Something Sacred

“Everything around us is a relative.” Enrique Salmon, Raramuri tribe, anthropologist, Professor of American Indian studies.

Recently, after returning from a big trip, I was feeling pretty tired, needing to recharge a bit. I just couldn’t manage getting off the couch for a few days. Finally, after trying my best to rest—no easy task for me—I said, “Enough, no more!” and went to the barn.

Dorian, the sweetie, was munching grass in the early morning beside his best friend Casey. I haltered him and with Casey trotting at our side, complaining a bit, I got him into the barn and out into the round pen.

A new mare and gelding had just arrived and were next to us. Dorian had been quite interested in Junie, the mare, and resumed his amorous neck arch and tail flair in the round pen. I let him prance around a little, and then he came over for his pleasurable, releasing massage. After a while we headed into the barn to saddle up.

It’s interesting to me that when I’m in Dorian’s presence, I feel energized, uplifted, and content. I know my experience isn’t unusual, and I’ve done some research on why this is—you can find some physiological studies related to this phenomenon in a YouTube video I made here, and in various blog posts.

But even though there are physical reasons for how we change when we’re around horses, I also know that what we experience, what we attract into our lives, is a function of what we accept as true—what we choose, or create, in other words. And, of course, how consciously grateful we are for the abundance we already have—that is essential.

And on this day, I chose to step into the world Dorian inhabits. Always, for me, a very wise decision.

And it was a beautiful morning—perfect for a ride. I was quietly happy, and we got Dorian’s saddle and bridle on in short order.

And then the fun began.

I mounted him and he immediately backed into something and spooked. He lunged forward, slammed into something else, and took a giant leap on the rocks in front of the barn in the bright sunshine. It was a rapid, tumultuous few minutes and I somehow stayed on his back.

 “When your only goal is that of a deep, vibrant, intimate relationship with your horse . . . It’s an opening to the core of your being, it’s an exploration and celebration of the best parts of being alive; it’s a spiritual journey.” Jini Patel Thompson, Listen To Your Horse.

Once away from the terrifying objects, Dorian was shaking like a leaf, so I wanted to settle him. We headed to the outdoor arena, which I thought might allow him to gather himself. We tried just walking around the perimeter but even the mounting block scared him. So I dismounted and walked him past things he’d seen for months but which now seemed so frightening.

He got things sorted out and we headed out for our ride in the lovely, cool morning. I let Dorian take the lead, go where he wanted. We headed around a field of tiny corn plants just coming up and on down to the lake. Dorian felt fine beneath me, so I sang him hymns as the birds swooped and the clouds shunted by overhead, and the wheat fields swayed, and the colors–as usual—astounded me.

Dorian so effortlessly connects me to the world he lives in—a green, living, pulsating world full of life. And my heart opens and fills. I find it interesting that the heart chakra’s traditional color is green. Maybe that’s why we love spring so much, as we’re gently held in life’s affirming greening presence.

For me, the deeper I want to go with Dorian, the quieter—even into silence—my mind needs to be. And then, something sacred opens to us.

 “Human people are only one kind of person . . . there are maple people, oriole people, cloud people and that changes everything.”  Robin Wall Kimmerer, ecologist, and author of Braiding Sweetgrass.

The point of this story isn’t the difficulties Dorian and I had that morning, it’s how he realized—even in his terrified state—that I was on his back and so made himself not lose it totally. His thought was not on himself, but on me—he protected me from harm even though he was under enormous stress himself.

Through all we’ve been through over the years, I’ve cherished how he’s opened an understanding of the intelligence and—as Kimmerer and Salmon observe—the “personhood” of himself and all that surrounds us. In this case, his care for me was a potent reminder of his generous, intelligent spirit. I feel honored to be in his presence.

The day after Dorian’s great self-restraint (and later in that ride, he got bit by a horsefly and again contained his urge to buck), I took some time with him, just the two of us. We walked along slowly and I had no other agenda but to be present with him.

“To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.” Lao Tzu.

As Dorian grazed, I noticed the bountiful, rich, varied pasture the barn owner, Dave, has planted for the horses. Look at these small slips of gracefulness, of color, nutrition, and individuality—all offering itself to us freely.

One thing Enrique Salmon’s indigenous upbringing taught him is that the natural world longs for a relationship with us—one, I think, where we show up as it does, without mental chattering, without busyness, without criticism.

And most importantly, without manipulation. Without dominance.

In the event you don’t think plants, for example, have consciousness or effective intention, note this: there’s a study done by Princeton University’s PEAR Lab that took a simple houseplant, put it in one corner of a closed box with a grow light overhead that moved from corner to corner in a randomly generated pattern. But the light somehow shown a statistically relevant amount of times on the houseplant, though by virtue of the random programming it should have shown equally in all quadrants of the box. Here’s how Adam Michael Curry, who participated in the experiment, summed up the findings: “It’s as though life itself – even life or consciousness in something as simple as a house plant, bends probability in the physical world in the direction of what it needs, in the direction of its growth and evolution.”

For some interesting info. on how trees communicate and even care for each other, click here.

This certainly speaks of the intention I mentioned earlier. Do we do the same? Bend our experience in the direction of our own growth and evolution? And how many of us realize that this capacity is resident in so much of the world we summarily dismiss?

Here’s another example: New Zealand has granted legal “personhood” status to non-human ecosystems—to a river, for example, and to a body of land formerly deemed a national park.

Sometimes when I’m riding Dorian, and sometimes when I’m just home by myself, I travel out into the universe mentally (or as I prefer to think of it—energetically) and look back at the earth. It’s beautiful! Try it, you can do it, I know. I’m in awe of the vast oceans surging slowly in blues and whites; the giraffes gracefully undulating through the African wilds; the great mountains towering into the heavens, the magnificent deep green forests breathing life back to us . . .

photo of earth, credit NASA

What I’ve been wondering about more and more lately is this: What would happen if we didn’t narrow our assumptions about the world to what we’ve been schooled to believe? What if we, instead of closing, opened our thought to the intelligence resident in our world, a reality other cultures are so clearly are aware of?

Even more potently, what if we took our place in the world as animals, plants, rocks, soil . . . as everything outside of us does—as one among many of equal value? We might then enter into relationships of listening, of grateful acknowledgement of how other beings in the world exist, create, and contribute. We might stop dominating and instead co-exist. How enriched our own lives would be, don’t you think? How expansive, how full of promise . . .

As Salmon observes, then we might begin to remember things we didn’t know we’d forgotten and start to mend what he calls “our broken relationship with earth.” And, quite possibly, I’ll add, mend what we think is broken within ourselves.

Just as Dorian’s purity and relationship to me allows him to control himself in the face of great fear, we can also locate the untouched, pure, unbroken nature of our own being, I think, and act in equally beneficent ways.

And just maybe, we’d become more graceful inhabitants of this world, caretakers rather than simply “takers.”

What a gift that would be—for us all.