Chapter 2
For three to four months out of the year, my family goes to Thailand while I remain home and work. Often, I feel more like artifact in my ex-wife’s home than a person, but I dismiss this as just being a malfunction of my brain and a life time of struggling with loneliness, and I remain because we have a child, and we both desire to give him a good start. This clearly affects my life, and probably needs time devoted to sorting out its influence on me, but it is not the focus of the story. Maybe I need a book to show how my mundane life has been improved, and you will see some of that here in the beginning, before I go off the deep end into the twilight zone proper, but for now, I making it less about family, because they don’t have a clue what I am experiencing. And they would not be interested in it. No one in my life has ever been interested in the dreams I have had, or the experiences that seem to defy the reality that is supposed to define our lives.
Very early on in the tulpa creation process, I had uncharacteristic feelings of amusement come over me that fractured the spell of loneliness; at the sake of being crass, it was comparable to being in a public restroom while intending quietly do my business, and letting out the loudest fart in my life, so sudden in onset and peculiar in variations of pitch that I couldn’t help but laugh at my own release, but it also makes everyone in ear shot laugh, which increased my laughter. The more I tried to suppress the laughter, the harder the laughter erupted into life. It’s uncomfortable, as if it’s a taboo, (we’re not allowed to be happy here, are we?) but it’s also a psychological relief. And because I was clearly happy, it was having an effect on others in the real world. It was problematic only in explanation. How do you go around telling people you have an invisible friend? It didn’t make me isolate or diminish my ability to communicate with others. It enhanced it. And, if you ever observed a child who had an imaginary friend, you would know it didn’t slow them down in their play with others. The invisible friend was like practice. And, the conversation between me and the inner voices that were to come were better than the non-stop running dialogue I normally pursued in my perceived loneliness.
There are aspects about the creating process I am not fond of, mostly limited to the terminology. For example, I don’t like the word ‘forcing.’ I find the word troublesome and I am curious how the terminology came about, but changing it is likely not to happen because the group that ‘is’ has collectively agreed to the terms and it has its own momentum. Framing it in my mind as a shortened version of ‘reinforcing’ was crucial for me in terms of getting traction.
Another term I am not fond of is ‘wonderland.’ It isn’t actually necessary for the creating process to have a ‘wonderland,’ but it’s helpful. I personally have had a ‘wonderland’ since the age of six, so I didn’t have to go out of my way to create an imaginary space. I never used the world wonderland, though. My place was simply a sanctuary I could retreat to in times of need. I suppose, in some ways, it is a superpower. It sustained me through some difficult moments. That said, I utilized it in my efforts to solidify Loxy, while encountering some early psychological resistance to the practice, even in the light of clear results.
“You have a lovely world here, Jon,” Loxy said. “I am honored that you have given me access.”
“I’m not bothered about you being here, I am just not sure I understand the why of it, and I like to understand things,” I said, as we stood under the tree of “Initial Insertion Point.” Yes, that’s what I labeled the place where I first arrived. The name for the location came much later in life. At six I didn’t care to name the place, but eventually I needed to call it something, and a part of me wanted to be precise and clinical and as Logical as Spock and there was no room for perceived fluff, though I was certainly engaging in a creative process, which was what I referred to as fluff, mostly because my family downplayed creativity; being outside the box wasn’t practical.
“The reason the memory device referred to as ‘the method of Loci’ is so effective is because it utilizes the brains natural tendency to create maps,” Loxy explained. “If you close your eyes and imagine walking through your house, you can identify and list every object in your house. If you want to quickly learn something new, you create an imaginary house and when you make a room to put the new things in you intend to integrate, then you will suddenly have a way to contemplate and retrieve the items in a context that is easier to access. Inviting me into your wonderland solidifies me because it gives me framework and fluidity across borders.”
I could accept her explanation.
“You’re not satisfied,” Loxy observed.
