Last night in class my mentor suggested that the most effective change I could make about the way I interact with my horses is to develop Galahad’s gas pedal—his willingness to get up and MOVE when I ask him to. I have been getting better about it. Just this semester, something in me has clicked and suddenly I’m able to use my body language to move him, not just the whip or reed. That’s been enormously helpful.

So I can get him moving…but then, as is so clear from my class videos, I quit asking as soon as he moves away. I don’t follow through. As a result, Galahad has figured out that I won’t really ask him to go very far, and he doesn’t take me too seriously. The game, as far as he’s concerned, is to go away only as far as he absolutely has to. Then, almost immediately, he circles back. He loves games.

Well. Today I went out to spend some time hanging out with him in the pasture before his appointment with the vet for the annual “teeth-and-sheath” event. Unfortunately, I had treats in my pocket, and Mr. Nosy found them. He would not leave me alone. What a pest he was! So I realized I needed—wanted!—to send him off. “Great,” I thought. “I’ll practice!”

Ahem. I sent him off, and just like always, quit as soon as he got about 20 feet away. Yes, I know—I was going to be more insistent and follow through. SO hard to break old habits. And yup, sure enough, he came right back.

And just then—I could hardly believe the timing!—Charlie, the Bossman in the geldings pasture, decided to move Galahad’s friend Dancer off. And I mean, Charlie MOVED HIM OFF. Head snaking, teeth bared, full speed ahead: Dancer took off like his life depended on it (as it might have done). Charlie kept after him for fifty yards or so, then skidded to a stop like the good Quarter Horse he is. Then he stood there, watching Dancer continue to run. After a while, he started grazing.

I’m telling you, the timing was SO suspicious. I swear, Charlie was showing ME how to do the job! Point taken, Charlie my friend.

So I took off after Galahad, doing my best to emulate my “teacher.” Galahad was shocked! But he did run. I chased him a lot farther than usual, then stood there and glared at him. When he dropped his head to graze, still watching me, I finally turned away, but I did NOT back up.

A few minutes later, Galahad started walking back toward me, just like he always does. So I chased him off again! This time he went faster and stayed away a little longer, but he still came ambling back pretty quickly. One more time, I made him run away and stood there, daring him to come toward me.

Finally, he got the message. I waited quite a while, and he didn’t come back, didn’t look at me directly, just stood “over there” and ate grass.

When the time came to get him for his appointment, I walked over to him, greeted him, and walked away. He did NOT follow. Nope. He stood there looking at me, head down, waiting to see what I was going to do. Good boy! When I called him over, he hesitated a second, then came slowly over to me, dropped his head into the halter, and followed me quietly out of the pasture.

Wonder if I can remember Charlie’s example the next time? I will try. Because I have no doubt that Charlie will be watching.

Horses are such wonderful teachers!

I am so excited! After 2 1/2 months of no driving (pending cataract surgery), I’m finally getting close to resuming my normal schedule–and being able to spend time with my horses once again!

And–best of all–I can see very well indeed. Much better than I’ve been able to see for decades, and all without contact lenses or glasses. That feels like a miracle.

Wintertime is a good time to schedule such a lengthy “time off,” I suppose, given the number of days that it’s truly unpleasant to be at the barn. But I have missed my guys SO much! I managed to visit, usually only for a drive-by feeding, once or twice each week…but as any horse lover knows, that is NOT enough.

I have some ideas of new ways I want to work with them–Carolyn Resnick has great suggestions, both in her online classes and on her blog. But mostly, for the first few days, I just want to hang out with them–that’s what I’ve missed the most.

The weather for the next week is warm(ish) and sunny–perfect timing! I’ll let you know how it goes.

Woohoo!

[The photo of my gorgeous Galahad enjoying a snooze in the sun on a chilly January morning is by Jenni Faust.]

This was originally posted on my other blog, It’s an Alchemical Life. There’s nothing here that is specifically about horses, though the Mean Little Black Horse makes a cameo appearance. But it’s important, so I’m including it here.

