Chevalia, The Way of the Horse, Book One, Chapter Seven

LIVING BETWEEN WORLDS

There comes a point when an experience of the sacred can no longer remain something encountered only in extraordinary moments. We still have to get up in the morning. Animals need to be fed. Water needs to be carried. Stalls need tending. There are decisions to make, responsibilities to meet, difficulties to navigate, and countless ordinary things that make up a human life.

The question then becomes: How do we live here, fully within this physical world, without forgetting what we have come to know?

This has become one of the most important questions of my life. The experiences I have shared throughout these pages have continually brought me more deeply into physical life. They have changed the way I understand presence, relationship, sovereignty, nature, transition, and the Divine expressing itself through the countless forms around us.

Living between worlds, for me, means allowing what I have experienced beyond ordinary perception to become inseparable from the way I live within ordinary life. One of the deepest expressions of this is sovereignty.

Mutual Sovereignty

The horses have shown me how completely sovereignty belongs to the individual being. We witnessed it in our breeding program, in their relationships with one another, in their ability to say yes or no, and even in the extraordinary awareness I have experienced with them as they approach transition.

Yet there is another side to this relationship. The horse also asks us to recognize our own sovereignty.

We cannot truly honor sovereignty in another being while continually abandoning it within ourselves. To meet a horse in authentic communion requires us to be present within our own being, capable of listening, discerning, feeling, questioning, choosing, and recognizing the Divine within ourselves.

Human beings can relinquish this inner authority in countless ways. We can become so accustomed to looking outside ourselves for answers that we stop listening inwardly. We may listen to a physician without remaining attentive to what our own body is communicating. We may accept the interpretations of religious authorities while distrusting our own intuition and direct spiritual experience. We may follow leaders and institutions without continuing to discern whether those entrusted with authority are acting with integrity, whether they are trustworthy, and whether their actions genuinely serve those they are meant to represent.

Sovereignty does not require us to reject knowledge, expertise, teaching, or leadership. It asks us to remain conscious participants within our own lives. We can listen, learn, and receive guidance without relinquishing discernment or abandoning the knowing within ourselves. No title can replace that responsibility.

This is something the horse makes extraordinarily clear because the horse is not impressed by human authority. Titles, credentials, reputation, status, and social position have no meaning in the relationship. The horse encounters the being who actually arrives. They meet what is true, and they know when we are not fully there.

The Difference Between Teaching and Relationship

For many years, I taught ballet. The students who entered my classes came because they had chosen to study the art. There was already an understanding between us. They expected instruction and had voluntarily entered a relationship in which teaching was part of the agreement.

A horse has made no such agreement simply because a human walks into an arena.

The horse did not grow up imagining that one day they would be trained by us. They did not enroll in our program. They did not choose our discipline, our timetable, our ambitions, or the particular skills we decided they should learn.

That understanding changes the meaning of training. What we call training has become, for me, the deepening of relationship, and the horse tells us the parameters within which that relationship can deepen.

We discover where trust already exists and where it has yet to be built. We learn what awakens curiosity, what creates uncertainty, what the horse enjoys, where boundaries lie, and how much we are actually listening rather than simply waiting for compliance.

Before asking the horse for anything, there is something we must bring to the relationship ourselves: presence.

Can I become still enough to perceive the being before me? Can I recognize my own sovereignty without using it to overpower theirs? Can I enter the relationship without hiding behind a role, whether trainer, owner, teacher, or expert? Can I arrive authentically enough that the horse can actually meet me?

This is where the Field of Presence becomes essential.

The horse already inhabits the universal language that exists there. It is a language beneath words, carried through attention, intention, energy, movement, breath, boundaries, invitation, and response. To meet the horse there, we have to remember how to enter it ourselves.

The horse does not ask us to become a better person. The horse calls us to remember who we are.

When we remember our own essence, we become more authentic. What we feel, intend, communicate, and embody begin to come into greater coherence. We stop trying so hard to perform an identity and become available for relationship.