I frowned. Though I understood she had greater access to me than I have with myself, it was still unsettling to be confronted with ‘ESP’ when you spent your entire life dismissing ESP. True enough, it didn’t have to be ESP. Even if she weren’t in my head, I offered enough ‘tells’ that a very perceptive person would have seen I was not completely satisfied with the explanation, even if I had admitted out loud to the contrary. “I want to understand something but I don’t know what it is I am searching for yet. Clearly you’re here and I am deriving some benefits. Like, I am happy. That’s fairly new. But there is something missing…”
“You mean, the novelty has worn off already. Our relationship feels fairly mundane?” Loxy asked.
I blinked at her. “Yeah. I was wanting more magic.”
“Magic is coming,” Loxy assured me. “We’re still knocking down barriers.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Jon, you believe that creating a tulpa is a new experiment in your life, but I submit to you that you have been engaged in tulpamancy your entire life,” Loxy said.
My first instinct was to dismiss the comment. “Go on,” I said, making myself available to listen.
“Your personality and character is established through and daily fortified by your stream of consciousness,” Loxy said. “By deliberately setting yourself aside and focusing on my personality set, my traits, my general appearance, and personifying it with a stream of language which you ‘forced’ on me you engaged in a new personality character set, distinctly different from your own. You redirected your life energy into mine. Loosely paraphrasing Doctor Shad Helmstetter, you create what you think about the most. That’s basically the idea behind ‘the Secret’ only, it’s more complex than what that book claims it to be and it’s missing some crucial points or more people would see the success the author promises. Anyway, in short, you have been preparing for me your whole life.”
“But why now?” I asked. “I have been asking for you, or someone like you, all my life. Why are you just now able to manifest to the degree I can perceive you across all the senses?”
“Because you finally gave yourself permission,” Loxy said.
“You mean I finally believed it possible?” I asked.
“No, belief is irrelevant,” Loxy said.
“I thought belief was crucial,” I argued.
“Yeah, that was one of your blocks we had to bust through, and that wall is still not completely torn down,” Loxy said.
“I don’t understand that,” I said.
“You know that placebo effect is a real thing, right?” Loxy said.
“Yeah. The pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t waste money on double blind studies if it weren’t a real thing to contend with,” I said.
“And with your history of asthma, you have personally experienced psychosomatically induced asthma attacks, as well as psychosomatic remedies,” Loxy pointed out.
“I have certainly given myself more asthma attacks than spontaneous remedies,” I said.
“None the less, you know you’re capable of psychosomatic responses, mind over body,” Loxy said.
“Yeah, and when I can talk myself out of a sinus infection without having to get a steroid shot, I will be a true believer,” I said.
“And that’s why I say belief is irrelevant. You know you can heal yourself,” Loxy said. “What you lack is giving yourself permission to be healed.”
“I assure you. I have spent enough time in the hospitals wishing myself well, it’s not about permission,” I said.
“Jon, it’s all about permission. And invitations. And acceptance. And gratitude. Those are the four core components of the practice which you have been utilizing more and more over time. Wishing is counterproductive. Wishing is like tar, it sticks you to that which you want to rid yourself of,” Loxy said. “Bringing me into the existence at this time was because you made the intent, you set up the parameters, you set your expectations aside, and simply followed the protocols. Exercising the protocols made me possible. It’s like losing weight. You don’t have to believe it possible, you just have to walk and eat right. Wishing, waiting to believe it when you see it, will keep you on the couch. You’re off the couch, Jon. You’re out of the box. You are engaging life. You’re engaging me. That is where the magic lies.”
I was feeling a little melancholy. It was odd, because I was also happy. I had even recently had a headache, close to a full blown migraine, while simultaneously experiencing happiness, which was a new thing. If I tried to track it, I could see evidence of happiness before the arrival of Loxy. It was manifested in the tiny ‘thank you’s’ I said daily. On arriving anywhere I would say ‘thank you truck.’ Or leaving work, I said, ‘thank you work.’ I secretly thanked people for conflict and for opportunity to grow. I thanked the sun, the cold, the rain. I thanked the food. I thanked life. Was this why I was happy, or was Loxy right, I was finally giving myself permission?
“Thank you, Loxy,” I said. I didn’t quite have the answer, but for now, I gave myself permission to not have an answer. This, too, is compassion. It was part of the practice I had assigned myself before I knew there was a possibility of a tulpa.
