I first became interested in Tarot cards when I was in high school, before I ever heard of Jung. The deck I have now—a Rider-Waite deck—is the same one I had then. I always thought Tarot offered a way into some hidden knowledge—though I had no idea how it worked. At that time, it seemed otherworldly and magical—just what I needed to escape the angst of adolescence.

The deck came with a little booklet that I still have and that offers very short interpretations of each of the cards. It isn’t too helpful. The interpretations are as cryptic as some of the images on the cards. For the The Fool, in addition to folly, it says mania, intoxication and delirium. But when I look at The Fool card, I don’t get that at all.1 He looks free and happy. Though he does seem oblivious to the fact that he’s heading off of a cliff. So, maybe just folly.

The Fool reminds me of my 20s. At that time, a friend told me that I was like a person driving a car with the gas pedal to the floor—heading toward a cliff. But instead of braking, I keep going, thinking, “Well, this could be interesting.” He was right.

But so was I. Because what usually ended up happening was interesting. Exhilarating sometimes. Painful most times. But always interesting.

The booklet also says The Fool means bewrayment. MSWord didn’t recognize bewrayment. Neither did I, so I looked it up. It’s archaic and means to betray or reveal. I guess the trip off the cliff can feel like some sort of betrayal. Who gets betrayed? Ourselves? Someone else? And what can the adventure that follows stepping off a cliff reveal to a fool? A lesson about life? About themselves?

Back then, though, I didn’t yet have the life experience I needed to look past the booklet and trust my own sense of the meanings of the cards. So, I read them pretty superficially. But that was good enough for me.

And I asked all sorts of teenage yes/no questions: Does so-and-so like me? Should so-and-so and I break up? Would I have a career? Get married? Travel to Paris?

In other words, as a teenager, I read my cards to know the future.

Now I read them to know myself.

What’s the Jung-Tarot connection?

Getting to know myself is part of the psychological journey toward wholeness and self-realization that Jung called individuation. And I’ve found Tarot to be a great tool for facilitating that process, which involves accessing the unconscious to discover and integrate hidden parts of myself so I can live a more authentic life. So, now I read my cards from a Jungian perspective.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Tarot, it’s a deck of seventy-eight cards. Twenty-two of them, the Major Arcana, numbered zero to twenty-one, represent archetypes,2 such as Strength and Justice, and are beautifully illustrated. The remaining fifty-six are called the Minor Arcana and are very similar to a deck of regular playing cards—four suits containing cards numbered ace through ten, plus court cards. Unlike playing cards, though, Minor Arcana cards, at least since the 1900s, are usually illustrated with images of everyday situations and people.

Tarot cards have been around since at least the middle of the fifteenth century and were used in Italy for a game called Tarocchi. Despite what you might have heard, they didn’t originate in ancient Egypt. And they only started to be used for divination in the mid 1700s—in France. So, not so mystical, after all.

But the images are powerful—just look again at The Fool above. Jung would say the images are symbolic.

Jung believed that most of who we are exists beneath the level of consciousness, and he discovered that the unconscious reveals itself through symbols—such as dreams, imagination, and art. Symbols are psychic images that are not just visual, but experiential and allow the conscious and unconscious to enter into a living relationship with each other.3

Symbols, then, are small doors to the unknown and only partially knowable material of the unconscious. I sense this when I wake up, remembering a powerful dream—the feelings it evoked and even the details. But can’t find the words to tell to someone exactly what happened in it. I find it’s the same with art. I don’t know a lot about art and can’t talk about it very intelligently, but I’ve always appreciated its ability to move me deeply and to express something that I can’t explain—and that I’m not even sure I understand.4

So, Tarot cards facilitate individuation because the images on them are symbols that allow the unconscious to reveal its secrets. In fact, the word arcana means “secrets,” and Ken James, in his course A Jungian Perspective on the Tarot, suggests these are “secrets we keep from ourselves.”

The Major Arcana that are numbered one to twenty-one seem to offer what Sallie Nichols, in Jung and Tarot, calls a map for “a journey into our own depths” (p. 2). In other words, a map of the individuation process. And Rachel Pollack, in Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, sees The Fool, numbered zero, as outside of the journey, “ready to leap into the archetypal world of the trumps” (p. 24). Though he looks like he’s ready to fall into it.

The journey through the trumps looks like this, with midlife falling between lines two and three:

1. The Worldly Sequence: Developing an ego and becoming an adult in the conscious world.

2. The Search for Self-Knowledge: Discovering who we really are by bringing what’s unconscious to consciousness.

3. The Great Journey: Developing spiritual awareness and releasing archetypal energy by establishing a living relationship between the ego—the center of consciousness—and the Self—the center of the entire psyche.5

In short, the images of the trumps represent the path of individuation and serve as symbols to facilitate that process.

How?

When you work with Tarot, you need to remove the ego from the driver’s seat, or as James would say, relativize it. Once you’ve consciously asked the question, you choose cards sight-unseen, allowing the unconscious to reveal itself through the random selection of the cards.

You’re probably wondering how it can possibly be that when we randomly choose the cards, the cards align with the questions we ask. In other words, how can the random selection of cards, driven by a question, be meaningful?