As a graduation present when I defended my dissertation five years ago, I bought myself a harp. Always wanted a harp (…and a horse…but that’s another story).

Since then, I’ve noodled away at my harp, mostly in the evenings, on rainy days when I was alone in the house, or in the wee, quiet hours when sleep won’t come. No lessons, no sheet music, just me tinkling out a melody and figuring out by ear what other notes go it.

Last week, a harp string broke, and I’ve not taken time to get a new one; so when the mood struck me to play something last night, I had to turn to the piano.

That’s when the weirdness started.

Picking out the melody of one of my favorite tunes with my right hand, I found my left hand finding chords to go along, just like I’d been doing with the harp. Suddenly, I wasn’t thinking any more. No sheet music, no nothing—just me, playing. Playing the piano. Not hesitantly, like “normal,” and not thinking about it. Just playing. Confidently, and rather loudly—gasp! Who is this playing, and what has she done with that timid Miss Kay?

I kept this up for an hour or so, running through my repertoire of favorites. I’m not saying I suddenly can play the piano—it’s still very much playing AT the piano, believe me! But suddenly, something shifted and I “got” the connection between chords and melody in a way that’s never translated to the piano before in my entire life.

Astonishing. My musical friends will all laugh—it’s so obvious, of course, but for me it’s always been intellectual and didn’t translate into a KNOWING that I, kinesthetic as I am, could make sense of. All my life, I’d sit down at the piano and try to read music and play songs “just the way they were supposed to be,” and I could never do it—I could never do it exactly, never memorize it and spit it back. My fingers just wouldn’t cooperate. But suddenly, there it is. Music. Chords.

Now, you all know me, right? It’s not IN me to just say, “Oh, that was fun,” and let it go at that. Nope. Especially not with something so huge (to me, at least).

I feel the ice breaking. It’s not just this particular breakthrough, either.

For months I’ve felt a change coming. Ever since the Mean Little Black Horse Midnight broke his leg just over a year ago, my life has kind of fallen apart. Nursing him back to health over the winter forced me into relative inactivity. Just as he healed, pain in my jaw and an injury to my own knee forestalled my return to “normal life.” Then this fall, cataracts and the upcoming surgery to correct them meant I had to give up driving and a lot of my freedom.

Something, clearly, is incubating. But what?

Dear Reader, I still don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s coming…and soon. And the understanding is dawning.

As you know, I see life in metaphor:

There was a new freedom in my playing last night. I wasn’t in my head, trying to “play the right notes” or “read the music.” Instead, I just opened up to what my fingers actually know. My ego stepped away from center stage.

In the experience and in a metaphorical sense, it was like letting go of the rules that I have tried so hard to live by, in my life and in my playing. It was like opening up to not knowing what it is that I’m “supposed to do while I’m here in this life,” and allowing for the possibility that I am actually doing “what I am supposed to be doing while I’m here,” just by being who I am.

There’s a growing trust in the process of Life—I first remember hearing that phrase more than 20 years ago: “Trust the process.” And I have done that, much more over these last 20 years than I ever did before.

But the idea and the sense of relaxing into trust is new to me. It’s a letting-go—a realization that I never had any control over anything much anyway. There are always choices to be made, and each choice has consequences; but I never have had control in the sense that we like to think of it. And suddenly, I find myself just fine—happy, even—with that fact. I find myself being surprised at what happens each day, and being excited to see what’s coming next—it’s a very different way of looking at the world than I’m used to. I know that’s part of what’s going on.

The best part of all this? I am so full of joy! What the heck is this?! Creativity, love, freedom, all those wonderful things—just welling up inside. Wow….

Thank you, God. Freedom … freedom from fear, mostly, I think. And there’s love. Lots of love. And more to come!

I am so blessed!

