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 Post subject: Being in the Moment
PostPosted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 4:55 am 
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This topic was split from the "Feel and Release" topic, located at:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1689&p=38253#p38253

Some thoughts/ideas in this topic may refer back to the Feel and Release topic.


Quote:
Horses live in the moment. There is no attention placed on the grass he ate 2 days ago or the horse that he met on the trail an hour ago or what he will have for dinner in the evening. He is right there; conscious of anything and everything that is happening in his immediate surroundings. He is 100% present.


I'm pretty sure I won't explain this properly, but I'll see if I can get anywhere close.

I think horses DO live in the moment. That doesn't mean they don't have memories...of course they do, and they learn as they grow, and every experience is banked into their minds, and every experience affects how they react, think, feel in any given present moment. And I know they can "want"...which would mean they are least cognizant of a future moment, because they expect to be fed at a given time and I think they look forward to that.

But having been listening to Eckhart Tolle lately, and trying to grasp how one lives in the now and still functions in every day life where we really DO need to plan somewhat for the future (saving money, buying food for tomorrow's meal, paying bills so we have electricity next month, etc). It come down to an awareness of any given present moment. It doesn't mean we're not affected by the past, or planning for the future, but it means we can be present in every moment of every day, and not LOST in the thought that we should just ignore this moment, because the next one, or the next one will be more fulfilling.

It's something we humans tend to suck at. But it's something a horse (or a dog, etc) is really good at. It's natural for them.

There's a poem I like, by Walt Whitman, that I want to share....as long as no one takes offence to the religious aspect of it....

Quote:
I think I could turn and live with animals.
They are so placid and self contained.
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God.

Not one is dissatisfied -
not one is demented with the mania of owning things.
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.


Now if you choose to take each line literally, there are many who would hate this poem, and think it sacrilegious. But it's not intended, I don't think, to slander anyone's religious beliefs. My take on it, is that animals live simply. I don't think they worry about whether or not there is any more grass if their belly's are full. Only when they are hungry will they look for more. Only when they are thirsty will they look for water. They don't carry canteens in case they get thirsty later.

They don't worry about what they look like. They don't care to impress, generally, other than of course the obvious of a stallion courting a mare. But in general, they don't care about such things. If one is wounded or lame, they just stand and bear it, or they hobble along after the herd the best they can. They don't complain about it. Whatever happens, happens.

That doesn't mean they don't fear things, that doesn't mean they don't like one thing (or person) more than another.

I think, more than anything, it speaks to their innate ability to live in the moment. To notice what is important about any given moment.

I'm not sure I explained that very well, but my point is, I think you can live in the moment, but still maintain your learned skills and memories of the past, and maybe a little hope about the future without obsessing about it (the future, I mean).

It's the difference between being totally goal oriented (which we are uniquely gifted at being), and totally survival oriented, which doesn't leave you much room for wishin' and hopin'. :D

So...it's just a tiny point from a brilliant post by Leigh...and it's not meant to change the subject or anything...this is just something of a point I've been trying to explore in myself the last little while and it caught my eye!

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 Post subject: Re: Feel and release
PostPosted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 6:25 am 
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In many ways I totally agree with you, Karen! In a Tolle sort of way, yes, I think they do live far more in the moment than we do. In the sense that they're not worrying about abstractions and external ego things that people worry about, I think animals have us beat, big time!

(And I think that's a brilliant poem from Whitman.)

But I think that the past/present/future all live simultaneously in horse's brains -- as I said, I don't think they process this stuff in the same way we do (which was what I meant, in short hand, Karen, along the lines of what you wrote), but I think it's there all the time.

A lot of this belief has to do with Stardust and my experiences with him. He had taken himself out of the moment almost completely when I first met him -- he was essentially catatonic. I didn't think this was possible for a horse until I met him. He'd gone somewhere completely different, and lived there -- when he began to return to the moment, he almost fell apart at the seams -- he didn't know how to process it!

This really changed how I thought about their capacity for thinking and feeling, memory and emotion.

