Direct Experience: Meditation Without a Mind’s Eye

In the Tibetan tradition, meditators may be directed to visualise in the space in front of them, the embodiment of compassion, called Avalokiteśvara or Chenrezig, seated on a lotus and moon cushion, radiant and serene, with four arms: the first two pressed together at the heart, holding a wish-fulfilling jewel, the second pair holding a crystal rosary and a white lotus. In other traditions, you may be asked to visualize a sphere of light radiating outward from your chest in all directions. For people who experience no mental imagery, this can be confusing or even alienating. What do you do when nothing appears?

This reflection is co-authored by two long-term meditators who experience inner life in ways that may differ from what is usually described. One of us has no mental cinema or inner voice: thoughts seem to arise in awareness out of nothing—clearly understood, but without images or sound. The other experiences fleeting, incomplete images, and spatial intuition without internal images, and limited verbal thought. Neither of us connected with meditation instructions that depended on visualization or inner narration.

While our specific perceptual makeups differ, we share a way of relating to experience that has emerged over years of practice. And we’ve discovered that for us, meditation does not require a mind’s eye or an internal narrator, and may be even more direct without one.

Why Aphantasia Is No Barrier

Much of the existing advice for meditators with aphantasia focuses on adaptation: substitute felt sense for imagery, attend to breath or sound instead of inner pictures. These suggestions may be helpful, especially at the beginning. But they carry an unspoken assumption that visualization is the default mode of practice—and that aphantasia is something to work around.

We’ve come to see things differently.

In many contemplative traditions, especially non‑dual lineages, meditation ultimately turns toward letting go rather than building up—toward releasing constructed experience and recognising the awareness in which it appears.

When inner imagery is absent and thoughts don’t habitually spin into mental dramas, there’s less to “let go of.” The attention that might otherwise be occupied with mental images and stories can rest more easily in immediate experience.

Seen this way, aphantasia isn’t an obstacle. It doesn’t block the movement of practice, but can quietly support it. Our aphantasia and hypophantasia cleared the way for a meditative life that is intimate, subtle, and—paradoxically—rich in felt experience.

“Being aware of being aware is the essence of meditation. It is the only form of meditation that does not require the directing, focusing, or controlling of the mind.”—Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware, pg 40.

What Practice Looks Like

People often assume that inner visual experience is necessary for meditation practice to be meaningful or effective. But that assumption overlooks a key point: practice—both in formal meditation and in daily life—doesn’t happen in images. It happens in experience.

Without a mind’s eye, attention may shift more easily to what is actually present: sensation, emotion, and thought. With nothing to picture, the path leads another way—into direct experience.

For one of us, sensations in meditation often seem to be located somewhere in the body initially, but when they are held in attention, the sense of location dissolves. Experience opens into what feels like a vibrating, energy-filled space. Emotion and thought arise in that space, silent and fleeting. The other feels vibration and senses light—not imagined but directly perceived. There is no internal dialogue, no mental narrator. Meaning is not delivered in words, but sensed in our own native language of experience—simply sensed as pattern or shape in the field of experience.

This way of practising fosters intimacy with life by staying close to what we experience directly. With no images to distract us, attention rests naturally on the experiences of sensation, emotion, and thought, and on awareness itself. With practice, it becomes easier to let go of the habit of shaping or directing experience, and to allow whatever arises to arise and pass in its own time.

A Practice of Uncovering

We don't meditate to achieve special states. We meditate to see what is.

That may sound austere, but it’s not. It’s relieving—and invigorating. It opens us up to the wonder of what we are actually experiencing—frees us to be as we are.

At first, it can feel as though something is missing—especially when a teacher says “visualize Avalokitesvara” or “imagine light above your head.” But when the focus of meditation shifts from working with mental images to staying with immediate experience, something else becomes apparent. The effort to manage or construct experience begins to fall away. What remains is a quiet attentiveness—nothing added, nothing missing.

This shift isn’t about technique; it’s about intention. Instead of trying to alter how experience appears, with practice we learn to stay with it exactly as it is. Over time, this makes it possible to experience whatever arises without needing to divide it into “me” and “what’s happening.” The aim is not to substitute one mode of experience for another, but to relax the impulse to interfere—to rest in experience as it unfolds, without elaboration.

Too close—you don’t see it. Too deep—you don’t fathom it. Too simple—you don’t believe it. Too fine—you don’t accept it. —A saying from the Shangpa tradition, translation by Ken McLeod

Letting Go of Identity

For those just discovering their aphantasia, claiming it as identity can be empowering and important —it helps explain a lifetime of experiences that may have felt isolating or confusing, connects you to community, and validates that your way of experiencing the world is real and shared by others. What we're describing here is a different movement—one that may come later in practice, or may not resonate at all.

