Equuality: Reflections on Life with Horses

Touching our Truth

About the Book

You can't just sit down and talk about the truth. It doesn't work that way. You have to live it and be part of it and you might get to know it. -Rolling Thunder, Cherokee

Satya is a word meaning truthfulness; that which has no distortion, that which is beyond distinctions of time, space, and person. When we truly begin to listen, the truth becomes the magnet that points the needle of our compass towards right action. When we practice Satya, we practice peeling away the layers of excuses to reveal what lies beneath.

As humans, it is our learned tendency to obfuscate, to put a "spin" on things that makes us look better than we feel. To lie. When we find these lies aren't serving us, when they begin to crack at the seams, our conditioned tendency is to try and patch them up with more of the same. Imagine that you paint your house and it begins to crack and peel after the first year. Instead of stripping the paint off and starting again, it seems easier to just paint over the problem. This time, it only lasts six months, so when you repaint you do two coats. Instead of lasting longer, the peels are larger, the flakes bigger, and they appear after only a few weeks. The joy is that finally you discover you have no choice. You must surrender to the truth, strip away all of the layers of garbage you've built up, and start fresh.

Many of us are forced, at some point, to strip away layers of garbage that we've built up in our horsemanship. While most of us become involved with horses because of the desire for natural connection, we are quickly swept up in situations that lead us down the path of the lie. We realize that everyone seems to know more than we do, so, to avoid looking bad, we do what they do. We buy the same gadgets, we use the same techniques, we put on the same clothes, and we learn to speak the same language. At first, everything seems great, but it doesn't last.

Soon the cracks in the relationship with our horse become too big to ignore. They get spooky, or rush the gate, or stop at jumps. So we pile on more gadgets, gimmicks, and confrontational thinking. Maybe we "solve" some problems, maybe we don't. Either way, they continue to multiply. We tell ourselves we are surprised, that this bolting problem is new and came out of the blue. But inside we know the truth. We've sacrificed the connection to try and save face.

At this point, it is easy to despair. The temptation is to feel like we've failed. We start to believe we should just quit. But we shouldn't despair at all! The truth is that this point, where we feel the lowest we can imagine, is the perfect place to touch the truth of love and connection. We have reached the place where we can give up on all of the things that haven't worked and strip away all the layers of lies, tricks, and fashions. It may seem like a daunting task – it always does to me – but just as to climb a mountain you only have to continue to put one foot in front of the other, the process for becoming a true horseman is simple, if not always easy. Just point the compass of your heart towards your horse, tell yourself the journey is going to be wonderful, and smile as much as possible.