Step Two
The Call to Adventure
Joanne, a British woman who quit her well-paid job and set off in search of the highest wisdom of our time, was visiting a horse woman she had heard of on her farm outside London. She saw with her own eyes what seemed to her to be a miracle. The sight of a woman on an unbridled horse raised more questions in her than just those about an unusual style of riding. It stirred her to question the art of how to live her life.
What has that got to do with a horse? How can an animal, which is commonly understood to be limited, and which man, as is well-known, is thought to have to dominate and bully with a bit and a whip, how can it enter into such a trusting relationship with a human being that it voluntarily carries it on its back?
If a horse is prepared to do something like that, am I then, perhaps, also prepared? Prepared no longer to flay myself, force, subdue, control myself, drive and humiliate myself? Describe myself as stupid and limited?
Do I perhaps also deserve to be treated sensitively, empatheticallyand with understanding? Not only by others, but also by myself? To move without fear, to have confidence, to follow my feelings and impulses, and to feel comfortable in every way? To be creative, to cooperate, to dance, be happy and contented, secure and protected? Not a monster of civilization, but an innocent creature.
According to animal communicator Ted Andrews most people are unaware that they treat themselves the way they treat animals.
Joanne's story depicts a typical call to adventure. It begins with discontentment, a feeling of being unwell, with doubt or curiosity, with an openness to new things–and then suddenly a sentence comes, a message emerges which sets something in motion.
The trigger can be something unimportant and random.
The call to adventure, the heroine’s invitation to make the journey, is often woven into a web of events which spreads unnoticed over one’s whole life. Many minor events slot together to form a whole. Suddenly doors open, people nod and say “yes” because they sense the underlying current and become part of it themselves.
My call to adventure began like that of many women, while I was leading a life like many other women. I had a family and two children and our next vacation was supposed to take place on a farm. It also turned out that our daughter Lea was in love with horses. For the first time in years I was sitting on a horse again. The memory of going out riding with my grandfather recurred.
None of this would have preoccupied me further, if Hadban Enzahi, the prince, had not returned on one of the rides.
Happiness, psychologists say, is the fulfillment of a childhood dream. A white Arabian flesh-and-blood horse flies up a hill before my eyes with sweeping tail and dancing legs. Something that has long been locked away breaks open. Images and feelings rise up in me from some deep source as if it had never stopped bubbling.
In their own special way horses give humans an identity. Myidentity revolves around Arabian horses, as strange as that often seems to me. Incredible!
The events unite to form a painting of the senses. My husband had a new job, and we would be moving to a small town in the Black Forest, on the edge of civilization. I would lose my best friend, leave behind my whole life. Recently my literary agent asked me: do you know anything about horses? He was looking for an author to write horse novels. I was more interested in landing a book contract than a horse.
At a horse market I bought a toy horse, supposedly to bring me luck. A contract followed, shortly after that one of four stalls in our riding stable became available. Hadban Enzahi followed, in female form.
The horse had seemed like a dream to me up to the day she was travelling behind me in our transporter on the way to the Black Forest. I played sinking battleships with my daughter–while the previous owner told me straight out that my star-sign was Aquarius.
Since then I have gone through what the Americans call a steep learning curve. The horse was young and had only recently been started. You get what you ask for.
I can precisely pin down the moment of the call to adventure. It was Hadban Enzahi, the forefather, who gave me the sign on that August day on the bank of the river Lech.
Ask any horse owner and he will tell you the moment of his call. His story may perhaps be more dramatic than mine. It does not depend on how dramatic it is but on how effective.
Our life history unceasingly weaves a web of moments until we hear the call, until so