Here's what I wrote in my diary when I was describing my sense of how he emerged from this, and how I see how he thinks:

Quote:
a swirl between past and present in their minds where they hold equal reality. I see their thinking process as a dance between personal memory, herd and ancestral memory (I actually think this is part of what we understand as instinct in animals), and present -- I think this is how their imagination works. The future is not something they think about in far off terms, but as they meet situations, they have this wheeling set of images and emotions and sensations that blend what's happened in the past, what's happening now, and what could happen next that are all intertwined.


and from another post in Eileen's diary:
Quote:
I was writing in my diary about how I imagine horse's minds to work [...snip...] and I think that they also on some level or another co-think, co-experience, and co-imagine -- I think this is what animals who exist in large communities like herds or flocks do -- there is a communal kind of intelligence and communication that's passed back and forth between them. The next layer of sophistication, in my mind, to Carl Jung's ideas about the collective unconscious in humans -- I think we may have once had this ability but lost it as we turned to reason over intuitive thought...


I do think animals live in the moment more than we do in many ways -- I think because of the constructs of our consciousness, that's why we need meditation to take us out of it and folks like Eckhardt Tolle to remind us to step back in! ;)

Obviously, they don't spend a lot of time worrying about the future in concrete terms like humans do -- they don't store food like some animals, for example, or hold off drinking water until they're sure they'll have enough for later (loved the canteen image, though! Circe would have one if she had opposable thumbs, I'm sure!) ;) ... But I do think that spot of grass yesterday gets folded into their thought in a particular way, or the emotions they felt when meeting the horse on the trail...I think they're emotional and sensate memories, that don't live that far from this precise moment -- so I don't think it's either/or, I think it's part of the whole.

And I know that when I'm communicating best with my horses I'm 100 percent there with them, but am open as broadly as I can be to what that means -- I think their past/present/future mind constructs are all based in the now unlike how ours tend to be -- but I think their now is all encompassing. Does this make sense?

So I don't think they live in the now with no sense of particular connection to what happened before or may happen in the future -- which is how I understood that writing on the website Andrea pointed us to.

Donald, I love your line about "nerve pathways" -- I think that's key. With Stardust, we've had to work hard to literally rewire those so he was not captive of his past, even when his pain abated.

Sorry -- I have contributed to swinging off topic 8) ;) , but I do think this is important when we think about training and learning. (And Donald, I still need to read Jaynes' Bicameral Mind!)

And I SO hear you about how much easier it is to counsel patience than it is to live it! :D I find it's an appetite that, to use a French phrase, "grows with eating." The more I'm out with my guys living in their atemporal time, the more I'm content there and the more I crave it. When I get caught in my own linear, task driven little human life, my impatience boils over and we all pay the proverbial piper.

Ooh, ooh -- that leads me to a last thought, Karen -- I think horses sense of time is very different than ours and is part of the "now" that you're talking about -- because I have spent so much time looking at myth, it feels like mythic time to me -- not the time of wrist watches or linearness, or internal or external momentums, but a "one time" on some level...

Shutting up now...
:D

Hugs,
Leigh

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 Post subject: Re: Feel and release
PostPosted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 6:59 am 
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Quote:
not the time of wrist watches or linearness, or internal or external momentums, but a "one time" on some level...

Shutting up now...


No shutting up allowed!

MORE!

This is fascinating!

And I want you to delve a little more, please, into the quote above, 'cause I don't quite get it...

...more please?

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 Post subject: Re: Feel and release
PostPosted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 11:10 pm 
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Oh, man, here she goes...
8) ;)

Let me try to explain what I'm thinking...

People in western European culture are used to thinking about time as linear and fixed....but, if you look at quantum physics or quantum mechanics, or the ideas about time in many hunter/gatherer cultures, there is a very different sense of how time works.

A couple thoughts on mythic time:
The Australian Aborigines, for example, think of time as something that is happening backwards and forwards (and sideways, and up and down) all the time -- we've badly translated this concept into English as "Dreamtime." But a better one-word translation I've run across is "everwhen." I love that! They live in linear time but also in this "everwhen" time all the time -- even today. There's also a really interesting book called "Thunder Rides a Black Horse" by Carol Farrer about the Apache concepts of mythic time -- one example being time being defined as "participant time" (not their word for it, I'm sure! ;) ) -- the right "time" for something happening emerges when everyone is ready, not by linear/clock time.

