Tulpa.info - metaphysics

It may help to calm down. It's possible the stress is making things harder

12:12 AM

Y'all have been quiet for some time. Tell me, how have your meditation practices been coming along?

I have attempted meditation but I don't really practice it. Due to my lack of experience I can only go for maybe 15 minutes and it's good for brain frying among other things. As far as wonderlanding goes, we actually made some progress on that front. I have a rough draft for a guide but I feel it's somehow incomplete. I want to practice wonderlanding with Gray more before committing to a draft I share with people

Luminesce: Meditation isn't inherently metaphysical, so people just talk about it in #tulpa-discussion or the general chats even (edited)

3:14 AM

We used to have a #meditation but it was very inactive, so ^

Hmm I thought if I posted that question in the metaphysical channel I'd get metaphysical answers. For me, there are a wide variety of meditation practices, some that have more of a metaphysical bent than others.

10:21 AM

Tragically, I see this channel is more inactive than I had anticipated

10:23 AM

I suppose I'll read the backlog for ~~a month or so~~ cough several months to get a better feel of the common nature of the discussion here lately (edited)

Lusovius

Hmm I thought if I posted that question in the metaphysical channel I'd get metaphysical answers. For me, there are a wide variety of meditation practices, some that have more of a metaphysical bent than others.

Luminesce: That is true, and the point of the metaphysics channel here & board on the forum (edited)

10:28 AM

Though, the reason they're separated from normal discussion is a lot of people (and the intended thought for discussion on Tulpa.info) don't really like metaphysical explanations for things, which also means the metaphysics channel here isn't very active

10:29 AM

It's here because we didn't want to flat out ban metaphysical talk entirely, is all

I appreciate your attempts to illuminate the nature of this channel and the server as a whole. But I am somewhat aware of this. That is to say I'm not new. Back when I was active here this channel had somewhat of a near daily activity. Though from my brief scroll up through the backlog I found it didn't take long before I was in October of last year.

10:32 AM

Activity has therefore dropped rather below my expectations, for this channel

Sorry, but the metaphysical sections of the Discord and forum aren't things we strive to keep active - if people find other communities more conducive to metaphysical discussion, that is A-OK with us

Am I to assume that I should refrain from sparking metaphysical talks of any sort within this channel to stay true to the intended thought for discussions within the server? Instead reserving this channel for those rare moments when the metaphysics surfaces in other channels and is thus brought here for containment?

No no, you can talk about whatever in this channel any time

10:36 AM

Though if you actively seek discussion on metaphysical subjects, I don't think I would personally recommend only looking here, since this community isn't focused around it (edited)

So you would not find it repulsive if I somewhat daily said one thing or another in this channel for my own amusement so long as I don't expect to drag regulars into this channel and it's otherworldly claims

Luminesce: I hope I'm not scaring people into taking things too seriously because I'm an admin now. I generally still intend to talk like a normal member (edited)

10:38 AM

Anything is fine as long as it's following Discord and server rules

Oho, a new promotion then! Congratulations on your rising, sir or ma'am

10:38 AM

10:39 AM

(Or they, them, it or other pronoun.)

You can't be blamed for incorrectly guessing someone who hasn't made their pronouns clear

10:40 AM

I'm male but my tulpas are female, though I don't care enough to specify in a bio or something

10:40 AM

I personally just say "They/them" until I know someone's pronouns for sure

My my it's lovely to make your acquaintance. I see you take your role seriously here in the server.

Just here to help people/make everything run smoothly, as I have been for 9 years (though only volunteered to help as an actual staff member recently)

Ooh very good. It's a wonder I don't remember you if you've been active for that long

Luminesce: I strongly prefer the forum to realtime chat (edited)

10:47 AM

I was even tempted to recommend you try making a thread in the Metaphysics board of the forum instead of here, since usually threads there (however rare they are) get a reply or two, but I didn't since I know more than half those repliers are non-meta-minded individuals just replying for helping-someone's-sake (like myself)

10:48 AM

I'll leave a link for anyone reading anyways, though - at the very least they may find something fun to read

Hmm, yes I see. Why bother with discord at all then? Has the activity in the forum dropped to all-time lows?

https://community.tulpa.info/forum/16-metaphysics-and-parapsychology/ (edited)

Lusovius

Hmm, yes I see. Why bother with discord at all then? Has the activity in the forum dropped to all-time lows?

~~well the activity is neither here nor there...~~ I was asked to help since there was a lack of active staff. Now there is not (:

1

Oh I notice this channel doesn't have any pins. If nothing else, do you think that link would be worthy of pinning in this channel since this discord is a direct offshoot from the forum?

