You can’t predict the future, no one can, actually maybe some do but I don’t know them. Let’s agree that most of us humans can’t predict the future, but we wish we could, we wish to have the information about our destiny, the good and the bad, we will handle any knowledge we achieve for what is about to come. It doesn’t matter if we can predict the future or not, what matters is the fact that we all think about the future, it seems that in many cases we live today while thinking about tomorrow, or yesterday.
Horses are lucky, because they don’t meet with all these mental complications of self-fulfillment. Their self-fulfillment is based on the providence of physical needs and safety, horses can define between good and not good, not because they think about it but because they can physically feel it. Horses experience this world based on their attention to their physical state. They don’t spend their life living in the gap between physical needs and self-fulfillment (as humans do) they experience self-fulfillment every day after breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Why is it like that?
Maslow pyramid tells us that we are climbing towards something that will provide our needs. By Maslow our first and basic need is physical, and our last and highest need is need for self-actualization; This level of need refers to the realization of one's full potential. Maslow describes this as the desire to accomplish everything that one can, to become the most that one can be. People may have a strong, particular desire to become an ideal parent, succeed athletically, or create paintings, pictures, or inventions.
Maslow's approach is interesting from the perspective of time perception. The physical need is always present, it is a dichotomous reality, hungry or not hungry, with pain or without pain. The physical needs provide us direct affirmation.
However, the highest level of needs according to Maslow is self-actualization, which can be understood as a fulfillment of human’s potential to be revealed in the future, it is something to be achieved in the future, and even if it is already achieved it will be hard to define it, it seems that it can always be “a little bit better” than what it is.
If self-fulfillment becomes the highest goal of humanity, it can be understood that we are a group of individuals who physically live in the present but mentally live in the future. How complicated and stupid that sounds… for me it means that our mind and body are not aligned, there is always a gap between my physical state and my mental state, and in many cases in our internal experience, we experience the gap between our mind and body.
It seems that the smart is being stupid, and the stupid are being smart. We think we have all it takes to be happy, chasing our dreams, with the attention of constant chasing, while the horse's dreams are being experienced and fulfilled every day.
The work with the horse allows the human to let go of his dreams, future aspirations and connect with a unique individual which is living in the moment, in the present time. The horse will never communicate with you about tomorrow, it is all about today. It doesn’t fill the world between you two with words, but through physical behavior. The physical is now, it is happening or not happening.
It allows us to connect, to connect first to our body with pure conviction, it can be like surfing and dancing in which the mind becomes fully absorbed in the physical happening, it is art, art of motion and connection. How to reach this level, I don’t know yet, maybe you have an idea. How to let your mind go and body in, how to let go of time and be here with your horse, and yourself. It might sound easy but for me it is the hardest thing to do. I try to be here and now every day when I meet my horses, but my mind is far ahead thinking of a bright future. But let’s try to stop time and feel, feel the horse and feel your body, experience your art, your unique art of communication.
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