If you have a VMWare VM installed on your Lion machine, and you have set up SSH on the VM, then it is possible to mount your VM as a volume on your Mac using OSXFuse and a client such as ExpanDrive.
For those of us who like to use an IDE like IntelliJ or WebStorm to do development, being able to treat my VM as a volume on my Mac has been a boon to development. But moreover, mounting as a volume allows for easier file management than using the command line. Some folks are fine with the command line, and I applaud them, but I’ve gotten used to using an IDE and having all its conveniences. Call me soft, but a big part of development is being able to work efficiently. If you’re not efficient, then you’re not productive.
The Dawg House! 
ExpanDrive doesn’t seem to work with OSXFuse, do you know of any other reliable clients?
I’m using ExpandDrive with OSXFuse right now on OSX 10.8. Used with 10.7 as well.
crap I must be doing something wrong then I installed OSXFuse and ExpandDrive doesn’t seem to recognize it. All i’m seeing is the online stuff (FTP, S3 and their disk service). what version are you running?
First, test to see if you can SSH into your VM from terminal (if you’re using a VPN, you have to be logged into that as well). If you can SSH into your VM, it’s simply a matter of creating a new entry in ExpandDrive that points to the VM’s IP (or if you’re using DHCP, then you can use the VM name).
Use SFTP. Here’s how I access my VM: