Sentient Times Dec 07/Jan 08

Horses have consented to partner with humans for millennia—for work,
competition, and sport. Today, they are taking on a new evolutionary
role with mankind as a new global consciousness emerges that
requires us to respond to unprecedented challenges. They can
take us back to who and what we really are—a place where
we can source the creativity we need for building a new future.

For the past 80 years in the US, people with a wide variety of disabilities have explored new horizons from the back of a horse. People in wheelchairs have learned to walk because the complex motion of their horses stimulated their nerves and muscles in the same complex rhythmic pattern of walking. Children not speaking by the age of four or five experience from that same motion the needed neurological integration for their first spoken sentences. Individuals with autism connect with a horse as a first step for more connection with others in their environment. This is the world of therapeutic riding and miracle stories abound in the barns and riding arenas of programs all across the world.

In the past ten years, a new aspect of this work with horses has emerged. Psychotherapists and edu-cators have discovered the unparalleled benefits that horses bring to the hearts and minds of people seeking to live their lives out of a deeper aspect of themselves. A psychotherapist working with adolescents who have committed homicide utilizes work with horses for their remarkable skill in mirroring the teens’ behavior for therapeutic interventions. A consultant in leadership development often takes corporate teams to a nearby horse facility for developing teamwork and leadership skills. Therapeutic riding instructors who previously had focused on their students’ physical issues are now addressing emotional and spiritual issues as well.

In all of these instances, people are coming to honor the sentient nature of the special horses who work in these settings as skillful and important members of the professional team. Instead of a tool utilized by the instructor, therapist or consultant, horses are increasingly emerging as beings who contribute significant insights for healing interactions. This talent stems from their birthright of exquisite sensitivity to very subtle energy in their environment, necessary for their survival as prey animals. Horses are experts, for instance, at detecting when a person is distracted by something that has preceded their arrival at the barn, often when the person is not even consciously aware of their state of dissonance. Or they pick up and respond to hidden feelings like fear or anger that is typically not acknowledged in most social situations.

When people engage in partnership with a horse with the intention of exploring these subtle talents, they have the opportunity to develop new aspects of themselves. They can develop a broader palette of communication skills and learn new approaches to utilizing power for collaborative, more effective outcomes.

These benefits of the horse-human connection are not limited to people with disabilities or mental illnesses. They address some of the problematic conditions of modern life that we all confront. Often in today’s world that emphasizes competition, action and outcome, people become disconnected from who and what they really are. They may experience, for example, a sense of self-betrayal by an affluent American lifestyle. They leave their homes early to return late after a long daily commute, their communities resembling ghost towns during the day. These men and women lock themselves into jobs that pay their ever-escalating expenses but ignore the niggling desire to engage in the deeper journey that calls them to live a deeper story. Instead, many women take antidepressants, depending on their psychiatrists for emotional stability, while many men suffer other ailments. Yet, affluence continues to have a hold on their imaginations, fed by the media’s encouragement of the acquisitive lifestyle. Stepping into any other lifestyle feels like failure by the standards of our culture. People feel caught between the promise of happiness in buying more, and the fear of failure, a place where a sense of desperation quietly tightens its firm grip on their health and their lives. They know that something is wrong but they do not know what to do about it. The story out of which they live their lives has become outmoded. Knowing that they were called to some adventure long ago and lost their way, they are stuck in the cultural trance of our times, living a story where they set forth with high intentions for life, only to find that the way has been lost.

People in these kinds of situations increasingly are finding their way to horses where they find that they can reclaim their larger story through a potent connection to their own creative sources. Whether it is through the local riding stable, a friend’s pasture, a psychotherapy session, or volunteer work at a therapeutic riding program, they find a profoundly restorative aspect of their lives emerging. These people are not interested in entering the world of horse show competition. Rather, they are seeking a new perspective on their lives that returns them to places of deep sourcing within, where they can recognize the larger story of their lives begging to be lived.

Partly because horses are associated in our imaginations with heroic tales, just by being in their presence, we step into our own larger, mythic lives however briefly. When we pay attention to the innate wonder and excitement that we experience with a horse and allow those seeds to grow in our imaginations, the daily struggles of our day to day life become part of the grand drama of our deeper story, our own heroic journey, so to speak, where we have the leading role. Horses become important partners and companions on the journey, keeping us in touch with our mythic selves. They do this through their particular talents in sensitive, subtle interaction, offering us a more intimate connection with the deeper story of our mythic lives. We can learn skills of compassionate, sensitive communication and other intuitive skills by developing the same attunement to subtle energies that horses demonstrate so well. When we take on the challenges of working in partnership with another species like a horse, we can learn new skills for working in other challenging partnerships and in situations of power. We find that horses evoke our own life writ large, connected to generative sources of creativity within.

From that place we have the tools to address not only the problems of our own lives but also the core issues that surround global problems, like fear, shame, death, and denial. From our deeper story we can more effectively develop action addressing world problems like global warming and HIV/AIDS. Many of those engaged in leadership development on a global scale, like Jean Houston in her social artistry work and Monica Sharma of the United Nations, advocate the necessity of enabling people to connect to their creative, generative core self when working cooperatively in their countries to solve complex, global problems. Programs and initiatives that are based on anything else, such as an activist dedication to solving problems, have consistently failed. Rather, leading people to their commonality that goes beyond religious, cultural, and political differences, allows them to create programs of much greater success.

