She said “There sure is a lot of sad stuff going on with horses”

I had an email this morning from Kathy who talked about her heart hurting when she was watching a video of a horse getting pulled around in a jumping arena.  The horse was playing up, the owner was getting more frustrated, losing their seat and that in turn made the situation in the horse’s mouth even worse.  The pain was getting worse, so the horse was complaining bigger.  It was an ugly looking situation deteriorating rapidly.

So is it Kathy’s job to fix it?  And what about me – I have more power with this blog and website – is it MY job to fix it?

To answer that question I’m going to have to talk about what I believe in, but I don’t expect for you to believe in MY Truth.  I love to encourage people to find their own Truth, because I’ve found that no matter how my beliefs might appeal to you intellectually, finding what you believe in, with a deep to your bones sense of rightness, is the only thing that will sustain you with a foundation of certainty when the crap hits the fan in your own life.

Anyway… Here’s how I see sad things like the video and the horrible photo I’ve picked out to go with this article.

1.  I sat for a moment and honored the horse and what it was going through to bring change to that girl’s life.

2.  I felt compassion for the rider (I don’t always, sometimes I have to work at it.) In this case I felt compassion for the rider because I’ve experienced the kind of lack of knowledge and skills that has such crappy things happening and if we don’t get in her way, then I expect she’ll continue on her journey to get better results with horses too.

3.  I think again about the kind of world I want to live in, where kindness to animals is the norm, where the skills this girl needs are easily found and become normal in the horse world, where the sentience and incredible wisdom of the horse is acknowledged and respected.

4.  I make sure that the vision of what I want feels good.  If it doesn’t feel good, then my vision wants thinking about and changing.  If it doesn’t feel good, there’s no point in going forwards with it, cos’ it’s doomed to cause me to struggle needlessly.  So this “feel good thing” right at the beginning is important.  And a shared vision, that’s a big deal too.  If a whole heap of people share a feel good vision and are working on ourselves to achieve this vision, then there’s nothing we can’t achieve.  Pause on that for a moment, because that is an incredibly big deal right there…

5.  Then I follow my Feel, the same Feel that horses have taught me that gets such good results with them.  I follow that Inner Guidance system to know when it’s time for ME to play my part and contribute to all the threads that will bring about that change.  See… the world doesn’t rest on MY shoulders, or on Kathy’s or on yours either.  There are a million threads – maybe many millions of threads – that need to pull together to produce that change and each of us has our own part to play, our own thread to contribute to the weaving of this wonderful goal.

But do you get it?  I can’t contribute Kathy’s thread to this, or yours, or even the girl on that abused horse, I can only contribute my own threads to the overall picture.

So what is my contribution?  How do I know what I need to do and when?

Practicing Feel for our horse, getting good it and applying that same inner guidance to the rest of our lives – THAT tells me what I need to do to make MY contribution  to this vision and to produce the kind of results we’re looking for and that brings me great peace and I don’t get stuck in sadness and despair watching this girl and her horse. If I feel crappy watching someone else do something, then it’s MY guidance system at work, looking for MY contribution to change – so what is that?  Does that make sense?

6.  And here’s the biggie…  Every time I watch something, see something, read something that DOESN’T fit with that vision, that shared vision that feels so good to think about – then it’s another opportunity to sit with that vision in my head, feel the feel good feelings around it and watch the energy of that flow out into the world, doing beautiful things on the way.

THIS is the kind of strength and power of what I was talking about in the last blog, when I talked about a sisterhood of spiritual warriors working with strength and cohesiveness and shared values.

And that brings me full circle back to gratitude – we are so blessed to have the wisdom of horses in our lives, aren’t we?

Comments

What part of this resonated most for you? I’d love you to drop your answer in the comments section.

Today’s photo:  I took this at a campdraft event, about 14 years ago.  It’s a good photo to practice being a spiritual warrior with:

1. Honour the horse
2. Compassion for where the rider is at in their horsemanship and their lives
3. What change am I looking for?
4. Does my vision of change feel good?
5. What’s MY contribution to this vision?
6.  And biggest of all – what do you believe in about this process of change?  What’s YOUR Truth?