How to uncover the hidden truth of your inner wounded healer - Lian Brook-Tyler

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Written By Lian Brook-Tyler

Episode 553, released 17th June 2026.

Wild Sovereign Soul co-founder and soul guide, Lian Brook-Tyler, explores the myth of Chiron the wounded healer in full, from conception to stars, reframing it as an awakening arc rather than a healing one, and examining what we miss when we stop the story too soon.

This episode is Lian’s All The Everything show… her solo space where she dives deeply into a theme that is alive for her, which, if you know her, could be literally anything - explored through the lenses of science, spirituality and story - hence the name of the show!

It is created for those who feel called toward a soulful life shaped by meaning, depth, truth, and love… for those who feel unsatisfied with quick answers or surface level takes. This is a rich rabbit hole that Lian journeys through alongside you. She speaks from her own lived experience and unfolding process… while inviting you into your own as you listen.

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In this episode, Lian returns to Chiron, the wounded healer, not to retread familiar ground but to follow the myth all the way to its end, the cave, the exchange with Prometheus, the death, the stars, the parts that almost never get told. She traces the full arc from Chiron's conception through his years of genuine mastery and medicine, into the collapse that the second wound brings, and through to what von Franz calls the hopeless conflict, the precise moment the ego runs out of road and something else becomes possible.

She draws on the work of Ken Wilber, whose pre/trans fallacy names something she has lived personally, the difference between a genuine spiritual opening and the long harder work of becoming somebody before you can genuinely become nobody, and why so much of contemporary spirituality mistakes one for the other.

Listen if you have done years of real inner work and quietly wonder whether the identity you have built around your healing has itself become the thing you are now living around rather than through.

We'd love to know what YOU think about this week's show. Let's carry on the conversation... please leave a comment below.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

  • Why the wound becoming medicine is genuinely true and also only the middle of the story, and what the myth of Chiron reveals about the arc that follows it

  • How Ken Wilber's pre/trans fallacy names the difference between a real spiritual opening and the work of becoming that no awakening experience can replace

  • What happens when the ego finally runs out of road, and why von Franz and the data from Hardy's 6,000 accounts both point to the same uncomfortable portal

Resources and stuff Lian spoke about:

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Thank you!
Lian & Jonathan

Episode Transcript:

Please note: We are a small team and not able to check through the transcript our software provides. So you may find some words are out of place and a few sentences don’t make complete sense. If you do see something utterly ridiculous we’d love you to let us know so we can correct it. Please email any howlers with the time stamp to team@bemythical.com.

Lian Brook-Tyler (00:00)

What if we've been so eager for the wound to become medicine that we've glossed over what actually happens in the story of Chiron, the wounded healer, which could be the most important part? Hello, my beautiful soul seekers. This episode, welcome, welcome, welcome, is my all the everything show.

It's my usually monthly solo space where I dive deeper than deep into a theme that's particularly alive for me, which, if you know me, could be literally anything. And often we journey through the lenses of science, spirituality, and story, hence the name of the show, all the everything. It literally is all the everything. And so this month's theme is Chiron the Wounded Healer.

An archetype, a myth, a figure, an aspect of the human experience that for all kinds of reasons really speaks to me and is a very important part of the work that we do at Wild Sovereign Soul. And so this is this is a a story and a figure that I have spoken about so much. Right now we are.

World Sovereign Pilgrimage, 25 of us are journeying really deeply with Chiron. I'll probably share a bit about that in a moment. and yet, as I was moving towards this month's All the Everything, and actually, as voted for by the members of our Facebook group, going back and doing a part two, my first episode on Chiron was two or three years ago.

And I thought I went pretty deep into the Chiron story there, and yet I was being asked to do a part two. And it was so interesting realizing the ways that I had been journeying personally with Chiron since then, which I'd only shared a tiny amount publicly, and even in the pilgrimage in which we're working directly with Chiron.

And with that invitation to come back and do a part two on Chiron, so much has emerged. So much has emerged. Hence, this episode is going to really go, as I said in a little kind of promo trailer I did for this episode, we're gonna go off the beaten path that's already off the beaten path. So if you like that kind of, let's say quite liminal, paradoxical, contradictory exploration, this episode is definitely for you. I've been surprised with some of the places I've gone to in preparing for this episode. And so this episode and this show, All the Everything, is for those of us who feel called for a soulful life of meaning, depth, truth, and love, and who don't want quick answers or service takes.

This is a glorious rabbit hole that we journey down together. I'll be speaking as we journey from my own experience and unfoldings and again things that I've I've either discovered years ago or even quite recently, and the dots that I'm joining between the two. And as we go, I'll be inviting you into perhaps taking a deeper look at your own story, your own experience, your own, your own soul's journey to this point.

And so we're looking at the bigger picture, archetypal patterns, questions as they arise, and there'll be often pauses where I'll ask you questions that I would I would suggest that you both see what arises in the moment, but also they are perhaps ones that you feel particularly either drawn to or feel a bit like, get that away from me. Make a note of those and I would suggest journeying with them more deeply after this episode.

And in that vein, I would also say if you don't have a pen and paper, perhaps go get one. as I often say, there is something different that's activated and evoked when we write with a pen or pencil and paper rather than electronically. So that would be my suggestion. Give yourself the space to kind of draw and doodle and make notes and random words as we journey and then come back and see what it's your what it is that you're being called to go more deeply with.

And if you've just arrived here to World Sovereign Soul, welcome. If you've come back, welcome home. And if you keep finding yourself here without subscribing, your soul clearly knows what it is doing. So honor the call and go ahead and subscribe. It's challenging to live in this crazy modern world Sovereign Soul is what we know will help.

And so if you're struggling with the challenges of walking your soul path and your heart longs for guidance, kinship, and support, come join us in Unio, the community for Wild Sovereign Souls. UNIO is the living home for the Wild Sovereign Soul Path, where together we reclaim our wildness, actualise our sovereignty, and awaken our souls. You can find out more and walk with us by hopping over to wild sovereign soul.com slash unio. And now back to this week's episode, let's dive in.

