What is a Tulpa?

Alright, so it's time to re write this a bit, just because I feel like I didn't go in depth enough describing what a tulpa is, as opposed to what it is not. Anyways, this is just a quick update on this entire thing, and of course I'm leaving some things from the old version behind. Note that the following is all about a psychological interpretation of tulpae.

What a tulpa is has two main parts, the first part is sentience, and the second part is hallucination/ projection.

The sentience is basically a product of your unconscious mind; you create by fleshing out through personality work and narration. You're basically taking an already existing part of your mind, and defining it until it becomes what you experience as sentient. Now the tulpa is not actually its own sentient being, the tulpa is a product of your mind that you are experiencing as sentient. Really, there is no difference between the two, since the outcome for you is the same. That being said, by defining these personality attributes and talking to your own mind until it is able to talk back you're creating a false personality within your mind- one that is not a personification of your subconscious, but rather a being built on it.

This sort of sentience entails: autonomous thinking, decision making skills, the tulpa having its own set of likes, dislikes, pleasures and emotions, the tulpa having different thoughts from you, and the like. The tulpa will be able to talk and function on its own. But note that because the tulpa is a being of your subconscious, they are always within your mind, and do not exist elsewhere. Even if they have a body that is merely a projection of a form that is being controlled by them from the mind. Really the form is NOT the construct, the sentience is. The body is not really for their benefit, it's mostly for yours.

Note that you cannot have a proper tulpa without working on personality and narrating. You have to give time for sentience to develop, or else you'll end up with something known as a servitor: basically just a form with no sentience controlling it, a hologram. However, you can have a tulpa without a form; they are more optional.

The next, part of what a tulpa is, is the form. Basically, you make a form of your choosing to allow the sentience to control, which you will experience as a separate being. Of course the tulpa will still exist within your mind, but, they will be controlling this form which further personifies them and allows you to interact with them in the real environment. You're making this form within your mind, working on it so intensely that you are able (after a grand amount of time) to impose them on your environment and have the tulpa be able to control the form.

That's a basic explanation of what a tulpa is.

Now I would like to debunk some myths regarding tulpae and innate mental illness. The first one I'm going to tackle is Dissociative Identity Disorder, formally known as Multiple Personality Disorder. This disorder is characterized by time gaps where the person doesn't know what happened, or where time has passed and the person has apparently done something and not remembered. The other major symptom also includes other ‘personalities' or consciousnesses taking over your body. The disorder is caused by traumatic events, usually in childhood.

Here's why creating a tulpa is not DID. You can't manifest DID by belief and imposition. Alternate personalities are within your mind, not imposed on your surroundings in a vessel of sorts. Tulpae cannot take control of your body if you do not will it. Tulpae (even in a possession state, which is purely theoretical at the time of writing) would not cause you to black out while you're in control. An alternate personality depends on your body to have its own form. Note that you cannot have MPD and subsequently make it into a tulpa.

Secondly, a tulpa is not schizophrenia. Some people like to call it self enforced schizophrenia but this in and of itself is an oxymoron. You can't give yourself schizophrenia. People ask about it on /x/ all the time, and are met with utter disgust. You can't give yourself a mental illness you're born with. That would involve drastically changing the chemical make up of your brain.

You can apply this thinking to most mental illnesses people inquire about. A large chunk of insanity manifests in not knowing that you're insane. You realize that your tulpa is part of your mind, and you treat is as such. Insanity ensues when the lines between reality and fantasy blur. By looking at things from an explainable stand point you keep your perspective and see that the tulpa is just a vessel and representation of your subconscious and its interworking mechanisms.

When you make a tulpa, some people are foggy or mislead about what you're actually doing to your mind. First, you begin the sensory excursion, and with repetition, you can imagine it perfectly. Nothing is so strange about making an image very familiar to your mind's eye. Then, you start talking to it. When you don't create responses for the tulpa, your mind actually begins to see the thing you're sending the messages to as another being. This is when it experiences itself subjectively.

The part of your subconscious you have sectioned off then becomes to take a shape of its own, furthering the schism. Your tulpa is now sentient. After, when you begin to impose the tulpa, you're playing on the sensory details you've already been focusing on until this point. You were imagining them in your head before, now you're actually enforcing them on your senses.

So, in short, that's a basic breakdown of what a tulpa is.

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