh, again. I just opened up... twice. Guchh.