The 8th Nerve

Well, after reading The Tao of Equus by Linda Kohanov, I’m never going to look at horses in the same way again. I happened to read the inside cover of this book while I was at PetSmart and since then I kept thinking of it and finally I ordered it online. While reading it, I was amazed at how it chronicled, in a different way, the essence of my grad school paper. The book is about one way of finding authenticity and how to live it. Authenticity requires fully experiencing and accepting the range of one’s thoughts and feelings and integrating modes of awareness.

The author argues that horses can be very sensitive barometer of authenticity and can work therapeutically to help riders get in touch with suppressed thoughts and feelings, as well as working through trauma. We can easily fool ourselves and others with our presentation or “mask”, but not a sensitive prey animal such as a horse.

She introduced concepts that I have been mulling on since, such as pre- and postconquest consciousness (a description of the concept can be found here) and nonlocal mind (one explanation here). I feel that the current environment of our culture, with its emphasis on appearance, science-as-god and logic, is incredibly detrimental, not only to the planet but to our own spirit. We are brutally confined and arrested in our development as human beings and suffering for it. The next step- authenticity- or integration of pre and postconquest consciousness- is so important. Feeling/intuition meets logic/reason, instead of one overruling the other.

I cannot say why I believe this so strongly, particularly when I feel so far from authenticity that I don’t know where or how to begin. Nothing inspires me more than reading about remarkable journeys of discovering new levels of awareness and ways of being as one develops psychologically and spiritually. Something about it rings so true and clearly that I wonder if what I was meant to do with my life has something to do with this. But again, how to begin, or how to ever someday make a living at it?

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Oct 17th 2006Books & Introspection