My attitude at that moment was: "To hell with the book and this endlessly frustrating two-legged existence! I want my hooves back RIGHT NOW!" Upon reaching home, I stormed into the house and smashed my computer against the desk, thus destroying the files that I had written for the book. I shouted at the ceiling: "See that, Horse Ancestors?! F**k the book! It's not going to happen!" I got out my vicodin narcotic painkiller pills and baclofen muscle relaxant pills and separated out enough of each to put me to sleep for good. The prospect of dying did not frighten me, but I hesitated when I thought about Heidi. She is my owner, and in this life she was my night manager at work. I knew that she would be devastated when she found out about it, if I went through with it.
However, I still strongly wanted to go. That evening I called my friend John Evans, a 100% disabled Vietnam combat veteran with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder who battles depression and suicidal thoughts every day. He also knew and accepted me as a horse in human form. He suggested that if the suicidal thoughts didn't stop, I should go to the local hospital and request a bed in the psychiatric ward. I managed to resist the urge for the rest of the night.
The next afternoon (Monday) I was still enveloped in a deep gloom. I called Debra Chesnut and told her I just couldn't stand being in human form anymore. She said she would come by the next afternoon and she asked me to hang on, and I promised her that I would.
Tuesday afternoon came and went, but Debra never showed up. That didn't upset me—to the contrary, I felt bad for having drawn her into my problem, as everyone has his or her own problems to deal with. I figured that something big must have come up to detain her.
At about midnight that night, I was standing in my living room when I heard a nondescript voice in my head that quietly said: "Give tomorrow a chance." I gasped in surprise, and then I heard it again: "Give tomorrow a chance." I wondered if Debra had had anything to do with the voice, and then I realized that I was pretty tired, so I decided to go to sleep on the couch. "I can always go back tomorrow," I said to myself.
I was awakened at about 10:30 AM the next morning (Wednesday) by a thump in my arctic entrance (my front vestibule). Stepping out there a while later, I squinted down at a package on the floor that bore an unfamiliar Miami Beach return address. Opening it, I found two novels and a hand-written Thank-You note from Edna Buchanan, the famous crime novelist. The novels were The Corpse Had a Familiar Face and Cold Case Squad, and she had handwritten a nice dedication to me in the front of the latter book. Then I remembered with some satisfaction that two months earlier, I had answered Ms. Buchanan's extensive questions about Alaska (her latest novel at that time was set here) after my old boss, Jack Horkheimer (Director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium) had referred her to me.
My uplifted mood didn't last long, however, and soon the gloom rolled in again. I recalled that I had an appointment with my physical therapist at the pain clinic that afternoon, so I shrugged and went over to the clinic. I was also feeling down because I was in pain and I didn't think my doctor at the pain clinic would prescribe more vicodin because it is a narcotic and potentially habit-forming (he had put me on the muscle relaxant baclofen, which didn't help at all). I asked Jim Pasek, the physical therapist, if he thought that Dr. Marc Slonimski might put me back on vicodin (it had been prescribed by another clinic, the local urgent care center). He thought it was possible, so afterward I set up an appointment. Dr. Slonimski’s assistants said it would be no problem at all, which turned out to be the case.
Feeling slightly better after this, I figured I might as well stop by at the Alaska state public assistance office. I didn't think I would qualify for any kind of aid because I was still working. I was the last one served, with just minutes to go before their office closed at 4:30 PM. I didn't think I'd get the rather thick application booklet filled out in time, but I did—with just moments to spare. The desk clerk asked me about my income and health as I filled it out, and I was happily stunned to hear that I was eligible for just about all of the Alaska state aid programs that were relevant to my case, even food stamps. He could have knocked me over with a feather!
