Getting to know you.....

Sarah needed to be worked on, she had never been trained, and M. took her in hand. I did not know her yet enough to completely trust her, and watched M. working on her. Often he was rough, and more often than not angry, electing all her ‘faults’. At times I was desperate, thinking Oh my God what have I done, buying a horse that is no good. But  then I knew that I had had no other option: either that or give up riding altogether.

I approached Epo-Na. She looked at me for a long time and then asked why I was in such a hurry.

I was confused, angry with M. , afraid to ride Sarah. That day I did not want to ride her, I was confused, tired, angry, and had been crying in a corner of the riding place.

Then, in the end, I decided to ride her anyway, just for a few minutes. M. took us out on the road, and the clippetyclop of her feet on the hard road woke some memories in me, times that I had been out, with Cisco, and also before, and the sound was soothing and comforting. It went straight into my body, and Sarah whispered: trust me, we are together.

When I got off her back she rubbed her face against my chest like Cisco used to do, and I knew beyond any doubt that she was ‘my’ horse, that there was deep down a bond from before we had met, and a great love for her welled up in my chest. I felt a new door  had opened, and I ran over to the herd.

Epo-Na blew softly in my face: you keep forgetting that you are a shaman, that you have a relationship with animals that few people have. Trust Sarah, she will take you further on the road, that Cisco started with you. Cisco was standing next to her, and they were both looking at me, and as I went home, I felt that what she had said was true. I ‘felt’ animals in a different way than most people, and I should trust that. And Sarah was there to help me.

Bond

The next day I asked if we could work her in hand, and so that was what we did. She ran around the round pen in a disciplined way, and M. was very kind to me. He knew that  I had been very upset the other day, and so he took it easy. Slowly I took over, and when she began to follow me like Cisco used to do, I felt a great happiness well up inside me, and I knew that Epo-Na and Cisco had sent her to me to pull me out of the hole in which I was drowning.

Cutoso

‘I have been thinking a lot about Cutoso’, I said to Epo-Na. ’I used to get up at five in the morning to hear the birds sing. Now I am having a hard time getting up at six thirty.’

‘I remember’, she laughed. ‘Life was so much more simple, was it not?’

I thought about the little stone house, the evenings in the winter sitting on the sofa in front of the laughing open hearth. The silence, the intimacy. The aloneness, which was not loneliness, the hours of doing nothing, just sitting, looking at the flames.

‘I have been lost for too long’, I said, turning towards Her. ‘Please help me.’

‘Help has to come from within you’, she smiled, ‘start with remembering things from the time in Cutoso’.

So here is one of the reflections I made in the Cutoso journal.

Cutoso journal (Tuscany 1986)

““Life is a movement through countless births, deaths and sorrows towards the throne of God, and those who are on the road suffer  more because they are aware of their  exile. Others live and die in darkness and never catch a glimpse of that world of Light. But in those who have seen that world the soul aches because they remember that once upon a time they were there, and then they fell, and ended up in this world where all is dark, and no one to blame but oneself. And so comes a day that we turn our  face back to where we came from. But that road is full of dangers, and the devil never sleeps. Part of our soul we sold to him when we fell, and he remembers, he always remembers, and in a moment of weakness he strikes ....

It is a cold and dismal morning, rain and clouds and the wind howling around the house – but  I look out of the window and there is the cherry tree in full bloom-“”

‘Find that place within yourself, where you were whole’, Epo-Na breathed. I told her that lately I have been thinking about being on a mother ship, floating in space, travelling past stars and planets. From that perspective the earth seems so small and, yes, primitive, and dirty. All is silent, the ship is moving smoothly, looking out of the windows to far  away galaxies. And longing for that space.

The world was going crazier each day, and fear and anger were everywhere.

‘You are also guilty of that’, she said, ‘look again for that simplicity of the Cutoso days. The you which is eternal, unchanging, undying and unborn is always there, but human animals allow themselves to be misled by circumstances, instead of hanging on to that consciousness within.

