"It is a puzzlement"

Myth is the public dream, and dream is the private myth. - Joseph Campbell



One of my favorite musicals, "The King and I," has a wonderful song entitled, "The Puzzlement." It popped into my mind when I saw this post's illustration, a brain teaser in my collection of <mess with your head>. I love the word and I love the story of the teacher and the King of Siam.
The line between fantasy and reality is often blurred in our minds. That is confusing for us. What is real; what is imagined? How do we know where to draw the line between actuality and illusion?
Dreams are this way. They are "puzzlements." As we are having dreams, it seems as if we are really there. It is as if the setting and props exists, the characters move and talk, the plot moves forward.
Dreams are gifts from our own internal "Dream Makers." Constructed from symbolic imagery and language, dreams have several purposes:

• Integrate disparate bits of emotionally engaging memory of what happens to us within the previous day or two
• Help us resolve internal conflicts
• Give us health/illness information about our bodies
• Solve problems or invent and create
• Work through trauma memories
• Give us in fantasy what we cannot experience in reality
• Remind us of our own internal wisdom

Remembering dreams can be challenging, but writing them down immediately upon awakening can often help. With practice and becoming familiar with your own internal dream "language," you can interpret your own dreams and solve all these wonderful and scary "puzzlements."
Tags: illusion dreams brain teaser
The topical post today at South by Southwest is about the US ship of state.