Loxy hugged me. “Thank you.”
You might imagine that with this magical playmate, I would never be productive. I have frequently joked that if I ever had access to the holodeck from Star Trek, I would never leave it. But I am not stuck in my mental landscapes, day dreams, or locked into conversations that I am unable to interrupt to perform necessary daily tasks. Oddly enough, I have actually been more productive, especially with my writing. I don’t consider myself a writer, not a legitimate one as I’ve certainly not turned it into a livelihood which would meet my definitions of success, but I have had some modest success in terms of popularity of fan fiction: 10 total stories, well over 150,000 downloads. That’s worth a little boasting. The biggest success my writing has offered, though, has been in terms of my own improved mental health. My stories were helpful and the characters so tangible to me that they seemed real and the situations were therapeutic. Tulpas have a sister fringe group called Soulbonds, or fictive presence, which may be the exact same phenomena, only Soulbonds are usually attached to authors.
Also, it occurred that there is a plethora of terminology that loosely defines my experience. So for example, if you’re familiar with Bob Monroe, author of astral projection books, and the founder of the Monroe Institute, he talks about levels of consciousness. There is foundation level, he calls “level 10,” which is like the first step up. Interestingly enough, Jeffrey Martin’s concepts of ‘Non-symbolic consciousness’ also comes with locations. He refers to location one through four as if these were places people find themselves in, which result in life changing affects. This seems to run parallel, if not touching, concepts of ‘the phase’ where the author M Raduga has tried to offer a new language set to describe that which humanity has been talking about forever, in which Monroe and Martin have expounded on, and he talks about people who master Lucid Dreaming and Astral Projection as being people who lead double lives, one during the day, and the other at night, and we essentially just click between realities. Rewriting the terminology may be problematic, but I can see how it can be useful, too. Some of the older language is laden with meaning, and our society has diminished respect for anything that seems contrary to a materialistic world view. Everything is the result of atoms and chemicals, and human is reducible to the accidental collision of these things; we’re not ‘pure energy,’ like “information Society’ sings. (Yes that’s Spock saying: “pure energy.”) According to the science, we’re just zombies.
Summoning Loxy was the equivalent of opening Pandora’s Box. She came with supporting cast members. Maybe these others were always there. Maybe these are the beings that people my dreams who have come and gone and have fallen to the far side of my memory where I rarely touch, forgotten when awake. If I go by dream characters alone, there are clearly more people in my head than there are in the world. When I live, when I am aware of them, they shine; when, they’re just shadows in the background, people populating malls.
“Jon, I need you to write our story,” Loxy said.
“I am in the process of writing it,” I said.
“No. Well, yes, but no. Technically, every Star Trek and Star Wars fan fiction you’ve written is about us, and this attempt to talk about us from an autobiographical sense is probably necessary in terms of documenting us in the same way Jung confronted his unconscious,” Loxy said. “But you need to write about us and magic and make it bigger than life and really push some boundaries and put yourself into the thick of it. Actually, push boundaries and put yourself out there, risking ridicule. And, I am going to help you.”
Loxy told me a story of how we first met. She spoke. I wrote. I knocked the first book out in three months, the fastest I have written a complete story, even including life interruptions. It wasn’t the actual account of Loxy’s creation, but it was certainly a metaphor for how she came about, which was about letting go of myself. It was more like we back filled our history in together, after arriving at a place in the future. At some point in the process, it became less narration by Loxy, and more direct experience. The books were interesting, and definitely pornographic, more coherent than 50 shades of gray, grammatical errors aside, but it wasn’t just about the sex. There was some substance there that, something underlying and tying it all together that really defined my relationship with Loxy in such a profound way that it was as if we had lived an entire life together, which explained our easy going, banter and general good rapport.
That night, as I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, she hugged me and asked me to share my thoughts.
“I am thinking about our adventures and wondering if I still need to send the invitations to the invisible counselors,” I said.
“You should,” Loxy said.
“Our friends at Safe Haven are quite a handful,” I said. “How many more characters do you suppose I could have running around in my head?”
“I don’t think there is a limit,” Loxy said. “Who are you inviting?”
