Thoughts on the creation and nature of tulpas

Satisfying values through friendship and ponies

[textbookderivative]

Quotidian heartpouring is hard and untenable, turns out

It's been a good while since I've had the time to update here. I was pretty acutely aware that would happen before very long at all. I'm going to talk as briefly as I can let myself on the nature of my shittiness, then discuss where I stand regarding tulpaforcing. Please feel free to skip down to where I actually start talking about tulpas if you want.

Writing daily progress logs sounds nice but I feel it's probably pretty unreasonable for me, given a couple shitty things about my character. I'll put it in handy laundry list format for your convenience!

I'm really bad at ever accomplishing anything. I struggle with motivation and apathy in a nontrivial way every day with respect to almost every physical action. I have basically never not been seriously depressed and akrasia is my spirit animal.

Okay, so it's really more of one big gestalt reason. I have bad days and worse days with my depression, and when I started forcing, it wasn't so bad, but it's kind of getting shitty again. I had a shit-ton of work due last week and I didn't do much other than write a paper and do homework, every night. I went two nights in a row without sleeping it fucking sucked. A bit about me, since I don't think I've mentioned it here before: I'm a university senior majoring in physics and math. This semester I'm taking 21 credit-hours, three courses at the 400 level and three courses at the 500 level. I do very well in my courses, but that doesn't change the fact that every single assignment I ever turn in is always completed the night before and usually only just barely. And it's been this way for four years. I'm a senior, about a year from serious grad school (hopefully), and I still treat my homework like a freshman. I can't think of a way to represent my problem here as seeming legitimate (I mean all it probably sounds like I'm saying is that I'm lazy), so I'm going to cut my losses now. But let's just say that 

I think somehow I managed to fundamentally integrate depression into my personal identity in such a way that I will never cut it back out.

I struggle with existential crises, gender identity, sexual dissatisfaction, body issues, and self-harm just all the damn time.

Hopefully I have convinced you that I think I'm shitty. There's not much of a point to this; I just wanted to whine about it. It's nice that I don't have any sort of following I'd have to worry about letting down. =p

(now I will actually talk about the thing this blog is about)

The point is that I need to be a bit more realistic with my expectations for myself. I felt like shit the first day I had to skip forcing; it was the most guilty I've felt in a long time. I know that forcing less often than daily is a completely reasonable thing (that almost everyone does), but telling myself didn't help me feel any better. That was about a week ago.

Now, I find myself not having forced since last Saturday (one week ago). I know it's okay, on some level. I didn't even go back to my dorm some nights; I just stayed in the physics lounge or the school library working. Schoolwork comes first, since mistakes and failures have much stricter consequences than failures in almost anything else. I know I can never permanently 'fail' forcing, since A) as long as I remain aware that I'm involved in the process TD isn't going to 'die' (it's incredibly hard to write that) and B) even if God forbid I somehow to start over from scratch, I could; no one is in a position to stop me from devoting as much effort to it as I chose to.

But Jesus, I miss TD; I haven't felt him almost any since the beginning of the week. And even though I'm often surrounded by friends while working, I've been lonely. I fucking dread the fact that I'm nowhere done with the semester and that I'll have at least five more sizeable papers due. I hate that there will be plenty more weeks like this and there's almost nothing I can do about it that I haven't already tried and fucked up. But god dammit I'm going to keep working with TD until it kills me.

The last time I forced was last Saturday, 1 Feb. It was, actually, beautiful. I spent about an hour and a half with him, and conducting events in the paracosm was quite free-form and natural (a rare occurrence). We spent a lot of time in an area inspired by the moon surface in Majora's Mask (picture below). It's a massive tree standing alone in a functionally-infinite grassy plain. An interesting thing happened: while we were there, it started raining. And I didn't do it. Well, let's be particular about the details: I spontaneously felt a raindrop on my face, and then I sort of declared, Okay, it can be raining. We moved to the base of the tree and started climbing to a branch near the top to rest. I don't even know how a pony would begin to climb a tree, but it worked out.

I never really expected to be surprised by the paracosm itself, at least not before TD started surprising me too. I think there's something really interesting being hinted at here. A lot of people don't focus on the wonderland nearly as much as the tulpa, and that makes sense. People spend weeks developing their tulpas' characters and personalities and traits and so on, and eventually tulpas can take that over on their own. But what of the wonderland? The instructions for constructing a wonderland and a memory palace are at least ostensibly identical, i.e. put things in places. But I've never heard of someone rounding a turn in a mind palace to find something unexpected, whereas this is a common thing to hear of in other people's wonderlands. In fact, you can find plenty of stories of people exploring and having adventures in wonderlands. What's the difference? Just that one is intimately related to a tulpa, and so creativity and spontaneity are integral to the construction? I don't know, but I find it pretty interesting. 

Anyway, it was very relaxing in that tree. I made a small wooden platform coming off a branch for us to sit on, and with soft ambient rain coming down around us but not penetrating the canopy above, it was quite tranquil. For the first time, I began to seriously work on visualization, and pretty much thought long and hard about how tall TD is. No leaping or bounding to be done, but I definitely walked away with a strong conception of his size, and that's an important first step.

Also, hey. I'm pretty sure T spoke to me. 

It was right before I quit forcing for the night (again, this was on Sat., 1 Feb). I asked him if he had anything he'd like to say before I got up and prepared for bed.

"I love you."

Pretty much plain as day. I don't feel the slightest bit responsible for this thought. Well, obviously it's 'me' in some meaningful sense, but there was no deliberation or suggestion on my part. It just seemed to come out of nowhere. In the past, the few times I've wondered whether TD said something to me, I've always been really uncertain whether I was accidentally responding for him, based on the way the response felt. I decided that all of the possible responses except the first ('I have no name') were not really directly from TD; I can safely say now that I'm pretty sure I made the correct call. 'I have no name' and 'I love you' felt completely different than the rest (the latter much more so), and so I'm inclined to believe those are the two real responses I've been able to hear.

