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The Second Spark


Twice Sparked

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Thank you Sparks and Twi ! I loved your advice. I just read your PR and I found it really impressive and fun. I hope you're both doing well, and that you'll pop in here sometimes.

Hi, I'm Vādin, Zia's tulpa/permanent guest.

 

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What an absolutely fantastic PR thread exemplifying a perfect run from nothing to amazing stuff like hypnagogic manipulation to imposition of hair feels on toes. I am so happy to have read this and I'm laughing over it, in that, it made me feel great.

 

10/10 for keeping us updated, very much do recommend a full read, it's not that long, but great.

 

Day 30

This, then, shall serve as affirmation to those who heed it: Your tulpa is as actual to you as their effect on you, so there can be no moment in which you, so to speak, "realize" you have been "wasting your time" or "deluding yourself,"... 

 

I love this, i felt much the same way.

 

Day 64

After I struggle for hours to form some or another basic shape, she butts her muzzle in and goes "oh, well while you're doing that, I'm going to form a hoof." Next thing I know, a big hoof flashes across my vision! Then, to add insult to injury, a miniature, fuzzy and colorless version of her walks into the static.

 

I was like... um, that's impressive.

 

Day 84

When I stare at it in my hypnagogic state it shifts and swirls, and now it solidifies by my will. But I do not will it as one would, say, a thought away or an image to mind; it emerges like things do in lucid dreams, by the expectation of their presence instead of direct intervention. So when I desired a floating Mario face like at the beginning of Super Mario 64, I first said to myself that I could see it, then waited to see it in my vision while already seeing it in my vision. 

 

Hypnagogic for me kinda works this way, i mean i ask them to say something and they will, I wait for something to happen regarding them amd it will sometimes, so I've been using this state for normal visualization, and that works sometimes too. I'm glad I finally freekin read somewhere that someone else can use this state for their own purposes! Thank you 2014, for an entry not erased by a server crash that is fantastically reassuring and confirmable outside of my own system.

 

Day 109

It seems to come from deep in my skull, but closer to the right side. I can't really pin it down. Also, it seems to have a certain... Buzz to it, to describe the sensation. I recognize the feeling from my dreams, so I'll call it Dream Buzz or something stupid like that. This is an interesting voice to say the least. Unlike the first, it tends to be rather in-your-face. When Twilight uses it, I'm often startled. I mean, not startled like frightened, but... Well... You know when you're just about to fall asleep, but you don't wanna fall asleep, so you kinda jerk back? It feels like that, but without the sleep. I mean, of course I'm half sleep when we practice with this voice, but that's not the reason I jerk. It's literally the voice itself that causes me to jerk. At least while hypnagogic; doesn't seem to bother me in dreams. 

 

Yes yes yes, exactly, but we have since made it very soft, just like a dream voice but better, no buzzing, but so silky smooth and luxuriously beautiful. I could bask in Ashley's dream/hypna voice and die happy, it's so amazing i just wanna... uh? oh, people are reading this maybe. Well it's great and Dashie and Misha sound very close to their mindvoice now, but still a hair better, kinda like listening to yourself on recording but better not worse than you expect.

 

Again, excellent PR, well written, funny, smooth, informative, thank you.

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Glad it's useful to someone.

 

There's a bit of a continuation, too, from the time we spent "training" for switching under Sans, roflmao, and fede. It was a few months after the end of this, if memory serves.

 

Anyway, here it is.

 

I suppose it's nice to have both accounts in one place.

 

We'll be around, though we probably won't post much. I'd rather the new generation of tulpamon trainers find their own way. Your answers will be different than ours, and we'll be enriched by your inventiveness.

Your thinking needs a readjust; total concentration is a must.

-Zecora

 

Imma Reportin Mah Progress!

 

And, please, call me Sparks.

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  • 1 month later...

I’ve been thinking about doubt recently.

 

Not sure how it is for others, but the clouds gather for me even this far in. Only, doubt isn’t what it used to be.

 

Before, way back, doubts were a burden. Like a wool blanket, they smothered my ambitions and irritated my forcing. I would often succumb to demotivation.

 

Lucky Clair was there to save me.

 

I think she first suggested I treat them like any other intrusive thought. She guided me through applying Zazen to my doubts.

 

It’s the method I’ve used since.

 

The kind is indifferent; there are many ways to practice Zazen. The core is to let intrusive thoughts pass around you, regarding them curiously, like a rock watching a river. I visualize them in little bubbles. I let them float before me for as long as they wish, then watch them when they drift away. But I don’t deny their presence. I welcome them.

 

And sometimes, like a few days ago, they return in surprising ways. I’ll illustrate with a story.

