The unusual way neurodivergent people hold paradox and polarity - Caroline Carey
Episode 568, released 14th October 2026.
Caroline Carey, soul cartographer, writer, and author of The Neurodivergent Soul, joins Lian to explore why neurodivergent people so often find themselves living between two worlds at once, what the ancient symbol of the mandorla reveals about that capacity, and why it may be less a burden to manage than a particular kind of gift.
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Caroline Carey is a Soul Cartographer, workshop facilitator and writer who has spent over 30 years guiding people on journeys of self-discovery and personal transformation. Working mainly with women in the second half of life, she creates safe and creative spaces where story, movement, emotional intelligence, spirituality, and connection to nature come together.
Drawing on intuitive, mindfulness, creativity and shamanic traditions, as well as her own original maps and frameworks, Caroline supports people in reconnecting with their inner wisdom, understanding their life patterns, and uncovering a deeper sense of purpose. Her work explores where soul meets story, helping others navigate life's transitions with greater authenticity, self-compassion, and meaning. Caroline is an advocate for neurodivergent people, a mother and a grandmother; she lives in Hastings, East Sussex. Her latest book is called The Neurodivergent Soul published 2026.
In this episode, Lian and Caroline explore the mandorla, the ancient almond-shaped symbol formed where two opposing circles meet, as a map for something many neurodivergent people have always lived without a name for: the ability to see both sides, inhabit two worlds, and hold what others experience as contradiction without needing to collapse it into one.
The conversation moves into what neurodivergent perception actually is, the pattern recognition, the depth of feeling, the acute sensitivity that can make ordinary life so hard and spiritual life so natural, and why so many neurodivergent people end up on shamanic paths without quite knowing how they got there. They also look at the masculine and feminine as a particular set of opposites that many neurodivergent people find themselves holding, and what it might mean that the tension between those two keeps showing up.
Listen if you're neurodivergent and have always seemed to live in more than one world at once, or felt most at home in the space between things rather than on either side.
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 neurodivergent perception, particularly the depth of feeling and pattern recognition, may draw people toward shamanic and spiritual paths
How the mandorla appears not just as a symbol but as a lived pattern, and how to begin recognising where it has already been present in your own story
What happens when the experience of holding two worlds at once starts being something the soul is calling us toward
Resources and stuff that we spoke about:
Join UNIO, The Fellowship for Wild Sovereign Souls: This is for the old souls in this new world… Discover your kin & unite with your soul’s calling to truly live your myth.
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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@wildsovereignsoul.com.
00:00 Lian Brook-Tyler
Could ancient symbol be the most accurate map neurodivergent people have for the way that we experience life? This week I'm joined once again by the wonderful Caroline Carey. Caroline is a soul cartographer, writer and the author of The Neurodivergent Soul. We explore why neurodivergent people so often find themselves living between two worlds at once, what the ancient symbol of the Mandorla reveals about that capacity, and why it might be less of a burden to manage, although it very much can feel that way sometimes, than a particular kind of gift. Caroline has spent over 30 years guiding people, mostly women, in the second half of life through journeys of self-discovery, using story, movement, shamanic tradition and her own original maps and frameworks, exploring where soul meets story and helping others to understand the clues that their life has been leaving behind.
01:03 Lian Brook-Tyler
So we explore the Mandorla, the ancient almond-shaped symbol formed where two opposing circles meet as a map for something many neurodivergent people have always lived without a name for: that ability to see both sides, inhabit two worlds at once and hold what others experience as contradiction and without needing to collapse it into one thing. So listen, if you're neurodivergent or suspect you might be and have always seemed to live in more than one world at once, or felt most at home in the space between things rather than one side or another. If you're new here, this is a show about the deeper, truer life, the one your soul is calling you towards. If you've been here before, you already know that. And that calling is exactly why UNIO exists.
01:56 Lian Brook-Tyler
UNIO is the Fellowship of Wild Sovereign Souls, where Jonathan and I meet with members twice each month in our guidance circle to meet whatever is alive in your life, your relationships, your health, your business, your soul path, the places you feel called or challenged or both. And we bring everything we are and know to meet you exactly where you are and to help you move forward. You can find out more and join us at wildsovereignsoul.com/unio. And now, back to this week's episode. Let's dive in. Hello, Caroline. Welcome back to the show.
02:37 Caroline Carey
Thank you, Lian. Thank you for having me back. It's very exciting.
02:40 Lian Brook-Tyler
It is my pleasure entirely. And we have got just a topic that is... only as I've been talking to you, both in the last conversation and then in the conversation we're just having, I've realised how this symbol, this archetype, the Mandorla, has actually been something very present for me throughout my life. And then, as we are going to explore today, there is that question of is it specifically relevant to those of us who are neurodivergent? So it feels like such a... such a juicy topic, one that's begging for us to explore and immerse ourselves in it. So I am so excited about... about that. I feel like this is one of those conversations sometimes we like... this is something for me in this, there's something I'm going to see, uncover, that is directly relevant to me right now. I have a sense that's...
03:34 Lian Brook-Tyler
This is going to be one of those conversations for me. Let's begin with perhaps a Mandorla 101, if you will. So before we are going to specifically be exploring the Mandorla through the lens of neurodivergent... the neurodivergent soul. Before we do that, I know we touched on the Mandorla in our last conversation, but for those that are just diving straight into this one, would you mind giving a little bit of a definition as to what the Mandorla is and why it's relevant at this kind of soul work level? This soul work lens on the Mandorla, what is that? Why is that something that you've seen is really rich and potent?
04:14 Caroline Carey
Thank you, Lian. Thank you for the question. Because it's really important to me. This symbol, which is ancient, ancient symbol, goes way back into all the old records of spirituality and human design. If we think about where it originated, we might be looking at the flower of life, for example, we might be looking at the symbol of the Mandorla. When we look at religious icons or saintly beings, when we see this almond shape of a glow around their figures, we would be looking at the presence of that. We would be looking at the world of polarity as we know it. And we live with polarity all the time in paradox. So this is not a new thing.