Yesterday was the Autumn Equinox, the festival of Epo-Na, and I had spent that morning in a huge quarrel with M. about Sarah. Yes, she was a new chapter in my life, new things to learn, old things to unlearn. Many challenges, many moments of joy and despair. My life had become too complicated, and I felt that I had lost that sweet independence that I had in Cutoso. I felt that I had lost something precious –my freedom.

Freedom is inside yourself’, Epo-Na said, as she wrapped her neck around me. I quoted to her from the:

Cutoso journal (Tuscany 1986)

““My heart aches to be a wanderer,

A bird free and light,

A cloud without root,

To spread my wings and hover over

The world, wingtips touching the

Edges of the globe , and the rainbow

my abode –

One day my death will come to touch

me, sooner or later –

Let me meet him with empty hands

And flowers in my hair,

Leaving not a thing behind –“”

Change

Epo-Na was silent for a while. I thought that she had fallen asleep, but apparently she was pondering.

‘You have become too stiff, too lodged in your life. Quote to me again that part when you were on Martha’s Vineyard, when the autumn colours were in full glory, and you were thinking about transformation.’

I remembered that autumn. The colours were exploding all over New Jersey and Maine, and I had gone to Martha’s Vineyard to shoot a film, my first one. It was cold, and it was glorious.

Cutoso journal (Tuscany 1986)

“”It is seven o’clock in the morning, and the pond is utterly tranquil. Last night the Canadian geese gathered in and around it for their quiet evening bath and meeting, but this morning they have not yet arrived. The land is undulating softly  in front of me and the huge trees stand silently, a little aloof from the house and noisy people. They are just starting to change their colours and have withdrawn into themselves to watch their inner transformation. So too we humans should change our colours each year, shedding the old by withdrawal and introspection, to then come out more brilliant, more fresh and more young than ever before in a new spring.

To withdraw like the trees into oneself, to watch the changing of the colours in one’s heart and mind, to die to all that was of yesterday and the day before –

The crows are calling in the distance and the answer of the trees is silence – the silence between death and rebirth, the silence between fading and renewal, the silence between the end of one road and the beginning of a new one –

The wind is rustling in the dry leaves and there is peace, healing and renewing the heart of him who knows how to watch with eyes that are empty of all that is of self.””

Meditation

I had met P.M. a while ago, and then, when I was in the middle of my problem with M., he kind of ‘forced’ me to get into T.M.  One day he initiated me in the camper and after that I sat twice a day in the camper, meditating, not sure what I was doing.

 ‘You asked for help’, Epo-Na said accusingly. ‘You have to take what comes, even though you may not always understand or even agree with it’.

I knew very well that I needed help, that I had been asking for it for many months, that after Cisco’s death, but even before that, I had gone astray. I used to do some kind of meditation, relaxing the body and trying to undo all the knots, but that had stopped a couple of years ago, and my body had aged and gotten more stiff and aching.

I also had lost that intimacy with myself, that ‘being alone’ feeling, alone with myself, with the Universe. I had lost my intimacy with nature, with the stars at night, with my luminous body, with being with myself without relying on anyone else, without being so dependent on others, always with the excuse that I was getting ‘old’, that I needed physical help. I felt that things started to move, and more than anything else I started to remember more and more Cutoso when life was so simple.

Epo-Na was rubbing my shoulders. ‘Time to get back to feeling comfortable again,’ she whispered, ‘ and to get rid of all the raging anger and depression.’ Time to get back to Cutoso:

“”When I was a light weight traveller

I did not throw my anchor anywhere -

How is it that my boat became so

heavy all of a sudden?

I was a saunterer, roaming through the

fields, and the trees smiled at me.

Now I sit in my room and call in vain

my playmate of before –

The skies are dark outside and my

bonds are heavy –

Break the chains, my heart, tear your

house apart, wall by wall, and

escape from your prison –

Hear, your friend is calling you outside,

what have you got to lose?

I am sitting on an old chair outside on the road in front of the little house. On another chair in front of me sits the old manual type writer. I am typing ‘Cutoso Journal’, ‘Heart aflame’, and six other books, about yoga and about poetry. Messing around with white ink to erase the typing errors, cursing each time the typewriter gets stuck. The cats are sitting next to me on the road, wondering what I am doing.

