Five barefoot women sit on the floor, in a circle, here at a home deep in the hill country, more than an hour outside of Austin. Dozens of candles flicker around them. The only movement is that of a gentle breeze blowing through an open window.
''Just close your eyes and begin to think about letting go of whatever traveled with you here tonight,'' begins Judith Yost, the evening's host, ''so we can be open to whatever the spirit has to tell us . . . to be clear and fully present.''
This is not your mother's Tupperware party. Nor an evening with ever-pink Mary Kay. It's not even a book club, although what's being played out here is supposedly replacing book clubs across the country.
It's called a ''dream circle,'' and if you think that sounds a bit hokey and a little too touchy-feely for you, even the dreamers understand.
''You probably think we howl at the moon, too,'' says Melissa Wolf, one of the participants. But they do not. At least not tonight.
The women are part of a cutting-edge trend in America that sprang out of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a trend toward looking inward. Talking about their dreams, in a circle, a couple of times a month, is their ticket in.
Dream circles can be traced back centuries to native populations who believed dreams are not individual, but that all our dreams fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
Author and spiritual counselor Connie Kaplan of Santa Monica, Calif., who dubs herself the ''grandmother of dream circles,'' says she has helped start up 25 such circles in the last year, one just last month in the non-trendy burg of Little Rock. This Austin circle began in June.
Kaplan became interested in dreams 16 years ago when an illness caused her to sleep most of the day. She began holding dream circles in her home and is now the movement's most visible crusader. Once the domain of consciousness-raising Californians, the circles are now creeping into the heartland.
''People have become much more interested in finding ways to self-investigate since 9/11,'' says Kaplan, author of Dreams Are Letters From the Soul: Discover the Connections Between Your Dreams and Your Spiritual Life. ''The whole point of a dream circle is to achieve something like the dream state, but while awake. Your breathing slows down, your heart slows down, your blood pressure goes down. It's like a prayer meeting, meditation.''
''What it's not is group therapy, by any means,'' says Yost, a psychotherapist and newly minted New Age minister and dream-circle facilitator. ''We endeavor in this process to see how the dream might be collective, more universal, the larger picture. It's not so much about interpreting the dream, but what it generates.''
She begins this evening's circle by hitting sticks together, then beating a small drum. Twice.
Tonight's group consists of a creativity coach, an occupational therapist, a writer/teacher, an office manager and Yost, all in their 40s and 50s. Some are friends, some met Yost through her therapy practice, and some met through sweat-lodge gatherings. There is little small talk, maybe because Yost charges $25 a head for each session.
Kaplan insists that dream-circle participants are not on the edge or fringe of society.
''Our Birkenstock factor is rather low, in fact,'' says Kaplan, who describes herself as a soccer mom. She says she often hears from doctors and lawyers who tell her they've just joined a dream circle.
''It's all about getting insight,'' says Wolf, who drives in twice a month from South Austin, about an hour away, to sit Indian-style on the floor with the other dreamers.
''We're holding a certain vibration,'' adds Shiila Shafer, a fellow dreamer from Austin. ''It gets me out of my personality. I see what others see, a broader view.''
''And why not look at your dreams?'' asks Jean-Jack Morales of nearby Wimberley. ''You can't change the world without changing yourself.''
What happens over the next two hours is the women -- it's mostly a female exercise at present -- sit in a circle and pass a smooth stone counter-clockwise as they take turns telling their most recent dreams. (The stone carries the energy and memory of their collective dreaming.) After everyone has spoken, they go around again, talking about each other's dreams, and what messages they think are being sent.
''It takes practice, discipline,'' Yost says. ''It's not a parlor game that you think is fun and do once in a while. You establish a practice of opening your being.''
It's not about analyzing or giving advice, she says. ''It's more intuitive. It's objective, not emotional.''
Tonight's dreams are as varied as the dreamers. There's a dark one about a suicide pact and a little girl leading the dreamer away. There's one about sleeping at the beach, safe and secure buried under sand, while another involves a dreamer being somewhere where everything feels dangerous.
Although participants deny it, interpretation appears to be part of the evening to an outside observer. For an hour, the women talk, offering up comments like ''I think you were looking for the deepest part of yourself,'' and ''You're going back in the womb, protected, covered,'' and ''Things aren't what they seem.''
There's laughter, too, about a dream in a church from a dreamer who never goes to church. The same woman also never wears powder-blue pantsuits, but did in a dream.
Kaplan knows she has naysayers. She admits that one Sunday school class caused quite a ruckus in their church when they decided to become a dream circle. ''I think everyone thought there were a bunch of witches gathering.''
The skeptics also include the more traditional therapists who deal in dreams.
Martin Livingston, a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City, says he has no problem with the circles, as long as the dreamers find a ''balance.''
''If the participants are searching for a sense of community, that's fine,'' Livingston says. ''But what worries me is, will that take the place of personal growth?''
But Bruce Goldberg, a hypnotherapist in Woodland Hills, Calif., and author of the soon-to-be-released Dream Your Problems Away, believes dream circles are ''a very healthy process.''
''What they're doing is confronting and conquering any situation that might come up in a dream -- and with confidence,'' he says. ''They're used to take charge of your life.''
Even men are slowly joining up.
Frank and Annette Hulefeld of Oak Park, Ill., have been operating their dream circle for about six months now. It began with an all-male dream circle meeting in one room, women meeting in another, but the groups are now combined.
''We thought it was interesting to see what the men were dreaming, interesting to see the dreams of the divine mother coming through these men,'' says Annette Hulefeld, 60, a clinical social worker.
Hulefeld acknowledges that she ''couldn't always see the big picture. But now you can just feel the energy go through you. The story that has been told has been put right in your lap.''
Hulefeld is so into this dream world that she joined Yost and Kaplan this week on a trip to Peru, where they hoped to tap into different messages at sacred sites.
''There is a prophecy that the most ancient and secret spiritual truths of the Inca tradition, which were hidden at the time of the Spanish invasion 500 years ago, will become available to certain clairvoyant or receptive people starting in late 2002,'' says Edwin Florez Zevallos, a professor at the University of Cusco who teaches Incan history.
Kaplan and her dream followers hope they are those people.
''He wants to take us to places where tourists are not allowed to go, and to dream, to see what comes up under those circumstances,'' she says. ''I can't wait.''