Wayfaring means to travel on foot. This feels like the perfect expression of our journey right now. Together, free, exploring and close to the ground. Letting the ground lead us. It’s been a little while since I have felt inspired to write about where we are as a herd. Although things are growing more widely and deeply than ever before. I have come to think of us as one herd now, all of our family. The oneness isn’t in our behaviour or our individual shapes and energies, it is in the borderlines that connect us together. The boundaries which are places where we touch rather than separations. The places in between where we merge. 

Problem Solving Mode

I realised that over the last five years, probably the last twenty, I have been making an incremental shift in perspective. Like a flower slowly turning to face the sun. The intellectual realisation of this came when I was listening to an Esther Hicks recording. She channels a spirit group called Abraham, and they were communicating about giving up being in problem solving mode. Wow.. what a revelation.. that is what has been happening and is gently creeping out into all of the corners of my life.

It is most noticeable at this point in the horses. They are well, contented, their coats gleam and they move beautifully. And for one simple reason, I am no longer solving any problems for them.

There are no problems to solve because gradually, over all this time, I have come to understand that problem solving is a state of mind. It is almost an addiction. 

The joy that burst through me when I fully absorbed this was exquisite. And I am sure that this realisation will help to continue to liberate me in the more resistant areas of my life where I still hold on to this perspective. The way we work together for example, horse training/human training…this has been something of a problem to fix for a while. And letting it go as such is feeling very good. Embracing it as an unfolding dream is feeling very good. Crossing this threshold has also revealed, quite naturally and easily, our next step together. It is quite a physical thing, yet clearly with an energetic root. 

The Ingredients 

Where to go between us and what to do next didn’t seem to be clear, so I was resonating with the important ingredients. These include:

• loving the feeling of connecting with another being 
• enjoying the authentic, unattached dialogue 
• having the ability to recall the wonderful feeling of the physical connection… riding, engaging and sensing the horse

And even though I cannot see the path between, perhaps I haven’t become the path yet, I have faith that it will happen. I was having fun imagining riding Quaramba. Watching her as she dances and whirls and plays, when she displays her magnificent passage across the big field, or her great loping canter.

Feeling deeply into how to balance with her, how to stay tall and flexible as well as present and gentle… what a marvellous challenge it would be. To only feel through the reins when we are there in that stillpoint of engagement, to have the discipline and courage to trust in my ability to keep up with her freedom. 

The Re-Patterning

As well as infusing myself with the power of the ingredients as often as possible, we have also been doing some energetic work as a herd. From the tiny glimpse of the computer programming world I have been exposed to, there seem to be enough similarities for an analogy. We are travelling together, opening new passageways like lines of new code, maybe we are creating a whole new algorithm together. The analogy goes further in that once online the old cache has to be cleared. After a new site is created, accessing the replacement url is all about attuning to it. 

For example we were drawn into reprogramming the way horses possess their own feet. It was a joyful process of updating the old way, connected with the wild horse code and creating a new template based on reverence and mutual trust between us. A few days later I understood that to find this updated relationship required a present moment summoning of this sharing energy.

Atoning For the Wild

We all love this energy work, it feels natural and free of resistance. Even when the mood is grey, there is great potential there to connect and travel together. One session we had was deeply transformative. It felt like such a powerful shift that ripples of joy were sent out through the equestrian collective.

I was sitting a little way from the horses during this session, and quite magically they all appeared down in the barn, snorting and happily milling around. They were physically validating their energetic arrival is such a joyful way. 

The Next Step

Just walking with the dogs I suddenly understood our next step. Quaramba has been so clear about communicating her love for the headcollar. She gets soft and gentle, like a great blob of warm plasticine when I have it there. When I bring a cavesson, however, which is an ergonomically designed, soft piece of equipment without a bit and not done up tight in the traditional way, she has been saying no. Emphatically no. I could go into a long speculation about why this is, and there is no doubt there is a connection with the associations she has had with either one. Going into that doesn’t really feel good though and I am remembering to follow what feels good without exception. 

What feels good about this is that the headcollar is less specific. It connects us in a looser way, and this idea led to an understanding that in training before I have mostly focused on placing the horse into a way of being, a straightness, a balance, that initiates a state of being. This is one of the clearest ways of encouraging a tense horse to release and relax and come into a secure place with a person. 

The Different Way

Quaramba is not tense or crooked however, and I see that I have been too rigid in my outlook. I thought that we would reach the same comfortable state with the cavesson over time, and then we would move on into the other stages. Placing her body so that she would feel good and accept and merge in her mind. I am starting to see that she feels there may be a different way.

I only just caught on to this this morning, so it is a fresh, unformed idea. What comes to me is that she, maybe all of the horses, would like to explore our physical connection from the basis of the foundation we have already built.

We already trust each other, we love grooming and cuddling and resting together. Maybe instead of trying to push that all into a narrow little channel dictated by the cavesson and the straightness and the saddle etc.. we go the other way around and grow our straightness and our balance and our engagement out of the energy we have now. 

How Does This Express Itself?

But how does this manifest, this new wayfaring way?

It feels like exploring, moving together, resting together. Perhaps being invited to get on, to be carried. To follow each other, discovering how to relax even further, or how to ask in motion, how to be on level ground. And then rising, triumphantly and independently out of this true equality, a new engagement, a new dance.

It feels like expressing our trust in each other without any interference from imposition, and reminds me of when we would ride as kids, bareback, with headcollars, mostly telepathically. In itself it is not a new idea, especially with horses already formed into patterns of behaviour from previous channeling. Yet this is not about using up credit with a horse after being released from a certain shape of conditioning. This is to sculpt the physical elegance and straightness and balance from the foundation of pure mutual trust itself. 

Quaramba has only carried me one time, when we reached the summit of a previous cycle of the spiral. She gave permission for me to get on and she was relaxed. We were working in an atmosphere of gentle, careful channeling.

This is a beautiful way, and a respectful way, and without it we could not be here to consider this new idea of hers. But she is a venturer, a pioneer, and I am getting better at listening to her instead of listening to the problem solver who, ironically is also great at putting spokes in the wheels. 

Going Forward

I remember when I had a dream once about riding Mojo, a member of the herd who has now left his body. In the dream he was showing me how to let him gallop and jump and even fly without interference. There were no reins, no stirrups, nothing to hold on with except presence and trust. It was exhilarating and scary. Was it the new way?

There feels to be great swathes of energy around this, like dough as yet unformed, uncooked. To try this, going naked, no tack, no layers, no refinement in any way. Just raw, unpolished togetherness. 

Walking on foot. Wayfaring in a way that listens to nothing but how we feel in each other’s company. And lightening the conditioning of how it is done enough to let in how it could be done. This is our gift to each other.