How Dead Does the Horse Need to Be to Want to Get Off?

Image by Brigitte makes custom works from your photos, thanks a lot from Pixabay

There is an old expression “if the horse is dead, get off” which I believe comes from Dakota tribal wisdom, encouraging an acceptance rather than a denial of the changing realities in life. The problem is, I have discovered most humans – including me - are stuck in old templates of reality.

I’m perhaps like most other people in that I grew up with an eye to the future, waiting for that glorious moment in which I could take flight and no longer needed to do as I was told. And I thought I had done quite well in those early years of adulthood.

I had my own person upon whom I could rely (mum and dad always had each other so I thought that was the way to go, find that person who could understand me and complete me), I had my own career (which I did pretty well at) and I had my own property filled with my own things (albeit many were hand-me-downs). Rather than being happy, though, all I felt was stressed and dissatisfied.

It wasn’t until I was in my thirties, and my second husband walked out the door every Sunday to pursue his own interest in cars, that I even had any time to feel what was beneath that. I acutely recall the first time when he first went out on his own to pursue his hobby, I had this belief that couples should do everything together and I literally felt so abandoned that I sobbed my heart out.

This – I later discovered through inner work – likely emanated from an early event I had where I was left alone on a hospital stairwell as a three-year-old, while my father went to visit my mother who had just given birth to my brother; children were not allowed in the wards. Feeling alone, while they had each other, was reinforced in various ways throughout my childhood.

Once I got past the pain of my partner leaving me though, I began to relish those times I had to myself. For the first time in a long time I felt into what I wanted and needed in life and, eventually, it led me to immigrating to a country that feels less burdened and entitled in many ways.

From there, I set about redefining my life with a more steely determination to be who I am, whoever that was – I certainly was far from clear on that point. Things got waylaid again when a need to earn money outpaced any introspective insights on what a more authentic career path could look like, and I was thrust back into my previous career and continued to do well until my children came along.

When I say “do well”, I mean I had what is deemed a good job and salary; I still felt an ever-present nagging within that this was not who I was, or what I was meant to be doing.

Having children and being a working mum brought that pot to boiling point and beyond. When Lisa Marchiano says “You’re going to project your stuff on your kids. There is no way that you are going to get through any amount of time with your children and not meet those parts of yourself you cut off and sent backstage” she is not kidding.

To be fair, in hindsight I had been meeting those parts of myself (some call them the shadow parts or our blind spots) throughout my whole life. Through partners, colleagues, customers, friends, interactions with companies and institutions, I had travelled many a rocky road; I just hadn’t chosen to see them as a mirror of anything within me.

With kids, it’s more intense. For one thing, I couldn’t get away from my kids; they were mine, for better or worse until adulthood.

Thankfully I had enough threads of awareness to know that my baby daughter’s incessant crying and need to be with me in those early months wasn’t her trying to manipulate me out of spite. And that is no joke, I am truly thankful for that because my mind did try and convince (the bedraggled and sad excuse of a human being I felt in those early months) that this might be so.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I’d think in anguish.

Luckily kids are also so small, innocent and mesmerising when they arrive, but adults are not. My partner, who had previously had a romantic desire to be a stay-at-home dad, realised pretty quickly that this intense need for attention and connection wasn’t something he would cope well with 24/7 either. So he carried on working and I went back for the pay check and my sanity once each child started eating solids.

But although my kids were ready for trying out foods, they weren’t ready to dial down on the amount of attention and connection they needed. Despite having a far more calm, caring and nurturing stand-in during the day than I could ever have been at that point, they still had a strong need for mama time.

So inevitably after a few years of nightly feeds, awakening for attention, together with a high-responsibility job and big mortgage, not only did I meet the parts of myself I’d cut off and sent backstage, they were the main players in a very toxic narrative that represented most aspects of my life at that point.

Meltdowns and tantrums were pretty commonplace in our house, and that was just us adults. It was when our kids started exhibiting them too I reached tipping point.

I knew then that I had nothing else to give by running any harder along the same old well-worn tracks.

At the same time, with my mind fully occupied on the process of just getting through each day, my more intuitive self seemed to take my acknowledgement and, dare I say, surrender as a sign to slip new thoughts and circumstances spontaneously into view.