So, as you heard me share at the beginning of this episode, we are going to look at this notion, this archetype of the wounded healer, and specifically paying real attention to the actual myth of Chiron, which is largely, not only, but largely where this idea of the wounded healer comes from. And so we're going to look at that perhaps more deeply than is typically the case. And there's really good reasons for that. And there's a kind of important, none of what I'm going to share here is at all wanting to kind of make wrong the usual way that Chiron's spoken about or the wounded healer's spoken about. And yet, what I feel is being asked of us in this exploration is to perhaps, re-examine those ways that we're like, this is what it is. This is what the wounded healer is about, and I've done that work or I'm doing that work and that's it. So we will be going, not again, not to dismiss or contradict what's already known about the wounded healer, but to have another look at some of the places where conclusions have been made perhaps prematurely. So this this idea of the wounded healer, Is saying that that sacred wound, our deepest wound, can be alchemised into medicine first for ourselves and then for others. And that is true. It's I've seen personally the deepest work, it's so for me, it's become almost like the heart of the work, the heart of the great work, the heart of healing, becoming sovereign, individuation.

I'm not saying it's the only way to work, but l over time I've seen it's perhaps the richest, deepest, most potent way to work. And so again, I'm not at all going to say that isn't the case in this episode. It really is the foundation, and everything you would have heard me or anyone else talking about the wounded healer say about this is true. And Chiron's story, the myth of Chiron goes further than that. And what you'll notice is most most times when this notion of the wounded healer, the wound becomes medicine, it tends to stop at that point. And what I've begun to see over the last couple of years, and again more recently, as I've been kind of really coming present to where I'm being called beyond that understanding.

Is that identity of the wounded healer becomes almost like a destination in itself? Like this is the end point. I've become the wounded healer. My wound has been alchemised into medicine. Therefore, job done. That's the whole you know trajectory of my soul in this lifetime was to become the wounded healer. And what can happen is whilst there is real value in the ego kind of being reshaped around this notion of being a healer, being of service, our wounds being alchemised in this way. The the ego can also become kind of stagnant and trapped in that identity. The medicine becomes the brand, the healing, that experience we've had, that becomes our credential. And The wound then becomes something almost we're kind of living around rather than continuing to live through. And if we go back again and pay careful attention to the story of Chiron, what it's actually mapping is going beyond that. And that's what we're going to look at today, going from the conception to the stars and the awakening arc that Chiron goes upon is not a healing arc, it's an awakening arc. And so this is what we're going to look at. We're going to look at all of those stages of that arc, including the medicine stage, and then where the myth is calling us next.

So we will begin with Chiron's story. And you may well have heard me or others talk about this before. And we're going to tell the story kind of like in this moment, kind of afresh in this moment. Looking at different translations and different tellings are going to be kind of woven together.

And my invitation is, as I always do when I tell a story, is to allow yourself just this little brief moment of time. If you'll see if you're driving, listen to this, don't close your eyes. If you are in a safe space to close your eyes, do so. But just, you know, like little children gathering around, you know, perhaps in bed or around the fire to listen to a story, just allow yourself to enter that liminal story space and see what arises for you in hearing the story.

Before we even start to go deeper.

So once upon a time, in the age before the Olympian gods had fully settled their reign over the world, a child was conceived in darkness and born into abandonment. And his name was Chiron. His story really begins before he does, in the moment his father, Cronus, a Titan, and one of the great primordial powers who preceded the Olympian gods.

He was pursuing Philyra, an ocean nymph. He caught her and took what he wanted from her. And then he was interrupted by the sudden appearance of his wife Rhea, which, as you can probably imagine, wasn't very pleased to see this. So at which point he transformed himself into a stallion and fled, leaving Philyra alone with what had just happened and what with whatever was now growing inside her.

And I just want to pause and say, as is often the case of myths of this time, there is often ambiguity and things not always named plainly. And so we don't really know whether what happened was consensual, whether that was its own wounding, but what we know is what happened next. When Chiron was born, half human. And half horse, a centaur, his body carried that permanent and undeniable evidence of an act that was conducted at very least in concealment and then denied the moment discovery threatened. And here he was. That deception, that darkness made flesh. Unable to hide the truth of that because it took place, it took shape in his own body. His own body, his own physical appearance in this world was the wound made flesh.

And then his mother looked at her newborn son and found she just couldn't bear to remain herself in his presence. And so she begged the gods to transform her into something else, anything else. And they turned her into a linden tree. And so what's interesting here is she didn't abandon him to go and build a completely different life. She dissolved into another form.

And then Kronos had been long gone since before the birth. So Chiron arrived into the world with both parents already gone. And he was carrying in his body that knowledge that his very existence was what had had this impact on his mother, and this was the reason she could not be there with him. And then Apollo and Artemis, I've got a personal Love of Artemis. She's just such a I think side note. If you haven't already worked with Artemis as a woman, I would really go suggest checking her and what she brings out because there's so much that she reveals to us and opens us into, particularly that relationship with the wild of our body and the land. Anyway, that's a side note. And so Apollo and Artemis found him and they raised him between them, the god of light and the goddess of the wild, offering him what his own parents had not. And they gave him everything. They gave him tutoring and gifts in medicine and music and prophecy, archery, the whole wholeness of the healing arts in you know, such great depth and richness. And then on Mount Pelion, on his in his cave, he became the most trusted teacher in the known world. One that plenty of other legends and myths speak to. He became the one the heroes of the age were sent to. And they include Achilles and Jason and Perseus and Asclepius, who would eventually become the god of medicine himself. And so all of them were.

