You Can't Lead a Horse to Water
Catherine Mossman / Feb 1, 2013
I was discussing the Meier material with someone the other day regarding the great lack of interest of people in general to know more about it. My friend said that ‘well all you can do is put the FIGU material in front of them (or show it to them, something along those lines) and either they want to know more, or they aren’t interested. And leave it at that. If they have questions then one answers them to the best of one’s ability etc.” Then that old cliché popped into my head: ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink’.
Thinking further on this phrase however it started me thinking a bit more deeply about the implications of this phrase, and how it is actually not so. If the horse has been lead, it has not been allowed to come freely, to come on its own accord, from its own impetus. Rather it arrives in bridles, bound up in its own chains of beliefs, bound by false assumptions and expectations, tied to the need for estimation, recognition, approval from others. Shackled by fear-based projections from his or her own, or culturally induced, degenerations. Maybe it arrives out of loneliness. Nevertheless when confronted with concepts that challenge life-long constructs of what reality is and not being ready to honestly look at them, he/she is ready to rear up and kick out in defiance, willingly ready to hurt the person attempting to ‘lead’ them. The horse, or the human being, who is thirsty will come to the water, or the truth, on his or her own accord. With no one leading them. There will always be remnants of bridles and old conditioning hanging off of them, but the fact that they recognise their thirst and have set out on the path to find the water means they’ve taken the first steps on their own.
So, my friend was right, you can put the ‘water’ in front of them, but if they’re not thirsty, they won’t drink. No manner of tempting them with sweet apples, cajoling, pleading, trying to explain it with fancy words, is going to make them thirsty.
