I abandoned Mormonism in my twenties. I'm now in my sixties.

I had a dream last night that my 30-ish self was out in a meadow, far from anyone, on my back, masturbating. (I think this is the first time I ever dreamed of spanking the monkey.) Suddenly my dad is standing there. He's angry and judgmental. I say, "Leave me alone!"

Then Mom and my siblings are in a circle around me, disgusted, shocked, uncomfortable. I roll over on my stomach and shout, "There's nothing wrong with this! It's natural! Leave me alone!"

And then I woke up.

I think masturbation was symbolic of the various ways my life hasn't been "in keeping with the Gospel" and my family represented, well, themselves and the church in general.

Oh well. At least I've stopped having the recurring dream of being sent back on my mission.

A variation on the "naked in front of a crowd" dream, with monkey spanking included? :)

I had the "being sent back on my mission" dream for a long time, too. No, wait -- that was a nightmare, not a dream.

And yeah, our brains still contain all that early-life nonsense we were indoctrinated with, even though we consciously rarely use it.

One hypothesis of dreams proposes that while sleeping, your subconscious brain works to fit in the day's memories (that "matter") into long-term storage. In doing so, the existing long-term storage neurons get activated, and your brain "sees" those old memories. To make them stick, it sort of (but not often coherently) weaves a story around the mish-mash of new, older, and really old memories, which your sleeping consciousness "sees."

If that's the case, it makes sense that the frequency of such dreams diminishes over time. But that they still pop up (no monkey-spanking pun intended!) now and then! :)