Served and shaped and taught by this extraordinary being who had turned the conditions of his own birth, his own origin, into a life of genuine service and genuine mastery. So the wound had become medicine. And still lying underneath all of it, untouched really by any of it, there was still that child born in a body that no one could bear look at. And so I want to pause here because.

Often, as this story is told, it's not often told in the way where we can see this sort of precursor to the later wound. This initial wound of his birth, of his conception, even, is already the wound that was alchemised into medicine. He became this great healer despite his origin. And I think this is a really important thing to recognise.

And so here we have now Chiron as this incredibly accomplished healer and teacher. And then came a poisoned arrow. And somewhat, I guess ironically, not from someone who intended to harm him, but actually from one of his own students, Heracles or Hercules, depending if we're talking in Greek or Roman, got caught up in a brawl with a group of centaurs.

Who and it had nothing to do with Chiron at all, but this arrow that was dipped with Hydra poison struck him in the leg as it passed through another centaur. And that wound was so poisonous that in some tellings it would have killed a mortal man and yet, because Chiron, because of the circumstances of his birth and his father, was immortal. So instead of dying, he was struck by this agony that was so clearly beyond his ability to heal. And so there was this real cruelty where it was an accident, and despite his very real gifts of healing, neither him nor any of his students could do anything about this wound that had been created in his body. And so he retreated to his cave and howled in agony. And as I often say when I tell this part of the story, some tellings say it was a rose-quartz crystal cave. And if I ever have a cave, it will definitely be a rose quartz crystal barn. So it wasn't the worst cave to be in, but nonetheless, he was of course in desperate measures. He he was in agony, crying out for help, crying to Apollo, the god who had raised him, but he couldn't help. And the wound wouldn't heal. And again, because he was immortal, it couldn't kill him either. It would simply go on and on and on.

And this is a really important place to just pause and feel that this being caught between the fact that there is no way out, obvious, he cannot die, and equally he cannot heal. There is nothing he can do to fix this. And then at some point, something shifted. Somewhere in the world, Prometheus was chained to a rock, his liver eaten each day by an eagle. And each night he was restored again, so the torture could begin again the next morning. He was being punished eternally by Zeus for having stolen fire from the gods to give to humanity. And so Chiron, who's then lying back in his rose quartz cave howling.

Realised that there was something in this for him. So he was at this point in some form of I guess acceptance, surrender. I don't want to kind of place too much of my own projection onto this, but there was something in him that was able to stop this focus on himself and his own agony and look across at what was going on for Prometheus.

And was seeing something reflected back at him, two immortal beings, both marked by their origins, both in endless pain. Both, interestingly, in service of something larger than themselves. So he went to Zeus and he said, How about I give myself in exchange for Prometheus? And what then happened was Zeus. Said, okay, so you give up your immortality, which is again this inheritance that came to him through Kronos, and we'll I will release Prometheus. And so it's interesting, this isn't it. The father whose flight had originally set all of this in motion that caused the wound, created this inheritance, was also here again in this moment where it's all released. And so Interestingly, again, look at the way this has happened. At this point, he actually does die of the wound, it never heals. Death arrives as the mercy that the wound itself could never provide. And that could only happen when he could die. And then Zeus, moved by what Chiron had done, placed him amongst the stars where he became the constellation, Centaurus. And

Became luminous and eternal in a way that requires nothing from him. There's no identity needed as the wounded healer. He's just there. And so the wound never healed. And what became of the healer is what remains in the sky. So that's the story, or a version of the story of Chiron And what I've noticed is that again, many of the time much of the time when we're talking about Chiron and this archetype of the wounded healer, we're taking kind of snippets of the story and not working with a kind of full stories arc. And they may be taking kind of like a bit from Jung's clinical observation and other people that work with this archetype.

But not really looking at kind of what else could this story give to us, which again is what I feel we're here to do today. And so what often gets left out is this ⁓ this kind of hopeless conflict, the fact that the wounded healer doesn't become the wounded healer because of the wound of that arrow, and then everything that follows. So there's something just fascinating to me in that. And so again, it's not that the wound doesn't become medicine.

It does. And yet there's this whole other chapter to the story that is asking something different of us, something quite inconvenient, I think.

So again, before we kind of move into the other arcs, I just want to gesture towards some of the people who are kind of, I guess, most known to be working with Chiron or working with a wounded healer. Because again, all of these things are true and yet partial. So Jung, who if

If you know anything about me, you'll know I love Jung and love know ⁓ love Jung's work. So none of this is me kind of dissing on him at all. but his his focus very much on this idea of the the kind of wounded healer being the only one that is effective. So he said, for example, the doctor is effective only when he himself is affected, only the wounded physician heals. And then,

Karl Kereni, who was a Hungarian scholar of classical mythology and also a close colleague of Jung's, described the wounded healer as the capacity to be at home in the darkness of suffering and to find their germs of light and recovery with which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepius, the sun-like healer. And so This is already giving this suggestion of something around that, you know, like being in the home in the darkness, perhaps being in the cave. And then Marie von Franz, who we're going to look at her words again a little bit later, she was a Swiss Jungian analyst. She said the wounded healer is the archetype of the self, capital S self, like the Jungian version of the self, and is at the bottom of all genuine healing procedures.

So I'm just going to say that again the wounded healer is the archetype of the self and is at the bottom of all genuine healing procedures. So it's not a kind of just a kind of like nice to have or here for just some people. It is the deepest pattern of wholeness, is pointing towards individuation, towards that full arc. And then James Hillman, the American depth psychologist, he did a lot of work around the wounded healer, and I think in some ways, was taking it kind of more in the direction of where we're going to go in this episode. And one of my favorite quotes that I have so often quoted, particularly when I've been talking about the wounded healer, but also in other ways, he said, the wound and the eye are one and the same. The wound and the eye are one and the same. And this can, of course, mean that we look out the world through the wound. And that's true. And I think there is a different way we can see that that happens at a different stage, which we will come to. And so it seems to me that we have been collectively kept being called back to this story, to this archetype, and looking at parts of it as we've been ready and In ways that are relevant to us. Again, ooh, I'm spinning my oolong tea all over my lap. that are relevant to us collectively and personally and Maybe there is something collectively that's kind of emerging that is asking us to kind of come back and take another look. I wonder. So just just a brief segue now into Chiron, the planetoid, we might say. So as you heard at the end of the story, Zeus placed Chiron among the stars as the constellation Centaurus. And there is also another way to look at Chiron astrologically.

