maria mison: integrated awakenings

Hi. Let’s talk about dream analysis, myths, and fables.

I understand that not everybody remembers their dreams. But if you see a red stoplight, you instinctively understand it means “stop.” An external force is governing order and telling your forward momentum to halt. How do you feel about the stoplight? Do you feel obedient? Do you feel like breaking the law?

That is exactly how we translate the subterranean math of the subconscious. We take a symbol, we bring it underneath the waters, and we decode it. And if you aren’t having vivid dreams at night, don’t worry. You are participating in them all day long through pop culture.

Myths, fables, and fiction are the collective dreamings of our society. They are images and stories that relieve, entertain, and resonate with our present energetic state. In Carl Jung’s seminal work, Man and His Symbols, he illustrates how the human psyche produces archetypes—universal symbols that appear in religions, myths, and fairy tales across every culture. When a movie like The Last of Us or Godzilla spreads like wildfire, it’s because it is hitting a deeply resonant archetypal chord. It is a story the collective desperately needs to hear.

If we have a deeper understanding of how to read these stories, we can empathize with the collective subconscious. In Ken Wilber’s Integral Psychology, he maps out the different strata of human consciousness, noting that the “mythic” level of consciousness is ancient, image-based, and deeply rebellious. To understand the mythic layer of our world, we have to look at the stories we consume.

Here is the ultimate technique for analyzing a myth or a dream. It takes two steps.

Number one: Assume all energies, characters, and objects within a story are being dreamt by one single person. Do not perceive Joel, Ellie, and the Cordyceps fungi in The Last of Us as separate entities. Imagine they are all just different aspects of one human psyche.

Number two: Explain the story to an alien. Break it down into kindergarten terms. The alien doesn’t know what a mushroom is. You have to explain that Cordyceps is a bodiless entity of decay and proliferation. The alien doesn’t know what Joel is. You explain that he is a hardened, masculine protector archetype learning how to care for a fragile, divine legacy (Ellie).

When you break stories down this way, you start to see the ancient mechanics at play. The masculine archetype (Yang) climbs the mountain. He earns his strength. He battles the external environment. The feminine archetype (Yin) is already magic. She is the legacy. She yields, she receives, and she inherently holds the keys to the kingdom. This is why the princess is always kidnapped in stories! You steal a guard, nothing happens to the kingdom. You steal the princess, the entire kingdom goes to war.

These aren’t just nerdy movie tropes. These are the exact energetic polarities happening within you. Your internal masculine is learning how to defend your boundaries, while your internal feminine is learning how to trust, yield, and wield her inherent divinity.

So the next time your partner is obsessing over a “bad boy” character or a specific anime, don’t just roll your eyes. Massage the underneath of it. Feel the energy. What part of their psyche is resonating with that scorned, misunderstood archetype?

You don’t have to be asleep to analyze your dreams. The world is dreaming all around you. You just have to learn how to read the symbols.

For dream interpretation and deep archetypal mapping, book a 1:1 consultation via mariamison.io.