Quantum stuff:
Einstein wrote that space and time were "reference frames" that were relative to the observer -- this is the spacetime continuum idea, where time and space co-exist in a single construct. This is, as I understand it, the basics of Einstein's theory of Relativity -- in Euclidean thought (which pretty much covers all Western thinking on this until Einstein) -- there are the three space dimensions, and time as a constant and universal fourth dimension. But Einstein discovered that the flow of time is different coming from different vantage points...other ideas that have followed (some from Einstein, some from other physicists -- that time and space are curved; and that as time expands, space contracts; gravitation is actually a warping of space time; and gravitation itself is a property of space time... :ieks: :ieks: :ieks:

So -- a lifetime in human perception might be a nanosecond in another time construct, or another galaxy. The Greek philosopher Heroclitus believed that motionlessness was an illusion -- that all things are always in motion and changing. Quantum physics supports that theory.

So -- what does this all have to do with horses? I have no clue! :rofl:

What I think is this -- I think that given the beginning discoveries about spacetime that refute our conscious, linear human sense of time opens up possibilities for much different perceptions of time by those creatures on our planet that think differently than we do, without the same kind of ego-based, external consciousness that humans have.

(This is why I need to read Jaynes' book on the bicameral mind that Donald suggested -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin ... meral_Mind because I think, whether he's totally right or totally wrong, it could help give us insights into how other beings think. If we're at the beginnings of understanding quantum physics I think we're in the absolute baby steps of understanding different types of cognition and meaning making on our own planet...)

Animal Cognition
Here's an article from Science Daily about research that was done with rats on how they perceived time:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 183024.htm

"These results, the researchers say, suggest that episodic-like memory in rats is qualitatively different from human episodic memory, which involves retention of the point in past time when an event occurred."

From the study designer:

"“This research,” said Roberts, “supports the theory I introduced that animals are stuck in time, with no sense of time extending into the past or future.”"

I come to a different conclusion than he does -- I don't think they're "stuck" at all. Instead, I think his research suggests that past/present/future are all intertwined in a different way than how we process it -- because the "when" of what happened before isn't something that is stored, the then/now/soon is all part of the now. This is the "everwhen" of the Aborigines, and the "one time" I was talking about above. I think Roberts' sense of time is more limited than animals! :)

Have you ever had a moment where your consciousness shifts and you are suddenly aware of your self and the world you're in differently? That somehow you're "out of time" as we generally think about it? This used to happen to me a lot when I was improvising while dancing -- all of a sudden I'd look in the mirror and have a sense of myself there in that second, but also not there, being there in the future, being there in the ancient past... Or a moment where you look up and think "man, where did the time go?" when you're engaged in something deeply? (This is Tolle's "now" as I understand it). I think horses live there all the time -- and their "now" encompasses all that came before and all that may come. I have these moments occasionally when I'm really in tune with my guys -- time feels like space to me then, spiraling and connected.

And I think that the then/now/soon in horses' minds are based on emotions and sensations -- they don't think in words, obviously, so the language of their memory, I think, is in images and feelings (physical and emotional). I think this is why a horse might suddenly have a reaction to a current experience that doesn't feel different to us, but something about the smell, the sensation on their bodies, the light, the place, the energy, whatever, pops up a memory about something that happened that was unpleasant in the past. If they're not thinking "oh, yes, that happened ten years ago" but it's instead swirling, it's as much a part of the reality of the now as what's actually happening...

This is exciting to me for several reasons -- first, it invites us to explore the otherness of how our horses think and feel and remember as something to learn from, rather than to diminutize -- it is different, and powerful in its own right, not less than ours. We humans have a tendency to value things we understand, and life forms that process the way we process -- it's our way, so it must be the best way! -- I don't think that's necessarily true! (Don't get me started on plant cognition, for example...) 8) ;)

Second, I think that it offers some road signs that can help us better understand how our horses can learn. It can open up our understanding, patience, and compassion about a reaction we're not liking -- it may feel arbitrary to us, and therefore contrary, but I believe it's linked to something that has happened in the past that feels very real.

And third, I think it's something that we on some level yearn for -- I think it's part of what we find magical about horses and why they have sense of sense of being mythic and evocative to us. Thinking about time this way can bring you both outside of yourself (in a conscious, linear, goal-driven way) and into a deeper sense of yourself and the universe.

And I'll also spare you my theories on atomic vibration, resonance, and entrainment!!!

Hopefully this makes some sort of sense -- I've been mulling this over in my head for a while, but this is the first time I've tried to actually write any of it down...

