Freedom From Identity

The world is in love with identities. It always has been, but maybe now more than ever. Our analytical minds love to identify traits, diagnose, pigeon hole ourselves and each other.

It's visible in every corner of life, and not really unique to any one type of person. Gaining an identity gives us a short cut in our thoughts, a sense of security. If I can define who I am in one word, then I have a clear list of behaviors, ways of thinking and responding to world events and daily events, and I am cleared the laborious task of seeing others free of labels too - If I am X, then they are Z, and I know exactly who they are without observing.

The horse does not see us this way, or live in a world of labels and words. They see us as we are, and they see the world through the lens of safety. It does not benefit them for us to describe ourselves in one way and behave another - all they see is inconsistency, which is a threat to them.

Conversely, this offers us real freedom in ways we don't get to experience in life. We may be the CEO of a company or the most meager laborer, but the horse does not see these labels, they see inside of us. This is why a child can often have better results with a horse than a trainer, no matter how world renown, because the child often has an oppeness, a purity, a curiosity, that is less of a threat than someone with an agenda and a clear idea of themselves based on identity and not reality.

It's perfectly fine to have a favorite football team, or be a soccer mom, or be proud of being born and raised in New York. But when your growth, your observations, and your interactions are limited (as they always will be) by identity, we fall into a trap - we are not free to think, behave, or relate to each other in a genuine way without fear of being ostracized. And when we live falsely like this, with identity as a shield, we cannot interact truly with ourselves, and we cannot interact truly with the horse.

Who are you? You are not actually the culture you were born in, because that could change if you moved somewhere else for a time. It's not your political affiliations (those could change if you lived somewhere else too, whether we like to believe this or not). You're not your job or your status because all of us live one life event from losing it all -

You're not your clothes or your financial position or any other millions of things we like to use to label ourselves - you, like everyone else, are completely unique and the same simultaneously - a phenomenon of creation, born to interact with the universe and learn and create, and the horse, by miracle of all miracles, is here to show us the way.

Free yourself of identity, and be free to see all things as they really are.