This is where communion can begin.

Devotion

This requires devotion.

I do not mean devotion simply as loving a horse intensely. The horses have expanded the meaning of love for me. Love asks something of us. It asks whether we are willing to meet ourselves honestly, whether we can become quiet enough to recognize what we are bringing into the relationship, whether we can relinquish the need to dominate, impress, control, or prove ourselves, and whether we can stand within our own sovereignty while honoring the sovereignty of the being before us.

This is a devotion to presence, to authenticity, and to meeting another being without requiring that being to surrender who they are.

When this becomes the foundation, relationship changes. Mutual respect develops. Trust deepens. The horse begins to know us, and we begin to know the horse. Over time, something sacred can grow between us: companionship, friendship, family, and a deeply bonded relationship held by affection, recognition, curiosity, trust, and mutual choice.

Then something beautiful begins to happen. The horse looks forward to our arrival. They come to the gate to meet us. They call when they see us, asking us to come near. There is an eagerness in the relationship. They become curious about what we might explore together because our arrival does not automatically mean demand.

Creativity enters.

We may explore groundwork, liberty, work in hand, movement together, or riding. The activity is never the foundation. The relationship is. Trust, mutual respect, and mutual sovereignty create the ground from which everything else can grow.

Because the relationship is alive, what we do together can continue to evolve. This is why I no longer understand horsemanship primarily as something a human does to a horse. At its deepest, it is a relationship we continually discover together.

The Way of Effortless Alignment

And this has taught me something that extends far beyond horses.

There is a profound difference between participating fully in life and trying to control its unfolding.

We can have intentions. We can make plans, create, work, choose a direction, and move toward something we care deeply about. Yet the ego can become so attached to a particular outcome that intention turns into force. We decide what should happen, how it should happen, and when it should happen, and then expend enormous energy trying to make life conform to that expectation.

This is often where we meet resistance.

The harder we push, the more resistance we may encounter, and our response is often to push harder still. Yet I have found that when I finally release my insistence upon the outcome and return to the Field of Presence, something entirely different becomes available.

Within that field, there is nothing lacking. We are already complete. We are already whole. We are no longer acting from the fear that something outside us must happen before we can be complete. We become available to possibility rather than being confined by the single outcome the mind has decided it must have.

This is where wu wei became meaningful to me.

Wu wei is often translated as effortless action or non-forcing, but I have come to understand it as flowing with life. It is participating without continually trying to dictate the course of the river.

The Taoist image of water expresses this beautifully. In Chapter 8 of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu tells us that the highest good is like water. Water benefits all life without striving for recognition, and within its nature the text reveals seven qualities that can also guide the way we live.

Water finds its appropriate place, reminding us to inhabit our own lives without continually struggling to be somewhere other than where we are. Its depth reflects the inner stillness from which clarity can arise. In relationship, water gives freely and nourishes life, suggesting kindness that does not demand something in return. In speech, it reflects trustworthiness, the integrity of allowing our words to remain true to what we know and what we mean. In governing, it brings order, reminding us that true leadership serves the well-being of the whole. In action, water is extraordinarily capable because it responds to what is actually before it; it can flow, gather, yield, surround, and continue without losing its nature. Finally, water understands timing. It moves when there is an opening and becomes still when there is not.

I do not experience these qualities merely as convenient metaphors created by human beings and placed upon water. There is an intelligence within water, just as there is intelligence throughout nature. That intelligence reaches far beyond what I intend to explore in this book, but it deserves to be acknowledged here.

Nature continually shows us ways of living.

Water is one beautiful example. Its nature demonstrates how something can remain completely true to itself while existing harmoniously within relationship to everything around it. It does not need to dominate the landscape in order to remain water. It responds to what it encounters while retaining its own nature. In this way, water offers us a living expression of sovereignty, responsiveness, respect, adaptability, and harmony.