Horses have consented to partner with humans for millennia—for work, competition, and sport. Today, they are taking on a new evolutionary role with mankind as a new global consciousness emerges that requires us to respond to unprecedented challenges. They take us back to who and what we really are—a place where we can source the creativity we need for building a new future.

Returning to the wisdom of the body—especially by connecting with horses, which charges the process with mythic implications—can lead us to a deeper calling to significant work in the world as global citizens. It is a calling that arises from the body when we attune to its deeper rhythms, allowing them to lead us to our mythic lives. This process can trigger such a powerful awakening experience that individuals are propelled onto the mystical path, where union with reality becomes an artistic process. What was once the provenance of a few has now become the experience of many.

Historically, mystical experience has arisen in times of radical social upheaval and change. Consider St. Francis, who, as a young man, was imprisoned during fighting with the nobles of Perugia, experienced a severe illness while jailed, and was later ravaged by visions that led him to eventually build his own holy order of the church. We are surrounded now with such turbulent historical events that sufficient wounding is forcing us to find new coping strategies. Centuries-held convictions crashing down and traditional ways deconstructing invite a deeper spirit to arise in mystical forms that allow us to take on an inner spaciousness. We are suddenly knocked off course, and start engaging with a new level of radiance, focus, and vitality. Some have said that such times are the single greatest accelerator of human evolutionary growth. Jean Houston describes it this way:

“A huge switch in consciousness occurs, which you are not prepared for. You are suddenly outside of the three dimensions. You feel like you are in a larger, ubiquitous universe, and you’ve shifted into depth consciousness. Everything is interrelated, founded on truth and beauty, part of a holy perfection. Normal time—past, present, and future—is a surface veneer, like special laws within the larger laws of time. Mindfulness is intense. You are alert to everything: the sunset, emotions between self and others. You move beyond a half-awake state to a new state, startling in its vividness. You say, ‘What planet have I arrived upon? I will no longer live in my previous diminished existence.’ It brings ideas, plans, and the easy momentum to go out and do it. There’s a recruitment of more brain function, and it sends out a frequency that invites you to move into quantum mind. You welcome the blossoming of springtime in your life, whose breezes blow away the outworn winter of old forms. This is a natural ability that we all have, a natural function of our mind-brain system, part of the equipment we all have but latent in so many. We are being forced to cook on more burners now, to open ourselves to these latent abilities.”

When any of us assents to ride into the mythic life, to do so effectively we need to join with others. As the community strength of the church has diminished, other kinds of supportive communities have arisen to meet the need, sometimes called teaching-learning communities. A large group is not necessarily required for this. As Margaret Mead is famous for noting, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Weekend workshops and periodic teleconferencing abound for joining with like-minded others. In many communities there are numerous writers’ groups, book groups, therapy groups, dream groups, and men’s or women’s groups for individuals to support one another’s efforts to make changes in their lives and in the world.

The Millionth Circle Initiative, founded by Jean Shinoda Bolen, encourages people to gather for any of a multitude of purposes to “encourage connection and cooperation among their members and inspire compassionate solutions to individual, community, and world problems.” The millionth circle refers to the circle whose formation tips the scales, shifting planetary consciousness for the better. The phrase was inspired by the Hundredth Monkey Effect, a parable that has sustained social activists to continue their efforts when conventional wisdom has said that nothing (certainly not ordinary people) could deter negative forces such as the nuclear arms race between the superpowers or war efforts in other countries. In this phenomenon, once a critical number is reached, a particular learned behavior spreads instantaneously from one group of animals to all related animals in the region or the world. In India I heard the story that a few monkeys in southern India began to learn to pry the foil tops from milk bottles that sat on doorsteps after morning deliveries. Within a few weeks, monkeys in the entire region had learned this behavior, and once it reached a critical mass, monkeys in other parts of the continent, and even in other countries, suddenly had learned to pry the foil tops from milk bottles.

As Rupert Sheldrake posited, this phenomenon points to morphic fields of resonance strengthened by behavior until they reach a critical mass:

“The morphic fields of social groups connect together members of the group even when they are many miles apart, and provide channels of communication through which organisms can stay in touch at a distance. They help provide an explanation for telepathy. There is now good evidence that many species of animals are telepathic, and telepathy seems to be a normal means of animal communication ...Telepathy is normal, not paranormal, natural not supernatural, and is also common between people, especially people who know each other well.”

Thus, when we join together with others for a common purpose, our actions and intentions have a reach far beyond the immediate circle of our company. In Sheldrake’s terms we empower overarching morphic resonance fields, which I understand to be an aspect of the mythic patterns that we step into when we join with others in daring to live our larger lives.

