The Power of the Herd (28 page)

Like the Apache in the late 1800s, twenty-first-century Fulani have their own Geronimos who violently rebel at times. And they seem destined to suffer a similar fate. If the rampant, worldwide prejudice against the pastoral lifestyle isn't arrested in the eleventh hour, Cain will kill Abel in Africa well before the century comes to a close.

Still, I'm strangely hopeful that some of this pastoral wisdom might be resurrected, distilled, and incorporated into our own culture. After all, my horses created
an interspecies tribe by calling a handful of accomplished and adventurous souls together, and we learned some sophisticated, long-neglected lessons about power in the process. Yet unlike the Fulani, we had no models to follow, no ready-made support system. Those who took on the Merlin project were rogues and pioneers willing to feel their way through the dark, falling into ditches and stepping on each other's toes at times. In this effort, the symbolic synchronicities of working with a black-horse herd did not escape me, not for one minute.

In dreams and myths from around the world, the black horse heralds the reassertion of qualities difficult for the well-groomed persona to handle, revolutionary insights and energies that can't be readily tamed by the rules of polite society. To those courageous, humble souls who ultimately aspire to ride the black horse, this explosive force becomes a vehicle for expanded consciousness, inspiration, and innovation. To those who suppress or ignore its talents, fear its passion, or try to harness its energy without compassion and integrity, the black horse becomes an impetuous and compulsive element inflicting mood swings and bizarre cravings on people who once seemed the epitome of good sense and reason.

Black-horse wisdom challenges people to step off the well-worn paths of civilized thought. It is wisdom shrouded in mystery, wisdom that's felt more deeply than can ever be explained, wisdom we often ignore, unfortunately, until some difficulty in life opens us up to other possibilities. This universal archetype champions knowledge rejected by the mainstream: instinct, emotion, intuition, sensory and extrasensory awareness, and the human-animal partnership associated with tribal cultures. Science may never be able to dissect this wisdom, to bring it into the light of conscious understanding, but through the metaphor of the horse, and through real-life interactions with these animals, we can learn to track these mysteries, maybe even ride them if we develop the right balance of trust, discernment, skill, abandon, and power.

The tools my culture gave me for rehabilitating a real, honest-to-goodness, royally pissed-off black horse were severely limited: rudimentary, grossly incomplete scientific theories on dominance hierarchies and survival-of-the-fittest/competition-for-limited-resources models of evolution, combined with behavioristic horse-training methods — all of which Merlin promptly mule-kicked right out of the arena. Even natural-horsemanship principles and other more enlightened riding or therapeutic techniques treated the horse as an instinctual being with little consideration for his social needs. Yet seeing Merlin as an intelligent, social being was the first of three crucial missing pieces.

I gained other important clues from watching several experienced stallion trainers work with Merlin during the first six months of our tempestuous association. One of these women, Shelley Rosenberg, was open-minded enough to lend
her expertise to my goal of socializing, rather than isolating, Merlin. Still, no matter what she and her equally experienced colleagues
told
me about their methods, I could see that some pivotal nonverbal element was at work, something even they weren't fully conscious of, let alone capable of translating into words. This something seemed to light Merlin up, engaging an intangible sense of promise. And it had to do with their ability to remain calm and centered no matter what he did, while exuding power: courageous, controlled,
nonpredatory
power.

Over time, Merlin also lived up to his wizardly name, imploring me to recognize what most people dismiss as invisible, drawing my attention to principles now finding legitimacy through the field of energy medicine. These three factors — social intelligence, nonpredatory power, and the reality of subtle energies exchanged in relationships between living beings — were Merlin's greatest gifts to everyone brave enough to study with him under the guise of saving a damaged horse.

Somewhere along the way, I gained the courage to admit that Merlin's most profound lessons had parallels in ancient religious writings — and that the rest of my herd had been leading me down this same strange path for years.