Of course, the alignment between the cards and the question could simply be coincidence. Or maybe we just “read into” what we want to see in whichever cards come up. But my experience has been that something else is going on that goes beyond reductionist psychological explanations.

I read my cards regularly and have noticed that the same ones come up repeatedly—while there are others that I never draw. And, if something shifts for me, psychologically and/or materially (and they usually go hand-in-hand), a new repeating card starts showing up.

For example, during a period when I felt particularly stuck, I kept pulling the VIII of Swords. Notice that the woman looks stuck, but, being blindfolded, she doesn’t see that she can just walk away. There’s no one there to stop her, the ties are loose and don’t even bind her legs, and the swords don’t completely encircle her. So, what’s really holding her back? Her inability to see the situation clearly. Pollack calls this card a Gate card because meditating on it can lead to the awareness of our own ignorance—the first and hardest step to knowledge. This card helped me see that the oppression I was feeling was not coming from an external source, but from my own lack of clarity.

And sometimes the cards that come up don’t give the answer I was hoping for. (Note: It doesn’t “count” if you keep choosing cards till you get the answer you want. And unfortunately, it also doesn’t work. 😉)

I’ve also noticed that if you pull cards without asking a question, it’s often hard to make sense of the cards. So, asking the question seems to be important. Why?

Have you ever thought about someone and, at that moment, they call? Your thinking didn’t cause the call. And their calling didn’t cause your thought. But the two events—your inner thought and the external phone call—coincided in a meaningful way.

Jung developed his theory of synchronicity based on numerous observations of similar meaningful coincidences; his exploration of the connections between analytical psychology and quantum physics with physicist Wolfgang Pauli; and his investigation of oracles, such as the I Ching and Tarot. The theory of synchronicity suggests that a random draw of the Tarot cards can meaningfully coincide with the total psychic field—the constellation of what we are and aren’t aware of at a particular moment in time. The question we ask is needed to constellate the field.6

So, how can Tarot predict the future?

When I was a kid, I fooled around (there’s The Fool, again!) with Tarot because I wanted to know the future so I could escape the confusion and pain of adolescence. I needed to have some control during that transitional time, to see some light—that was not a train—at the end of the tunnel. Tarot made me feel mystical (kind of cool in the 70s—at least for a nerd like me), but it didn’t really help because I was using Tarot to try to predict a future that would happen to me—not one that would emerge from me.

The good news, for teenagers, is that the transitional period of adolescence ends. The bad news, for the rest of us, is that life—if you really live it to its fullest—is a series of transitions, each one bringing its own uncertainty and confusion. Because during transitions, you’ve got one foot in a world you know and the other in a world that you’re not yet sure of.

So, transitions, by nature, create uncertainty and confusion.

More good news, though. There’s a way to make transitions easier to navigate—at any age.

Transitions are calls to get to know yourself. All of yourself. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Not so you can change yourself, but so that you can change your life and live in a way that aligns with the most expansive version of who you are. But it starts with answering the call to get to know who you really are.

This involves asking deep questions, letting the conscious ego take a step back, and making space for the unconscious to reveal its answers through dreams, active imagination—or oracles like Tarot. And if you don’t know what questions to ask, you can always engage the help of a Jungian therapist or coach.

Reflect on the answers that come up. And if you’re using Tarot, remember not to keep choosing cards till you get one you like! Because this work requires radical honesty, acceptance, and integration. And it starts with becoming aware of the secrets the unconscious holds.

So, now when I read my Tarot cards, I ask questions such as, “What’s going on?” What’s the source of this? What do I need to be paying attention to?” What are some ways I can address this issue?

I don’t ask those yes/no, future oriented questions about what’s going to “happen” that I asked as a teenager. Well…maybe once in a while. 😉

In short, I no longer use Tarot to predict the future. Instead, I use Tarot as a small door to knowing myself. But I find that the more I know myself, the more I can “predict” my future.

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“The Fool can burst unexpectedly into our personal lives with the result that, despite all conscious intentions, we end up playing the fool ourselves.”

Sallie Nichols, Jung and Tarot, (1980, p. 10).

For over a month, I was working on a post about looking at the Tarot from a Jungian perspective. Still haven’t finished it. As I kept researching and rewriting, it got longer and longer—too long for a blog post. I never felt satisfied with it, and I started having dreams about it—seriously? Finally, I got stuck. I really needed to find a way out, a small door—then I realized that struggling with writing the post was a small door.

Oh, what a fool I am.

Ironically, the piece was meant as a follow-up to two previous posts that shared the common theme of getting comfortable with being a fool. And both included this image of The Fool from the Rider-Waite Tarot. In the new post, I wanted to talk about the Jung-Tarot connection and focus on the discomfort—but also the ubiquity, necessity, and freedom—of feeling like a fool.

That was it. That was all I wanted to say. But then I went down a some rabbit holes. As I tend to do.

First rabbit hole: Providing some background on Jungian psychology became, in my hands, more than I bargained for. Jung’s career spanned decades. His ideas evolved during his lifetime, and both theory and application continue to develop in contemporary “post-Jungian” work, which extends and often differs from Jung’s own writing. I wanted to be accurate and precise. So, I tried to explain it all. The early theory, the problems, and the developments. In a blog post, no less. Not happening. And probably not even interesting—in that kind of detail—to casual readers. Even I was starting to get bored… and I was writing it!

