The Horse and your Path to a Sovereign Being
The more time I spend with my horses the more I find that they are the very best and most honest reflections of myself. The basis of this is that I allow myself to feel what is going on inside of me in each and every second of my encounter with them.
I am like any normal human being “haunted” by many many different aspects of myself. Some aspects are clear and still serve me, other aspects have become slightly twisted in their energy by my past experiences or by looking into the future anticipating experiences that I might fear. And there are some aspects which you might want to call pretty dark. Aspects that loathe me, don’t like me at all, don’t trust me, don’t respect or believe me. Aspects that seize every opportunity to take over.
I am in that no different to most of the human beings walking on this earth.
How does this translate to my fascination with horses? Even though the horse in itself is a beautiful animal in many ways, my true fascination with these animals lies in the opportunity they provide for me to discover myself with their help.
Their expression of my energy is so accurate that when I spend time with them, they reflect me back to me, providing me with a learning that can be instant, as long as I am open to it. And there is everything, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Through the daily interaction with my horses and my quest to experience how energy works, I discovered that when I hold my attention primarily with myself, I connect to how I truly feel within myself and am able to just be with it, without judgement and fully present within my body and in the now moment. I reach a point, whereby a possible reintegration of my aspect could take place, no matter how ugly the aspect might seem.
Horses innately understand authentic energy and as long as it is not projected out to them, they will not feel threatened by it. However as soon as I find myself reaching out to my horses to “do” something and I am bringing one aspect that I am not aware of to this interaction, the horse will express it for me.
This is their unconditional service to us human beings to draw a clear picture of the energy behind our will, motivation and want, thus revealing our “unconscious” energy to us.
Standing in front of a horse at liberty creates a space where you can meet yourself and experience your different aspects. It might bring up fears, self-loathing, distrust in yourself, wanting to run away and hide yet also the feeling of connectedness and integrity. It is here and now when a platform for reintegration can be opened, so that you may become a sovereign entity, complete and authentic, allowing the energy to serve you and living your life in joy and abundance.
The horse challenges you to reach your authenticity. For the one who is willing to accept that the path might be unknown to the self, the process of integration will be a natural one.
I am by no means a horse expert however I feel and observe energies amongst people and also between people and horses and I see that more often than not hidden dynamics run the interaction between the two. The horse assumes the role of a mirror, providing the opportunity to bring humans back to themselves, to have a good look at themselves thus opening a door to enormous growth.
To achieve the ultimate connection with your horse, you cannot bribe it, it will keep to distrust you to a certain degree. You cannot process it in your mind, following a structured plan only. You don’t have to pander to your horse.
Horses are going to check in to see what is going on with you. They’re a bit suspicious, somewhat anxious. They want to connect with you, however they’re not sure if you are ready.
No horse is going to connect when you’re not in the here and now or your mind and emotions are racing within you. The horse will be lingering, slightly away from you, however close enough where it can feel you, and it will ask the question: “Are you real? Are you ready to be the leader, a being of sovereign service?”
Others might be aggressive, skittish or flighty. They’re wounded. Many of them have not been acknowledged in their true being. One can feel their frustration, their dangerousness, and their loathing. And the moment one feels it, more often than not, the door is shut once again, the humans run away, pretending that it is not theirs.
Can you imagine what it does to a broken, hurt and wounded horse for somebody to run off, to give them no attention, to give them no love? It makes them angrier, and it makes them more certain that you are not the one who is accepting the responsibility of being the leader – it makes them think they should be taking this role.
They resist. They don’t trust you. They don’t believe in you. They don’t love you. Interestingly an odd thing is, at a very deep level, there is a spark of light, a remembrance of the source – no matter how small it is within them, it wants to come back to life again. However, it is so hurt and traumatized, it is so wounded, that it finds it difficult to make the journey back to connection with you.
The horse just wants your love. It only wants you to be real and true with yourself. it wants you to be the leader, a sovereign being, and it wants to know that you are home, back in yourself, back in this moment and that you’re going to stay there.
There’s such a tendency to pack up and leave very quickly. That means to shoot out of the body, to go somewhere else, to say, “This is very, very difficult, it’s frightening or it’s uncomfortable, l’m out of here.” You leave your body, at least energetically. You leave behind pretty much a shell. Of course that shell can talk and think and function but basically it is just a temporary management. You are the owner of your body, mind and spirit. The horse requires you to be in there, to stay in your body, to stay fully present.
This means no psychoanalysis. Horses don’t want to be analyzed any more than you want to be analyzed. They want to know they are accepted, loved and welcomed home. They want to know you are the leader.
This means no cuddling your horses.
They don’t wont you petting them on the top of the head, telling them how everything is going to be okay. They don’t want you to make up phony idealistic, sugar-coated cliches. That’s why they are broken and fragmented in the first place. They are tired of it. They don’t wont rhetoric. They don’t want pandering or cuddling. That’s what’s caused many of them to become wounded. They want you to be present in your whole self in this moment – not off somewhere else and certainly not in some la la land. They want you to be in those socks and in those feet and in your skin and in your heart. That’s all they want.
They don’t want you to argue with them or be demanding with them, saying, “You hove to come to me or else.” Many of them are like little children – at the moment you start telling them what they have to do and get demanding, it starts to turn into an abusive energy and they feel it and they run the other way. They’re not going to come to you if you’re demanding.
They don’t want a lot of mental activity. The mental activity is what has caused many of them to also become fragmented. Too much analysis, too much trying to figure it out, it just doesn’t work, not in the long run.
They want your heart, the feeling. They want to know that you are present and that’s all. It is about being in the still, quiet moment, not forcing anything, not expecting anything. It is about being fully present in every part of your life, understanding that you create your life. It is about being so allowing and accepting of yourself that you can be still. You can observe your horse coming closer to you to connect with you, to become one. You can just be still, continuing to let it know it is understood and welcome.
The energy of compassion is truly what your horse wants, not your sympathy, not your sweet talk, not your bribes, not your fighting, not your anger or ambition or your mind racing in high energy mode.
So, to truly be with your horse means to be truly within yourself and to become your own leader, sovereign and authentic. Your horse is happy in service to you, to help you understand yourself, find yourself and ultimately make the connection to you as you have never experienced before. It then has found its equilibrium and full potential together with you. You are one.
