Sociosomnia: Spider-Man: No Way Home

Spider-Man: No Way Home is very good. Symbolically it speaks to integrating the internal pluralism of a Green self-system (where Spider-man represents you/me as the experience-interpreter, and the multi-versal versions of Spiderman represent the different internal voices/parts inside of us) and coming to love/reform/transcend-and-include our demons, rather than try to eradicate them (where the old villains represent spiderman’s shadows, and therefore our own). This counter-instinctual move involves taking responsibility for our part in inviting these shadow elements into our experience (spiderman publicly owns that his attempt to avoid his fate lead to the old-villains coming in his world), rather than holding them as evil (he maintains his willingness to transform them, rather than repress them by saying “this isn’t my problem”); this is extremely costly in that it often involves sacrificing a part that’s dear and deeply loved by us (symbolized by the loss of a main character), and yet it is living out that part’s mission to love these parts of ourselves.

Finally, we have to be willing to do this for the sake of itself, not any recognition from others (symbolized by spiderman’s final ask of Dr. Strange), and trust that our deepest love is there, and will rise to be known again, even if it gets forgotten (symbolized by re-meeting MJ, fresh).

I see the whole film as redefining heroism—rather than saving others, being a hero is about alchemizing our shadows and integrating our sub-personalities into a unified whole, as an expression of love and service.

With love, Jordan

* Sociosomnia: seeing popular media as collective dreams that we can interpret archetypally/reflectively, to learn something meaningful about ourselves—no matter the quality of the product itself. This may say more about the interpreter than the media :)