05:04 Caroline Carey
This is something that has been studied and explored and taken very seriously in all sorts of different ways, creatively and as a philosophical way of looking at life. And it's used in many different models, mediums. So I knew nothing about it until I went to do a workshop. And I'm not sure if I mentioned this in my... the last...
05:29 Lian Brook-Tyler
I don't think you did... conversation.
05:31 Caroline Carey
No. So the way I found it was when I was at a workshop and it was quite some years ago now, but I was in a workshop where I wanted to explore my poetry, my connection to nature, and to meet a particular teacher called Bill Plotkin, who I...
05:51 Lian Brook-Tyler
Oh, yes, no, of course. Incredible work. Yeah.
05:55 Caroline Carey
It was rather strange. I was coming back from one of my own workshops after teaching, sitting on a train, and the person sitting next to me happened to have a book. And I... for some reason, I was looking a bit over his shoulder and seeing all these words about nature and the soul. And I... I was like... I couldn't take my eyes off it, and I'm not a great reader, and I was being a bit rude and I said, I'm really sorry, but that looks like a fascinating book. Do you mind if I know what it is? And he showed me the book, and it was by Bill Plotkin, and it's all about the earth and soul. And I thought, I've got to get that book. I need to read it. This is clearly a sign. This is a sign.
06:31 Caroline Carey
So I got back home, so straight online, bought the book, ordered it, came within a few days, and I... and it's one of those books that I just, you know, devoured. I just needed to read all of it and understand it.
06:43 Lian Brook-Tyler
Was it Soulcraft?
06:45 Caroline Carey
It wasn't Soulcraft. It was the orange one.
06:48 Lian Brook-Tyler
Oh. Nature and the Human Soul.
06:50 Caroline Carey
Nature and the Human Soul. Thank you. Yes, it was... it was the book by Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul. I read it cover to cover, I explored it, and then I looked on the back and there was his website. I... and I looked at the website, saw, amazingly, that he just happened to be visiting Wales, North Wales, within a couple of months, and that there was a workshop I could go and attend. And I... oh, wow. Okay. This is even more of a sign. So I booked onto it. I recently moved to England from Ireland. My two daughters had come with me, and I was living with my new partner in this house. And he was in total agreement to the girls.
07:33 Caroline Carey
They're teenagers at this point, total agreement that he'd be there for them and I could go off and do this workshop. And it's up in North Wales. It's a beautiful environment, Cae Mabon, which is the most exceptional, beautiful landscape and retreat centre. So I was in heaven. I was absolutely... I had arrived there. I was in total heaven and just thought, wow, this is so right for me. Met Bill and his wife and the rest of the group, and we got into doing the work, which was a lot of spending time in nature. And it was... there was some sculpting to do, there was writing to do, poetry. So there's me with my journal and my drum and just immersing myself into the work. So... so before we started, I knew to ring home, check in with my daughters, make sure everybody was okay.
08:28 Caroline Carey
And, yeah, just have that friendly chat and let them know I'd arrived. All right. And I did that. And I'm answered by my youngest daughter, who, bless her, boyfriend had chucked her with a text message in that moment, that it was heartbreaking for her, first boyfriend, 15 years old. Ouch. Very painful. I was like, okay, do you need me to come home? Absolutely not. She did not want me to go home, and I respected that and also felt the extreme pull of having to leave and be away from her and not be there to make her cups of tea. But she wouldn't... I knew she wouldn't have wanted me to do anything. She's quite independent, young lady, still is, very strong in herself. So I knew she had to go through this process, and that was important to her.
09:20 Caroline Carey
And I would be there at the end of the phone if need be. So we immersed ourselves into this work, but I was still obviously feeling the ache of my daughter and feeling that motherly pull that we often have. You know, many will relate to it, the mother's guilt that many of us can carry. Can I be a good enough mother? And we started with our course material. Bill handed us a lump of clay each. And we had to sit there and just see what appeared. Not try to make something. Not try to work with something specific. Just see what our hands created in that moment. And I was very used to that kind of work. See what wants to be written through me. See what wants to be painted through me, what wants to be danced through me.
10:06 Caroline Carey
So having a lump of clay to do this with was... yeah, great. So my hands were there, moulding away at this thing, which kept appearing like a circle, but it wasn't merely a circle. I didn't know what I was creating. But in the end, I found this little boat in my hands. It was like a little clay boat that I thought was very sweet. And when Bill said, now take that out into nature and sit with it and be with it and ask yourself what it needs from you, I went off and I thought, I'm going to sit by the river. This beautiful river there. Beautiful rapids and rocks and just glorious sounds. And so I sat on this rock by the river, and I said, okay, what is this little boat?
10:48 Caroline Carey
And it was like a little rowing boat, a point at each end and just... or a kayak or something. I'm not sure, but. And I sat there with it, and I thought, I'm going on a journey here, and I have to really receive this journey just as it needs to unfold within me. And I sat on the river and I thought, I'm going to send my little boat out on a journey down the river and see where it wants me to go. Yeah. So I'm sitting there on the rock, I take my little boat and I put it down into the water. And of course, being a lump of clay, it dropped firm to the bottom. And I just thought, yeah, I'm going deep here. I am really going deep into something. And that was the metaphor for me in that moment. That night.
11:35 Caroline Carey
I'm sleeping in this little cabin right next to the river so I can hear the water all night long. And I went into a very deep dream. And in that dream, I went off into nature and I found a little house, this little house. And I went through the door of it and I looked inside. There was a few things that happened. I met with a particular old man who was very sad because his lady had drowned in the lake and he never heard her sing anymore. That was part of the dream. And then as I went in, there was a table and chairs, and at the side of... on the wall of this little cottage, there were quite strangely, two fireplaces. I'd never seen a cottage with a wall with two fireplaces in it.
12:22 Caroline Carey
And that seemed very strange, but I saw it and I thought, wow, this is an important part of my journey. I went in my dream, I walked back to my cabin. And it's as if... it's as if I was still in that dream somewhere, still asleep, but just listening to the river. Just listening to the river. And I woke that morning and we had our first introduction to the work we're doing at that point. And then Bill said, I want you to go out into nature and find the place that allures you the most. Not the place you want to be, the place that allures you, that calls to you. And I went off wandering thinking, yeah, I really want to take my drum and my journal, I want to sit by the river. Walked along the side of the river.