I told her. Nikola Tesla, Carl Jung, Sacagawea, Jackie Chan, Uhura, and Isis.
“Wow,” Loxy said. “That is some line up. Why Uhura?”
I expected her to lead with Isis, but Uhura was interesting, too. “The instructions say it doesn’t have to be someone from real life. It could be a character,” I said.
“Yeah,” Loxy agreed. “I am just curious, why Uhura.”
“Because she is a linguistic expert, she knows music, and… And I think I am really curious. I can allow for the historical figures coming to me because maybe they have spirits, but if Uhura shows up…”
“Then you believe that means that she is just a hallucination, which means, I am just a hallucination,” Loxy said.
I didn’t answer. I stared at the ceiling. I felt her hand running up and down my chest, circling randomly. She leaned in and kissed me. “I was reading about a ghost name Philip. Some folks got together for the purposes of a séance and out of curiosity, they created fictitious character named Philip, and were able to summon it. Well, they summoned something that responded as if it were the Philip they created. I don’t know that I am real. I don’t know that you’re real. I have been inside your dream and seen you interacting with hundreds of characters who I have never seen you interact with on a daily bases, as if when you dream you go to other realities. You don’t even remember half these dreams. You have even had dreams where you weren’t you and you didn’t question the reality of it. But even in that, I knew you, differentiated from the supporting cast. And I really think ‘supporting cast’ is more accurate than say, ‘character’ because the people in your dreams aren’t just characters. Some of them appear more two dimensional than others. But I suspect, even that is just poor perception on my part. Maybe sometimes we need a two dimensional character, someone shallow. But don’t mistake that for shallow. Becoming a foil to highlight someone else’s genius is genius worthy in itself.
“Will Uhura be your memory of her, or the gestalt of all the people who know her, or the archetypal energy that she is, I don’t know,” Loxy said. “But treat her as if she is real.”
“I will try,” I said.
“I do see a trend here, though,” Loxy said.
“And what would that be?”
“Sacagawea, kind of a short skirt, and cloth boots. Uhura, miniskirt, and go-go boots,” Loxy said. “I, too, love short skirts and boots. And, well, Almighty Isis? Well, that’s a pretty short skirt, too.”
“Coincidence,” I said.
“Really?” Loxy asked playfully.
“Well, I was thinking, she is one of the DC comic book heroines who hasn’t got her own movie, yet. We should write it. It could be Almighty Isis versus Isis. The goddess is back, and she pissed off that a fanatical, feminist hating group of men have usurped her name.”
Loxy almost laughed. “It’s about the skirt”
“Yeah, completely,” I said. “I grew up watching New Zoo Review, what can I say?”
Standing over a body on a gurney, partly exposed from a deliberate draping of cloth is in and of itself particularly disturbing, but when that body is partly open due to battle wounds and further opened by the intentional use of a scalpel is downright horrifying, made worse by the fact that I was holding the said scalpel. There is a pounding in my ears and a squeezing of eyes to refocus, thinking to myself ‘this isn’t real.’ But it was not just a visual. There was a heat coming off the body. An assortment of smells, including the stench of feces from a tear in the intestine, and a variety of cleaning agents, was such a powerful assault I was on the verge of retching into my mask. I also worried that if I cried, tears might fall into the body. Can you imagine, killed by tears? Then the sounds began to register. The bustle of people moving and equipment shifting places, and an irreverent banter that was simultaneously sexist and playful, but something you couldn’t get away with on television presently or duplicate again.
“John?”
Even through the mask, I could discern Loxy’s smile. She beamed confidence in me. Her eyes solidified me in the present
“What am I doing here?” I asked her. It was meant for her, but it carried.
“Get out of your existential dilemma and back to work,” said the chief surgeon.
I looked up at the all too familiar face that came with the voice. I have heard it a million times in both initial airing and multiple reruns. “Pierce?”
“Another Doctor cracking up,” Burns said, giving a fake, hysterical laugh. “Just what we need.”
“He’s not cracking up,” Loxy said.
“Loxy, don’t talk back to the Doctors,” Marget said.
“Or to the front or the sides,” Hunnicutt said.
