What is the Matrix?

The Matrix, in my estimation, is every story we have ever read, every dream we have woken up from with a strong, realistic emotion, every dream we have woken up from(or perhaps stayed in), period, for that matter, every time we have forgotten to remember that a story is not reality, and every time we have forgotten to ask "What is reality?". Also, and importantly, the Matrix is in the realm of our mind. The stories becoming true in our hopeful brains, our eager minds clinging to untruths, relating to them, making them real to us. We choose to believe them, even though they are called stories, and when asked to forget the absolution of their reality, we choose to relate to them, which is another, more obscure, form of reality. To escape the Matrix we "...must go by the way wherein there is no ecstacy./ In order to arrive at what you do not know/ You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance./ In order to possess what you do not possess/ You must go by the way of dispossession./ In order to arrive at what you are not/ You must go through the way in which you are not./ And what you do not know is the only thing you know/ And what you own is what you do not own/ And where you are is where you are not." (EC 139-146)

Next, dreamland. Have you ever awoken lividly angry with someone? I have. Christi (pseudonyms are a necessity in touchy situations) was a girl in my class in highschool, a girl who didn't exactly see things the same way I did. In short, we weren't the best of friends. In my dream we engaged in a full-blown fist fight, ending in seriously hurt feelings and maybe some bruises and cuts. She had said some things to me that cut to the quick and I woke up ready to fight, once again. All day at school, due to my disgruntled subconcious, I found myself fiercely angry about the things she had said to me in my dream. Some part of my mind had chosen to accept the dream as reality, triggering emotions originally derived from a simulated fight. I never capitalized on my latent anger, but believe me, my brain told me to consider otherwise. This emotion I felt during the day, after I had supposedly "woken up" made me think I was still in a state of dream. Had I really woken up? Does anyone ever wake up from their dream or is the dream the reality and the supposed reality the dream? How could one part of my mind be angry when I was telling it not to be, not to dwell on a dream? This enigma that is my mind defies me, much to my frustration. As for the Matrix, it is entirely in the mind, which is a scary place to venture endlessly, but is also a place we venture endlessly with no choice otherwise. Although our bodies move and we simulate the motions of everday life, isn't our mind where we truly "are"? Locate yourself and say "I am on the couch", but also consider the couch's reality without the faculties of the mind.

"Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders" Friedrich Nietzsche. When a person forgets to remember that a story is a fabrication, not the stuff reality is made of, they are vaulted into a dreamworld where the words on paper become tied to emotions, which become tied to ecstacy. In relating the world of words to the world of their reality, a person becomes ecstatic, unable to decipher between the simulation on the page and their actual life. They also forget to remember to ask "What is reality?". Even though the words on the page aren't reality in the common definition of such, are our lives reality, or are they simulations created by our minds to occupy our existence? Maybe in our minds is the only reality, making dreams, days, nights, foggy mornings, cold metal, smelly garbage, de ja vu, basically any one thing percieved by human senses, reality. Perhaps, when our mind tells us a story is real, and we watch the story unfold, watch the characters come to life, it is our reality projecting onto the story. After all, doesn't a person place themselves in the situations of the characters and let themselves be lost in the plots, emotions, and twistings of the reality of the story?