The same larger intelligence can be encountered throughout the natural world. We see it in animals, trees, forests, rivers, oceans, changing seasons, and the innumerable relationships through which life sustains life. Nature is not merely scenery surrounding the human experience. We are within it. We are part of it. When we become quiet enough to observe without immediately imposing our own ideas upon what we see, nature can show us something about how to live.

This is why the final virtue of water, right timing, has become especially meaningful to me.

There is something within life that continually gives us cues about when to act and when to remain still. The difficulty is that we cannot perceive those cues very well when our minds are filled with insistence about what must happen next.

The Field of Presence changes that.

When I enter that field, I do not have to abandon intention or action. I become more receptive to timing. I can feel when something is asking for movement and when it is not yet time to move. Sometimes the action is immediate and unmistakable. At other times, the invitation is to wait, observe, listen, and allow something to develop that I cannot yet see.

When it is not time to act, trying to make something happen can become force.

I have experienced this with horses repeatedly. I may enter an arena with an idea of what I would like to explore, but my idea does not create an obligation for the horse. The horse before me is living within the actual moment. They may meet my invitation with curiosity. They may offer something entirely different. They may show me that the direction I had imagined is not where the relationship needs to go.

If I am attached to my plan, I can miss all of that. But if I am present, I can feel the cues.

I can act when the moment calls for action. I can wait when it calls for waiting. I can change direction without believing that something has gone wrong. I can bring knowledge, clarity, creativity, boundaries, and intention while remaining receptive to what the horse is communicating.

Then something begins to flow.

The horse responds to me, I respond to the horse, and what unfolds between us can become far more beautiful than what I had originally intended to create.

I have found the same thing in life.

So often, when I finally release what I have been trying to force, the outcome is better than the one I was struggling to manufacture. Something appears that I could not have planned because I could not yet see it. The possibilities available within the Field of Presence were larger than the possibilities my mind had imagined.

This requires trust.

The ego wants certainty. It wants to know where the river is going before it agrees to enter the water. Presence asks us to become quiet enough to feel the movement that is already occurring and to participate when the moment calls us forward.

Water does this without struggle. It meets what is before it. It moves around what cannot be moved. It rests when it is contained, and when an opening appears, it flows. It nourishes without demanding recognition, and it does not cease being water because the landscape changes.

Its yielding is not weakness, and its stillness is not inaction. Water can be gentle enough to rest upon a leaf and powerful enough to reshape stone, yet its movement remains responsive to the conditions it encounters.

For me, this is where the seven virtues of water and wu wei meet. We do not have to force the river in order to participate in its movement. We become present enough to recognize where we are, remain deep and clear within ourselves, move through relationship with kindness and integrity, use our abilities well, and listen for the right moment to act.

This is the deeper meaning of wu wei for me. It is being fully present and available to life without believing that we must control every movement of it. We act when it is time to act. We wait when it is time to wait. We listen closely enough to know the difference.

And this is where sovereignty and surrender can exist together. Sovereignty allows us to remain conscious, discerning, and capable of choice. Surrender releases the ego’s demand to control the outcome. Presence allows us to feel the movement of life between them.

We enter the Field of Presence complete and whole, with nothing lacking. From there, possibility opens. We bring our creativity, our intention, our discernment, and our willingness to act, while allowing life to reveal what we could not have known in advance.

Again and again, I have found that what unfolds from that place is greater than what I was trying so hard to force.

Perhaps this is what the water has always known. Flow does not mean doing nothing. It means knowing when to move.

Living What We Know

It is one thing to speak of sovereignty. It is another to live it when another being’s sovereign choice differs from our own.

If the horse is sovereign, that matters when the horse says no. If I am sovereign, I must be capable of standing clearly within myself. If nature is sacred, that understanding must affect how I treat the land. If another being carries the Divine within them, their inherent worth cannot depend upon what they provide to me. If we are nature, stewardship must enter the choices we make.

