Chiron, the wounded healer, and his apprentice Achilles, are coming up as strong archetypes for many healers and helpers at the moment. This is an opportunity to heal your deepest wounds and weaknesses as a healer/helper…
The wounded healer’s drive to heal often comes from their wounded self. This is the part of us that heals others in order to heal ourselves. We see ourselves in others and by rescuing/healing others, we hope to heal ourselves.
If you’ve ever had a moment when you’ve wondered why you are able to heal and help others, but not yourself, this is your chiron-wound. The chiron wound blesses us with a healer’s wisdom and insight that only empathy can give us, but it can also make us abandon ourselves in our God-like quest to be everyone else’s hero.
The chiron-achilles wound can be blind spot, a wound you can’t see or understand, even though it may be obvious to others, some of whom may exploit this wound. For many, this wound results in martyrdom and self-neglect. For others, it involves active self-harm. Some call this wound “the healer’s shadow.”
When you stop hating, neglecting, or ‘not-seeing/hearing’ some part of yourself that is crying out to be loved, you finally pass the healer/helper/hero’s ultimate test: rescuing yourself with self-love, self-care, self-healing, and the acceptance of love and support from others, with healthy boundaries and self-respect. In other words, you walk your talk.
If you are a wounded healer, will you still want to heal others after you’ve healed yourself? You might completely reinvent yourself and take on a new identity, purpose in life, or job description. But if you do continue as a healer/helper, you can be fairly guaranteed your approach will be very different because the drive to help and heal no longer comes from your wound, your inner pain, or your martyred, heroic sense of responsibility and invincibility.
Are you a wounded healer? What if the desire to help and heal came from a place of joy, light, fullness, completeness, stillness, self-love and peace within yourself? What might be possible for you then?
This is an excerpt from my book Aura Colour Therapy, about an aura colour I call Compassion Orange. For anyone who has studied iridology, this auric pattern is equivalent to the Ring or Harmony or Lymphatic Rosary pattern in the iris.
If you need a herbalist/naturopath while I’m away, let me introduce you to the lovely 
Schisandra has a ‘Synchronicity Pink’ frequency to it… for anyone who doesn’t have an Aura Card set, this means it’s a magical herb that helps us to have more faith in (and attunement with) divine timing. And in all the ancient textbooks, Shatavari (wild asparagus), comes with a warning: “Do not use if you don’t want flying dreams’. I mean, really, who wouldn’t want to have flying dreams? Perhaps if you were scared of heights….
This small kit of five remedies can be used for emotional emergencies. Gelsenium, for example, is brilliant for performance anxiety, where we freeze up while on stage, speaking publically, or being interviewed for a new job. It’s particularly good for anticipatory anxiety, where we are trembling and having trouble with our breathing because we’re getting ourselves worked up about something we are dreading.
The big aura book and most recent Aura Card deck are temporarily unavailable, pending a wee make-over sometime next year. In the meantime, I have a few guidebooks left and have rummaged up some old decks, for various prices depending on whether or not I’ve had to replace missing cards with hand-drawn ones. 
I also have some books to give away on the day of the closing down sale, a mix of old and new, that need good homes. Topics range from the natural environment through to Aboriginal art, with the odd fiction book and magazine thrown in. There’s a laminator, a deck of cards, and so on.
The walk took me up and down through small valleys over little bridges and finally led to a raised area that was cleared, with a tiny little modern hut on it, built top-end style. I felt isolated and nestled in, with trees all around me. There were no people-sounds, just birds singing and the wind blowing through the trees. The block had been cleared some 40 years earlier and this fit nicely with my dream of protecting native land and/or rehabilitating damaged land. More than anything, there was a feeling of being home; some special, indescribable something that went ‘click’. When I came back and told Stephen what I’d felt, he told me he’d felt it too.