13:13 Caroline Carey
And I thought, this is where I need to be. Plonked myself down and something was itching inside me saying, no, this is not the right place. This is not where you need to be. Where you need to be is over there somewhere. And it was. I was feeling all the... and noticing all the brambles and the undergrowth and it was going to be hard to get through. I knew I had to go somewhere. And in the... in that area, I could see there were lots of little broken down cottages. It used to be a mining village there. And there were all these little cottages that grey stone like you see in Wales. But they were no longer of any use. You know, the roofs had fallen in, chimneys had gone, no doors or windows. It's quite desolate there. But on the weeds and the...
13:58 Caroline Carey
Everything had taken over, the trees and hedgerows. But I knew I had to go there. And so I picked up my drum and I left the river and I went running. Literally, I thought, somewhere I have to go to this place. And I arrived at this little broken down cottage, tiny little building, but just the walls were remaining. And I went through the opening that would have been a door. And I went in. There was a tree growing up in the middle of it. And there was another section to this little cottage. And I went through the doorway, the opening to that section. And what did I see in there? Two fireplaces.
14:33 Lian Brook-Tyler
Oh my goodness.
14:35 Caroline Carey
Empty. Nothing. You know, nothing had been burnt there for an eternity and just rubble everywhere. Broken down bits of house stone, rock, and lots of weeds growing around them, which I would call wildflowers because I didn't really believe in weeds that much, but... sorry. And yeah, and I... and I just stood there with my back against one of the walls looking at these two fireplaces. Absolutely aghast. Absolutely. I was like, oh, God, this is scary. This is a bit scary. Last night. What is going on here? What is going on? And I went back after we'd had. I'd spent a few hours there and I sat on the windowsill and I looked and I wrote and I, yeah, really trying to get my breath. And then I had to go back. It was time to go back and to receive more teachings.
15:31 Caroline Carey
And then I... and as we did, I talked about my experience that... well, I... I had this dream last night and then I find myself at this little cottage with two fireplaces. And that. How bizarre is that? And I also talked about my daughter who had this experience of... of this heartbreak and how I was feeling around that and... and also the part of me that so knew I needed to be where I was and so needed to be doing this work. And yet the pull in me was immense. I could feel it raging inside me. Should I be with my daughter? Should I be here doing my soul work? Both felt so important and so I was torn.
16:09 Caroline Carey
But I had this experience and it was at that point, the teaching then for me, it felt like was suddenly the exploration around the Mandorla. And the Mandorla is these two circles that overlap that create an almond shape. At its centre, at its core, if the audio... nobody can see my hands making that shape, but it's just like an almond. And Mandorla means almond in Italian, as we, many of us, would know that. So when I'm saying Mandorla, I'm saying almond in Italian. But it's the shape that these two circles create when they overlap. It's also known as the vesica piscis, which actually means fish's bladder and doesn't sound very romantic at all. But... but that is the shape of a fish's bladder, apparently. And so... and it's also called the aureola, so it has a few different names. We were...
17:06 Caroline Carey
We were to explore this with a bit more information and knowledge and where it had come from and what it was about. And I really felt these teachings were for me. In that moment, I knew that my teacher had heard my experience, what I was going through and what I had seen with these two fireplaces. And I really got a sense that this is what I'm coming home to. This is a really important part of this deep journey that little piece of clay boat was showing to me. And it took me a while then to start to process this, to write about it, to experience it. And throughout those five days of being on that workshop, I was going back to the cottage, sitting there, being there, praying there, wanting to understand it. And then we had to create a little ceremony for ourselves.
17:58 Caroline Carey
And I went back to the cottage, and I... I put a little night light, little candle, in each of the fireplace, and I stood with my back against that wall so I could just about see both of those little lights, you know, really hoping they wouldn't get blown out because they were both so important. And here in one fireplace was the journey of motherhood. And here in the other fireplace was the journey of my soul work and what I'm here to bring to the world. And somewhere I realised that those two need to meet fully together, and I need to feel that meeting place within me. And I began to drum and I began to sing, and I sang a song to the mother and the dancer and the soul worker that I knew I was.
18:40 Caroline Carey
And when went back together with our circle, our group, there was an opportunity to dance and to drum and to... I felt this incredible rage inside me of this she-lion. And I could see the she-lion inside me just wanting to break free and wanting to feel all the tension that I had ever felt around this terrifying and challenging experience of being a mother and doing the work I needed to do in the world, being a good parent, but being a good... you know, holding the work that was necessary for me to do my soul purpose. Now, I was a single mum for many years.
19:19 Caroline Carey
And, you know, I had a huge story that I think I've shared probably in the previous episode about, you know, being a 16-year-old mother, you know, and having to leave home and the trials and tribulations of all of that. But here I was feeling every moment of every experience I'd had as motherhood to six children and just the tension that can create within us. And so there I was, dancing with it and expressing it and feeling it and roaring with it and knowing it so deeply in myself. And this is what that workshop had given me. And of course, later on I realised that little boat shape, that little shape of the boat shape, oh my goodness.
20:02 Lian Brook-Tyler
Of course.
20:05 Caroline Carey
There you go. There was the little aureola, the little Mandorla, the vesica piscis, that went to the bottom of the river and didn't it teach me something in those moments? And I started to sing, I started to create my own songs, river songs, Mandorla songs, women's songs. And it really helped me to find my voice. And yeah, some of those I'm actually singing and creating now. So there was something about, yeah, the release of the tension, the release of my voice, the real deep understanding of where the Mandorla was in my own existence. And from then on I have been all about... went home and I held a workshop just for friends and people that I already knew who would come and explore it with me.
20:46 Caroline Carey
And were there making artwork with it and collages and getting messy with it and finding out, well, how does this fit into our life today in today's society? And what benefits will this have for us if we fully understand it? And that's where the magic of Mandorla was first began. And I've done many workshops with it around the world, in the UK and online. And I talk about it, I write about it. And of course my book, The Neurodivergent Soul, has its image, its picture on part of that, the polarity of two opposites. So that's what it's all about, the two opposites that we can often live with. And many opposites. Of course, it's not just about two, but that was the key element for it for me. That's how I found it in myself.
