Do Horses LOVE?

The Persian Poet Rumi said: 

 

"By God, when you see your beauty, you'll be the idol of yourself"

I believe horses do LOVE.

I believe they simplify 'how to' love for us to understand it better.

I believe they can teach us a lot about the true nature of love. 
I believe it would be impossible for them NOT to experience love.

There are different types of love - the love you have for your spouse, your parents, siblings and children, which can feel very different in its form and depth.  Then there is the love you have for a specific football team, country or place, religion or faith. We can love things that are bad for us or pursue passions with love that benefit us.  Somewhere in the mix is the love we have for our horse.

The question in my mind, is do they feel love, and if they do, what can they teach us about the nature of love?

To get my head around the concept it needs to make sense in my own mind as it relates to how we experience love first.

How much love do we feel towards ourselves and others?  Is it one emotion or many mixed up?   Where does it come from?  Is it self fulfilling? Can you track it and nurture it's development like mastering a new skill?  When I feel love does it feel the same as when you experience love, just as when we both look at grass do we see the same green? 

Let's step back. When we are born we are emotionally healthy and in tact. We love and accept ourselves and those around us.  We are free of expectation and judgement. We have no concept of if we are cute enough, the right weight or showing normal baby skills of alertness. We are at our closest to living as a horse lives i.e. we are present, living in the moment, for the moment, and without much conscious thought about the next moment, dependant on others for our mutual survival. We know and experience love (without any label).  Love is all around us.

As we grow and develop, things begin to change: we are taught right from wrong and so the process of judgement and comparison begins. Life takes on a routine of being told when and what to eat, when and when to sleep, and what to do.  We learn how to seek attention, who provides us with comfort, and who fills us with fear.  We learn what behaviours beget which results and with what consequences.  All of this sounds like normal healthy stuff, but over time it replaces our ability to remain present.  We become full of thoughts, perceptions and expectations; the stuff of busy minds.  Soon we have an image of how we should be and we reject those parts of us that get in the way of that ideal. In so doing we banish to some forgotten land vital parts of who we really are - fully!

Carl Jung once said "I'd rather be whole than good". In contrast most of us experience the opposite - and deny parts of ourselves in order to be accepted, popular, or fit in as 'good boys and girls'.

In Neale Donald Walsch's book Conversations with God, God says:

"perfect love is to feeling what perfect white is to colour. Many think that white is an absence of colour.  It is not. It is the inclusion of all colour.  White is every other colour that exists combined.  So, too, is love not the absence of emotion (hatred, anger, lust, jealousy, covertness), but the summation of all feeling?  It is the sum total."

The idea of love being a mix of emotions and feelings seems to make more sense than it being borne of only one specific emotion or feeling,  maybe that's why it is hard to describe.

So, do horses love?

Essy September 2013

I can vouch for how much love in me Essy brings out of me, and how much depth of love I feel for him when I'm around him, particularly when I look into his eyes.  It is at such moments that I well up with tears; tears of pure, deep love.  I am moved uncontrollably, unconsciously and spontaneously, just as love should be - without a need for rational explanation or analysis.  It is not a programmed activity produced on cue.

In my own experience horses help us to feel deep love without analysis, justification or explanation. Whether we love a big shire horse, a young untrained horse, one that is old and frail, statuesque or small, horses allow us to feel love deeply!

Horses are expert teachers at showing us how to spend each day being with ourselves, in acceptance; warts and all! You don't see a horse trying to change himself!  There is no obvious sign that they compare themselves with other horses (unless needing acceptance from the herd). They don't try to comply with some "Breed ideal"or standard.  Horses live being true to themselves, embracing all parts of who they are (ideal or otherwise)!  They know how to 'self love' whereas most of us would struggle to look at ourselves in a mirror and say "I love you" never mind accept what we see and live with it happily.

I'm always inspired by how horses don't appear to spend mental energy berating themselves, criticising their lack of impulsion, or flexion or double fault jumping round. They remember good and bad experiences of course; they are prey animals, learning all the time through experiences.  Yet their ability to accept the now, give things another go, and try, is without limit.  Where does that ability to bounce back or keep going come from?

Some will suggest it comes from their forgiving nature.  I think it comes from being vulnerable.  From being a prey animal.  It plays out like this: when we feel love (us humans) it is best expressed as intimacy, physical, spiritual, mental. Yet before we can be intimate we have to be vulnerable i.e. put our trust in another not to betray us in our vulnerable state of love. That is one of the ultimate expressions of love.  It also provides us with the feedback that we feel enough love in the first place to open up our vulnerable side to others.  In return we get the feedback that we are loved back when our vulnerability is respected not betrayed.

Our horses show the same trust and vulnerability daily: as we catch them, tie them up, ride them, stable them, sell them on to someone else.  They trust us not to abuse that trust; not to violate their vulnerability or exploit it. Trust between humans is brittle, it breaks easily.  I believe it is the same for us with our horses.  The difference is they appear to be resilient.  Perhaps that resilience comes from an acceptance of imperfection. From an understanding that feelings of betrayal will happen and is just one available emotion to experience amongst the full colour palette of love as suggested by Walsch.  Love comes, betrayal comes.  Both must exist. 

Love includes all emotions says Walsch so to experience love we should accept the full range of feelings that contribute to love, and realise that in our longing for Nirvana, a Sole Mate or the perfect horse - we already have them right in front of us, if only we could see and feel them!

Albert Einstein said "nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself..."

Peter Freund, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Chicago, emphasises that there is one fundamental theme running through the past ten years of physics. That theme is that the laws of nature become simple and elegant when expressed in higher dimensions.  Meaning if we got out of the cave where our nose is flush with the side of the lion, and stood on a hilltop we could see the entire lion!

What is directly in front of us is often most hidden from our view.  Our eyes deceive us.  We place too much importance on what we see or think, over what we feel, sense or hear.  Love is all around us, it is behind everything.  How could horses NOT experience love?  Be it in their love of sunshine on their backs, the massaging effect of rolling in dirt, the gentle nuzzling of a friend, or the security of a herd?  Love doesn't have to be complex, its wrapped up in simple moments of self expression and depth of emotion as you stand on a hill side and burst into tears at the beauty of what you see.

Horses teach us every day, to step back - to find that hilltop so that we can see what is right under our nose! Horses epitomise love in their being and in their heritage as a prey animal.

They are wonderful teachers of the feeling and depth of love if we look into their eyes and allow what radiates from them to reach our hearts and in turn radiate back out.

Yes, Horses Do Love!