I had poor visualization skills, and it's just something you improve with over time. You can't force an image to your mind, it's something that is given; lacking the ability hints at a break between the conscious and unconscious mind. If you have kids, raise them on books for a few years before you give them any visual media.

>>18760740
How did you improve it? By reading books? How much did it improve?

>>18760743
Dropping bad habits and getting more good ones, which does include more reading and exercising the imagination in general, yes. Meditation probably helped a lot too. I'm probably a bad person to ask, because all of the big improvements in my life seem to come gradually without me even trying. After a while I just noticed I was feeling better and having more vivid dreams, then seeing better in general.

>>18760738
>Do people actually "see" things they imagine
Yep. This is called the "mind's eye". It's only different from recalling someone's voice or a song in that it's visual. Have you never had a dream with visuals?

What ethnicity are you btw?

>>18760738
Wait, are you serious? I always thought the idea of people like you was some kind of weird thought experiment. How the hell do you think about anything?

Tbh, can I be honest, chat? I really don't see the point in having an imagination, any dumbfounded AI can imagine nowadays, same goes for intellect, any- and I mean any dumb AI can be stupid smart nowadays.
Today you see young people watching their favorite memetic youtubers whether this is Jean Philanthrope or Roy Jay it doesn't matter, most of it is AI generated. And you can see the redpilled/politically incorrect have their "charismatic" characters like Andrew Tate, or F&F being AI generated. To me this is no different from animal abuse what they do to those people. The memes being produced are fake, which raises the question. What matters most in life? Not the dumb variant of this, but what differentiates life the most from non-life, it's not sentience, it's not imagination or smartness. it's the buddhanature as this smart reddit post put it, I'm gonna quote

"Meditation now a days is just a tool for mental health.
But original intention of almost meditation practices is enlightenment.
And enlightenment is something very different from the normal state of the mind. It's supposed to put an end to the endless mental chatter.
Mental chatter, another name of for the generative functionality of the mind.
If generative AI (in its more advanced form) is what will make AI, then it will beat us at our normal mode of existence.
But maybe there's more that our mind is capable of, beyond just being a generative machine.
It may all be a hoax but if there's something that's as interesting as singularity - it's enlightenment."

File: Screenshot_20261027-143948~2.jpg (97 KB, 720x612)

97 KB JPG

>>18760738
I only see 1 and 2 when God's spirit shows me something, and during dreams. Not at will. Yet the spirit of God had already told me twice that he will open my eyes. I don't know when but when it happens I will be able to see the hidden realm and imagine anything at will.

There's a whole magical world all around is that we cannot see.

>>18760790
The thing is I was into lucid dreaming a while ago and I started writing down my dreams. I can remember at least one dream every night but they aren't vivid at all. My lucid dreams were all super blurry (which is why I stopped lucid dreaming in the first place). I can remember dreams and know what I did and where I was and who was around me but I can't vividly see it. I suppose it's slightly more vivid than when I'm awake and I try to imagine something though.

Also I'm white specifically Belgian

>>18760795
Basically I just remember what something looks like. For example when I think about my grandmas house I can obviously draw you a map of the house and I can tell you exactly where everything is. For example when you enter her home there is a small room that is separated from the rest of the hallway with double doors. See I can describe it but I can't visually see it with my mind's eye like I would be on shrooms.
When I did shrooms it was the first time I closed my eyes and actually saw something visually (except when you look at a light for a while and close your eyes and still see the light a bit).

By the way just as a little side note I can solve a rubiks cube and have solved certain parts blindly. I can't fully solve one blindly but if I tried I'm certain that I could.
Though I'm extremely bad at drawing, painting or anything like that so maybe that's got something to do with it.

>>18760738
>can't picture boobs at will
Why live

>>18760817
It's possible you have a nutritional deficiency or a metabolic issue such as hypothyroidism. There's been numerous occasions when I would take B vitamins, particularly B6, and I would have unusually vivid dreams. Your brain needs nutrients and energy in order to be capable of visualization. Some drugs or stimulants can reduce visualization capabilities. I notice that when I am on daily caffeine, my dream recall is poorer. The easiest thing to try would be taking B vitamin complex.

Meditation and practices associated with kundalini can unlock rare visualization abilities. There was a time when I was in a meditative state between wakefulness and sleep when I was seeing the contents of my mind's eye superimposed in front of me as if it had merged with my regular vision. The result was a vivid 3d object appearing to float in front of me that looked like a shiny wheel with spokes.