And then there was the Tarot. Again, quite a bit to talk about. It’s history and, among decks, differences in the images, ordering, and interpretations of the cards. Second rabbit hole. And again, my obsession with being precise and including everything was making it, well, just too much.

I was enjoying learning by going down the rabbit holes, but I was losing my excitement about writing that post. It was turning out to be a very different experience from writing the first few. Writing those was fun, but writing the follow-up was starting to feel, as we used to say in the 60s, like a drag. I felt like I was back in academia, where perfectionism driven by imposter syndrome is more prevalent than you might think, and where writing conventions can sometimes take a really interesting subject and turn it into Ambien. 😴

And then it hit me. In my earlier posts, I was writing from my experience, from a place of my own authority. It felt alive and exciting.

But in that still unfinished post, I was talking about other people’s work and writing, and I was being driven by an underlying fear of misrepresenting or missing something. Of being wrong. I was experiencing exactly what I was cautioning against in the post, “What’s so wrong about being wrong?” Honestly, you can’t make this shit up. And I started laughing.

No wonder I was feeling stuck in writing that post. And then I realized I had also been feeling stuck, in general, because I was still hanging on to some previous and no longer viable identities. In the case of writing the post, the academic.

My dreams were pretty clear about it, too.

During this past month, many of my dreams were taking place on the block where I grew up and in restaurants where I worked when I was in my 20’s and early 30’s. Or in weird, unfamiliar places that I couldn’t pin down—like the dream where I was either in Alaska or Thailand. Somehow, the liminal space in my dream felt like both. Strange.

The dreams involved taking responsibility for roles that were no longer mine—waitress, wife, mom (not over, but very, very different), and instructor at the college I retired from. In one dream, I saw the word juncture written on the refrigerator in the kitchen of a former colleague—not too subtle!

In one dream, though, a woman showed up and pointed out a different perspective.

The woman was a former colleague, interestingly, named Grace. I asked her to read a paper that I had to grade, but had not yet read. Though I have no daughter in real life, in the dream, the paper was written by my “daughter”—a newer, unconscious part of me?

Grace skimmed the paper and I had the sense that in it, my “daughter” was complaining about something that had happened between her and me. Grace looked up from the paper and said, “Well, you know more about this incident than I do.” And I replied, “It’s not about the incident. It’s about how it was written.”

My take on that dream was that I was concerned about the performance—how my “daughter’s” paper was written—and I was missing the point that the only one who could possibly know if the content was accurate was me. And “my daughter,” of course. Could she have been complaining about me trying to turn a blog post into a research paper?

I was being a fool. Again. Because writing a research paper is part of a world where I had figured out how to perform and had achieved some success. A world where I felt not so much safe as comfortable—until I didn’t anymore. Until that world started feeling uncomfortable. And no longer alive.

Since I retired, though, I’ve found that what does feel alive is writing from my own experience. Less dependent on others; more authentically me.

But because it’s also new, it doesn’t feel very comfortable. Like I’m somewhere in Alaska-Thailand—a place of opposites. My life has changed, and the parts of myself that were running my old life need to take a step back to allow other parts to have a voice.

But some of these newly discovered parts seem to be in direct opposition to who I thought I was, and I don’t particularly like them. For example, the “selfish” part that’s demanding that I set boundaries, so the “nice” part won’t develop resentments—which I was also discovering. Oy. 🙄

The goal is not to let the new part take over, but to allow it to have a say in the choices we make—to at least consider its perspective. Then this new part can be integrated into who we are instead of being rejected and repressed. When we’re not used to considering that alternative perspective, though, choosing a new way of being is uncomfortable, and it’s easy to fall back on old, more comfortable ways of thinking and acting that support an idealized version of ourselves.

Recently, I was telling my therapist about how I felt compelled to jump in and do a favor I really didn’t want to do—and hadn’t even been asked to do. I decided not to feed into the compulsion, didn’t offer to do the “unasked for” favor…and felt guilty for days. I didn’t like feeling “selfish.” I tried to tell him how my decision made me feel about myself. Struggling to find the right adjective, I said, “Not offering to help made me feel so…so..” And he suggested, “Healthy?” And again, I had to laugh.

The writing made my stuckness salient. And the dreams showed me that it wasn’t just about writing like an academic when that wasn’t what was called for, but about who I was becoming. So, after that dream, I pushed the “research paper” aside and wrote this post instead. Because the experience of attempting to write the other post was a small door…and it showed me where I still needed to let go.

Maybe I’ll get back to that other piece in time, or salvage some of it. But only if I can make it fun. And give myself a little “grace.”

Card image is © Copyright U.S. Games Systems, Inc.

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In the meantime, though, if you would like to know more about Jungian psychology, and prefer online materials, take a look at courses on the Jung Platform, or check out the work of George Elder. And if you are looking for some introductory material, see Scott Jeffrey’s writing on this topic

If you prefer books, try C.J. Jung’s Man and His Symbols (1964), Edward F. Edinger’s Ego and Archetype (1992), Andrew Steven’s Jung: A Very Short Introduction (2001), or Murray Stein’s Jung’s Map of the Soul. And anything at all by James Hollis. He’s an amazing writer.