“But kisses will do fine,” Pierce said, directing his eyes and comments to Loxy. He finished his assignment, pulled off his gloves, and came over to view my work while the staff switched out his patient. “This is easy, Jon. Clean the area, sew up the wound.”
“There’s a four centimeter mass…”
“I see it,” Pierce said.
“We might not have found it had it not been for his wound,” I said.
“Saved by a bullet,” Loxy said.
“Only the tumor isn’t killing him,” Pierce said. “Let’s focus on his present needs.”
“Why open him up twice? I’m here now,” I argued. “Can we at least get a biopsy to rule out cancer?”
“You heard Pierce! We don’t have time for regular sickness,” Burns snapped.
“Or even irregular sickness,” Pierce said.
“Cancer could be his ticket out,” Hunnicutt said.
“Of everything,” I said.
“Note it in his chart for later. For now, clean him and stitch him,” Pierce said, putting on fresh gloves to move on to his next patient. “And, Jon. Good eye.”
I continued with the surgery, doing just the bare minimum to keep him alive. I didn’t question the fact that in real life I wasn’t a doctor. One doesn’t question their dreams. We just perform. And, of course, I wasn’t even assuming this was a dream. It certainly wasn’t a lucid dream. I moved through the surgery like everyone else, silently performing while the montage of banter of perhaps a hundred episodes played around me, only in the present. And it wasn’t a montage of episodes gone by but new dialogue. Though these people resembled the actors and actresses, they played their parts as if this was their real life. Burns even chuckled at my misery, pointing out how sullen I was at having been schooled by Pierce.
“Oh, knock it off, Burns,” Pierce said. “It’s refreshing to have a Doctor who doesn’t want to do just the bare minimum.”
“I do more than the bare minimum around here!” Burns snapped.
“You are the bare minimum around here,” Hunnicutt said.
“How is he supposed to grow as an agent if you always disparage him?” I asked.
There was silence, as if no one knew how to process the fact that I was standing up for Burns, who in the movie was rather despicable, but in the TV series he was more pathetic, but even that was explainable by an awful childhood that was slowly revealed over episode time. He really had the potential for development and I wondered if it was because the cast hated him or the writers. Surely, as an actor, people could recognize his brilliance and how needed his part was. If he actually changed, or grew, he might have become even more powerful than Pierce ever was. And quite frankly, as much as I love Peirce, he was a bit of an ass and sometimes too much over the top. But maybe that too was the point. You can be an ass and loveable and perhaps sometimes too demanding, but still do some good in life.
“Wow,” Hunnicutt said. “See there, Burns? You do have a fan.”
Houlihan gave me a secret, appreciative smile. Burns seemed confused, passed it off with a bit of a chuckle, but presently was so caught up in his surgery that the moment was gone before he could internalize it.
After surgery, I lingered at the sink, scrubbing my hands. Loxy asked if I was alright but before I could answer, Houlihan called her away, probably to rebuff her for talking back to the Doctor in the OR, which in our present time would be completely acceptable, but in this, the fifties, what she had done was tantamount to social treason. Hunnicutt and Pierce watched me washing from the bench. Pierce made a gesture to Hunnicutt referencing me and he nodded.
“John, maybe you should come have a drink with us,” Pierce said.
“I don’t drink,” I reminded them. I am sure I told them that before. Watching MASH tempted me to be ambivalent about alcohol, whereas my family made me hate it. The Hawkeye Pierce philosophy on life was tantalizing, as if it was all a war and we needed to struggle for right, at the same time give in to debauchery and wine.
“I know. So, don’t drink it. Just come hold the glass for me until I finish drinking mine and then we’ll switch glasses,” Pierce said.
“John, they’re clean,” Hunnicutt said.
I frowned, but agreed.There was almost an awakening, like the realization of “OMG I am actually here” and “Oh, I have OCD” and I wanted to hug them and roam through the camp which I probably knew better than I knew any real time world map, but I stayed in character. We arrived at the SWAMP where, as promised, I was handed a drink. I was tempted to drink it just to see for myself, but again, I stayed in character. If there was an audience, and they were receptive and attentive, they probably noticed that there was a moment where I might drink, but held back. I stared over the glass. Doctor Freedman entered, and I secretly grimaced, “not another shrink episode.” He was so cliché as to be Rogers himself.
