(12-25-2019, 09:00 AM)Loki Wrote: 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.
"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." This is not how it usually happens.
So, you can be assured you don't have Aphantasia or, if you still have it by the right definition, you are by far not one of the few.
Here's a test everybody can do: https://aphantasia.com/vviq/ But I wouldn't use the quoted definition and I wouldn't close your eyes. Images appear in our mind much easier and naturally when we don't try to "create" them.