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Missy

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March 11, 2015.

 

The past couple of days have been slow; quiet interaction, unremarkable forcing, and not much to speak of.

 

Until today.

 

The first thing of note, I suppose is that I've started reading to Caramel. I did so both because I imagined we'd both enjoy it, and because I believed it would help with her vocality. I specifically picked the Eragon series of books for this, because the author is... to put it kindly: 'verbose'. To put it as Melody has: "Who'd have thought a dragon book could be so dull?"

 

I never did finish the entire series, but as reasons for giving second chances go: I'd say reading to Caramel is a good one. She and I have been enjoying it so far.

 

The reading has done wonders. After hours of reading aloud to Caramel, she corrected a sentence that I'd mistakenly jumbled. After six to ten hours of reading it was time to go to bed, and she pleaded for one more chapter. Today we did some active forcing (

) with a simple walk in the wonderland (with myself, Melody, and Caramel), and all three of us chatted.

 

Caramel has gotten vocal in slightly under a week. Melody took approximately seven years. That is a significant difference, and something I've stopped to think about.

 

Certainly knowing about tulpas is a significant factor. With Melody, we never practiced vocality. I'd outright assumed for a while that Melody couldn't speak, in fact, which likely hindered her significantly. With Caramel on the other hand we practiced daily, communicated frequently, and approached the process in the mindset that she could and would successfully communicate.

 

...But I think the biggest factor to Caramel's quick progress was Melody herself. Put another way: "The second tulpa learns faster than the first."

 

Now I'm sure there's exceptions to that, and I'd hardly call it a 'rule', but it does seem likely that the first tulpa will face doubts that the second and beyond tulpas never will. There was never any doubt in my mind that Caramel would become sentient, move, speak, and so-on, because Melody had already faced those doubts and proved those things possible. Caramel has likewise had more success with tactile imposition than Melody, even though that's something that even Melody had only made a very small amount of progress with.

 

On matters of visual and auditory imposition, the two are even: no progress yet. Seems Caramel doesn't get a head-start on something if Melody hasn't made any headway into it first. I have confidence that they'll both manage in time, though.

 

...I do wonder: if Caramel succeeded at either of those types of imposition first, would Melody then find it easier in her wake? I'm assuming yes.

 

A somewhat significant addition to the wonderland has been called for; Caramel wants a library, but doesn't seem to be able to alter things on such a large scale yet. The 'construction' is set for tomorrow.

 

-Missy.

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March 12, 2015.

 

We spent 8 hours mapping our wonderland in preparation for renovations. Just mapping. We haven't even started the actual process of altering it yet.

 

This project is... ambitious. The cliffside complex will be turning from a one-floor apartment with a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and living room into a three-floor villa with six bedrooms (I'm getting my own now instead of just mooching off of Melody's, and we're including several extra ones in case any additional tulpas or non-tulpa thought-based individuals show up without warning and need lodging, three bathrooms, a game room, a large library spanning all three floors of the complex, a massive hangar (because Melody wanted a spaceship) with a garage adjacent, a spa including gym, pool, sauna, and salon, an underground cavern including a subterranean garden and relaxing-waterfall-pond, and two alternate exits in addition to the elevator (three if you count the hangar doors).

 

We're going to have to do this one or two rooms at a time, I suppose. The mapping is now done (I probably should have spread it out over two sessions instead of working 8 straight hours on it), but there's still plenty of work left to do.

 

...That's not even counting the fact that there's going to be a spaceship to design after all this architecture. The current plan is pretty much to copy Millennium Falcon schematics and then make superfluous cosmetic changes.

 

-Missy

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Hey there, I have a quick question, if that's alright. Do you think that it's useful (advantageous, whatever) to really work on building a solid wonderland that you return to every time? The complexity of what you have going on is really impressive, but is it just a matter of taste or is it something that helps the process? I've been sort of making up wonderlands as I go along/ just doing a mixture of imposition-type exercises for visualization, would it be better to go about building something huge (read: spiffy as hell) like y'all have?

We're all gonna make it brah.

 

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Interesting question - I suppose it's different for everyone but from my perspective it's where my tulpa lives when I'm not actively interacting with them- I'm currently doing a half an half situation where I have the main house and then we use a sort of 'portal room' which has one permanent door to the house and then any number of temporary instant doors that lead anywhere and everywhere we choose to make up for adventuring etc. I find it helps me concentrate on her specifically when the initial environment is mostly stable so I don't have to spend additional time mapping out what is where every time.

