Dreaming You Are Your Tulpa

[Yakumo]

I can complicate this even further.

 

As a hopeless daydreamer most of my everyday routine is handled by what Bear called the BodyOS, an unconscious but highly effective servitor that handles all tasks I don't actively think about. That's a lot in my case while I ponder something completely unrelated. Therefore usually:

 

.)The BodyOS is the dreamer from my perspective.

This means I dream from my perspective but it's more like watching a movie. I have next to no control over what's happening and just get swept along. There's little chance to become lucid and even if, it's extremely hard to interfere. Reliably happens when the BodyOS has been doing intense repetitive work and then dreams about it (yes, it's boring).

 

.)I am the sole dreamer

Pretty much what you'd expect. I usually still have some trouble to control what I'm doing but it's easier and possible to become fully lucid. Happens frequently.

 

.)I am the sole dreamer but as tupper

Very rare, can only recall 2-3 cases. Once I realized I was me but in tuppers body, once I thought I was tupper. Most striking difference from the real deal - I was pityfully weak when I was 'her' while she usually wipes the floor with any sort of annoyance in dreams, whether lucid or not.

 

.)Tupper is the sole dreamer

As she doesn't front long enough this has never happened or at least we don't remember

 

.)The BodyOS is the dreamer from tupper perspective.

This may have happened once while she was practicing fronting but we're not certain. I saw the dream from tupper perspective but had no control over what was going on and she did tupper things she remembers but also had next to no control

 

.)We both dream from my perspective

The most awesome form of dream. Happened a handful of times but only once did we both become fully lucid for a longer period. It's from my perspective but tupper can influence the course of the dream, usually more, sometimes less than me. The effect is light years from meeting a dream charcter that looks like tupper. It often happens shortly before I wake up on the border to hypnopompic phase which sometimes enables her to enter my dream for the shotr remaining time. Or as WILD when I can call her.

 

.)We both dream from tupper perspective

Never happened probably due to lack of fronting.

 

Obviously there's a broad spectrum between these options but the bottom line is every combination is theoretically possible for headmates that have sufficient fronting experience.

[Luminesce]

Those sound about right to me. What most people these days are more comfortable thinking of as a "servitor" they call the Body OS, I think of a little more realistically as parts of the brain. Same experiences and concept, though.

 

I haven't really considered if that You-less (/personality-less, fronter-less or so on) part of the brain is all that's there in dreams and we're just less plugged-in than in normal waking life, but that's because the spectrum of consciousness within dreams blurs all of the lines I've drawn in dividing up what parts of the brain are what. I've had experiences that feel fully unconscious and disconnected from my sense of me, we've had a vivid dream that was clearly Lucilyn aware of who she was and that she was in my body, and I've had everything in between. I've had dreams that seemed to be driven by "me"/my sense of self, but that acted in ways I would never in real life, but I've had countless more that were just me acting as I would in random scenarios. I've had dreams where I'm playing the role of someone else, dreams where I'm convinced I know people that I don't, dreams where I'm literally me interacting with lifelike versions of people I know...

 

And despite all that being a smooth spectrum of left to right, it's even more complicated by the fact that most of the time I have an overarching awareness that what's going on is a dream, and I influence it as if it was some realtime simulation I'm just playing out. I have memories of directing myself and the dream to go a certain way so that it plays out correctly, despite simultaneously being the perspective of myself who is supposedly immersed in the current scenario.

 

This all makes it extremely difficult to tell where different parts of consciousness/unconscious processes begin and end, what's the "me" that drives the personality and conscious thoughts of the body and what's more unconscious and subconscious processes... Which I would need to be able to separate, because that sense of me is also what my tulpas are. And since tulpamancy is founded in separation of your tulpas from your other mental processes (and yourself), it's somewhat important to have a good grasp of to be an Enlightened Tulpamancer™ like I consider myself.

 

I don't have an exact description of how "You"-ness in dreams works, but perhaps the reality isn't simple enough to describe so easily anyways. I generally do think of it as a left-to-right slider as I said, ranging from purely unconscious/subconscious directing from other deep parts of your brain, up to vivid and lucid dreams being essentially equivalent to you in waking life. I can't quite grasp where this dual-consciousness comes in of being immersed in dream scenarios while also controlling them with some form of being-dreaming awareness, but honestly, it's been really hard to study the psychology of my consciousness while unconscious. Really, I'm impressed that a human can even do as much as I have, it's crazy stuff.

