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Maple

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I feel like I'm not going to be able to get any opportunity to have peace and quiet to actually make progress on anything. There's just literally always some noise or interruption that is bothering me. Everyone else left the house earlier, but I was stuck with my dog who was crying because he does that when one of them leaves the house ALL THE TIME. And there's nothing I can do to make him stop crying. This feels impossible.

 

Finally, something I'm experienced with! I've got a brain disorder that makes me hypersensitive to sound, a hamster who runs on a wheel all night long, as well as a corgi who's penned up on the other side of my (woefully thin) bedroom wall. You've got a few paths you can take here, but have faith: you can reduce the noise level to a useful level, and you can find time without interruptions. These things just require a little ingenuity and trial and error. 

 

1. Some form of noise-reducing device to wear. 

Personally, I own gun muffs that I wear when my sister practices the violin. I can't sleep/lay down comfortably while wearing them, though. You can get a pair online for 12, maybe 20 bucks max. Investing in a good pair of noise-isolating earbuds is a good idea- and don't forget to try the different sizes of the silicon ear-thingy- in my experience, the smaller ones make them fit much tighter and block out more noise. Look for ones that say "noise-isolating" on the package- they tend to run around 12-15 bucks. There are two types of earplugs I've used: soft foam ones, and silicon ones. You can buy them both at any pharmacy or drugstore for like 5 bucks. On the back of the box should be a little key to show you how much noise they will block out. I liked them both, but I found the silicon ones to block sound in a more natural feeling way, and the foam to be more invasive-feeling, but that's probably personal preference. Sleeping with the foam ones, half the time I'd wake up with one out of my ear, but that's never happened with the silicon ones. There are a few more types, too. 

 

2. Drowning out noise with noise.

My least favorite method, actually. I hate white noise in most cases- too sharp. You know what's my favorite? This customizable cat purr generator. That's the ticket. That website also has customizable colored noise and lots of other things, like forest sounds, chanting, etc.  It's really about finding what works for you. On Youtube, you can find ambient noise mixes, calming background music, nature sounds, you name it, it's probably there. I knew someone who, as a young child, slept in the same room as a washer/dryer and therefore found the sound of a drying machine like a lullaby. 

 

3. Sound insulation. 

One major, major thing you can do, though it may not apply, is rearrange furniture. Can your bed be moved to the other side of your room? Can a bookcase be moved against the wall facing where the dog is? Could the dog be moved further from your room? This may not be the case, and that's okay. But something like this can make a major difference in noise levels. If you can't rearrange, you can add. Anything cloth-like on the walls will absorb noise. Consider buying a wall tapestry or, if you're crafty enough, you can make one. The thicker the better. Even a canvas painting will block some noise, though. Or a big potted plant! Or, even put some hooks on the wall, and use them to hang your bookbag or coats. I have my winter coat hanging on my door, and it muffles some of the sound from the kitchen outside. 

 

When you're in bed, you can also bury yourself under your blankets. Or, if your bed is in the corner like mine, hitch a corner of the blanket up to the corner of the room: instant mini fortress, dark and quiet. Or, like Lumi suggested, if the weather's right, you can go outside! When my A/C was broken last summer, I would bring a bottle of tea, my music, and lay on my coat on top of the tornado shelter next to my house. It was cooler and quieter up there. Most parents will not argue with you if you say "I am willingly going to go spend time outside." 

 

4. Distracting the dog. 

If your dog cries when people leave, that may be separation anxiety. However, I have a cat in addition to the dog, and he gets into his barking frenzies because cats are good entertainment, and he also has a strong sense of morality about her. ("Cats should not be on top of chairs- I must bark her off!") In my case, peace and quiet often means getting the cat to fall asleep in my bed, where the dog can't see her. Sometimes, he also just has energy to burn off. Can you take your dog for a run/do trick training/play intensively with him? After a good run around, my dog will bark and berserk for five, ten minutes, and then he'll fall asleep belly-up and I can slink off to meditate in silence. 

