[jamesn.]

Professor Olson; thank you so so much for your incredibly kind and extremely thoughtful response. I was very concerned that my questions and context would be way too muddled and confusing to sort through but you did so in such a helpful way that I now feel I am on much better footing in the way understand this whole system I can now move forward with much better confidence. (Thank you for the “Portable Jung” suggestion; I have a copy that I need to dust off and revisit.)

So many days and nights I have spent going through this material to gain a better foothold in the understanding of my process; and thanks to you I now feel I now have a much better grasp of the concepts and a way to move forward with them. I think for me and possibly others; it is sometimes so difficult to put these ideas into explainable words, feelings, and dialogue; and you have helped to confirm many of the things I suspected but was not sure I properly understood them correctly so that others might understand the thoughts I was clumsily attempting to communicate.

More simply put this is not easy material to navigate and weed through so that one feels they are on solid ground; (and this can make “all” the difference in the way they see their life course moving in the proper direction because as you suggest the ego defense mechanisms can get in the way and as so often is realized: “we fool ourselves” which keeps us from seeing who we really are instead of who we “think we are”; and what we may need to do to make the necessary adjustments like in the examples you so thoughtfully offered.

We are living in a time when incredible pressure is felt by so many of us to decipher the difference between reality and conjecture; (and we can get lost within our own: “house of mirrors” as it were); causing so much misery and pain that is reflected I think in the increasing numbers of suicides, drug abuse, and violence we see happening all around us. “We don’t know ourselves”; as the saying goes; and it is the themes that Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung have helped to provide that gives us a roadmap of our inner terrain that we would otherwise be so lost in.

This symbolic “Telesphorus” of Jung’s I think in many ways provides us with a way to think about; as one way I read; “a small light in a dark room that brings hope and meaning into mere existence” for both ourselves as well as sharing our pain with others. The Journey of the Hero is so important in a time of so much confusion and chaos; and it is work that people like you are doing that will help others to find their way forward. Thank you again for your extremely kind and generous help.

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I was thinking about our conversation last night and how it was such an important realization for me in bridging a number of concepts together and I remembered a recent video clip in the JC Foundation’s YouTube channel which I’m going to add as a short addendum where Joseph and Bill Moyers talk about myth and how people can learn how to see the things that may help them in their Journey if they are open to integrating the transformative realizations that may be required along the way.

It reminded me that finding and understanding what our “Core Complex” is – is directly related to one’s personal myth and that integrating it helps to open an important doorway that otherwise may be closed to us. So see if this doesn’t ring a bell with what we were just talking about; (I think it does because to me it represents the serpent shedding it’s skin metaphorically).

The Adventure of Being Alive