Most of us have had dreams that were so intense and amazing that the images stay with us for years. These dreams, as well as waking images and experiences that share that same haunting quality, are often referred to as “numinous” in the Jungian sense. Numinous experiences are ineffable, spiritual, impossible to describe. They evoke a sense of awe, mystery, importance, and, often, fear. I experienced a numinous dream this past summer:

When I dropped off to sleep this evening, the movie “Jane Eyre” was playing in the background—so it’s no surprise that the dreamscape is the English countryside. There’s a centuries-old barn, and my Galahad is stabled there. I am with him in his stall. I don’t see him, but he moves his shoulder nearer to me and I feel his breath on my face and hands as he breathes me in. Then I’m outside. I look up and see a vine hanging down. It’s got delicate, dark green leaves and tiny purple flowers—very beautiful. It’s just hanging from the sky, and as I follow it up with my eyes, it becomes clearer, and I can see that it goes up forever. I wonder if it will fall if I pull on it, but it doesn’t. Then I wonder if I can climb it—so I try, and the vine easily and naturally hugs my foot and leg to help me. I start to climb up, knowing I will be able to climb as high as I would like! Then I remember sweet Galahad and his warm physicality, and I hop down off the vine. Very strange—but lovely, warm., satisfying….

A few days later, I figured out why the dream felt so “familiar” to me—I remembered another hugely important dream from more than a decade ago, at a time when I was casting about for the next step in my life journey:

I am coming out, it seems, from “underground,” somewhere I’ve been with friends, perhaps a restaurant. I walk out into the edge of the woods along a road. My attention is caught by the early morning sun slanting through and illuminating the mist in shimmering patches rising from the ground. I move closer, spellbound. Each tiny hair on each fuzzy leaf is so clear, the drops of mist so sharp—I can see it all, feel it all. I am awestruck and I realize that I am one of the few who can see such things, or see that way. I look up and find myself at the base of a mighty tree—tall, so tall I can’t see the top, and huge. It is split into two huge trunks; lichens and other strange plants have taken root here and there. I can see it all with such clarity, and can feel the bark beneath my fingers. I look up and up, becoming more breathless and awestruck with each second. It occurs to me that I could climb that tree—all I have to do is scamper up it like a squirrel! I can actually feel my tiny claws gripping the bark as I go up a few feet, but I am afraid. Awe and yearning well up in me and I can’t move, only look and cry out to the Being I call Grandmother for help: “What does this mean?” I wake slowly, reluctant to let the vision go.

These two dreams seem to mark stages in my understanding of my Soul’s path in this lifetime. The “Tree of Life” dream is the most powerful and numinous that I have ever had. At the time, it helped me to begin to realize both the fear-filled paralysis I was suffering as I tried to figure out what to do with my life after a layoff from my career as a research botanist. It also brought to my attention the gifts I have been granted, as one who can move relatively freely between the imaginal and the waking worlds. In the “Galahad and the Beanstalk” dream, the dream-I is curious about the beautiful celestial vine, and I begin to climb it without fear—I know that “I will be able to climb as far as I would like!” As in the first dream, though, I stop before going very far. But this time is very different: I stop not from fear but from love of my horse, and a deep knowledge that my path lies not in “heaven” (in my personal symbology, heaven represents the refined, spiritual, “mental” plane) but in the world, in connection with Nature and Horse. My path leads not upward toward Spirit and Samadhi, but downward and inward toward the deeper, embodied, feminine knowing of Soul. In the months since the “beanstalk” dream, I have become more certain of its message, and of the rightness of the direction it suggests. My soul craves not the denial of or escape from my embodied state, but the full embrace of embodiment, of deep connection with the Earth and all her creatures. This sense hints at a darker, moister, more “feminine” path; and yet it is not “passive and receptive,” as the Feminine is so often defined. But what might this mean? Exploration of the Feminine (in Jung’s sense) through interaction with my horses feels right to me: My interaction with them, and the community I’ve found since beginning my work with them, calls to the depths of my being. So even though I still can’t see more than a step or two ahead, I will trust and follow where my soul leads! Cross-posted on It’s an Alchemical Life.