Sovereignty allows us to enter relationship without possession.

Two sovereign beings can meet completely without either disappearing within the relationship or surrendering their essential being in order for communion to occur. This is why sovereignty and oneness have never felt contradictory to me. Oneness does not erase individuality. Communion becomes possible because two unique beings can remain fully themselves and still meet within the Whole.

The Isha Upanishad says:

“He who sees all beings in the Self and the Self in all beings never turns away from it.”

— Isha Upanishad, Verse 6

These words resonate with what life among animals and nature has continually revealed to me. The more deeply I experience relationship among living beings, the harder it becomes to divide the world according to usefulness.

A tree has value before it becomes lumber. Water has value before it becomes a commodity. An animal has value before a human being decides what can be done with them. Human worth exists before productivity is measured. The Earth is sacred before anyone declares ownership over it.

Recognition carries responsibility.

We are stewards of the Tao.

To me, stewardship is an expression of belonging. We care because we are within this living world, dependent upon it and participating in it. The air entering our lungs, the water moving through our bodies, the food growing from the soil, the animals sharing our lives, and the trees surrounding us continually remind us that our lives exist within relationship.

We are nature.

Living between worlds has brought me more deeply into this one.

The Sacred Ordinary

There was a time when I might have imagined spiritual experience primarily through extraordinary moments: an experience of healing, a dream carrying unmistakable meaning, an encounter with a presence beyond physical form, or a moment when the boundaries between beings seemed to disappear.

Those experiences remain sacred to me. Yet something else has become equally sacred.

Ordinary life.

There is wonder everywhere when we become present enough to receive it. It is there in the early morning before the day has fully begun, in the sound of animals waiting to be fed, in changing light across the land, in a horse recognizing our approach, in birds beginning their morning chorus, and in wind moving through the trees.

Nothing extraordinary has to happen for the moment itself to be alive.

Life stops being divided so sharply between meaningful moments and everything in between. The ordinary reveals its depth.

There is something profoundly beautiful about washing a bucket, carrying hay, opening a gate, preparing food, watching an animal rest, or standing beneath a tree and realizing that for this moment nothing is missing.

Contentment begins there.

It is an abundance that does not depend upon accumulating more experience, recognition, possessions, or proof that our lives matter. Life itself becomes enough, and from that enoughness creativity can arise naturally.

The Wellspring Within

The Tao Te Ching offers this reflection:

“When the Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is morality. When morality is lost, there is ritual.”

— Tao Te Ching, Chapter 38

I have experienced something in my own life that makes these words meaningful to me.

When I am deeply present, compassion is more available because I am actually perceiving the being before me. When I am listening, humility arises because I become aware of how much I do not know. When I recognize another being’s sovereignty, respect becomes the natural response to what I see.

Honesty, humility, integrity, authenticity, responsibility, compassion, empathy, vulnerability, and love begin to feel like qualities waiting beneath the layers we have accumulated.

Perhaps this is why horses can reveal so much without giving us a single moral instruction. They bring us into immediacy.

A horse does not need our philosophy. They meet what is actually present. In that encounter, our incongruities become harder to hide from ourselves. If we remain curious rather than defensive, the relationship continually returns us to authenticity.

The horse makes us want to remember who we are. And when we remember, we meet them from a different place.

Purpose as Participation

Purpose has also changed meaning for me.

We are often encouraged to find our purpose as though somewhere in the world there is one predetermined task carrying our name. My experience has been quieter. Purpose reveals itself through participation.

It can emerge through what is immediately before us: a being who needs care, a relationship asking for honesty, an idea seeking expression, a piece of land needing stewardship, or an animal inviting us into deeper understanding. Some purposes may remain with us for decades. Others may belong to a single moment.

What matters is our availability to them.

The more I have learned to listen, the less purpose feels like something I have to invent. It feels like movement arising through relationship between my own nature and the life around me.

