So you're making your own view helper and you need, for a reason, to access the running $view instance. Don't worry, all you have to do is implement a setView() method which will be called on your helper's instantiation, with the $view as argument:

class My_View_Helper_SpecialPurpose {
	
	protected $_view = null;
	
	public function setView($view) {
		$this->_view = $view;
	}

}

And voila !