So on the 1st of November 1977, American astronomer Charles discovered what then became known as Chiron. And so initially it was classed as an asteroid, and then later was found to exhibit behavior that's more typical of a comet. And so now it carries both designations simultaneously. So Minor Planet 2060 and Comet 95p stroke Chiron. And just a little bit on both. So an asteroid is a solid, inert, moving through space. A comet, however, contains volatile material and releases it as it approaches heat and light. So Chiron is actually both. just like the centaur, there is this dichotomy, there is both.

There is a union of opposites that is in Chiron the planetoid and Chiron the figure. And Chiron's orbit is a quite let's say eccentric orbit. So Chiron's orbit takes around, it's just over 50 years, and orbits between Saturn and Uranus in this strange path.

So, not belonging fully to either planet's domain. So it goes from this kind of like personal to transpersonal and in a quite unusual shape. So everything about Chiron, as you can hear, is not typical. There is always this kind of strangeness. And we've got Saturn again, these are kind of two bodies that Chiron is orbiting, a kind of around between with in Saturn in astrology is structure, form, limitation, time, you could say the building of of self, that consolidation of things and people. And then Uranus is that kind of like rupture into something new, sudden awakening, shattering of structures that have outlived their purpose. And Chiron is moving between both of them. And so coming back again to the orbit, this is happening over kind of 50 to 51 years, which means that, and we're gonna look a little bit more about this at the moment, when we're looking at this from a birth chart perspective, we are going to meet Chiron again when it returns around the age 50 to 51.

Because of how this orbit happens. So we're going to touch back on that in a moment. But just as we're talking about Chiron, it's important to recognise one final thing, which I thought was quite an interesting factoid. Back in 1989, astronomers discovered that Chiron, as it approaches the sun, releases a luminous cloud of gases around itself. And so as it moves towards heat and light, it lets go. What it releases becomes visible and luminous.

And I was thinking it's not a bad description of what the wound followed all the way through its arc does. This kind of opening to the light, this becoming luminous. So looking at this from a natal chart perspective, which is again what we're doing right now in the World Sovereign Soul Pilgrimage, we're working deeply with Chiron.

From this idea of what it's what it's showing us in terms of its position on our natal charts and then what's being asked of us to journey with that in this pilgrimage. And we can do this by looking at, and I'll say now actually, if you don't already have your natal chart, if you go to I find astro.com is a really good site to use, but of course, use your own, or if you already have a natal chart, use that. if you use astro.com, if you go to I think it's free extended chart, and then you'll get a mandala and a table below it. So everything I'm talking about can be found in that. And so we can have a look at where Chiron appears in terms of the sign and the house, and then we can have a look also any particular aspects it has to other parts of our chart.

And so recognise because Chiron moves slowly, and again, this kind of orbit isn't particularly like nice and neat, as in it spends a certain amount of time in certain signs. there is a very much generational collective aspect to Chiron and the wounds that it brings. So we can see that people of a similar age are going to share similar wounds, of course, again, the house and particular aspects are going to make that personal, but we can see these similarities.

And so the sign is like the we can see it's like the costume or the role that wound takes on. And then we have the house, which is a bit like the stage that this takes place. Like where in life does this wound appear? And then again, we've got these aspects to different planets. And so I notice the the people often that we work with most closely often have really spicy aspects, particularly with the sun, for example, just speaking personally, I have Chiron in opposition to my stellium, which includes my sun So I've got a five planet stellium in the seventh, and I've got Chiron in the first, and they are opposite each other. And so there's a lot of energy happening between Chiron and a lot that else is going on in my chart. And I see this over and over again. The people who really have come here to live out the story of, I guess, their own inner Chiron often have these really spicy aspects in their charts. So look out for that and see if that's the case for you. And so again, looking at a chiron in this way, it there's something really powerful and unique to each of us that it can open up. Again. Looking at this as it's playing out in the pilgrimage, it's kind of mind-blowing the specificity of each of our Chiron wounds and what it's asking of us. beyond anything that makes any sense at all. It really is very profound. So we are now going to start to have a look at these different arcs of the story. So I've kind of hopefully to an extent kind of laid the groundwork in terms of kind of what we're working with, the story of Chiron, how this relates to Chiron up in the sky, and how this relates to you could say the journey of each of us as souls through that lens of our own natal chart. And so now we're going to take that and start to work through those different aspects of Chiron's story. And so

Firstly, remember Chiron's conception and birth. So Kronos pursuing and taking in some way Philyra and then fleeing. And then she dissolves rather than remains. And so Chiron arrives into the woo-world already carrying a wound. And also a wound that can't be hidden. It's written literally all over his body. And This is, and particularly when we look at it through the lens of chiron natal chart, this is the one, this wound is one that's written into our body before anything else happens. This is there, kind of almost like before birth. All of this, the how we were born, who we were born to, where we were born, when we were born, all of this is there right at the start.

So this is the condition that precedes and shapes everything else, including further wounds. And so Chiron's body carried that very, very visibly. You can't hide that. you know, it it you can't I'm just trying to imagine trying to hide what being a centaur. It'd be interesting to try to do so. And some of us, like Chiron, carry that original wound quite visibly. It could be in a particular form of disability, a difference in the way that we present ourselves. it could even be not necessarily something as visible as that, but kind of obvious. I mean, I'm thinking of for example, myself and many of the people who come to work with us are neurodivergent in some way. I've also am partially deaf. And so there can be these kind of very clear physical marks or kind of ways that we've been wired that are very evident. And then some it isn't as evident.

