Aphantasia

[Scah]

Hi Loki,

Thank you for sharing. This is the first time i have heard of Aphantasia.
After reading the definition and your experience, i am pretty sure i am also one of the lucky few.

Here is my experience in visualization while having similar inability to form mental image.
When I first started meditation, i had the same frustration with visualization as you.
The image that I was trying to visualize either would never form (closed eye visualization) or would disappear within a second after i close my eyes.

Since I can't really visual images, i decided to only do colour visualization.
Colour visualization works for me. Though, I have the same grainy/shifting issue with colour visualization as well.
I usually just let the colours shift and simply try to watch the shifts instead of consciously trying to stabilize the colours.
I never give visualization much thought after this. The shifting colour visualization was sufficient for me to meditate.
However, one day, without any conscious intention, I saw some POV landscape scenes. I was very surprised but calmed myself down and just enjoyed the ride. The visualization I had were still grainy and shifts (imagine very low def video recorded on a handheld device).

I still can't consciously visualize anything other than colours for more than a second.
The landscape scenes and other new POV scenes do appear randomly from time to time during meditation.

My interpretation of my experience is that even though being able to visualize is a tool and do speed up meditation routine, it's not a requirement. And eventually something else does happen to the brain after some regular meditation practice and visualization would be turn on randomly.

Just thought that I would share my experience.

Aphantasia is the inability of someone to see mental images. When I say mental image I mean a stable two dimensional image which is projected by your mind with your eyes closed roughly in the same location where your open eyes would see an image.

I am one of the "lucky" ones that have this condition and no mater how bright and simple an image is as soon I close my eyes the image is completely gone. A millisecond after my eyes are closing the colors the shapes the edges of the images are disappearing and are replaced by a black/grey screen. This seems to be a problem considering that visualization is a big part of spiritual awakening.

Do I visualize things. Yes I do in a way, but they are not in front of my mind eyes but rather inside my brain. My day dreams and mental images are generally not vivid looking and if they are sometimes vivid (mostly on bright white light) they are created literally in the place where will be the middle of my brain and I see them not like a two dimensional stable images but rather like a three dimensional dynamic thoughts. Those 3D images from my brain are not stable and they transmit more feelings than visual details. In fact I cannot remember any detail about any of my 3D thoughts but only certain feeling of melancholy or happiness or excitement. In other words my brain is not able to see 2D stable images but only 3D unstable thoughts.

Is this blindness of my mind eye curable in any way or I am just doomed not to be able to spiritually break the veil this life? I am trying to meditate but I cannot visualize anything so my green sunny place I need to visualize is a thought of pieces of past memories and not an image.  Everything is a gathering of past memories  assembled by my brain trying to improvise but as soon I look more in detail the images are shifting like sands, permanently changing and never stable enough to see details.