Hah, yeah, the story about blindly believing. It wasn't about you, but if you see it being pretty similar to what you went through... I think that's proof that blindly believing isn't the best way to do this, huh? It's not a single case that had it backfire, it's more than one person.
And Sands, your post here is under the assumption that I know the potential responses are just me parroting, but the post you linked to assumes that I'm getting responses that I'm unsure of. Honestly, I kind of don't know how people can wonder if they're parroting or not; if they can't just wait and see if they hear/feel a response, and instead they have to consciously do something that results in their tulpa saying something (but only when the host does that thing), isn't that parroting? Sure, the case could be made that you're actively listening for a response rather than creating one yourself, but to me that just feels like another excuse that was made up to support the "believe everything" mindset. I feel like those are the types of responses you're talking about in the linked thread (though correct me if I'm wrong), whereas your post here acts as guidance to hearing actual alien responses, rather than actively seeking out those uncertain responses like I had been doing until I made the decision to avoid parroting. Both your post here and the one you linked seem like very sound advice to me, but they seem to contradict each other (either that or I'm just misinterpreting everything).
Yeah, I don't really see where your first sentence comes from. I mean, I'm not a good writer so it's very easily for me to write one thing and mean something else, so if something I said felt like it said something else and you can show it to me, I'll read it and tell you what I actually meant. Sorry if I didn't really word myself correctly but I guess I'll write some more words in case they help explain a few things. Warning this is massive tl;dr and woflo is going to hate me for this, help. I hope you will be able to get to the end, though. Won't blame you if you don't.
Sure, it's obvious when you parrot your tulpa. You make them say things, ta-dah. But it's still a very common question. Especially early on, it was a constant battle of making the tulpa prove themselves to have done that before you bought any of it and unless it was an auditory hallucination that was completely alien, your tulpa didn't say it and it was just you parroting them. That's why I felt it was really important to talk about whether or not it is you tulpa and why it just doesn't matter early on when you are starting out.
Is listening parroting? I'd say it's not. I can tell you some things I've experienced when working on a tulpa and I can also tell you stuff others have told me, so believe what you want. A young tulpa is rarely strong. Their voice is faint and difficult to hear. How do you expect your young and weak tulpa to overpower all your other thoughts so they can be heard? Besides, how would they answer when you're already talking? That would be kinda rude.
I tell people to stop and listen because it was a problem with me. I was talking to him, telling him stuff and asking him questions... Except I never stopped to let him answer. It didn't even matter to me if he did or didn't, I just talked. I don't think "he's not going to answer, so why bother waiting for it?" is the best mindset when working with tulpas and trying to get them vocal. You're training yourself to have something else responding to you in your mind and in my case, it definitely was more about learning how to listen. Guess what? Later on I did notice that Roswell could give me signs of his answer. Not actual words, those came much later, but all kinds of other feelings I found I couldn't quite replicate perfectly myself, so they at least were something I could go with. Did I believe yet? I didn't, but I was being pretty stupid when I wasn't waiting for a possible response when I could get some if I just gave him a few seconds to actually respond. Surely I could've had a vocal tulpa much earlier if I just wasn't in such a hurry to just talk and talk.
So why does it help when I let him respond and I don't even fully believe it was my tulpa? Narration. Like you said, it's difficult to have a one-sided conversation. There's only so much I can talk about myself and the questions I ask my tulpa are pretty worthless if I don't even try waiting. So, let's say I do get a response of some sort. Maybe it's an obvious yes or no, or maybe it's something else. Just a feeling. Maybe you are talking about those ducks and suddenly you get the feeling of "let's talk about dogs instead". No words, mind you, just a feeling, a hunch. Was it you or your tulpa? It doesn't matter. Start talking about dogs. If it was you, well, you probably were running out of duck things to say and if you weren't, you can talk about ducks again later. You didn't push it on your tulpa in case it wasn't them. If it was your tulpa, you actually followed what they said. They saw they got noticed and it surely will make them feel better and will train you to be able to pick up all kinds of responses. You don't have to believe, so it's not a blindly believe everything mindset. You just follow it if the idea you got sounds good. Don't follow stupid ideas, of course. Or talk about why the idea is stupid.