Buoyed by this development, I decided to check my e-mail from the library, to at least clear out my spam folder if nothing else. In my e-mail inbox was a message from Kip Mistral, an equestrian author with whom I had been corresponding for a few months. In it she asked how I was doing. I sent her a brief reply that mentioned my mental state and the computer-smashing incident. Her message was dated August 27 (3 days previous), so I didn't expect a reply before my one-hour reserved online session ended. Five minutes before my time was up, Kip replied and asked for my home address so that she could send me an extra laptop computer she had! She refused to accept any compensation, and I thanked her profusely. I am writing this book on that laptop computer right now.
It was a strange and wonderful day—it was as if I had won the lottery over and over again! The next day, I called Debra Chesnut. Before she could say anything else, I asked her: "Did you do something yesterday?" She laughed and said, "Why yes, I did! I performed a shamanic ceremony last night and contacted your Horse Ancestors. I told them you badly needed their help and asked them to assist you." I then told her what had happened, and she chuckled, "Yes, that's how your people helped you and lifted your spirits.” She apologized for being indisposed on Tuesday, as her son was about to get on a plane to leave for school in Ireland when his housing arrangements fell through at the last minute. Due to the time zone difference between Ireland and Alaska, she had had a difficult time contacting them over there. I suggested that he could stay inexpensively at a youth hostel until he found new housing, and she thanked me for the tip.
If a simple, barefoot Shire draft horse like me could be so blessed, who knows what blessings are in store for you when you need them? An additional blessing turned up later, when I remembered that I had printed out all of the files for the book as well as my e-mail correspondence with Debra. By the next May everything had fallen into place, and I had Social Security Disability and Alaska state benefits, disabled housing, and both Medicaid and Medicare.
My Work Begins
Another happy happenstance was meeting and having sessions with Carol Slonimski, Ph.D., a pain psychologist at the local pain clinic. Not long after our first sessions, I decided to “come out of the stall” to her about being a horse in human form. I was relieved when she believed me, and from then on the sessions took a somewhat different tack. It was so nice to be able to just “let my mane down” and not “self-edit” my thoughts and words, as I have had to do around most humans all my life. I was happy to answer her many questions about how we horses live and what we think about, and I jokingly apologized for having drawn her into an equine veterinary psychological practice. She was particularly interested in comparing equine psychological traits with human ones.
Something intriguing happened during the last week of May 2007 that cemented her conviction that I am a horse, and it also sparked her interest in learning our equine language. During my regular monthly session with Dr. Carol Slonimski, she connected me to a biofeedback computer that measured the coherence of my parasympathetic nervous system (in plain English, how well I could directly control my heart rate and respiration with my thoughts). It was set up as a game where a hot-air balloon rose at a speed that was directly proportional to the level of coherence, and as it moved horizontally across the screen obstacles that could snag it appeared (these were designed to throw off patients' coherence).
At all three difficulty levels, the balloon never descended and never got caught on a single obstacle. I got a perfect score at the first level, a near-perfect score at the second level, and a very good score at the third level. (I hadn't had breakfast that morning, and by the time level 2 started my mind was wandering toward food.) After I finished, Dr. Slonimski was happily stunned. She said that very few humans can do what I did, and that those few who can require years of practice in relaxation techniques and meditation. She put it down to my
equine abilities, and then she told me about an incident with a friend's horse.
A friend of hers had a Tennessee Walking Horse, and Dr. Slonimski said that the horse tried to communicate with her. She told me, "Now that I know there is more to horses than I thought, I'd like to learn how to communicate with them." I ordered a copy of Henry Blake's book Talking With Horses (which contains a horse language/English dictionary and also describes how to engage in ESP and telepathic communication with horses) for her. I also gave her copies of Doranna Durgin's Dun Lady's Jess series of novels which, while fictional, gave her insights into the lives and problems of horses in human form.
