omgz I have a question - visualisation

[Arch]

Ok, every so often this really bugs me and it is right now, I just can't seem to visualize. It would be handy to be able to do it as a way to transistion in my WILD attempts. Every so often I see people saying they can create a picture in their mind and hold it there, afew people claim these visualisations are crystal clear and look like real life. It really bugs me how my dreams are so clear and realistic yet I can't even conjour the most simple shape in my mind. Am I thinking about it the wrong way? I close my eyes and attempt to picture something, I am looking at the back of my eyelids, but if I am supposed to be 'looking with my brain' I definitely struggle to do that. Any tips people? Please don't link me to picturing exercises as I literally cannot picture anything : (

[Burke]

You know how when you close your eyes it's not 100% black? There's that "snow" type thing like you see when a t.v. isn't getting any reception, and you may see some faint colors and shapes, thought it's mostly random crap that never really amounts to anything. Try looking at a picture first. I used your avatar. Then, close your eyes and imagine the image being formed out of those abstract shapes and snow-like effect. For example I first pictured the general outline of the character on your avatar, followed by the weapons outline, wing outline, and then filled in the colors. Granted you don't actually see the picture, but you can still imagine it. The image becomes the clearer the better you get. Once you get decent at that you can start creating images out of nothing. This is, of course, only limited by your imagination and certain people are innately better at this than others but there is no real limit. Also, daydreaming can help a lot with this. This is at least how I do it and, of course, it's not going to work 100% for everyone but it's a start.

[Fuzzman]

This is something I'm struggling with too but doing some practices seems to help. For me usually when I think of picturing something, it's not so much a vivid picture that my eyes see, but something that i'm thinking of in the mind. Which I've wondered if it's pretty much the same for everyone, do you actually "see" the image when you're visualizing or is it just something you think of? Sometimes my visuals can be very vivid, as if I'm looking through my eyelids, but those are when I'm on the verge of sleeping and most of the time I hardly notice it because I'm just tired and about to go unconscious. One exercise that I liked was using visual memory to build up visualization skills. You can do this anywhere to practice. What you do is you look at a scene for a little bit and try to see what's around you. Then close your eyes and bring back everything you can remember. I like to focus on single things at a time and get a clear idea of what it looked like, and usually I move my eyes to the same spot where I think I actually saw it so I can put the pieces together to form the full image. Remember everything you can and then open your eyes again to see how much you got right. For me at least there's usually A LOT that I overlooked, so then I close my eyes again and add those to the original mental picture I had formed, and do this over and over again until you feel like you've gotten an image that's similar to the actual scene. Now I don't know how it is for everyone, but it seems like it helps me, and it's useful for creating images if I'm daydreaming because I have images that I've already visualized. If you say you can't picture ANYTHING then I don't know how much this will help you. If you really can't picture anything or even have an idea of a picture at all then maybe start with very simple shapes / lines / colors and start slow to see how much you can visualize. Try to imagine a straight line, rotate and change the size, now add more lines to make a triangle, fill it in with a color, add more shapes, etc. I hope this helps but if not then I don't know what to tell you