Journal of Sacred Work

Today's mediation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

  Dr. Saki Santorelli has captured the wonderful movement of the wounded healer in his book titled "Heal Thy Self – Lessons on Mindfulness in Medicine." The archetype of the wounded healer has been used by a number of well known authors, but its origins may not be so familiar. Like so many others, this archetype emerges from ancient Greece and the myth of Chiron. Chiron is told to have been a wise and beneficent centaur and a great master of healing. Wounded by a poison tipped arrow, Chiron – an immortal being – lived as the greatest of healers but was unable to completely heal himself. The myth is told that Chiron recieved into his watch care and trained thousands of students, one being Asclepius who is believed to be in the lineage from which came Hippocrates. Each of us, asserts Dr. Santorelli, is a living myth encompassing both the woundedness of Chiron and the innate capacity to take advantage of adversity and be transformed. The virtue of being human ascribes to us the path of the universal, mythological journey of the hero on quest to forever more "heal thy self."

 The myth of the wounded healer is quite real and captures the interrelatedness of patient and practitioner. On the surface, this relationship appears as seeker and giver, of the helped and the helper. Dr. Santorelli suggests there is no polarity among the two but that one is the reflection of the other: "Within every health care practitioner lives the Wounded One; in every patient, every sick and suffering human being, abides a powerful Inner Healer. These are the gifts of being born into this world."

Dr. Santorelli then makes an audacious claim: "For too long care has been conceived of as either practioner-centered or patient-centered. In actuality, the healing relationship has always been a crucible for mutual transformation. The bare willingness of human beings to encounter one another in the midst of our weaknesses and strengths is the quintessential transformative agent. But my experience tells me that it is nearly impossible for us to relate to another human being in this way if we do not begin to relate to ourselves in the same manner." And what manner he calls us to is in that encounter that we call sacred, where Love meets need, with mindfulness. It is an act of love to willingly see ourselves closely just as we are. Rumi reminds us of an entryway into that place of seeing and knowing in his poem "Childhood Friends:"

Trust your wound to a Teacher’s surgry.

Flies collect on a wound. They cover it,

those flies of your self-protecting feelings,

your love for what you think is yours.

Let a Teacher wave away the flies

and put a plaster on the wound.

Don’t turn your head. Keep looking

at the bandaged place. That’s where

the Light enters you.

    And don’t believe for a moment

that you’re healing yourself.

Perhaps our best teachers are those we seek to serve. When with great Love I am willing to be still, to listen, to relate to the person before me, perhaps they will wave away those flies and healing will begin for us both. Don't turn your head. Keep looking. Let Love and Light enter in.