The horses’ message is simple, they want a relationship with us, a dialogue. It doesn’t have to be about abandoning everything, just the possibility of listening to each other.
Message From the Horses
It is not so much about the activities we do or don’t do with them, or even their living circumstances. Although it is clear that horses appreciate a lifestyle closest to their adaptive needs. These incredible beings are here to develop relationships with us. It is a funny thing about consciousness that we are trying to fit this vast bubble of energy into tiny little boxes called words. And of course these same words resurface over and over, even though the energy behind them has grown and expanded and evolved in a million shimmering little ways.
I have a little idea that horses are really vast souls who come here just for this journey with us. To support our path, to engage with and embrace our ignorance and illuminate the collective human awakening.
So this message has been heard and contemplated and shared a million times already perhaps, from so many minds in so many ways. Yet every time it becomes clearer. Every time it is heard a little more authentically, and filtered by our ego a little less. The message I am hearing is about reverence. Both reverence for ourselves and the horses who have chosen to walk into our lives. First we must go within, to feel and know who we are, who we always have been. Not the identity we carved in this life to survive, and not the labels we were given as a citizen in society.
The Journey
This self was there long before the mind made concepts, and will outlive them. This self is the one who is loved, by ourselves and others, because this self is love. There is no struggle to love what is love! The only struggle is letting go of the layers wrapped around it. And although this is where our horses are telling us to start, they know it is actually the whole journey. There is no other purpose here than returning to love.
At a certain point of revealing our self, in revealing to ourselves we also reveal to the horses. They are then able to reveal their true self… love sees love. It could be said that horses do not hide their real self, that they are always true and vulnerable.
I believe however that they will protect themselves, it is natural for them to do so, and so they mirror our protections. If we are aggressive, we will trigger defences in them. If we are frightened they will look for danger, and if we are unable to listen, they will not be able to communicate.
This is the most beautiful learning path, and they have infinite patience for our awakening.
The Relationship
This relationship the horses are talking about is available to all horse guardians. It starts the moment we even think of each other. It is an enlightenment that can begin at any stage of any interaction. From the moment a competitor realises his horse understands him to a shared sense of oppression in a riding school. This relationship is about the dialogue. Horses have essentially been our slaves for centuries. We are largely unaware of it in those terms because it is what we grew up with and always knew. There needs to be a little bit of sky to see there is a forest, and most of us are deep in the forest.
Yet it doesn’t have to be a massive upheaval, this is the important part. The horses understand that most horse guardians are not ready to open up the door and let their beloved go free. And maybe their beloved is not yet ready to go free!
The shift into a new paradigm of reciprocity can happen gently and gradually. Millions of tiny moments of liberation is much more constructive than a violent wrenching apart. In this way the friendship can evolve, becoming authentic and profound, instead of lost entirely.
Making the Plan Together
This new relationship can start today. The solutions are there to be found in each listening moment. Decisions can be made in the limitless potential of now. No one needs to commit to stop riding, to stop training their horse or making demands of them. The secret is not in the mind, but in the heart. Allow yourself to be yourself for your horse. Just for a moment, share you, with no agenda. Be still and feel who you are in this moment with this being. Allow there to be some doubt about what to do, encourage that space of possibility.
This is how the horses are asking to join with us. Come to us vulnerable. Let us make a plan together, we can feel the plan together. Maybe there is no plan today. Something new might happen, something neither of us has experienced before. Let’s discover it together…
And over time the deeply rooted assumption that the leader knows best, and that we are the leader will erode and dissolve. The relationship becomes a partnership and a new, uncharted world is born.