Those were the days before the computer. Paper and carbon paper in an old typewriter. Then modern life caught up with me, and I got a computer (black and white, 1986) and a printer (black and white, idem). And then came the first cell phone.

I thought that I was being smart and modern.

Zoom over to thirty years later.

Trapped by a new computer (colour) and a new cell phone (colour  and internet). Thank God I still have the old printer, black and white, arthritic but still working.

The T.M. is opening lots of little windows, peeping into the ‘me’ that was, and the ‘me’ that I have become.

‘You have to find the middle way’, Epo-Na whispers. Integrate Cutoso in you new life. Look for that simplicity.

RETURN TO THE HERD

I was standing on the hill overlooking the herd, and then I ran down the slope. I had a lot of things to talk about with Epo-Na.

Walking amongst the horses, touching a rump here, a shoulder there, straightening out an entangled mane, I made my way slowly to where Epo-Na was grazing.

She looked up but did not say anything, waiting for me to start.

I have discovered what human animals do all their life, from the moment they are born to the moment they die- I said pompously.

Oh, and what is that?

They are running away from themselves.

Epo-Na laughed so hard I thought she was going to choke on the grass.

It took you seventy-five years to discover that?

Seventy-five years and one day, I said defensively. It could have been far worse, it could have been seventy-five years and two days, or even three.

It was the 24th of February 2017, and a lot of grass had grown in the field and died since I had seen Epo-Na. I was now 75 years old, and had not celebrated my birthday at all due to all kinds of unforeseen circumstances. It had been three very heavy years, with a lot of tears, self-pity, violent quarrels and running away from myself, and from Epo-Na. In the end the whole mess got expressed in an abdominal haemorrhage which almost took me to the other side. Cisco’s death, the gas lighting attack of my brother and the arthritic knee finally came to a dramatic conclusion in which I found myself standing in the hospital, after the abdominal operation, in front of the ‘tunnel’, the gate to the other side, and found out that the term ‘tunnel’ is totally inadequate to describe the glorious splendour of this sphere of light, scintillating with all the colours of the rainbow, through which we go at the moment of death. I could ‘see’ that, going in there, the physical body would become speedily transparent in that living light, and then invisible as we advance deeper into this sphere. I found myself standing in front of it, with on my left side Cisco, and on my right side Sara, longing to go in there to find peace, and joy, and – yes – myself.

I did not go in.

Turning around, the three of us walked back, and my ‘vision’ ended.

Bonjour Tristesse

I had been out of the hospital for almost a month now, reflecting. Seventy-five years of work, laughter, self-pity, students in, students out, most of the time running away from myself.

I could not blame those monks that go into the mountains and never come out again, sitting on their butt being with themselves, most probably running away from society, most certainly having poor hardworking people bringing them food, acquiring good karma...

One huge discovery I had made in this time, maybe my final birthday present to myself, was that I have been far too serious, that I am a far too serious a person, that I take things far too seriously, especially my self-pity, that the world could not care less what you do, or how you do whatever you do, or why you do whatever you do. The world couldn’t care less about YOU. And why do I care that the world cares about whatever I do, or how I do whatever I do, or  why I do whatever I do, or ME.. ?

To be serious is a double-edged sword, depending on the meaning you give to it.

If you are serious  as a reason to have self-pity, it will destroy you. Superficiality is the buoy that keeps you floating, superficiality in the sense of what the word says, to keep things on the surface.

I looked at Epo-Na. She had been listening to my monologue, stopping for a moment to graze. Seventy-five years and one day and you still get hurt, because you want the world to care about you. And that makes you sad, and that gives you arthritis.

I told her about  all the emails I get from my ‘old’ in the doubles sense of the word, friends, complaining about all the hurts and miseries and OLD AGE.

Well, do you want to be the same? She asked. Actually, I AM  the same.

Nooooo, I sighed.

Trust Sarah, she will take you out of that.

Saturday is our play day. I am sure that Sarah counts the days till Saturday. We go out in the arena and then she takes off like an arrow. We invent all kinds of games, and sometimes she invents them herself. At the end, when she stops her running around, I call her, and she slowly makes her way towards me, and my heart sings when I see her beautiful face in front of me.