21:33 Caroline Carey
And ever since that day, I have found it in my conception story, my birth story, in all the rites of passage throughout my life. It exists, and I name some of those, if you're interested, but they're very significant moments in my life story that has helped me to say, yes, I am definitely here to share the world of polarity and the path that weaves its way throughout that.
22:03 Lian Brook-Tyler
What a beautiful story. Thank you so much for sharing it so fully. Just such a rich story.
22:08 Caroline Carey
Just to say my daughter went through her own process with that and recognised her own. She was accountable to her own mistakes within it all and came out so much stronger for it. Proud of her for handling that in such a beautiful way. And she did it herself. And I think that's... that was to be commended.
22:27 Lian Brook-Tyler
And yes. And that so often we find that when we are able to choose the path of soul, everything that's kind of part of it, that is other people's path, gets this opportunity to find something new and true within it too. Even though it doesn't feel like that at the time; when we choose, it feels like we're potentially being selfish and it's gonna have a negative effect.
22:50 Caroline Carey
So.
22:51 Lian Brook-Tyler
So often it doesn't. But I've got my own story to share that I've just remembered. At hearing yours... at the synchronic... you will not believe the synchronicity of this. So I don't even know how I hadn't thought of this before you told your story, but I don't have any... maybe five years ago, it was during my initial shamanic training that I did with Jez Hughes on British land. And one of the weekends we're undergoing initiation into the element of earth. And so everything we're doing, I think it was the same weekend we did a burial initiation where we're immersed in the earth overnight. One of them, one of the kind of ceremonies we did was very similar to what you described, where we're creating something with clay. It was actually clay, I think, from the graves that were dug to spend the night in.
23:43 Lian Brook-Tyler
Anyway, so that was the... and probably very similar to the invitation you were given to not set out to free create some amazing sculpture, but just to see what... what got formed, what was being uncovered through... through this work. And I cannot believe this has not come to my mind before. It was only when you mentioned the clay, I'm like, oh, my goodness, I can't believe this. So what got created for me was initially, it was like a book shape. So it had the shape of a book, open book, two pages. The symbol on the book was what I saw at the time I called a vesica piscis. It was a Mandorla; it had two circles overlapping, and the overlap was the spine of the book with these two circles.
24:30 Caroline Carey
There you go. Yeah.
24:31 Lian Brook-Tyler
And I completely had forgotten I'd done that until you told me your story.
24:40 Caroline Carey
Well, that's it. That's why story is so important that we share our stories. Storytelling is a profound way of helping others and to find their growth and what's important for them.
24:52 Lian Brook-Tyler
It really is. It really is. It's made me... now it feels as though there was something very synchronistic in us recording this conversation. I had a sense there's something in this for me, and I have a sense that memory probably links to why I'm meant to be in this conversation today. So I will go away and contemplate that afterwards. But... wow.
25:14 Caroline Carey
Yeah.
25:14 Lian Brook-Tyler
So magical.
25:15 Caroline Carey
There was so many synchronicities with this sort of thing. When people start to look, like, where's the Mandorla in my life? You can see them everywhere and you can see them reflected back through your life story. Quite often. When I did my very first shamanic training, I can remember being sent on a... on a walk, you know, where you're just focusing. Absolute walk of intention. Absolutely focusing and stopping every moment. And what did you see? So you... you're just walking through nature. What do I see in this moment? And every time I stopped and looked, I would see two of everything. Two chimneys, two gates, two cats, two trees. You know, it was just so clear for me. What I'm seeing is two of everything. There again, it's those two fireplaces. That's what I kept... was...
26:04 Caroline Carey
Was following me throughout my journey, was these two of everything. And so that polarity journey has become very clear for me.
26:13 Lian Brook-Tyler
Yeah. And the same again. Even though I haven't named it. Through that lens of the Mandorla, that union of opposites has become so clearly my path. I see it as like my devotion is to union. And it is the union of opposites, which I guess starts to bring us to this question around why might the Mandorla. There is clearly... and I think it's Robert Johnson did a lot of work around the Mandorla and the work of the soul. And then, of course, Jung spoke so much about the union of opposites and that sort of third thing that's birthed. And so there is absolutely something so powerful for anyone to journey with the Mandorla in the way that you're talking about.
26:57 Lian Brook-Tyler
And I have a sense there is something that is particular to neurodivergent people and that it doesn't feel as though this is... it feels as almost like it's one and the same thing. There is something about the neurodivergent soul path and your divergent experience where we are going to be in that lived experience of the opposites and being called to become the union of opposites that's so present for us whether we choose it or not, whether we, before we're aware of it or not. That feels to me is just part of the neurodivergent experience. And again, that's certainly been the case for me personally. Obviously been the case for you, but in the work that we do, which is so often with neurodivergent people. And that wasn't an intentional thing, it's just what happened.
27:54 Lian Brook-Tyler
I noticed these... the... this theme of the union of opposites seems particularly alive for neurodivergent people. And it's only when it starts to be named, they're like, oh, yes, this is. This has always been true for me. And often we can find that we're in the... you know, I'm kind of over here trying to understand why do I keep being pulled by this? But it feels as though that is something that is so alive for neurodivergent people. And so that's not a specific question, but I'd love to hear your just initial sense as to what have you seen about neurodivergence and the Mandorla since you've become aware of your own neurodivergence.
28:34 Caroline Carey
Yeah, well, it's... obviously it's very new for me because it's only in my 60s that I was diagnosed and that I came to be aware of it. And so exploring it alongside the Mandorla is quite a path that I've found myself immersed in and starting to look for myself at where the parallels are, where they walk together. And I think there's still a lot of work for me to do around that, but certainly... and from my own experience, I can see how possibly my pattern recognition, for one thing, would be a big part of it. I recognise patterns and things hugely. Working with any form of pattern is going to give me information about myself or about this particular world.