Certain key aspects of Taoist, Christian, and Buddhist teachings were useful to me in wrangling Merlin and, subsequently, in better training and socializing his sensitive, vivacious sons. Still, developing so-called spiritual skills at the barn didn't lessen the effects these skills had on the rest of my life: exploring nonpredatory power and subtle energies, experientially, created an involuntary transformation that raised my courage, altered my perception, and opened my heart, constantly confronting me with the ineffectiveness of words to describe what I was learning.

I could also see that writing or speaking about such insights engendered a great deal of misinterpretation. Still, I was undaunted, filled with the conviction that any ensuing drama or confusion was worth the price of admission if my sketchy verbal approximations inspired even
one
other person to notice what had previously been hidden. Standing at the edge of a vast desert wilderness with an increasingly empowered herd by my side, I was struck by the immensity of what could
never
be spoken — and the dubious history of power and religion suddenly made sense to me.

While their personal histories and cultural contexts were very different, Jesus, the Buddha, and Lao-tzu were masters of nonpredatory wisdom. All three left civilization as they knew it and spent time in the wilderness grappling
with big questions related to life, death, and the meaning of both. They returned with a counterintuitive view of power, one completely unrelated to brute force.

These social innovators were unusual in that not only did they embody nonpredatory behavior during a particularly violent stage of civilization's worldwide development, but Jesus and the Buddha, in particular, isolated and consciously taught advanced emotional-intelligence principles that are naturally activated in pastoral cultures, encouraging people to

1.   resist the flight-or-fight impulse in favor of tend-and-befriend behavior;

2.   emphasize mutual aid over competition for limited resources;

3.   develop the high tolerance for vulnerability needed to endure fear and pain as well as risk love and connection; and

4.   recognize that the individual psyche matures in deep relationship with others, most especially through the consistent, freely given support of others.

Over the centuries, however, the insights of these three teachers became overshadowed by another factor related to the visionary aspect of leadership: religions grew up around these pioneers, primarily because all three emphasized, in various ways, that the human mind was embedded in a larger matrix of intelligence, one that, if accessed, could provide innovative solutions to the challenges people faced. Their alliance with this mysterious source of inspiration was palpable: contemporaries of Jesus, the Buddha, and Lao-tzu noticed that these men had become wiser, braver, more poised, and more peaceful as a result, that these charismatic teachers
exemplified
an expanded view of human potential.

Yet because their most profound experiences occurred in the realm of that “other 90 percent,” attempts to describe their discoveries sounded vague and mystical, couched in metaphor, parable, and experiential rituals or techniques designed to jump-start a transformational process that was primarily nonverbal. Even so, some of their followers were able to integrate and
live
these principles, in direct contrast to the brutal conquerors of their day.

Early Christians and Buddhists in particular were so effective in spreading their life-changing perspectives that predatory cultures had to acknowledge and eventually absorb their teachings, if only to control their influence. So while insights on nonpredatory power tempered humanity's aggressive tendencies, civilization's hierarchical, intensely opportunistic focus also affected how these religions were interpreted and practiced over time.

This confusing state of affairs has been amplified over the past four hundred
years or so by an
overreliance
on verbal communication and logic, not to mention increasing disconnection from nature and animals, and a resultant mechanistic view of life. During that time, mainstream science vehemently dismissed ritual, myth, and metaphor as superstition, when, in fact, these high-context forms of communication were the only means people had to
point
to nonverbal insights that couldn't be translated into linear, logical language.

Influenced by the Age of Reason and the growth of technology, modern religious people grapple with the flip side of this same issue: searching for ways to prove or justify the
literal
truth of ancient texts. But two thousand years ago, the scientific method hadn't been invented yet, books were rare, information was passed primarily by word of mouth, and scribes weren't educated to separate concrete reality from emotional and spiritual realities. Consequently, religious writings mixed actual historical events with symbol, poetry, parable, dream interpretations, transformational sacraments, and other methods for recording and exploring ineffable mysteries that nonetheless influenced people in powerful ways.