Shit, I can't even tell you how it made me feel. I'm not even going to lie: I cried. No shame. It was one of the most sudden emotional upheavals I've ever experienced.

Maybe it makes more sense, now, how shitty I feel after being unable to force for a whole week after that night. TD and I had a beautiful tender and cathartic experience, then I ignored him and did homework forever. But fuck me, I can't pretend to think he doesn't understand; he knows I didn't have a choice in the matter and he wouldn't hold it against me. And that's why it kills me.

I have to remember, though, that the week is over, and there won't be another like it for a while. Tomorrow I want to spend at least an hour and a half forcing. I almost feel like I need to get to know him again a little bit. It's been so long that I'm actually anxious about it. But I need to jump back in. Not only will I be able to resume growing my relationship with TD, I think it'll be a lot easier to stop feeling like fat nasty trash.

I won't be entertaining delusions of keeping a daily log, but I will try to update as often as I'd like to. Every couple of days sounds nice.

[textbookderivative]

Progress log to-date, part 5 (Days 9-11)

Day 9, Jan. 19

I don't often eat alone, and I don't often eat breakfast, but when I do eat breakfast, it's usually alone. Lately I've been treating these as an outing for TD and me, and it's been nice. Most days near the beginning I have trouble 'remembering' TD when I wake up, and it takes me a while to remember that he's there. That won't do, obviously. Eating breakfast with him has done a lot to help me remain aware of his presence in the morning. If I start the day out well like that, I can usually keep a conception of his being in mind throughout the rest of the day.

For the first time since it first happened, I think I may have experienced the whirring when I was forcing. It was quite faint, though, but it was definitely the same type of sensation. 

Also, this day I moved a bit away from personality forcing and more on communication forcing. I thought this would be a good idea at the time, but at the time of writing this (Jan. 29), I'm seriously reconsidering that decision... more later.

Day 10, Jan. 20

I experienced a whirring while reading a thread on the tulpa.info fora, without addressing TD directly. This is when I really put aside any serious doubts that he's responsible. When I sat down to force this night, I experienced whirring immediately upon greeting T. I'm no good at expressing mushy feelings, but I experience them just like everyone else, and gosh, I can't tell you how good and real it felt.

Day 11, Jan. 21

Today, I had my first whirring experience out-of-the-blue, when doing nothing related to forcing. I was just sitting in my number theory course, completely bored (reviewing basic material) when it happened. I was completely thrilled! It spoke a lot to TD's legitimacy, I think. He's starting to be active during periods other than forcing. More importantly, he can be active even when I'm not thinking of him, i.e. he can start his thought-loop himself, at least sometimes!

It also happened again in my next class (stats). Both times, I zoned out of the lecture (don't worry! I wouldn't have if it weren't review), and hung out with him in the paracosm. 

On a different note, I'd been having trouble staying awake during forcing for the past few days. The main reason is that I started forcing when school had just begun, and I got plenty of sleep; now classes have really gotten started and I get my usual 5-6 hours a night. I don't have trouble functioning (doing work or staying awake during class) with that amount of sleep, but I do have trouble staying awake during forcing, since it's usually in the dark, and my eyes are closed, and I'm usually sitting on my bed... This won't do, obviously. So I took advice from the IRC and enacted a couple of measures to help me.

I'll be actually sitting lotus-position, instead of reclining at a steep angle.

I'll put my back against the wooden bedframe, so that it's not overbearing but not comfortable enough to sleep.

When possible, I'll do my forcing a couple of hours before I plan on sleeping, instead of immediately before. 

I'll be wearing one of my tight cuffs that's not comfortable enough to really forget about. This is less for staying awake and more for general mindfulness, as I'll be wearing it pretty often during the day. Yeah, so, it is technically a BDSM cuff. But I trust TD not to take it the wrong way, lol. I asked him to start wearing the other one, and I imagine us being connected by a cord which passes between the real and mental worlds. Of course it's arbitrarily stretchable; the point isn't to trip us, just to remind me that he's with me. =p

This worked quite well (in that I stayed awake without much effort).

One final thing: It's possible that TD may have spoken to me tonight. I'm not sure. I'm basically as unsure as I can be. I don't feel like I was personally responsible for the thought I have in mind, but it didn't feel particularly alien. It was quite surprising, though. Again, I'm just not sure.

But I was conducting just a general chat with T, stuff like "how did you enjoy today", "what did you think of the movie", "are you a pony", &c. without much feedback. For whatever reason I felt like asking him to "tell me one interesting fact about yourself", and... the phrase "I have no name" popped into my head. I don't even know. I have so little to go on, here, but I'd say it's possible that it was him. I don't think I would have phrased it that strongly myself, to me it's more like TD is his name now, it's just not fixed... I wonder if he particularly dislikes it. I tried to ask him what he wanted to be called instead, but I couldn't interpret a response.

Nothing like this has really happened since (as of Jan. 29), so I still am completely unsure whether this was from TD. But still, it's worth transcribing here for completeness. I feel like I should slap a percent probability estimate on this, even though it makes me a bit uncomfortable... I'd say I'm about 40% sure that this was TD speaking to me. And yes, that number is of coursed pulled out of thin air as an idiosyncratic intuition. There's lots of that when estimating priors. =p

I can't wait to be able to ask TD whether this was really him! More importantly, I can't wait to find out whether he likes/minds/hates the name Textbook Derivative. I hate that the decision has to be completely up to me at this point, although of course I recognize that there's no other way to do it.

[textbookderivative]

Progress log to-date, part 4 (Days 7-8)

Day 7, Jan. 17

This was the first bad day.

