Telling when you have a tulpa

If you are resorting to a guide with a title such as this than you are probably pretty familiar with the entire process of creating a tulpa. You know about how to make a personality, you know what forcing is, you know how to put yourself in a wonderland with relative ease. You have found that despite all this knowledge, despite hours of forcing, despite reading every scrap of information you can find, you really honestly aren't sure what to expect from a tulpa.

Alien feelings? A person whispering into your ear while you cross the street? The feeling of a walkie talkie? Some threads speak of tulpa as if they are simply other people, yet other threads speak of them as if there is hardly a distinguishing factor between the tulpa and the host. So what gives? When is it that you really do have something that you can confidently state is a tulpa? When are you or aren't you parroting?

Some who have tried to create a tulpa seem to do incredibly well with it. They are out talking about how talkative their tulpa is in the first week! Some take less than a few hours! It's obvious that you, the troubled reader of this guide, must be doing something horribly wrong, right? No.

Like all human efforts and questions, some things will just «click» for some people. Be it from prior experience, natural disposition, or just plain old peer pressure, some people hit the track running. You probably hit the track going about twenty miles an hour and with a broken leg. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, you can end up doing much better in the long run because of the foundation you are forced to build.

Not all tulpa through the community have voices that are even close to consistently alien/foreign feeling. Even some of the people who have been at this for quite a while have been known to have moments of doubt. The process of creating a tulpa is not something that is just accomplished through an hour of forcing. Outside of certain “breakthrough” moments that drive you to new prospects, progress in the field of tulpa is incredibly gradual. Even If you may not be noticing any improvement, it is almost definitely there in some form. What you will get out of tulpa will be exactly what you put in combined with your own natural affinity, nothing more, nothing less.

The only thing you really can do at a stage like this is to just keep at the process that got you here. Do not shut down or shut out that little voice in your head. Cater to that voice. Humor it. Clearly, as you are wondering if some of your thoughts are those of your tulpa, something is going right. Continue to force, continue to develop the personality of your tulpa, continue to work on trying to think of your tulpa throughout the day. All of these things build and reinforce the idea in your head that a thought no longer is a simple, one dimensional thought. Instead, you create the idea that there is some identity, some personality, some tulpa, that can be doing the “thinking”. The stronger that identity, the easier and more often thoughts will be assigned to it.

What you are experiencing is the beginning of your ability to recognize and order a thought as being the thoughts of your tulpa rather than yourself. More often than not that thought will feel like its origin lies with you rather than a tulpa. That is absolutely normal and expected. For now, you are very likely bad at the process of ordering thoughts, and you are are almost definitely going to continue to screw up along the way.

You may find it helpful to spend some time just trying to recognize your own thought processes as you go throughout the day. It is amazing sometimes how quickly the mind can work, and if you pay a little more attention you may start to notice that you tend to think about two to five sentences worth of thoughts across the course of one normal language-based thought.

Learning to pay attention to this level of thinking is very helpful when dealing with doubt issues such as this. I wouldn’t so much recommend to attempt to endlessly be in control of every thought you make. However, being able to pay attention to that level of thought is often very good for assessing and realizing what trains of thought or mindsets lead to you feeling like your tulpa isn’t exactly not-you. Those trains of thought can be avoided while forcing for the sake of fostering progress, and then examined later on when you are not trying to actually communicate.

Overall you should expect that as you force the voice will become stronger. Along the line, there will be doubts. It is likely that you will never find a point at which you never have doubts of if what you heard was you or your tulpa. That is normal, that is expected. However, as time slowly passes, the doubts become less. You probably won't notice it at all after any single day, but you may just find that one day things “click” and it really feels like you are talking to a voice in your head.

You may even go so far as to call it a tulpa.

Sentience confirming/anti puppeting guide

You need to let go of your fears of parroting/puppeting at least for this. Let them do whatever they want and tell them «Surprise me!».

It might seem too easy to be true, but this guide actually works, because the tulpa will surprise their host and thus prove their sentience to them.

I hope this method helps many people to let go of their worries about puppeting/parroting.

Possible Method For Faster Sentience

Please note, the following is not meant to be unquestionable but rather to inspire anyone with differing experiences to write a similar guide listing their own experiences so there is something for everyone. It's also meant to be more inspirational than factual so please try to interpret it as you will rather than simply «following» it. I only hope to make a broader field for forcing rather than simply telling everyone to «follow their own path». Especially since, for some reason, a lot of people interpret everything as literally as possible around here.

I notice people have trouble with believing in their tulpa during creation. They can’t really get it to do much of anything, and people just tell them “believe”. But they don’t exactly know “what” to “believe”. They just sit there waiting for their tulpa to talk while “believing”. As I’d like to set up a simple analogy, you don’t win a game just by “believing”, you sort of do it by at least having a vague idea of how the game works.