:) :kiss:
Leigh

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 Post subject: Re: Feel and release
PostPosted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:33 am 
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:applause: :applause: :applause:

Yes! I get it! I think.... :rofl:

Quote:
Have you ever had a moment where your consciousness shifts and you are suddenly aware of your self and the world you're in differently?


Growing up, I would have these periodically (at least I think that's what it was)...the moments were paired with a physical sensation of lightness. They were, to me, moments of awareness, and felt rather spiritual. But they were fleeting and I could never explain them and could bnever "grab on to them" and make them stay long enough to know what they were. Could have been hormones for all I know :lol:

I love the concept of everwhen! And it makes sense in your observation that Stardust could be present and not present at the same time.

In one of my poems about Rio, I touch on that same sense of everything being here...past and future all being present in Now, all at once, but in the form of water and scent, like music and memory...or thought contained in water...like ancestral knowledge - and scent being as rich to a dog as a symphony is to us.

"I drink in the symphony of a thousand years". The idea came about in simply knowing that the molecules that form a pond on my property today, could have been part of a stream on the other side of the world thousands of years ago...or part of an ocean at the very beginning of time. And knowing (or thinking I do) how dogs process scent, and knowing how joyful scent is to Rio, I wonder if, within the molecules of my pond, are the memories of all that they touched throughout the millennia...can Rio smell that too? Can he recognize the first dog in a taste of pond water?

I rarely have the presence of mind to be able to ponder these kinds of things...because I can ponder all I like and still not understand any of it. The thoughts are fun, but I can't connect it with anything that seems beneficial for me. I don't have the knowledge, or the right kind of mind to do that perhaps? I don't know HOW to explore anything that ethereal. So hey...maybe that's YOUR job!!! Ya!

Quote:
(Don't get me started on plant cognition, for example...) 8) ;)


Oh,we'd need another forum for that... :D

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 Post subject: Re: Feel and release
PostPosted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:15 am 
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Quote:
"I drink in the symphony of a thousand years". The idea came about in simply knowing that the molecules that form a pond on my property today, could have been part of a stream on the other side of the world thousands of years ago...or part of an ocean at the very beginning of time. And knowing (or thinking I do) how dogs process scent, and knowing how joyful scent is to Rio, I wonder if, within the molecules of my pond, are the memories of all that they touched throughout the millennia...can Rio smell that too? Can he recognize the first dog in a taste of pond water?

GLORIOUS!!!! :love:

Yes, yes, yes! That's exactly the kind of awareness I'm talking about!

And I think herd/flock animals share a consciousness/ancestral memory that's much clearer than what we share...

I thought you'd love "everwhen" -- very much in line with the philosophy of a woman who isn't seeking endings... ;)

Have you ever read Deepak Chopra's "The Return of Merlin"? Lovely book -- he casts the crows as group memory/thought holders that is stronger than their own individual consciousness. Very cool concept...there are several mythologies that do this (Norse myth -- Odin's two ravens were Thought and Memory.)

And I think this is something that most of us generally just catch glimpses of -- I don't think many of us live here most of the time. It's a brush with the liminal, I think. (Which is what your moments growing up were...hormonal or not!) :D

This stuff just jazzes me, in part because I DO think there are links to our mundane, work-a-day world -- I think it's a different way of understanding ourselves and the world than we usually do, and I think animals can help expand our awareness about this. But I think there are different ways to glance at it -- for example, I think one strong way you do this is through your art -- you can translate and create meaning constructs in a way I could only dream of -- my brain just doesn't work THAT way! :D

This is an article that I wrote a while back on what I call "imaginal logic" that digs into some of this stuff a little bit...

http://www.imaginalinstitute.com/imagin ... rticle.htm

Okay...back to our regular programming..I feel that I must release this thread! :rofl:

Hugs,
Leigh

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 Post subject: Re: Feel and release
PostPosted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 5:21 am 
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Quote:
Have you ever read Deepak Chopra's "The Return of Merlin"? Lovely book -- he casts the crows as group memory/thought holders that is stronger than their own individual consciousness. Very cool concept...there are several mythologies that do this (Norse myth -- Odin's two ravens were Thought and Memory.)


I know we've gotten so totally off base here, but it's rather interesting. For Andrea's sake, I'm going to do the moderator thing and split this off to a new topic.

I want to kick this around some more! Thank you!!