>>18760817
>belgians
>white

>>18760860
My metabolism is completely fucked. I eat more than my dad but my entire life I've been underweight. (170cm 5'7/50kg 110lbs?)
I can literally eat anything and I will remain 50kg, my weight barely fluctuates. And I was just reading now that there's some people who can't even trace their step back in their head. They can't rotate a cow in their head of retrace their steps in their house. I can do all these things I just don't see it. So you might be right I will check up on this

>>18760861
Yeah Belgians are white, am I talking to a Dutchie or something?

>>18760738
aphantasia is not real in humans. Some people are really stupid and engage in very minimal abstract thinking, which will somewhat calcify their ability to effectively do so when prompted (hence the "how would you feel if you hadn't eaten breakfast" meme), but nobody is born without even the ability to think abstractly except for maybe people who are literally braindead. Like a person who is technically alive but has no brain activity.
If someone actually had aphantasia, then they wouldn't be able to speak a language. Languages encode common human experiences into a series of abstract symbols (words) with particular conventions that enable us to use essentially gibberish mouth noises to convey real meaning. If someone had "real" aphantasia and I told them that earlier today I ate an apple, they wouldn't even be able to parse that sentence, because they wouldn't be able to imagine someone eating an apple. Language would just become noise and they would go feral.

>>18760887
I actually agree with your point. It's just a spectrum not necessarily an on and off switch. It can never be truly off but it can be weaker

>>18760738
>as if they were on shrooms
No, you don't see things in your normal field of vision like what happens with psychedelics. At least I don't. I see them in my mental space. If you have an internal voice, it's like that but with vision instead of sound. For me it feels like just about every external sense has an internal analogue that I can control with different degrees of skill, so I can create a weak, fuzzy simulation of whatever I want.

>>18760887
That's not what aphantasia is.

>>18760738
How do you imagine things without seeing them?

>>18760738
>as if they were on shrooms
shrooms initially just warp the visual of the eyes, before becoming so warped that it becomes hard to decode.
If you've ever lost motor control due to a cut, injection or injury, or been briefly partially unconcious due to dehydration or fainting, that's what shrooms do to the visual.
The minds eye is different, in that it doesn't actually replace the "pixels" of your visual field with a warp of new colored items, but rather act as a third backchannel in addition to your 2 eyes, with a similar "unvisible field" like the nerve connection blindspot of the normal 2 eyes, except that if you try to "see" this blindspot, there's actual interpretable input, different to the nerve blindspot of the eye that is just blank.
For people with aphantasia, learn to locate the blindspot of your nerve endings, see that it is blank, and imagine (hehe) that this blank field is instead inside the mind, as opposed to a visible blindspot of the eye. the minds eye is a toggle-able blindspot, that can be focused with effort or without effort, depending on the strength of the vision and grade of phantasia.
sort of like a phantom limb eye.

File: _91408619_55df76d5-2245-4(...).jpg (54 KB, 976x850)

54 KB JPG

>>18760738
i never understood this but maybe i'm retarded
i can visualize all the details of thing and construct it in my mind but i have never seen it like 5
when i ask people they describe the same
who among you is actually seeing vivid pictures projected?
you can close your eyes and imagine light?
does it fill your vision or are you just visualizing the idea of light?
they're different things.

I see 1 but it's a honeycrisp apple and it's being sliced by a magic knife ready to be eaten
Now I want an apple, brb

>>18760817
You wouldn't be a jew would you? They lack the ability as a punishment from the gods

>>18760817
I don't think you understand the concept, and you're probably not a 5.

>>18760738
if you've ever had a dream you don't have aphantasia

>>18761208
The condition exists on a continuum. For severe aphantasia that might be true but there's probably people who can dream but still have trouble visualizing things on demand.

>>18760976
It's hard to explain but essentially I just get a very abstract idea of the thing that I'm trying to imagine

>>18761179
LOL no I think jews get special powers because they signed their soul away to the devil

>>18761190
When I close my eyes and try to see though my "mind's eye" I just don't see anything.
But you are right that I can still visualize things. I don't need instructions like "left right right straight right left". I just know where something is.

>>18761208
Like I said before I don't think it's a switch where you can turn it on and off. I think it's on a spectrum and I just have a very bad imagination. My dreams are extremely fuzzy and blurry yet I can dream. But I think >>18761211 is right because I'm pretty sure dreaming works with another area of the brain than trying to imagine things on the spot.

>>18761217
>I just know where something is.
In line with what I said here >>18760917 about every sense having an internal analogue, I wonder if you're using your internal kinaesthetic/spatial sense instead of your internal visual sense to know where things are? That's what I most often use for navigating and finding things, as opposed to visualizing a map in my head. The kineasthetic sense is much more three-dimensional and so better suited to the task in many cases.

