Walking My Path

Jung and the Collective Unconscious.My awakening  to Archetypes.

As I delved into shamanism, I found myself navigating the layers of the unconscious that Carl Jung describes. The collective unconscious—a realm that holds the archetypes we all share—became a place I encountered again and again in my own healing work. Jung’s discovery that beneath our personal experiences lies a shared world of symbols and patterns resonated with me as I journeyed into shamanic ceremonies.

In these experiences, I saw the archetypes play out in powerful ways: the Healer, the Warrior, the Shadow—all came alive in visions, in ceremonies, and in my work with others. These weren’t just abstract concepts; they were forces that moved within me and helped me to understand the path I was on. In one of my most profound shamanic experiences, I encountered what Jung might call the archetype of the Divine Mother—an all-encompassing, nurturing presence that brought me to tears. It was a moment of grace, a return to wholeness.

Jung’s process of the integration of conscious and unconscious parts of the self, mirrored what I was experiencing in shamanism. Each ceremony, each descent into the unknown, was an opportunity to confront the fragmented parts of myself, to reclaim them, and to emerge more whole.

Joseph Campbell’s work on the Hero’s Journey felt intimately familiar as I walked the path of spiritual transformation. The Hero’s Journey, a universal narrative that Campbell found in myths across cultures, spoke to the trials and tribulations I had faced—both in the physical world and the inner realms of the psyche.

The call to adventure had come for me in the form of emotional and spiritual pain, an undeniable sense that I needed to heal. Just as in the Hero’s Journey, I faced the darkness within, encountering personal challenges and traumas that tested my strength. Campbell describes this phase as the descent into the underworld—the hero must confront their deepest fears and the Shadow aspects of themselves before they can transform. My own descent came in the form of a crisis: witnessing trauma in my work, feeling an unshakable heaviness, and sensing unseen forces around me.

This journey led me to seek out shamans and eventually embark on a mentorship with an Algonquin medicine man. Much like the hero who encounters allies along the way, I found guides who helped me make sense of the chaotic, otherworldly experiences I was having. The ceremonies, feasts, and sweats I attended in Canada and Mexico were part of my own underworld journey, where I confronted past issues , the pain of others, and the ancestral wounds that were still living within me.

Campbell’s Hero’s Journey doesn’t end with the trials—it culminates in the hero’s return to the ordinary world with newfound wisdom. For me, this return meant integrating what I had learned through shamanism into my everyday life. I realized that I was not just healing for myself but for my family , for the generations before me, and for those who would come after. The wisdom I gained through the journey of healing became my gift to others, whether through my work as a stylist, my spiritual practice, or my Ayurvedic studies.

Interestingly, this journey into shamanism brought me full circle to my roots in Indian spirituality and Ayurvedic philosophy. My father, a swami, had devoted his life to healing through Ayurveda and spiritual teachings, but I had run from that path for most of my life. As I worked with plant medicine and explored shamanic healing, I began to see how the wisdom of Ayurveda—the balance of body, mind, and spirit—was deeply aligned with the teachings I was learning in ceremony.

Plant medicine became a bridge between the worlds: the ancient Ayurvedic herbs I had grown up around, and the sacred plants used in shamanic traditions. Both were rooted in the understanding that healing requires balance, that sickness comes from disconnection—whether from nature, from spirit, or from the self. In ceremony, I began to work with plant allies that helped me access deeper layers of my consciousness and reclaim parts of myself that had been lost or hidden away.

In many ways, this path back to my roots mirrored Jung’s concept of individuation. Just as Jung believed that we must integrate the unconscious to become whole, I found that my healing journey required me to integrate the Indian and shamanic traditions I had kept separate for so long. It wasn’t about choosing one or the other—it was about seeing how they could work together to bring me back into balance.

Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell’s insights into myth and archetypes are not just intellectual concepts—they are living forces that have shaped my journey. Both men understood that the stories we tell ourselves, and the symbols that appear in our dreams and visions, are reflections of the deeper currents moving within us.

In shamanism, the process of healing often involves journeying into the spirit world to retrieve lost parts of the self, much like the Hero’s Journey. In ceremony, I have traveled to places beyond the ordinary senses, confronted darkness, and emerged with new insight and strength. Each step on this path felt like an embodiment of both Jung’s and Campbell’s teachings—the Hero’s Journey in real-time, guided by the archetypal forces of the unconscious.

As I continue on this path, I see how the myths and archetypes that Jung and Campbell wrote about live not only in the stories of ancient cultures but in the ceremonies of today, in the plant medicine, in the dreams and visions of those seeking healing. My own journey through shamanism has revealed that these timeless patterns are still active, still guiding us toward wholeness.

Walking the Path

My journey, like the Hero’s Journey described by Campbell and the individuation process outlined by Jung, is ongoing. The deeper I go into the realms of the unconscious, the more I understand the power of myth, the wisdom of archetypes, and the importance of connecting to the unseen world. Whether through shamanism, Ayurveda, or the teachings of my father, I see now that the path to healing is not linear—it’s cyclical, spiraling through the layers of the self, the community, and the natural world .

~Shanti Freedom Das