To live only in the moment, not to give a date to that moment, not to insert it in past and future moments,. A moment in eternity that has no past and no future. No young age, no old age, just BEING.

Epo-Na rubs her face against me. You can do it, she breathes in my hair, you can do it. You can live like that, because you understand, because your soul is the soul of a horse. We live like that – no sadness, no anger, just being.

Is that moment love, I asked, feeling a little silly. What is love anyway.

It is, she said, but not the emotional, not the intellectual love, but the merging of ourselves in that timelessness, where time and space are no longer there, only the here and now, only the totality.

I looked at Sarah. Her fine face telling me to be with her, to follow here, wherever ..

Goddess day

Tomorrow is goddess day, said P.M. You have to bring your goddess flowers and rice and incense. Who is your goddess? He caught me off balance, and for a moment I did not know what to say. I did not know what he meant with that. I did not have a goddess, I did not know what it meant to have a goddess.

Green Tara, I said. I had always liked green Tara, being the mother of nature.

And then I listened to my body, to my heart, to ME. And suddenly I was standing in the Field filled with the white horses. And then there was Epo-Na, and I embraced Her, and there was love, endless love, and I KNEW what it meant to have a Goddess. I held on to Her, and we stood for a long time, and then she suddenly laughed and said: you don’t have to bring me rice and incense. Just bring me a couple of carrots and I will be more than happy. We both laughed, and I KNEW that I was HOME, that there was nowhere else for me to go, and that I would always be surrounded by the herd, goddess day or not, and that I was Her and She was me. And there was a joy, and peace, and the golden smile of my Goddess before she walked off into the herd.

HOME

I had been reflecting on the last five months. All the heavy-duty stuff going on in my life, and then I had a tremendous realisation.

I was sitting cross-legs in the grass, chewing on a blade of grass. Epo-Na was grazing next to me. I had been having this enormous sense of being home, of moving among the herd, of watching Epo-Na as she checked every now and then on everyone, and I spent a lot of time with them.

And then, suddenly, I realised with great clarity that I was FREE, that I was alone in the Universe, that every single sentient being was alone in the Universe, travelling, being born in a physical body, dying, reborn again, or just floating amongst the stars. That I was only responsible for and to myself, that I was not  responsible for or to anyone else, that things happen in this vast universe, and that our reaction to those things were a CHOICE. Every action has multiple responses, and it is WE who choose which response we are going to give to that that particular event.

I thought about Cisco’s death, and my enormous sorrow, hurt and, yes, self pity that he had left me. I thought of my brother and his gaslighting attacks (because they were still continuing), about the arthritic knee, and in the end about the abdominal haemorrhage, and I realised with extreme clarity that in all these cases my response was something that I had CHOSEN amongst a myriad of possible responses. In each case I could have responded differently, but I did not know that.

Now I knew, that whatever happened, it was me who chose that particular response, that nobody was doing anything to me, but that I choose to think so, and respond to that.

Epo-Na had stopped grazing, and looked at me, sitting in the grass. I had stopped chewing on the blade of grass, it did not taste very good anyway, and then she knocked me over. I lay on my back, with her great head above me, golden eyes boring into mine. She softly blew all over me, and a great sense of peace enveloped me as my eyes moistened.

The stable where I had put Sarah a year ago was closing and I had had to find a new one. It was May and the fields and the sides of the roads were full of poppies. Due to the abdominal haemorrhage and the resulting blood clot in my lower abdomen I had not been riding. M was training her and she was making great progress, but I was kind of in limbo as far as riding went..

I took her to another stable, and that one closed too after two months. At that point I had two options left : sell her or bring her home. This is where A jumped into the situation, and in no time had built her a stable and a paddock.

And so, finally, Sarah came home. I once again had a herd.

Which god?

It was October, and the autumn equinox had come and gone. I had been reading about the holographic universe, and David Bohm, and had been, kind of, doing Zazen. Nothing exists, said David Bohm, it is all in your  head, and out of the nothingness we are creating a world.

Booom!

This is where everything suddenly came together.

Krishnamurti, quantum physics, Carlo Castaneda, zen, everything suddenly made sense.