My apologies in advance if I screw up this move...my first time trying it!

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 Post subject: Re: Feel and release
PostPosted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 5:39 am 
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I have been re reading the Jayne's book. I realize he is writing theory - but I feel
wistful - wondering what we gave up


I so like these thoughts about time! Thanks!

What about saying that time is layered? Everwhen being the name for is now. Perhaps time is not only layered but woven and that's why some yesterdays show up to some people as some tomorrows do. Kahoozerat we need more words.

If, as it is theorized that everything since creation is being recycled (love the line from your poem Karen) and if this is a closed universe -- then why not time as well? .Recycled time? So horses might be seeing a layered reality? And most of it has no interest for their ways of life (though everyone has accused their horse of seeing ghosts, right?) but some is's are noticed.



How fast is earth moving? Are there tiny time warps every day? Do horses notice them?

Leigh said :I feel that I must release this thread!

:) silly Leigh!

blessings to all that can still think straight - this stuff is exciting.


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 Post subject: Re: Being in the Moment
PostPosted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 6:12 am 
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Bravo Leigh for having the courage to think that through to something that could be written down and explained so lucidly!! :cheers: :cheers: I feel that you have captured for me the sense of time awareness/ being awareness that I pick up from the animals, when I open my conciousness to their patterns...but I've never put all the pieces together to be able to express it in a senseful way to anyone else. Thankyou!!!

Karen, YES!! Me too!! I have had exactly these thoughts about the water.. One particularly memorable experience a few years back, sitting in boulder pool of hot water that seeps out from the rockcliff at the base of a sheer 500metre plus drop in the Taroko Gorge, looking up at the narrow cleft of light above, feeling like I was inside mother earth, then diving into the cold rushing water of the river and holding on, under the surface, as it all surged passed me, I had a blissful revelation that this was the VERY SAME water that had been travelling around the earth for millenia.. what essences had it picked up.. and if I drank it, who was I drinking? Who will be drinking me in a thousand or five thousand years from now? It gave me a sudden wonderful awareness of the continuity and connectedness of all life. :smile:

And Leigh.. I am eagerly awaiting Plant Cognition 101.....

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 Post subject: Re: Being in the Moment
PostPosted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 6:29 am 
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I did it! I spit the topic! Sorry for any confusion it may cause!

Leigh, my dear sweet Randy...my better half, love of my life and the bane of my ego, has always called me a "crow person". He meant it of course, in the context of being attracted to shiny things ;) , the shiny things he refers to are just interesting pursuits and the fact that I have tended to flit from one to another as my whim took me.

But as much as I always wished to have a more noble "totem" animal, I have always been fascinated with animals that easily adapt to urban life, yet remain wild. Clever, clever creatures that we tend to hate and think of as pests...crows, ravens, magpies, whiskey jacks (Gray Jays?), coyotes, raccoons, rats, etc. But the ones that fascinated me the most were the coyotes and the crows/ravens. So I guess I'm not so averse to being a crow person, if it also means I'm clever and adaptive (even if I'm a little drawn to shiny things). :rofl:

But now...also perhaps a keeper of thoughts and memories. I LIKE that idea!

I have not read "The Return of Merlin". Honestly, I rarely read anything...I wonder if it's available on disk? I'll have to look!

As for my art, I usually find meaning, much, much later, when it becomes apparent...like today... :rofl: :rofl:

Painting just happens. What it might mean, comes much, much later. Usually I don't try to explain what I paint, and let mean whatever it might mean to whoever looks at it.

But Rio's poetry was interesting. Because I kept saying that they are HIS songs. Not mine.

But in trying to crawl inside of Rio's mind, and imagine things from his perspective, what came of it more than anything was a very different sense of time...so that is extremely fascinating.

Maybe I was doing a little more than imagining. Maybe more of an exercising. Because a concept too that didn't become a poem was regarding the deeper meaning of digging a hole. :D

How each bit of dirt is thrown wildly out from between his hind legs, while his nose reads the flying earth like speed reading the morning newspaper, his nose is telling him the history of the world, layer by layer. Again...did his ancestors walk just a foot beneath where he walks today?

Is that the reason he digs holes? His history lesson? His way of connecting with something much larger than himself? Does he know what himself is?

Quote:
Meanings shimmer and reflect both themselves and their perceivers


THIS is horse training! :applause: :applause: :applause:

It's also art.

