You can probably relate to those feelings and thoughts because chances are you too have felt these same feelings and had these same thoughts many times throughout your own life. If you can think back to why you had these thoughts and feelings—what were the circumstances when you had them? How were people approaching you at these times? How did you feel people were treating you, or what did you feel people were expecting from you, etc.? If you do this, you will begin to relate and understand what the horse is mirroring to you.
Understanding what the horse is mirroring to you takes you beyond thought and emotion into what I refer to as “sensing.” This sensing is where you can feel and understand what is going on deep inside (the inner state) of both yourself and the horse.
When you can relate to and understand what the horse is thinking and feeling, and begin to see things from the horse’s point of view, you will start to understand why the horse’s reactions are justified in his mind. And how those thoughts and feelings are true in the natural world.
With this insight, it becomes a matter of consistently observing your own actions, feelings and thoughts in order to change undesirable behaviors or reactions from the horse. You must begin to ask yourself, what am I doing, expecting, feeling, or thinking that is causing the horse to think, feel and do what he is doing? And more importantly, what feelings, thoughts and expectations do I have that are not in accord with nature, and why are they not? What am I and the horse sensing? The answer to these questions will lead you out of your egotistical self and into your true and natural self. This is where you and the horse will come together in communication and understanding.
Coming to know your true self is what allows you to hear the intelligent energy or let Divine mind enter and work through you. When in this frame of mind, you can overcome and go beyond your feelings of inadequacies, discomforts, pains, and fears—which keep you from seeing what the horse is mirroring, and what the horse is feeling, thinking and offering. This greater intelligence keeps you in a frame of mind where you are not trying to teach the horse anything: you are allowing them to learn, and you are working at these things and learning them together in a joyful frame of mind.
However getting to this state of mind is seldom an easy journey. It takes complete honesty and sometimes great pain while healing the old wounds and transforming old ways of thinking, but it is necessary if you desire to know your true self and have a harmonious relationship with your horse.
I would like to leave you with the following quote from Sherry Ackerman:
“There is no gnosis (knowledge or knowledge towards enlightenment) without pain. One must come to know dressage, not just with the mind, but also with the flesh. Intimate, uninhibited contact between horse and rider is a prerequisite. The rider must become comfortable expressing unconditional love for his/her horse. The pain of destroying personal ego cannot be imagined or described: it is beyond words. The dressage artist must surrender the very core of his/her own private being, the sense of self. There is no anguish like that of relinquishing one’s individuality, one’s sense of control. For dressage to come into its rightful place as an art de vivre, the boundaries of personality must dissolve.”
All content © Clay Wright Horsemanship Schools 2007
© Uniting the Spirits 2007