We are free, and make a world that we can live in and with, according to our nature.

And worse. All religions say that God, or Allah, or whoever, made man in His image.

Wrong.

It  is man who makes his god in his image.

If you look carefully at all the gods, they are a pretty bloodthirsty and miserable lot.

Allah is a bloodthirsty unshaven bum who told his followers to conquer the world by fire and the sword. As the Muslims hate women and hide them under a sack, it makes sense that they are told to blow themselves up so as to have those 72 thousand virgins afterwards to make up for what they are missing here on earth.

Christians are a masochistic lot, and so have a god hanging from a cross.

Jews are no better than Muslims. They too hate women and have them shave their hair off. The ultimate humiliation.

Buddhist don’t care about anything, just their own salvation.

And so ... if we are free to choose what kind of god we want, or if we want a god at all, we can do some shopping...

Epo-Na looked at me over the tuft of grass she was eating.

Well ?

Well what ?

Which god do you choose, if you do want to choose?

I looked at Her, my heart overflowing with love.

Do you have to ask?, I whispered, embracing Her.

On the way to New Ground

I had been very busy, more than anything with physical issues and having to make decisions. I had to decide that I was not going to ride anymore. Too many issues and I had not been able to connect with Sarah. In other words, 2017 had left me a fearful person. Mario rode Sarah, sometimes nice, sometimes terrible. We quarrelled.

After the haemorrhage came the car accident where someone drove into me from the back. Cracked sternum. I had become a fearful old lady.

I decided to sell Sarah.

Some people came. Marlies came. We decided Sarah would go to Spain.

At that extreme moment, when I realized I was going to give her away because I had not connected with her, and it seemed stupid to keep Mario to ride her and pay for it, and as I had also not been connected to Mario and often had to run away when he was riding Sarah, and I had not been able to integrate Sarah into the little herd as she seemed aggressive with the little ones, at that moment I realized that I was not going to send her away. A. Was very kind and supported me in everything. I told Marlies I would keep Sarah. She was disappointed. And I had this sense of relieve. Sarah’s home was with us. The decision was made, as usual, by the Universe. I could NOT GIVE HER AWAY.

Bringing Sarah home

30 May 2018

It was exactly four years that Cisco had died, and two years that I had bought Sarah.

I still kept her segregated in her own paddock. She could see the others but not ‘harm’ them.

Then, slowly, step by step, I managed to integrate her into the little herd. First only with Julio. She liked Julio (who would not like Julio), and soon became his poodle. They went around the paddocks like a little chuchu train, the small chocolate brown  locomotive (Julio) in front pulling the big white carriage (Sarah) behind him.

But when dinner time came ….. different story. She became very jealous and pulling back her ears would send him away.

Integrating with Suzy took longer. According to A. two females ….But eventually they came to some kind of understanding.

Lulu was shy as always, and kept largely to herself. As she loved her box and loved spending time in there I was not worried to force her, but let her take her own time.

Then, one evening, there was a huge lightning storm. I could see Sarah from the house, standing all by herself in her paddock. I had locked the others in their box so she really was all by herself, alone in the wild storm..

She was scared to go into her box; probably because of the noise of the rain, and so stayed outside in the pouring rain, and with each lightning bolt she jumped and trembled, slithering in the mud….

And suddenly I had enough.

The clock of the Universe rang loud and clear.

I called A. who came immediately over and we took her down in the pouring rain to the box of the little ones and closed the door behind her. I decided that from that moment on she would live with the three.

I will always remember the expression of immense relief and relaxation on her face when she saw the others and knew that she was safe and in company.

From that  moment on A. and I arranged to have her permanently live with the little ones, sharing the communal box with them and the paddock, and, eventually, after a couple of weeks, even sharing their meals.

It was a victory for all of us.

It was new ground for both Sarah and me. We had both heard and obeyed the ‘clock’ of the Universe.

Epo-na smiled in the dark, her golden eyes shining with the light of love.

New beginning (2019)

The 29th of May 2019 it was five years that Cisco died.

I was sitting cross legs  in the grass, chewing on a blade of grass.

Epo-Na looked up.

