The first hurdle to get over is that most people regard imagination as something unimportant and childish that doesn't have any real value. There is quite a deep irony in that. It's the most powerful ability humans have, through which all kinds of advanced abilities can be regained, and then we think that it isn't important.
One doesn't have to convince people of the actual causative, creative value of imagination at first. It is enough to persuade them to be willing to imagine stuff, to play with it, to examine what-if scenarios.
The belief that perceived information is "just imagination" can often be an advantage with a new client. It makes it much easier to confront certain things. The client is released from the responsibility of defending the validity of what she perceives. We agree that it is "just a game".
Imagination is key to past life recall, telepathy, astral projection and many other interesting session activities. It is much easier to get started in the imagination. Rather than convincing the client first that this is REAL. If she becomes willing to imagine it, whether it is real or not, then she will soon enough face up to the reality of what she perceives.
So, remember, don't ever try to argue with the client about whether or not past lives, other dimensions, dead relatives, or whatever is REAL. She doesn't have to believe it is real in order for processes to work. She just has to be willing to imagine it.
As the person gets more comfortable with what she is perceiving you can let her in on more of the secret when she is ready. Anything you can perceive exists somewhere. The key method of contacting any reality is through imagination.
Track with the client's belief in the matter. If she comes in asking for past life sessions, sure, talk about past lives as real. But if you find that she would reject the idea, then she can accomplish the same by dealing with what she regards as metaphors and fantasy. Don't push the client into having to believe things she isn't comfortable with. It just isn't necessary. We need her to believe that change is possible, and that it has something to do with her, but there is not a whole lot more that clients will have to believe.
The more willing the person is to imagine freely, the better. That doesn't mean we want her to be oblivious to her physical surroundings; it simply means that she should be able to imagine other things.
It is common that new clients are addressing many things from an effect viewpoint. They are waiting for things to happen to them, they are waiting for things to pop up and demonstrate themselves to them. And they would be afraid of putting anything there themselves. That is exactly the opposite of what we need.
In recalling an incident we cannot sit around and wait for it all to appear by itself, without any action from the client. Sometimes it happens, but that is only a trick she plays on herself to stay happily unconscious. Incident clearing will work much better if she starts taking some more responsibility for it.
The imagination that is useful in re-experiencing is not the conscious figure-figuring on what something ought to be and then meticulously constructing it. No, what we need is more like the first impulse, what one would expect something to be. The obvious choice, not something one has to figure out first.
Let's say you are trying to get the client into an incident. All she sees is "a door". You ask her "What is the door in?" and she starts getting lost. "Well, I don't know, I guess since we were talking about money, then maybe we could say it is a bank, or maybe a store, because I don't have money enough, I don't know". That is not the kind of imagination we need, that is just human indecisiveness. What we need is the impulses that she would reject because they are too obvious or too far out. Like, she thought of a Victorian mansion first, but that was just like one she saw on TV, so she rejected it. We need to get her to be willing to take the obvious first choice that comes up. It doesn't have to make sense. We rather need something like: "Hm, it is a whitish wall made out of boards, and it is .. oh, looks like a mansion with, like a little tower on it, and there is a little path that leads to .. eh, a well." We need that flowing discovery process.
Imagination is not a conscious, logical, mental construction. It is more something that comes flowing through the sub-conscious, or through other channels. It is something one is discovering a chunk at a time without knowing exactly where it will lead.
An overly analytically oriented person might have to be walked through some very analytical imagination exercises before she becomes willing to just let it flow. Let her construct things step by step in a logical fashion. As she becomes more adept at imagining logical stuff she can gradually begin to be more intuitively aware of what it would be appropriate to imagine.
In most session activities it is mostly the intuitive, sub-conscious imagination that will be used. Being attentive to whatever is bubbling up from the mind. A more advanced student can use it the other way, using her conscious imagination to change her overall reality, but that is a different discussion.