Mind's Eye

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*Bumped* for Syl, and anyone else who may want to say something, or explain this bizarre phenomenon of "seeing" things in your head.

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[dennisrwood]

Avatar: i have no problem with time. i can usually figure out the time, even when i wake up. math is hard for me, but i can compute some numbers pretty fast when not thinking of it. at work i can tell by the feel how much food we will need. just observing the ebb and flow of the inmates. i can usually tell within 5-10 minutes where problems will occur. i'm great at organizing the day at work.

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And how about "seeing" picture in your head though? Do you "visualise" things?

When I was talking about time there, I wasn't talking about the actual time. I can usually estimate the time to within 15mins or so of the clock.

What I meant was the sense of time passing. The "feeling" that something happened recently, or long ago. To me, it all feels recent, probably, as I said, because my memories are "text". At any given moment, it always feels like its the only moment.

There were other moments, but they occupy the same point in time in my head. In other words, although I can know that preceding events have happened, there is no sense of progression, or time lapse, from that memory to the next.

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[[Syl]]

Yep, that sounds like me. I remember I was always angry at shows like Mr. Rogers because I couldn't "imagine" stuff in my head, go to some land of make-believe, or anything. I could role-play, but that's about it. Even when I was a kid, everything was conceptualization. The idea of things.

Surprisingly, I'm pretty good at math. I can't "see" answers, either, and all the basic stuff is done by memorized tables or formulas. I can work out things like electronic circuit diagrams in my head, though. I think this is because even though I can't picture things, I do have a spatial sense in my head, and I can place certain "facts" in places they need to go. I have to maintain focus on it, though, or it all slips apart.

I believe all the more complex stuff I handle by compression and extraction of basic ideas. As if my mind is translating two dimensional (textual) information into a 3-dimensional reality.

I think I share your thing with time, too. They way I see it, time is a 4th dimension, but your brain, as I understand it, plots down all temporal information wherever it just happens to fit. So it's up to the visual memory process to lay it out in the timeline. For people like us... I can generally only say with any amount of certainty when something happened if I have some kind of contextual clues to link it to a specific year or season. Example, I went on a camping trip with my aunt and uncle up to the Sawtooth mountains. I remember riding a mountain bike (pedals were slightly longer than my legs) and finding a very cool rock with a bunch of purple crystals on one side. I know I lost that rock some time shortly after high school. For the life of me, I can't figure out when between 6th and 10th grade I did that. And, of course, some memories are more faded than others, so that helps.

Heh. And except for a few glaring details, my memories are largely colorless. My first bike was red. The rock I mentioned above was purple, but I think the reason I remember that was because I had a lot of white crystals in my collection, but I'd never found any purple ones. Oh, and up until I was about five, I couldn't tell the difference between yellow and orange. It wasn't that I couldn't see the difference, just that it never registered they were different.

For a long time, I thought people were just talking about the same thing but in different ways. It wasn't until I told a girlfriend of mine that I couldn't keep a straight, unmoving line in my head (I forget how that came up) that I realized I was different.

[The Dreaming]

This is actually one of my favorite phenomina of near-sleep. I don't think I have a photographic memory, but my minds eye is very powerful. Especially when I am high. I can just close my mind and let it wander, and I get that edge of sleep feeling, where it is almost a waking dream. It is very pleasent.

[lurch]

..Its my experience one can controll the whole minds eye/dreaming facilities of ones mind...`1) As one slips off to sleep..repeat over and over to one self,,,I will wake after each dream ,,I will wake after each dream,,etc. Self hypnotising does work and usuallly around the 3rd nite of self hypnotising,,one finds oneself literally waking up after each dream. upon waking , one remembers,,and is free to write down what one remembers. Conclusion is..99% of dreams are not note worthy..junk. Over time waking from each dreams, in effect interrupts the sleep cycle to ill effects..as in,,the next day one is always tired, irritable. The more you stay with the waking bit,,the weirder your waking days become..Read as , Not Worth It.
...For general sharpening of mind eye skills I strongly suggest the consumption of Algae..yea the Lake Klamath variety( for those who know). Brain food is nuturing to the brains abilty to focus, organize and create. Google Cell Tech or Blue Green algae if interested..IT DOES WORK..........amazingly so.......MEL

