Aphantasia

Why Can’t I See in My Mind’s Eye?

--

Created by the Author in Canva

Have you ever had an aha moment? I had one yesterday. A friend had posted about a condition called aphantasia on her social media page. It was a poster that described how people are able to imagine things in their mind’s eye. The subject was an apple and I have replicated the diagram above.

This is what happens when you close your eyes and try to imagine something. Though I have not been diagnosed with having this condition, I believe it might have been why it was so difficult for me to learn how to meditate and how to channel. It also might explain why I have a hard time drawing. I’m okay if I have a photograph but ask me to draw a real horse who moves around and twitches their ears, and I just can’t do it.

It was a relief to me to think that there might be an explanation why it was so hard. The directions to meditate are: Imagine that you are looking at a candle flame. I don’t know about you, but what I see is a candle flame, flickering in the draft of air around it and it vanishes. Poof. It’s gone.

That took me years to learn how to do that and all the exercises to learn to channel involved visualizing things.

My visualizations now are like bits of a movie reel. I can see motion. Not long sustained motions, just real quick ones. A guide holding his nose to…

--

--