Tulpa-Assisted Advanced Symbolic Externalisation
Introduction
I'm a real sucker for scientific sounding names. To summarise in a sentence: As tulpamancy in general is convincing yourself that some of your thoughts are not your own, this method is convincing yourself that your anxieties belong to someone else. In certain therapies, “symbolic externalisation” is used. This is where a therapist or counsellor will ask you to project your anxieties/fears/grief/anger on to a symbolic object (common ones are sand, or water), and then to discard/forgive/destroy the object. In the case of water, you can do all sorts of things. You can imagine all of your anxieties going in to it as some sort of a cleansing ritual, and then you can pour it down a drain. I believe, too, some magickal practitioners, like to use this method. Much like tulpamancy itself, it matters not if you want to put a psychological coat of paint on the method, or a magickal one.
Discovery and Development of the Proposed Technique
The idea here was to take this powerful method used by many, and to strengthen it with tulpamancy. I found this usage almost by accident, as I had put a picture on my wall which I look to when I feel anxious, projecting my anxieties on to it. Usually, I am never an anxious person, though something happened a few months before I put up the photo which made me often quite anxious. Simply looking at the photo, projecting my anxiety on to this photo of an anxious man helped greatly. I would imagine how anxious he felt, and the many severe reasons he had for feeling so anxious. Essentially I was spending a good deal of time imagining a person. I wanted to extend this method with tulpamancy.
The tulpa’s “blueprint” was essentially very well-formed already, as the man in the picture was a fictional character that had some something terrible, and he was sitting there anxiously waiting for the consequences of his actions. This made it exceedingly easy to form the tulpa. As all I had to o was base it off him.
Why the Technique is Effective
It is my belief that the technique works as well as it does primarily because you are interacting with a tulpa that (1) is much more anxious than yourself and (2) has good reason to be anxious (plus the additional anxieties that you shift to it). Essentially, you feel better because (1) look at this sucker he really messed it up, what I’m anxious about isn’t so bad and (2) I’m sending all my anxiety over to him. As horrible as it sounds, it always feels good to compare yourself to somebody else and see you’re doing better.
The second reason the technique is more effective than the ‘standard’ one is that it can be done at any time and in any place, and it does not require any materials or ritual to be performed. The whole reason the standard technique uses some external thing like water or sand is precisely because it is external. The only way to shift your emotions to something external without anything external is by convincing yourself that some part of you is external. And hence, the tulpa. I also think the simple fact that the thing you’re shifting the emotions to is essentially conscious must help, as well. You can ‘see’ the effect of your shifting, this way, in that the tulpa becomes more anxious. The sand on the other hand seems ambivalent as ever.
Applying the Technique to Your Own Practice
See the article in the tulpa playground!
On The Ethics of the Technique
Essentially, I believe the technique to be ethical because, to me, it really does seem that this tulpa stops existing once I am no longer focusing on it. The word tulpa in and of itself may not be exactly correct, as it does not really ever take agency in the world, or in my eyes have any sort of will of its own. Perhaps servitor may be a more fitting word, even though it doesn’t really perform a task. Point is it feels separate from me, though, and that to me is the main thing about tulpamancy – convincing yourself that some of your thoughts are not your own. (If it’s not already up I hope to expand on my views on tulpa ethics soon in the philosophy section)
Happy tulping love you all <3