Most people can create images inside their mind quite easily. About 1 in 50 people, however, have a problem with the visual cortex called aphantasia. In aphantasia, the part of the brain that processes information received from the eyes doesn't function properly. As a result, there is an inability to create mental images.
According to Web MD: “The ability to create mental images exists on a spectrum. On one end, are people who can create extra-vivid mental images. Most people are somewhere in between.” On the other, those with complete (or total) aphantasia are unable to conjure up any kind of mental imagery. Though they are able to dream because dreaming is involuntary.
My aphantasia was and is, total. Like many people with aphantasia, I grew up thinking that everyone was like me and that the ‘image’ in imagination was a metaphor.
But there was one "psychic" advantage to my condition. I couldn’t deliberately make up a vision if I tried.
So when I began to see visualize spots of color during a guided chakra meditation I was overjoyed. As the meditation progressed, a distinct circle of violet light appeared, and I felt as if I was looking through this circle of color into another space.
Then, very abruptly, I found myself surrounded by color.
A bright endless blue.
It was almost as if a giant curtain had fallen or a bright blue screen had blinked into being and wrapped completely around me.
For a moment, I panicked. Thinking that I was having a seizure or even a stroke, I opened my eyes to an ordinary room. But when I shut them again, the color was waiting. This continued for a good ten or fifteen minutes before I decided to keep my eyes open and get on with my day.
Later, when I sat down to record my experience in The Mystic Review, I remembered the swirling spectrum of blue I’d seen in the Spirit Dream. While the blue I’d seen in meditation was only a single shade, it had reminded me of some kind of screen.
Thinking about it now, I think it was almost as if my attention was being drawn away from my New Age interests, and back to the dream.
UPDATED: 2024
I will be returning to this experience in a future post and wanted to update the original with an updated version.
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The update to this post is excerpted from The Spirit Dream © 2024 All Rights Reserved
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