29:25 Caroline Carey
And I think that there is so much pattern recognition for many who are in that world, in the neurodivergent world, that we see things somewhat differently. We have a tendency to see things in a way that maybe others wouldn't. Maybe a more typical world would see things in a very linear way. Oh, this is how it is, and are quite comfortable and happy with that and stick with that. But we tend to move around much more with our thinking. So we can be thinking one thing and then thinking another simultaneously, or even many more ideas or experiences being thought of because our mind tends to go. It tends to travel a lot more. So in that world, I would say that for patterns, there is a strong connection to the Mandorla.
30:16 Caroline Carey
We would understand it and we would understand the parallel between opposites very clearly. And I think from my own journey, seeing myself growing up, seeing the worlds, the opposite of the worlds I was living in, everything throughout my life, I could see very clearly two worlds. When I was very little, I used to imagine that my parents and my brother and my sister were sitting one cloud. In my mind's eye, this is... and I was sitting on another one. There was two clouds. There was differences. Now, I think probably my family are neurodivergent too, but I wasn't obviously aware of that. But seeing this world of these two places was very significant to me. I was born on the solstice, so the winter solstice.
31:11 Caroline Carey
So there you have that meeting place of the dark and light, that place of darkness, but also the place of the returning light. So there's a paradox there of the two.
31:23 Lian Brook-Tyler
You really were imprinted with the Mandorla, right from birth? Yes, absolutely.
31:28 Caroline Carey
And I see that. So... and then I say, well, yes, I was a middle child with an older brother and a younger sister, and I was in between those, the two of them. I didn't feel like either of them, actually. I felt more like a complete different person in between that. Who was I? Who was I really? My love of where my father worked in the factories in Birmingham. You know, he worked as an engineer and he's had his own business there. I was allowed to go there and hang out in the factory and listen to the noises and the smells of the factory and be amongst the people there. I loved that. But also I loved nature. I loved being in with my horse and my pony and my... all my animals, all the many animals that I had living in the countryside.
32:19 Caroline Carey
And again, the sounds, the smells, the textures, the connection. These two worlds were. Both had great wonder for me. And then there was the world of... there was the world of spirituality and religion. I was brought up to go to church, to be with my family every Sunday, went to Sunday school, told to pray. My hands were put on the Bible by my mother if she thought I was lying. You know that story of, oh, you know you won't go to heaven if you tell a lie. God knows what was this heaven place, this place, this heaven, this earth, this polarity between these two. But I was then sent to a convent. So there's this polarity between two churches, Church of England and the convent where I was being taught sides of religion. So it was quite confusing.
33:16 Caroline Carey
Yeah, but I can track all these things throughout my life. There's always these opposites happening continuously through every rite of passage. All these significant moments where I was forced into this world of darkness and light and trying to help these places meet in the middle. What's my place in this? You know, when I was a young mother, my first relationship was with a partner who was blind for a while. He had cataracts on his eyes and you couldn't move them, they couldn't be removed at the beginning of that. And so now they can act on them very quickly. But he had to spend a couple of years. And that was just at the time when I was pregnant, giving birth to a little baby, 16 years old. How was I coping and managing with this?
34:06 Caroline Carey
And then looking back at that time, I was really taking care of the innocence, the innocent babe in my belly, the innocence that I was. And he was... we're very young, but also leading the blind, leading this blind person through the streets, through our lives, looking after his needs. He was also diabetic, so I had to give him these injections because he couldn't see the needles. All of this. And I look back on it, I said there was part of my experience, almost part of my life training was to lead the one who couldn't see certain areas of his life and look after the innocent, take care of the innocent while doing that.
34:48 Caroline Carey
And that polarity of those two, leading the blind, taking care of the innocent, meeting at the core, at the centre of the Mandorla, in that way gave me the tools to help me understand that this was part of my soul journey, to start helping people who can't quite see their full story yet, shining a light on what's needed there in order for them to embrace it fully. Even the struggles, even the challenging pieces, and also really take care of the innocence in them, the child in them that is wounded, that is very hurt, but that needs to play, that needs to find themselves again. Because that's where our soul purpose first showed up in our innocence at the very beginning of time.
35:38 Caroline Carey
So these two elements were a big part of my own discovery, painful though it was at the time, and confusing and difficult and challenging. My goodness, if anything, was a life lesson. That was a lesson for me just as a young teenager.
35:54 Lian Brook-Tyler
Yeah. Coming back to something that we touched on in our first episode. We were musing on the way that it seems so many neurodivergent people, and perhaps particularly neurodivergent women, are often called onto what we might call spiritual or shamanic paths. And I was citing a study that I read right at the time that I was diagnosed as autistic about the hypermetabolism of endogenous DMT in the autistic brain and how that could predispose us to have this openness to other... other worlds, other realms, other experiences. And then going back to your story about being on that weekend with Bill Plotkin and then what was happening at home for your daughter. I've seen over and over again in my own life, but again in the work that we do with others, how there often is this.
36:59 Lian Brook-Tyler
This deep calling to our soul work, and in particular, this kind of spiritual, shamanic type soul work. And at the same time, this calling to be very in the material, devoted the material often to our children. For those that aren't mothers. It could be some other way that we're really called to be very present to the material, not the, I guess, more transcendent coming up and out of the material view that some spiritual traditions and religions have. The idea is to get the material doesn't hold anything. Let's come up and out of it. But it seems to me that neurodivergent people, and again, maybe particularly neurodivergent women, are very much born into this way of having a deep calling into those spiritual realms, but also a deep calling to tend to the material in some kind of way.
37:57 Lian Brook-Tyler
And again, for both of us, that's been motherhood. And at times has felt like I'm really being like, how on earth can I do both? How can I devote to both? How can I do both in a way that my soul feels like I'm here for this? And so I would love to explore this. What have we both seen and experienced about that being perhaps something that isn't adjacent to the neurodivergent soul, but is part of it? This idea of being pulled between two realms. And our work is to be able to unite those two worlds within us, but perhaps also be maybe a beacon as we are able to create that within ourselves, a beacon for how that could be possible for others. What's your sense of that?
