Tulpa Time with velvetaboveground

[velvetaboveground]

About a month ago I cautiously began the process of tulpa formation. I seem to be really rusty when it comes to focusing on visualization, so I am going into this with the expectation that it may take a very long time, assuming it works at all. I have a background in psychology and I think that from a psychological and scientific perspective there is no reason that this can't be possible, even excluding any metaphysical intervention.

 

So why make a tulpa? I'm generally pretty content with my life; I have good friends and a great relationship, so loneliness is not the answer. The things I struggle with tend to be focus, consistent drive, and consistent organization (I can get organized, I just have trouble staying organized). I'm hoping to make a tulpa who excels at these things. I am also prone to depression and anxiety; the last few months have been the first consistent period for 8 years during which I am not diagnosed with depression. I want a tulpa who is calmer and less neurotic than myself to provide a level of inner emotional stability. Lastly, I do pottery and write fiction and nonfiction. Instilling my tulpa with observational and artistic qualities would be valuable to these pursuits.

 

Where will I tulpa force? I have created a small wonderland space in my head which represents a segment of beach typical of the northwestern coast of the United States (lots of rocky cliffs, violent surf, grey clouds, etc). There is a large cliff face to our backs all along the beach in order to simplify envisioning the area - if it gets too big I get too overwhelmed and can't hold it all in my head. There is a small campfire on the beach and a door in the cliff wall that will eventually lead into our first home and provide a route out of that part of the wonderland. There is a river that drains into the ocean, and in this river I can retrieve handfuls of clay which I intend to use as a symbolic process in forming their body; as I said, I'm a hobby potter so this metaphor works well for me.

 

What will I tulpa force? His/Her name is Baron for now. Because gender fluidity is important in my life, even though I identify as female, I will probably keep Baron's gender ambiguous in my head even if I start to prefer one pronoun over the other when I'm writing it down for simplification. This will obviously change if she/he starts to prefer one gender over another. Visually I'm sort of picturing Noodle from Gorillaz but I feel like a simpler, non-humanoid form might be easier to visualize. I haven't decided yet.

 

How will I tulpa force? As I said, I have already began this process. I figure personality will come first, until I feel that I have sufficiently established in my mind the characteristics of Baron. As I said, I have a psychology background so I'm using several official personality inventories. After personality I will focus on physical form and start taking them places in the wonderland and inventing stories for us, even if I do not fee that they are fully sentient; life is about experience after all. I've read enough to decide that I'm not really afraid of parroting. If that's what I have to do for a while so be it.

 

So far... I am currently picturing Baron as a big ball of light hovering in place over the campfire, I am not trying to give them form yet. I try to narrate whenever possible; I explain what things are and what I believe about them when I feel the need to. When I force (which I have only done a few times), I have been sitting down or standing next to the campfire and telling Baron what sort of personality characteristics I want them to have. I did have one weird experience which really had nothing to do with Baron. I felt like we should go inside because it was going to start to rain... force of habit, it always rains here. I also wanted to start working on our wonderland house. So I loaded up the big ball of light onto a wheelbarrow (I feel silly saying this for some reason, it wasn't necessary of course as it's all in my head but I did) and opened the little round hobbit door in the cliff face. I was intending for our first house space to be a cozy one room hobbit-like hole, easy to visualize. I walk into the room, and sure enough there's a small fire, a rocking chair, and a simple little stove in the dirt floor room, and for some reason two other doors. Suddenly got all of these weird visuals of distorted gnome-like faces coming out from the darker corners of the room. I tried to banish them but didn't feel like I could. I wasn't really afraid but I was a little freaked out so I went back outside, thinking 'I'll deal with this later'. And that was it. It is worth noting that I think I was half-asleep by this point. Inevitably forcing puts me to sleep or almost to sleep. I must also note that I detected no reaction whatsoever from the light in the wheelbarrow that is Baron, which suggests to me that there isn't any sentience at this time.