My tulpa would move once he had a form. At first I had a problem with keeping everything still, but then I managed to relax and just let things happen in my imagination. I'm the kind of a person who has a really good control over their imagination, so this included learning how to not be such a control freak. So, anyways, tulpa would move. Would I believe it was the tulpa? I didn't. I didn't care, it was or wasn't. At one point though, I just had to say that hey, you know, you've surprised me so many times that either it's you or I'm good at lying to myself. I don't really care what it is, so I'll just go with "it's you". So I did.
I did the same to many other kinds of responses, as well. I didn't doubt, but I didn't believe. I let it come and once it started to look more and more like it wasn't me, I could allow myself to start actually trusting it. Him getting vocal was the same. Do you think I got some omg alien sound out of nowhere? No, sure as hell I didn't. Actually let's go back a bit and I'll remind you that back when I heard about tulpas, what you were supposed to get from the tulpa would be this alien voice that is totally like some other person's voice. Strong, clear, obvious. That's one of the reasons why both of the early guides said that it will take hundreds of hours of forcing to get a vocal tulpa, because actually getting those hallucinations when you're in an aware state is pretty difficult. Luckily for us though, "mindvoice" started to become a thing after vocal tulpas chewed at their hosts for not fucking listening to them when they tried to get their attention. We learned to listen with other things than just our ears.
So, anyways, I got a response after tons of work and symbolism and shit to make us able to do it. Did I believe it? No. If it was him, it was. If it wasn't, it wasn't. It wasn't some special moment for me where I finally knew I had a sapient tulpa (that actually came before vocality) that could speak. But, I allowed it to happen. Later on I started thinking. You know, it was pretty similar to me, so maybe it was me. But it also was different. It was slower, the speech pattern wasn't identical, the words he used weren't ones I'd use. It came from a different spot in my head - I know, sounds weird but it makes sense to me - and well, the voice that seemed similar to my own opposed some things I felt really strongly about. Hell, should I still disbelieve all that? I could, but whatever it was, I had a voice in my head that had opinions of its own. That's tulpa enough for me, so I let it be. I definitely did have to stop and let him talk seeing that he was super slow and pretty quiet, but it only got better from there as we practiced and talked more. And then we could have actual conversations.
Could you wait for the totally alien hallucination? Maybe. But it's not that easy to get those hallucinations. It would take a ton of work and then you probably would doubt that too, because you realized you can cause hallucinations yourself. Usually, what the tulpa can do, you can do. Sometimes it might take some practice to be able to do it just right, but you're going to be able to get pretty close in many cases...
Anyways, even now when I'm really into something, it's really hard to get me a message across. Roswell has taken to just giving me a short message of yo slow down, I wanna talk. Which I then do and he says what he wanted to say when I'm not busy with something else. Don't know about you, but I basically think in a mindvoice all the time. My head is a really busy and loud place, so it's not too easy to get anything in, especially if you want me to notice it. A clever tulpa tries many forms of communication and sees which ones they can do and which ones you actually hear. If you block all their possible methods of communicating, well, you're not going to be doing too well.
A good state for listening is a relaxed one. I didn't use to understand what it meant when others talked about it, but I do now. You let your thoughts just flow freely without trying to stop them, as you might very well stop a response. You're not trying to fill your head with thoughts, or they will drown everything. Just let them go. If you hear something, you don't have to believe if you're skeptical. It's good material for narration - or maybe you could even see if you can hold a conversation with the voice. All good material for later narration, when you talk about what you experienced to your tulpa and ask them if they were there. Even if you don't hear anything, it's not a bad thing. Sometimes it's good to slow down and just listen to what's going on in your head.
Fede's stuff might help you with visualization, but I have never tried it myself. At least not long enough to see if it would help, but you did report that Eye-Bo helped. I guess when you talk to me and Fede, you gotta keep in mind that I think tulpas are sapient even though I have no proof of it, while Fede thinks that they're not even though he has no proof of it. Do I believe in my own tulpa these days? I do. Does he believe in his tulpas? I think he does. And I probably got his exact view wrong because it's hard to explain in one sentence, but our views are pretty different. Do what you think is the best.