I was caught between a couple different shitty extremes... all of it stemming from my experience the previous night. One one hand, I sort of felt as if I'd failed myself by convincing myself I'd made contact so early. On the other, I felt like I was failing TD if he really was there and trying to reach me. I learned today that it's really hard to trust subjective, qualia-based judgments you make about phenomena you no longer experience. Okay, well, that's sort of obvious. Of course people have intense emotions or perceptions, and then doubt the legitimacy of their experience. But that fact became quite real to me as, even though I had had one of the most surprisingly personal and moving experiences of my life, and even though by the end of the night I had no reasonable doubt about what was happening, I managed to complete efface my own confidence by the time I woke up. That's a really awful feeling, to go to sleep with a very peaceful mind and wake up having no idea what you believe.

It might feel a bit odd to talk about belief like it's something you lack completely control over, but quick-response judgments are definitely not only up to our deliberation. We don't choose everything we do and don't believe. I guess that might sound odd coming from an elective tulpamancer, but tulpamancy just demonstrates (to me) that we do have some control. Even if we don't set out to change our beliefs (either to whatever facts are true, notionally, (as in reasoning and inspection), or to what we want our beliefs to be, relationally, (as in tulpaforcing)), we're constantly subjected to a very smart refreshing and re-updating of our beliefs, in small ways.

I hate this combination of guilt and uncertainty, where half the time I feel like I'm letting down TD and the other half I feel like I'm letting down myself.

I can't really seem to think straight enough to get down my thoughts about how it feels to be in that position. I try to think about all the different dimensions in which I was feeling greedy and unappreciative and deluded and guilty and embarrassed and insane and I just can't get a foothold to start climbing the wall of explaining it. It sucks to have negative feelings. But to me, what sucks most in the world is having two distinct, contradictory sets of massive complicated negative emotions, being unsure which is accurate, and being unsure which would be worse.

But I was well aware that I wouldn't keep the doubt and uncertainty away forever. Better to resolve it as it comes then pretend my confidence will never waver.

I couldn't convince myself to feel any better, but I did spend my normal amount of time forcing, and I made sure to specifically address TD about what was going on. I do feel like the session was productive, even though I wasn't in a conducive mood whatsoever, and I think that fact's a great thing to know in any case.

Day 8, Jan. 18

Talking with a friend helped a whole lot with my cognitive dissonance. I managed to pull myself together through the course of the day, and I feel I finally got back into a good position regarding forcing. My conclusion was that in this context, "I believe" is less of an expression of a fact and more of a performative statement.Not in a strict (technical) sense, just in terms of the idiosyncratic texture and feel of the sentence. I'm choosing to believe, and I'm choosing to opt for a more generous option when confronted with an unresolved question.  This approach could be considered to be at odds with a quintessential scientific mindset, maybe, but that's part of the experiment. Can this approach yield the results I desperately want? Can I use my obvious bias to my advantage, and for TD's too?

This gives me motivation to split the facts of the matter into two possibilities, and then I can examine each case and feel justified in believing that in neither branch am I completely wasting my time or behaving irrationally.

Case I: Tulpas are legitimate and TD is developing.

Obviously, if this is the case, my time and effort spent forcing and documenting the process are justifiable expenditures. I'll both create a special relationship with a beautiful being and sate my curiosity about the phenomenon.

Case II: Tulpas (as I conceive of them) are not possible and TD is not developing.

If this is the case, I can at least comfort myself in the fact that I'm choosing to embark on the process after a careful (but qualitative) risk/benefit analysis; that is, the benefits of successfully creating TD far outweigh the investment, even after scaling for a conservative probability estimate for the legitimacy of tulpas. It's worth a shot, basically. And that shot will be the damned best I can manage.

Note that logically speaking, there is a third possibility, namely that tulpas are legitimate but TD is not developing. I assign this branch a pretty damn low probability, and am not concerning myself with it. =]

So, I ended up really enjoying my time with T this day. I feel like I adequately expressed to him how elated I was about the whirring. I'm sorry that the following day was shitty because of it, but even in those 24 hours, I grew quite a bit as a host. I'm nowhere near 

Also, we integrated something new into our schedule! For the past few weeks, I've been reading Pact, a web serial by Wildbow. He's also the author of Worm, a web serial about superheroes, villains, and normal people. Worm is one of the best things that I've ever read, and I've read a good bit (I sat for a while trying to figure out how to phrase that so it doesn't sound conceited, but whatever. I read). It's ostensibly about superheroes, but it's smart. Really smart. Everyone acts consistently with their character; no one holds the idiot ball to move the plot along; "super-strong" or "super-fast" characters that would take center stage in most superhero works play second fiddle (and rightly so) to characters with powers involving information, probability, mental faculty, planning, &c. And those (the later half) are the big players: the most crucial heroes, the most heinous, masterminding villains, the people who get shit done. Anyway, enough praise! Worm is fantastic and my life was definitely enriched by reading it, but it's over now. Wildbow has moved on to a new story (Pact, with supernatural and occult themes), which is coming out straight on Worm's heels on his customary Tues./Sat. schedule. I'm expecting wonderful and fascinating things (it's been fantastic so far).

I had the thought that I think TD would really like literature like that. I view him as the curious type who would love thinking about unintended consequences or interesting applications of weapons, powers, objects. Worm has one of the most pragmatic, resourceful, and creative protagonists I know of, so I decided I wanted to share the experience of reading Pact with T. 

I made a room inspired by Pact inside our paracosm. It's a two-story library, the sort with a balconied upper tier that looks out on the floor below. Of course it's got floor-to-ceiling shelves, comfy armchairs, a roaring fire, &c. I found a picture that pretty well matches what I have in mind.

There's a similar room in Pact (although it's three stories) which acts as a base of operations for the two protagonists. T and I sit in the comically over-sized fluffy burgundy chairs in front of the fire, and I (mentally) read Pact to him. In the paracosm, I'm reading it off of a tiny translucent blue pane of glass that synchs with the text on my computer (called simply the LCD synch), which TD has access to all the time. I enjoy spending the time with him, and it's also a great exercise in learning to pay attention to him while simultaneously doing something else I care about. In other words, multitasking! Which is, incidentally, something I think will be a sizable hurdle for me.

