In his wonderful book, Little Book of Dreams, Robert Bosnak says that the best way to enhance dream recollection is the classic memory practice. This is important for many reasons. Here’s one:
In a dream I was given a slip of paper on which was written the word HEARTNET. The image was very clear and when I told Lily of the dream the next day, she suggested I google it. It turned out to be a heart health website.
Taking this as a sign, I had a checkup and found my cholesterol levels dangerously high. I became resolved to clean up my act and extend my life. It gave me a reprieve.
Tibetan Buddhist teachers say that the ability to consciously enter the dream state-lucid dreaming-is a good way to prepare for the bardo after death.
As I am not ready to face the bardo’s dangerous pathways, attending to the dream message allowed me more time to cultivate the qualities of compassion and wisdom that help to ease the transition. This, it is said, increases the possibility of a favorable rebirth.
I was thinking of Blake’s vision of Jerusalem as a Golden city of peace, love and harmony that, at some timeless time, was “on England’s pleasant pastures seen.” Did such a city exist in prehistory?
Then I read this in Eva Wong’s commentary in the Hui-Ming Ching (Cultivating the Energy of life:)
When we are in our mother’s womb, we were filled with the primordial energy of the Tao. In the natal state, original nature and the energy of life are united.
At birth we come into contact with the world. When air is inhaled through the nostrils, the primordial breath is contaminated and the connection with the Tao is broken. Original nature and life energy separate, the former moving to the heart and the latter moving to the kidneys.
A View from the Wheelhouse 