So some of us have that original wound, that kind of you could say almost like soul-chosen wound, very obvious or very visible. And others carry it more inwardly and quietly. But either way, it's just as present. And again, I'm not at all saying you have to see it this way, but certainly the way that I orientate towards it is that the soul did choose this, not as punishment, not because we're bad and need to, you know, have to experience something awful, but as a way of learning. In my last all the everything, talking about near-death experiences and what they show us, one of the ways that near-death one of the ways that the I guess things that we're shown in near-death experience tells us is the purpose of life is to love others and to learn. And so This is what I see is happening here. The soul chose our particular chironic wound as a way of learning and loving others. And again, looking at it through this lens of our chiron placement is showing that that was in place before any event occurred, before anything occurred, would already that had already been set in motion. That particular chiron wound had already begun, before anything has happened to us.

So can looking at that through the lens of your own life, can you feel the difference between the wounds that happened to you later life and the wound that you arrived carrying? And often I notice the later ones are echoes of the earliest ones. And then What have you learned to do with yourself as a result of that earliest condition, the earliest wounding? How much of your life has been organized, created around that original wound?

And then moving into the next chapter. If you recall, Apollo and Artemis found Chiron, raised him, and gave him everything his parents could not. And he then moved into this era of his life where he was this kind of superstar, teacher, healer, everyone's coming to him, all the heroes love him. his wound, that original wound, truly became medicine. And interestingly, I don't think I mentioned this in the story that I told at the beginning. But the other centaurs at the time were known to be quite aggressive and crude and not at all known to be healers and teachers. Let's put it that way. And so Chiron was very different in that way too. He wasn't just different because he was a centaur. Even amongst centaurs he was different.

And so again, he's now become this healer, but that wound, that original child that was abandoned is still there. And so the wound absolutely creates real pain and limitation. It shapes who we are, what is possible, what feels dangerous. And the soul is showing us how to build around it. What do we create to compensate for that?

What gifts can emerge from that wound's particular pressure. And just to recognise it's funny, actually, last week I was talking to the wonderful Caroline Carey about a neurodivergence and the soul's path. And at some point in the conversation, we were talking about this notion of masking, like autistic masking. And looking at it from the lens of yes, it can be seen as this, you know like masking isn't exactly something we are like, yay, let's mask. It's a really deep and often painful part of understanding one as neurodivergent and starting to see the masks we've worn and dismantling them in places and you know paying a price often in dismantling the places that we've masked. And but also looking at it another way, isn't it interesting that part of the neurodivergent gift is that ability to create masks, to create these really believable, detailed masks that people see as being real, see as being our true self. And what if they're not random? Yes, they are there to meet the particular circumstances that we find ourselves in, but there is also something of us in the mask, the fact that we created that mask rather than another mask.

And so there's something interesting, I think, when we look at it through this lens of the shape we've taken because of the wound is also deeply linked to our true self. It isn't, you know, the places we might see as like this is wounded behavior, even that has soul in it, even that has medicine in it, even that has truth in it. And so I think it's just worth really recognizing like where we've got to isn't a mistake, it isn't a detour, it's all part of this unfolding. And then I want to now take a moment to touch into Ken Wilbur's work and There's something I think really important that Ken Wilbur illuminates in a way that I don't think I don't think many people have done such a great vast job of it as he's done. So Wilbur, as you probably know, is an American philosopher and writer who has spent decades mapping out that spectrum of human development and looking at psychology, philosophy, contemplative traditions to create what he calls integral theory.

And one of his contributions is what he calls the pre-trans fallacy. And it's worth taking a moment with it because it really changes how we look at what follows in this arc. And it also talks about something that certainly I've noticed is very present in contemporary spirituality and has certainly been a really big part of my own journey to this point. And so

This is I'll first of all kind of name the fallacy, and then we will look at why it applies to this particular topic. So if we think of a young child, so the young child has no fixed sense of self yet, they haven't built this identity, they haven't built a clear boundary between themselves and the world. They exist in this fluid, open, undifferentiated state. And now

Over here, if we imagine we're looking at someone who's done tons and tons and tons of deep, deep work, they've become perhaps a mystic, you know, a contemplative, a sage, someone who's built this kind of firstly a a real coherent sense of self, and then through all of their practice and the what they've experienced as life has been cracked open beyond that into something much larger, more spacious, more permeable, and something that many traditions would describe as something as like awakening or enlightenment or liberation or union. From the outside, those two states have much in common. Both seem to lack this rigid ego, this fixed identity, both seem open and fluid, don't have those hard boundaries that most adults carrying, carry rather. And What Wilbur says is what runs through so much of psychology and spirituality is looking at those two states as if they're the same thing. we could mistake the child's openness for wisdom, and we could call it awakening when actually the self hasn't yet been built in order to kind of awaken beyond. And so this is quite important in looking at this trajectory of Chiron.

So Wilbur talks about something which again I've seen so clearly personally. It's in I've actually been kind of in this fallacy personally, and then I've kind of had the opportunity to kind of come out of it and look at it from the outside too. So Wilbur talks about how much of what passes as contemporary spirituality, and so this could be the wave of like neo non dual teachings.

Become very popular. These are examples of this in action. So those teachings are pointing and touching something that is real. That sense of spaciousness beyond the idea of the personal self, this under differentiated, non-dual whole. and yet, what can happen is they become this sense of like this is the destination to reach right now. And often it's spoken about is like this is available to you right now. but they can then become the reason to skip that long hard work of healing, of shadow integration, of becoming a coherent somebody. And it's I have seen again this happen so much. And so again, Wilbur's work speaks about this in much greater detail, which we're not going to spend huge amounts of time on. But you've probably heard he talks about it about waking up, that kind of spiritual dimension, expanded consciousness, genuine awakening, growing up, that psychological development, the building of a coherent mature self, cleaning up, which is that shadow work, meeting what has been wounded or split off.

