What plan?

Let the horse play and have your mind easy. Discipline and confidence come in humble play. To be free of arrogance is to give up your plan.

There is no order or plan in dressage. To created such thing is what is called arrogance. Whatever happens, whatever comes in a training session is not for you to say. Arrogance is thinking you know what you are going to do. How can you know without consulting the horse?

In a dressage of goodness real humility is complete flexibility. In the end the only authentic dressage is one which expresses complete devotion to the horse. Such devotion has two points; longingness and humility.

Longingness is to want to enter into the mind of the horse and then look at yourself. You seek to mix your mind with the horse’s. With a dash of humility, your longing easily comes to the ground of accepting the horse as your lifelong teacher. Facilitated and resolute, you are drawn to dressage as a sacred discipline, always seeking the key to the mixing of the two minds into one. Your soul longs for the centaur effect. There is no other way.

Your humility releases you from arrogance. When arrogance is released there is an absence of uptightness. Each and every experience with the horse is shaped by the horse. Devotion and longing both become part of your path.

Goodness brings to your dressage a wisdom that is born from your devotion to the horse. This dawns slowly for most as the experience of working with the horse soaks into you heart and mind. Do not let your arrogance or aggression harden your heart.

You can open to the horse, for the horse also reflects you kindness much in the same way that many experience the reflection of their own arrogance, fear and aggression in the early work. Opening and accepting the horse as your teacher is a profound step in which, for most people, there is a surrender generally over many years.

You control and choose when and how you surrender. Declare an end to the war, the horse was never your enemy. The enemy in the horse was just the confusion of your own mind.

Release and find the brilliance and power of a dressage of kindness. Gentle and tender is this way. Lightness is the first guide. To be awake is to know this is the only real dressage.