Finding the harmony within

The joy of

harmony on horseback

Animal trainer Vicki Hearne writes about her experience in restoring difficult horses, horses mistrained so badly their views on life and sometimes people have soured.

Her goal, if I understand her correctly, is to connect with the beauty and honesty the horses inherently know is true about themselves, but that has been buried by confusing signals from humans.

She explains her ability to adapt to the needs of a particular animal -- she knows how to meet each where it is.

Hearne describes a beautiful young mare who reacted murderously to sweet-talk and touching. So the woman had to find another way to communicate.

The form her respect and love (my term, not Hearne's) took was unorthodox, but communicated so clearly to the horse that in four days that same animal ambled up to a picnic table in the pasture and allowed a total stranger to scratch her neck.

Another family came after a week to check on the progress of their troubled horse. As they waited at the fence, they failed to recognize the docile animal loping along under saddle as theirs.

In her book, "Adam's Task," Hearne says, "As it happens, I never encountered a horse in whose soul there was no harmony to call on, though I have thought about giving up more than two or three times. I believe in such horses..." (P. 146)

At this point I'm going to make a huge leap that Hearne might not. That is to say that she was honoring the inner majesty and nobility of her client's animals, much as Christ Jesus showed his respect and love for the inner majesty and nobility of the sick, the scrabblers, and the sinners who crossed his path longing for their genuine life-purpose and life-meaning.

He saw God's man -- whole, useful, generous, caring, intelligent -- right where the rest of the world saw the lame and blind, lowlife and sinners. Where people were willing to connect with that good God who loved them, and discover their inseparability from this infinite goodness, there was healing and transformation.

Sometimes a blessing followed, "Go in peace." Occasionally a solution for making the transformation permanent followed, "Go and sin no more."

Eddy writes, "Whatever is governed by God, is never for an instant deprived of the light and might of intelligence and Life."

I believe Hearne works her transformations from the basis of this intelligence as a constant in her equine clients.

I believe Jesus also lived and healed from the basis of this Principle in his daily encounters.

You and I can find the spiritual intelligence from God active in our lives as well, that allows us to recognize and draw it out in others.