They both turned to face me when they saw me get out of my car and they seemed so glad to see me there. I had come to visit and to begin preparing to ride again after all these months. It is so exciting here in our vacation place with all the new smells, new horses, and lots of new things to check out!
As I walked closer I asked, “Who wants to go first and explore with me?” Cierba turned away from the halter, but Zorro came trotting right up to me. He was ready to go, Cierba seemed to be more focused on eating the hay.
So I took Zorro out of the paddock and walked around the farm – greeting the goats, chickens and other horses on our way to the arenas. Once we got to the round pen, where I could let him go and play with the energy, I could hear Cierba beginning to race around the paddock, whinny-ing as she built herself into the panicked state of discomfort.
Many times, Cierba would leave the Picadero at home and wander down the mountain on her own. Zorro would start to feel discomfort at the change and call to her for her to come back, but she just stayed the course, focused on what she wanted. Zorro would have to find his own inner balance and Cierba didn’t seem to be at all distracted by his need for her to do something different.
But today it was different, because he was leaving her. After a few minutes, Cierba started to throw a fit. She raced around the paddock, whinnying and screeching to a halt at the fence line.
While we were in the round pen, Zorro would call back to her occasionally, but he was easily engaged again in play. Why was she so distraught? She had lots of hay and peace and quiet. But now she was focusing on what she didn’t have, and that made her feel bad.
At first, I thought the message for me in these events was about being left behind and how we don’t seem to mind leaving when we have a focus on what we want, but we resent being the one that is left. And then I found myself thinking of a guest that had come to Epona Ridge.
Lisa was a business woman in her mid 40’s, who came to me almost a year ago with a familiar story. She was unhappy in her work and felt stuck in her life because of the choices she had made. She said many times, as if it were already in the process, that she was going to quit her job and do something she really loved. She said that she no longer felt inspired by what she was doing and was ready to move on.
Almost four months later, Lisa signed up for another retreat. The company where Lisa worked had “let her go” and she found herself angry and completely unprepared. She was outraged. After all, she had worked there and done a good job, even though she didn’t enjoy it anymore. How could they let her go?
What Lisa learned was similar to so many others. Although we may be enduring an uncomfortable situation, the messages keep coming through – and they just get louder until you have no choice but to deal with them.
Your inner being is asking you to take care of yourself all the time and that may involve changing what you are doing or thinking. It is up to you to listen to it, or ignore it. If you continue to ignore it, don’t be surprised if something you didn’t expect changes for you.
When Lisa first had sessions with the horses, they would turn their back to her and walk away. She immediately felt rejected and it was painful for her. At first, Lisa thought they didn’t like her. However, over time she began to understand it differently. The horses continued to do the same thing when she was around but Lisa started to get the message.
“They are mirroring how I treat myself,” she told me. “They’re showing me how I have ignored my own feelings.” In essence, Lisa found that she had been turning her back on herself.
Throughout her retreat, she learned more about her personal patterns and saw the gaps in her own boundaries. Lisa found that she hadn’t taken the time to focus on what she really wanted, because she was so focused on doing what she had learned to do. She had been caught in the maze of doing a great job for others around her: her boss, her parents, and her husband. She was living in reaction to her life as it was, and enduring a lot of discomfort within herself that had been growing increasingly worse.
As Lisa began to understand more deeply, she began to soften and feel the hope and inspiration that was finally able to expand. Her sessions with the horses reflected her inner shift as they gently came over to her, allowing her to touch them, while they stood respectfully close by her side.
Lisa’s story is like so many others who are working at a job or at a relationship, but not working at sustaining a life that feels good. What we eventually find is that we are leaving ourselves be-hind, because we aren’t growing in tandem with our spirit. The key indicator is when we feel an increasing discomfort in our lives, like Cierba felt in her paddock after Zorro and I began playing in the round pen.
If you are feeling discomfort, the energy is already in motion and the solutions are there for you.
Expansion in life comes from personal awareness and continued alignment with your spirit. We just need to learn how to listen within for our clear guidance and we then will feel the flow of inner balance and inspiration.
BTW, I’ve created a simple but powerful tool especially for those times when you feel frustrated because you can’t seem to find your inner balance. It’s a FREE toolkit to decode your inner wisdom so you can get the message from your heart and soul.
