I had admitted to a reluctant defeat this morning, by sending emails to my clients with the message: “No internet; sorry, but I can’t work until October 1”. My original plan in Tuscany had been to ride horses during the morning, and to give Skype video sessions all afternoon. But the promise of in-room internet access was met by the reality of a rural hotel lounge-only wi-fi set-up . Reality had won out over my desire.
Now I was sitting on “Napolitano”, a full-blooded Lippizan horse, and we were slowly treking downhill towards the olive fields and vineyards that surrounded our hotel. We were not getting along very well. Napolitano was young, but slow and stubborn. I respect that, but he was also big, strong, and a muncher. Every time we passed anything remotely green he was trying to grab it. There’s a lot of green stuff on a Tuscan hillside, so I was spending all my time trying to manage my horse. Symbolic, no doubt, of my frustrations with having to let go of two weeks of sessions.
I’m not an experienced rider, but I can hold my own with the average horse. And today Napolitano was in Silver Chakra mode, making me do something I didn’t want to do: spend all my time staying on his back while trying to guide him down the dangerously-steep rocky trail. And not fall off. As for the continual munching … ,well, very frustrating.
The thing is, I’m still only a few days away from my Higher Chakra Intensive in Germany, which has left me open to new experiences and perceptions. A Silver chakra situation calls out what you don’t want to face but must face: it is the hard work part of the transformational process. I begin to wonder what the point of all this struggling is about, for me.
Not all of us want to deal with life as a challenge; mostly, we want life to accommodate to our desires, and to our demands. It takes struggle to spur new growth, to create an enhanced response to any life situation. Otherwise, we just stay the same. Without accepting our challenges we will grow older, but we remain the same person inside. It is the level of difficulty, and how we wrestle with it, that stimulates our personal and spiritual development. In this most mundane of moments, I was engaging in only two challenges: to stay on the horse’s back, and to control his head without being overly harsh with pulling on his bit. Sightseeing the vineyards was not currently an option.
Energy healing can be like this, in that we all want to get results but we don’t necessarily want to welcome the drudgery of practice. If we are healers we may want to become a “Master”, or a teacher, or another authority-enhancing title, and with a minimal effort. If we are a healing client we may want someone to do our personal work for us, to hand us all the answers so we can get back to life as usual. Very few of us enjoy the monotony of practice, and wrestling with a strong-willed being. We don’t want to let the Silver (Eighth) Chakra mess with us; we want the Gold (Ninth) Chakra to appear to us with the end result. Personal development is hard work.
Almost two hours later my uncomfortable relationship with the Lipizzan began to change me. My heels were down, not because of what I had been told but because, well, because that is how you stay on your horse as you descend a steep rocky trail. But you need to take care. Feet too close to his belly and it may trigger a cantering response, while too far away and you can slip off the horse’s back. Repetition results in competency. Also, my attention has been moving continually down, not through my feet chakras as usual but through Napolitano’s body, and into his hooves. I am no longer two legged, but a four-legged creature.
It’s now the end of the ride, and we are returning back up the hill. I’m standing up in the stirrups to shift my weight forward and off his back, to make the climb easier for him. My stubborn silver muncher is breathing harder, and our male competitive natures have relaxed and come together, so as to manage the steep climb efficiently. Then my heels accidentally touch his belly, and the Lippizan surges powerfully uphill, and we are joined as one. Silver is transformed into gold, and I am no longer the rider. For a few seconds I am centaur, and not just a man. Sightseeing is not why I am here; it is for this experience that I am here.
