THE SHAMAN, THE PSYCHOLOGIST & JESUS

This is a self-portrait, an old watercolour drawing I did many years ago. I had been haunted by shark dreams throughout my childhood and into my twenties and this was one of the more benign ones. After living with the shark for many, many years I decided to let it eat me and the dreams stopped. The decision to give into the shark allowed the dream, and therefore my psychic relationship with it, to transform. Recently I realised that it was also a 'shamanic' experience.

From my own experience and reading Jung, Corbett and others there seems to be a major sticking point in the process of transformation. It is to do with the balance between the small self (ego-self) and the Self (God-self). Corbett talks about needing a strong sense of self to get us through the process, saying that if we don't have that we can become fractured and fall victim to the depressive and destructive aspects of the psyche. However, the process for me must include this dismantling in order to make me vulnerable and therefore open to the Self at all.

It is an extremely delicate balance because the other side of this is an identification with the Self that leads to what is known in psychology as 'inflation', which is why you get your 'guru' types and insistent but aggressive 'new-age' healers who are saving not only you but the entire world. This is also why psychiatric hospitals will often have one or two Jesus' floating around the wards, mostly well intentioned of course.

The other alternative is to take the experiential and shamanic path which leaves us walking a fine line between a 'death' (mental or physical) from which we might not recover or, on the other hand, a God-complex where power, though not necessarily wielded in a completely destructive way, must create blind spots.

This is where the shaman's path differs from that of the depth psychologist. I think Jung was both, he was an extraordinary man, but many who followed him have not had the shamanic experience first hand within which to contextualise the theoretical structure.

Just like Jesus actually. Jesus was a shaman, a wounded healer who suffered. Most of those who followed, though well meaning, had not had the direct experiences that he had. The shaman's path is not for everyone - it is difficult and dangerous and we don't choose it. It chooses us.