Meditative Horsemanship™

The Dharma ~ Philosophy of Meditative Horsemanship ~

Throughout Eastern philosophy, “Dharma” is a universal concept describing the “higher truth” or “ultimate reality”.

Dharma literally translates as “that which upholds or supports truth”, or can also be simply translated as “teachings”.

It is said in Hinduism, Buddhism, and other Eastern Religions that all beings choosing to live in accordance with Dharma or “universal truth” proceed more quickly along their spiritual or energetic path towards enlightenment or ascension.

This is similar in teaching the concept of Christ Consciousness. When one accepts one’s Christlike Consciousness, one can no longer help but walk the path of the Dharma ~the path of Jesus, Buddha, and many other saints and avatars.

Where is Dharma in today’s horsemanship?

In studying  current practices and modern theory, we all come to a space, eventually, where we meet a horse we cannot come to terms with - who simply refuses to fit into the square hole our current paradigms around training force upon the animal. We blame the equipment, the horse, the clinician, but we do not seek first the internal stimuli that may be at the root of the issue. We draw forgone conclusions about the horse’s inability and toss it aside, and seek another, more compliant mount, leaving this mistrusted animal to an uncertain future.

As elevated individuals, we have not reached our goal with aligning ourselves philosophically, spiritually, or energetically to become better partners to our horses. We have instead fallen upon half truths around the paradigms and mordern day quick fixes that dominate book shelves, promising us compliant, happy, healthy horses if we but don the hat of of “herd leaders” and “dominate” the animal before us.

Along each of our individual life paths, we frequently come up against our own obstacles and our hypocrisies. At some point in time, our own paradigms and lack of awareness in the dangers lying within these half-truths, rear their ugly heads, and we find ourselves in very dangerous, if not absolutely life-threatening situations with mounts we absolutely lack trust in.

We must learn how to traverse around such obstacles through lessons that test us, force us to grow and become separated from our physicality while becoming more interconnected and interdependent of one another.

The Paradox of Riding

For the moment you sat upon the back of the horse, you asked to become interconnected and interdependent. You begged for a chance at a freedom you longed for, yet you ride with such tension, such fear, such trepidation, that the animals feels nothing from you but wave after wave of distrust, fear, frustration, compounded with force, pain, panic and control.

Horses by their very nature are deeply sensitive, energetic beings. Their sole survival depends on their ability to assess and translate hundreds of thousands of mass energetic stimuli coming at them from all directions, including from their rider. And if their rider isn’t clear in intent and purpose, and the horse feels awashed in anger, fear, desperation, and control - all coming from the rider - the horse will eventually blow from the sheer magnitude of it all. This then becomes the danger to you - and your horse.

Awaken to the Dharma

These lessons ask you and I to traverse past the particularly challenging terrain of generally accepted paradigms (“bits make us safer”, “we must be dominant herd leader”) to come to understand “THE truth” or “dharma” of what it means to be a TRUE Horse Whisperer, or a TRUE man or woman of the horse – a horse-man or horse-woman.

Although this great, magnanimous, physical, living, breathing being, is not like us physically, we do not own divine manifest RIGHT to treat this living, breathing, sentient being as a SLAVE, much less as a machine or single-serving object that we force and control to do right by us, to toss aside when it no longer serves our needs or refuses to comply with our prescribed world view.

Ethics and Horsemanship
Some of us would like it if the difficult questions of spirituality, morality or ethics didn’t enter the constructs of today’s horse world. We can lie to ourselves and tell ourselves our horses enjoy being ridden – yes, being kicked, yanked on, and pulled, or scared, and forced really sounds like a good time. We can pretend that bits make us safer riders, that we NEED that whip or that martingale.  We can pretend that the latest and greatest training program will fix ALL our problems.

Truth 1.

The truth is one cannot operate within a vacuum. Bits don’t make us safer riders. Practice, trust, respect, and consciousness makes us better riders. Accoutrements don’t fix our horse’s problems – they often make vices and behavior issues  worse.  Quick-fix-clinics don’t solve our problems. Turning over responsibility to the trainer to solve all our ills with our horse doesn’t solve our problems.

The problem lies in the VERY NATURE of the dynamics of the relationship between horse and rider – and how we view that very relationship through glasses tinted and shaded with our deeply held opinions and beliefs – our paradigms.

We are asleep in our relationship with our horse.

We take no responsibility in developing our relationship with our horse, and we wonder why our horse acts out?