And if you’d like to know more about Tarot from a Jungian point of view, check out Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey (1980) by Sallie Nichols, Rachel Pollack’s Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness (2019), or Ken James’ course on the Jung Platform, A Jungian Perspective on the Tarot.

And who knows? Maybe I’ll finally finish that other post!

I attended a conference on teaching and learning in higher education about 20 years ago and saw a presentation that has stayed with me all these years. So yes…another small door. The audience were primarily middle-aged academics, and the speaker was a physics professor, Jose Mestre, who did a demonstration using games where balls “raced” on different tracks.

He showed us two tracks: Track A was shorter and basically flat; Track B was longer, and more like a roller coaster with an early, deep plunge. He asked us which track we thought would be faster, and by a show of hands, we guessed A, B, or a tie. I guessed A because it seemed more logical. He played a video of the race, and we saw that B won. He then explained the physics behind why Track B was faster. I honestly don’t know much about physics (not my best class in high school), so I had guessed wrong, but I understood his explanation. 1

Here’s where it got interesting. He showed us a second set of tracks, C and D, that were not identical—but comparable—to A and B, respectively, and asked us the same question. We voted with a show of hands that looked an awful lot like the first one. He played the video of the second race, and Track D—comparable to Track B—was faster. Same result for the same reason. Despite his clear explanation after the first race, very few of us who were wrong the first time, including me, had changed our views.

We were given the information we needed to make the right choice—and still we ignored it. That’s mental rigidity. Hanging on to what we believe, a way of thinking, our stories—in spite of evidence to the contrary. Why did a group of middle-aged people (including me!) who worked in higher education—of all things—refuse to take in and apply new information—refuse to learn? Weren’t we supposed to be—literally—in the business of learning??

Mental rigidity is like building a wall around our beliefs, keeping out new information that might challenge our way of thinking, might show us that we’re wrong. So why do we resist being wrong? What’s so threatening about it?

I think we hang onto our stories because what we believe is often central to who we think we are—what Jung called our ego. So, when what we believe is shown to be wrong, who we are is also shown to be wrong. That can be really destabilizing, so we dig our heels in, and stick with what’s wrong.

Not knowing anything about physics, I made my first guess at the presentation based on logic. It didn’t work and I was wrong. As a new professor, that was unnerving. So, when I was asked to make the second guess, I doubled down. It couldn’t be as easy as just applying the physics that had been explained to us. It had to be a trick question; we were being led down the garden path, and I was too clever for that! But I was wrong…again. So, not so clever after all.

This small door showed me my own mental rigidity, which seemed to be motivated by a need to see myself as “smart”—which creates a tendency to expect things to be harder than they are—and a fear of being “taken for a fool.” Lots of ego protection going on there. 🙄

Card image is © Copyright U.S. Games Systems, Inc.

Jung described the ego—who we think we are—as the center of consciousness. In addition to beliefs, the ego also includes the roles we play, our experiences, and our self-image. During the first half of life, we take on new roles, accumulate experiences, and develop beliefs and a self-image. Who are we when we commit to a life partner? When we embark on a career? When we have children?

If all goes well, somewhere in midlife, our lives and our egos might look relatively stable and if we identify with our egos (which most of us do), we think our identities are stable, too. But they’re not—because the beliefs, roles, experiences, and self-image that make up the ego are vulnerable to change. So, the questions in the second half of life may become: Who are we when a life partnership ends? When we lose our jobs or it’s time to retire? When our children no longer need us the way they used to?

And when multiple changes take place simultaneously—as they sometimes do in midlife—it feels like, well, a crisis. I know. I’ve been there. And more than once. We no longer feel like we’re on solid ground. We can feel unmoored because we’ve lost a frame for how we see ourselves and how we respond to and function in the world.

If we’re not responsible for the change that occurs because it’s something that’s out of our control—an illness, death, aging, children growing up—we might resist it, but we don’t blame ourselves for it.

However, sometimes—such as when a partner leaves or when we are “let go” or “retired” from a job—we may start to blame and question ourselves and our choices. Were we wrong? Did we choose the wrong partner, the wrong work, the wrong life? So, we resist to protect our egos.

It’s interesting that we might resist the change even if what’s changing is something that we experience as limiting, stressful, or soul-sucking. Why? Well, for one thing, it’s “the devil we know.” It may be horrible, but at least it’s familiar. The unknown could be worse.

In addition, if we do accept the loss of something that was awful, and things become better, how do we justify the years we spent being miserable? We realize we could have made the change a long time ago but didn’t. So now there’s regret for having suffered needlessly. Wrong again.

All of these midlife changes can feel threatening to our identity—if we identify with the ego. But Jung didn’t equate identity with ego. Jung distinguished between who we think we are, i.e., the ego, and who we are, which goes beyond the conscious ego to include the contents of the unconscious, both personal and collective. The contents of the personal unconscious include anything that belongs to an individual’s psychic history, but that the ego has forgotten, ignored, repressed, was never fully aware of, or rejected (the shadow).

The collective unconscious, on the other hand, is universal and contains what Jung calls archetypes—universal energetic structures or patterns. For example, we all share an image or concept of the energetic pattern “Mother”— unconditionally loving, nurturing, etc.—even if our personal mother was like Joan Crawford.