10:50 AM

It would certainly make finding it again easy for me grin

Reisen pinned a message to this channel. 1/5/2023 10:51 AM

Luminesce: That's a very good idea, actually... Maybe we should pin the respective forum board in every channel (edited)

That's an interesting idea! It would certainly help tie the discord more firmly to the forum in terms of ease of access. I'm sure, with the disboard bumps being used, that people are joining the discord without ever having been to the forum (people like me, hehe)

Reisen

I was even tempted to recommend you try making a thread in the Metaphysics board of the forum instead of here, since usually threads there (however rare they are) get a reply or two, but I didn't since I know more than half those repliers are non-meta-minded individuals just replying for helping-someone's-sake (like myself)

And not to worry, I am in several other metaphysical servers. It's just that...I prefer servers that are less active because I enjoy keeping up with the chat. It is difficult to find the time to catch up to channels in greatly active servers

Definitely if you like slower participation, the forum's metaphysics board should work fine (edited)

10:57 AM

Glance at the number of replies to each thread on the board

10:57 AM

Since this place seems to have quieted down I will spend more time here... Aha, I don't know. I was going to check it out later...Oh! How kind, you've screenshotted it for me

11:02 AM

I confess I'm mostly here because of Ranger poking me in...another server we share

Lusovius

Hmm I thought if I posted that question in the metaphysical channel I'd get metaphysical answers. For me, there are a wide variety of meditation practices, some that have more of a metaphysical bent than others.

I'm sorry, but I never practiced meditating in a magical sense. I think the closest thing we did to doing something "magical" is we attempted to astral project following a wikiHow guide and we failed

You're fine. I did want to ask you how you go about your normal meditation practice, since everyone seems to have their own definition for what is meditation

Totally fair When we meditate, we sit down and try to focus on counting numbers (usually 1-5). We try to say the numbers in mindvoice in slightly different ways to make sure it's not being said automatically and we also focus on visualizing the numbers to help keep our mind busy. When we get distracted, we acknowledge it and then go back to counting numbers. Doing the type of meditation where it's just no thinking at all is way too hard for us and mindfulness always felt a little on the too easy side? Then again I think with mindfulness we often get distracted so

(edited)

fascinating! Do y'all count the numbers all at once or does each voice give voice to the next number in the sequence in their own way?

We try to say each number one at a time. Usually 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and repeat

I honestly didn't expect the everyone presenting in the mind to participate in meditation, but it does make sense to give everyone something to do so there's less distraction from within.

Oh, I should clarify- the headmate switched-in does the meditation alone. Usually it's Gray who does it but I have done it at least once before

12:36 PM

More than one headmate meditating at the same time does sound really interesting

A long kiss goodnight

We try to say each number one at a time. Usually 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and repeat

the headmate switched-in does the meditation alone.

oh! I assumed you were affirming that all the headmates were meditating at once when you started the sentence with "we" here.

12:38 PM

Grey seems to be a prominent member of your system. I see you mention them often. I had assumed they were the host, but is that not correct?

Gray is the original and the host, yes

12:39 PM

I co-host and happen to be switched-in a lot, like right now

mm fair. I'm learning

12:44 PM

From what I know about no-thinking meditation it's less about no-thinking and more about the ability to focus attention upon one thing (usually the breath) while preventing oneself from getting distracted by the random thoughts that intrude upon the meditation. That prevention is achieved through acknowledging the distraction and releasing it without the need to berate oneself for getting distracted. Thus returning attention to the breath. Sometimes counting is associated with the breath, as in breathe in so many seconds, breathe out so many seconds. Some also hold the breath out or in for an amount of time. I was fascinated to see you mention breath not at all, just the counting aspect

We (well, maybe just Gray) had a weird phobia about breathing. The idea of tying breathing with the meditation was stressful for Gray and we simply disconnected the concepts. More recently Gray found a way to be less stressed by it, but we're content with our counting ritual. We pretty much only meditate when we have nothing else to do and we need to wait for like 30 minutes or something (edited)

how interesting that a phobia could be developed regarding breath when one literally can't survive without breathing. ~~not to mention it's good for the lungs to breath deeply every so often.~~

Breathing normally wasn't what scared us, but deep breathing did

12:51 PM

I don't remember if it was because of Gray associating stress with breathing, the sleep paralysis episode he had, or both

12:53 PM

I think it's funny we haven't spoken long and you learned about two of our weird phobias!