 

That's it for now, I will try to update soon.

 

- Velvet

[Gabriel]

I like the way you started tulpaforcing. Your motivations are sure valid enough.

You're very good with words, too, which makes me want to devour this progress report, as in I can't wait to see what's coming next.

Your skeptic/cautious approach to this is also very much appealing, and I'm sure that when you overcome this it will just help encourage others to start.

I specially liked the bit where you said you won't mind if you're ever going to parrot. This is one of my greatest afflictions when I tulpaforce, and reading that just felt great.

Thank you for this, I'm looking forward to see what's going to happen. I hope Baron turns out to be an excellent companion. :)

 

-R.

[velvetaboveground]

Wow, thank you for the encouragement. It's really motivating to know that somebody is actually reading this; hypothetically writing it for myself should be enough, of course, but people don't really work like that!

 

With regards to parroting I figure it's all a function of time, which we all have plenty of. If the guides can be believed, it's just us and our tulpas in our heads. My brain is capable of determining the most tiny nuances of inflection in human speech and posturing. There's no reason that I can think of that I wouldn't eventually also be able to determine when it is myself versus my tulpa speaking to me. So I might as well start out with parroting (if it feels right at the time, I'm playing all of this by ear), it seems like a natural transition to normal human-tulpa interaction.

[velvetaboveground]

WARNING: CONTAINS POTENTIALLY DISPARAGING COMMENTS ABOUT OTHER TULPAMANCERS. I am only writing them here because this is my private reflection space and I need that space to work through doubts. If you're going to be offended, please don't bother continuing. I am putting this here because I don't want to instill doubts in others or derail any threads. If you want to respond, I would love that. Just don't freak out or take things personally.

 

Not a lot of time lately for forcing due to external factors, I knew this going into it though and will be able to seriously start next week. I've been using the time to figure out what kinds of things I want, what techniques I believe will work for me, reading guides, etc.

 

One recurring thought that keeps coming up for me is belief. I see a lot of good advice here. I also see a lot of stuff that honestly undermines my confidence in the whole tulpa thing. This is problematic because I am quite sure that belief in the possibility of developing a tulpa is key.

 

From a psychological standpoint, I think tulpas are completely possible if you consider it to be walling off an aspect of your personality and developing traits that give it an existence separate from your own. If I didn't think this was possible, I wouldn't be attempting it. The problem is that I see a lot of things that look like bullshit. For instance, there's a post on here (I won't say who or where) that references forcing specific drugs for their tulpa to try without actually doing the drugs themselves. This is, frankly, retarded. Drugs physiologically affect serotonin reuptake and other biological functions, there are scientific reasons for why they make us feel the way they do. If you somehow convey the effects of cannabis while you are high to your tulpa so that they can also experience it, good for you. That seems totally plausible. But forcing imaginary drugs is just silly. It makes no sense. Honestly it doesn't make sense from a psychological standpoint for your tulpa to experience anything that you physically can't/haven't; for instance, if you have never tasted an avocado it is totally illogical for your tulpa to know what an avocado tastes like, because they are in YOUR MIND. I see so much of that in posts on here and on reddit... claims that tulpa have read books that the host never read, have been places that the host has never been... there is so much of this that it makes me lose confidence in the entire concept.

 

Maybe it's really bad that I'm having doubts so early on. But I'm no good at faith. I tried the religion thing and it didn't take. I guess the best thing to do would be to assume that people like that are just roleplaying and to disregard those kinds of posts entirely, but they still bother me immensely.

 

- Velvet

[bersinger]

(I won't say who or where)

Stopped reading there.

If you see some individual being stupid and won't even elaborate so you can make it a generalized spergout about "ROLEPLAYERS AND COMMUNITY", you don't seem like you're going to stand this place very long, dear aspiring activist. Don't skip the most important information.

E: OH WAIT, i forgot that's exactly how to fit in here. Good luck.

