PRISONER RELEASE STORIES

E S P í R I T U ?

THE HORSE GUY?

Coaching with Horses?

Story #138

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PRISONER RELEASE STORIES

Everyone gets lost in their own life at least three or four times. These are more than a tough day at the office. When it happens to you you can feel terribly alone and flawed. Certainly, if you had your act together like everyone else does you would not be in this mess. This mess is only reserved for losers. The truth is we all have those infrequent times when we are at our wits’ end; we are so far in we can find no way through and we can’t simply jump off and start over. We are prisoners in our own lives, trapped.

I’ve been through several experiences like this. As a young husband who discovered I had no idea what this required. Worse, when I did discover the requirements I knew I did not possess them and would not be able to find them.

I was a young social worker working in a human rights commission who decided to make the leap into corporate America. On my second day on the job my boss announced to the entire department she had made a mistake in hiring me. I was in the room. This was the doorway into a three-year period of deep agony and ultimate release.

Walking alone one evening in the small town where we lived I happened by a street-side chapel. I heard singing and walked in. I remember two things from that evening. First, I heard the young street minister teach from this passage of scripture:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor: He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovering of sight to the blind, To set at liberty them that are bruised…(Luke 4:18)

Second,I had heard this stuff before but on this particular evening the words seared deep into me. I knew these words were my purpose, my calling. I didn’t know I needed a purpose back then and certainly wasn’t looking for one. Yet here it was, shown vividly to me in a way I would never forget. This was not a religious experience. This passage became my work, my career, my thirty plus years as a leadership coach and consultant.

Someone once wrote, “If you’re not careful you will end up where you’re headed.” I knew where I was headed was not good; a change was needed. Everything changed that evening, beginning with my mind.

I began to see I was the blind one all along. I was the one laboring in the prison of my own mind who needed release. These experiences would take root and unfold in my life over the years. As I allowed life to work me my sight slowly got more clear and the bars on my mental prison slowly dissolved. I began to see it was my own experience as a blind man walking that became the gift I offer to others. My life as a prisoner was the key needed to release others from their prison cell. A strange reversal of how I thought things work.

I am not creative enough to make up a story like this. I just report what happened. The most recent version of a prisoner release comes in our horse paddock. As we move more deeply into the equine coaching work it is obvious that we are assisting in spiritual healing and release in ways we could not imagine. We have seen professional people who live entirely in their heads suddenly discover they have a body! And their body has its own wisdom and knowing. Others have reported only blackness — a complete absence of sensation in their heart — and suddenly discover orange and red colors pulsing from their body, as if blood (and life) had returned.

George Bernard Shaw once said, “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

Prisoners come in a variety of shapes. Some have to do with people reclaiming parts of themselves they left behind at a certain juncture. Some discover a level of inner congruence they never know existed. Others who were convinced their trauma, lingering anger, resentment or other tough circumstances might define them have been surprised and released when the horses ‘saw through’ to their essential nature. And accepted them as they were. Their time with the horses was simply delightful and easeful. No one tried to make anything happened and yet everything happened.

A beautiful reversal of how I thought things worked. The blind prisoner times, in the end, can be times of amazing growth, opening an abundance of all good things. We need only remember that our cell door locks from the inside. Our equine partners are unsung experts in this inner world prisoner release.

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