Though we’re not aware of what’s in the unconscious, it wields tremendous power over our lives—as long as its contents remain unconscious. As Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will run your life, and you will call it fate.” So, the work of the second half of life—what Jung called individuation—is to bring the unconscious material to consciousness. To know, accept, and integrate all of ourselves. To become whole. Authentic.

Changes in midlife, then, are doors to individuation. While they can be disturbing, they can also be seen as an invitation to what Joseph Campbell referred to as the hero’s journey—a story structure that we see over and over again in myths, legends, fairy tales, novels, and movies.

The journey starts with “a call to adventure” that takes an individual out of their comfort zone, through a road of trials, and into the “belly of the beast” where their deepest fears are faced and overcome. As a result, they receive a “boon”— a reward or blessing, often in the form of an insight. The individual then returns home and integrates the insight into their everyday life. Think Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, who returned to Kansas with the insight that she always had the power—the ruby slippers—to return home.2

So far, we’ve described the call to adventure of midlife as the external changes that no longer allow the status quo to be maintained. But the call can also originate internally, often experienced as a sense of dissatisfaction or absence of meaning that motivates us to initiate a change. And sometimes it can be both. In the Wizard of Oz, at least in the movie version, Dorothy expresses a longing to go “over the rainbow,” and it’s an outside force—a cyclone—that “sends” her there. The external world mirrors the internal. Jung had much to say about that, too. Synchronicity.3

Whether the call is internal or external, we can’t take the journey unless we are willing to be wrong—wrong about identifying with our ego, wrong about who we are—and to trust that, over the rainbow, there’s a much more expansive “us” to identify with. The good news is we’ve got the slippers—we just have to dig them out of the bottom of the closet.

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Why ask questions?

When my brother was a teenager, my mother would ask him a million questions about what he was doing, where he was going, who was he going with. You know. The usual “mom questions.” And my brother’s response was: “Questions! Questions!”

As annoying as mom questions are (just ask my son), I’ve come to appreciate questions, in general. The jobs I spent the bulk of my life doing—waitressing, teaching, mentoring, and now coaching—all depend heavily on me asking the right questions. (And having a pencil. I actually got by sometimes without the pencil, but the questions were crucial.) Questions help us build relationships, and they often serve as small doors when we are feeling stuck. So, it’s worth giving them a little thought.

Questions can open conversations. They also offer opportunities for clarification, much needed because it’s so easy to misinterpret each other, especially given the way we communicate these days. (As bad as it is now, can you imagine how much worse—yes, it could be worse—communicating by text would be without questions?) And, in relationships, the questions we choose to ask—and not ask—are just as important as the answers we get. We can learn a lot about people by noticing what they’re curious about. We can learn a lot about ourselves that way, too.

Great teachers have taught through questions. Socrates didn’t give lectures—he asked questions—giving us the Socratic Method. And Ramana Maharshi, who I mentioned in the post, “Why not?”, reached Enlightenment by exploring a single question: Who am I? Questions can be powerful levers, which is why they’ve been at the heart of my work as a teacher, mentor, and coach.

When I was teaching, how students answered my questions gave me insight into what they understood and could apply, and where there were still gaps in their knowledge. And student’s questions—as well as their lack of questions—let me know if they were engaged in learning. Because to learn, you need to be continually raising questions and actively searching for the answers.*

Novice students often think learning means memorizing and spitting back information. Memorization has its place in learning, as it can increase the speed of accessing information. But it needs to be supported by an understanding that’s deep enough to allow and inspire creativity—the adaptation of what’s been learned for use in new situations. That’s why math teachers tell students to “show your work.” I think that education is less about getting the answers, and more about becoming better at asking the right questions. But if you’re a novice learner, how do you know the right questions to ask? That is, how do you know what you don’t know?

What stages do learners go through?

Research has shown that, when first beginning to learn some skill or body of knowledge, a novice begins in a state of unconscious incompetence. This means they don’t yet know enough to know what they don’t know. So how can they be expected to know what questions to ask?

I experienced this when I retired and had to figure out how to draw down from my retirement fund. I approached my retirement fund like an animal. While I was working, I was “an ostrich with its head in the sand.” Didn’t know. Didn’t want to know. And when I retired, every time I spoke to the representative, I must have had that “deer-caught-in-the-headlights” look. I could feel my brain shut down and my eyes glaze over. I didn’t understand what he was talking about, and I didn’t know what questions to ask. I finally said, “Please talk to me like you’re talking to a fool, because, when it comes to retirement funds, that’s what I am.” Humbling, but true.

Eventually, I moved into the second stage of learning, conscious incompetence, because I started becoming aware of what I didn’t know and could at least ask some questions. But I still haven’t gotten to the third stage, conscious competence, where I would know but still need to act methodically. I’ll keep you posted if I ever get there.

The fund representative, though, is (I hope!) in the final stage—unconscious competence. In other words, he’s such an expert that his knowledge has become second nature to him, and he’s no longer even consciously aware of what he knows—like driving, when you’re an experienced driver.

