Alison Noble

I was at a meditation retreat where my teacher was asking us to explore our thinking processes and label them as either 'verbal' or 'visual'. I kept asking him to explain the 'visual' category as I didn't see any images. His response was "yes, yes, they may be faint, or fuzzy, or dim, or momentary". But for me it was... nothing! I just saw black or, sometimes, movement that resembled oil floating on the surface of water - just shifting blobs of purples or reds that grew, shrank or shifted. I've spent a long time trying to see images. When I started exploring Tibetan Buddhism, a lot of emphasis was placing on visualization and again I felt hampered by my inability to practice the way that they were suggesting. I've tried to improve my visualization skills without success. It's still unclear to me if this is even possible for me. I DO have visual imagery in dreams which seems to indicate that I am not aphantasic. You can probably tell that I still have a great deal of uncertainty about all this 🤣.