Ian Ziegler

I feel your vision but do not see your vision

I don’t think I have taste, smell or touch memory because my friends’ experience differs from mine rather markedly. I know I like salmon but it doesn’t make me crave it, I just make it sometime and alas it tastes good. I know smells I like but I only when I smell them. My cool trick is I can lucid dream and many cannot, so while I cannot have waking images, I have context from my dreaming life.

I cannot say I feel this way, myself is easy to see everyday, I don’t have self blindness.

I have life long aphantasia but I lucid dream very well and so I get a peak at what the general population can do in their waking life. In my dreams, if I understand it to be a dream, I can move objects with my mind, I can conjure people I know into existence and if I’m doing a very good job I can warp into a different scene entirely. For myself, I have to balance my manipulation of the dream to stay within it, too much conscience effort brings awakeness. I “understand” the minds eye through this other skill I have but it’s still very intriguing that most people can do this at will when they are awake. I’m not jealous and I am career successful, so it doesn’t seem to be a terrible thing just a different thing, to me.