38:46 Caroline Carey
What's my sense of that? Yeah, I think it's. It's like what I've written in my book, The Neurodivergent Soul. A lot of the journey that we have, I think we have a tendency to see things differently and to be more expansive with our mind, to open up to situations and experience. And I'm not saying this for everybody because obviously we have to always remember that there are some people with different levels of autism and some extreme cases of people really struggling with this. And I don't want to sound like I'm not considering that because some of us have held down very good jobs and function perfectly well in the world. And then there are others who haven't and don't, are extremely challenged in just even being present in the world. Yeah.
39:34 Lian Brook-Tyler
Yes.
39:34 Caroline Carey
So I think it's really important to acknowledge that. But I do see, and most of the people that I've had time with who are neurodivergent that I can now see, I knew neurodivergent... or they've stepped forward and said, oh, yeah, me too, have this way of connecting to something much bigger than themselves. Sometimes so much so that it's actually painful to be with them because our society doesn't necessarily embrace that. So our spirituality, our idea of consciousness might be something very different to somebody who is neurodiverse, to somebody who's neurotypical. Because there is an expansion of mind, we are able to hold much more information, for one thing, it seems. And this pattern recognition, which I'm big into because that's my experience, so I talk about that quite a lot. But the way we see the world is different.
40:32 Caroline Carey
Our connection to nature, to the earth, to the empathy we feel and the emotion that we can feel for life, for whether it's human, whether it's animal, for nature itself, our hearts can feel so much more than others at times. And I'm not saying others don't feel. It's just that there is such a tendency. They talk about neurodivergent people not having empathy. And I think it's rubbish. I think it's not true. It's just that actually it's so big for us that quite often we have to really steady ourselves with it and really take care of that part of us. And some, in some cases, it might be that we shut it down. So.
41:15 Caroline Carey
So that then, because the heart is a beautiful gateway and the emotions are a beautiful gateway into other realms, if we allow ourselves to feel emotion, which of course, some people are really just don't want to go. They don't want to open up the Pandora's box. But because we feel so deeply, it helps us to go through that gateway into worlds that others might miss. We can go into the pain story of nature. We can go into the more spiritual realms of it because we feel so deeply. And I... it's not just about what we see with our eyes. It's what we feel intensely in our whole bodies. And that's something that I grew up with. I felt others' pain. I felt animals' pain. I felt the Earth's pain. I felt that the...
42:01 Caroline Carey
I remember having a conversation with my father where I was looking at the road and the tarmac and saying, it's like a big scab on the earth, isn't it? And it must be so painful underneath. And really just... just feeling it. So I think what we also find is that neurodivergent people are often incredibly present. Nothing to do with the past, nothing to do with the future. It's like I'm just so present in this moment. So our depths, the places we'll go to, you know, for me, just being with that little stone itself is a...
42:29 Lian Brook-Tyler
Union of opposites, isn't it? The union between the past and the future.
42:33 Caroline Carey
Exactly. There you go. I will just be in the present moment. And that's where that light can shine through. So that light illuminates the world around us and what we're able to see, if we allow for it, if we haven't dulled our senses so much that we become too distracted from it or we just can't process it anymore, it's too much because it is big. And for some people, it's so big. There's a lot of addiction, there's a lot of all kinds of challenges in life with neurodivergent people. Because that sense of consciousness is so big, it's almost hard for me to talk about it. It's so big that we need to shut it down because we can't handle it. And there isn't the support out there to be able to understand it.
43:22 Caroline Carey
And that's why I think a lot of neurodivergent people have crossed my path through this work, through Middle Earth Medicine, through all of this world that I've created with the cartography and the maps, because they felt understood in a way that nobody else has been able to understand them and been able to see their life and their story in a way that nobody would have taken much notice of before, and changing perspectives and see it differently, in which case you change the pattern. You see the pattern in a different way. So it's changing our perspectives all the time. Which I think I've... well, I've known many neurodivergent people. Once you give them permission for that, once you say, well, let's look at it this way.
44:07 Caroline Carey
Suddenly their eyes light up and their whole being just becomes light and that they're just, wow, now I get it. Now I get it. What I'm here for, what I'm... what I'm bringing into the world. And I can see it so much more clearly. It makes the outside world difficult to be in. So we tend to retreat, we tend to live in isolation a lot of the time, because when you start to see things in a different way, you realise just how damaged our society is. And that's hard, especially if you don't feel there's that much you can do about it. And the empathy that you feel, the emotional body feels so deeply that better not to... better not touch, engage with too much of that. It's just too hard.
44:53 Caroline Carey
So I think all of these things are what I see as that consciousness of... and the shamanic world. The shamanic world, of course, in the spiritual world, it's a place we can go and fit in because it's out of this world and we consciousness with it. I understood the shamanic journeying and the drum, the rhythm and the just the seeing of spirits, and all of that was so familiar to me. I immediately felt I fitted in. Now there is a shadow to the shamanic world, and we have to be really mindful and careful of that because there is so much that is now labelled as the shamanic, like the new sexy, the spiritual sexy.
45:34 Lian Brook-Tyler
Yes, of course.
45:36 Caroline Carey
I'm so careful, really how I want to talk about that and explain that and share my world with that. And it takes great care to understand that world. And I don't even know if that's right for a podcast in this moment, because there's so much more to it than what a lot of people imagine.
45:58 Lian Brook-Tyler
I so agree.
46:00 Caroline Carey
But when I think about the shamans and I think about those that I've met and those who also often live in isolation on their path, who have a connection to the spirit world and to nature in a very different way, they're clearly, to me, clearly neurodivergent. You know, the way they live, the way they sense the world, our senses are so acute. So, of course, feeling the energies and the experiences throughout our lives and the deeper meaning of things, it's there. It's there. And these wonderful beings that shamans, teachers, spiritual leaders, you know, they have that. They really have that. You know, if they're really unique in that and ethical in what they're sharing, they will feel an element of that.
46:44 Lian Brook-Tyler
Yeah. So we are almost off on time. It's flown by. But there is something I'd like touch on briefly before we close. Although this almost certainly is a whole conversation in and of itself. So it's the... what I guess I would call almost the... the ultimate opposite, are that of the masculine and feminine. By that, I don't mean man and woman. You could say archetypal energies. And certainly my own... I guess the... the main way that the Mandorla has shown up for me in my life is the union of the opposites of masculine and feminine, all kinds of ways, way before I realised that's what was happening. For me, I think that links very much to what we're just exploring around the kind of spiritual domain. And again, so...
