Isn’t it funny how you can experience something in so many little ways, and yet it hides in plain sight. It isn’t ready to blossom fully into the level of realisation that requires a shift. And yet the journey to get there is utterly perfect. As gradually understanding aligns with the readiness to embrace it. In this case my readying has taken years, maybe even lifetimes. My realisation concerns Quaramba, and releasing her fear. And this process is infused with such love and support, which allowed the portal to become fully crystallised for us both.

Quaramba’s Story

I have come to understand over time that Quaramba is a very intelligent, yet complex being. She is utterly relaxed and tranquil, even in difficult situations. Yet there is also a sheer panic that can light into her whole being at an instants notice. She has a way of understanding people that makes her feel human, and in this she is often a mediator within the herd, translating both sides of horse and human. Yet she has a part of her self that is wild and deer-like, untamed and spirited. It is not ethereal as such, this manifests directly in the physical realm. She may inhabit a horse body, yet her soul path was never to submit to the kind of horse training that would have had to alter that wildness entirely. 

Quaramba was bred for the Sports horse industry. An Oldenburg with dressage lines, and she was born in one of the largest commercial breeding facilities in France.

She is an embryo transfer because her biological mother was competing, or having several progeny in one year. Growing inside her donor mother Quaramba was subsequently rejected her at birth, and she was successfully transferred into the care of another mare. This mare already had a baby of her own. 

Why Quaramba Is Ready

I was reflecting the other day about how rarely a healing focus has directed itself towards Quaramba. She has always been healthy. Her system in harmony as a result of her holistic lifestyle. Stable-free, barefoot, never having been vaccinated, medicated or given wormers other than herbal preparations. She has not attracted any major musculoskeletal issues, aided no doubt by the fact she has not been ready to be ridden! And other than a few days of being her most hostile self as a foal of six months just after she arrived, it has been an easy road emotionally. For whatever reason we have just been ticking along, and now it seems, preparing ourselves.

I see so clearly now.. every time we would be truly merging… abandoning ourselves into the wonderfully powerful engagement on the physical plane.. this panic would surface. I would explain it through the circumstances.. it was that particular arena that frighten her because there were so many distractions. It was because she is so tall and scopey, she felt unbalanced. It was because we were moving house, the herd wasn’t settled yet etc.. 

The Surfacing of the Panic

Every time in the last few months that I have brought the cavesson to ask if Quaramba felt to go out, a truly invasive anxiety has inserted itself. I feel it in myself also. I went through a process of examining it in myself.. and it would shift into potential and the kind of joy that comes from the vortex of your authentic path. So it circled back around. I left it awhile since Gabrielle arrived and we were doing such intense herd assisted healing. When I came back to her, it was stronger than ever.

When we spend time together, hanging out, grooming, she is often very attached to my attention. This is fine, and she does understand that I need to share it out with everyone. Yet there is always an underlying sense of something unresolved. I have been going through a process of untethering my attachments to an outcome, to an agenda, to the focus on results. I have been entering the space where I can distinguish what is my ego and what is my heart wisdom.

Making the Decision

This sense of something unresolved was certainly in both of us, in our partnership. Yet it was not sourcing from a desire to accomplish something. In fact it was sourcing from my love for Quaramba. I could feel that her world was being narrowed by this fear. I could sense that when she stayed within the fear-based limits, she could escape it, in her everyday life with the herd, and yet she was not empowered by this. That if we did not go into this fear and explore it, she would not continue to grow. And I love her too much for that, I love her so much it stretches my heart.

Whenever it has surfaced before I always returned her quickly to the herd, and she would regain her composure quickly. They could dissipate it for her. And yet most times she would be perfectly calm without the herd. The one time I sat on her back she was completely relaxed and not even bothered when the other horses left the barn.

Even when she travelled the 500km from the centre of France to come here, she went all alone in the trailer like a princess. Utterly at ease when we stopped in gas stations with massive trucks beeping and more people than she had every seen. 

Addressing The Fear

So instead of accepting her declining the cavesson, I stayed gently with her, and insisted. In love, in leadership, in courage, I softened her refusal with this love energy by asking her to yield and accept it on her head. There was no drama or fight in this, and yet there was not a willingness on her part. This is another thing I came to understand. Quaramba was in a place of anxiety that did not guide her decisions in an intelligent way.

Essentially, she was drowning in this fear. Although it was subtle on the behaviour level. As her friend, I invited myself to catch her as she was falling. 

Going to the Arena

She followed willingly enough as we left the barn, but once we reached the arena, the panic seemed to rise and rise and I did what I could to allow her to run. She was exploding with it.. leaping and galloping, kicking and spinning. All apparently for no reason at all. Yet it was the perfect explosion for this abscess of emotion that had been building and building over all of our years together. 