If an expert (the rep) wants to explain something to a novice (me), they need to unpack what it is they unconsciously know by becoming re-aware of what they know so they can see the situation from the novice’s (my) perspective, and the novice (me) won’t shut down.**

Parents do this unpacking all the time. For example, they’re not even aware of what they’re doing when they tie their kids’ shoelaces, but they need to become aware of it when it’s time to teach their kids to tie their shoelaces themselves.

So, in defense of teachers everywhere, not only is it usually not the case that those who can’t do, teach, but it often is the case that those who can do, can’t teach. So there! 😊

How do we get to Stage 2?

Moving from unconscious incompetence (Stage 1) to conscious incompetence (Stage 2) is tricky, and it’s where learners often give up. Since questions are admissions that we don’t know, and novice learners don’t know what questions to ask, they often don’t ask because they don’t want to look—and feel—stupid. Feeling stupid threatens our identity—and our self-esteem and self-confidence suffer. It’s risky. That’s why teachers, who know how important it is for students to ask questions, assure them that there are no stupid questions.

Since stupid suggests a permanent state of intellectual lack, I agree that there are no stupid questions. I do think, though, that there are foolish questions, because foolish suggests a more temporary situation. When we’re young—chronologically or experientially—we’re foolish. We act impulsively; we lack wisdom. Just think about some of the things you did in high school. So, yes, there are foolish questions. How could there not be?

Since few of my students distinguished between stupid and foolish, I used to tell them that there are stupid questions—and that I know because I’ve asked them. This usually made them laugh and took some of the pressure off. But I explained that stupid questions were really just foolish questions, which were to be expected and, in fact, necessary for them to learn.

So, we get from Stage 1 to Stage 2 by listening actively and asking whatever questions—foolish or otherwise—come up. In other words, we get to Stage 2 by being willing to look foolish. And I think the best way to get over the fear of feeling foolish is not by never being foolish, but by getting comfortable with it. I tried to help my students do that. I think there’s a lot of freedom and usefulness in it.

How do questions help in coaching in midlife?

Clients come to coaching because they feel stuck and are looking for answers. Some clients imagine that I’ll advise them on what they should do. I can’t. And even if I could, it wouldn’t really help.

Because while the first half of life requires dialoguing with others to learn how to get on in the world, the second half requires dialoguing with ourselves to learn more about who we are. That means knowing the right questions to ask ourselves, and that’s where coaching can be helpful.

So, instead of offering answers, I guide my clients’ conversations with themselves by asking lots and lots of questions—small doors that invite them to consider an alternative way of thinking about the dilemma that brought them to coaching, so they can see it from a fresh perspective and a path through it can emerge.

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* This is true now more than ever. AI has made answers easily accessible, but we still have to know the right questions and follow-up questions to ask. Asking follow-up questions, I think, is what distinguishes people who use AI optimally from those who don’t. Because asking them means the user has critically assessed the quality of the answer in terms of accuracy and comprehensiveness, and, if either of those fall short, is requesting elaboration. Think of it as Q & A with AI. Because education is not just about “getting answers,” it’s about learning. These are two different things. Engaging in dialogue—with AI, a book, a person, and ourselves—is how we learn. If we don’t ask questions—if we’re passive—information doesn’t take root and grow and learning doesn’t take place.

**If you’re an instructor and are interested in research on learning, you might like Ambrose et al.’s How Learning Works (2010) or (2023). If you’d like to know more about unpacking your own expertise, check out Pace and Middendorf’s Decoding the Disciplines (2004).

For as long as I can remember, I was on a “quest.” I think a lot of people are, though the nature of the quest might vary from person to person, and what may be meaningful to one might seem frivolous to another. The content of the quest, I think, matters less than the energy it generates. For me, the quest was “spiritual,” although my definition of spirituality has changed over the years.

I was raised Catholic and attended twelve years of Catholic school. I remember that, as a kid, I had a “nun doll” and early on, I thought I’d become a nun—a very big door. But by the time I was sixteen, that was simply out of the question. Especially since I’d gotten thrown out of confession for questioning the infallibility of the Pope. But that’s another story.

Next up was transcendental meditation (TM)—meditation à la Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I remember waitressing (we didn’t call it serving then) in Circles Cafe, a cool restaurant in Bay Ridge in the 70s, where most of us who worked there took “TM breaks.” So, when Maharishi appeared on the Merv Griffin show one night, we brought in a TV and watched to see if he would levitate. (He didn’t). Then it was Guru Maharaj Ji, the teenage guru, until his followers told a group of us, at the end of a long day of what, in retrospect, was brainwashing, that we had to clean toilets. I guess my ego was too big, so that was the end of that.

My searching didn’t stop there, though. I was on and off “the path” for many years, exploring various religions, philosophies, teachings, and practices. I took something away from almost all of them, and while there often wasn’t a specific thing that made me hold back, I never fully committed to any of them.

What was I looking for? I think I was looking for some deep energetic connection that I expected—but never found—in Catholicism, and that I could never sustain on any of the other paths I tried.