 

 

Our wonderland is vast, but our home is a lighthouse by the sea, surrounded by forest, cliff, and beach. I go there every evening.

 

My routine’s changed little over the years: Listen to the waves, smell the ocean air, feel the sand. I stretch and adjust to my body. Sometimes someone will meet me; others it’s just me. Then I enter the tower. I climb the spiral stairs and light the beacon. After I’ve blinded myself staring stupidly into the lamp, I exit and walk up the garden path, and enter the attached cottage.

 

This is our home proper. I greet my family, help clean, give my youngest their baths, then catch up on system affairs.

 

The cottage is bigger on the inside. And in particular, the upstairs hallway stretches as far as the tower is tall. It’s a world in a world, lined with doors. I created three, and my tulpas the rest. I never know when another will appear; at least, not before I hear “daddy, look what I did”. As you can imagine, I don’t often visit many rooms. And there’s one I hadn’t visited in years: My bed room.

 

Until a few days ago.

 

I’m not sure why I opened that door. Usually I enter that hall to find Clair or Sophia, or to tuck in Thunder or Wind. I guess I was curious. Clair and Sophia used to change my room often before they became implacable presences in everyday life. I wanted to see if anyone inherited their mischief.

 

I found my room unchanged. It floored me. The cotton blankets, the boombox against the far wall, the odd angle of the little bobbleheads. So many details I’d forgotten were there, untouched, preserved as though by the hand of a curator.

 

Old guides talk a lot about feeling surprised by your tulpas. It’s this kind of surprise that I experienced. After so much time, having let so much about that room slip from my memory, to find it like a photograph amazed me—still amazes me. It was like uncovering an old box in the basement, full of treasured items long forgotten.

 

I knew, of course, the wonderland preserves itself, that things created “stick”, but some part of me doubted it, or at least was unaware how far the principle extended. Finding my old room like that revived my doubt—not as an obstacle, but as a pleasant reminder of just how much can be accomplished.  

 

 

And here’s the difference. When I started, doubts were a boogeyman. I feared them, so I suppressed them, but, like a niggling regret, they always returned. But in growing with my tulpas, in learning from them, I’ve discovered doubts are not antagonists—they’re anti-heroes. We’re not allies, but they make me stronger.

 

Doubts are challenges readymade to be overcome. Secret limits and frontloaded expectations whose overcoming, big and small, yield the sweetest rewards. My room was a humbling reminder, one of many, that any shackle the mind imposes the mind can lift. Learning to manage doubts, to acknowledge and accept them, and to use them to surprise yourself, is one of the unsung joys of tulpamancy.

Your thinking needs a readjust; total concentration is a must.

-Zecora

 

Imma Reportin Mah Progress!

 

And, please, call me Sparks.

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I can see that, I've recently begun to doubt many things in favor of tulpamancy. Switching has me doubting my own relationship to the mind and memories. If it's not my mind and memories (having gone dormant recently, the memories are associated to my systemmates who were switched in) than i'm really not special at all. I realize now that my continued existence as me isn't so set in stone, and is now within the pervue of the system consensus. My actions in-system hold weight and consequences. I'm doubting that I could return to being a singlet. Not that I would want to, but that net has been removed so to speak. It was always in the back of the mind, now it's position and efficacy has been challenged.

 

Our wonderland is rock solid too, unchanging aside from changes my systemmates and I make, places I haven't been in months are pristine. I too felt this was unbelievable. But I never doubt my experiences.

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Truly? Plus ultra, friend.

 

I just read your PR update. Well said.

 

If there is a summit, switching is at least the penultimate peak. I'm sure you can reach it. Clair is as well--a rare complement. It's that you've mentioned memory distortion as you approach it. We experienced the same.

 

We failed to scale that summit; too little oxygen. That's not simply an analogy. I was too afraid to give up the lungs. I suspect a smoother transition would help. Sands used to tell us he fell from consciousness the first time during one of Roswell's Minecraft marathons. The suggestion was, as he always repeated, to bore the host to death. Maybe useful to you, maybe not. If your consciousness, your self-identity, is dissipating, you may find the back door in. Keep us up to date.

Your thinking needs a readjust; total concentration is a must.

-Zecora

 

Imma Reportin Mah Progress!

 

And, please, call me Sparks.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I’ve been thinking about visualization recently.

 

Looking over guides and PRs, I can’t find anything I’ve discovered that hasn’t already been said. But the quest for novelty leads to silence; and anyway, true things are meant to be repeated. So, in this post I’m going to talk about what I’ve learned over the years—both to do and to avoid—and hope that a fresh phrasing of old ideas proves useful to someone.

