In the last lesson, we talked about how we can feel our horse’s feelings as clearly as if they are our own and that’s not the province of psychics or specially gifted people. We ALL have our way of experiencing that connection and we’re going to explore our own uniqueness of that Feel in upcoming lessons.
Today, I want to introduce you to the Magic Questions. I no longer need to ask myself these – they’ve become second nature and I have a gentle open flowing awareness of them all the time.
The Magic Questions
If you prefer to read rather than listen, you’ll find the written version below.
This is a BIIGG lesson. Not big as in size but BIG in impact. You might like to take this out to your horse and breathe with them for a while on this, as you explore the truth of The Magic Questions for your own self.
You can also switch back to this page to read along with the audio, if that suits your learning style best.
WRITTEN VERSION OF THE AUDIO
I expect you’ve heard me say it by now and you’ll certainly hear me say it many more times. We ALL have our natural talent for Feel.
Usually we have just one or more Feels that are more noticeable than others. In my case Mental Feel was the strongest, which meant my horse Bobby communicating with me with thoughts and ideas – which was how we wrote Bobby’s Diaries – all those thoughts and ideas got written down in my little notebooks every time we were together, and that eventually became his book.
See, some of you are going to be going “what the? Is she weird or something thinking her horse is talking to her?” And that’s because Mental Feel isn’t your thing. You might be feeling the physical tension and even aches and pains of Physical Feel as your strength or you might be feeling your horse’s fear with your Emotional Feel. I’ve often thought that if people could just understand how very differently other people experience their Feel for others, that we’d solve most of the problems in the world – in fact we WOULD solve most of the problems in the world.
Certainly we’d solve that whole “I am not enough – not smart enough, strong enough, clever enough, loveable enough” – insert any word that fits here – that comes from not noticing the incredible and utterly unique gift that we ALL have inside us.
You’ll be turning off the vacuum cleaner
As your mind gets quieter throughout the practice with your horse, you’re going to be developing the ability to turn off the vacuum cleaner that I keep talking about and start noticing more clearly how YOU feel your Feel.
Some of the feelings are yours – they’ll be your inner guidance system at work for YOU – guiding you to what you need to know or do in your OWN life.
But it’s a simple fact that the feelings you’ve been experiencing all your life are not all yours.
No doubt we’ve quietly and unconsciously flowed with the knowing of what someone else was feeling or what someone else needed. There may have been times when we knew what our horse was feeling and just knew what they needed – but bringing this to our conscious minds and expanding on it – THAT brings us to a whole new level of horsemanship.
When we didn’t understand the natural connectedness of all of us, it was natural to ASSUME that the tension or restriction of breathing that you’re feeling is yours, to assume that the anxiety or fear is yours, to assume that the aches and pains are yours, to assume that the explosive stuck energy is yours, to assume that the worries are yours.
But they’re not all your feelings
I developed what I call the Magic Questions to remind us of that:
- Whose is it?
- What do I need to know or do about it?
- Has it all gone yet?
I’m going to keep this to horses for the time being, although you’ll very quickly figure out that the same thing applies to your Feel for people as well as horses.
1. Whose fear, anxiety, anger, frustration is it? Yours or your horse’s,? Whose worry is it? Whose tension and tightness of breath is it? Whose aches and pains are they? Whose anguish is it? Whose uncomfortably stuck even explosive energy is it? When you get the answer, the feeling will either noticeably reduce or disappear altogether. And yes Feel is THAT simple. It takes practice to notice it and you’ll no doubt fine tune it with that practice, but it IS that simple.
2. What do I need to know or do about it? Sometimes it’s something you need to know, sometimes it’s something you need to do and you need to take some kind of action. Let’s talk about fear and anxiety as just one example. Where is the safety that this fear is guiding me to? Or what do I need to know to help this horse feel safe? What action do I need to take to help this horse feel safe? What is this feeling guiding me to?
3. Has it all gone yet? Most people are willing to settle for feeling BETTER than they did before, when if you’re still feeling anything less than feeling good, then there is still something else to know or do. This question is there because for so many of us, we’ve been so used to a low grade feeling of feeling crappy from that vacuum cleaner going, that we need to be reminded to STAY OPEN to the first two questions until we’ve understood all the layers of what’s going on and feel really good – like Dawn was bubbling in happiness 8 minutes into her lesson in the Kingdom video.
This will only feel complicated if it takes you out of your own Feel. Your own Feel is simple. You’ll find it familiar and there will be an ease in using it when you focus on YOUR uniqueness and what’s inside of YOU.
The intensity of your feelings does not make them yours
Now here’s the thing. I can tell you right now, because everyone I’ve worked with has fallen into the same trap. The INTENSITY with which you experience your feelings DOES NOT MAKE IT YOURS. The intensity comes from not listening, which intensifies the feelings. The more we ignore our feelings, the more we bury them, the more we suppress them, the more intense they get. VAST amounts of the feelings we buried which have been causing us all kinds of physical and emotional problems, AREN’T EVEN OURS.
And when you understand whose it is and what you need to know or do about it, pffttt the fear, anxiety, anger, frustration, worrying thoughts, tension, aches and pains, anguish, uncomfortably stuck even explosive energy – pffftt – it’s gone.
And yes it IS that easy.
You’re in for a treat at how fast we can be feeling better and you extra sensitive people, wow it will be like ten tons comes off you.
I do it more easily these days
Way back when I first developed these questions, I used to try waayyy too hard to get the answers. You’ll be learning in your Quiet Mind lessons, that trying too hard is the single biggest thing that gets in the way.
These days it’s just an automatic flow of awareness of whether what I’m feeling is mine or a horse’s, mine or someone else’s.
A path that suits you
You’ll find a path that suits you. Maybe in the beginning, you’ll need to remind yourself with the Magic Questions every time you notice ALL your feelings – emotions, worries, tension, stuck energy. Maybe you’ll need to actually ask yourself the questions, get the answers and the validation that will come from feeling those feelings just drop away.
Or maybe you’ll be able to skip straight to the feel good stuff (we’re going to talk more about that in the next lesson) and just hold an open-ness, an automatic awareness of the possibility of who and what your feelings are for and what they’re telling you and what they’re guiding you to.
And every variation in between.
The big deal though, as you move forward into your meditations and exercises with your horse, is to be open to the idea that these feelings might actually be what your horse is feeling. And as your horse gets used to you listening, you’ll even find them deliberately communicating with you in a way that suits you and suits them.
Is it true or not?
It’s like I was talking about in the Messages of the Emotions lesson. What I’m telling you can only ever be inspiration. Now you have to go out with your horse and notice if what I’m telling you is true or not. You have to find your own Truth, so that it’s easy for you to follow it.
Are ALL these feelings – not just the emotions, but the tension, aches and pains, the worrying thoughts, the anguish, the uncomfortably stuck even explosive energy – are ALL these feelings “just” messages from your Inner Guidance system?
Are they REALLY sometimes yours and when you’re with your horse, sometimes theirs?
Are they REALLY guiding you AWAY from what’s not useful and TOWARDS what you’re looking for?
If it’s true, then noticing and exploring your feelings could become a whole new journey of enjoyment, opening up all kinds of avenues of communication between you and your horse.
Because if it’s true, you and your horse’s life might just have changed forever.