I've just spent the past 20 minutes thinking about how I do it, I can do both eyes closed and eyes open, at work, I mostly talk with my eyes closed actually because my thinking style is generally quite visual. I then spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to explain it, and it sounds a bit nuts...for eyes open there are generally 2 things involved for me, one is what I could describe as "disassociating from my eyes" my eyes are open but somehow my brain just kinda suppresses the image into what becomes an out of focus low contrast blur, and then my eyes typically look up a bit. The images themselves appear in an area that feels like it's in the top of my head where a darker area has formed, in that space I can think about what I want to visualize, or my brain serves me images if I'm thinking. I googled around a bit, according to this research, folks who have strong minds eye report a few different places that they use to build the image within, some people report they built it out in front of them, other like me build it "inside", other folks report other spots: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.30.679629v2.... - this one is also pretty interesting: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105381002...

This is always a hot topic on HN.

My takeaway from all of the discussions is that the ability to 'see' an imagined visual representation of something exists on a spectrum from absolutely nothing ever, into a minds eye abstract idea of an image (like a melody heard in your mind rather than your ears) toward a full ability to see an image overlay in the visual space. There's a lot of debate as to whether this is a trainable ability.

This makes no sense if you can visualize things when you’re dreaming your brain has no problem visualizing things it’s just correctly suppressed when you are awake