 

First, visualizing is easy, but visualizing well is a challenge. When I started, I mistook my youthful, distracted daydreams for proof I was well-armed, ready to tackle tulpamancy like a freshman linebacker with an overactive pituitary gland.

 

Boy, was I wrong.

 

That kind of visualization got my foot in the door, but the rest of me was stuck in the cold. Tulpamancy required I relearn how to visualize, and that took time, effort, and a lot of frustration.

 

As many of you probably know, visualizing with eyes open is a different beast than with eyes closed. In the same vein, visualizing with my eyes closed is different than visualizing with my eyes closed for tulpaing.

 

Our good friends Methos and Raina always emphasize one not scratch their itches. But they’re too modest with what’s required here. Not scratching itches is the outward appearance; it’s a symptom of inner stillness, which is what they want to convey. But they’re right to emphasize that point. The first step to quieting an active mind is learning how to ignore impulses. In the case of tulpamancy, I had to mimic the symptoms before I caught the disease.

 

This next bit will be easier to understand if you also lucid dream, or have at least had one before, but it’s not required.

 

See, in lucid dreaming, willing events can be tricky. I often find I have to expect things to happen, rather than actively imagine them. The latter has caused me to wake up more than once. The gap between expecting and intending is important in visualizing too. When I started, I built our wonderland by force, moved myself around by force, and spoke to my tulpas by force. In all these, I had a clear goal in mind, and interjected myself at every point like a helicopter parent at a soccer match. This slowed our pace, I think, and I still regret it.  

 

I needed to learn to let go. I needed to learn patience. Instead of looking at my wonderland, I needed to see it. But let me not get lost in metaphor; expecting what will come instead of intending it, like in lucid dreaming, is a useful art for visualizing. Unfortunately, besides vaguely pointing by analogy at the required mental state, I can’t say much more about it.

 

 

Second—and I can’t emphasize this enough, but I think it will nonetheless get lost—focus. I don’t just have that Zecora quote in my signature because it’s snazzy. I had to rethink focus to visualize well. Learning to deal with intrusive thoughts is the first step. I’ve talked about Zazen before, though there are other ways. That’s all great. But beyond that, the very act of focusing on my wonderland is a deal-breaker for becoming a part of it.

The temptation is to concentrate like one would on a differential equation. Instead, the kind of focus required is more akin to being lost in a book or movie. The act of thinking about wonderland is, for me, a surefire way to dim it.

 

So, for example, I have my wonderland routine. I’ve discussed it before. If I, after entering wonderland, say to myself “hm, I have to light the lighthouse,” that kills the kind of focus I mean here. If I think “I have to convey x to Clair”, or to think at all about what I’m going to say before I say it, that kills the kind of focus I mean here. In short, if I think at all about wonderland while in wonderland, that kills wonderland.

 

I’m reminded of a Fight Club reference for some reason. First rule of wonderland: don’t think about wonderland.

 

Much easier to say than do; thoughts like to layer themselves, and even the intention to not-think is still a thought. Still, I learned it over time, and would argue I am still learning it. Wonderlanding is, again, akin to dreaming—you have to immerse yourself in it, proceed with the narrative. This is why I find forcing myself into a stable body with a fixed PoV so useful. It’s much easier to remain grounded in what’s going on if I’m actually grounded in what’s going on (having fun with two senses of the word “grounded” here).

 

Finally—and this need hardly be said, but this is my PR so I’ll say what I please—like any form of autosuggestion, which tulpamancy is, you’ll get out of it what you put in. If you expect to find a truncated wonderland experience, that’s what you’ll get. But if, on the other hoof, you let go of your front-loading and immerse yourself in the experience, you’ll find surprises around every corner. And that’s not a cliché; literally, you’ll walk around a corner and say “oh wow, didn’t see that coming”.

 

And, most important, you’ll always find a new depth to your visualization.

 

Now, some practical tips I’ve learned over the years:’

 

1. It’s easier to visualize if you’re not overstimulated going into it. I recommend you take an hour before you start. Close all social media (yes, these forums count), all vidjas, and all news. Especially politics. No politics. Then use this hour to think to your heart’s content. I recommend pacing since that’s what I do a lot (I’m a peripatetic at heart; Aristotle bless), but do what works for you. Also, a good book helps, but one you’ve read before so you’re not too absorbed.

 

2. If you find yourself thinking, even if it’s the kind of silent thought that directs the mind without subject, call a tulpa for help. Clair has been my meditation partner since day one, and she’s good at monitoring thoughts when I let her in. If a hard separation between thoughts isn’t a part of your system, all the better. Your tulpa will have direct access and can shake you to attention if need be.