Much information categorized as “spiritual” is nonverbal or unphotographable, not supernatural. Nonetheless, there will always be an element of mystery to the invisible, unnameable forces that move people to perform great deeds, leaving a sense of awe and wonder in their wake. This is especially true of men and women who tap the triumvirate of power, vision, and innovation, spurring leaps in human consciousness and behavior that affect generations. The soulful, palpable, yet elusive presence such people embody is always greater than their personal histories convey, which is why symbolic and mythic elements are often added to their biographies by followers and observers who were deeply affected by direct encounters.

Yet nuances tapped on the other side of sound are notoriously hard to sustain after the original innovator moves on, especially when a culture encountering this wisdom functions in opposition. No matter how inspiring and eloquent the pioneers may be, they can only leave their words, methods, stories, and images behind — hoping, but not guaranteeing, that people will use these maps to travel the same territory.

Insights on nonpredatory power that Jesus, the Buddha, and Lao-tzu accessed provide a classic example. Because an exceedingly small portion of their wisdom could be written down, millions of city dwellers have been able to worship these innovators while continuing to be influenced by hierarchical, predatory,
competitive, emotionally disconnected modes of behavior. And so, historically, we see large numbers of Christians, Buddhists, and Taoists act in aggressive ways completely at odds with the examples set by the founders of their faiths.

Even more disturbing, the inexact nature of techniques developed to explore and record that “other 90 percent” allows these same tools to be misused at times, especially when people are pressured to follow a subsequent, usually dominant, authority figure's interpretation of the original rituals and metaphors. Organized religion is not the only transgressor in this regard: science and politics too have suppressed experiential exploration and constructive debate on spiritual matters. As a result, our modern rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion have been used to create subcultures of believers and nonbelievers who deride each other rather than exchange ideas, competing for followers — and the votes, funds, and other resources that come with them.

We don't crucify people anymore, at least not literally. But because issues related to vision, creation, and charismatic presence also have to do with power, those invested in the status quo feel threatened by anyone who accesses an expanded view of reality, even if he or she is simply drawing on invisible and nonverbal insights that others ignore, inventing something “new” out of information that was already there. Abuse almost always follows: innovators in fields ranging from business to art, religion, science, and politics are initially, and usually ruthlessly, ostracized, discredited, controlled, or overwhelmed — by competitors
and
peers — through rejection, sarcasm, lack of funding or publication, institutionalization, or most recently, medication. It takes a brave, intelligent, committed, and inspired human being to stand up to this pressure without losing his conviction and, in some cases, his mind. When it comes to enduring the animosity most pioneers experience, introverted and highly sensitive visionaries don't have a prayer.

And so we've reached the point where U.S. politics appears to be ruled by aggressive fundamentalists on one side and humanistic atheists on the other, despite the fact that millions of citizens aren't represented by either of those narrow views. Yet crucial insights continue to be washed out of alternative debates as many social activists see spirituality and religion as outmoded dominance tactics employing the ultimate hierarchical trump card to manipulate the masses. After all, ambitious men and women have used God to justify everything from torture, witch burnings, and “holy” wars to modern acts of terrorism, racism, sexism, environmental destruction, and the eradication of indigenous cultures worldwide to seize territory and resources.

But what if we invoked our right to freedom of religion for another purpose, neither
rejecting
nor
blindly worshipping
influential figures like Lao-tzu, Confucius,
the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad? What if we suspended our beliefs and disbeliefs, just for a moment, to look at these innovators as
visionary leaders,
paying special attention to their insights on power, creativity, and social intelligence, and their awareness of invisible or nonverbal forces representing a much wider view of evolution and human potential? What if we studied — outside the confines of conventional science and religion — their ability to tap revolutionary, thought-and behavior-altering states of consciousness that, in all cases, inspired culturally significant movements that long outlived their founders?