If we were to consider horses as capable of expressions traditionally reserved for humans, we are considered at the very least eccentric and dabbling in anthropomorphism, at the very worst,  in today’s society we’d be medicated with anti-psychotics.

The simple truth is –horses do NOT perceive the world as we perceive it.
The simple truth is – YES we need some ground rules established in order to maintain safety and build a foundation upon which we can grow and foster an inter-species relationship.
The simple truth is – yes Horses are much more similar to us than most of us can willingly admit, for admitting it would mean the very nature of our culture and society and what we consider “normal” living conditions for animals would have to be questioned.

Dharma is truth.

Philosophically speaking - Simply being an observer with a point of view changes the very nature of what is being observed. This transcends the Physical, the Energetic, the Astral, and the Causal. This is Truth.

The question then becomes, what then is being observed? If a person is pulling a horse around a field, kicking it or whipping it over jumps, or if another person is kicking a horse up into a canter, yanking it back with a bar of metal while driving into its back to perform a canter half-pass across the center-line, do we call this abuse? What if an exhausted horse is being whipped into a frenzy to cross the finish line of a near 2 mile race a nose ahead of another?

Do we call this slavery?

No, in our current paradigm and world view – we call this SPORT.

A sport built on the blood, sweat, and quite literally the bodies of our equine slaves.

You cannot foster a true partnership – if half of the partnership is bound, gagged, and chained.

What if we were doing this to another human being? Do we then call this abusive and enslavement?

What’s the difference in what is being observed?

What is Truth?

If we saw a dog being yanked about with a bar of metal in his mouth, being kicked, yanked, and beaten with a stick, we wouldn’t think twice to putting a phone call into SPCA…but this very same abuse is carried out in the name of “training” in nearly every barn around the world today.  All for the love of “sport”.

Without understanding another point of view – the horse’s point of view -  we cannot possibly open ourselves towards DHARMA - Universal Truth and foster true partnership. We cannot foster Dharma – much less a new approach to mutual companionship.

How could a life with horses WITHOUT dominance, WITHOUT abuse, WITHOUT fear, WITHOUT accoutrements possibly enlighten us or grow us far beyond our immediate need of instant ego satisfaction? How might we grow as a society if we could turn away from the ugly side of our nature - of taking control of another being, beating it into submission to accept the unending pain in order to go for a ride, win at a show, or race the Kentucky Derby?

Awaken to View the World Through Equus Eyes

When we have been awakened to view the world through new eyes, with a child’s openness and simple view of the world, we see no difference between how we treat a slave and how we treat the horse. We see no difference between how we treat a human and how we treat an animal.  When we have been awakened to view the plight of the horse through these eyes, we cannot go back to the old way of training, living, and riding horses.

But then how do we forge ahead along a new path?

Truth is in discovering the Dharma as we start on our new path.

And the solution is the path of the Equus Humanus, the Conscious horse person. The Awakened Horse person – for through this path she learns how to apply the science of yoga and meditation to learn the answer. She learns the science of learning theory and behavior. She learns about psychology so she can understand her horse’s behaviors and motivations. She studies energetics so she can connect with her horse deeply.

For the answer to building a perfect partnership lies between building a bridge of communication with her chosen horse partner.

And that communication is as unique to each equus humanus as a snowflake. There is no one-size fits all answer. The answer lies in your path that you must traverse together.

Relationships are ever-changing, growing, evolving. They are not stagnant. They evolve as each part of the relationship grows, learns and evolves. That is the Dharma.

Sometimes we are the teacher, sometimes we are the student, at all times we must be conscious, respectful and trustworthy in our communications with our chosen equine partners.

Ghandi said the greatness of a nation can be judged on the way it treats its animals.

I say this. The greatness of a single human can be judged on the way she honors the intelligence and dignity of her oldest and most useless animals.

When the question of morality and universal ethics come into play we must look again towards ourselves and hold ourselves responsible for the current plight of the horse as a SLAVE to the human ego and worldly need for gratification, rather than as a PARTNER traveling with us along our energetic and spiritual life path.

When one works in unity with Equus, one walks the path of Dharma. When one works out of unity with Equus, one walks the path of worldly ego and physical ambition. Now that you have read this, you have been awakened by Equus Consciousness. And now you are being asked to choose the path. Whatever it is you do now, you do consciously and with knowledge of where your path leads.

The Path of Meditative Horsemanship requires one to approach every aspect of equus work with awareness, with consciousness, with contemplation towards developing a completely different relationship with your partner, the horse.

~isis