You should probably sit down before you read this.

But seriously. I had to write this down before I forgot it/before someone else claims this idea from me.

Basically, Inception is just one big dream. Ok, beside the parts that are "dreams."

When Dom tells the story of him and Mal experimenting with dream-within-a-dream, he is telling the truth, up until the point where he says they woke up. In reality, they didn't wake up. He then dreams that Mal is dead and that he must leave his kids and begins to project new people in order to help him escape this dream. In reality, it is more likely his subconscious killed herand now she is in reality trying to wake him up. Ariadne and Arthur, et al., are merely subconscious projections of Dom's mind. Mal's interference is still his guilt for dreaming that he killed her through inception, which remains the same from the movie, although it may also be her trying to actually wake him up (remember that being dunked in water created that tidal wave in the early part of the movie, and Mal's attempts would produce similar effects). Saito's plan to "make a call" after the team deals with Robert Fischer is really one of many plans Dom has created to escape from his own mind.

Now on to the problem of the totem. Dom claims it was Mal's idea, and that it was Mal's totem which he uses. This is what helps him determine if he's awake or not: he can see it spinning indefinitely (meaning he's in a dream) or see it wobble and fall over (meaning he's in reality). At one point, he mentions that a "you have to know your totem, how it feels in your hands, to be able to tell if it's real or not." How can he know if he's using someone else's totem? This is why it sometimes falls over and sometimes spins indefinitely: because he can't tell the difference, and therefore is dreaming the outcome because it's not his totem.

Oh and he never gets to see his kids. At least in reality. He's still dreaming after all.

DID I BLOW YOUR FUCKING MIND OR WHAT?

I feel pretty accomplished. Someone has probably already figured this out, but I feel special because no one has mentioned it to me yet and every time I talk about it, I get the same reaction as when someone hears about Ferris Bueller's Day Off being more akin to Fight Club than a light-hearted family movie.