I ended up reading Brian Weiss’s book Many Lives Many Masters after someone recommended it to me, not one I’d have usually chosen as it’s about past lives and wasn’t a topic I felt particularly drawn to. However, since it recounts Brian’s own journey as a psychologist working with patients in the standard way, and how this somewhat surreal subject of past lives came up in his world, it was an interesting read that took me on a journey.

It also put into perspective for me many of the concepts a mentor of mine had talked about many times and I hadn’t really followed, suddenly my view of life clicked into place. Instead of this nebulous sense that we are all part of one thing, I suddenly felt and saw things more clearly. Around the same time I saw the movie Lucy, which cemented this clearer aspect of reality I’d now obtained.

That is what I look upon as my spiritual awakening. What I mean by this, is simply a felt-sense that everything and everyone is connected. There is no scripture, dogma or particular philosophy I follow, I experience my connection to all-that-is through my inner senses. But the most important facet is a knowing that my personal power need never be at the mercy or cost of another.

In short, it was quite a pivotal moment in realising that it was entirely within my gift to change my attitudes and ways of expressing in the world. But although I knew then the horse was dead (my previous ways of relating to the world and experiences it drew) I had yet to figure out how to get off.

Then a couple of months later, after reading Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, I went to a weekend workshop with his partner Kim Eng and learned about presence through movement, as well as listening to Eckhart himself and his musings on life. This gave me clarity and brought my energy into a more centered place than it had been in years. It is probably no coincidence that the very next week I manifested a healthy redundancy package and walked away from my corporate career.

That isn’t to say “happily ever after”. Not only was the proverbial horse dead, it was starting to stink and needed a proper burial.

Therein began the real work of getting to understand myself, which got a lot uglier before it got better. Sure, like everyone else, I have childhood wounds and have suffered heartache and rejection in many guises, but by getting to know myself, what I’m really pointing to is the act of understanding the subconscious limitations I had placed on my psyche.

The root cause of those limitations is the (often subconscious) unhelpful narrative I’d developed about me and my life, and I had to bring that into my conscious awareness in order to address it. More importantly though was awakening to the realisation that it was (and never is) what has happened, it is how I reacted (and react) to it that makes me who I am.

That is not to say I had developed those reactions consciously, especially as a baby and small child, my reactions were unconscious and born out of a need to belong and to feel safe. And there began the firing of neural pathways that would lead to decades of unhelpful thought patterns long after the real threat had passed. This is what lies at the basis of a normal childhood (as we have known it to this point in our society).

Becoming aware of those unhelpful thought patterns has been helped by becoming aware of my reactions in the moment, which has been made possible by practicing meditation for a number of years. Nothing spectacular, just fifteen minutes each day of noticing my breathing, noticing any thoughts that creep in, and letting them drift away while refocusing on my breathing.

That helped me become a more conscious observer in my life, which helped me more quickly notice when I was triggered and needed to self regulate my nervous system rather than act out of fear, anger, guilt or shame.

And rather than “take immediate action” as my brain and nervous system were apt to want to do, I have learned to be with the pain more often, just as I did that evening when my ex-husband started pursuing his own interests, to see what it has to reveal. And have awoken to greater capacities and potential wihin myself.

Terri Cole, in her book Boundary Boss, suggests a three-step-process for using when triggered. I’ve found this is naturally what I’ve been drawn to do over recent years, and it’s effective both in the moment, and as a longer term strategy of getting to know the real me:

• Recognise repeating patterns (get curious, ask: Where am I feeling this in my body? Where have I felt like this before? Who does this person remind me of? How is this behavioural dynamic familiar to me?)
• Release the physical body in the moment by breathing deeply into that spot until it expands. Tell yourself “this is just old stuff” and, if this is a deeply ingrained pattern, take responsibility for healing,
• Respond from a more mindful and conscious place.

Life really is for the taking. When we can accept that our limitations may be a result of our inner narrative not keeping up with changing realities, that the scripts in our head are outdated, and train our bodies to feel safe with new – more helpful - scripts, our potential can be fulfilled.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy You Don’t Need to Be Perfect to Make a Breakthrough, The Journey to Me - My Jonathan Livingston Seagull Story, When to Act on Possibility and Overcome the Greatest Human Fear – Be the True You. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.