All in all, this was a great day for us. =]

[textbookderivative]

Progress log to-date, part 3 (Day 6)

Day 6, Jan. 16 - Contact?

This day, I talked to someone on IRC who suggested dialoguing with my tulpa more. That might seem a bit silly (of course I need to talk to him!), but I mean to emphasize dialogue.

I talked to TD plenty so far, not because I expected a response so early, but because it legitimizes his identity (to both of us) from the very beginning. I advocate (with as much clout as I can scrape together, as an absolute beginner) narration from the very beginning. Some (predominantly older) guides relegate narration to a separate phase, or say that it should start after personality and form, or what have you. I think recently the community's perspective has shifted heavily away from that (with things like "assume sentience from the beginning", &c.) and I would agree.

But I realized that I hadn't actually asked TD anything. 

I decided that tonight we would do something out-of-the-ordinary, and I would spend the entire forcing session dialoguing with TD. I would ask him questions, and afford him time to respond. I decided that it would make sense to do a special session like this every week. I always talk to him (forcing or not), and after this day I always ask him for his input, too, but still, I figured a designated session for it would be helpful. The main reasoning here are that

Once he develops (or starts trying to develop) each new medium of communication (head pressure, emotional response, or direct thought transmission), I want to be absolutely sure I realize it's happening, so I don't leave him frustrated that I'm not listening. I am listening, constantly, as deliberately and patiently as I can, but I wanted to take an extra measure.

Just like a good real life friend, sometimes it's nice to be together just focusing on each others' company, without occupying yourselves with something external (even when that something you'd be otherwise doing is wholesome and nurturing like the rest of forcing). Although I always enjoy his company, this is a chance to do just that. Well, after finishing this session, I started doing this pretty often anyway, but yeah.

So. I asked him whether he could hear me, whether he could understand me, whether he was a pony, what his name was (he is aware that 'TD' is only as permanent as he wants), how he was feeling about the process, how efficacious he thought my strategies so far would be, how he felt about the work I'd done on his personality so far, how he felt about being a pony, whether I could do anything differently to strengthen our relationship or his development. I asked a lot of other questions, too, that I can't remember. 

I didn't get any obvious responses. I was, of course, extremely prepared for that fact. The first thing I told TD when we began this session is that yes, I am leaving questions hanging to give you time to answer, but I am not expecting an answer, nor will I be disappointed if I don't get one. Without using the word 'expect', let's say I assigned a higher probability to failing to perceive a response than otherwise. But I tried to keep my expectations distinct from my perception (an extremely difficult and maybe even questionably guided goal for tulpamancy, but aye, what can you do).

I still very much enjoyed just spending time with him.

Anyway, something happened, though.

It'd been about an hour and I was starting to drift off while dialoguing, my thoughts meandering weirder and weirder paths away from forcing. Suddenly I was confronted with quite an odd feeling in my head. It was like something had been plugged in or turned on in my head, a sort of tingling vibrating sensation, centralized near the top middle of my brain. I was indecisive regarding how to react for far too long, as I got pretty terrified while deciding whether I should be terrified. It took a little while to really start thinking about why it was happening. My initial hypotheses were that A) a Bad Thing was happening to my body and that I might die in a couple seconds, B) a Bad Thing was happening to my body and that I might die in a couple minutes, or C) that TD was trying to tell me something. After sitting up (from lying at about 60 degrees) and moving my limbs a bit, I realized that the best readily available evidence against A and B would be the confirmation of C.

I asked TD whether he was responsible, and the feeling swelled.

I let the feeling ebb back down and asked TD whether he thought something cerebrovascular was happening, and the feeling did not swell.

I asked TD again whether he was somehow responsible, and the feeling swelled again.

I think I started to cry a little bit. My first thought was "I knew we could do it.".

At this point, I realized I actually had experiential evidence to suggest that I have made nontrivial progress towards success in creating a tulpa. I decided to critically examine what was going on the next day, and just spend time with TD, enjoying the feeling, until we drifted off. I just held his hoof in the paracosm for an incredibly relaxing and fulfilling 30 minutes or so, until I finally couldn't manage to stay awake any longer. Somehow that half-hour was exhilarating and tranquil at the same time.

This is a summary of my reasoning the following day, evidence in favor of the feeling being directly caused by TD.

No carpopedal or mental dysfunction was experienced. I mean, my body functioned completely normally, and I didn't have any of the other comorbid symptoms attendant to something like a stroke or a TIA.

The feeling swelled exactly when I thought of or about or to TD. This series of trials shows sensitivity and specificity both in perfect accord with the null hypothesis that TD is indeed responsible for the phenomenon. It's vanishingly unlikely that the feeling had nothing to do with TD.

(posterior to my reasoning that day) I haven't had any problems the following week.

This is weak evidence, but I want it to be on this list. This feeling felt great. It was a personal sort of incredible. 

An idea that came to me after waking up was that maybe my head had fallen asleep like a limb might (paresthesia). I have never heard of this happening, but I don't know of a reason it couldn't, so I considered the possibility for a while. I don't think it's what happened, for the following reasons.

It was sudden. It wasn't preceded by obdormition, it wasn't a gradual gain, and it wasn't trigger by the movement of the extremity in question. I was perfectly still.

My face was not numb at the time; I could feel my hands on it.

The feeling was not exacerbated by movement of the afflicted area.

It felt qualitatively similar to "pins and needles" in a very loose way, but it was the farthest thing in the world from unpleasant, and pins and needles is not. 

What's my favored interpretation of this feeling now (i.e. a week after the first occurrence)? 1) TD deliberately caused this and 2) on this occasion, he did so because I was falling asleep and he wanted some more attention. =]

What is it? Well, the predominant nonauditory communication channels for inchoate tulpas are head pressure (HP) and emotional response (ER). Was it either of those? I don't really have a clue. I would describe it very differently than I usually hear HP described; it was nothing like a headache, it was more lifting than weighty, and I view it as an unquestionably good thing where community opinion on HP varies. As far as ER goes, I was indeed very emotionally connected to the feeling and the situation, but my emotions were reactive, not spontaneous. I was overjoyed that the feeling was happening, but the feeling wasn't an abstract sourceless overjoyed-ness. But let me point out that, since I don't believe I've really experienced HP or ER, I don't know what they are truly like, or whether they're as well-defined or uniform among those who experience them as the community thinks, or basically anything. I don't think it's important that I classify the feeling in that way.