 

Here I thought I put a lot lf effort into things like building and designing. Now (we) have read your plans vixen wants her own rocket (seems to think it's now a space race for some reason XD). Guess I now have to design a launch bay myself.

 

With regards to building it - do you actually manually construct it or just use magical wizard powers to just 'poof' things into being?

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Hey there, I have a quick question, if that's alright. Do you think that it's useful (advantageous, whatever) to really work on building a solid wonderland that you return to every time? The complexity of what you have going on is really impressive, but is it just a matter of taste or is it something that helps the process? I've been sort of making up wonderlands as I go along/ just doing a mixture of imposition-type exercises for visualization, would it be better to go about building something huge (read: spiffy as hell) like y'all have?

 

I do think so, though with that being said, a wonderland is easier to work on that a tulpa. The wonderland isn't sentient (though that raises interesting thoughts about what it would be like to make a tulpa that takes the form of the wonderland itself...) and thus the only thing you need to focus on for it is solidifying your perception of its physical form. The process is much faster with inanimate locales than with sentient beings, and goes even faster when everybody works on the same changes (i.e. Melody and Caramel can make changes independently, but they can also work alongside me to strengthen the changes I'm making, and it's easiest when they do so).

 

As for size: well, that's personal preference I think. Our wonderland has been getting bigger and bigger over the years, but at one time we worked with a very small space, and I see no reason why we couldn't continue to do so if necessary. Expanding the wonderland wasn't so much done out of necessity as it was done out of desire.

 

Working on your wonderland probably does provide practice that helps with more difficult visualization (and indeed potentially imposition) though.

 

-Missy

 

With regards to building it - do you actually manually construct it or just use magical wizard powers to just 'poof' things into being?

 

'Magical mind powers' are easier. Have to keep in mind that this is all mental, too, and thus is limited by what we know. Missy worked a few years in construction, but we still don't have nearly enough know-how to actually play out the renovations as literal construction.

 

There might be benefit to doing it like that if you know the process and are capable of it. Dunno.

 

-Melody

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I heard about tulpas years before I discovered this community. In those days, I had to learn everything I could from books, the main subject of which was usually something else entirely. So in my PR I've collected a bunch of book reviews, in which I call attention to the tulpa-related sections of otherwise un-tulpa-related books. The Wonderland section is here.

 

Anyway, there are two tips on the size of the wonderland in these books. Psychic Dreamwalking says:

Your dream haven should not be immense. Rather, focus on a space no more than twenty feet in diameter. This is about the size of a large room. This is a manageable size, small enough so you can control each detail, but not so small that you will feel cramped.

But a dream haven isn't exactly a wonderland. Michelle Belanger, the author of the book, originally created her dream haven to be a place that she could visit in dreams. She wanted a place so familiar that she knew every detail, so she could dream about it.

 

Most books about wonderlands give other advice. A Course in Scrying says:

Make your world much bigger than you could maintain by conscious use of your imagination. Create as many detailed areas as you want, but surround these with regions whose landscape is only known in a general way, and whose specific content is unknown. These allow room for expansion, and for the "surprise me" exercises later on in this paper.

I suggest combining the two techniques. Have a central location which is small and familiar to you, like a study or a bedroom, or an entrance hall -- basically a spawn point. This can be built up like a dream haven, so you can get to your wonderland even in dreams. You can have a lot of wonderland outside of that too, but you don't need to devote as much time and attention to it.

 

As to whether it's better to build a wonderland or to discover it, both Mastering Your Hidden Self and The Book of Wizardry suggest that your wonderland represents your own mind, so it's good to discover it. If, for example, you discover a dungeon, the prisoners there might represent suppressed parts of yourself, and rehabilitating them will help you to grow as a person. You might get the same results by creating a dungeon, but it might take longer because your brain has to go through the work of assigning meaning to the symbols you're giving it.

 

Of course there's no wrong way to use a wonderland. You don't have to visit it in dreams, and you don't have to use it to interact with the inner workings of your mind. All I'm doing is throwing possibilities out there.

 


 

Mels (I can address all three of you!) I didn't want my first post in your PR to be entirely in response to someone else. You are very interesting people, and I've been following your posts since you first showed up. Missy, if you lived closer, I'd love to join your Pathfinder group, or you could join my writing group. Melody, you have a refreshing perspective, and I've enjoyed your posts throughout the rest of the forum. And Caramel, welcome to the world!

