Not because it removes ego or makes someone automatically humble, but because visualization intensifies emotion.
When a person can vividly picture a scene, the body often reacts more strongly, which is why scary stories can feel physically frightening. The person is not only reading words, they are seeing a scene inside their mind. I learned I had aphantasia around four years ago.
Before that, I had no idea people could actually visualize a sheep in their mind.
A study on aphantasia found something interesting: When people with aphantasia (around 4 percent of a population), read frightening stories, they did not show the same physical fear markers as people who could visualize, but when both groups looked at actual frightening images, their bodies reacted similarly.
That suggests the difference was not emotional coldness, but visualization. The image gives the emotion more fuel. And this may apply to ego fantasies too.
When someone imagines being admired, praised, envied, powerful, famous, respected, or finally seen as right, the fantasy becomes stronger when they can see it in their mind.
The mind creates a movie, and the body starts reacting to the movie.
The ego does not only want honor, revenge, or success, it starts feeling the imagined honor, watching the imagined revenge, and picturing everyone finally realizing they were wrong.
This may also help someone live with less shame around unhealthy sexual fantasies, because if they cannot visualize them, the fantasy happens as a monologue instead of becoming a vivid inner movie.
That does not mean the thought is good, healthy, or something to feed, but it can mean the body has less visual fuel to turn the thought into a stronger emotional experience.
So a person with aphantasia still has an ego, comparison, approval-seeking, imagined conversations, resentment, sexual thoughts that feel unhealthy, or status fantasies, but those fantasies feel less gripping in the body, and less emotionally powerful. Because what you visualize often intensifies what you feel.
What does the story of Joseph and his brothers teach us about the body and soul?
If you want to go deeper into this work, explore the NextSelf 2026 and 2025 Indexes.
It organizes the core ideas on awareness, compassion, boundaries, and how they build real relationship and responsibility with The Creator.