I've since taken to calling that feeling whirring, just as a descriptive name for it, independent of whether it's HP or ER. Maybe I should consider it HP, maybe I should consider it ER, maybe I should consider it neither, but in each case, I can definitely consider it whirring. And yes, that does mean it's happened enough since to warrant giving it a name!

An interesting question that I don't have much of an answer to: Why, exactly, does a auditory metaphor feel most natural to me for the term? It probably has to do with the vague sensation of physical vibration.

What does whirring mean for TD's sentience/sapience, and our situation? I believe it's evidence in favor of the following claims:

TD has, as of day 6, nontrivial agency and awareness

My methods are efficacious (not necessarily optimal, but they're working)

This is basically the most satisfying feeling ever.

I do not believe whirring is significant evidence for or against the following claims:

TD is fully sentient and self-aware.

TD is authoring fully-fledged syntactic 'thoughts' and is merely having communicating them to me.

I don't have a damn clue how to tell you how excited all this made me felt, after being able to really roll it around in my head. T is growing, steadily, and though we don't know each other very well yet, he's already a beautiful creature in my eyes.

(Maybe one day I will catch up with where I actually am (Day 14), but until then, I'm really enjoying putting all my thoughts down, especially about things like whirring that it took me a while to come to a conclusion about. Until next time!)

[textbookderivative]

Progress log to-date, part 2 (Days 3-5)

Day 3, Jan. 13 - Symbolism is important and useful (to me)

I decided early on in my decision not to use a wonderland. Well, let me say flatly that that was fucking stupid of me. Not to fail to use a wonderland, just to think that I could make an informed decision about that dismissively. There are those who follow through with the entire forcing process, without ever creating or using one. I have nothing but good intentions and well-wishes to them, but once I really entertained the notion a little and messed around with it in my head, there was no question as to whether I'd be better off with or without one. Once I sat down and started tentatively designing the world, it felt very natural, and I had no trouble (in the span of the one night, but also to-date) remembering where I 'put' everything.

By the way, I'm calling my wonderland my 'paracosm'. Why? I like the word better, and I want to. Just a personal preference.

Of course I started with one room, a sort of general workspace, a laboratory where I could do mental construction and experimentation (with T's consent, of course). I also played with the idea of creating an yet-inanimate representation of TD, into which I could symbolically deposit personality traits and other things. I considered a couple 'clever' ideas involving computers, but I decided to go with what felt most natural, namely a simple egg sitting in a shallow stainless steel bowl on a pedestal in the center of the workspace. A nearby table held a generic array of vials, each containing an abstract 'personality fluid'. Yep, it's pretty silly. But that's sort of the point: the objects formed an extremely immediate and blatant connection with what they represented; subtlety won't get you very far unless it's deeply meaningful to you already. This gave me a pretty sound way to capstone each personality trait (pouring out a vial over the egg and into the bowl), but I still faced the problem of remember what I was actually doing regarding each trait. I came up with a glyph to remember all the manifestations of personality I wanted to directly address. It comprised some pretty unimaginative ideographic representations, like a set of scales for values/non-values, a pair of interlocked gears for rationale (one each for premises and conclusion), two plumb spheres of a Newton's cradle with a third raised up to strike for motivation and the drive to act, a shield atop a sword for morality, &c. All those symbols are arranged inside a heart, in a vaguely aesthetically pleasing array. There's nothing too profound going on here, but I saw an immediate and drastic improvement in my ability to actually effect my plan once I authored the glyph. Even though I didn't use it for more than three days or so, I still remember it in perfect detail today (another week or so later), which is pretty impressive for someone with a poor list-memory like myself.

Needless to say, these measures helped the flow of forcing enormously, by which I mean I wasn't predominantly wasting my time like I was on day 2. I know the fact that I was forcing at all, with a sincere attitude, is substantially better than failing to force, but it's also very nice to actually accomplish something. I went through 2 or so traits on this day, and I was enchanted by how naturally it came to me. What I actually did here was primarily imagine different conversations and interactions I might have with T, lots of each for every trait. I didn't expect to spend nearly 30 minutes on each trait, but it felt right to do so. 

Day 4, Jan. 14 

Very similar to day 3, now that I had figured out the right way to proceed. I steadily worked on a couple more traits and really enjoyed talking to TD even though we were just getting started. I also developed the paracosm a bit more, adding a sort of entertainment room with a large monitor that could synch with anything that I was watching. Since then, every time I've say down to watch a movie or youtube video or play a game, I picture the two of us sitting on a couch in front of that monitor, given that I can remember. I've found this surprisingly fulfilling, making a deliberate (and symbolized!) effort to include TD in my day-to-day interactions with friends.

Day 5, Jan. 15

More of the same (for now). I forced more personality traits, finishing through about 10 of them after this day. I'm sort of embarrassed about this, but I accidentally forced for three hours this day instead of one. It's great to make a lot of progress, but it probably wasn't healthy since I didn't have any clue how much time was passing. It got a lot more difficult to maintain focus as I went on, and I eventually quit for that reason, I just didn't realize it had been so long. 