>>18761235 (cont.)
Although I call it an "internal" sense, I don't mean that it necessarily feels internal. For example, I can "imagine," in a largely non-visual manner, the sensation of there being a wall three feet behind me, if that makes any sense, and it feels like a extension of the same sense I use to "imagine" what it feels like to hold an apple, no vision required.

>>18761249 (cont.)
The last part equating touch with the kinaesthetic sense might not be quite right, but subjectively they're at least very closely related to the point of being difficult to separate for me.

>>18761235
>I wonder if you're using your internal kinaesthetic/spatial sense
Good question but I don't think so. I quite literally have a map inside of my head but I just don't visualize it. I don't see anything or would even be aware of the existence of a mind's eye if it wasn't for the fact that I found out about aphantasia. But I do have some sort of map inside of my head.

It seems contradictory but it's true.

>>18761257
What I'm calling the kinaesthetic/spatial sense can represent a three dimensional model of a place without any need for color or perspective. I guess you could use it to represent a two dimensional model (an ordinary map) as well if you wanted, since 2d is contained within 3d.

If you really have no idea how you know things, then I wonder if your brain is still doing more or less the same thing as other people, only much of the process is unconscious for some reason.

>>18761268
>What I'm calling the kinaesthetic/spatial sense can represent a three dimensional model of a place without any need for color or perspective.
I still have a very abstract idea of color within the map and perspective even more I believe (though I admit it's hard to describe exactly what I'm "seeing" or "feeling") However I do think that you might be on to something. Because I originally thought you meant something like closing your eyes and touching your nose without any visual cues.

>>18761270
>Because I originally thought you meant something like closing your eyes and touching your nose without any visual cues.
I did. That's the external kinaesthetic sense over which you don't have much voluntary control, because it's hard to not yo feel where your nose is in space. The internal kinaesthetic sense is like it, but you do have voluntary control over it, and you can use to create a feeling for the shape of your environment based on visual cues or you can use it to "imagine" the feeling of the shape of whatever environment or object you want.

>>18761274
I guess you could get "color" by associating different parts of the kinaesthetic model with different colors verbally or texturally, idk

>>18761274
But what about Louis XIV then? I mean I can imagine (not picture) his famous 1701 portrait in an abstract way but this is a 2d image. It is not a place in space. Just a flat image. I've seen many people with aphantasia say that they are very bad with faces and bad with memorizing certain details. For me this isn't really the case. I know Louis' face is somewhat oval and he has a sharp nose. How would you explain this then?

>>18761287
2d is a subset of 3d. If something is capable of representing 3d, it's certainly capable of representing 2d in theory. But, if my description isn't clicking for you, then maybe I'm wrong and that isn't what you're doing.

>>18760738
It's just people not understanding the question/description. Everyone except the truly retarded (as in actually medically retarded, not the insult) is a 1.

>>18761296
But you specifically mentioned spatial senses. Makes sense that this applies to 3d spaces, but how exactly does it apply to a flat image? I'm really trying to understand.

>>18761302
I think it's fair to have a debate about number 5 but I'm absolutely not number 1. I cannot visualize anything

>>18761302
That's what I suspect too. Like I'm an easy 1, but when you're picturing the Apple it's not like it's literally there, it isn't a visual hallucination. And that's where I think people end up misunderstanding the question. They aren't asking whether or not the Apple appears as if it were a real object, they're asking if your brain can "visualize" it in the first place.

>>18761322
I would describe myself to be 5 and I understand your concept. If you close your eyes you will still se black. However some people swear they actually see color via their "mind's eye".

>>18761332
that's bullshit because then you wouldn't be able to draw an image from memory (even a stick figure or letter of the alphabet) or be able to describe somethings appearance to someone verbally.

>>18761363
I've been asking myself that too. But I swear I cannot "see" the images through mind's eye. Just an abstract idea of it in my head. Maybe I'm a 4 but I don't even see the outline in my head. It's very weird to explain

>>18761320
>how exactly does it apply to a flat image?
One way you might represent a 2d image with the kinaesthetic sense is by imagining the feeling of drawing or painting the image. Or you might imagine the picture as a wire sculpture where the lines in the picture are the wires. Or you might imagine it as being broken into flat shards of different shapes along the lines. All of those sensations can be narrowed down and compressed by removing nonessential elements to reach a very subtle sense of how the picture is arranged, and different parts can have verbal notes attached by memory to say what color each part is.