This life is such a beautiful mirror and this essence that we feel so clearly in our horses, well it lives within us as well. Often as humans, our authentic Wild I AMs can become buried beneath Domestic counterfeits. Domestic I AMs begin to take over and before long, we begin to think this is who we are. We may even forget completely that we ever had a beautiful, expansive, free flowing Wild I AM within.

Fortunately there are many pathways to Uncovering and re-discovering our inner Wild I AMs. I want to share with you a story about our sweet Mustang pony Clarity to help explain.

I spotted her on the internet adoption. She was SA (sale authority) meaning she had been passed over three times for adoption and would be sold outright. She looked to be not much bigger than 12 hh and had the most adorable face. I just had to adopt her. My hopes were that she would gentle up to be a safe Mustang pony for my 7 year old daughter.

I easily won her bid on the internet adoption, as I was her only bidder. She was loaded up with all the big Mustangs and shipped from western Nevada to NC. When I saw her at the pick up facility, she was in a lot with about 10 other Mustangs. She stayed mostly to herself, as best she could. But she did not mind pinning her ears and wheeling around to kick the big guys if need be. My daughter and I were in love with her at first site and could not wait to get her home.

We backed the trailer to the round pen and set her free.

I was amazed at how quiet she was. So calm and not afraid of me at all. I was even able to let my daughter be a part of the first touches, this pony was so calm. But really, she was more than calm. I remember the word ‘Stoic’ coming to mind in that first session. She just did not seem to care about much of anything.

I continued to work with this little Mustang pony and before long that Stoic personality did a complete flip and she became very … well … the exact opposite of Stoic! She became so deeply engaged in everything. She went from not seeming to care about anything, to seeing and engaging with everything. With this came a heightened sense of sensitivity and a very ‘feely’ little pony. She is quite simply ‘Inspired’.

You know how you feel when you are inspired to do something or inspired by watching someone else do something well? This is the essence of Clarity, she is just totally Inspired in all that she does. So much so, that it is taking a little longer to get her ready for my daughter to ride because she is just so Inspired by EVERYTHING. She is busy busy busy 🙂

We have been tailoring our ‘training’ to let her Inspiration flourish through lots of relationship building games with positive reinforcement. She is AmAzInG at liberty and will glue next to us in a huge open pasture just like a puppy dog. She is just so cool to be around and we adore her Wild I AM within.

Her true authentic Wild I AM of Inspiration now flows freely from the inside –> out. There is no ‘Stoic’ to be seen or felt in her presence. Honestly, now it seems crazy to think she could have ever been that way! Oh the places this Inspiration will take her and my daughter just makes me giddy with excitement.

But I would like for you to think back on that Stoic nature she had when we first met. This was, without a doubt, a Domestic I AM. Domestic I AMs are created from our environment or life experiences, they are not born of the Soul Self. Clarity was not born Stoic. She was not born with an ‘I do not care about anything in life’ attitude. She was not born detached and emotionally flat. Of course not. Can you even imagine a baby of any kind being born that way?

I am certain when she was first born she bounced around and played and was completely overflowing with her Wild I AM of Inspired that flows from her inside –> out.

But life got in the way. Clarity was rounded up from the wild when she was less than one year old. For the next 4 years she stood in holding in Nevada. Surrounded by many other, much bigger, wild horses. She was herded into squeeze chutes to be vaccinated and branded and flipped on her side to have her hooves trimmed. She rode over 2700 miles in a trailer packed full of wild horses twice her size to reach her destination in NC. The life of a wild horse is not an easy one. The road to get adopted is not easy either.

So she did what she had to do. She shut down so she could survive. She took the very deepest, most pure part of herself and she shoved it down within and closed the door. On one side of this closed door, hiding deep within, was her Wild I AM of Inspired. One the other side of this closed door was her new definition of Self, her Domestic I AM of Stoic.

An antonym of Stoic is Inspired.

If we only knew how these inner doors work. If we only knew that every door has two sides. If we only knew that for every contracting, self limiting Domestic I AM that is written on one side of the door, there is a mirrored opposite Wild I AM that lives on the other side of that very same door.

Oh what beauty awaits on the other side of that closed door.

~from our Wild I AM to yours, Mary & Wild Mustang Guide, Clarity