"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson

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Mmm, yes, that sounds similar to how our wonderland is set up. My central location, 'spawn point', 'dream haven', etc. is the clifftop (specifically the section of it directly to the east of the elevator), which fits that 20x20 suggestion reasonably well. The initial work of expanding into the cliff with the complex was mostly Melody's, and we've been gaining detail particularly in that regard over the years.

 

That total detailed area of clifftop and the complex though is around 80x80x80 ft. Beyond that the forest is pretty indistinct, and has no limit that we know of. There are occasional 'islands' of established locations within them (landmarks like the stream, the spring, and the stump, and according to Melody at least two distant locations in which other tulpa-ish entities that never stuck by me are still living), but most of it is just an expanse of trees, unestablished and open to later addition or discovery.

 

I wonder if my maps would be acceptable content for the 'draw your wonderland' thread?...

 

-Missy

 

Mels (I can address all three of you!) I didn't want my first post in your PR to be entirely in response to someone else. You are very interesting people, and I've been following your posts since you first showed up. Missy, if you lived closer, I'd love to join your Pathfinder group, or you could join my writing group. Melody, you have a refreshing perspective, and I've enjoyed your posts throughout the rest of the forum. And Caramel, welcome to the world!

 

Yup, we picked our names for a reason. ;)

 

Caramel wanted to type a hello in response to your welcome, but can't really possess yet, so I'll type it for her.

 

She says hi. :P

 

-Melody

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March 16, 2015.

 

The past few days have been uneventful with not much more than further work on the wonderland taking place. The library (one of the largest and most difficult rooms in the complex) is essentially done now, and we're just about set to start expanding into the second basement level around it. Yesterday we took a day off.

 

Today was supposed to be back to work with regular forcing in between the renovation, but I got a toothache in the middle of the night that kept me up without sleep. It's settled down now, but for a few hours I was miserable.

 

Sadly, it reflected on the girls. Melody was grumpy and snappish this morning, though she apologized in the afternoon and blamed the lack of sleep on how my mental state had affected them. Caramel was... well, pretty out of it. 'Staggered' somewhat describes it, and I don't blame her. This is the first time since her creation that I've had a bad day, mentally, and so that's something that's unpleasant and new to her.

 

I felt bad, so I tried to set up for an extra-long forcing session for the two of them this morning. 5 minutes into it I almost passed out. Lack of sleep didn't do any wonders for me, either. We're going to have to skip scheduled forcing for the day, catch up on sleep, and try again tomorrow. I'll have to make it a really good forcing session tomorrow...

 

I still feel bad.

 

-Missy

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March 29, 2015.

 

The last couple of weeks have been slow. Caramel has evened out as far as sentience and communication goes, and since then there's been no really big progress in any regard. We've tried working on her possession a few times, but it's been a struggle, and right now she can just barely lift my idle hand, compared to Melody who can fully switch.

 

Another tulpa showed up while Caramel was still really new, but we were able to talk her into staying out of focus in the wonderland for a while until Caramel had gotten all the focus she needed. After about half a month, she seems to still be around in the background, so it seems likely that she's going to be staying, and is in fact a tulpa rather than just an intrusive thought. I'd like to make a little more progress with Caramel before we focus on that, though.

 

There's been several days lately where I've sat down to force and burned out really quickly. I'm rather disappointed in myself, since we had a really good week of forcing a while ago.

 

-Missy

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Greetings, Missy!

 

It's always nice to see account by people who seem to have a partner well before this site existed. They bring a very different perspective on things, I think. It looks like your new addition, Caramel, is coming along well, and she seems to be gaining a bright and happy persona, which is always nice. It may be a reflection of your state, but that unnamed fragment of yours seems not only polite, but persistent. She must really want to come to life like Melody is and Caramel is in process of. I've had a few of those myself, though they were at least to a state where they could not only communicate, but say clearly what they wanted me to do for them. Having another resident around her level may help Caramel a bit, or at least it will give her someone else to interact with while you aren't around to tend to her directly.

 

Just in case you haven't mentioned it yet: What made you gals decide to make another resident in your head? Just for the fun of it?

 

Peace

Sock Cottonwell's

Sketchbook, Journal, and Ask thread.

Peace

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