1

I hope y'all have integrated deep breathing in some way since that time. I'm told that shallow breathing (for instance because of pain) could lead to pneumonia. When I had my appendix out the doctors gave me this neat little breathing toy and told me that thing about pneumonia. So since then I try to breathe consciously and deeply at least once a day

Oh, I forgot about that In therapy Gray discovered we can breathe in too much and actually hurt ourselves. I'm not joking, we got a weighted pillow specifically to prevent us from breathing past a certain point. We're autistic and it could be we can't feel when we stretch things too much

oh fascinating! I have never breathed in too much and didn't know that was a risk. You might say that counting the seconds of a breath while breathing in slowly during meditation might actually prevent that from happening. Like if you used the 5-count and just breathed in for 5 seconds....it's unlikely that you would breathe in too much unless you were attempting to breathe in fast during that time

1:01 PM

Of course, work within your own comfort levels

1:02 PM

I'm on the spectrum myself and it's always interesting to be reminded that someone else can be autistic and have it manifest in different ways from myself

I think we just overachieve breathing in our own weird way. Given it was surprising to our therapist too, and she works with autistic people, it could just be a weird us thing

1:04 PM

I wondered if the autism contributed to the can't feel when to breathe out part

Have you ever achieved passing out due to holding the breath too long?

1:07 PM

When I was a kid my parents tell me I used to do this. Usually when frustrated, I'd be crying and then just stop and hold my breath until I passed out. It freaked my parents out a good deal and I think eventually mom instilled some kind of mental block on it with me because I can't do it anymore

1:08 PM

I guess it's not really good for the brain to attempt it or something

No, Gray didn't do that. He did however try to pass out from hyperventilating, which he would fail every time

hyperventilating is the key to the all-natural high

1:12 PM

heh

1:13 PM

Do you differentiate between meditation and whatever you do in wonderland? How are they different

Absolutely. Wonderlanding you're allowed to mess around in and meditation is hard core focusing. We're actually not very good at wonderlanding, but we have some tricks I figured out we're trying and we're making a lot more progress with it. It's just a matter of we don't always want to wonderland because we have a lot of depression causing gunk in our head we need to sort out in therapy. Otherwise, every other side thought is depressing

oho

1:19 PM

How vivid are your visualizations?

Not super vivid. They're stable and most of the time consistently so but I think our progress more or less stalled

What were you doing to make progress on visualizing?

I think just wonderlanding and imagining each other in physical space. I guess we did it often enough to make some progress but not enough to have stellar visualization

I wonder if that lack of visual vividness relates to your inability to enjoy reading. I know when I'm reading a book I'm hallucinating vividly nearly the whole time, picturing the characters in my head as I read

1:30 PM

I would have recommended a book relating to depressive thoughts, but I remembered that reading wasn't your thing.

Possibly. A book related to depressive thoughts might make us more depressed, heh

1:34 PM

Reading suicidal ideations doesn't sound fun

mm no

1:38 PM

It's more of a book that shares the concept of how the mind is similar to a computer program in that if one allows certain negative thoughts to occur and repeat over and over it becomes a habit. A programmed habit that will continue to occur in the background until stopped.

Ah, that makes a lot more sense

1:40 PM

I thought you were talking about fictional characters with depression

more like a self-help book

1:42 PM

to be fair I was making two separate points, one about visions while reading and another about the self-help book (edited)

Lusovius

It's more of a book that shares the concept of how the mind is similar to a computer program in that if one allows certain negative thoughts to occur and repeat over and over it becomes a habit. A programmed habit that will continue to occur in the background until stopped.

That makes a lot of sense to me, but I am feeling resistance to it because I know my depression is due to a lack of awareness of my own emotions. The idea of shutting out the pain is technically the opposite of what I need to be doing. This is starting to get into therapy stuff that I really shouldn't share. I honestly would like to one day but the timing isn't great. Perhaps some other time in hopefully the not-so-distant future I can talk about it.

hmm. In that case feel free to not respond to this next point but I feel like my intent is being misunderstood so I would like to press on just a smidge more

1:52 PM

shutting out the pain

This is not what I am suggesting. It's not even remotely what I would recommend anyone do. Human emotions are in my mind living things that demand respect and recognition. When emotions are ignored or buried, it's like they feel they haven't been properly seen and will fester in whatever corner of your mind you've discarded them to. Eventually that festering will become an explosion in a way. No, When I say the mind is playing a pre-programmed message I'm talking about the little voice that says over and over i'm not good enough, or things of that nature. Words that, when repeated, bring your mind to a depressive state. The self-help book merely suggests you notice when such programs surface. Stop the program. And rewrite it with a new one, something that you might not even believe in yet but words that make you feel good. Repeated over and over like a mantra until they become a new underlying message.

1:53 PM

The emotions themselves of course need to be seen, experienced fully and then released, for once they're given your full attention, they've served their purpose. Of course I'm no therapist and do not expect you to regale me with all the specifics.