It’s been nearly four months since I posted on either of my blogs. The reason, it seems, is that Midnight’s injury and long recovery took more out of me than I realized. A cold that started the day after Christmas kept lingering, and a bout with the flu in late January knocked me out for a couple of weeks. The cough lingered for most of February and triggered the pain in my tongue and jaw, which had been manageable up until then…. It got so bad that I went about six weeks in late February and March without a single full night’s sleep. That, friends, was NOT fun.

It felt like I “fell apart” right after Midnight’s condition improved to the point where we were no longer worried about his survival. I guess that at some level my body figured it was safe to let go the terrible focus and tension that had kept me pushing through that bitter winter, tending to him every day, and often twice or more each day. I’m no spring chicken, after all.

Anyway. It’s now nearly June and both I and Midnight are doing pretty darn well. Midders may never be quite as spry as he once was, but he’s loving his life! He’s able to walk, trot, and even canter when he feels like it, and he races the food wagon to his stall most days, twice a day. He’s always eager for a walk or a meal, and has gained weight despite the stress of these last few months.

As for me, I’m back to sleeping at night, worrying a whole lot less, and yes, I’m loving my life, too. I’m finally able to take clients again, and am looking forward to some exciting developments for the Alchemical Horse! Stay tuned!

This entry is just an explanation of this long silence, and a promise of posts to come on a much more regular basis. Thanks, readers, for checking in! I’ll talk with you soon!

(Cross-posted on It’s An Alchemical Life)

There have been so many wonderful, memorable incidents during Midnight’s adventure–too many to list in one post, for sure! Here’s one of my personal favorites:

Midnight and Galahad

When Midnight was first allowed to walk around the ranch, what he wanted most of all to do was see and converse with other horses. All up and down the lane, he stopped to check in with his neighbors.

He stopped for a long time near the pasture, across the fence from the hay bale where all the geldings hang out. It wasn’t long before the boys came over to say hi.

I was so touched by the greeting Midders had for his old friend Galahad. Here’s the video. This greeting went on for many minutes, and what was so surprising and memorable was Galahad’s response. My big boy is usually playful and boisterous, and a very lively game of bite-face (usually followed by run-and-chase) is his favorite pastime. But on this afternoon, with Midnight, he was so gentle and loving that my heart just melted.

It didn’t end there. I sent the video link to a friend of mine, who showed her 18-month-old daughter the video. The next day I received this email:

“Thanks for sharing. Midnight looks amazing! I was showing the video to Marcie because she loves horses. During the part where Midnight is kissing Galahad she leaned in and kissed the screen of my phone. Too cute!”

I totally agree.

Midnight’s injury and recovery has been a real challenge, but it’s also been a time of great personal growth. Throughout the process, I’ve experienced synchronicities and events that seem pretty clearly to reflect Guidance. These signs have kept me going when things got rough, and now, as we move into the rehabilitation phase of Midnight’s healing process and I have the luxury of time and a little distance, I can begin to examine them more closely.

If you’re interested, you can read more about my process and the inner work that I’m doing on my other blog, It’s an Alchemical Life, which deals not just with horses but with pretty much all aspects of my experience. I invite you to explore with me.

You can reach the blog from here or from the link on the banner above. Enjoy!

Midnight continues to improve. He’s doing so well that he’s now allowed to stay outside all day in the part of his paddock that we’ve fenced off for him. The other morning, when the door to his run was opened, he came out bucking—good boy, Midders!

Midnight has a huge, valiant heart. That optimistic little horse never gives up! He loves his life, he loves his people, and he enjoys every day that dawns. If ever there was a horse who could overcome a broken leg, Midnight is that horse.

I’m also certain that the prayers, positive thoughts, and healing energy that his huge circle of online friends sent him were instrumental in his remarkable recovery. There’s a specific and important way that I asked them for their help. It’s a concept that’s tough to put into words, but here’s my best shot:

Midnight’s owners and I, along with Dr. H. and a few others, knew the details of Midnight’s accident and his condition. Statistically speaking, a horse with a broken leg doesn’t have much chance of recovery. That’s “common knowledge…” but we were willing to give him a chance to beat the odds.

