I have aphantasia, and what makes me very certain is 1) that I have dreams and see things in them, and I experience nothing like that in a waking state, 2) except one time when I experienced something far clearer while meditating. It felt like walking around a movie-set in that I was 100% aware it was not real, but it looked entirely real; at the same time I knew that I was sitting and meditating and was still aware of my breath and the sensations of my body. It's possible it was a lucid dream, but I've also never had a dream that clear before or after.
Either way, I've experienced a range, where my normal day to day experience is no sign whatsoever of seeing anything except maybe occasionally sub-second vague flashes, and the best I've experienced was as if I was looking straight at a real scene. So my day to day experience stands out very, very starkly against both my regular dreams and that one experience.
The frustrating part about that experience is that it suggests I can see things in the right frame of mind, but I don't know how to bring it out.
I suspect the mind is just like a body in the sense that the more you engage a particular muscle the easier it gets.
When I’m struggling with something I find it helpful to reframe statements into questions to activate creativity and clear any unconscious barriers that the mind is enforcing.
Either way, I've experienced a range, where my normal day to day experience is no sign whatsoever of seeing anything except maybe occasionally sub-second vague flashes, and the best I've experienced was as if I was looking straight at a real scene. So my day to day experience stands out very, very starkly against both my regular dreams and that one experience.
The frustrating part about that experience is that it suggests I can see things in the right frame of mind, but I don't know how to bring it out.