The one thing I hope you will not forget is that these stories could not have been told if it hadn't been under a living sky.
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If it hadn't happened surrounded by the seasons, by the sun, by the water, by all of the connections that created this world that they live in.
It is a world where scents of life waft across the paths winding along the bank of a stream raging in the spring, a stream coming close to dying out in the long days of a dry summer, but still where ducks frolic and insects skate so delightfully across the surface of the water when still. When you spend time here, it is not just with the horses, it is with the amazing thing that is nature, that is our world, that is life, that too few see. This is their world.
We think to connect to the horses, not realizing that they are more than just one spirit alone in a shell. Their connections extend as ours once did beyond themselves. There are connections within connections that we should be experiencing, valuing every day. And they can only be found out here. In the breeze, in the air, in the feel of the earth, in the sound of leaves rustling against each other, where there is no us and them. It is just life and our connection to all of it.
They live in a world where connections still exist, can be felt at a very visceral level. The richness of the space, making it easier to find your way.
I think for some, it might be confusing when we say consciousness is a place. But it is true in different ways.
Once that was probably not true. A time when we didn't live inside, when we had not yet begun the process of separation. Possibly there was a time when we wouldn't have been closer in one space, one place over another. A time before we cleared the land, leaving the land to grow, only a single plant repeated again and again for mile after mile. You can look across endless fields and see no rabbits, no gophers, just one plant that looks exactly like the one planted next to it. One species planted in endless rows. Row upon row with large empty spaces in between where no life is allowed to exist, an emptiness that now dwells that seems to go on forever between every row winding its way across endless fields, mile after mile. All of our efforts exerted to make sure that nothing else will live in that space, not a single rabbit hole nor a single blade of grass. Not realizing in our spread how many endless spaces we now create where nothing lives. Refusing mother nature her due to delight not only in abundance but diversity and to bring the miracle of life to every space she can.
We do the same in our cities, both in our backyards and in our parks, where we ruthlessly control what grows and what doesn't. Limiting the astonishing diversity, which makes this planet the incredible rich source of life that she is capable of being.
I didn't realize it at the time that I was looking for something—more than an image, a feeling. I didn't know to question why was it that I spent all that time going to such remote places. I could get pictures of many different horses so much closer by. Just go to any barn or arena. But what I was looking for was never there.
Without realizing it for a long time, when I take my dog for his daily walk, I find those pockets, those spaces where I can find that feeling - that feeling of being alive, of finding a connection. Sometimes it is just finding a road in the country where as we walk, I can watch the falling sun glimmer gold through the trees. Sometimes it's just watching the nodding heads of yellow flowers getting ready to rest after a long day of following the sun. I look for pockets, spaces, places where I feel connected, alive. To feed my soul once again, to let the reverberation keep up the amplitude of that which I had experienced in those fields years ago.
You perhaps thought this story, this book was a lesson in connecting to the horses. That is what I thought when I began to write.
But life in all of its complexity showed me it wasn't about us connecting to the horses or the horses connecting to us. It was a part of it, but there was more. It was about two conscious beings recognizing each other when both were in a place where that could happen.
It is about the conscious horse recognizing us. Because we have found our way.
The consciousness of the space can be measured by the richness and diversity of life to be found there. While we don't have to be someplace to be in that space of consciousness, there is no doubt that even the simplest essence makes it easier to connect, and then to stay connected.
We finally found where they lived. We found who they lived with. We became part of the dance of sparks of life that wove through the tapestry of the sun and the water and the sky.
And as we can discover, it is richer when we are with those we are connected to, who are consciously aware themselves. Somehow just by being there, they amplify, enrich, strengthen, empower that which is. Which is why when we share that space with the horse, it can feel so different. Something I didn't realize until that one day when the horses were not there, and I felt so bereft and so very alone.
And one has to wonder if they can do that for us, can we do the same for them? An interesting question don't you think?
Consciousness is a place where the sparks of awareness of that which is life dance together in the light. There are many paths to conscious awareness, but none are true if they don't include and involve the complete unity that is all life. We are not alone in the universe. We never have been. I maybe only heard the horse say, "I choose you.", but it turns out there is an endless diversity of life saying the same, just waiting here for us.
Consciousness is a place. If we want to reach a true conscious awareness, then we need to live where it lives. We need to exist in awareness. Our senses always reaching for the heartfelt wondrous beauty that is the awareness of the wonderous possibilities of so many different sparks of life in that space where we all live together. A place that fulfils us, nourishes us, feeds our minds and our spirits, supports us and the world that we create together. And our world needs this, needs for us to reconnect.
Finding those connections though, means that while maybe you can now feel the essence of life in these places, you can feel the opposite in others. You can sit in a city park and, in that moment, feel the falseness, the lack of life, in the silence. We spray, we remove, we kill, we limit the lives of what can live in these spaces and don't realize in the process how we take away the health of that space, the health of a planet, the health of our own souls in the doing. We take away something that used to belong to all of us. We end up losing something of ourselves.
I know not what we should call this thing that we are missing. I talk about seeing, about hearing, about connections, about a search for enlightenment, when the answer is that we have lost something, we are missing a very real vital part of our beings, something that was once was a part of all of us. It is like we are missing one of our senses, and how do you describe a sense when you don't even know that it exists.
Within this book are the seeds of how a healthy world is supported. Change happens from what we feel, not necessarily in what we know. At least not to start with.
What we feel, what is of us, what is in us, is what comes to pass, not necessarily what we know. In much the same way as we would not cut off one of our arms or blind ourselves, we protect automatically that which we recognize as us. Disconnected, apart, nothing changes. We feel no true connection, and feeling no connection, somehow we are not moved to fix what is broken. When we connect to become part of the beauty that is life, when we become more consciously aware of the touch of all life upon our own spirit, we cannot stop ourselves from amplifying that vision, living in such a way that this becomes our reality because this is where we live. This is what we are a part of, and finally, we see who we are.
Chapter 67 Notes - Insights to Share
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