Earlier this month, I attended a workshop on how we can use our dreams, imagination and coincidence to heal ourselves. In preparation for the course, I read of couple of books by the workshop leader, Robert Moss, in one of which I came across a powerful story that resonated with me deeply. It’s called ‘The Forgetful Envoy’ from his book “Active Dreaming” and I’d like to share it with you here. During his workshop, Robert suggested that we take this universal story and make it our own by changing any details and outcomes we find appropriate.
You are sent from your homeland on an important mission, to rescue something beyond price. You understand the enormous risks of this assignment, and you freely choose to fulfil it. On leaving your homeland, you are honoured and mourned, because you are dying, for a time, to those who love you and know you best.
The conditions of your assignment require you to put on the clothes and habits of the country where you will operate. You must fit in with those around you and follow their ways. This is hard for you in the beginning, because people here live as if there were nothing beyond their world of getting and spending. Their pleasures are tawdry and their drugs numb the mind, but you are required to pass for one of them, so you do as they do.
In the miasmic conditions of this plane, you start to forget why you came here. Your memory of your homeland, of its achingly beautiful music and its true communion of souls, seems like a fantastic dream and is starting to fade away. You let those around you in your new country tell you what life is about, and you act in accordance with their valuation of things.
You join them in snickering at dreamers who rant of other worlds.
Then one night there is a knock at your door. You open it and feel a strange wind, like the beating of giant wings. The person framed in the doorway is strangely familiar. When he speaks, his words leap to your heart. “I come from my father’s house.” He is here to remind you of the mission you forgot. You are weeping now, ashamed. He is not interested in your tears. Now that you remember your contract, you are required to fulfil it.