Creativity lives there too.

When we are no longer using all of our energy trying to become what the world has told us we should be, something authentic has room to emerge. Art can arise. Music can arise. A sanctuary can arise. A different way of living with horses can arise. A solution to a problem can appear from somewhere deeper than repetitive thought.

There is still work involved. There are physical actions to take, skills to learn, and responsibilities to fulfill. Yet the originating movement feels different.

Creation becomes participation.

Between the Visible and Invisible

Living between worlds has also changed my relationship with the invisible.

After the experiences I described in the previous chapter, I could no longer think of physical form as the only way relationship exists. Yet I also learned that I did not need to spend my life looking beyond the physical world for those I love.

Sometimes the most profound way I can honor those who have transitioned is exactly what Stary told me:

Take care of the living.

Those words continue to deepen for me.

Care for the living horses before me. Care for the animals who share our farm. Care for the trees and the land. Care for the life that is here.

Be here.

The mystery beyond physical form makes physical life more precious.

The visible and invisible can meet within the same moment. I can feel the presence of someone who has transitioned while my hands are carrying hay to a horse who is physically here. A sunrise can belong completely to this Earth and still open something within me that reaches far beyond what my eyes can see.

The physical world is where I am living the spiritual.

The Way of Nature, the Way of the Horse

Over time, what once felt like a spiritual practice gradually became a way of living.

I wanted to know whether the sacred could be lived while feeding horses, caring for land, grieving, creating, making mistakes, beginning again, and meeting whatever arrived at the gate.

The horses continually returned me there.

They have preferences and memories, relationships and emotions, histories and individual personalities. They can be playful, resistant, curious, frightened, affectionate, powerful, subtle, expressive, and extraordinarily clear.

Each is an individual.

Living among them asks me to meet the being who is actually there rather than the horse I expected to find. That is a practice for life.

How often do we meet another being through the history we have assigned to them rather than through who they are in this moment? How often do we meet ourselves through an old story? How often do we approach a challenge already convinced that we know what it means?

The horse keeps bringing me back to what is here.

And what is here is alive.

Chevalia

Eventually I needed a word for the way of life that had emerged through all of this.

Chevalia.

The Way of the Horse.

It grew from relationship: from horses, animals, nature, the land, grief, healing, transition, stillness, sovereignty, and the continual discovery that life is far more intimate than I once understood.

Chevalia is remembrance lived. It is presence carried into relationship. It is sovereignty recognized within ourselves and honored in every being we meet. It is stewardship born from the recognition that we are nature. It is the willingness to listen before imposing, to remain curious before assuming, and to allow relationship to reveal what cannot be known in advance.

And it is devotion.

The devotion to return to ourselves. The devotion to meet another sovereign being without asking them to surrender who they are. The devotion to become quiet enough to enter the Field of Presence and remember the language life has always been speaking.

There is hay to move. There are animals waiting. There are dishes in the sink. There are decisions that cannot be avoided. There are mornings when we feel radiant and mornings when we do not.

The Way must live there too.

Can it remain with us when the extraordinary moment has passed? Can it enter the way we speak to another being, the way we care for the land, the way we respond when life refuses our plans, the way we hold a boundary, the way we grieve, the way we create, and the way we begin again?

For me, the answer has gradually become a way of life.

I listen and participate. I try to remain present enough to recognize what is actually before me. I remember that every being I encounter has an existence that does not belong to me. I remember my own sovereignty so that I can meet the sovereignty of another without diminishing either. I remember that the Divine is within me and expressing itself throughout the living world.

And when I forget, as human beings do, life reminds me.

Often through the horses.

This is what living between worlds has come to mean for me. I do not have to leave this world to touch the eternal. I meet it here, within physical life, within relationship, within the ever-changing forms through which Source continually expresses itself.

The wind moves through the trees. A horse lifts their head. The day continues.

And within the most ordinary moment, the infinite is still here.