Procedure
Lie in bed with legs fully stretched out, and review the chief events of the day in reverse order, starting from the moment you got into bed. Work your way slowly backward from one experience, feeling, or idea to another, up to the last time you did the exercise — which should have been roughly twenty-four hours earlier! Finish your meditation only when you are back in bed and about to fall asleep the previous night. Thus you will relive not only the events of your waking day but also any dreams you may have had during the night before.If you are doing this meditation in the morning, then you will start with the night's dreams and end with the previous morning's awakening.
You will, of course, find your mind tending to wander as the events you are recalling trigger extraneous thoughts that may lead you far from your purpose. To maintain concentration on the task, try to make your re-visualisation of the day's events as vivid as you can. You need not relive absolutely everything that has happened during the period: you may pick out the major events, activities, contacts and reflections which seem most significant or important to you.
At the same time you must stand aside from your personal life and evaluate your own deeds, feelings, thoughts, sayings, and dreams in the light of your own ethical and philosophical standards of propriety, with the aim of exposing any unconscious complexes and hidden motives.
If you maintain the practice, you will obtain more subtle and more significant benefits as time goes on. Discussion of these will be deferred until you have gained experience in the use of the exercise.
Detachment
It is, however, essential to see your own body with its actions as though it were someone else's. You must watch it working, moving, talking, enjoying, and suffering, with the same detachment as if you were watching a stranger.
Benefits
This form of meditation exercises your creative imagination to the full, both in retracing your steps and achieving bifurcation of consciousness. It will immediately begin to purify your motivation, strengthen your will-power, improve your mental capacity, and enhance your powers of memory. You will be surprised at your own ability to remember small, but potentially important, details, and to recall them as needed.