Remember, it’s good to get in the habit where you

  1. read a practice
  2. try the practice for awhile, hopefully until you find something interesting about it
  3. move on to the next practice after awhile.

note: the memory return, old dream return, and scene return practices are all essentially the same practice, just aimed at different types of images to return to. Feel free to read through all three, but if you’ve practiced one, you can repeat the same basic process for all of them.

In this practice, you’ll choose an old dream and “go back” to it. This might be a dream from last year that you still remember, or a dream from your childhood that has stuck with you. In a meditative trance, you call back up the dream, and element by element allow it to re-form itself around you.

  1. Choose a dream that has been with you a long time, and that feels like it still has some juice in it. If you remember a lot of the dream, it’s best to choose one particular moment or image that feels quite rich, and start from that.
  2. Drop into a relaxed, deepened state. You can use whatever method is already comfortable for you, or use one of the Relaxation/Trance methods in this course.
  3. Staying mentally and physically relaxed, not trying to force anything — begin “angling yourself” towards the dream you chose, the rich moment or image you chose. Just gently allow yourself to move towards the experience of that dream, allowing it to begin to take shape.
  4. Stay loose — you’re not trying for perfect, accurate recall of every detail. It’s okay if the unconscious fills in gaps, changes things, moves around. Don’t tense yourself trying to recreate the scene accurately.
  5. As you deepen into the sights, sounds, and sense of the dream, check in with the emotional atmosphere. What does this dream feel like? Is there any “information” in the air, any intuitive leaps about the scene? Can you sense any differences between when the dream first happened, and what it feels like now?

[You can stay here as long as you want, simply letting yourself practice resting in an imaginal scene. Or you can continue onward to working with the dream.]

  1. If you’re continuing, notice if there’s anything in the scene that wants your attention. Anything your awareness is tugging towards.
  2. There are hundreds of possibilities for how to continue, but some of these include:
    1. Talk to figures in the dream, interviewing them or asking them to stop doing what they’re doing
    2. Talk to or protect your younger self in the memory. If the memory is an unpleasant situation, you can step in to comfort your younger self, or chase off whatever’s unpleasant.
    3. Enter the perspective of other figures in the dream, notice how they see you from their point of view, how they see the scene.
    4. See if you can let the scene continue to unfold itself; not pushing it to do something, but opening space, inviting the scene to continue, inviting the figures to take agency and do something.
    5. Treat the dream itself as a figure, asking the memory itself to talk to you, answer some questions, share some wisdom and perspective.
  3. Whenever you have a feeling that you’ve done what you needed to, or that there’s nothing left to do, drop the dream and imagery and let it fade away as you continue to lie down, relaxed.
  4. Take a few minutes to let your body metabolize the experience, to let your mind rest without doing anything. Stay like this however long feels appropriate.
  5. When you’re ready, start to move, sway, stretch. Bring your body and mind back to the room you’re in. Let yourself move and sway and hum however your body might want to. When the time is right, stand back up and go about your day. Record what you remember from the session in your Waking Journal.