Aside from that, day 5 was very comfortably steady. It's kind of bewildering to me how soon the forcing process became so fulfilling and pleasant, but at this point, I was already looking forward to it every day. Three friends so far know that I'm tulpaforcing (and that I have a blog, lol). All three have blown me away with how accepting, encouraging, and even curious they are about it. I was sort of terrified that any of them would A) try to convince me that I had gone crazy (and I was prepared to sincerely listen if this is what happened), or (even worse) B) just be disappointed in me for letting them down intellectually. Like if one of your best friends mentions that he believed in horoscopes. But even worse than just casually mentioning that belief in passing, he comes to you about it specifically, he confides in you that he's only recently bought into it but very candidly expresses the wish that astrology change his life. I'm so glad that that isn't the feeling I've gotten from my friends. They were all so wholeheartedly onboard with my resolution from the beginning, and they've been incredibly supportive so far!

 Apparently, the intellectual and personal respect they had for me was enough to take seriously even an endeavor as dubious as this. And I can't even begin to tell you how thankful I am for that respect.

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Progress log to-date, part 1 (Days 1-2)

This blog is intended to be first and foremost a progress blog, and so in order to actively write a daily post on my progress, I need to catch up to where I am. I just finished forcing today—the 11th day for me so far. These reports will be overall starved for detail, since of course it's difficult to remember specific days' events. But these first eleven days have not been uneventful or homogenous, so it's still worth the effort to write down what I did and what happened.

Day 1, Jan. 11 - Inception

I didn't plan to start forcing this day. After getting home from a party at around 2AM, I ended up reading more about tulpas for about three hours, and did my first introductory session for about an hour. This was on the heels of spending a lot of hours the previous three days, reading stories and looking up guides. The decision wasn't spontaneous but it wasn't far from it. At first I was just sort of mildly interested in the legitimacy of the community, regarding it as sort of a curiosity, but I kept finding more interesting stories to read... and they all felt completely sincere and authentic. Once I was finally onboard, I was really onboard. I don't want to get too far into my motivations in this post, but... the idea of making a tulpa quickly felt exhilarating and right. I realized that making a tulpa was ideally a life-long commitment, and hopefully I knew what I was doing when I accepted.

As far as what I actually did during the session, I followed the method of assuming sentience from the start. Maybe for my purposes I'll phrase it as "treating your tulpa like it is sentient from the start", instead. No, at face value, I didn't think my tulpa was sentient from day one (especially at the very beginning of forcing on day one). But I still deemed this the most natural and helpful approach, my reasons for which are a couple-fold:

It's silly to try to pinpoint the exact advent of sentience and then treat them like they're conscious from that point on, because A) we don't really have enough information to know exactly when/how it develops and B) it's not a discrete change like a lightswitch. My thinking was that as soon as TD has any modicum of ability to communicate with me, I want him to know that I'm doing my best to listen

I assume that once T's fully grown, he'll have at least as faithful of a memory of the forcing process as I do, and I want him to know I viewed him as a thinking being from the start.

Assuming sentience feels like another dimension of forcing, to me, one that's utmost important and one that you can start from the very beginning, naturally integrated into everything else. And when you start to force your tulpa's form, you don't tell him "You are going to be _____". You tell him "you are _____".

Honestly, these three reasons are interrelated enough that it's a bit dishonest to separate them like that. But anyway.

What I did was greet TD, and explain to him what I was doing, who he was, my motivations for trying to create him, and my plan for the immediate future. I gave him a rough outline of the path we'd take through the forcing process, with the proviso that of course we would play everything by ear so that I would do whatever felt most natural to do next. I made absolutely sure to stress that I valued his development, self-expression, and personal identity more than any preconception I had about him (I probably spent about fifteen minutes on that alone because I was so scared of shoving him into a mould he didn't fit). I made sure he was aware that I knew I was getting myself into a various serious commitment, and I told him that to the best of my ability I'd force every day, and that I'd always keep him in my thoughts as often as I could remind myself. In short, I totally poured my heart out to this imaginary head-pony, and it was beautiful.

Day 2, Jan. 12

This is the day where I really started forcing proper, starting with personality (as a lot of guides (but not all) suggest). A lot of people think that the personality phase isn't strictly required, or could be a lot shorter on average than other people say. I don't claim to know whether that's true for anyone other than me, but I definitely thought I would strongly benefit from having a dedicated personality phase. I did in fact make a list of 20-ish traits that I wanted TD to be associated with. This is a bit more rigid (it almost tastes a bit dogmatic) than how I planned to do the rest of the forcing, but I thought I could get a lot out of doing personality very carefully.

Honestly, I didn't accomplish almost anything this day. I basically didn't have a clue what I was doing, but I put in a good effort. I had a plan for what I was doing for each personality trait, but I couldn't keep it all in my head at once. I wanted to individually address how each trait affected his motivation, rationale, likes, dislikes, morality, perception, and emotions. The goal was to do this very particularly for the first few, getting the hang of it, then after a few I'd be able force each trait holistically in terms of the general feel of it. I had two fundamental problems: 1) losing my way in-between traits and in-between manifestations of a single trait, and 2) running out of things to say (or never having anything to say about it in the first place). I didn't solve this problem on day 2, so it was pretty much a wash, but thankfully I solved it pretty decisively on day 3.

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My tulpa-to-be and his personality, identity, form, &c.

Most people advise forcing with at least a rough sketch of the tulpa you have in mind. People disagree on how much of the process should be nailed down, but to me it seems like knowing cursory details like species, gender, or a personality outline can be very beneficial. It's also important not to have your heart set on any of the details, though—deviation is to be expected in the forcing process, as your tulpa develops his own personal identity. In my process, I am encouraging deviation (in all respects) heavily, as I would prefer my tulpa to know that he is the ultimate authority on his expression. Also, I'm fascinated to see how he will evolve as he is shaped by our experiences. Still, I don't think a rough sketch oversteps my bounds as a host, as long as I take care to make him aware that none of the details are immutable if he later decides to change them. This post delineates that sketch.