47:38 Lian Brook-Tyler
So much greater and deeper than I can possibly even, like, hope to capture in this conversation. But certainly that's... that's been, for me, the main way the Mandorla's shown up, this union of opposites of the masculine and feminine. And Sara in the team was also recognising the way that in her community, where there's a lot of neurodivergent people, there's also this recognition often there is differences as to how they experience gender. When I've heard that said as well, I think there's been studies shown of this link between different experiences of gender and neurodivergent people. And this, again, is a vast conversation, and particularly at the moment, there's a lot of quite heated views and sensitivities to be aware of. But I think it would be interesting just to explore this, even just briefly before we close.
48:34 Lian Brook-Tyler
What do you see there is going on there? You even spoke about in your... as you were growing up, you had an older brother, and I think it was younger sister. Is that right? And there was... I kind of could see there was a union, opposites of male and female happening there. What do you see could be at play? And I appreciate, as we spoke up before the podcast, this isn't something that you want to sit, like, I'm an expert on, you know, gender. Like, I know that you're not proclaiming that whatsoever, but I would love to hear anything that you've seen that could be relevant to this conversation around neurodivergence and the union of opposites in some way when it comes to gender.
49:12 Caroline Carey
It's a really interesting topic because there does seem to be a very strong link there. And I'm very aware of that. Not that I have any experience of it in myself apart from growing up. And I was a tomboy.
49:28 Lian Brook-Tyler
Me too, completely. There was no sign I was a girl. In fact, everyone thought I was a boy for many years.
49:34 Caroline Carey
Well, there you go. There's a start of something. But yes, I wore all my brother's hand-me-downs, just the jeans and the jumper and the sneakers and all the rest of it and wanted to spend time with him and my father. I had motorbikes and tinkered around in the garage with old cars and things and still had my connection to nature and the animals. So I, it's almost like I, I really lived in a non-gender world in a sense. You know, my mother found it so hard to get me into a dress or to dress properly for church and all those sorts of things. My school uniforms were absolute disgrace.
50:10 Caroline Carey
You know, even I let the leg shot on the horse and I was walking back from school, eat part of my boater and I would tear my blazer going under barbed wire fences. You know, my poor mother, I really feel for her. But I was a wild child and I wasn't interested in girly stuff or boy stuff even. It was just... I was fluid completely between these two worlds of the male and the female. And I feel like that gave me a very strong sense of developing a... almost like a strong masculine and a strong feminine.
50:44 Caroline Carey
And then when I start to think about myself as a mother and being a single mother for much of that, being that the one who was earning the money and the one who was looking after the family, the one who was holding the space and the one who was nurturing the space, I was doing all those things even when I was in a relationship. Quite often they were dysfunctional and so I was playing mother-father role constantly. So throughout my life I can see how that has been a big part of my journey. And even in the work that I do, I work completely on my own. I'd have an admin for the first time in the last couple of years because I went to Access to Work and they gave me a beautiful grant to have an administrator for my work.
51:27 Caroline Carey
They saw it as important and yeah, you need some help with this. Marvellous. That's so fantastic. But I've always held the technology, the organising, all that side that would feel more for me. Part of my masculine energy is like creating and building and holding and doing the building work of such like. And then I'm there holding A space for others in the dance and in movement and the creativity and nurturing and offering that more feminine aspect of the work. So there's been a crossover for me in all of that. And I feel deeply feminine in my ways, especially as I'm aging. But actually, I know that... that there is a strong masculine quality within me that can really step up and hold and build what needs to be built. I often think of masculine and feminine. It's like the...
52:22 Caroline Carey
The masculine, it protects, holds, keeps a safe space. And the... the feminine brings everything to love. So whatever we experience, bringing it to a place of love. And that's the two elements that I like to hold within my work. Yeah, so there's all the practical techie this, that, and the other stuff with music and organising. And then there's the bringing everything to love with that feminine quality in the dance and in creativity and poetry. There's two worlds there for me now, how that relates to others. They would have to ask themselves personally, what does my masculine feminine hold? But that is a meeting place there between the masculine feminine.
53:05 Caroline Carey
And I think in our cultures, if you look at the worldwide view of this, we're trying to find a balance between the patriarchal and the matriarchal and what is healthy, what isn't healthy, and how we can meet together. It's not about having one or the other. It's like, how do we find a meeting place of the two? And I think there are many people now who are actually showing to us that it is possible physically through their bodies, showing us that there is a possibility of really meeting the masculine and feminine in a very beautiful way. And whatever our views are on all of this, it's like we are.
53:45 Caroline Carey
Gender is not that important one level, and it's really important to us on another that we hold a sense of both healthy masculine and healthy feminine within us, within each one of us on some level. So, yeah, and I think it's. We need to find that for ourselves. And I think there's a great attraction to that which I think neurodivergent people, for one, would see. And the presence of that and the connection to their own experiences. I've certainly been one of my dances throughout life and continues to be. I'm married, I have a husband, and we work quite beautifully together. We're very good friends. And so we're holding the home and the dogs in the garden with that level of masculine and feminine. But I know I can hold that masculine energy myself as well.
54:30 Caroline Carey
I don't think I'm really answering your question, because I'm not an authority on gender issues and the like, but it's my view and it's. It's what I hold within myself that feels very important to me, and to respect everybody's desire and need to be who they are in the world. Yeah.
54:48 Lian Brook-Tyler
Beautiful. Thank you so much. What was occurring to me is just the way that there is something important around the union of opposites of masculine, feminine that for some reason, is relevant for many neurodivergent people. That's not to say, therefore, it needs to be this way or should be this way, or this is the only way it can show up. But there is something deeply significant about that particular union of opposites.