Five years of endless self pity, accidents, hospitals, useless X-rays, gaining weight, losing weight, no riding, no exercising,  ruining my body.

You got another horse, you got Sarah,  she said.

I stared in the distance. I saw the poppies yesterday in the fields, and the other day I had heard the cuckoo. I remembered the excitement in the past of spring banging on the door.

I got another horse, but I do not feel she is mine. I am missing the physical touch, the ‘we’ feeling that I had with Cisco, the hugging, the touching, the love and - at the end - the heart break.

And then I told her about the two mini horses. She laughed. Who is going to clean the box?

It was then that I ran home and started empting out the cupboards.

I burned all the medical papers.

I threw out all the useless stuff that people had given me.

I wanted to be ready for the mini horses, if they would come, when they would come.

I needed to face the demon inside me, the demon that whispered: You are old.

I needed to find the straight road again, unblock the laughter, the outdoor me, that strangling apathy that had taken hold of me.

You do Julio’s box, said Andrea. I do Sarah’s. So I did Julio’s box.

After ten minutes my shoulders and arms were aching, and I realised with  a shock that all that lounging around had robbed me of my muscles.

Epo-Na nudged me gently with her muzzle. I have told you all these years that numbers are man- made. You have lost too much of your self-confidence, and it is useless to blame others. Remember it takes two to tango. It is also useless to listen to people who look at you as if you are old. You let people influence you too much. Your inner saboteur loves that. Gives you an excuse to lie on the sofa and do nothing.

I stared at the herd in the distance.

True. I felt something had dried up inside. I used to have a bubbling sense of poetry inside, jumping to be put on paper. Now the words would not come, stuck in some gooey stuff.

Epo-Na looked at me. 

Her face was shining as she pointed at Her back. I knew what she meant, and with a clumsy jump I jumped on Her back. She started a gentle walk, and then a gentle trot. I bumped up and down on Her back, till she bucked me off. You have become really a sack of potatoes, She scolded. We’ve got to get you back in shape. I sat in the grass, clutching Her leg, crying and laughing. She started to lick my face as I leaned against Her strong leg.

The peaceful universe

Where have you been all this time? Her eyes were shining in the gathering dark. A nightingale was singing in the fig tree next to the turtle pond. Stormy clouds passed overhead and the air was very still, waiting.

I don’t know, I cried, somewhere in a shady place, far away from the shining herd.

She gently licked my face, while some of the other mares gathered around.

In the years that I was away I knew that inside my body there was a scream, ready to surface at any moment, a deluge of tears.

You never got over Cisco, She said, and spent too much time indoors, doing stupid things on the computer and the cell phone. She wrinkled Her face in disgust.

I leaned against Her body, burying my face in Her mane, warm and comforting, and I knew with every cell in my body, with every drop of blood in my body, that my place was with the herd, in that sheltered valley, and with Her, my home and refuge, the Goddess of a thousand smiles.

For the first time in a very long while I felt the peacefulness of the Universe, of that Goodness which is beyond thought and words, beyond feelings and hurt, beyond time and space.

Epo-Na’s golden smile lit up the darkening skies.

Raining

It had been raining heavily for a few days and the fields were full of poppies. Everything was lush and green and the branches of the trees were dancing in the wind.

Glorious dark and menacing clouds hung over the herd which was huddled underneath the trees. The newborn foals were taking refuge underneath their mothers, and only the Great White Stallion was standing in the pouring rain, watching over the herd.

I was standing next to Epo-Na under a poplar tree and, leaning against Her, I felt the peace and love of the Universe.

Epo-Na nuzzled me, and playfully licked my face.

It was peace, and beauty, and endless, endless love.

I buried my face in Her silver mane.

Fireflies

It was midnight as I stepped out of the house to look at the stars. There were lots of fireflies dancing in the grass and in the hedges, like so many tiny elves at an impromptu elven party.

Overhead the Great Swan was sailing peacefully between Vega and Altair and Ursus was pointing at Polaris, the guardian of the pure and icy regions of Planet Earth.

There was a dance in my heart, a song, a laughter, as I hugged Epo-Na.

I knew with every fibre in my body that the field was my refuge, my escape from the chaos of the world.