And once she was within the panic, she couldn’t get out. She even ran out back to the herd (I wasn’t able to hold her) and I thought it was better anyway to show her that she could physically escape. When we reconnected she was still submerged in it. Running had pushed it away, but could not release it. And even being close to the herd did not help.

We walked around a little while we were both processing it all. It was all beginning to make more sense to me at that point. Why we have gone so slowly in our work together, why we never pushed on. This was the reason we we have always been diverted or shifted on to another track. The fear was waiting, an untapped layer, subtly influencing our relationship. And now, here it was, our portal to let this fear go. It felt so exciting.. so joy filled… literally shimmering with possibility. 

Why I Am Ready 

Perhaps the most important realisation I made in the last week was why I am ready to embrace this fear for Quaramba…
I no longer see what is happening in terms of the success of our training. I could understand that this is about her process, this fear inside her. It happened to be highlighted through the matrix of the arena.. which is our space, where the spotlight is on our partnership. Yet it was not about the arena, or the work we have done.

When I think how depressed and upset I would have been before about this! My precious girl who I have always been so careful with. Doing my best to listen to her boundaries, to allow her to grow, to support her limitations. Refusing to surrender to intimidation in order to force something to happen. And despite all of that she has a complete (yet unprecedented) meltdown just because we went 100 yards to the arena she has always been comfortable in. And I feel so blessed to be ready to see it how it is. I cannot see the whole picture, but enough to be able to support her process and not be distracted by my own ego. To be able to be fully there for her, a rope to help her climb out and expand her world. 

The Source of the Fear

It came to me that I was ready, and that this fear was a pattern to be addressed. In going into this I began to feel Quaramba’s baby self, and a connected sense of utter alone-ness, and the panic that she felt.

At this point I felt such love for her, to protect her and enfold her in safety. Now that the fear had expressed itself fully, and I was awakened to it, we were able to engage with it at the Source. 

Back in the barn we went into the energetic connection together which allowed us to listen at the deepest level available to us. We started with the fear itself, and my fear or the fear led me into the fear within her.. there came an incredible feeling of new-ness, perfection and vulnerability. I started to understand that this was when she was first born. The delicacy and fascination of creation in this physical dimension was so clear. In it I could clearly feel the silent witness of God, the Source, the Universe, bathing her in love and appreciation.

The Herd Replays What Happened To Quaramba

Rafael suddenly pushed her away from him in the barn. Could it be that the herd were playing out the scenario as it had happened at the stud farm? Was this when her mother pushed her away?  She moved over to shelter in Honey’s gentle acceptance, yet it felt somehow second best. Was Honey re-enacting her adoptive mother who already had a beloved child of her own

Back within the energetic world, I could feel her energy gradually changing because her physical needs were not being met. She felt colder and colder and gradually receded into sleep. We left it here, tired from coming so far. 

The Next Step

I was inspired to take her out of the barn again the next day. She was still fairly reluctant and we went though the same gentle insistence as the previous day. We were both more present however. It came to me that we could channel this fear, use it for something. I knew that it was not resolved at that point. We were beginning to walk to the arena and an idea came that the fear could be our paint. A very shiny, oily, non-porous kind of paint that didn’t mix easily. It carried a charge, almost like radioactivity. Yet we could still create with it. As we were engaging with this something came up and so we went back to the barn.

Later we went back in energetically with the herd and I could feel Quaramba coming out of her energetic sleep into fear. It was a truly incapacitating fear. And as we listened, and waited, letting the process unfold, she began to grow. She became tall and pure and strong. Her resilience, her majesty was unreflected in a mothers love. She was independent in her courage and strength! As the whole herd family were appreciating this magnificence, Quaramba began to sleep physically, making deep breaths.. transported somehow, and Honey followed her to the same place.

The Calm State 

There is a vibration that I have been becoming aware of in the last year or so. It is not fully manifesting in the outside world, and yet there are traces of it. It is a vibration of infinite and elemental calm.

I believe that it will appear within our relationships.. humans and horses… and will ripple through every surface, every particle, altering and adapting, until there is nothing left but pure, defenceless peace. Even as I am writing about it, I feel it rippling through my energetic field, amplifying itself. 

This new earth calm will come into the partnership between Quaramba and me.. and so many other horse human partnerships. It will transform everything we do together into the pure potential of presence. The bubbles of fear which are still held in the flow will rise to the surface, just as Quaramba’s has done.

The calm vibration will arrive when we shift fully from head into heart, from intellectual into energetic. Finally we will be on equal ground with the horses. Beyond rules of what we should do, and simply able to listen to our mutual inspiration. It seems that to come close to another it is necessary to find the parts of us that are the same. And the part that we will always share is our one heart.