As we have seen, horses are part of that company and offer their own special talents for becoming our mythic partners. They teach us skills of compassion and intuition as we ride into discovering our own unique stories of grand proportions. Together, we create a new morphic field. In the process, the horses taking part in this work grow into new evolutionary roles as teachers and healers. That’s why physical therapists, occupational therapists, expressive-arts therapists, and psychotherapists, along with special-education teachers, corporate coaches, and other educators, enlist the talents of horses in every major city in Europe and the United States. Many of these practitioners incorporate other animals into their practices as well, building various kinds of cross-species communities for the benefit of their clients. They are creating a new morphic field, a new community that joins with others for building a new world.

Linda Kohanov detailed her own transformational journey with horses in The Tao of Equus, in which horses led her, and others gathered around her, on a path of awareness and healing. In discovering that horses are intensely emotional, intuitive, and intelligent beings, she found that they are also teachers because of their extraordinary ability to awaken intuition in humans while mirroring the authentic feelings that people often try to hide. At the Epona Center she has gathered people around her who recognize the importance of this work for themselves and others and are dedicated to sharing the work through workshops and training programs that have drawn hundreds of people over the past several years. She writes:

“I have noticed a definite strengthening of the morphogenetic field regarding people’s acceptance of deep soul work with horses. The community growing around Epona is filled with people who are interested in strengthening their ability to move between the worlds, between humanity and nature, consensual reality and mythic reality, between grounded experiences in the here and now with horses and spontaneous visionary experiences, as well as more formal shamanic journey and ritual/ceremonial sessions.”

Years ago Joanna Macy and John Seed developed a ritual experience that has enabled hundreds of groups to evolve into global citizens, whose primary community includes both people and animals. Macy and Seed embraced the term “deep ecology” as a key to the change needed in our world, especially in the face of radical alienation from the air, water, and soil, as reflected in the shredding of natural systems in the name of economic development.

Although it is true that not many people nowadays believe that the Earth was created a few thousand years ago by an old man with a white beard as a stage for the human drama to unfold; nonetheless, this attitude permeates all aspects of our society, our language, our very psyche. Growing up in a culture permeated with this arrogant view of ourselves, we are isolated, separated from nature. As long as we maintain a self-image created in the matrix of such views, a shrunken and illusory sense of self that doesn’t include the air and water and soil, we experience nature as outside our self and fail to recognize that the nature out there and the nature “in here” are one and the same. Moreover, we can’t think our way out of this mess—the attitudes and habits are far too deep rooted.

Recognizing that it was the denial of feelings that maintained the status quo, Macy and Seed developed the Council of All Beings, a series of processes that enables us to deeply experience our connection with nature, in our hearts and bodies. They recognized that all indigenous cultures, such as those of Good Lifeways Woman and the aboriginals of Australia, conducted rituals from a central role in their societies that affirmed and nurtured the sense of interconnectedness between people and nature. Together, Macy and Seed created a ritual that, first, encourages people to feel the pain of the earth in a safe place where the pain can be acknowledged, plumbed, and released. Second, people are guided to remember their rootedness in nature through music, dance, and other activities. Third, they are given the opportunity to be chosen for a time by an animal or plant ally in the natural world, to make a mask of that ally, and then to speak for the voiceless ones. Many participants in this work have discovered that “alignment with our larger identity clarifies, dignifies, and heals our personal conflicts. We see that the pain of the earth is our own pain, and the fate of the earth is our own fate. The Council of All Beings empowers us to act on behalf of the earth, and gives us clarity and direction for this work. In the same fashion, it clarifies and orders our patterns of consumption, our needs for intimacy and support, our priorities for action.”

I have found such experiences of deep ecology with a horse to be especially powerful for people because horses partner with our mythic selves. Horses are especially suited for ushering us into the Council of All Beings, for being ambassadors for our global citizenship. In her work, The Eye of the Horse, Melissa Shandley builds entire workshops around mask making as a way to walk in the shoes of another being, the horse. These masks especially emphasize the unique visual attributes of horses resulting from their eye placement at the sides of the head, creating a blind spot in front of the horse’s visual field and a correlated broader peripheral field to each side. Melissa involves people in the creative process of building a horse mask and then wearing it to evoke a shift from their habituated ways into standing at a portal for new information, more somatic information than most people acknowledge. Participants have the chance to see themselves as the horse sees them. Melissa elaborates, “As they deepen their bond with a particular horse or with horses in general, they find that they shift into perceiving on a core level. In addition to receiving intellectual and emotional information, they are able to shift their behavior because their point of reference for daily decisions is rooted in a broader perspective.”

Horses partner with us to ride into our lives with power, grace, and beauty, offering their mythic talents to teach us greater compassion for all sentient life and to allow new or forgotten aspects of ourselves to emerge for the benefit of building a brave new world of the future. With horses as our companions, we can ride into that world with the extended power of our mythic lives, experiencing the journey with greater joy, trusting our intuition, claiming our capacity for wise leadership, and stepping into our greater life.

Patricia Broersma is president-elect of the Equine Facilitated Mental Health Association, a section of the North American Riding for the Handicapped, and a registered therapeutic riding instructor. Based on the book Riding into Your Mythic Life, copyright © 2007 by Patricia Broersma. Reprinted with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com, (800) 972-6657.

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