Wounded healer, dark night of the soul

The title of this post is a interesting spiritual concept. Wounded healer sounds like a name for an Indian in actual fact its the creation of the eminent psychologist Carl Jung the idea states that an analyst is compelled to treat patients because the analyst himself is 'wounded'. I understand this to mean in order to help those affected by an illness or a disease the healer needs to experience the affliction. I came across this ideology after having a numerology report. Its not something I have done every year but the link kept crossing my path and I decided this one time to act upon it. I am and always have been a seriously spiritual person and have developed my own understanding of the after life and what happens its my own personal belief system. I feel we all need to develop an understanding by ourselves of what it means to be human and where we go after we die. The numerology report was an eye opener and so accurate it described me my life and personality including all my bad traits (which I recognised) but more importantly it made me aware of this 'Wounded Healer' concept indeed possibility.  Here's the part of the report that talks about Wounded Healer.

"Your attitude towards life in general is very selfless and you usually have a good connection with God or a higher power. However often the number 9 faces a unique challenge at some point in his or her life that seems to be a test of faith. Usually this incident takes the form of a devastating personal loss, disease or some sort of tragedy. This triggers a period of time that lasts a few years that is often called the "dark night of the soul." It is usually during this period of your life that you find the extreme courage and strength to become what is called a wounded healer."

Leading up to the point of getting this numerology report I had been questioning myself as I do periodically why I got breast cancer? I walked through the woods and up on the coastline pondering this question and as usual I didn't get any answers until I got back and sat at my computer, I am so so glad I decided that I'd get this report done (it was free). For me I finally understand spiritually why I got cancer and why I write this blog. Its important to look into everything even the seemingly bizarre especially when it comes to something as random as cancer. Somebody had to talk about the spiritual side of cancer as well as looking into alternative treatments and unconventional approaches to drugs and treatment and that someone is me. I thought the idea of this blog was to write all of this down so that I could make sense of the mountains of conflicting information out there on this subject. I realise now that this may of been the reason for starting the blog but in actual fact its not the only reason I am writing down this stuff its for other reasons and 'wounded healer' is one of them. To say I am blown away by all of this is an understatement, to me its enlightenment.

Further information on Wounded Healer

In Greek myths, Chiron was the wisest of the Centaurs and the archetype of the Wounded Healer

He was accidentally wounded by an arrow that had been dipped in the blood of the Hydra

In his search for his own cure, he discovered how to heal others

In teaching others the healing arts, he found a measure of solace from his own pain

The Wounded Healer understands what the patient feels because he has gone through the same pain

The suffering patient can be cared for by the Healer and be instrumental in the Healers own healing

Each encounter between Healer and patient can be transforming for both

The lesson of Chiron teaches us is that we can overcome pain and transcend into knowledge

That each of us can become a Wounded Healer
Here's a link to a short film on youtube that explores this concept and explains the symbology and ancient belief system behind it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orxEawi9qro

As for the dark night of the soul then you need to look no further than this wonderful explanation by the visionary teacher Eckhart Tolle.

Eckhart on the Dark Night of the Soul

Q: Have you ever experienced the dark night of the soul? Your teachings have been so helpful through this difficult period. Can you address this subject?

A: The “dark night of the soul” is a term that goes back a long time. Yes, I have also experienced it. It is a term used to describe what one could call a collapse of a perceived meaning in life…an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness. The inner state in some cases is very close to what is conventionally called depression. Nothing makes sense anymore, there’s no purpose to anything. Sometimes it’s triggered by some external event, some disaster perhaps, on an external level. The death of someone close to you could trigger it, especially premature death, for example if your child dies. Or you had built up your life, and given it meaning – and the meaning that you had given your life, your activities, your achievements, where you are going, what is considered important, and the meaning that you had given your life for some reason collapses.

It can happen if something happens that you can’t explain away anymore, some disaster which seems to invalidate the meaning that your life had before. Really what has collapsed then is the whole conceptual framework for your life, the meaning that your mind had given it. So that results in a dark place. But people have gone into that, and then there is the possibility that you emerge out of that into a transformed state of consciousness. Life has meaning again, but it’s no longer a conceptual meaning that you can necessarily explain. Quite often it’s from there that people awaken out of their conceptual sense of reality, which has collapsed.

They awaken into something deeper, which is no longer based on concepts in your mind. A deeper sense of purpose or connectedness with a greater life that is not dependent on explanations or anything conceptual any longer. It’s a kind of re-birth. The dark night of the soul is a kind of death that you die. What dies is the egoic sense of self. Of course, death is always painful, but nothing real has actually died there – only an illusory identity. Now it is probably the case that some people who’ve gone through this transformation realized that they had to go through that, in order to bring about a spiritual awakening. Often it is part of the awakening process, the death of the old self and the birth of the true self.

The first lesson in A Course in Miracles says “Nothing I see in this room means anything”, and you’re supposed to look around the room at whatever you happen to be looking at, and you say “this doesn’t mean anything”, “that doesn’t mean anything”. What is the purpose of a lesson like that? It’s a little bit like re-creating what can happen during the dark night of the soul. It’s the collapse of a mind-made meaning, conceptual meaning, of life… believing that you understand “what it’s all about”. With A Course in Miracles, it’s a voluntary relinquishment of the human mind-made meaning that is projected, and you go voluntary into saying “I don’t know what this means”, “this doesn’t mean anything”. You wipe the board clean. In the dark night of the soul it collapses.

You are meant to arrive at a place of conceptual meaninglessness. Or one could say a state of ignorance – where things lose the meaning that you had given them, which was all conditioned and cultural and so on. Then you can look upon the world without imposing a mind-made framework of meaning. It looks of course as if you no longer understand anything. That’s why it’s so scary when it happens to you, instead of you actually consciously embracing it. It can bring about the dark night of the soul – to go around the Universe without any longer interpreting it compulsively, as an innocent presence. You look upon events, people, and so on with a deep sense of aliveness. Your sense the aliveness through your own sense of aliveness, but you are not trying to fit your experience into a conceptual framework anymore.