The fireflies were dancing their dance of love and healing, of a new spring, a new beginning.

Epo-Na’s breath was warm on my face in the evening breeze.

Goethe

‘The highest happiness on earth lies on the back of a horse’. This is what Goethe said.

I walk around the house, and I know that the world is complete. Just got off Sarah’s back and I know that my world is full. I can’t even call it happiness. I can’t even call it joy. It is not an emotion. It is not jumping around laughing. It is the feeling of being where I should be.

Epo-Na smiled in the field. You have always known where your home is, where you should be. Remember this, do not forget. This where you belong.

Pan

I was walking quietly side by side with Epo-Na through the fields, when I heard Him. He was sitting on a rock away from the herd, playing on His silver flute. The sound was haunting and sweet and penetrated deep into my heart, touching places of beauty and love.

We stood still and Epo-Na smiled at me.

Follow his flute, she whispered, it will take you to places you never dreamed of.

I looked back at the rock, but it was empty.

Far away I heard the silver sound of a flute ....

Moon light

The Field was bathed in the silver light of the Full Moon. Most of the horses were sleeping, but Epo-Na and the Great White Stallion were standing side by side on a hill, overlooking the herd.

In a few days it would be Summer Solstice, and I reflected on how many moons had passed since I was at Peace.

But now Peace was here as I walked silently among the sleeping horses.

A new born foal put its tiny muzzle in my hand, curious about this two-legged horse, till his mother with a soft nicker told him to go back to sleep.

In the deep sky the Great White Swan was sailing silently towards the Full Moon.

I sat down at the feet of Epo-Na, listening to the Silence of the Universe, listening to the sound of Peace.

Fight

I was for the umpteenth time in a roaring fight with my brother, but this time I was more prepared.

This is what I wrote right after I had bought Sarah. The first horrendous fight with my brother had been right after Cisco died, and it had destroyed me, sending me into a shock I had never experienced.

Now, less than five years later, again there was a horrendous fight, but this time instead of being the victim, I told myself: you want to fight? OK. Here we go, and I hit him back as hard as I could.

This is what I wrote at that point:

<<<My relationship with my brother has come to a point that I HAVE to realize that continuing is no longer an option, that it is time to move on and leave the past behind, including ‘family’. I did not see anymore a way to come to some kind of understanding, and was risking my health and heart in the meanwhile. I finally had to admit that the gap between the two worlds was too big for me to handle, that  I had read more in a relationship than there was in reality, and that there was no future, that the only thing that had kept us by a thin thread was the blood we had in common, the past  we shared. It was the only thing,  but at this point it was not enough.>>>

Then I remembered that in reality we were not always in the same place. There was a gap of 20 years that I was in Italy and he in Holland, and we never exchanged letters.  Then my mother died, and he wrote to me, and I went to Holland from Italy for the burial, and he gave me half of the money that she had divided between us. I told him he could keep the rest of her belongings.

With that money I bought an old casa colonica and redid the whole building. He and his wife came to visit me. That was somewhere in the late seventies, early eighties. And here it started. Him commanding me in my own house what to do and what not to do, scolding, treating me with disrespect.

When I moved to Soiano it was the same thing, attacking me in my own house so that I got so angry that he said he was leaving. The situation was saved, but never went underground.

Now we were in the third war, but I had been studying and reflecting much since a couple of months, and was more prepared.

‘It talks two to tango’, whispered Epo-na in my ear. I had been studying Ho oponopono and I knew now that in a way I had ‘created’ this situation, and that I could let it go, leave it with my brother to do with it what he wanted. As Vedanta as well as Einstein says, nothing exists, so all that ‘exists’ is in our heads, is our own creation. My reaction was only fuel on the fire, so I decided to completely ignore whatever would come afterwards. I think that in a way he ‘fed’ on my anger and so, yes, it takes two to Tango.

Epo-Na was rubbing her face against my back. Remember ‘Sat-Cit-Ananda, she whispered, the universe ‘Is, is Conscious and is Ananda’

‘It will take time to repair the damage of his gaslighting, I said. To get out of this depression, this endless pain and sadness. How is it possible that a human being, that I have created in my head, can hurt me so much?