I made an Instagram post the other day with this quote by Anais Nin...
“When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with.”
Chew on this one for a second. Where in your life have you created an illusion of yourself so others could ‘handle’ you? Or changed what you say or do depending on who you are with?
In the eye of the horse, this is a passive action and manipulative in a sense. When I change something I am doing to appease someone or interest them or get them to like me, I am being passive and incongruent. Incongruent because I am speaking different than I am feeling or I am acting differently than I am feeling. We all know this and we all have done this at some point even just to ‘avoid a fight’. This can set up some major self-trust issues. How do you trust yourself if you are constantly putting your feelings aside in the name of ‘peace’ or ‘being liked’.
Coming back to the horse, one of the things they most dislike is incongruence. Horses feel energy. When they can feel the energy of you and then they see you acting different from that, it doesn’t make sense to them and they will usually choose to move away from you. An example is if you were feeling really angry about something and came to the horse and pretended to be feeling sweet and happy. The horse would move away and essentially wouldn’t ‘trust’ you. If you simply acknowledged to yourself and the horse, ‘I’m feeling super angry today but it has nothing to do with you’, that would shift your energy to congruent.
To me, this act of creating illusion was something I came up with as a safety mechanism in order to not be seen. Nobody ever asked me to do it but it was something I decided at some point along the line, was the best way for everyone involved. Creating an illusion was like casting a big ole safety net wide around me or more pointedly, building a wall. If I was who everyone wanted me to be, that would keep me safe from them seeing the real, authentic, vulnerable Me. Behind this wall, I felt safe from any judgement. But, hanging out behind this wall, I didn’t feel truly connected to myself or others and I felt ‘not good enough’. How can we truly feel accepted and loved for who we are when we have never shown who we really are to the world?
I love hanging out with my horse because she has no questions about who she is. She is wild and unapologetic. She teaches me to Be. We play together for treats often with the goal of her letting her wildness shine. When I ask her to run, she gives this big grunt and then proceeds to flip her head around and prance around the field. It is beautiful and big and comes from within. The energy of her when she runs with her tail up and her big black self moving quickly through the fields or forest is arresting. It makes me feel my own wildness inside. At first, I was terrified of her bigness and her big energy, but now I love it. I celebrate it and go and run with her as long as it is safe.
So it’s like this...each of us has a Soul or inner being, a larger and wider part of ourselves that is connected to both Source (or what you call it) and Us. Your Soul wants for you joy, health, peace, ease, abundance etc all things good....Our Souls are celebrating us. They want most for us that we express our uniqueness, our individuality out into the world. They want expansion. There is no expansion in staying small.
I want to say to all and everyone who reads this blog... You are enough. If you allow yourself to open yourself to the world, you will flourish. You will begin to trust yourself and then watch out, world. A person who trusts themselves to have their own back is unstoppable.
Hugs and love from Us at Soulfarm....
