Consciously Dreaming

    Since starting this class, I have looked for as many examples of stories within stories as I could possibly find. Randomly throughout my day, I find examples that I swear I will remember so I can blog about them later but rarely do I remember.

    I have found one more example in popular television that I have remembered...well actually it really isn't that popular of a show but I enjoy it. Once Upon a Time is a show that incorporates all of the fairy tales that we grew up hearing into present day America.  But thinking about this show made me think about the biggest story within a story that we all know, which is our lives. Each one of our lives is our story but it is embedded and immersed in so many other stories. It is truly impossible to separate out the stories of reality. Relating the themes of classes is what helps me to find the purpose of literature courses. (Must be my business side kicking in)
    This same phenomenon can be found in Sharazad's story. In order for it to have the gained the popularity and status it now has, the author(s) must have created the stories within a reality. Sharazad's reality. I'm not all the way through the Arabian Nights but already I can tell that reality is intertwined with the mystical. So much so that it is impossible to tell what is real and what isn't. The themes of greed, love, betrayal, loyalty, and every possible human emotion can be seen in the stories that Sharazad spins for her king. The mystical and the believe aspects of the story intertwine so much that everything becomes believable. I started asking myself, why couldn't a woman turn into a goat. This complicated relationship causes the lines to blur between reality and fiction.
    Thinking of the blurring of reality and fiction reminds me of various dreams that I have had lately. Last Wednesday night, I had the most horrible and wonderful dream of my life. It was vivid, realistic, and impossible. The dichotomy of horrible and wonderful is what creates the dichotomy of the realistic and the impossible. Or is it vice versa? Either way, the dream was so heart-wrenching that when I woke, my pillow was soaked through with tears. These tears were of sorrow and of joy. The particulars of the dream aren't the point this discussion. The point that is vital is that even as I was dreaming, I knew I was dreaming. At one point, I knew I was dreaming as I floated in the air and looked down upon myself laying in a hospital bed asleep in a coma. I was conscious of my dreaming state as I lay in my bed in my house in Bozeman as well as my hospital bed. Who knows how many more layers of consciousness that I don't remember or am not able to be aware of. This is the type of feeling that television, movies, and literature seek to emulate. Nestings  within these types of entertainment and communication are our way of consciously seeking the amazing feeling of knowing multiple levels of the unconscious at one point in time. Normally we can reach this point only through dreams and very rarely do we remember it. We may remember the feeling for a brief time period but rarely does it last long or are we able to recall it with clarity. It is almost like a gift from our subconscious when we are allowed to remember the moments of our life when we transcend to more than one level of our being.
   Transcending to multiple level of our being reminds me of tales told in various mythologies. The specific imagery that pops into my mind when I try to imagine the subconscious in a visual manner stems from Egyptian myths that have been passed down. This image is of the Duat, or the land of the gods and of the dead. Looking through the Internet, I haven't found a picture of the Duat that resembles the one that I have formed in my mind. I see the Duat as a layer below the level that we inhabit. This lower level looks similar to the one we live in except that more can be seen. Gods, mythology, fiction, and so much more can exist at this level that is directly below our reality. The really interesting thing about the Duat is that there is multiple levels of it. I haven't been able to imagine the levels that are below the one that I just described but I believe they are there. This is how I imagine our subconscious to be. Levels upon levels that blur the boundaries of reality and fiction, mythos and logos, and the subconscious and conscious states of our beings and souls.