Is now the time?

Is now the time?

There eventually comes a time. For some the time is sooner and others it is later. Your practice needs to change. Things are just not working for you any more. It is not that you cannot do “things” with the horse, but more that “things” just do not bring the satisfaction they once brought.

It is a difficult time and for some, it is far easier to ignore the feeling of it not being quite right or you seek out and find someone or some other thing which for a time distracts you from the feeling of dissatisfaction. Yet, there it still is, a feeling of “not right”, but what is not right, you cannot quite say.

This dark feeling is a door to the change in your practice. This is the moment when the confusion and discomfort can be overcome. It is the moment when you know you cannot do it, you cannot fix it without some help. Looking outwardly, you have not found the solution and looking within only heightens the darkness. Here is the time when you need a true friend and here is the time when you realize the friend has always been there for you. Who and where is that friend? It is the horse and when your heart opens, you find the deep listening you crave. The sun rises as you give up your doubts and start to find simple pleasure in a simple truth which is about harmony.

The idea of harmony saves no one, but the experience of harmony saves everyone. Long before you can change anything, in a good way, one must listen to see the way you think you need to change. The world you have built around the horse is not a world for the horse, but it is only a world for you and it is dark. The light comes quickly when your mind turns to finding the world the horse would make with you. So it is that here, you start all over again and starting again and again is what you do until the sun shines.

Find and experience such a dressage. It comes when you do not know what to think and what to feel. You give up your dressage and discover real Dressage. The surprise is that nothing is the way you think it is but everything is the way it really is because you find the confidence and joy in simple presence.