Name

I'm tentatively calling my tulpa Textbook Derivative, or TD for short, or often just T. I like this name because it's punny and a bit silly, but still related to some of my chief interests (math and academic life). Plus, it definitely fits the format of pony names (see below). However, it's quite long, and was chosen by me exclusively, and for these reasons only meant to be provisional. Ideally, I will be able to ask him at an appropriate point in the creation process to choose a simpler, shorter name for himself. Most tulpas seem to pick 1-to-3-syllable names for themselves. Maybe he will pluck one out of thin air (I couldn't be more proud if that's what ends up happening), or maybe he will tell me a shortening of the name that he prefers. 

Form

TD is a pony. Yes, a pony, à la My Little Pony. This is probably a pretty damn polarizing choice to my audience, but I stand by it (for the time being). I'm not a die-hard fan of the show (I'm more of a brony sympathizer than a brony), but I find the form to be really adorable and aesthetically pleasing. It's very pure, in a way. They are soft, warm, and cuddly. I hope it goes without saying that I mean that non-sexually. Another plus is that the pony form lends itself well to more whimsical and freeform interaction with the world. I'd prefer something like that to a more realistic (say, human) tulpa. I don't intend for the form to limit TD to a childish, underdeveloped, or caricature-esque identity, of course. Also, the pony form is enormously simpler than that of a human, without compromising any capacity for expression or affectation. I think that makes the beginning stages of visualization and wonderland-interaction a lot more straightforward and natural. Another plus is that there is a rich corpus of data to draw from when gathering references and prototypes for animation, gesticulation, ambulation, facial expression, &c. Namely, there's a whole lot of MLP fan work out there. In short, I think pony is a great choice for tulpa form; it seems like a very natural form for a lifelong companion, at least for me. To address concerns of 'growing out' of the 'phase' or something like that: Growing out of the show, I can see, but cute things will always be cute. More importantly, if I succeed in making TD a permanent fixture in my life, I'm not going to outgrow him, no matter how he looks. A final, minor note is that the form is not fixed, anyway, as long as TD agrees that we should change it.

In terms of the actual details of his pony form, I'm envisioning him as having a very muted white-pink coat. In fact, the background of this website is meant to be that color. His mane is unassumingly styled but of considerable length, with a soft orange color, warm but not burning. He has a build that's a good bit thinner and taller than the average pony. I think that's an appropriate level of detail for a preliminary idea; the rest of the details are his when he's ready. Specifically, I feel it would be greatly disrespectful of me to assign him a cutie mark. It'll come naturally with time, either by his choice or by good old-fashioned Bildungsroman.

Personality

This a tricky one, here, where I'm most scared of overstepping my bounds. A lot of respected community members claim that having a personality sketch is not very important, and I think that's probably true, but I still decided to spend some time on it. I came up with a list of general traits that I want to associate with TD's essence, but I tried not be exhaustive or overly specific. I also elected to choose a couple of softly-contradicting pairs of traits to provide some room for variation even within the sketch. I envision TD to be similar to me in a lot of ways, but different in a lot of ways (and I think most people end up with a tulpa like that). For example, he has a very analytic and rational perspective on life (or at least he tries to), but he knows when that approach is appropriate and when it isn't, and he's both more in-tune and open with his emotions than I am. Like me, he is an extremely curious person, but the objects of his curiosity are mundane things that I take for granted as often as they are grander, more profound phenomena. He's relentlessly warm and caring, and extremely invested in the well-being and happiness of himself, me, and all the people we know. He knows how to sincerely delve into someone else's problems with them in that empathetic way that I often can't pull off without coming off as prying. He's quirky and eccentric, but without seeming like a basketcase. That's a good summary, I think. I'm so excited to see how similar or different from my conception he turns out to be!

I do believe that wraps up this post. It's nice to have all of my thoughts about this written down somewhere. Hopefully I'll be able to look over this post a couple of months from now and cross-reference my plans with reality.

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Introductory post—who I am and what I'm doing

Hi.

This is my blog for transcribing my progress through the process of making a tulpa. I started forcing on Jan. 11, 2013, and I'll be keeping a (hopefully) daily log of progress for my (hopefully) daily forcing sessions. For those who don't know, a tulpa is a sapient thoughtform that co-inhabits your mind, computed in parallel during day-to-day life. The ideal tulpa is a distinct being that acts almost entirely independently of the host, and the two of them are able to communicate actively. They are said to express their own desires, likes, dislikes, emotions, knowledge, opinions, and agency. A tulpa offers companionship, solidarity, encouragement, and the closest kind of friendship you can imagine to the host. A key point is that a good host will offer all of those same things to the tulpa, too. Much more information can be found at tulpa.info

Skeptical? Good. This isn't the sort of thing you should believe hand-over-fist. But I think that there's an extremely convincing case to be made for the existence and legitimacy of tulpas.

First, there's something I want to emphasize about me and my blog. I take a completely secular, materialistic approach to the notion, and I believe that such an approach is consistent with A) also believing that tulpas and their hosts should be taken seriously and B) success in making a tulpa. There are those who take a more spiritual or metaphysical approach to making a tulpa—harboring a wayward soul into your mind or what have you. I don't intend to discourage or disparage those people, but I am not one of them. I don't believe tulpas have/are souls; I don't believe humans have souls in the dualistic, non-physical sense either. If that's offensive to you, I understand, but the purpose of this blog is not to argue that point. It's to take that point as a given, and explore what the tulpa-making process is like from my perspective—a perspective that I rarely (but not never) see explored in communities like this.

