Quote Originally Posted by wrinkledlion View Post
Your point about thresholds and doorways is a really good one, I'd like to work with that... if you were trying to manifest something behind a doorway, how would you do it generally? Do you think to yourself verbally, "I'm going to open that door and see a [BLANK] on the other side," or do you engage in some sort of visualization from within the dream? Is it sort of a "knowing," like you just tell yourself that you know your desired dream object is behind the door?
I don't think I have much in the way of lucid experiences with summoning things and for me I think it would work much like in non-lucids where I do summon or change things, partly just expecting it to happen to some extent and partly willing it. Whenever I've influenced dreams lucidly however, I tend to relate it to how I/my body works in waking life. This is the same for me in any kind of inner visualisation or imagining.

If I want to inhale deeply, I do not verbally think it. I just intend/will it. It's the same thing with walking, changing position and a bunch of other things, including imagining and visualisation. It's a kind of thought to be sure, but it's not thought as we tend to think of it and it's difficult to put into words. I think we all have some innate understanding of it though.

To answer you more specifically under that context, for me it would be a sort of "knowing", yes, though you can mix it with verbal thought or visualised thought too. If you think about it, there's no special reason to exclude any type of thought or feeling as an enabler to another dream action because ultimately all you need to care about is whether it was one result or another, you don't need to care about the process too much other than the fact that you want to try something.

You can think "I'm going to open that door and see a [BLANK] on the other side" without actually verbally thinking it, is basically what I'm saying. And if you choose to verbally think it, that's fine too, because thinking of words can bring up other associated words, which I can see as helpful in some contexts.