ABSTRACT
Carrying on with the question of practice, of Doing, we need to look at the phenomenon of linking, a form of deep relationship which arises very naturally at the Subtle level of work.
LINKING
Sometimes in the history of psychotherapy a phenomenon arises which occurs to several people at once, like ripe fruit which drops into everyone’s back garden at the same time. It is a situation in therapy where something is experienced which is not empathy, not projective identification, not countertransference and not identification, but can easily be confused with any one of them. Rosemary Budgell, in her formal research project, has called it linking. She says:
The experience is described as near fusion, a communion of souls or spirits and a blurring of personal boundaries. To achieve this, both parties have to give up something of themselves while remaining separate. It is not symbiosis but the other end of the spectrum, as described by Wilber (1980). It is the transpersonal sense of relinquishing self. Symbiosis is about being cosy, but this is about working through pain and fear. It is a sacred experience and yet natural and there all the time. It comes from the spiritual or transpersonal realm, being a step beyond empathy and the natural plain.
