Aphantasia

[Loki]

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.

Thank you Scah,

You are lucky if you see colors. I can imagine colors like in a bubble above my head but I cannot see them in front of the third eye with my eyes closed.
I only see shades of grey and black.

One night I was able to have the entire mental image filled with a bright violet color and it lasted minutes. Unfortunately I wasn't able to repeat that experience since then. Other colors? Not even a sparkle. Though I can image them but not see them.

Looks like my mind replaced the eye with some other sort of imaging.