I posted in this thread a while back, and I wanted to include an update.

I have spent a lot of time practicing meditation lately, and have found that visualizations CAN come to me under certain circumstances.

It seems to require complete non-focus in regards to my visual input. Rather ,I place my focus on my "inner body", my sense of "being" (Eckhart Tolle talks a great bit about this concept), and, once having cultivated a relaxed state, images may spontaneously pop into my consciousness.

I do not yet seem to have control over what images pop into my mind, and they vanish as soon as I realize they are there. Like Wily E Coyote running off a cliff, staying in mid air until he realizes he has no ground below him; In this way, I continue to see images until I realize I see images, and then they shut off immediately to be replaced by the visual input of the back of my eyelids.

So it seems when I become consciously aware of my visualization (rather than effortlessly allowing the pictures to flow into my being), my mind becomes overly active, and it brings me out of the prerequisite state of relaxation necessary for the images to occur in the first place.

I hypothesize that if I can get to the point where I do not get excited by the prospect of mental imaging, I may gain some control over them, and an increased degree of conscious awareness of them in day to day life, perhaps to the point that I can choose to see them in such a way that visually thinking people take for granted.

-Dave