Now, what a lot of people (or at least I) have come to realize after creating a tulpa, is that they are sort of a personality construct, a sorting machine if you will, for unconscious thoughts, similar to us. When people try to “believe”, they just wait for the tulpa to move, without realizing how that’s supposed to happen, or worse, they think they’re puppeting due to the tulpa using the host’s unconscious thoughts.

When a tulpa moves for the first time, and the host is curious why they knew that would happen, it’s not due to puppeting. The tulpa is gaining sentience, and is using the host’s unconscious thoughts, mainly the easiest ones to grab, which is why the host feels like they’re doing it. During this early creation process, the tulpa feeds off the host’s immediate thoughts like a newborn, and both minds are very intertwined during this process. Now, this does not immediately mean “wait for the tulpa do start collecting thoughts”, though you can try to feed it thoughts somehow. Perhaps puppet it for a moment to see if it can pick up the idea. Though I’m not outright saying you should do that. Simply do what feels right in the context of getting the tulpa to start using your thoughts. But it will take a while if you just “wait”.

So, with this in mind, even if it’s false, if the host knows what to expect instead of having blind faith, it might speed up sentience much quicker. I only realized this myself after my first tulpa was gaining sentience, and this revelation pretty much finished up the process of it gaining sentience. Perhaps if the personnel creating a tulpa realized this before the enlightenment process, it could speed it up much faster.

Of course, it’s up to the host to believe whatever they wish. Again, I just like this better than simply stating they should simply believe, that’s incredibly vague.

Counting games

Due to a while's struggle with having my own tulpa think separately from myself, we felt the need to come up with ways to help her think for herself. These are methods that can be done both passively and actively, and good for times in which you need to work in short times or when sitting down to force is not an available option.

Method 1

The first is simple and easy. Simply lay out a number of items (preferably between 10-20 of them) before you. These can be cards, dominoes, or any other small item you can find. Ensure that you can see all of them at once while staring directly at the middle of the objects. The objects should be spread out to an extent, preferably not overlapping. It is important not to count how many you are laying out, as this negates the process entirely.

Now that the objects are before you, stare in to the center of them and explain to your tulpa what is going on. Ask them to count the unknown number of objects before you and then give you the number. Do not participate in the counting alongside them, simply stare and clear your mind. If you find yourself unable to clear your mind, occupy it with something simple such as spelling, reciting a poem, or simple math. Leave your mind open enough to hear your tulpa's response.

Try not to move your eyes from the center in order to allow focus to be given to your tulpa. Rely on them to count and give them a minute or so to do so. After they let you know they are finish or decide that their time is up, ask them how many objects their were and then count them yourself. It is optional to keep track of how close they are to accuracy each time to track growth. With this method, I find that my own tulpa generally gets it right 4/5 times with almost no previous abilities to parallel process.

An alternative to this method is to lay out a random number of objects on one side, then placing a divider beside the objects, and laying out a different number of objects on the other side of the divider. Then , as you count the amount of objects on the left side, you must rely on the tulpa to count the amount of objects on the right side. For more of a challenge, set a time limit of your comfort and gradually attempt to work down to lesser amounts of time to count the objects.

Method 2

This method is better for times in which you don't have as much time to spare, you're constantly moving and having to divert your focus, or there are no objects at your disposal. It shares close similarity with the first method.

Look around you for a word, preferably one with several letters, though do not count the letters yourself. If you're in class, look at the posters, if you're outside, look at the signs. If there are no words around you, use a random word generator such as this one: http://www.wordgenerator.net/random-word-generator.php

After you have the word, simply ask your tulpa how many letters are in the word and then count them for yourself. The tulpa shouldn't require as much time to count as they would with the objects in method 1. Ask them to report the number of letters back to you and then count them yourself. This can also turn in to a back and forth game by telling your tulpa a word, having them tell you the amount of letters in it, and then having them tell you a word, and having you tell them the number of letters in it.

If you're finding it difficult to keep your mind busy as they count the letters in whichever word, you can use the option of giving yourself and your tulpa a word and each of you having to count the number of letters in the word. This allows your tulpa to think for itself while your own mind is busied.

- - -

I find this to be more of a basic tip for tulpamancer with tulpas still in the earlier stages. It requires small amounts of vocalization, allowing younger, more quiet tulpae to participate and help their parallel processing skills to grow as well as older tulpas suffering from the same issue. The methods have proved very effective for us, and I hope the same shows with other tulpamancers.

The way in which these tactics assist the tulpa is simple. It forces the mind of the tulpa to work on its own, without any input from yours. Due to your conscious mind being busied with something else, it requires the tulpa to use your subconscious thoughts and to form their own thoughts on what is happening. It is a simple method to build up the parallel processing of the tulpa before they move on to more complicated tests and tricks. By forcing the tulpa to think for themselves when counting, they no longer feed off of the conscious mind.