Becoming the bridle is happening in energetic process. It can only be understood by suspending thought and feeling in. Perhaps not even understood, but embraced. Although the energetic dialogue between the herd and me is so intense, and feels as if it is accelerating in purpose, I have still been struggling with the conflict between being and doing. It feels like the fundamental conflict between spirit and ego.

I have been feeling the ‘I want’ part of me getting more insistent, shouting louder.. yet the I am part which is everything, is diving so deeply into such magical waters it seems crazy that ‘I want’ can even exist. “I want to ride, I don’t want to waste time, I want my dream”.. and yet when I go out to the herd, and we pick up the dialogue again, the voice goes silent and whatever it said is meaningless.

Shift In The Wall Of Doing 

I found the herd out in the field and was feeling how their energy is within me when I tune into our relationship. I marvel a little at the energetic redirect every time I sense out to them. Like a boomerang: I feel for them out there, and sense them instantly within me. Questions are arising.. why am I not content? What if this is enough? Is there more than this? I am releasing some fear. The fear that the energetic connection is enough. Why is there a conflict? How does doing and being relate?

The horses are always doing.. they are eating and moving. I am feeling the edge of this perpetual doing.. it feels like a concrete wall but softer.. more like nougat.. I can clearly feel the lack of clarity in it.. Now Honey won’t let me be physically still, she is asking me to join the doing. I am sensing the wall softening.. it needs to integrate, to become aligned. The alignment of feeling and doing! the horses are showing me.. the first layer is grooming, like the skin of doing, and I realise there are no barriers anymore.

The mares Totti and Aimee who had some taboo areas are touchable everywhere. I explore deeper into feeling and pressure. Sensing the way the horses feel in their bodies and how I can connect with that. Feeling in the standing horses how their movement would flow if they were moving. There is a block in Quaramba’s back when I do this with her.. this way of sensing is bringing up emotions in the horses.. some anger.. in Cheyenne especially. It is exactly like ‘resistances’ which come up in straightness training, they are exactly the same resistances in fact.. as if we were working, coming instantly simply from perceiving how the energy flows … It becomes difficult to stay present and understand how this works.. how to work it.. the connection.. responding to feelings.. there is a need to go slowly. Going back in to pure meditation and the nougat wall feels like an undefined mass.. a space rather than a wall.. potent but unclear.

Monday 25th of May

Healing The Bridle

Starting to feel into the merge between us again, and Honey came up close. Allowing myself to be present.. just this cradling of each other within. Letting go of everything else. The I remembered about following, the way the horses had asked me to follow.. feeling what that means fundamentally.. to follow. The horses became unsettled.. they wanted to go but were not going.. Quaramba wanted to be groomed but not really that. It occurred to me that the horses are also new to this path.. they don’t know the way either.

I went to get bridle, not sure why. Sitting with the bridle and the horses are peaceful now. I am holding the bridle in front of Quaramba and becoming aware of the wrongness of it, it seems so heavy and clumsy, and her head is so delicate.. like putting chains on a butterfly. It felt almost dirty to hold. I put it down, and eventually Quaramba came closer for me to remove a fly and to consolidate our connection without the bridle. I couldn’t feel a physiology associated with the bridle. Then Quaramba went to stand with herd. It felt like they were releasing something deep yet beyond my perception.

The bridle was still so potent, and the more I embraced this, the more separate it felt. Then Honey came, and she felt like a living poultice to draw the poison out of the bridle, healing it with her golden vibration. It still felt very heavy and toxic.. to imagine putting it on would be like sticking a knife into something. Just allowing that to be. Allowing it to unfold. There is no set path to follow. There was so much peace around this.. the horses were stretching a lot, especially Cheyenne. The power of our merge was very strong. The bridle felt like a disconnected place.

Tuesday 26th of May

Opening The Passageway With Phenomenal Light

The conflict between my desire to ride and train and the energetic process without agenda was weighing heavy intellectually before this session. 

Starting out in the field again. There was such a beautiful feeling of the horses swirling inside me.. so joyful. I felt the horses offering to heal me.. I began to sense into the pattern of wanting to ride, my dream with Quaramba, the need to explore the physical connection with horses..

It felt first like a hole and then the opposite of a hole.. like a mass.. a growth.. a tumour.. and then I could feel the size of it, so huge and suffocating.. it was blocking out the oxygen, making me feel sick and exhausted.. Then I became aware of the light, starting more golden and becoming whiter and whiter.. so indescribably powerful.. I realised that the herd was bringing it in.

I was aware of the herd as themselves, friendly, happy, horses and also as an ancient wisdom.. like a committee, a panel of wise ones watching… I wasn’t sure if that was the horses or even more advanced beings. I could feel a passageway then.. open and soft.. free, so liberated. The horses can come to me and I can go to them.. everything was made of soft liquid light.. that is what love is. The horses came closer physically. I had a sense that I could go to them, but I didn’t need to. Then I noticed how much wider my attention span is in general. An acceptance of the eternal infusing my consciousness. Impatience and desire have no place here. Feeling the tiredness of processing all of this. Now I was becoming aware of the band of human consciousness. The collective consciousness of our society. So tightly held, and yet it is preparing to change..

Wednesday 27th of May 

Becoming The Bridle

Starting again in a difficult place.. there are distractions, an argument that morning which followed unhappy dreams about being ignored by strangers in childhood. Being fundamentally unimportant. Totti came to graze outside the arena and then Honey.. I became aware of the pattern of  ‘doing’ between us was a dried up lake. Then the horses showed me that they are doing and being at the same time.. I can learn this..

I picked up the bridle, it was no longer toxic, Honey said I must be the bridle.. absorb it.. become it.. I felt excited and enthusiastic about becoming the bridle, and amazed that the bridle was so different today, no longer poisonous but powerful. I felt connections with empowered times in the past.. and the bridle was becoming very heavy.. Gorrion was approaching now.

I understood that the weight of the bridle is responsibility. Realising that I am not the bearer of this responsibility in this moment, but the channel.. transporting the weight of responsibility to everyone. Yet it felt like a dam, the weight would not flow across, nor through. The sense of a set of scales, and the bridle is too heavily weighted on one side.. I can only acknowledge this. It does not shift. Everyone is back in the barn.

Thursday 28th of May

Following, Listening, Allowing the Flow

I have not been exploring these sessions intellectually as I like to do usually. Interpreting them through thought, ideas and experience to tease out a meaning that I can understand. I feel a lack of interest in that. Sometimes in reading them back I think, wow, there it is.. how magically it all fits into place. Still I don’t feel like going further in that. It is almost as if by letting our dialogue flow uninterpreted, it will flow unhindered. Keep going, keep connecting, keep listening.. everything will unfold, everything is already understood deep within, beyond the human mind. 

The session today started out busy at the summer barn. Quaramba and Cheyenne wanted scratchies, and then everyone was wanting more minerals. When things settled down I became aware of this feeling that the bridle is inside me now, just as the horses are. This feels so physical, yet is complicated to describe in words. I imagine putting it on, it feels so vivid and real.. but we are not ready yet. It has too much power.. it would squash and damage Quaramba’s face. Not in a still way but as if it was alive.. in fact putting it on feels like the wrong direction entirely. It is within me and its power is going inwards, I can’t push it back out. I can only invite the horses inside too.. it feels just like a vortex. The bridle is harmless inside me.

Friday 29th of May