The spiral labyrinth is one of the oldest of symbols; it depicts the way to the unknown center of death and rebirth, the risk of the search, the danger of losing the way, the quest, the finding and the ability to return. Edmond Whitmont, The Symbolic Quest

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(15) High Anxiety This spiral shape kept wanting to be drawn. After I made the drawing, it felt to me like an image of high anxiety, of something dark and foreboding suspended ominously over the landscape. Exactly one year after the heart attack, I consulted with psychotherapist James Nourse, another kind person who helped me on my way. He told me that of all the drawings I showed him, this one in particular struck him. He had seen very similar images, he said, that were indicative of shamanic initiation experiences. The spiral was an image of “the way in” and “the way out.” I was not particularly interested in having shamanic experiences, and I was skeptical of Dr. Nourse's explanation;  this just seemed like another New Age Fad -- like walking labyrinths. All I wanted was to get over the trauma, to quickly put it behind me, and to get back to being normal. But I did see the connection he spoke of.  Initiation experiences (which every shaman necessarily endures) always involve suffering. And, in my situation, I had no choice but to suffer, in the same way that any person who is traumatized has no choice but to experience and to re-experience, over and over again, the trauma that changed his or her world. Trauma threw me into another world, a bleak internal world of fear and despair. And, regardless of what the drawing may have suggested, I did not believe that there was a way out.

 February 27, 2007