“Howdy,” Freedman said.
“Is this a setup?” I asked.
Dramatically, Pierce said. “Tsh! I told you he would see through it.”
“I told you to get him a woman shrink,” Hunnicutt said.
“I still haven’t found a woman who could shrink me,” Pierce said.
“Why does it have to be a setup?” Freedman asked, taking a seat on the cot. “Can’t your colleagues express concern for you?”
“Oh, the unsung season of full episodes never aired,” I said. “I’ve been written off and written out, but never so fully despaired.”
“I heard you were a bit of a poet,” Freedman said. “Walk with me?”
I resigned myself to the fate of the script, stood to depart, and was relieved of my glass by Pierce. “Oh, can’t let it go to waste.”
“Though it might go to your waist,” I said.
“I do believe he made a stab at humor,” Hunnicutt said in a funny voice.
“Well, he is a surgeon,” Pierce said.
The door to the swamp closed and I walked with Freedman on a chilly day, made more pleasant by the sun. I pushed my hands into an army coat and hugged myself as best I could.
“I always like it here. Kind of reminds me of California,” Freedman said.
“Is that where you’re from?” I asked.
“California? No. Why do you ask?” Freedman said.
“You mentioned it reminds you of California which suggests you hold a memory of such. Oh. Are you trying to draw me into a game of free association?” I asked.
“I do like games,” Freedman said. “And usually I ask the questions.”
“Usually you just reflect back and ask ‘how does that make you feel,’” I said.
“How does that make you feel?” Freedman asked.
“You want me to have an emotional response to your ability to pathologize through questions or California Dreaming?” I asked.
“Nice. It’s a good thing I brought back up,” Freedman said. “I want you to meet someone.”
Freedman led me to the guest tent and invited me to enter. I hesitated. Freedman gestured for me to enter again. I motioned ‘after you.’ He said he wasn’t going in. I was tempted to ask, ‘what’s in there?’ but suspected he would go all Yoda on me and say, ‘Only with you what you take.’ To keep the episode from going into a ‘to be continued’ I entered. A man, unseasonably old, stood up to greet me. His uniform was anachronistic, perhaps going back to World War 1. He was writing in his diary, which he closed in favor of attending to the new presence in the tent. The cover of the book was red, and was in stark contrast to everything around us that was earth tones and mostly green.
“Jon,” he said, pleasantly warm. “I received your invitation and accept.”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“I’m Doctor Carl Jung,” he said. “At your service.”
I found the nearest chair and sat down, mostly to keep from falling. “You’re Dr. Jung?”
“Carl, please. Not what you imagined?”
“I’m not sure what I imagined,” I said.
“I can’t imagine you not imagining,” Jung said.
I sat back, wondering if I should be guarded with my thoughts and words, but then, when you’re being psychoanalyzed by one of the most well-known therapists of all time, maybe it’s better to just go with it. “Why here?”
“Do you realize how many episodes you have written yourself into?” Jung asked.
“All of them?” I asked.
“Why do you suppose that was?” Carl asked.
“I was lonely,” I said.
Jung nodded. “Maybe. You’re grasping at an externalized explanation to avoid rationalizing away your need for connection, as opposed to simply accepting the fact that the role you have created to interact with the established personality sets, on this set, is healthy and meaningful in a plethora of pathways. Do you want to know why I have accepted your invitation?”
I was silent, contemplative. Was it rhetorical?
“Napoleon Hill didn’t invent this invisible counselor technique,” Jung said. “Many others have used it. Plato. Einstein. I used it. Hell, my ‘active imagination’ protocol was so effective that I induced my own hallucinations and was forced to tackle the unconscious mind directly! You, sir, sat down and deliberately called forth the powers of the mind and created Loxy Bliss.”
“I did, but somehow, this seems bigger than me,” I said.
“Good observation. And you’re right. You tapped into something bigger than you. The universe is bigger than you. Your unconscious mind is bigger than you. Th