At a recent natural horsemanship clinic, I was reminded that a horse does not trust a human unless the human embodies compassion and leadership. A horse is a prey animal, and naturally uses its flight or fight consciousness for survival. My biggest “Aha!” awareness from the seminar is that my soul seems to be similar to that of a horse.
In following my path to wholeness, my inner prompting was to treat all parts of myself as I treated my horses. I love my horses. My horses have always been an open portal to higher dimensions, and when I am with them I feel grounded to the earth and open to the heavens.
Sage, my four-year-old palomino Gypsy/Quarter Horse cross, attended the clinic with me, and he was one of my teachers there. By nature, he is very sweet, inquisitive, innocent, and a bit precocious. Sage has never had trauma and shows up with an open mind and heart. Mostly, I learned that when I engaged with Sage with true embodied confidence and compassion, he would do anything I asked him to do. But I had to communicate clearly and use his language.
Horses are in constant communication with each other, but they do not use words. Horses embody their thoughts and emotions and use their bodies to communicate with each other. In some ways, their communication seems clearer and cleaner than that of humans. We use words that are often not congruent with our feelings. And when we communicate that way, it is ineffective with both horses and humans.
Sage taught me to whisper to him by being fully present, clear in my intent, and most of all, totally congruent to my own peaceful center of being. He let me be his leader because he trusted me, and he gave me his trust because I was trustworthy. We shared the slice of heaven connection that occurs when two lives communicate with trust and compassion.
My experience with Sage reminded me that my healing path really started when I started treating myself with the leadership and compassion I shared with my horses. As I was climbing out of the abyss of my inner fragmentation at multiple levels of being, I treated myself as I would a young colt I was training. I became patient and kind with myself. When I am training a colt, I reward any effort to move forward in the right direction. I decided that self-condemnation and self-criticism could not exist in my round corral of healing. When my PTSD was triggered, I treated myself like I would treat a young horse I was riding. I tried to keep from startling further or tightening up when my inner being bolted. I strived to keep myself calm and stroke my inner being 2with soothing energy, just like I would my horse. I told myself I was no longer in trauma. I was safe.
Just like training Sage, it took time for my inner being to shift when I whispered to my soul with kindness. It has been said that it takes at least twenty-one days for a human to change a habit. And I knew that Sage and all the young horses I have trained take a certain amount of time and repetition to learn and trust that they are not going to be hurt or asked to do something that will harm them. My soul and wounded parts seemed to be very similar to a young horse in training.
After going to the clinic and relearning what I already knew from my experience, I now know that we humans have a part of us that can rise to a higher consciousness and whisper to lead all our wounded parts home. I sometimes ponder that this leader in us is similar to Christ and is the true leader of our hearts. Just as Sage can immediately sense if I am congruent and whispering to him clearly from a point of compassionate leadership, my soul also knows whether it can trust the part of me that is leading. After my weekend with Sage, I want to be a better horse whisperer to have an ongoing enlightened partnership with him and all horses. Also, I want to be a better soul whisperer to provide loving leadership in drawing all parts of myself home to my heart. I truly believe that the best way for me to change the world around me is to follow my healing path and to embody as much wholeness as I can contain. And I believe that wholeness is mysticism minus the mystique. Wholeness is oneness with my divine pattern and my reason for being.
Together, let’s start a revolution for wholeness that starts at home inside us, and from that foundation let’s transform the outer world to be the place we dream of.