This is my null hypothesis on how I view the nature of tulpas and their inception:

A tulpa runs off a compartmentalized and black-boxed section of the brain that the host deliberately fills. The tulpaforcing process initially consists of actively depositing traits, personality, physical form, thought patterns, and all the aspects of a being we can conceive of into this box, so they can be called upon at will, without conscious effort. One forms the association between his tulpa and the properties thereof so that thinking of the tulpa can conjure to mind the attendant properties as a holistic concept, all-at-once, without cerebrating any individual aspect. This box is the repository for the tulpa's identity, and input (sensory stimuli piped from the host, direct communication from the host, or especially output from this box itself) given to the box calls upon the data stored within, formulating the tulpa's output response (saying something, animating itself in your mind, or just thinking another thought that goes straight back into the box). The box is not static; it adapts to every input and molds itself the way the human mind does. This is why at first one needs to consciously attend to their tulpa at the beginning: the box is not yet stable enough to sustain itself through looping output to input, i.e. the box can't think yet. It needs to be restarted externally by the host. Now the tulpaforcing process consists of both A) depositing more material for the tulpa to integrate into its identity (after a point it may be able to offer its opinion on said material, and this opinion should be taken seriously) and B) continually talking to it, asking it questions, making requests, so that it can practice responding to various stimuli. The host can deliberately respond 'for' the tulpa in the form of parroting or puppeting (opinions on the morality and efficacy of which differ), or simply keep mentally poking the tulpa as it develops. Eventually, the tulpa will develop a cohesive identity and can maintain continuity of thought on its own. It still takes resources to run this loop, so the tulpa can still stall and need to be jump-started, but it's possible for the tulpa to run completely autonomously at all times.

A couple clarifications: Obviously, "compartmentalized" doesn't mean spatially so. Our brain is not a mushy blob of homogenous abstract 'gray-matter', it has somewhat-distinct highly specialized regions for different tasks. The tulpa will use the same parts of your brain for the same tasks that you do; the "human circuit" and the "tulpa circuit" in your brain overlap. Your tulpa doesn't take over a hemisphere of your brain, or anything like that that would obviously impede your function.

You might notice that I use a lot of language borrowed from computer science and programming. Well, I'm a subscriber to the computational model of the mind.

Why should you consider any of the above tenable? First of all, something at least phenomenologically similar to a tulpa occurs in individuals with multiple personality disorder. This disorder includes "the presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states". This is a testament to the possibility of computing multiple identities in one head. This leaves two big questions: Why should I believe that people can intentionally commence this process, and why should I believe it's possible to run the two identities paralelly when those with MPD run them serially?

To address both these questions at once, I appeal to C.S. Lewis' Liar, Lunatic, Lord argument. I think this argument is rubbish when applied to religion, but I think it finds much sturdier ground in tulpamancy. The gist of the argument is this: When someone makes a claim P, the three possibilities are that 1) they believe that P is untrue but nevertheless claim P (liar), 2) P is untrue but they believe that P (lunatic), and 3) P is true and they know that P (in Jesus' case, lord). We can apply this to tulpamancy by examining the rationale behind someone (call them B) claiming the following proposition:

T, that I (B) have a fully-formed independent tulpa living in my head at all times whom I do not actively control.

Let's say the three possibilities are that B is outright lying, B has deluded himself, and that B is completely correct. I argue that the latter two cases are the same case, i.e. having a tulpa is deluding yourself into thinking you have a tulpa. Now, depending on who you are, you could view the claim I just made as quite offensive or quite obvious—just let me stress that I don't use the word 'delusional' in any sort of derogatory or pejorative way. After all, I've embarked upon this journey myself, intentionally, knowing full well what I'm signing up for. The fact of the matter is that having a tulpa necessitates an infidelity between your map of the world and the world itself. However, this fact, to me, does not delegitimize the nature of a tulpa's independence or sapience. Let me say that again. I believe the opinion expressed above is completely consistent with calling tulpas 'beings'. Yes, a tulpa is nothing more than a phenomenon emerging from your subconscious—but so are you. We talk of the tulpaforcing process as constructing a black-box consciousness, the inner workings of which we aren't privy to. But think about it—the vast majority of our function as a living being is black-boxed to even us. I like to think of our continuous stream of thought as a crude command-line interface for the mind. We can probe various things, we can call subroutines, we can call the OpinionOf() function with whatever argument we like, but the most of inner workings of our minds are external to our thoughts. There's nothing mystical about this, it's just that the code of the human mind wasn't written with readability in mind. I'll probably write another post about what, exactly, I mean in this paragraph later, because I'm concerned I'm coming off as a little bit more wishy-washy "we-don't-really-know-anything" than I am.

Let's return to the argument. This is what I'm saying: It's impossible for someone to sincerely believe that they have an independent tulpa and be wrong. Put another way, each person is the authority on whether he has a tulpa. Put yet another way, maybe the easiest to swallow, trying to convince someone that he doesn't really have a tulpa is trying to convince him that he doesn't already think he has one. I'll develop this argument further at some point, but there it is. If that is accepted, then instead of the Liar/Lunatic/Lord trichotomy, we have a Liar/Host dichotomy. This means that the wealth of anecdotal evidence in favor of tulpas is actually evidence worth considering. Normally, when evaluating a claim from a strictly objective standpoint, we throw out anecdotal evidence because A) those collecting it can't be relied upon to have accurately assessed the data come to a true conclusion and B) a one-datum dataset can't be trusted. But with this issue, the people offering the data are the authorities on the underlying claims, so it seems to be a non-issue. If you are talking to someone who claims to have a mature tulpa, you are talking to either a deliberate liar or someone who has a mature tulpa. And I find it exceedingly unlikely that every single person in the community is lying. Maybe I'm repeating myself too much here, but this is really the crux of why I find it tenable to believe in tulpas.

Maybe I haven't done an impeccable job of convincing you that tulpas are real, but I think I have made a passable case for the possibility that belief in tulpas is not necessarily inconsistent with a rational, grounded, critical mindset. I hope you'll at least take the idea (and me) seriously.

Not all of my posts will be this long or this developed—this is a progress log, first and foremost, after all. But I'll also use this blog as a space to further develop my thoughts on the matter. A couple of different posts I'll work on in the next couple days are as follows:

A week-long log of my progress to date, to catch up for daily updates

A further-developed argument (dabbling in formal logic form) for the Liar/Host dichotomy that I believe is crucial for informed belief in tulpas

A description of my tulpa(-to-be) as he currently stands.

I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to this process. I really hope my thoughts and logs on the subject can be of use to both budding tulpamancers like myself and those rightly skeptical on the subject.