How on earth can you say you're not an artist? Artists either painstakingly record exactly what they see, or they paint what they experience with rich blobs of imagination on a very open mind. But either way, it's art. The technical ability or the expression of imagination. It's art. And you can do BOTH!

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 Post subject: Re: Being in the Moment
PostPosted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 6:48 am 
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:blush: I misquoted Rio's poem.

"I swallow the symphony of a million years"

Pah...a thousand years...silly me...:roll:

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 Post subject: Re: Being in the Moment
PostPosted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:39 pm 
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I am still recovering from a virus and have a thick head, but when I found this topic I just had to get involved, it is a subject close to my heart.

Karen your first post was excellent and for me it came very close to describing the way I try to live my life and ultimately train my horses.

After I became a reiki master over ten years ago my inner beliefs began to fall apart as I began to realise a lot of what I believed in was just a fabrication when I say this I am not speaking about a personal level.

I read and studied so much that my head came close to exploding, subjects as far apart as quantum science and the indigenous cultures. I then began to apply these laws to my life and found it was possible to create a special kind of magic.

For me a book called 'Urban Shaman' by Serge Kahili King, P.H.D. comes closest to explaining the path I follow and the shamanic methods I used to make Gouch whole again.

The Fourth Principle M A N A W A - Now is the Moment of Power.
Our environment and circumstances in the present moment, this includes our horses, are the direct reflection of our physical and mental reflections in this moment. Because of memory we carry over habits and beliefs from day to day if we change our belief we change our present.

We can actually change anything , animals are aware of this they react in a new way to each circumstance however they are affected by our thoughts, that is why some people may quiet a horse and others wind them up. The horse is living in the present but is aware not only of memories, but everything seen and unseen that is going on around him, this information is processed and the best possibly outcome chosen. In shamanism all that exists is the present, the past is a jumble of memories the future possible outcomes.

I was told by several knowledgeable people that Gouch would never work with me and that his aggressive behaviour would continue to escalate and I would no longer be able to manage him. For a while I bought into that belief system with negative results, it was after i began to change my belief system and live in the present moment with him that we began to move in the direction of positive change. It was more about me changing as he was only reacting to the energies of that one moment in time.

I guess this is a little O.T.T. for most but that's the way we live our lives and it is what works for us.

Eileen

P.S. leigh I love reading your scientific reports on this , to me the scientist are only affirming what the old cultures have known and used for centuries. The knowledge is there for all to use but people in the west seem scared and shy away. Horses and other animals help us to reconnect with this part of ourselves.

Cleve Backster has done some very good work on communicating with plants are you familiar with his work.

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 Post subject: Re: Being in the Moment
PostPosted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 5:08 pm 
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Eileen, as I mentioned above, the only time I have felt that I have tapped into another creatures reality is when I have consciously tried to see the world from that animal's perspective. Just trying to imagine it. I have never felt that I knew enough about a horse to do that. Dogs, yes. I don't know why I would feel there is a difference?

Perhaps this is something I need to try and do.

Sue, I have felt the same thing about water, only for me it was simply sitting on a beach in Oregon.

Breathing in the salt water air felt like taking in the exhalation of the earth. And in a scientific sense, that's probably exactly what it is. But that is where I felt the most humble and the most connected to earth. I felt no more important than an amoeba floating out there in that vast ocean, and at the same time, I have never felt so free.

Quote:
I guess this is a little O.T.T. for most but that's the way we live our lives and it is what works for us.


That's why I split the topic...so it's not OTT! So we can play with the ideas and discuss them. :yes:

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blessings to all that can still think straight - this stuff is exciting.


For me, it's anything but straight! More like trying to untangle a mass of fishing line one finds in a dusty old tackle box! It's a big job just finding one end so you can start!

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 Post subject: Re: Being in the Moment
PostPosted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 5:46 pm 
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no, you're right Karen! It's woven thinking if anything.

I was just listening to some lectures by Matthew Fox and in talking about medieval mystics and how they can speak to us today said : "The modern era that we're emerging from is very very hostile to pre-modern consciousness -...<snip> and "the post modern times requires pre modern wisdom" or indigenous experience and wisdom -(my paraphrase). I think horses fit neatly in that pre modern consciousness - yes?

and like recycling water -- and oxygen -- it must be 'being wondered' by many of us these days -- I was pondering the scent of forests as tree's breath (anthropomorphic, I know) and moss breath and --- do rocks give off oxygen as they wear down? (there might be - does anyone know?) No - I understand the science of scent -- but tree breath and rock breath sound more familiar.