(Dun Lady’s Jess and its two sequels, Changespell and Changespell Legacy, are about a mare from a parallel world who was accidentally transformed into human form by a malfunctioning spell that brought her and her rider into our world. As I read these novels I frequently found myself trembling and nodding, because Jess’s experiences and reactions in human form closely paralleled mine. I corresponded with the author, Doranna Durgin, in 2006, and she had a most interesting story to tell about the first novel. She did not compose Dun Lady’s Jess. The entire novel came to her as an exquisitely detailed lucid dream that she can still remember to this day, and she said that she merely “dictated” it onto paper. She also told me that none of her other novels had ever just “come to her” like that, and she was astounded at how this one did. I think the Horse Ancestors sent that lucid dream to her.)
Even before I met Debra Chesnut the shamanic practitioner, I had had a gnawing fear about being hypnotically regressed—a fear that I might re-experience some very unpleasant equine experience I had lived through (or died from) before. After conducting her first shamanic journey on my behalf in June 2004 (I had not told her of my fear), she told me that I had something in my past that I needed to work on and that in our then-upcoming (in July 2004) shamanic ceremony at her home, she would be careful in accessing it because it might be unpleasant. After her second shamanic journey on my behalf, she discovered that it was merely my concern about being able to return to equine form. Even after this revelation, however, my gnawing fear remained.
On January 20, 2007 Ian Punnet interviewed me on his “Coast To Coast Live” international talk radio program. He was a most gracious host and was open-minded about what I had to say. I was deluged with e-mail messages from his listeners for weeks afterward. On June 20, 2009 he had me on his show again. After this interview (as with the first), several horses in human form contacted me.
I had been in a deep funk for some time prior to the second radio interview due to my inability to make any progress on the book. It had intensified at the end of April, when Dr. Carol Slonimski and her husband Dr. Marc Slonimski left the pain clinic. Her elderly parents in Georgia were beginning to have serious health problems, and she quite properly wanted to be closer to them. Early on the morning of Monday, June 8th (I hadn't slept at all or eaten much the preceding weekend), I kept hearing a buzzing noise in my head when I tried to sleep, and after fighting it for about an hour I decided to let whatever was going to happen take place.
It was an out-of-body experience in which the Horse Ancestors showed me a previous death when I was a large, darkcolored draft horse helping to build a Roman aqueduct somewhere in northern Europe. I was walking up a narrow, winding dirt path that had been cut into the side of a tall, barren cliff-like hill, carrying something in a large pack strapped to my back. Whatever it was, it didn't feel excessively heavy. I wasn't wearing blinders (blinkers), just a halter. A bald, well-tanned muscular workman wearing roughhewn, dark-colored clothes was leading me with a rope, which was quite slack.
When the experience began, I was already most of the way up the hill, perhaps forty feet above the flat land below. To my right, I could see two arches of the aqueduct under construction and another hill in the distance. My right hooves were close to the edge of the narrow path. The arches caught my attention, and I bent my head and neck to the right so that I could look at them with both eyes. At that instant, the soil gave way beneath my right hooves. I plunged, kicking wildly and screaming equine screams of terror, down into a work area at the base of the hill where I slammed down on my side. The man who was leading me gave a shout just as I fell, but he didn't fall himself.
Hitting the ground wasn't like what happens in nightmares, where you wake up before you hit. I hit and then continued to scream and kick for an instant, unaware that I was already dead. Then came what seemed like just an instant of blackness.
The next thing I knew, I was being led by the halter (without a rope) into a strange empty paddock by a swarthy man with black hair and a black beard, wearing light tan homespun robes and a dark brown girdle. He was walking slightly ahead of me and to my left. He may have been wearing sandals, but as I was taller than him I mostly saw his head and torso. Most of my attention was on the grass, which was a vivid green. This puzzled me because it was a new color that I had never seen before. (To us horses, things that are green appear white.) Also, the grass was brilliantly illuminated from above by an intense, incredibly pure white light that appeared to be brighter than the Sun, yet I could look upon the illuminated grass with no difficulty at all. The light had no visible source overhead, as there was only a bright blue sky above with a few thin streaks of clouds. There was no Sun visible in the sky.