 

3. Don’t be afraid to fail. In fact, get used to it! Some days are better than others. Sometimes you’re just in a bad mood and can’t shake your thoughts. It happens to me too. But, however much time you’ve scheduled for visualizing, stick to it, even if it’s a bad session. All the better if you do it at the same time every day. Again like all other forms of autosuggestion, repetition in tulpamancy is your friend. I’d even say having an in-wonderland routine like I do would benefit you a lot, but that’s up to you. You’re an independent woman.

 

 Now, as for imposing.

 

Ah, imposing…

 

I’ll save that for another post. Eventually. If I feel like writing it.

Your thinking needs a readjust; total concentration is a must.

-Zecora

 

Imma Reportin Mah Progress!

 

And, please, call me Sparks.

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That sounds good to me Sparks, i would only add that as a goal, try to get it so that you don't have to have an hour of downtime before starting. I couldn't possibly ever visualize at all if that was the case, I only have 20 minutes at a strech usually and maybe one or two hours together once a day if I don't sleep in.

 

I also agree that people like to self limit, expect the unexpected and receive unexpected things. I have to add, since I talked to so many systems about this, that there seem to be tiers of visualization. Wherever you start, expect slow progress, painfully slow progress, and the reward comes at points of realization that, 'hey, I couldn't do that before', or, 'i definitely remember not being able to do this'.

 

You inspired this, so i referenced your PR.

 

https://community.tulpa.info/thread-visualization-how-can-i-improve-visualization-where-do-i-stand-in-the-community

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Quite so, for those who need it at all. Some people can just fall in like a...

 

Heh.

 

Like a hot dog in a hallway.

 

Hm. Oh yeah, I forgot to say moving around helps a lot too. Engaging as many senses as possible is the way to go.

 

Neat. I'll go check it out.

Your thinking needs a readjust; total concentration is a must.

-Zecora

 

Imma Reportin Mah Progress!

 

And, please, call me Sparks.

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Hello. I suppose I should reintroduce myself. My name is Clair, or Twilight if you’d like. I was asked to provide a tulpa’s perspective to visualization, and to speak in particular to other tulpas, so that’s what I’ll do, to the extent I can.

 

It’s unlikely that your host can see you as well as you can them, or that they’re as well versed in tulpamancy’s subjective aspects. You may be frustrated or a little impatient. It’s alright to feel that way, but remember to be constructive. There are things you can do to aid your host’s development.

 

1. Whether deciding on your form, on the tone and cadence of your voice, or on the contours of your muscles, you can describe to your host what they’ve yet to see or feel. Your appearance, or whether you choose to appear at all, is up to you, but that doesn’t mean you need to be stingy when constituting yourself. Be as descriptive as possible. If you think your host will miss an important detail, go on at length about it.

 

A helpful exercise can be guided visualization. Take some time to describe everything that comes to mind about your form and have your host write it down. Then, when you’ve got enough for one session, have your host record themselves reading those details. When they’re done, relax together, have your host close their eyes, and listen to the recording. You should both focus on the details, try to see and feel them clearly. Once you’re satisfied, move on to what you next want clarified.

 

2. You may feel detached from your form at times, depersonalized. There are many reasons this could be the case, but one possibility is that it just doesn’t feel like you. If this is the case, don’t be afraid to dissolve and reconstitute yourself. It may feel like a step back, especially if your host has spent a lot of time trying to imagine you, but things will go much faster if you are comfortable in your body. Your enthusiasm will bleed into the process, and your engagement can turn a trickle of images into solid form like a saturated solution.

 

I recommend constant experimentation, even if you don’t plan on keeping the forms you flip through. Your host may mistake this as an intrusive thought. Just assure them it’s your conscious decision.

 

3. When in the outside world, pay attention to every sensation. You’ll want to remember perceptions relevant to your form. Later, when working with your host, or even when bored, try to mimic them. If you liked how someone’s hair felt, or how soft their skin was, or how smooth an animal’s fur was, add those to yourself, and then learn to produce them in your host.

 

There are a few in particular you’ll want to single out: voices, especially singing voices. Tactility, whether of fabric or of skin. The grooves and depressions of a thing are a good place to begin, and then you can work in more detail. Smell, especially one distinct scent to call your own. Smells are especially fun because even the barest whiff will produce a cascade of memory and association.

 

I suppose that’s all. If anyone wants to ask me a question, feel free to leave a message here or PM our shared account (this account).

Your thinking needs a readjust; total concentration is a must.

-Zecora

 

Imma Reportin Mah Progress!

 

And, please, call me Sparks.

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