TRUSTED HORSE CARRIES TRAVELER INTO THE DEEP — Both survive

Espíritu

Veterans Equine Alliance

THE HORSE GUY

COACHING WITH HORSES

STORY #183

TRUSTED HORSE CARRIES TRAVELER

? ? INTO THE DEEP —

Both survive ordeal

I jumped trains as a boy, stole farm equipment (tractors & trucks) so I could drive them out in the fields. I built snow forts when everyone else stayed indoors, river rafts in the Spring when others just wanted to stay dry and avoid the seasonal showers. I captained a state champion cross country team in high school, got thrown into jail for attempting to break into a liquor store with a buddy, served as a paratrooper in the Army, graduated near the top of my class as an older undergrad and graduate student.

Maybe there’s something wrong with me.

I wanted to do ‘real work’, so I spent several years in various inner city job training programs around the country. I felt like I was coming into my own; I was finding my own voice, on the other side of the conditioning we all get from family, school, church and the media.

I spent seven years in corporate America and, for the most part, enjoyed my time. I had challenges. I was fired on my 40th birthday for raising safety concerns to senior leaders that field supervisors in the natural gas utility where I worked had shared privately with me. Quickly reinstated, I began to realize I had been unconsciously making myself play small in order to fit it. Apparently I still wasn’t small enough. I saw things happen to my Black and Brown colleagues that disturbed me. They were not getting the same opportunity I was as a white person. I needed to know why. I interviewed the key players and wrote up my findings in a report to senior leadership. It did not go over well.

I left corporate America in the Spring of 1990. I wasn’t building river rafts or snow forts anymore but this was just the grown up version of living more fully. I have spent the subsequent years of my adult life working on issues of racism and sexism in corporate America as well as other kinds of deep, personal leadership development work with leaders and their teams. I have a pained smile on my face when I hear the current squabbling about DEI hires. Apparently, this only occurs when Black and Brown people are unjustly awarded employment because of the color of their skin, not because of their qualifications. This seems simple-minded.

I’m glad we whites somehow lost our own race and are only offered goodies because we deserve them. Not because we look and sound like those who run many of the organizations today. That would be the white version of DEI — white privilege. We know this doesn’t exist any longer because it was banned in all libraries and school textbooks books in Florida.

This was getting too close. I’m glad I am off the hook.

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“…Often what is needed is a horse, a trusted animal who can carry one into these depths of emotion…so the wall around the heart can be broken without breaking the spirit.” ( Men and The Water of Life, by Michael Meade ).

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Seriously, the point I want to make is for years I was cut off from my deeper emotional life of doubts, fears, insecurities and the nagging sense I was an imposter —acting like I knew something when I knew I did not. Because? I was not connected to the deep well of emotion in myself, I couldn’t help others connect with their own. When we deny or simply ignore our own wounds, we tend to attack these same emotions and? behaviors when we spot them in others. There’s a lot of this going on now, i.e., a mean spirited contagion, triggered us being cut off from our own depths.

Then I discovered horses, with the help of my wife and a few others. A new frontier opened for me and, through the horses, for many others.

Horses, unlike their human neighbors, are trained to pay close attention to the sensations, impressions and emotions of their interior life. Their survival has depended on this capacity, several times stronger and more nuanced than ours. They place high value of congruence and harmony, a natural capacity for alignment and transparency far eclipsing our own. They sense without words our inner life as well, and often bring about a deep peace we may have gone a long time wanting but not experiencing. They are master guides of the deep and teachers of the way through. Simply being in their presence can be freeing.

Find us for half-day, one day, and multi-day experiences with our equine coaches. No fee for military vets and their families. If you seek transformation, you must use transformational means. No PowerPoint presentations! If you’re feeling lost, uncertain of who, what or where you are in life, please join us. If something is stirring in you that feels important but you have no words for it, you are especially welcomed!

Try not to spend much time figuring out whether this is something for you. It’s a bit like standing outside a restaurant and figuring out the menu. Come in. Eat. Afterwards, you’ll know if it was something for you.

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