I felt as if I had been mildly sedated, and I felt that I was completely safe where I was and that no harm could come to me. The paddock was rectangular and was bordered by thick trees, as if it were a clearing cut out of a dense forest. It was not extremely large, perhaps forty by fifty yards in size. The trees were partly obscured by a dense mist or fog that did not intrude upon the paddock itself.
My impression was that the paddock was a transition area for the newly dead, where they could acclimate to their new circumstances. I do not know who the man was. Perhaps he had been a previous owner of mine. He never said a word. After leading me about one-third of the way across the longer side of the paddock he stopped, and I stopped. He turned and smiled at me, gave me a gentle pat, and walked away behind me on my left.
Then came another instant of blackness, and suddenly I was in human form, sitting on the couch in my bedroom in my family's old house in northern Georgia. I was facing the large sliding-glass window, in front of which the cream-colored curtains were drawn. My old 1960s-vintage Philco console AM/FM/turntable stereo (a massive, wooden piece of furniture with a large lid) was under the window just as it had always been when I lived there. The bottom corners of the curtains were folded back where they met in the middle, which created a small triangular "portal" through which I could see that it was dark outside.
A faint, slightly orange-tinted glow appeared just outside the window, and then I received a non-verbal message from the Horse Ancestors that would be translated into English as: "We see the misery you are in. If you wish to be free from it and return to us, simply think it and it shall happen." In other words, I would die and be back with them in equine form. At that instant I suddenly understood why I had been shown my death at the aqueduct, so that I would know that I need not fear death.
I thought of my friends here in town (some of whom are also disabled to one degree or another) and how they would be saddened if I died. I immediately thought back to the Horse Ancestors, "Not now," and suddenly I was sitting bolt upright and fully awake in my chair in my apartment. I trembled for a few moments at what I had just experienced, and then I got up and went to the bathroom. Then I sat back down and slept soundly for several hours. When I awoke, I was completely refreshed and felt an invigorating new sense of purpose. I was also heartened to know that if I ever do reach a point where my situation becomes unbearable, I will be welcomed back into the great herd if I return by my own devices.
Where Can You Go From Here?
Almost two years before my 2006 health and financial crisis, in October of 2004, Debra Chesnut had told me that the Horse Ancestors came to her with a message about humanity�
�s future:
“As I fell asleep two nights before my Basic [Shamanic] Journey Workshop a herd of horses came to me. One mare stepped forward to tell me that soon Man will need the assistance of Horses and they are willing and ready to assist Man in the hard times to come. Man will need them and they will help.”
“The Horse people had never come to me before like that and I blame that on YOU, Jason. I mean that jokingly.”
The Horse Ancestors told Debra that humanity is approaching an era of great trouble and that horses will help humanity in that time which is to come. I don't know what this coming trouble is. However, since the Horse Ancestors did not describe what it is (they could have projected images of earthquakes, floods, forest fires, or other natural disasters to Debra if these were the events), my guess— and it is only a guess—is that the trouble involves something that is outside of equine experience and thus beyond their ability to describe.
That makes me think that it may be Peak Oil, which could cause modern human civilization to grind to a halt (or be wrecked through wars over remaining petroleum reserves). A worldwide economic depression and hyper-inflation of the U.S. Dollar and/or the rise of radical Islam could also trigger massive wars that would threaten modern civilization. Such a world would need us horses for our physical strength as well as for our abilities to help humans with their psychological, emotional, and spiritual challenges.
Whatever these future troubles are, every horse who is here in human form has a task or tasks to perform to help our people as well as humanity. Each of you has at least one gift (and often more than one) that will enable you to be effective in your work. Identify and utilize it or them. If necessary, you can use the previously-described techniques to contact the Horse Ancestors to request their guidance and help.
What If You Are a Horse in Human Form Page 6