In the 70s, I was all about eastern philosophy and religion (though not so much about cleaning toilets). I majored in both Religion and Philosophy in college (and minored in Music), and my favorite and most influential undergraduate professor George Elder,* who taught Religion (mostly eastern) from a Jungian perspective. He also referred me to the C.G. Jung Institute in NYC, where I found the Jungian therapist I worked with throughout my 20s. She was a godsend, and, throughout my life, Jungian psychology has deeply informed how I interpret the world. When I retired from teaching, I trained and became a Jungian coach, because it’s been looking through the Jungian lens that has helped me make meaning in my life, and I think it can help my clients find more meaning in theirs.

I’m mentioning all of this because in my 20s, I fantasized about going to India and living in an ashram. Every girl’s dream? Maybe not. But certainly mine. I’m sure the dream was also fueled by my reading and rereading W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge. Larry Darrell might be my favorite character of all time. (If you don’t know the story, choose the book over the movie versions of it. I could almost buy Tyrone Power as Larry in the 1946 film, but, much as I love Bill Murray in so many roles, he’s not my Larry.) What I loved about the character is that—spoiler alert!—he goes to India, becomes enlightened, and then goes back to America, planning to become an auto mechanic. My dream guy—an enlightened auto mechanic. I’m not kidding.

So, when I took a sabbatical from 2019 to 2020 (literally right before the pandemic), I added India to my list of places to visit. Big door for me. I went to Tiruvannamalai and visited two ashrams there. One was the ashram of Yogi Ramsuratkumar, where I chanted at least once—and often twice—a day and got to know a number of people. The other was the ashram that Maugham visited in the 1930’s to meet Ramana Maharshi, an experience that, it’s been reported, inspired Maugham to write The Razor’s Edge (1944), in the first place. I visited that ashram only twice and didn’t really engage with anyone, but did get some materials on the teachings.

At the ashrams, though, I felt awkward and out of place. And chanting—a staple practice of Bhakti (devotional) Yoga that was practiced at the ashram of Yogi Ramsuratkumar—didn’t open my heart. I remember talking to the spiritual leader there, who had been yogi’s devotee when he was alive. She was saintly, and picked up that I was not getting it. She tried to help, but I realized that the devotional path was not my path. So, my big door—going to an Indian ashram—hadn’t taken me where I thought it would.

But I loved Tiruvannamalai. It’s a special place where I met so many warm and kind people. It’s situated next to a sacred hill called Arunachala and I was lucky to participate in Girivalam, a sacred circumambulation around it, which was exciting. Every day, for the almost four weeks I was there, I sat on the roof of the apartment building where I was staying, and meditated and watched the monkeys play, before an unobstructed view of Arunachala. That’s probably when I felt the most “spiritual.”

And almost every day, I went to a small family owned and operated restaurant. I think the family probably lived in the restaurant, too. The parents and older children cooked in the back and the twelve-year-old daughter, Nisha, was the server and cashier. She was a very pretty girl, and despite being only twelve, carried herself in a way that was more grown up. More knowing. And also, more distant. I noticed this because having waited tables for a long time (that’s what you get for majoring in Philosophy and Religion—though, actually, I loved it), I always talk to the server, and it took a while for her to warm up to me. Eventually she did, and she’d smile and say “hello” when I walked in.

One day, when she came over to take my order, I asked her, “How are you today?” She looked at me and said, “Fine.” And then she took a beat and added, “Why not?” with a little shrug of her shoulder. I’m not sure why her response struck me the way it did at just that moment, but it was the little door I needed.

That unusual pause and the addition of Why not? to fine in a common exchange of greeting felt profound—so much so, that I’m thinking and writing about it six years later. It hit me in a very deep, and not totally intellectual, way. My head and my heart opened up. Reflecting on it after the fact, it suggests two things: an acceptance of life just as it is and the recognition that how we feel is a choice.

The idea of acceptance is carried by both parts of Nisha’s response. Fine is an interesting adjective. When we talk about fine wine, for example, we are describing a wine that is “very good” or even” exceptional.” But often, and it seems to be the case here, fine means “acceptable.” Nisha’s not great—she’s fine.

The Why not? also suggests acceptance—surrender of control of this moment—since it’s impossible to change what’s here right now. You can make adjustments now to inspire change in the next moment, but you can’t change this one. And much pain comes from resisting what is. I remember getting a parking ticket and being so angry about it, that I didn’t pay it and just left it on my desk. Every time I looked at it, I was annoyed. Then I realized that since I was in the wrong, I had to pay it either way, and that the sooner I paid it, the less it would annoy me. So now I accept parking tickets (if I’m guilty!) and pay them as soon as I get them. And life sometimes feels like a series of parking tickets.

Choice seems suggested by the Why not? and is empowering. Why not be fine? What’s the alternative? Terrible? Why choose that? And if having a fine day is a choice, making that choice every day, creates a fine life. The trick, it seems, is making that choice every day, day after day. Easier said than done.

One more note about Nisha’s response. I asked, “How are you today?” I didn’t ask about the day, or the weather (hot!) or about business in the restaurant. It occurs to me now that accepting what is and choosing to be fine suggests seeing ourselves as outside of our experience. Life may be great. Life may suck. But we are fine.

An 8,000-mile trip, two ashrams, weeks of chanting, and a walk around Arunachala. Yet it’s an offhand comment from a twelve-year-old server that moved me. Small door.

And I didn’t even have to clean the toilet. But I left her a good tip.