We don’t relate to aphantasia as an identity. That doesn’t mean denying it. We acknowledge our perceptual differences, but we don’t build a sense of who we are around them. Everyone perceives the world differently, and by understanding that we differ, we come to appreciate our uniqueness.

As attention turns towards direct experience, identity becomes less compelling. Instead of comparing ourselves to others—or measuring ourselves against a standard of “normal” perception—the impulse to evaluate falls away. Practice becomes about meeting experience, rather than managing it.

“We have to be very, very careful and attentive to the tendency to form an identity about any aspect of our life.”—Ken McLeod

This approach isn’t indifferent—it’s deeply compassionate. It allows for difference without turning it into definition. We each experience life in distinct ways, many of which don’t fit neatly into existing descriptions. Conversations with other meditators reveal a wide range of perceptual styles across every sense modality, along with many ways of describing them. For both of us, a critical turning point came when we let go of the need to match anyone else’s accounts of experience. That release made it possible to trust our own experience more fully, and to meet the uniqueness of others with greater curiosity and openness.

Living in Two Worlds

There’s a helpful distinction between “the world” and “my world.” “The world” is the shared realm of concepts: coffee cup, dollar bill, house. “My world” is the world of actual experience—of sensation, emotion, and thought as they arise. This is the world in which meditation takes place. When non-dual traditions speak about awakening, they point to this immediate, experiential world that each of us inhabits and can not share with anyone else.

This distinction helps explain why mental imagery isn’t necessary to meditation practice. Imagery belongs to “the world”—the conceptual, representational realm. Meditation unfolds in “my world,” the realm of what’s happening right here and now in my experience. Inner imagery or words may or may not arise there. What matters is not how experience appears, but that we meet what does arise, honestly and openly.

Seen this way, aphantasia isn’t a missing feature—it’s a different doorway.

A Path Less Adorned

There were times when we felt out of step—when teachers didn’t know how to respond, or dismissed our experience as unusual. Over time, those moments gave way to deeper inquiry. We came to value practices that didn’t ask us to visualize anything, but instead asked us to open: to feel, to sense, to simply be here.

This shift wasn’t about rebellion or rejection. It was about discovery. And what we discovered was that you don’t need inner imagery to walk the path. You don’t need a mind’s eye to wake up.

Awareness cannot be possessed, earned, or achieved. It is simply what we are. It doesn’t depend on form. It doesn’t require adornment. Meditation—at its heart—is not about producing imagery, but about recognizing what is already present.

Much depends on each of us. We’re not suggesting this is a better way, but for some, it may be a more direct one.

References

Rupert Spira. 2017. The Essence of Meditation #: Being Aware of Being Aware

Shangpa tradition verse, quoted in Ken McLeod. 2021. Arrow to the Heart.

Ken McLeod 2008. Living Awake: Who Am I?

Ann and Linda recently launched Akalpana, an invitation for meditators and contemplatives whose inner experience may not match what’s traditionally described—whether related to aphantasia, neurodivergence, or simply the uniqueness of being. Akalpana is a Sanskrit word meaning “beyond conceptualization” or “without fabrication.”

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Lukas Widmer•recently•edited

Thank you for this thoughtful piece. The core claim – that aphantasia is no barrier to meditation – is worth making. But I'd suggest the argument runs deeper than the framing here allows. The article opens with Tibetan visualization practice: Avalokiteśvara on a lotus cushion, spheres of radiant light. These are presented as representative of what meditation typically asks for, making aphantasia appear as a deviation from the norm. But historically, this gets things backwards. The oldest surviving Buddhist meditation instructions – satipaṭṭhāna, ānāpānasati – require no mental imagery at all. Breath, bodily sensation, feeling-tone (vedanā), states of mind: none of these presuppose a mind's eye. Systematic visualization practices entered Buddhism significantly later, embedded in Vajrayāna contexts with their own initiatory logic. They are a historically younger layer, not the baseline. If we take Theravāda practice as the oldest available reference point, then aphantasia was never a problem to begin with. There is nothing to work around. The meditator with no inner imagery is not adapting an essentially visual practice – they are, in a sense, closer to the original instructions. The article's framing inadvertently constructs the obstacle it then generously removes. That is worth noting – not to diminish the experience the authors describe, which is real and carefully observed, but because people with aphantasia deserve an accurate picture of what the tradition actually offers them.