Throughout my life, I’ve faced many moments where I exhausted my resources and appeared to reach a dead end, where nothing more can be done. I reach the limits of my awareness; I have a blind spot. My search for clarity yields a half-wisdom that doesn’t quite emerge, not fully. The solution is out of reach. I feel utterly defeated.

This is the path of every Healer.
But, I digress. We will get to this in a moment.

This type of experience used to happen quite a bit related to my health, with strange symptoms and undiagnosable physical pains taking me out of life and into a sort of no- woman’s land of darkness and mystery. Then, around 2015, it began occurring with frequency related to energy sensitivity. Energies that plagued me, distracted me from feeling like myself, would cause me to pull on various tools and techniques. It has taken time, grace, and so much patience to get back into a sense of alignment.

In many difficult experiences, I noticed my Ego wanting to use these unfair experiences to throw the baby out with the bathwater. To build a story about how awful life was, and how “this path sucks.” Particularly “my path sucks (at times, I wanted out of life entirely).” But I noticed when I did this, I forfeited my relationship to myself, something I always can control, to the experience I was having- which I often cannot control.

Let me say this again, because it is so vital to understanding Chiron, and ourselves:

When I allow my relationship to myself become compromised by the confusing, painful life experiences I do not yet understand and cannot control, I suffer.

It doesn’t seem a “fair” thing to do to one’s self, does it?
Yet how often do you do this- to you?

Chiron & the Inherent Unfairness of Life 

Chiron’s life wasn’t fair.  Unfairness is embedded in the myth. Chiron sustained a permanent injury because he was caught in the crosshairs of someone else’s battle. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and was injured by a poisonous arrow. Chiron spent the rest of his life in chiron-ic pain. Trying to heal a wound that just didn’t seem to want to fully heal, he became a master of astrology, acupuncture, homeopathy, sound therapy, energy healing…and just about every alternative medicine we have on this planet. This is why Chiron is the father of alternative medicine, and why he spent so much time learning. Eventually he became a teacher consulted for his healing gifts.

Wanting out of life, wanting to die, is also inherent to the myth. Chiron was an immortal with a wound, which meant he would live forever with his pain. Eventually he made a bargain with another God to trade his immortality for mortality- so Chiron could die. Those who have experienced chronic pain and suffering understand this kind of dark bargaining.

The Chiron journey is like this: You try everything you can to ease the ache, the pain, and while you may or may not be successful in easing your pain, you will become a master of yourself. You learn healing techniques. You develop self-awareness. If Chiron is strongly placed in your chart, you are a wounded healer. If it is connected with your Mid-Heaven, tenth house, or tenth house ruling planet (as it is for me -all three) you will be that person in a more public way. It’s part of your contribution to the greater good.

Chiron & Crossroads Moments

Everyone has a Chiron, an area of life that aches, feels incredibly unfair, and tempts us into adopting a victim consciousness. It is not just defined to physical health, although a need for integration and healing is at the root of it. For one person, Chiron appears in relationship (7th house Chiron), for another, in co-worker situations (6th house Chiron), and for another through children or relationship to creativity (5th house Chiron) and so on… It’s the Achilles heel that, by design, will deliver many “crossroads moments” for our growth- moments of having a partial or incomplete way forward so that we can discover something about our self.

Imagine a heroine traveling through the desert. Her wagon broke down, the wheel rolled right off. It is nighttime, she seeks shelter. She sees a house but the doors and windows are locked. She can hear the hungry night animals shift about, and she knows she is in unfamiliar land. What to do? Is there anything to do? (often there is nothing we are required to do, or can do).

A crossroads moment is a period in which we are facing uncertainty, and a lack of vision or solutions, for an indefinite, seemingly interminable, amount of time. Something new wants to emerge, and eventually will– a revelation, perspective, insight. But at the moment –and because there is no time in Spirit, this moment stretches on for days, weeks, years — the path appears blocked.

We can use this “crossroads moment” to feel disempowered, victimized by something we do not yet understand. We can go back to every other moment we’ve had this exact feeling and call up all those disempowered moments up to exacerbate this one…and this will definitely stimulate our deepest terrors and fears for ourself. What if the night animals eat me, and I die? What if I don’t make it through the night? What if I’ll always be alone? What if I never find my right work/mission? 