And you think she knows something by the second refill
You think she’s enlightened as she totals your bill
You say, “Show me the way to Barangrill.”

Joni Mitchell, “Barangrill,” For the Roses, 1972‍

*Do yourself a favor and follow the link to George Elder’s website. His blog is brilliant, and he offers insightful analyses of many current events from a Jungian perspective.

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What brought you here? If you’re over 35 and are looking for a “small door,” maybe you’re experiencing what’s referred to as a “midlife crisis”—which most of us go through, sometime after 35, regardless of how we view our lives. (Yeah, I know. I also thought midlife started at 60. Nope.)

You can recognize a midlife crisis if you find yourself—in your forties—buying roller blades when you couldn’t even skate as a kid. Then again, maybe that was just me.

Midlife crisis. That gnawing fear that we’re living a life that “happened” to us—a life that we didn’t really choose—at least not consciously. “Once in a Lifetime” by The Talking Heads describes it pretty well:

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”

Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime,” Remain in Light, 1980

Well, how did we get here?

It’s a pretty good question to ask in midlife, because it invites us to consider not whether our life is “successful,” but instead, whether it’s authentic.

Jung saw the first half of life as focused on external goals—developing the ability to survive and thrive in the world—while the second half is about transitioning to internal, spiritual, and psychological goals—what he termed, individuation (C.G Jung, “Stages of Life,” 1930, which can be found in Modern Man in Search of a Soul).

In the first half of life, we see models of what constitutes personal, economic, and social “success”—and learn which values and skills are needed to achieve each. But we also have our own spirit, which may be celebrated or suppressed, depending on how well it aligns with these models. How, where, and by whom we’re raised—including cultural, political, and religious contexts—inform what we believe, how we think, and what we do. These influences are so ingrained in the fabric of who we are, that they become unconscious patterns that run our lives. Sort of like how code runs a computer program.

Sometimes we find that these patterns of belief, thought, and action didn’t work— we haven’t achieved the “success” we’d hoped for—and the midlife crisis shines a light on the places where we feel we fell short. But sometimes the patterns did work. And by everyone else’s account—maybe even our own—we’re “living the dream.” And yet…it feels like something’s missing.

So, what’s really behind the choices we make? Are we simply going along with patterns we inherited? Are we rebelling against those same patterns? Either way, when our decisions are reactions to these patterns, how can we be sure our choices truly reflect who we are? Until I was 16, I did everything “right.” But I couldn’t maintain it. So, then I did almost everything “wrong.” I can remember making some terrible choices as a teenager and through my 20s not because they were what I wanted, but because I was simply choosing the opposite of what I was supposed to want. Of course, I didn’t realize it at the time. And that’s sort of the point.

We create a life by making many—if not most—decisions unconsciously. Maybe these decisions lead to “success”—maybe not. Either way, at midlife, when the strivings of life start to subside, we find ourselves in our lives—and the question “Well, how did I get here?” is actually quite profound. Because it asks if the life we created is a life that is authentic and meaningful to us.

To answer that question, we need to ask other questions. A good place to start is to consider some change—internal or external—that you’re facing. What outcome would you like to achieve? What options are available to you? And how freely can you make that choice?

That last question is crucial. Because if you’re life is being run by patterns that are unconscious, then none of your choices are truly free. You’re stuck in a loop.

Jungian coaching helps bring those patterns to awareness so you can discover if they truly align with who you are now in order to live the second half of your life more authentically.

If you’re interested in learning more about looking at midlife through the lens of Jungian psychology, check out Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life by James Hollis. Great book. You’re sure to find a number of small doors there!

Doors can lead us outside the confines of our own “spaces”—both physically and metaphorically. They’re an invitation to go somewhere different, see something new—take a breath of fresh air and get an alternative perspective.

Metaphorically, big doors are easy to spot. They announce themselves and invite you to go through them. I’m thinking about large, external things that we believe will be life changing. Maybe it’s a career, a course of study, a philosophy, a religion, a relationship, an adventure, retirement, or a spiritual quest. Big doors often come with their own set of assumptions and philosophies. Whether you walk through these doors or not is up to you, and if you’re having trouble deciding, you might need to find and open a few other doors first.

In my own life, I’ve often gone through big doors—choosing paths that I believed would have a huge impact. But when I look back, I realize that often, they didn’t. And the biggest insights came from noticing and opening small doors.

Small doors are easy to miss. An offhand comment that somehow gets to the heart of the matter. An observation about yourself that reveals something so absurd that you just have to laugh. A line from a movie, song, or piece of writing that speaks volumes to your soul. A myth or fairy tale that parallels your life. Small doors softly nudge us to consider another way of thinking, another way of feeling. But, unlike big doors, they rarely announce a change, or tell how to think or feel. They sneak up on you.

Sometimes, when you’re feeling stuck and you need a way out—it’s hard to find a small door. I like to think of my work as a Jungian coach as offering my clients a small door, and inviting them to open it up and take a peek beyond it. Those doors usually take the form of questions.

I like the small doors. They give us little glimpses that can have big impacts.

But you have to find them. And open them. And at least look at what’s behind them.

This blog is about noticing something small that serves as a lever to a bigger realization that can lead to a lasting change of perspective.

What are your small doors?