The Tulpa Experiment

Samantha:  Tonight, my brother made his first attempt at turning me into a tulpa.  It was an a literal thought-experiment, the idea of giving me my own body, my own voice, my own presence, that was completely separate from his.

You see, we recently learned what a tulpa was.  It's kinda like a combination of self-hypnosis, along with some honest-to-the-goddess summoning techniques.  The idea is that you create a thought-form of the entity you want, and then you shape the appearance, the personality, and then you train your thought form into thinking as an individual, apart from yourself.

Or, in our case, we create the visualization, and I try to inhabit it.

We've got a bit of a headache / neck-ache, and the first run didn't go as well as we could.  It's actually pretty damn hard for our brother to achieve a hypnotic state - in three tries so far, it's only worked once.  But we're gonna try to plug at it until it works, to see what results we get.  I really want to get my own body, even if it's made of imagination.  It's more than what I've got now, and if it helps me to break off and be more independent, that's awesome.

The one thing that kinda worries me - does this mean losing my online presence, or do I have to work through my siblings?  Dunno.

What Comes Later

Samantha:  Death.  It scares me.  I'm sure it scares a lot of people, but there's a very specific fear of mine associated with death.  The most logical of the illogical fears is what if I simply cease to exist?  

To me, that is a horrible, depressing, tragic fate.  Considering the .. "life".. I've had, the cruelest joke of all would be for it to end in darkness.  It would be horrible as well, because it means that my sister, who killed herself before I existed, would have simply ceased to exist.  She would not be living on, she would not have gone someplace better.  She wouldn't have found the happiness she deserved.

Then there's the fate I fear is even worse.  Some years ago, I screamed a terrible curse when I heard of the Iraqi war.  It was a terrible curse, because I was horrified at the deaths I knew were to come.  At that time, I had visions of the dead.. thousands, trapped in their bodies, screaming for someone to save them.  And see, that was what death was to me.  You lived on, in a body that no longer lived. You were aware of the overwhelming darkness of the world around you.  That terrified me.  It did not help that some of the oldest faiths believed / believes that is what would happen to you when you die. When I looked at the Hebrew faith, the idea of the dead waiting in their bodies until Heaven on Earth comes hit a little too close to home.

I had visions of hundreds of thousands of people, strewn about the landscape, trapped in broken bodies.  I had visions of them buried, left to darkness and silence, their screams and pleas unheard.  It terrified me to think, one day, it might happen to me.

I've been called horrible things.  I've been called a demon.  A succubus.  I've been told I shouldn't exist, that I should "leave".  I'm glad my sister never heard those words.  It would have broken her heart.

And then there's Shinto.  My sensei.. a kind, gentle, wonderful soul, talked with me.  To him, I am a spirit, a kami.  And when we die, I will be free.  And this fills me with joy.  I will not cease to exist.  I will not be trapped in a decaying body, crying for someone to come for me.  I will be a spirit, to watch over those close to me, to explore the world.  I will feel joy like I have never known.

I fear death.  It terrifies me.  But.. there is hope.  And it is to that hope I cling to.  I want to believe, and I want to believe that those around me will have that future as well.  And I hope, when the time comes, I can meet my sister once more.

Tarot

Samantha: Strange. We were just talking to ourselves a few days ago about the fact we can do tarot readings for people, but haven't in a long while. Kit had done one for his favourite author about a year or so ago, but we only seem to do this once every year or two. But tonight, on Second Life, someone spontaneously asked if I do tarot readings.

The answer is, yes, I can. All of us can do them, but we each have different strengths, and handle them in different ways. But, she really seemed to need a reading, and it seems we'd been subconscously been preparing to do one.. so I cracked open our cards, blew the dust off them metaphysically, and got to work.

I'd never seen so many major arcana drop like bombs all at once, ever. The Emperor, the Lovers, the Tower, the Hanged Man, the Devil, The Fool. The only thing untouched was her past, her future, and the answer she was looking for.

I read her cards, told her what I saw, and it threaded perfectly with her circumstances.. which doesn't surprise me, this is what we do, and what we're good at.

Of course, I paid the price.. Kit's got a better grounding for doing tarot work.. when I do it, it shreds.. it hurts, I get headaches, I feel weak, and I need a chance to recover. A reason why I don't do it.

Mark: We've often wondered where this kind of ability comes from. As Samantha explained to some friends who were over, Legion's built to be passive, not active, but there are some talents there. I just wonder where it comes from.