Meditation and colors

[SPhoenix]

I enjoy meditating. I'm not great at it, but I like it a lot. In particular, I like guided meditations.

One problem I have always had, though, is color. I know that I visualize mentally in color, but I have a lot of problems visualizing specific colors when asked to.

For example, "imagine yourself surrounded by yellow light" is really, really hard for me. I can visualize something that I have seen that is yellow, like a lemon, but I can't seem to translate that into 'yellow light'.

Anyone else have an issue like this? What did you do about it? Does it even matter?

The meditation tapes I have now are guided meditations where you basically walk through a rainbow. And for the life of me, I can't see "blue light" and "red light" and purple light... yellow, orange, all the same.

If I were to witness a car accident, I cannot reliably tell you what color the cars were. Today they'll be green, but in a month, red. A week after that might be blue. I'll SEE the car that color. Same make and model. Same everything else, except I really, genuinely cannot keep colors straight or visualize them properly.

Just wondering if I'm alone in this, lol.

[nbdy]

Re: Meditation and colors

That is very intriguing to me from a scientific POV, but I can't help you. I have known people with color blindness, but that does not sound like what you experience at all. I would not imagine you are the only person on earth who experiences this so there is probably a name for it. I am trying very hard not to go researching it right now since I have plenty of work and don't need to spend the time, but I find this fascinating.

[SPhoenix]

Re: Meditation and colors

You know, you may have a point. I have other issues, too, lol. They might be related, I didn't think of it until when you said that.

I also have a problem where sometimes I mix two words up. Let's take apple and fig, to make it easy. I will say, "hand me that apple, please." But what you will hear is, "Hand me that fig, please." You'll say, "We don't have any figs." To me, though, it will sound like you're saying, "We don't have any apples." I'll be all... there's an apple RIGHT THERE! Yet what I'm saying is, "There's a fig RIGHT THERE!"

I don't do it much anymore, but when I was a kid, it happened six or seven times a year-ish.

I'm also autistic (I was autistic before it was cool??), so that might just be part of it for me. But I used to have a perfect memory... yet never, ever could remember the right colors for longer than a few minutes. I could tell you anything else about a photo as a kid. I could even reproduce it creditably... but colors? Confusing to me.

[PsykhikosAnarchosNautikos]

Re: Meditation and colors

I have never really been good at visualizing because I am more kinesthetic (I feel rather than see) with my meditations and other practices. Sensory imaging might help you as it has me. Sensory imaging is just using all five senses when you 'visualize'. I don't like just 'see yellow' when I meditate... the reason I don't do guided meditations, I just go with the flow or make my own up. Basically, when you are asked to 'visualize' yellow, imagine not only what the color is, but what feelings (emotions or tactile feelings, such as tingle, pressure, etc), how it smells, what it sounds like, how it tastes and what you hear as associated from the color. This may or may not help you see the color better, but it might help you get more in tune with colors on a more dynamic level. I hope that helps.

[Aeran]

Re: Meditation and colors

I have this same issue, but only with specific colors, and I find it both annoying and incredibly irritating. For example, I have a really hard time visualizing a bright orange, it ends up more of a reddy brownish color. Likewise with green, I can do a bright green, but dark green tends to just fade into a kind of grey. As I'm sure you can imagine, this makes some meditations a pain, particularly anything involving the concept of chakras.

The best way I've found to get around it is something you hit on. For some reason, visualizing colored objects from memory is much easier than random colors by themselves, so if I want, say, orange, I know start by visualizing a literal orange, then letting the other aspects of the image fade away, the shape, texture, etc. until I'm left with the color itself. It's distracting and far from perfect, but it helps.

[WinterTraditions]

Re: Meditation and colors

Yes!! Ooh, it is so annoying when it comes to guided meditation! See, when it comes to my clairvoyance and mind's eye, I have sharp, crisp colors. However, when I am meditating, being asked to visualize a color, or am experiencing a dream.... Nothing. My dreams are colorless, and always have been. It's so bad, if someone asked me to visualize a piece of amethyst, I would get the quartz structure right, but I just wouldn't be able to visualize the color to my liking.

What I do about it? I record my own guided meditations without the use of colors. When it comes to the chakras, I visualize the ten lotus flowers at each point, with each flower having a certain amount of petals. My meditations are black-white, and I'm perfectly fine with that.

[SPhoenix]

Re: Meditation and colors

This may sound terrible, but I'm glad that I'm not the only one who experiences this. I am not ready or willing to give up my guided tapes, as they are professionally made and assist me into going into a deeply relaxed, yet still aware state (which I cannot seem to do on my own without the music and such).

But it does sometimes make me wonder if not being able to see "yellow light" surrounding me is making it worse for me/harder for me. Like perhaps I would advance faster if I could do it that way.

I am just going to keep on keeping on, though. I am really uncertain which type I fall into. I have very advanced senses, yes, but I don't seem to be a sensory type. To me, yellow doesn't have a smell or feel or anything. It's just yellow. It doesn't sound like anything, it's just... yellow. (the same goes for all of the colors, yellow just happens to be the one he starts with in this meditation).

I've been just sort of semi-ignoring the color bits and using that time to focus on relaxing my body. So maybe I am a sensory type, lol.

*shrugs in total confusion* I so don't know!

[Aeran]

Re: Meditation and colors

I wouldn't worry about it too much, imo the color isn't as important in itself as the psychological associations it has in your mind.