And showing up, bringing all of that into genuine engagement with the world. And going back to what I was just saying about Modern spirituality, as he says, a lot of it's focused on waking up and is not looking at the growing up and cleaning up parts. And so even if we've had a genuine opening, which I certainly did when I first was kind of plunged into.

My soul path, I guess you could say, when my father died, I had some profound experiences of opening. and then through different teachings and communities I was involved in, spiritual teachings, I had further openings and they were real, and yet I can see how, had I carried on in that direction, I would have really missed the cleaning up and growing work, a growing, sorry, cleaning up and growing up work that I really had to do, which again links so beautifully back to Chiron, and the wound becoming medicine. My wound would never have had the opportunity to become medicine if I had just carried on on that waking up path, thinking that was all there was.

So, okay, where have I got to? I did tell you this was going to be long and complex, and is why I've taken so many notes to make sure I keep on course. Let me just pour another cup of oolong and see where we've got to. I think we're towards the end of the last couple of chapters now. Let's see. Okay, so one of the Well, I think one of the wisest things I've heard Wilbur talk about, and this may be paraphrasing, I don't know if he says it word for word, but simply put, you have to become somebody before you can become nobody. And so the nobody, again in the case of the mystic that emerges on the other side of real awakening, is a completely different condition from the nobody who never became anybody or somebody.

And so this is again the work that Chiron really invites us into. Chiron became that wounded healer. He became the teacher to heroes. He became somebody. He became himself. And we can't skip that and call it genuine awakening because we haven't yet become somebody to awaken from.

So again, this is for Chiron was those years or decades of mastery, that life of genuine service, and all of that was a necessary precondition for what happened after he got hit by the arrow. So I just want to take a moment to allow you to kind of pause and think about this. Like when for you looking at your own life trajectory, where has your wound genuinely become medicine? Where have you truly become someone? And where is there still work to do? Where is there still healing work to do? Where is there still alchemising to do? Where is there still serving to do from that wounded healer identity?

And looking at the other end of that spectrum, where have you in your spiritual journey touched genuine opening and then perhaps consciously, perhaps not, use that as a reason not to go further into the kind of deeper, harder work? And again, it's so seductive to do that.

When we experience that opening to the divine, to spirit, to love, however we want to name it, it's completely understandable that we were like, this is this is all there is, this is what everyone's been talking about. Why the hell would I kind of go back into the darkness, into grief and pain and healing when this is what everyone wants, this feeling of peace and bliss and connection.

So no hating on that if I think we all go through phases where we're like I don't need to do the work because of these opening awakening experiences that we've had. And then lastly, where has your identity of the wounded healer become something that you have become kind of like so identified with, so salivated into it's stopping you to look at what might lie beyond it.

Okay, so moving into the next chapter. So if you recall, Chiron is hit by this arrow. So it's just complete accident. The brawl that Hercules is caught up in has got nothing to do with Chiron. And so this Hydra poison means that it's so potent, all of its healing knowledge is useless.

And so this is this second wound. And again, I notice, although with myths, these things are kind of often, you know, things only happen once or twice. I notice that in life, in real human lives, these things are often far more cyclical. So we won't necessarily have one original wound, and then, you know, years later, a second wound often we'll journey through these cycles over and over again and have the opportunity to see more, heal more, become more each time. So recognize there is a way that we can look at these things as being kind of binary, and it's like it's only like this. And actually, these are cycles we might journey through more than once. And yet, let's again look back at what the story itself is telling us. So, Chiron, of course, has this second wound, which is the collapse of everything.

That Chiron has built himself and his life around. So he's got this real mastery and service and community and just rich medicine. And then this second wound collapses it all. And this is where again, going back to Wilbur's work, this self, this self of the wounded healer of Chiron is now present.

There is the opportunity now to move beyond it. And so recognise that that has to happen first. That the those are the conditions. So there is a there's a real difference between someone who is on the way to becoming truly the kind of quintessence of their own version of the wounded healer, versus someone who has reached that place where they could spend the rest of their life there.

And yet their soul is calling them beyond that. And it it might come in this kind of big dissolution. you know, something's happened in their life that, you know, could be an illness, it could be bereavement, it could be a relationship breakdown, it could be a crisis of faith. It could be a wound that mirrors the original in some way. It doesn't appear that with Chiron's, it does particularly something maybe I want to sit with a bit longer before I say that quite as confidently as I just have. But I often notice that in the people that I've worked with and looking at my own life too, often our original wound is mirrored by subsequent moot wounds in some way, sometimes almost like so ridiculously accurately, and sometimes in kind of more of a metaphorical sense. So just notice that the way that this point where we're kind of being asked to let go, be broken open, it can come in something that's like a repeat of the original wound in either a very dramatic way

Or in a kind of more subtle inner way, or it might come in a different form altogether, but we will recognise it as a calling beyond where we've been, or the opportunities to recognise it as that. So Again, I'm going to give you a couple of questions to reflect upon. Have you experienced something of that kind, a second wounding that has arrived after years and years, maybe decades, of real healing, mastery, a sense of self, this kind of like I've built a successful life? And this second wounding is is asking you to kind of let go of everything you've built.

And what does that bring up for you? You know, in Chiron's sense, if sorry, in Chiron's story, it feels kind of almost like a betrayal. You know, like for no nothing that he's done wrong, he's now at this place where everything he's built is being brought to the ground. And so just just spend a moment of that. There is something really tender, Austin, to be met in the way that.

We can build these beautiful lives and beautiful relationships and beautiful work. And we can be doing you know, great service to others, and yet something happens that can feel so painful and so much like a betrayal because we're it's like it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how true it was, how real it was, we're being asked to let it go, or sometimes forcibly it's being taken from us.