Edited December 4, 2021 by Luminesce

[TB]

1 hour ago, Luminesce said:

And despite all that being a smooth spectrum of left to right, it's even more complicated by the fact that most of the time I have an overarching awareness that what's going on is a dream, and I influence it as if it was some realtime simulation I'm just playing out.

 

Isn't that lucid dreaming?

[Luminesce]

Like I said, that phenomenon really complicates things. It's also somewhat unique to me, although I think some people experience it too, maybe less often. Whenever my dreams start to drift off course in an undesirable way, like something bad is going to happen or a really good plot/event/action from someone is not going to happen like it should, I have memory of kind of guiding it into place the same way you'd guide visualization, I guess? In my dream last night, even though I was immersed enough in what I was doing and thought I was in that situation, when the dream kind of went the wrong way, I thought "{It's} supposed to be going like this, though" and willed it back on track (to me having a confrontation with someone who was bullying someone, instead of walking away with someone I was with). It wasn't a perfectly vivid dream or anything so I don't remember it crystal clear, but it really feels like the perspective is dream-wide rather than from my "self's" position in the dream. Again, comparable to visualization/wonderlanding, momentarily thinking something from your IRL perspective instead of remaining fully immersed in your view from your body in the visualization.  (To those who can't visualize or haven't had experiences like this, sorry I can't compare it to anything else)

 

So, it's a background "knowing I'm dreaming" that only becomes noticeable when I influence a dream for meta reasons like avoiding a stressful scenario (I never have nightmares for this reason), but I'm fairly certain it's present through the majority of dreams I have. Perhaps not during the very least conscious dreams. And yet, I see a limit to the awareness, because supposing that background (foreground?) knowing is still active when I become fully lucid, I still manage to fall for dream tricks and back into non-lucidity, being carried away by dream nonsense and forgetfulness. So yeah, I have no idea what the bounds to this "background knowing I'm dreaming" are.

 

And that complicates the topic of "Dreaming you are your tulpa / Your tulpa dreaming", because if I have two sort of levels of consciousness in dreams, is it possible for one to be my tulpa and the other not to? For this I think Yakumo's categories apply, because it's probably possible to "be the main character" of a dream, with it "supposed to be you", while you're more consciously simply watching the dream play out as an observer - and in that scenario, the character that's supposed to be "you" could be your tulpa. Then it would be you, dreaming that you're your tulpa, I suppose. But of course, the whole perspective could simply be your tulpa's on both levels, or you could just not have that observer perspective or my seeming dual-consciousness and just be fully immersed in "the character's" (but in this case, it's just your body as normal) perspective, and if that was your tulpa, then it'd be your tulpa dreaming. If they had their body, it'd be your tulpa dreaming they're them, or if they had your body but clearly their thoughts/perspective, it'd be them dreaming they were you, lol.

 

Complex stuff, even by tulpamancy standards, but only really because making sense of unconscious states is so hard. I mean, I'm sure it's hard, but no harder than tulpamancy itself - it's just hard because it's so hard to remember, especially in any detail. My dream recall is terrible and I often only remember key parts to the last dream or two I had in a night, let alone remember in full vividness, so I've only been able to study and think over this stuff so much.

[TB]

Oh, I think I know what you're talking about. It doesn't happen to me every time but it happens. It can't stop me from nightmares though lol, except when I figure out I can wake up, but sometimes I just wake up into sleep paralysis and it is even worse.

[WondrousFairy]

I've never become someone else, but I've frequently been a non-existent observer in their dreams. Usually the dreams are just that and we can laugh about them afterwards. But Jane sometimes has dreams about her traumatic past and those are usually not really fun to be a part of. Whenever I've had a dream like that, I'll ask her in private if I indeed was watching a dream of her past and she'll either confirm or deny it. In a way, I know she appreciates it, because as fucked up as she is, I think it gives her some solace in knowing at least someone else know about what's happened to her before we all met.

[Yakumo]

There's one more and especially frustrating category - the 'realistic' dream.

Here things work like irl, tupper is in your head but has no physical body.

 

On 12/3/2021 at 10:57 PM, Yakumo said:

Once I realized I was me but in tuppers body, once I thought I was tupper. Most striking difference from the real deal - I was pityfully weak when I was 'her' while she usually wipes the floor with any sort of annoyance in dreams, whether lucid or not.

This has been impressivley confirmed once again today.