Or we can decide who we want to be in this story we are living.  For instance, I can recognize that while I cannot control what I experience, I can decide who I AM. I can decide to be empowered, I can choose to see my circumstances with the curiosity of a student willing to learn from what presents. I can pray for guidance, and the grace to recognize helpers, synchronicities, insights.

I may not like or even want some of my earthly experiences, but I can choose to love the Earth, and myself.

Every day, I can choose to be the kind of person I want to be; perhaps today that is kinder to myself, gentle, tender, present and self-aware. I may not be able to choose what I experience, but I can always intentionally choose the experience of myself that I want to have – and therein lays my true power. I don’t let this crossroads moment define me, or take control of my energies, who I AM. No matter the appearances of what is or is not happening in my life, I don’t have to let it compromise my relationship to ME.

When the heroine feels the walls close in around her…

In that moment, that can stretch on for days, weeks or years…

Here’s a golden question to ask: Am I victim to this, or am I a curious journeyer of life?

Journeyer or Victim?

A journeyer expects and accepts discomfort, confusion and unknowns as part of the journey. A journeyer knows a destination isn’t fixed, it can change as circumstances change. A journeyer relies on curiosity and intuition to navigate tough terrain, and tight corners. A journeyers motto might be: I may not know what this is all about, but I know I will figure it out!

A victim allows circumstances to alter her self-perception, and define her very identity. A victim sees external experiences as a true reflection of her capacities. A victim lets the drama of external situations and people to energetically commandeer her relationship to her True self. A victim’s motto might be: This always happens to me. I can’t ever get it right.

Whereas a journeyer sees life as an unpredictable journey of self-discovery, one in which, like commanding a ship, we can steer in certain directions but not control what we experience… A victim mentality exists, interestingly enough, because, like a child, it believes it can control everything, so uses any feelings of lack of control in their life as a springboard for all kinds of toxic negativity.

Reflect on your relationship to Chiron. Reframe your experience and you start to change how you relate to yourself, and everything.

Chiron in Aries: It’s Your Decision

When we are faced with an uncomfortable or painful situation, we always have a choice to feel defeated, or to allow the fear, discomfort, obstacles to marshal deeper resources from within. We might ask: What is the highest outcome for this? What control do I have (and not)? Yes, this is painful and unfair, but who do I want to be? Think about your favorite heroes and heroines, women and men who have faced great adversity and have decided to use it to advantage. A woman loses her hearing to an illness but uses that to become an advocate and teacher for others, for instance. A person who uses oppression to find her voice, to speak out for others. Whether you will be a victim of circumstance that you cannot control or not is a decision and it’s all YOURS.

This is the fighting spirit of Chiron in Aries. Why do I know it so well? I am blessed with this placement (conjunct my Aries Moon). One of the biggest leaps I made in changing my perspective about all of the hardships I’ve experiences is to decide to see myself as the heroine of every adversity I face. Heroines need victories (Aries Moon), even little ones (sometimes those are all I get).

So, here are some more points for reflection: Do you let your experiences define you, allow the drama of daily life and others’ energies pull at you and distract from yourself? Or will you decide to lead with your I AM? This is “key” for Chiron in Aries, to lead with your own choices about who you want to be. You don’t get to choose the experience but you do get to choose how you hold your experience. You get to decisively decide. That’s Aries, using your personal will. Sometimes stubbornly, always insistently.

Chiron & Your Willingness

One final story I want to share about Chiron has to do with the symbol itself: a key. A key is the only thing that can open a closed, locked, door. And, until you are on the other side of that locked door, nothing else exists – how can it? All you can see is the door, all you can see is the immovable obstacle. This is the feeling many of us experience, those of us who are deeply Chironian.

I’ve thought about the key symbol for a long while. Then, a few weeks back I decided to do a chi reading on myself (one way I’ve learned of receiving Spirit messages). Images dropped into my Consciousness, and one, a skeleton key, was the aberration in the message; it stuck out oddly, so held the substance of the message. I looked up the symbolism and read: key=willingness.

I understood, finally. This. The key to working with Chiron is our willingness. The door can only stay locked and closed so long as we are unwilling to: change our perspective, work with it, accept it, decide to do something with it, learn, teach… When we decide to do something with our WILL… our WILL-ingness is the thing that breaks the spell, and unlocks the closed door.