Okay, so then we have Chiron retreating to his cave and howling and in Ovid's translation, he says, Chiron wept and called to Apollo for your help, but you could not overturn the orders of great Jupiter. And so Apollo, a very powerful god, is useless. The wound is just going on with no hope of healing. And so This cave part is something again that I'm really sitting with at the moment. I was talking to Jonathan, the co-founder of Wild Sovereign Soul earlier, about this notion of the cave and what this is asking of us in our work. And so he is there in absolute agony and hopelessness and feeling beyond help. And this identity of him as the healer.

Has stopped being useful. It doesn't matter how much he wants to call himself a healer, it doesn't help. And so there is a real ⁓ there is a real honesty to this. There is a real, in a shamanic tradition, there's a kind of like it's that dismemberment where you know there is a kind of like pulling apart, a dissolving, nothing that used to work now works. And I was looking at Some research done by Alistair Hardy, So he was a marine biologist of all things who retired from his chair of zoology at Oxford University. and then he founded the Religious Experience Research Unit unit at Manchester College in Oxford And he spent the rest of his life collecting first-hand accounts of spiritual and religious experience from ordinary people. And then he analyzed them and kind of like put them into buckets. So Apparently, his archive now holds over 6,000 accounts gathered across all kinds of cultures and belief systems, and over many, many years. And he began to put them into these 30 distinct buckets of kind of what triggered these genuine spiritual experiences. And so we're looking at things like prayer and meditation, encounters with natural beauty. So interestingly.

Prayer meditation, 13% of people who have had these you know, incredible spiritual experiences came from prayer meditation. 12% came from encounters with natural beauty. But the bottom falling out of life was the most reliable gateway to having this genuine spiritual experience, more so than anything. And so that came in at 18%. So depression, despair, this sense of like absolute hopelessness and pain, 18% of this 6,000 accounts had these spiritual experiences triggered by this cave-like experience. And so the cave is the portal.

And so again, reflecting on your own life, have you been in your own cave, a place where those usual tools, frameworks, ways of making meaning have stopped working?

And if you have that notion of that identity you have, perhaps it is already based around the wounded heater, maybe it's a different one. The one who's done all the work, become a master, if that identity was no longer available to you, what does that bring up?

And lastly, if in some way you are already in the cave, are you trying to leave it before something has been completed there?

And before we leave the cave, I just want to go back to Marie Louise of En France, the Swiss Jungian analyst we spoke about earlier.

There's a quote that she says that's one of those quotes that's like, because it hits so deep. And it's probably one of my most shared quotes with students and clients. And this I think is what Chiron is facing in the cave. So she says that Jung said, Jung said to be that to be in a situation where there is no way out or to be in a conflict where there is no solution is the classical beginning of the process of individuation.

It is meant to be a situation without solution. The unconscious wants the hopeless conflict in order to put ego consciousness up against the wall so that the man has to realise that whatever he does is wrong, whichever way he decides will be wrong. This is meant to knock out the superiority of the ego, which always acts from the illusion that it has the responsibility of a decision. If he is ethical enough to suffer to the core of his personality, then generally, because of the insolubility of the conscious situation, the self manifests. In religious language, you could say the situation without issue is meant to force the man to rely on an act of God. And so again, this hopeless conflict: I can't die because I'm a mortal, I can't heal because it's beyond healing, isn't a problem to be solved. It is this place that is calling Chiron beyond this, beyond the place he's in, beyond this identity he has. And the ego's illusion of control is not something that could be like gently discouraged, you know, like politely stand down, please. It really needs to be kind of put up against the wall in von Franz's language. It needs to be kind of exhausted of options.

And so this then is going back to Wilbur, where he's saying, you know, that fully formed, accomplished self has tried everything, it knows everything, it knows its limits, it's knows who it is. And now there is the opportunity from that having built a somebody to become nobody.

And going back to that my favourite James Hillman quote, the wound and the eye are one and the same, that very thing that could not be fixed is now opening to a new kind of seeing.

So where in your life has your ego run out of road? Where every time you look at kind of I could do this, I could do that, it feels wrong or even is just useless. If we're finding ourselves in that position, we're perhaps entering that space that von Franz illustrated.

Okay, we are in the final stages of the story. This is the I keep saying this, but it's like there's more, there's more. So I think we're in the penultimate stage. So Chiron now is at this point where he's given up. He knows he can't heal it. And then he thinks of Prometheus. So Prometheus is suffering. And it's not a sympathy he feels exactly. I think maybe like a kinship of sense of, well, I've given up anyway. I'm going to surrender to this. And I may as well, in that surrender, do something for someone else. And then so he went to Zeus with the only thing he had left. And There's something really interesting in the way this moves from the personal to the collective. So both Prometheus and Chiron are both, in one way or another, serving others. Prometheus is serving humanity as a whole, whereas Chiron's serving these kind of individual heroes. And this interesting move where Chiron, in saying he'll switch himself for Prometheus, again, remember, Prometheus has stolen fire and given it to humanity.

So again, a service for the whole, and then he's suffering eternally for this act of radical generosity. And so Chiron sees this and says, I am going to step in and take your place, really, in service of the whole. And it's from a place of recognizing he's not going to get anything from it. He's not doing this as in, like, I'm going to, you know, manifest all this abundance by serving to the whole. He's basically saying.

Yeah, it's cool. I'm gonna put my hand up to have my liver pecked out every night and then reformed every morning so you can go free. Because hey, I'm in agony anyway. It's a very different proposition to the one that kind of makes sense to the ego, where it's like, Well, I'm gonna give this and I'm gonna get this fabulous thing in exchange. I was just thinking of Alan Watts. If you haven't watched his talk about the golden goodie, I think it is, it's years and years since I've watched this.

