Creating a Wonderland?

[NecroPhysics]

From the stuff I've seen, most people seem to be saying that creating a wonderland is as simple as just imagining it up, but I seem to be having a lot of trouble doing so... doing any visualization to be exact.

 

I've heard people saying that they can close their eyes and realistic images just seem to pop up before them but I can never seem to do this. All I see is blackness. I can think about things and understand what they look like but not actually get them to materialise in my mind (The best I can get is an extremely brief, not detailed/fuzzy/obscured flash of a very basic image or object and then it is gone, much less an entire scene that I can come back to.)

 

I suppose my question is, how easy do you find visualization and the creating of wonderlands, and is visualizing similar for anyone else? How would I go about improving it, if I am even able to visualize? Is everyone able to visualize? (sorry If I'm asking a lot, it's just really frustrating for me.)

 

Thanks :)

[Linkzelda]

Hey NecroPhysics,

 

TL;DR at the bottom

 

I can completely empathize with you on the visualization aspect. I would make a statement that visualization is super simple to do, and tend to take for granted of all the hard work I had to do to develop metacognitive skills to make things easier. Before I used to attempt to recall my dreams about 3 years ago, I would rarely remember any dreams.

 

It was always that pitch blackness when I woke up, and I never had an interest in the concept of dreaming until I was fortunately informed you could practice being aware that you’re dreaming. From those years, those competencies stack up, and with the hours of finding personal development, and literally spending 1-3 hours of intense forcing every day for a few weeks, it’s much easier.

 

People who state that wonderlands are easy to do probably tend to take for granted of their visual skills, and seem to attribute that it’s applicable for everyone else. Of course, you’re going to get an answer that you’ll have to work hard, and think about it this way:

 

Let’s say you have older sibling. You, as the younger sibling, may gain perspective of them, and become jealous of their achievements, and you’ll feel as if you’re nothing compared to them. But when you realize they had the years to progressively reach those milestones, you start having a shift in paradigms of your capability.

 

The same would be applicable with something like visualization. People probably don’t acknowledge how hard they had to work (excluding the ones that seem to have a natural visual prowess), or aren’t capable of finding people to compare to in order to see how much effort they put into. Like you’ve stated, you tend to only see transient images that disappear, but the thing with mind eye’s visualization is that it’s not about having solidified and mentally manifested objects for hours on end sustained in your head.

 

Things may be blurry, inconsistent, patchy, but you must allow yourself to continue to embrace those things so that it’ll eventually get easier to maintain focus on that. Because if you’re becoming dissatisfied on a few mental hiccups, you can’t expect yourself to elevate cognitively if you can’t be appreciative of what you can do.

 

I know this only sounds like euphemistic assurances, but it’s really something you have to keep in mind. Whatever skill set or competencies you have that could help with visualization, there’s always room for improvement. It’s not surprising seeing people not having better hold on delayed gratification, and comparing themselves to people who had more time to make achievements. This is one of those things where you have to be cognizant that people’s progress should not be validation that you’re incompetent, or incapable of doing anything in relation to tulpas. Use the gregarious spirit as a compliment to help you go through the motions, but don’t let it be the driving force of everything you may do with this.

 

 

Semi-TL;DR:

 

Don’t compare yourself to others who had more time to go through personal struggles to make breakthroughs into this (and then state it’s easy as pie when it really takes time and commitment like anything else). It’s unfair to expect yourself to make progress faster than others, and even when people state how easy it is to imagine a wonderland, they either take their cognitive skills for granted, or create an imaginary populace to compare themselves with to make false preconceptions of their true capabilities.

 

You shouldn’t make a false preconception that being good at visualizing wonderlands requires that you can solidified mental projections in your head the can be sustained for long periods of time. Some people visual passively, with projections ebbing and flowing from going to blurry to being clear, then going back to a cyclical process (excluding what may occur for active forcing).

 

To be blunt with you:

 

Persevere with your shittiness until you get good at it. It’s a standard I held myself to (and still do even though I'm already aware of huge gaps in improvement compared to months ago) in order to be appreciative of those patchy visualizations that eventually extended into crazy virtual experiential realities. And whatever people state about their accomplishments, how they gauge the level of success is subjective.

 

Like, a person who may have horrible concentration skills may brag about how they have super concentration if they managed to go for 30 minutes. Compare that to someone who would spend 3 hours narrating, and think that was a pre-meal warm-up. Newcomers tend to fall for the trap of making objective statements of capability when it’s subjective and varies from person to person.

[Guest Anonymous]

Linkzelda, a tl;dr isn't supposed to be nearly as long as your post.

 

NecroPhysics, everyone can visualize. If you can see, and have a memory, you have the ability to visualize. However, you don't visualize by waiting for images to pop up. First of all, they're not "images" like pictures are images, and you don't "see" them like you would see your environment when you open your eyes.

 

"Visualization" is a very annoying word, because it sounds like a special skill. It is nothing more than a visual thought. You don't use your mouth to think, and you don't use your eyes to visualize. So just get rid of the notion that visualizing has anything to do with closing your eyes. Some people find it easier to visualize with their eyes closed, because this means there are no distractions - others find it easier to visualize with their eyes open, because with their eyes closed they just keep looking at the back of their eyelids - something which you are doing.

 

So, the best idea is to experiment and practice. Rather than trying to see an object with your mind, try thinking about how it looks. What colour is a table? What is it's shape? How do the ridges in the wood look? Is the table decorated in any way? What colours are those decorations? What is their shape? etc.

 

If you stop trying to see objects and start thinking about how objects look, I can guarantee you that you will visualize eventually. How long this will take depends on how easily you get over the "trying to see" problem. My host still can't visualize, even though I have crystal-clear visualization. This is due to a difference in mindset. Your mind is most likely already fully capable of visualizing, you just need to learn how to access that skill.

[Sophie]

Linkzelda, a tl;dr isn't supposed to be nearly as long as your post.

 

Sometimes, with him, I think they're longer than the post. But they're always very helpful and informative. :)

 

To sum up though, visualization is like a muscle -- it needs to be exercised, and some people have exercised it more than you have. Yes, some people will get eyes-open clarity to their visualization, just like some people can do a thousand consecutive squats. All it means is that they've exercised those muscles more than you have.

 

And as the others have said, most people who wonderland aren't "seeing" things in the way that you can see this text on your screen. They're imagining, and pretending, but that will eventually become seeing -- that's what imposition is.

 

Anyway, a lot of this was written as a sort of guide to exercising your visualization muscles with regards to wonderlands.

 

I hope this helps.

[Linkzelda]

Linkzelda, a tl;dr isn't supposed to be nearly as long as your post.

 

It's about 57% shorter than the original, it's clearly a semi tl;dr.

 

282 words / 495 words (excluding the "semi tl;dr" in the post) = .56969696. Sorry for not being hipster enough to know what a semi tl;dr is supposed to be.

[NecroPhysics]

Thanks guys, your responses cheered me up and I'm feeling a lot more confident about this now. :)

 

@Scylla

As you said, I'm able to picture things and know how they look but not actually "see" them as such. Knowing that that's what it's supposed to feel like is reassuring.

 

I'll try to practice visualization more and hopefully will be able to make progress!

[Guest Anonymous]

Good luck, NecroPhysics.

 

Linkzelda, did you seriously count your words?

[Linkzelda]

Nope, have Microsoft Word for that. =P