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Hello Jamesn,

Winnie the Pooh may be the true beginning of wisdom, if we work the metaphor differently.  And no snakes!

I’m reminded now of a line my brothers and I were terrifically fond of… from the expedition to the North Pole maybe?  we used to go camping a lot and, inevitably, would get lost. There is a wonderful line where, I think it’s Pooh who says, “I recognize this, it looks exactly like it did the last time we got lost.”  I think I’m remembering that right. 🙂

I kept it fairly simple in the newsletter, but as you notice this idea of refusing to acknowledge parts of ourselves about which we are ignorant gets deep very very quickly. There is a Jungian shadow lurking in this idea and I also keep going back to Campbell’s discussion in Hero about infantile cathexes and what’s required to get over them. Phaeton crashes the solar chariot precisely because he thought he knew what he was doing. If he had just taken a deep breath and reflected on his situation, he might’ve been okay.