But we are typically as humans wired to be looking for the golden goodie in life. And as Anna Walt says in that talk, and as Chiron's story shows, there is a point where we recognise, like, there isn't that kind of golden goodie out there that I'm working towards that lies in the future. There is something asking me to kind of meet something right here, and it goes beyond this notion of the golden goodie.

I've probably horrendously paraphrased and butchered Alan Watts' work. So apologies, Alan Watts. I feel a sense of kinship with Alan Watts because he's very similar to my father in many ways. They look quite similar and sound quite similar. And so I always have this kind of sense of like I can take some liberties with Alan Watts because he'll kind of see me a bit like I'm his daughter. Don't think it works quite that way round, but hey, that's why I do.

So Chiron's in this place where he's like, okay, I'm not gonna do this as a way of getting the golden goodie.

I'm going to give away my inheritance, my valuable, precious inheritance from Kronos, the father who caused the original wound. I'm going to give up my immortality in order to release myself from this cave and then also release Prometheus. And so this is going back to Wilbur's work, that transpersonal opening. The somebody has the opportunity to become nobody, to break open. And going back to what von Franz said, the self-manifests. The ego has run out of options, run out of roads. And what she calls an act of God becomes possible. And so that is Chiron's own surrender. and so it's not martyrdom exactly. This is just this natural, kind of almost like organic movement of someone who has seen the

This is the structure. This is the lie of the land. And I no longer need to just kind of hold on to this kind of like if only, if only if what, you know, what could be different? I'm just going to give myself over to life. And so looking at your own life, what inherented structure or kind of maybe like hard one structure are you still carrying that makes your wound.

Increasingly unbearable to hold. So again, going to Chiron, it was because he was clinging so hard to this idea of like, well, I'm immortal, so there is no options. What could that be for you? What have you inherited or built or value that makes it impossible to actually bear the wound and hold on to that structure?

And what would it mean to release not just the wound, but that whole identity that you've organized around it and to move into something that is in service of something that just isn't even available when we're still looking from this notion of will I get the golden goodie?

And finally, this is the final chapter, of course. Chiron died of the wound, it never healed, and then Zeus placed him among the stars. The healer dissolved, that wounded healer identity dissolved, and then what remained was placed in the sky. And so the death here wasn't a literal death, it is the death of an identity created around the wound. So there was an awakening, an opening that happened on the other side. So it wasn't a death where nothing is after that, it is a birth into something else. And the stars, too, are not like a reward. It's you could see in a way they were there all along. Again, looking at this from the lens of our natal charts, the stars are there before the body, before the cave, before the arrow.

And now are visible because everything that has obscured them has gone.

And then bringing this back into our human lives, looking at that point where we come to the Chiron return around age 50 to 51, this could be a place where we really get the opportunity, and as we move towards it or move away from this age, to be back understanding this original wound another way, to have the opportunity to move into a different chapter of our wounded healer story. The Nobody becoming somebody, and then the somebody becoming nobody again. That Saturn self opening into that kind of what Uranus is calling us to. And so if you're kind of coming to that sort of 50 type age or moving from it, notice this is a really potent time to meet your inner wounded healer and the story that that's told in a different way.

So what do you imagine would remain of you if the wound, the medicine, and everything you've built around it was released?

If your wound is not here to be cured, but to be completed, what would completion look like?

And so the stars could be seen as Chiron's true form. And there's something, again, so magical, the fact that there was the original constellation and then this kind of second coming of Chiron in the planetoid. So that's there before the centaur body and the cave and the arrow. And what's that for you? What's the thing that's always been there, even before the wound and the story about it?

And so I'm going to I'm going to l leave you with an invitation for you to take this deeper and then we will be closing.

So looking back over this arc of the story, and I would suggest go away and sit with this again afterwards, not necessarily do this now, but really bring that original wound to mind. And again, you could do this through the lens of your chiron placement. And where does that live in the body? What what form does it take? What's its texture? What's its weight? Really feel that.

And then look at the structure that you've built built around it, those gifts, the way of servicing, serving others, the identity, and really allow yourself to feel the gratitude for that.

And then bring to mind the cave, which again you may or may not have journeyed into. And again, these things often we spiral round and round. It's rarely just like one time, you know, then another. And those times where everything we know no longer makes sense or no longer works. And what's needed in that cave that perhaps you are kind of rushing past. The cave's a very uncomfortable place to be. So it's understandable that we want to just do everything we can to escape. And then That Prometheus question, what do you notice about that kind of idea of something that is serving the whole, but beyond this kind of acclaim and adoration and identity and I'm so good, and I get the golden goodie? What might that be for you? What's calling you beyond the personal in service of the whole?

So we have journeyed right all the way through Chiron's story and again through our own stories and looked at this idea of yes, the wound does become medicine. And what if there's more? What if there's more to this story? And so I would love to know where in this arc are you right now? And what does that ask of you?

And if you if you're here with me live and thank you for being with me for this again very long episode, please do share in the chat or reach out whether you want to email us or comment in our Facebook group. I'd love to know what you've seen of yourself and your own story in this. Where are you in this arc and what are you being called to next? And as you heard me say earlier, if you're struggling with the challenges of walking your soul path and your heart longs for guidance, kinship, and support.

Come join us in Unio the community for wild sovereign souls. UNIO is the living home for the wild sovereign soul path where together we reclaim our wildness, actualise our sovereignty, and awaken our souls. You can discover more and walk with us by hopping over to be mythical.com slash unio or click the link in the description. And if you'd like to hop on over to the hop over to the show notes for the links, I think I've got this URL right, be at wildsovereinsoul.com slash podcast slash five five three. And if you don't want to miss out on next week's episode, head on over to your podcasting app or platform of choice, including YouTube, and hit that subscribe or follow button. That way you'll get each episode delivered straight to your device as soon as it comes out automagically.

Thank you so much for listening. You've been wonderful. I'll catch you again next week. And until then, I'm sending you all my love and blessings as you walk your wild sovereign soul

 
 
Lian Brook-Tyler
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