4 ms·

I was like you until the age of 34 or so. Now I can make full corporeal models that move in time and walk around them. Learn. And people don't visualize thin

by godDLL 5y ago

I was like you until the age of 34 or so. Now I can make full corporeal models that move in time and walk around them. Learn. And people don't visualize things the way I learned. They "see" the same spotty attention-point cloud they move around in in real life, one spot at a time. Plus many didn't learn to draw. Also learn.

Jap2-0 5y ago
How?
- godDLL 5y ago
  It's not an infectious disease, and in my case wasn't a disorder of some kind. I just never was told that it's a learnable skill. I just told you it is. You might have luck starting with a point, or maybe with a word – try tracing letters and read it backwards. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367198
1_player 5y ago
You can't simply say to "learn" to cure yourself from aphantasia and leave it at that. Please elaborate.
- godDLL 5y ago
  The way you learn anything. 0_o You need a journal. You need deliberate practice. You need progressive goals. I did about 5 minutes every 2 to 10 days. First, no other thoughts. I did mindful boxed breathing for about 3-4 minutes. Then, a point. Something that is in a spot. Then two points. Something like a distance. When you have that, advance to a triangle. Then colored triangle. Then a pyramid that you spin around, coloring different faces in different colors. That alone took about 6 months of practice. Then it gets easier.
  - yodon 5y ago
    I also did this process, but my experience was different. When I first realized that others could visualize things and I could not. I practiced trying to visualize a simple cube for months, relaxing and meditating as you did. Then one day I actually saw something. I was fully awake, and I saw a crystal clear image of a large granite slab, slowly rotating. I could see the texture of the surface, the physical detail of the shape. It was a truly amazing experience, the likes of which I had never experienced. And then I had what was the most frightening thought I've ever had: "I don't know how to make this thing go away - what if I can't make it go away? Have I just taught and meditated myself into psychosis? Oh shit!!!" I then pulled out of the visualization (no idea how that happened, it just ended with no fanfare, presumably as I started to think about other things) and have never seen another mental image like that, even though I've tried. This happened perhaps ten years ago. That experience was not entirely unlike my experience with lucid dreaming some years earlier. I essentially never dreamed (never recalled my dreams), but I read all about lucid dreaming, thought about it, and used Richard Feynman's dream study approach to try to focus on it. Then one night I had a lucid dream, and the next night, and the next. Each night for almost a week I had an incredibly vivid lucid dream, absolutely amazing experiences, waking up the next morning with full recall of it and feeling exhausted and entirely unrefreshed from my sleep. At the end of that week I had a final dream. In that final dream the subject of my dream was the realization that I couldn't lucid dream any more. I never had another lucid dream, and have almost never remembered any dreams since then. The hardware is clearly there for this stuff, at least in my case, but it seems the OS is also clearly working to "protect" me from some of those hardware features. Given that there absolutely are people who are subject to uncontrolled hallucinations and mental breakdowns between the real and the imaginary, I've concluded that at least for my mind these experiences are too close to the boundary for whatever circuitry protects me from that sort of breakdown. Others will have their own journeys, but for me based on my personal experiences I've concluded it's not a case of the mind "can't" it's a case of the mind "shouldn't" or "wont." As with any extreme training, be careful not to injure yourself. You might be fine, but not everyone who engages in extreme training does so without injury. I'm glad to have walked away from the process safely and can easily imagine not having done so.
    - 5y ago
godDLL 5y ago
You know what, I just might do a training app for you all. After all, I know a thing or two about that.

by godDLL 5y ago

Jap2-0 5y ago

How?

godDLL 5y ago
It's not an infectious disease, and in my case wasn't a disorder of some kind. I just never was told that it's a learnable skill. I just told you it is. You might have luck starting with a point, or maybe with a word – try tracing letters and read it backwards. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367198

1_player 5y ago

You can't simply say to "learn" to cure yourself from aphantasia and leave it at that. Please elaborate.

godDLL 5y ago
The way you learn anything. 0_o You need a journal. You need deliberate practice. You need progressive goals. I did about 5 minutes every 2 to 10 days. First, no other thoughts. I did mindful boxed breathing for about 3-4 minutes. Then, a point. Something that is in a spot. Then two points. Something like a distance. When you have that, advance to a triangle. Then colored triangle. Then a pyramid that you spin around, coloring different faces in different colors. That alone took about 6 months of practice. Then it gets easier.
- yodon 5y ago
  I also did this process, but my experience was different. When I first realized that others could visualize things and I could not. I practiced trying to visualize a simple cube for months, relaxing and meditating as you did. Then one day I actually saw something. I was fully awake, and I saw a crystal clear image of a large granite slab, slowly rotating. I could see the texture of the surface, the physical detail of the shape. It was a truly amazing experience, the likes of which I had never experienced. And then I had what was the most frightening thought I've ever had: "I don't know how to make this thing go away - what if I can't make it go away? Have I just taught and meditated myself into psychosis? Oh shit!!!" I then pulled out of the visualization (no idea how that happened, it just ended with no fanfare, presumably as I started to think about other things) and have never seen another mental image like that, even though I've tried. This happened perhaps ten years ago. That experience was not entirely unlike my experience with lucid dreaming some years earlier. I essentially never dreamed (never recalled my dreams), but I read all about lucid dreaming, thought about it, and used Richard Feynman's dream study approach to try to focus on it. Then one night I had a lucid dream, and the next night, and the next. Each night for almost a week I had an incredibly vivid lucid dream, absolutely amazing experiences, waking up the next morning with full recall of it and feeling exhausted and entirely unrefreshed from my sleep. At the end of that week I had a final dream. In that final dream the subject of my dream was the realization that I couldn't lucid dream any more. I never had another lucid dream, and have almost never remembered any dreams since then. The hardware is clearly there for this stuff, at least in my case, but it seems the OS is also clearly working to "protect" me from some of those hardware features. Given that there absolutely are people who are subject to uncontrolled hallucinations and mental breakdowns between the real and the imaginary, I've concluded that at least for my mind these experiences are too close to the boundary for whatever circuitry protects me from that sort of breakdown. Others will have their own journeys, but for me based on my personal experiences I've concluded it's not a case of the mind "can't" it's a case of the mind "shouldn't" or "wont." As with any extreme training, be careful not to injure yourself. You might be fine, but not everyone who engages in extreme training does so without injury. I'm glad to have walked away from the process safely and can easily imagine not having done so.
  - 5y ago

godDLL 5y ago

You know what, I just might do a training app for you all. After all, I know a thing or two about that.