[velvetaboveground]

I've done my homework and read the threads that set a precedence for how the management deals with role players (they do nothing, deliberately). I'm not exactly sure what the benefit would be to my public calling out of users who have been here far longer than myself my first week on this website, but you certainly seem upset about it so please, tell me more about your feelings.

[bersinger]

I've done my homework and read the threads that set a precedence for how the management deals with role players (they do nothing, deliberately). I'm not exactly sure what the benefit would be to my public calling out of users who have been here far longer than myself my first week on this website, but you certainly seem upset about it so please, tell me more about your feelings.

Pfft, sorry, that was mostly quite a derailing spike at the intra-community politics where every controversial outrage from roleplaying to immorality to sex to badges can be exaggerated beyond their limits because rarely anybody either cares about evidence at all, cares to provide it beyond the cherrypicking limit or conceals the scarcity of it with lots of single "for examples" and "lists that could go on"

 

Anyways, the point i wanted to address is your confidence and faith, which seems to be way too dependant on what other people report doing. This is behaviour more fit of newblood fresh skeptics, not someone who has decided to begin already and judging from your well-worded motivations, has also spent more than 5 minutes thinking about it.

Now, unless you believe the phenomenon to be a conspiracy-level ruse, dubious claims honestly should not waver your own perception of it. That speaks more of your self-esteem than anything else.

 

Next, your example about imaginary drugs/foodstuffs/literature and similar experiences sounds like one that breeds a lot of misunderstandings. Sure, i've encountered a lot of people using imagination to experience sensations and stimuli they have no practical experience or memory of

like sex #rekt

, but honestly really, really few people who have specifically & seriously claimed for it to be "identical" instead of "different" or "something like that" compared to the real deal. Very few due to arrogance and another handful due to an overimaginative retrospect, but that's about it. Are you sure you can't say the same?

Note: No need to actually answer, just something for you to reflect your interpretation on, the difference of what people claim and how you possibly view it.

 

Oh, and that's not the only reason why specific information is important; In your example, the person behind the claims is almost as important as the claims themselves. Even if the bullshit radar is foolproof, misinterpretation firewall is up to date and the logic really breaks the barriers of sanity, those things could be said by persons who don't even attempt to fit in the scientific & psychological standards of this place and have subscribed to.. alternative views, which is kind of an important tidbit of information for knowing how many grains of salt you're gonna need for this ride. Doesn't make it any more believable, but it's a method of recognition between a roleplayer and a simple everyday contrarian windmill-remover who doesn't even attempt to go for subtlety.

 

Last point would concern mindset. If you're subscribing to a pessimistic "le faith in humanity"-view of the communities, your confirmation bias will inevitably leave you with more suspicious or negative experiences & memories with no room for positivity. Keep that in mind if conspiracy theorizing with cynical farts starts looking attractive, it might have something to do with it.

 

..I don't know, at this point i'm just listing reasons that can make roleplaying look rampant that aren't actual roleplaying. They are worth considering if they can cause you actual harmful doubts, although personal experiences, successes and any level of self-confidence will still probably remain the best medicine for that.

[Gabriel]

Well, I do agree with Velvet, it's rather disappointing to read nonsense when we need confidence to keep going.

R.

[Yori]

Thing is, some of the same people who acknowledge that methods that are useful to some people and not to others vary also like to put their Roleplayer binoculars on, so if people are being called RPers because the method doesn't seem "believable," it should just stop. If it's about incredible speed, (could be mental issues) that fits in with other kinds of trolling we get.

---

Basically if there's not blatant case and just 'signs', when they could also be innocent realistically as well, talk of them being official liars or deceivers shouldn't be done. Eventually the community would look similar to ASPD forums, where people talk about who's a fake, especially when a new person comes.

[querist]

People read these journals. Some of us are trying to make sense of all of this (see my intro for additional information), and these journals help.