 

Something else you may want to try is a frozen peanut butter toy. Goodness, my dog loves frozen peanut butter. It doesn't take much at all- just a smear over one of his KONG toys. They sell those bauble-y looking ones, but there are also KONG toys that look like rubber balls with slits all around them, and ones that look like bones with big pores to trap peanut butter. Once left in the freezer overnight, they take a good half-hour for my dog to lick them clean. He also likes a good stick, which he'll bring in from outdoors and rip to pieces. There are also puzzle feeders and things, but my dog barks if he smells actual kibbles that he can't get. It's all about whatever will distract your dog and get his dog-brain off barking. 

 

5. Schedules.

In general, earlier is better. Later in the day, more and more people are going to be coming into your space, asking for things. At least, that's my experience. You could stay up past when everyone else goes to bed- but you're likely to be tired, by then! The thing to do, though it's not a fun thing to do, is wake up earliest in your house. No one will bother you. Everyone will be asleep. It's the best time slot I've found. There are other benefits to waking up early and meditating, as well. It really puts my day in a better light, than when I sleep in. 

Outside of that, there are other times when people are more likely to bother you. Know those times well, and plan accordingly. When my sister comes home from school, she's bound to come knocking on my door- so I know I have to meditate before that. Around 8:30, I usually walk the dog, but after 9, he tends to fall asleep and everyone in the house is winding down and it's pretty quiet. When is it quietest? What time stretches are you not disturbed? Take advantage of any time when people are out of the house and it's quiet. 

 

If your family is polite enough, you can also kindly tell them, "Do you need anything from me? If not, I'm going to be spending the next 45 minutes on something and I really need quiet." Or just say, "I'm going to go meditate now, I'll start dinner after, give me like an hour." I've had mixed results but generally my family tries to respect my wishes. 

 

Here's to figuring out what works for you. It's not hopeless. It's a puzzle, a system of various elements that you must manipulate in order to produce an environment you can meditate in. Good luck. 

-J

The world is far, the world is wide; the man needs someone by his side. 

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Hi, we're still somewhat alive. So I decided to put off on trying any progress due to the state of my health (both physical and mental) and I went through several hospital stays, just not trying to force like I did before, because I honestly felt like trying to stress over it during my stays before was really hindering my recovery each time. I just got back from ANOTHER, and I feel pretty okay. I can still feel Celedyr and Ruth, but it feels like the rest have kind of faded in a way that I discussed probably a month or two ago on a discord server, in a way that I wasn't sure if I wanted or not. I've been stressed over the fact that my dumb ass tried making 6 tulpas in one year near the start, and that I tried to just hold it up nonstop and started to feel like I should take action to just cut the stress down. But I haven't been sure what to do, because who is active really used to change a lot, but honestly hasn't changed in a long time like it used to, in the intervals that it used to. Celedyr and Ruth have been the most active, and the rest have been basically completely inactive, aside from Angel and Luna. It feels like Vinyl and Kara just don't exist at this point, and that Angel and Luna are at the point just before where Vinyl and Kara were now. I feel shitty about it, but I'm really trying to fix my health and not stress myself over past mistakes. And so many solutions that I'm trying that seem completely reasonable to fix them, are just adding more stress or not working AT ALL for me. Hopefully soon I'll be able to get back into the swing of things with at LEAST Ruth and Celedyr, but I don't know about the rest at this point, or what to do. It IS my decision, but at the same time, I can't help but feel that same guilt I've always felt. And the people I usually consult, are giving me strange answers that I don't know what to do with, torn between grounded "realism" and just "I don't know what to do with what I just read", across several different servers and platforms.

Awakening Eyes Progress Report:

 

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I don't believe they will ever truly be lost. Get better and bring them back at your system's discretion. Joy was dormant for two years and didn't skip a beat.

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I just got reminded again of this extreme merging incident some years back. I haven't forgotten it a day in my life since, and I've been honestly wondering if that's why Kara and Vinyl are less responsive, especially Kara. Like, if we just never unmerged. I never wanted to merge. Merging was literally the devil back then, and it's basically the same outlook I have on it now. I lost my entire sense of self from then forth, and everything was just fucked. That was like, extreme possession "help" session gone completely fucking wrong and I will never forget the fucking anguish I felt after. Holy shit. I don't know how I'd find out, either, since like I've been saying, neither of them respond "fully".