[dennisrwood]

Avatar: i can't visualize instructions that you give, i have to have hands on to learn concrete things. but abstracts like chaos theory just fall naturally to me. and damned if i can properly explain it. when i was a kid i learned that light was a wave and a beam. i said, 'of course' it just made sense. i can 'predict' events in a time line. i don't drive, but riding with my wife, i'll tell her a car is about to move and then it does. she has come to mostly accept it. i have no basis for most of it. but the structure seems to fall into place. i can run my inmate work crew easily, showing up where a problem is about to occur. my co-workers struggle and you can see the difference in how things run. i had a job running a machine. i could 'sense' when another machine across the floor would break down. i would alert the operator. sometimes they listened, mostly did not. i was correct around 90% of the time.

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...because I couldn't "imagine" stuff in my head, go to some land of make-believe, or anything. I could role-play, but that's about it. Even when I was a kid, everything was conceptualization. The idea of things.

Yeah, for me, when people said "imagine", I assumed they just meant "think about". Don't know when I realised that people actually meant that they could "see" some sort of internal "picture" in their minds.

My math is terrible as it happens, but my memory is excellent.

It's just the whole "picture" thing that I don't get. How does it work? Conceptual abstracts are simple to me, I just "know" how it works. But I can only imagine a colour because I've seen the colour, and been told it's blue, or whatever. I don't see a sudden splash of colour in my mind.

And nothing seems to make a difference. Even LSD or shrooms only produce distortions of what I can see with my eyes anyway. Oh yeah, lurch, not only do I not remember dreams, I never even awake with the sensation of having dreamed.

The transition from sleep to waking is instant. There is not even a sense of the night having passed. I fall asleep, the next moment I'm awake, and 6 hours have passed. This doesn't affect any of my abilities, I can still focus, organise and create, but it's as though where others have a movie screen in their heads, I have a long page of text, (which I can't see). It's only words in there.

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[[Syl]]

"Even LSD or shrooms only produce distortions of what I can see with my eyes anyway."

Yep, me too. I always thought I was getting bunk stuff. Tracers, lights shimmering, that's about it. Closest thing I ever saw was the clouds on Windows moving like real clouds. Even then, I didn't actually see anything that wasn't there.

And I'm still not sure if I dream in pictures or not. I don't "see" anything more than when I read, but it's not actually text, either. I know I feel physical sensation, though, sometimes to a great degree. And they've been things that couldn't possibly have an external stimuli - like concussion waves. The only time I ever come close to seeing anything behind my eyes is when I lay with my eyes closed and look at the random colors and flashes. Sometimes if I follow one long enough, I'll kind of move beyond it, either going into dream or seeing dream-like images. The only one that I can remember is one that occurs frequently, and that's one of a large, white, marbled, and slightly curved surface over my head. I know others have been common objects, though always in the singular... a chair, a person, etc. *shrug*

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Even LSD or shrooms only produce distortions of what I can see with my eyes anyway."

Yep, me too. I always thought I was getting bunk stuff. Tracers, lights shimmering, that's about it. Closest thing I ever saw was the clouds on Windows moving like real clouds. Even then, I didn't actually see anything that wasn't there.

Know what you mean. Although, in actual fact LSD is a pseudo-hallucinogenic. The distortions etc. are quite usual, and all visual effects usually depend on existing stimulation, rather than producing complete images from scratch. Even people with visual minds don't usually really experience true hallucinations.

*shrug* Yeah, it's just one of those things. I've long since accepted the way that my mind works, and as it usually seems to work quite well, I don't really have any grounds for complaint.

Still, I'd like to experience some of my memories as though I was actually reliving them, rather than just reading about them, but on the other hand, that could have it's drawbacks as well. When I remember a smell, it's not like I'm suddenly smelling it again, it's just the knowledge that it smelled awful. (Or good I suppose.)

My way also has the advantage that when somebody mentions something that I'd rather not think of, I don't get a mental image of it. So I don't ever experience the problem of "images I could do without." I'm sure the other mental benefits that I enjoy compensate for the lack, which, never having had it, I don't really feel anyway.