-Mouschi


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 Post subject: Re: Being in the Moment
PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 5:25 am 
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Cool -- Karen just did a quantum physics spacetime warp and moved the thread! :rofl:

Most excellent! :green:

Really intriguing ideas, all...

Sue and Eileen, some of the most intriguing stuff I've been reading recently about plant cognition is coming from the plant neurobiology community (http://www.plantneurobiology.org/). Absolutely fascinating!

And Mouschi (Karen the Wonder Child -- to whom I owe a PM -- sorry! ;) ), yes, I think horses do in many ways invite us into that pre-modern consciousness -- but part of what I'm totally intrigued by is how much they also fit into the post-modern consciousness of quantum physics. (Where I personally think some of the most creative thinking in science is happening -- and I think it's connecting the dots into more magical and metaphorical thinking rather than only "rational" thinking -- Einstein, for example, was eloquent on the importance of imagination over knowledge...).

I think there are extraordinary things offered by both ways of approaching the world -- there is a questioning and analysis and need to be able to defend in an organized, external way that I so respect in the scientific community. I think this is one of the great gifts its offered to the world -- challenging ourselves to step out of our beliefs in a particular way. But, like anything, science has its limitations and its lenses can be as limiting as any!

And I do agree with Matthew Fox that there's been a devaluing of other ways of "knowing" (and have spent a lot of my life trying to find ways to bring honor to those other ways that I have fluency in) but my hope is that we can find ways to intertwine them, to let them dance together in our consciousness. I actually think that the religious fundamentalism that has gripped many parts of the world (including the US) is a shadow response to the devaluing of intuitive knowledge -- but it's the pendulum swinging way far in the other direction. "I know this to be truth -- Truth -- and my faith is all that matters; and in fact, my faith is about not asking questions." This can stop us as dead as any über commitment to rationality...

So I'm looking for both/and approaches, rather than either/or -- to me, this is where the juice is!

I recently found an organization called The Nature Institute that really intrigues me -- they are a nature/science research institute, but are working deeply with the idea of context.

Here's a very thought provoking article from them about the kind of lenses we look through, called "Qualities:"

http://www.natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/i ... lities.htm

(Interestingly, he starts with a reference to Nobel prize winning biologist/plant geneticist Barbara McClintock, who felt it was imperative to get to know the plants she studied -- he quotes her rather famous line about cultivating a "feeling for the organism" -- so we're back to feel again! ;) )

And Karen -- my self-effacing bit about art was about visual art -- I have played with lots of art forms and disciplines over the years, some with more intuitive ability than others, but the spatial construction process of drawing (other than HIGHLY impressionistic pieces! :lol: ) escapes me. I don't have that particular kind of spatial imagination instinctively -- I watch my husband, who designs lights and sets for theaters for a living, and he can create a 3-D world in his head and then build it -- never ceases to amaze me...I find it as I go along and generally stumble across things after the fact; he sees it in his head full blown before he begins to build a thing. Blows me away. (And also has been the source of some angst in our house renovations, as you can imagine, because I keep wanting the spacetime to let things unfold and he's tapping his foot in impatience because he already sees it and I'm being frustrating! :rofl: (Though I see music spatially and have choreographed for years, and I've never been able to figure out the difference -- it's like my utter inability to do straight-up math, but being completely comfortable with the math and geometry inherent in music and dance and poetry...) :blonde:

And Karen, I love that you're a Crow person! Much trickster in you (and making energy -- crows/ravens figure a lot in creation myths in many Native American cultures, for example)...

...another book suggestion for you (yes, more reading! 8) ) is "Trickster Makes this World" by Lewis Hyde -- actually, another book of his, called "The Gift" is exquisite as well -- and I think many of the people here in AND land would resonate with that big time...

And Eileen, thanks so much for the pointer to "Urban Shaman" -- will need to track this down. I have recently become completely obsessed with Scythian culture, which was a shamanic culture (along with being a horse culture) -- this would be an interesting different step sideways into shamanic thinking... thank you!

xoxoxoxoxo
Leigh

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