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Bringing Faith to life with out mental imagery

Hi, I am new to the network so I apologise if this post isn’t suitable. I am not here to start a religious debate or anything like that . I am just really interested in hearing from anyone who has any sort of faith and how you potentially connect to what you believe. I have only very recently found out that I have Aphantasia but am undertaking a wellbeing discipleship program. A lot of my fellow students descibe how they see images in their head and how this helps bring their faith to life and helps them hear from God (in our case).  I am really struggling to bring my faith to life and hear from God as I don’t see pictures, or hear songs, sounds in my mind etc. I was just wondering if anyone out there has had a similar experience and has any advise or different ways they connect to their faith without mental imagery.  Also I feel that I live in a world of darkness, does anyone else feel like this? How do you bring your every day life to life and remember things. 

Many thanks, 

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Ann Marshall
on May 10, 2021

hi there! i just found out I’m total aphant a few days ago and i am struggling too. but this is my issue, i’m a buddhist and a lot of the specific practices we do, like you, are built around what are called meditation objects(deities), so yes we meditate with very specific and often complex mental visuals of compassionate bodhisattvas. mind blown when i realized i wasn’t doing it wrong or was bad at it, i just can do it the way it is instructed. i don’t have a solution. but i just wanted to express to you that i understand why its distressing. i will be talking to my teacher soon, so i will let you know if he has any useful thoughts. 

Chatter
on May 20, 2021

New here also.

I don’t have the ability to visualize or hear sounds in my mind. I do, however, feel things internally. So when I dream or recall a memory, I recall/dream essentially in feelings and ideas. For me, it didn’t occur to me that people actually visualize and see God! *laughing* (I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at me still struggling to understand that visualization isn’t metaphorical.) 

When it comes to faith (for me, that’s God), I’ve accepted that I do not need to see or hear His voice to know He is there. I take it on faith. I know He is listening. I know He hears me. I know He answers my prayers. I feel Him – most notably through a sense of calm or peace. Or I might stumble upon an article to read that tells me what I need to know. Or I get a phone call or an email from an unexpected place. God talks to us in the ways we can hear Him best. He knows those ways better than we do.

And I take that completely on faith. He said He is there. Always. And I believe Him. No proof necessary.

swrong
on July 8, 2021

I love that you said “feel like living in a world of darkness”, I feel the same way, always have.
I’m very strong in my faith, BY faith. I can feel when the Holy Spirit hits and can smell Him. What I struggle most is reading the Bible (or reading anything), as it’s just words to me. It’s just as useless to listen to the Bible. There are movies that are word for word biblical, and THaT helped me greatly, wish they had that for all books in the Bible.