Having just returned from another amazing African STAR (Self Transformation Adventure Retreat), filled with magical people and astonishing animal encounters, I’m even more obsessed with non-human creatures than usual.

Anyway, I’m getting a bit confused by the number of different of meanings various sources associate with a given animal. Do bats really represent the ability to navigate in the dark, or is that a toad attribute? Does the lizard outside my window mean I need to relax in the sun or be more compassionate?   Furthermore, it seems odd to me that no negative qualities are ever associated with any animal. I mean, really—malaria mosquitoes? Plague rats? [...]

When I was 20, I got a fellowship to travel mainland China gathering folktales for my undergraduate thesis at Harvard. I was expecting the kind of stories I’d seen animated in Disney films: handsome prince and beautiful maiden overcome evil and unite in a happy-ending marriage. To my astonishment I found that this archetype is incredibly rare in Chinese folktales–they always ended with the protagonist getting rich.This was the first time I realized that my experience of romantic love was just one more set of socialized beliefs. Some of them made me very happy, and still do. The presence [...]

In their book The Knowing-Doing [...]