Awakening Eyes Progress Report:

 

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Merges are temporary, they wouldn't last long. Integration is more permanent, but undoing that is still possible I suppose. If they merged/integrated with you long term, you wouldn't feel like yourself, you'd feel like someone who isn't either of you.

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you wouldn't feel like yourself, you'd feel like someone who isn't either of you.

 

This felt a lot like how I'd been since then. I'd long since stopped caring, but like I guess the terminology changed. "Merging" was what people used to say just in general as a permanent thing, at least from what I saw from a good majority from 2013-2014 before I left the IRC.

 

I don't really feel like I have a solid identity anymore, but I do have a lot of traits from what Kara was back then, combined with the "original host", and that's what scares me. Because the "me" as the "host" or "original host" or whatever, I was just a stoic, mute individual for the most part outside of a very small zone of exceptions. But like, I feel like since the incident, that there's just been a pool of our personality traits. So if we did actually have like a permanent merge or whatever, I'll never really know, but it's always felt that way. Obviously people can change, but for everything to change so suddenly and to have like just this random snapping between all the personality traits constantly is quite confusing. Granted, I got a psychological diagnosis of bipolar and bpd, but I feel like they could potentially go hand-in-hand. Maybe I'll never know.

Awakening Eyes Progress Report:

 

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One of the great things about tulpamancy is you can fix things. We can separate you again, we can help complete the merge/integration, or we can at least make you feel more whole and consistent. I believe we can do this.

 

The issue now is how. Bear, my host, had completely changed himself in the past. After learning switching its pretty clear that what you're currently personality traits are can change, be trimmed and replaced, or swapped entirely.

 

For replacing, we have helped him by taking care of some things that he didn't feel he could handle appropriately. Then as he 'watched' how he handled things, he learned.

 

That's a big one, if you want to explore other things with us, please do in a new thread or this one. The most important thing we've learned is that now we know pretty much any behavior can be swapped, copied, or removed. It sounds crazy, but then, hey, we can try to help anyway. What do you have to lose?

 

Switching shouldn't be required for this, but for some techniques it might help a whole lot. This is how we learned, and switching was an unintended consequence. Thankfully switching isn't like imposition, one day you just have that 'ah ha!' moment.

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It's becoming a bit easier to figure Ruth out lately. It was a lot harder since he literally barely talked, if at all, since he was first made, and changed a lot... but like he's a lot like Celedyr now I feel. Like if I go to make a stupid decision or if I already did, I can just feel this fucking glare from him and hear him telling me to just not do it in great detail of why it's a bad idea and it's such a strange thing. I asked others about this because it's so foreign to me, and they described it as like a "parental" thing, I guess? I wouldn't really know what that's like normally, so I guess? Celedyr kind of called a lot of shots to prevent disaster in the past or in general just helps guide me, but it seems Ruth is picking that up as well. But he doesn't put on that "I'm a very serious person" face that Celedyr does, at least entirely. Ruth is pretty serious but not AS serious. He's at least light-hearted a lot more. I think Celedyr is just closed off a lot more. He acts pretty friendly and not reserved around me, but to others, he's kind of mysterious I guess. Ruth, on the other hand, kind of flops back and forth between being chill or just really excited to talk to people.

Awakening Eyes Progress Report:

 

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So since my visualization skills have diminished, I've been trying to remember exactly what visualization exercises I used to do to practice it (even though I used to be really strong with it anyways). I did try to mess around with a new form. But putting myself into a new form proved way harder than I ever remember it being, probably because with my awful memory, I would honestly forget about my form a lot of the time, and I'd just go back to like a regular image of the physical body. So I tried to put myself into a new form. That was a disaster. I tried from a sort of third-person perspective, I tried making the form separately and like stepping into it, and everything felt really clunky and just like it wasn't going to work. I tried asking for help but everything went off topic so I stopped trying.

Awakening Eyes Progress Report:

 

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Try simpler exercises, just 20 minutes a day or so, it'll come back slowly, like muscle memory.

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