We all knew exactly what was going on with the little guy. But publicly, when asking for help, I always posted things in a positive way. I would say, “Midnight needs all of his friends to send positive, healing energy and prayers. And as you do that, here’s the image I’d like for you to focus on.” Then I would add pre-accident photos of him and say, “Visualize his whole, perfect, beautiful legs.”

There’s also the video (here) of him racing in for his dinner a couple of years back, demonstrating his wonderful energy and optimistic nature. Again, I’d ask people to focus on his beautiful, perfect self, and to notice his vitality. I never publicly mentioned the very real dangers of his condition, or the sores that developed halfway through the process.

Some folks have suggested that by doing it this way, I was denying reality or engaging in some kind of magical thinking. Not so. All of us dealing with him every day—and in fact, anyone who knows very much about horses—were keenly aware of the dangers of his condition and the statistically probable outcome. But that’s not where I wanted energy to focus.

Was it magical thinking? Was I just saying to myself, “If I want it badly enough and wish hard enough, then surely it will happen just this way!” No. Denying the existing situation, or refusing to see and acknowledge the range of possible outcomes would be delusional.

So how does this differ?

It’s not a question of denying any possible outcome. Rather, I simply wanted to focus on the possibility of healing and on the outcome that we wanted to have happen. I did NOT say, “Oh, he’s doing great and there’s nothing wrong with his leg.”

More and more people are beginning to understand that we create our own reality, and that where we put our energy and our thoughts is vitally important in the way our lives unfold. Personally, I’ve come to this understanding over the past couple of decades and have seen the truth of it in my own life. It’s a huge and difficult topic, and throughout recorded history, greater minds than mine have written extensively about this fact of existence. One recent book that explains it pretty clearly is Greg Braden’s The Divine Matrix. That’s a good starting point, IMO.

Just before Midnight’s accident, I saw a post by John Edward (whom I’ve followed for years) in which he said, basically, “Don’t post anything negative on facebook.” His reason? You don’t want to attract the negative energy that such a post generates.

For instance, if you happen to have a headache one morning and you post “Oh, I have such a headache,” you and all your friends who see that post will focus on the discomfort—and all their loving and caring energy goes toward the fact that your head hurts.

Instead, he suggested, post something like, “I’m looking forward to feeling really great today!” You’re not denying the headache; you’re just choosing to focus YOUR energy on the outcome you would like: feeling better. Those same loving friends who see that post will smile and visualize you feeling wonderful. The energy of their affection goes into that, not into the pain.

That made so much sense to me that when Midders needed healing prayers, I decided to post specifically what I wanted people to focus on: the possibility of his healing, and the reality of his essential wholeness and vitality. So that’s what I posted, every day.

There’s a VERY fine line between positive focus (focusing on the outcome that you desire) and denial (refusing to acknowledge possible outcomes you do NOT want). It’s tough to keep the balance in our own minds, but it is possible. In the case of what we share publicly, it’s easier to control where the energy goes.

Some of my friends who are themselves healers understood. One in particular shared that video on her own page, without comment, so that all of her friends could watch it and say to themselves, “Look at that beautiful horse! Look at his energy—look at how well he runs!” More positive reinforcement of the energy—even from folks who don’t know Midnight at all.

A friend of mine (one of the “inner circle” who knew the physical situation) asked, “Why post something from the past, knowing that he won’t ever be that youngster again? He’s 28!” The practical answer was that I didn’t have anything more recent that would show the energy I wanted to convey.

But the deeper answer is that I wanted to allow the greatest possible recovery for him. I didn’t want to add limits or restrictions. In my mind, I focused on wholeness and health, and always added “…whatever that may look like for him.”

I think the key word is “allowing”. You allow for the fact that there are many possibilities, including the possibility of wholeness, whatever that looks like for Midnight at the moment. I was consciously NOT deluding myself—not using the kind of magical thinking that says, “If I wish hard enough for it, it will happen.” I wasn’t trying to “control the form.” Rather, I am putting an intention out—I intend for him to be whole and healthy and strong…whatever that may look like for him.

And so far, it’s working out just fine! Good boy, Midnight!