55:18 Caroline Carey
Well, if you think about our conception. Okay. So my view and... but also what actually physically happens in conception is. My view is that we come in with a particular soul blueprint imprint within us, and that is part of our journey. The soul comes to Earth in order to inhabit a human being, human body, and to experience what it needs to experience throughout its life and to offer back to the community, to society, to the earth, its particular gift. Yeah. So that soul arrives in the mother's womb. Now, at that moment of conception where the sperm meets the egg, there is a spark of light. The sperm enters the egg, and there is a release of zinc. Scientists, you can see this on YouTube or wherever, there's a little release of zinc that is actually released, a bright light, a spark light.
56:15 Caroline Carey
And that happens, that release of zinc happens because it has to prevent any other sperms getting in. So only one sperm can get in. And at that moment, there is this light. Now, if we're living in a world of duality, and we think with patterns in the ways of duality, what if that spark of light was actually the beginning of consciousness, which is what they used to think. This is the moment of consciousness. And then discovered it was zinc. So you've got this little egg that has just released a bright light. This union. Yeah, the fertility moment. And in that moment, what starts to happen is the egg splits into two. Yeah. It's the first action that we as a physical form take is to split into two. Of course, it's the light and the sperm that creates that.
57:10 Caroline Carey
And there are pictures on that. You can see where the camera has taken a picture, and you can see the Mandorla. You can see the two circles overlapping as they begin to come up apart. And then you get that. That divides into four, and then eight, and then 12, 16, it starts to go until you have this formation, which looks very much like the flower of life. Yeah. All these little circles connecting. There we have it. The very beginning of everybody's life started with this division, the spark of light, and a division into two. And what I believe is that as that forms and becomes human, our work is to accumulate the conditioning. Because we have to. That's part of being human. We accumulate conditioning.
58:00 Caroline Carey
And then over time, when we get to a certain point in our lives and we think, now the work needs to be done, we start to shake off or release or shed some of that conditioning to see ourselves and to reclaim that original light. And that's the work of the Mandorla, is to be able to reclaim that original light that was there as we first came into the world, as we actually began. A little spark of light with this beautiful egg cell, if you like, that's split into two. First action. So once we start to meet the Mandorla in life, in ourselves, we start to see what is most important to me, what really matters, what's my story and what's my soul journey. And these two meeting together, that's where we find our soul purpose.
58:50 Caroline Carey
Because without knowing what our soul's imprint is or the blueprint or the core wound that we carry as well with that, we can't fully find the solutions that we're here to explore in order to bring our gifts into the world. Everything we've been through has been very necessary from the beginning to the present moment, if we can look back on our story, change the perspectives, look at it with a different light, with different patterns, see its true form, feel, and allow whatever we need to feel through that. Then we start to get a clearer picture. A soul map, if you like. And we start to see, this is why I'm truly here. This is my personal message. This is what I was created for. And the soul begins to shine.
59:37 Caroline Carey
But if we leave it under all that conditioning, it's diminished, and it'll never be, never fully come to form. So it's our story that holds the magic and the potential for each one of us and... or not. I believe... I just think a spiky lot have a bit of a, you know, a gateway into it, and we find it a bit more easily.
01:00:02 Lian Brook-Tyler
Yes. More challenging at the beginning. And then this part is where perhaps we have it easier. I so agree.
01:00:09 Caroline Carey
I could say so much about that. You know, I could go so much in depth. I mean, I really encourage people to, you know, have a look at my website, read the book, because I... I... I can write it better than I can say it.
01:00:19 Lian Brook-Tyler
You say it beautifully.
01:00:23 Caroline Carey
Better than I... and I can see it. But sometimes putting into verbalising it can be actually quite challenging. And that's okay. That's okay because it's very precious. It's very magical and it's very, very potent. So we have to be careful how we name it and work with it and not be in any way flippant about it or... because it's actually the beginning of life. It's the beginning of the world. It's the essence of all of us.
01:00:51 Lian Brook-Tyler
Beautiful. I am so pleased we've been able to journey everywhere we've joined this conversation. Yeah, there's certainly been something here for me that I'm intending to go and sit with. So thank you. So where can listeners find out more about you and the wonderful work you do and of course, your books.
01:01:14 Caroline Carey
Yes, I... I have seven books at the moment. So it's my life story, my memoirs, and my explorations with all of this soul work throughout time. I have a pack of oracle cards that people can order off my website. They're very beautiful and they hold the essence of the Mandorla within them. And you can go to my website, www.middleearthmedicine.com and I'm on Facebook, I'm on LinkedIn and Instagram and all those places. I wouldn't say I'm brilliant at posting on social media, but my website is probably the best place to go to find all the courses and information I hold. Women's work. I do creative memoir, writing, crafting, our memoirs. So I help people write their story. And I have a dancing platform online which is newly created.
01:02:07 Caroline Carey
People can go in, they can meet me once a month for an online dance, but they can also go in and help themselves to meditations and dances to explore the soul.
01:02:15 Lian Brook-Tyler
Oh, gorgeous.
01:02:17 Caroline Carey
Yeah. And that's just being created. In fact, I had a web meeting with my web guy just before this and he's getting it all ready to put in place. So that's very exciting. Yeah.
01:02:27 Lian Brook-Tyler
Oh, great stuff. So hot off the press.
01:02:29 Caroline Carey
Thank you. And I am available for workshops if people want me to do an in person workshop, which that needs organising.
01:02:37 Lian Brook-Tyler
Fabulous. Well, thank you so much, Caroline. This has been. Yes. Such a rich conversation. I really appreciate you and the work you do.
01:02:45 Caroline Carey
Thank you very much, Lian. It's been really lovely to connect with you again. Appreciate it.
01:02:50 Lian Brook-Tyler
Yeah, my pleasure entirely. Thank you for joining me for another episode of The Wild Sovereign Soul Show. If this conversation has stirred something that you want to follow deeper, that's exactly what UNIO is for. UNIO is our Fellowship for Wild Sovereign Souls, and twice each month Jonathan and I meet with members to meet you in whatever is challenging you, calling you, or both. And we will meet you exactly where you are and support you to move forward. The link for that is wildsovereignsoul.com/unio, and show notes and other links are at wildsovereignsoul.com. If you don't want to miss out on next week's episode, follow or subscribe wherever you're listening or watching. And until then, I'm sending you all my love as you walk your Wild Sovereign Soul path.