Thread: Recapitulation

I am wondering if anyone has used what is called recapitulation and whether or not anyone has observed a connection to lucid dreaming.

Recapitulation is a meditation, of sorts, where a person reviews the events of one's day, one's life or some other significant event in reverse order. There are different methods to do this but the idea is that one sits quietly in a dark space at the end of the day and tries to visualize all the events and interactions one had during the day in reverse order. Its not about trying to visualize yourself literally walking backwards, but you would, for example, call up the image of oneself getting ready for bed, brushing your teeth, saying goodnight to a loved one, eating dinner, coming home form work...until you get to an image or impression of yourself waking up in the morning. the idea is that by calling these images and impressions up, one releases oneself from them and allows them to be consciously let go.

I first heard of this years ago in Castaneda's books and then read a book by Victor Sanchez on how Castaneda's method worked. I began trying Castaneda's method and was having lucid dreams almost every other night for a while.

I then got dissillusioned with the shenanigans of a lot of Castaneda's spinoff groups and started reading Rudolf Steiner. He had a very similar method of reviewing one's day in reverse order before going to bed each night. He had some weird German word for it "Ruackshaw" or something.

I then found the same technique in Max Heindel's Rosicrucian teachings (although he was a student of Steiner's for a short time, so no big surprise there.)

Lastly I found the Asian teacher Gurdjieff to be independently teaching a similar method to his students. The gurdjieff twist was to review the day's events in reverse order at the end of the day, but he told his students that if their minds strayed, they had to start all over again.

Anyhow has anyone else here tried something similar, and if so what results/observations/impressions have you had?