The Senoi taught children through a form of dream therapy to navigate the edge of their fears and likewise navigate their fears in the outer world. Inception requires this fear to navigate its narrative, a  curtain falling endlessly on western myths: does the dreamstate reveal our failure to conceive a life beyond fears?

"The simplest anxiety or terror dream I found among the Senoi was the falling dream. When the Senoi child reports a falling dream, the adult answers with enthusiasm, "That is a wonderful dream, one of the best dreams a man can have. Where did you fall to, and what did you discover?" He makes the same comment when the child reports a climbing, travelling, flying or soaring dream. The child at first answers, as he would in our society, that it did not seem so wonderful, and that he was so fightened that he awoke before he had fallen anywhere.

"That was a mistake," answers the adult authority. "Everything you do in a dream has a purpose, beyond your understanding while you are asleep. You must relax and enjoy yourself when you fall in a dream. Falling is the quickest way to get in contact with the powers of the spirit world, the powers laid open to you through your dreams. Soon, when you have a falling dream, you will remember what I am saying and you will feel that you are travelling to the source of the power which has caused you to fall."

"The falling spirits love you. They are attracting you to their land, and you have but to relax and remain asleep in order to come to grips with them. When you meet them, you may be frightened of their terrific power, but go on. When you think you are dying in a dream, you are only receiving the powers of the other world, your own spiritual power, which has been turned against you and which now wishes to become one with you if you will accept it."