Happy New Year! It's a Revelation Resolution Revolution! (say that three times fast)

You know those two pounds I lost? Good news, I found them again!

As I sit here typing, on January 2nd, eating 3 pieces of bacon for breakfast, I have to ask myself; what is really important to me? What am I doing? What are my goals? Why can't I achieve the simplest one of all - just lose 10 pounds? And being the fairly clever person I am - I've figured it out in the 4 seconds it took me to type this first paragraph.

1) First of all, I AM ready. Now. I've always been ready. I just didn't have the right amount of focus or determination. But now I do. I'm going to kick off my quest tomorrow when I return to work (I would do it today, but my husband just brought me some bacon, I didn't want to be rude or ungrateful). Also - notice I reduced the amount of weight I wanted to lose from 15, 20, or 25 pounds to 10. Let's be real.

2) One of my "go to" goals for the New Year has always included some incarnation of "practicing Dharma", "becoming" a better Buddhist, etc. Well, I think I have some new and exciting insight into this one as well. Sometimes I'm annoyed by those cheesy self-help Yahoo! articles or Facebook "posters" that tell you the 10, 6, 12, or whatever number of simple steps/ways of thinking that you need to practice in order to be the happiest person EVER. Most of them are too obvious, old news, or I'm "already working on it". But every once in a while, I'll see a new one, one that I hadn't heard or thought of before, or have forgotten. Here is one such tip: Don't measure or compare yourself against other people, measure or compare yourself with where and what you were five years ago. Brilliant. I see some improvement and I see some old habits returning. I'm on it!

But the greatest revelation I've had, that will assist with this particular resolution, is that I have realized a new and exciting way to combine my passion for horses and my desire to deepen my spiritual practice. Have you ever trained or cared for a horse? I have my whole life, except for the past 8 years or so. Now I'm back in it and the more I read and study training techniques, the more amazed I become with the connection between horses and Buddhism. There are volumes of books, studies, forums, etc. that explore this connection. There is even a book called: Zen Mind, Horse Mind; the Science and Spirituality of Working with Horses, by Dr. Allan Hamilton.

"Mindful work with horses, says neurosurgeon Allan J. Hamilton, can enlighten the human handler as much as it benefits the horse. Evolving over 30 million years to become the quintessential prey animal, equines have developed acute right-brain survival skills, such as leadership, awareness, empathy, and cooperation. In particular the horse has finely honed abilities to lead, communicate, and connect not with words, but with the vital emotional energy described in the Buddhist tradition as chi. When we learn the language of chi, we become more effective as leaders, more attuned to others, and more joyful as human beings."

And according to Linda Kohanov, Author, The Tao of Equus, horses are "natural mindfulness teachers".

It makes me wonder. Was my old mare my very first mindfulness teacher? Was that relationship responsible for the spiritual path I chose? It would explain, to some degree, the amount of meditative-like calm, pure joy, and intense awareness of each moment I experience when I'm with my new horse. It would also explain that "bolt of lightning" feeling I had when I looked into the eyes of my new horse for the first time and recognized the soul of my old one. My teacher has returned!