And there you have it. If you never had it, you don't know what you're missing in the first place.

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[Sheol]

I have got the mind's eye thing down good, but it's controling it that is the problem. I can see past events precisely and watch them unfold in my mind like a movie. But when I try to see something that hasn't happened yet ( I'm not talking about perdicting the future, just making things up in my head) I can't control it. It starts out the way I want it to but then it goes beyond my control. And it never happens the same way twice. I can't try it for very long because I get mad at myself for not being able to see it. Maybe I am crazy.

O, and Avatar, I like your sig. I wonder what you are reading rignt now.

[The Pumpkin King]

This post creeps me out because this is how my brain and imagination has always worked--very, VERY visual. It's not something I DEVELOPED, it's just ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY.

[dennisrwood]

Avatar: i also remember most of my dreams. i have re-occuring dreams. time progresses in my dream. and sometimes i know that i'm dreaming.
i break the fourth wall and try to control events in the dream.

when i listen to music, i can see it played. (i don't play myself) and i can see colors, feel space. there is a song that i started to sing along with, having never heard it before. my wife pointed that out.

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Actually not reading Dune right now, Sheol, just one of my all time favourites.

Pumpkin King-- So how do you experience it? A little movie in your head? And that's part of my question overall.

How does it work? Do your eyes have to be closed? Is it an image superimposed on what you can see naturally? Or does it occur in some part of the brain unconnected to the eyes?

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[The Pumpkin King]

Actually not reading Dune right now, Sheol, just one of my all time favourites.

Pumpkin King-- So how do you experience it? A little movie in your head? And that's part of my question overall.

How does it work? Do your eyes have to be closed? Is it an image superimposed on what you can see naturally? Or does it occur in some part of the brain unconnected to the eyes?

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It's not so much an "image" as well..it IS an image, but I don't "see" it. I can just kind of..feel it. Every detail of a scene, the angle, everything that's happening in it. Sounds, movement... Like my brain is moving over the scene and can feel its texture...

And yet, I can kind of "track" the 'vision' with my eyes, even though it's not technically visable.

It's really odd, but I've found it INCREDIBLY useful in writing, and drawing, as I can play through an entire book or scene like a movie, or have an exact idea of every aspect of a drawing in my head; turning it into the simple task of putting it on paper.

[Avatar]

Weird. I just can't conceive it really. And apparently, language is, at the moment, insufficient to explain it.

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[The Pumpkin King]

Weird. I just can't conceive it really. And apparently, language is, at the moment, insufficient to explain it.

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Yeah, it's weird. I can't even tell you how I manage it. It just HAPPENS. On demand! My imagination is simply geared to work like that.

Strange, ne?

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Yeah. I particularly wonder if there is some underlying reason for the difference.

I must say that this is the first time that I've ever encountered others (Thanks Syl) who experienced the same thing. (Any childhood head injuries Syl?)

Usually, when I discuss it, people are like "Of course I can see pictures in my head. You mean you can't?"

--A

[[Syl]]

One that I can think of, and since it's an amusing little anecdote:

When I was seven I was hanging out at the little municipal park in my little town. At this particular time, I was on the curly slide - you know, all metal, about 15' high. All was well until two girls about my age showed up (no idea who they were). They decided they wanted to go first, so me being the young gentleman that my family raised, I let them. Then I went down. They go running off doing little girl things, so I climb back up the ladder. They come up behind me. Then they tell me that they want to go first again, but in my belief in fair play, I said no, it was my turn.

And then I woke up with my grandmother kneeling over me. Apparently I had fallen (or was pushed) off the top of the slide and was out for however long it took for someone to find my grandmother. I'm guessing it was at least half an hour, most likely longer, since she had been in a bar about a block away.

Not sure if that explains my lack of visual imagination or just my inate distrust of little girls.

[ChoChiyo]

My imagination is extremely vivid. I can visualize entire scenes in my mind. When I'm writing, I visualize it. Wait. Watch what happens. Write it down. If I don't like what happened, I back it up and try again.

Sometimes it changes. Sometimes it stubbornly remains as it was before, whether I like it or not.

It sucked in childhood because every squeak in the house turned into something scaley and hideous (and hungry).

Now, it's rather enjoyable.