How perfectly clear it is to me now. Moments in my life come flooding back to me. I reveal, I remember, I accept and now I understand. Yes, everything seems to be interconnected.
I can explain the things I've done, and the ways I felt. And now I'm free to feel, free to evolve beyond all those petty, bitter warring times. At war with myself, at war with the world; not any more.
I climb up over the last few small boulders that surmount the ridge. I've been told that in this place, I stand the best chance of catching a glimpse of that which I feel I need to see.
The glaring sun seems to spread out accross the sky in a hazy white mist. A sharp horizon of vividly blue-white mountain peaks. An incredible vision, the focus seems sharper than anything I've ever seen before. More real.
Tired from the climb, I sit myself down on a flat rock and survey the length of the wide, shallow valley ahead of me. I seem to have come at the wrong time.
I wait, and think.
I wonder about the huge and timeless force of consciousness that pervades these mountains. I run through in my mind the still incomplete connections that I, nonetheless, feel exist between the various philosophies and insights that I'm trying to distill.
I chuckle to myself when I consider my location. The "Celestial Mountains...hmmm." I give a smile, and then a broader one as I realise that coincidence is at work again.
For me personally, horses will always occupy a special status in the world. But I feel proud of myself now for my willingness to accept that horses are no more important than anything else.
I hear a rumble, distant but growing, and return quickly to awareness from the depths of my reverie. Looking along the valley, to the west, I can see them coming.
They're trotting and cantering, on the move, not fleeing. I watch intently for a moment and then start to make my way down through the dry, loose terrain towards the valley floor some way ahead of them.
By the time I have reached the bottom, they've slowed up and are starting to spread out to graze. They're still a mile or so to the west of me, down along the slightly sloping valley. I stare on at the distant four-legged shapes for a while, and then start to walk.
Wonder fills me. An indescribable feeling of awe; just to be alive. I feel the ground beneath my feet. I feel it's hard dusty stone, but I also feel it's presence.
The sloping foothills to each side of me, don't just cast their shadow accross me, or shelter me from the breeze. They sit there, massive and timeless, but aware of my nearness.
Everything around me is alive. Everything around me is conscious, has feeling, has atmosphere. I doubt that the hills themselves have anything within their consciousness that I could call a thought. But there is life there, energy.
I walk amongst them, and they don't seem perturbed. These are the last wild horses on the Earth, the "Celestial Horses" of China. So wild, so un-used to human company, and yet they do not back away from me.
They understand my connection, they know who and what I am. I am in touch with myself now, and in touch with the world. The world knows me, and therefore so does anything else in it that is in touch with the world. And these most proud and beautiful of all creatures surely are blessed with the most vital and gleaming spirits. They are in touch.
An old mare moves by, she reaches out her face and sniffs at me. I nuzzle her back with my face. Eye contact is exchanged and a symbolic greeting is relayed. She moves off.
I stand at last in what seems to be the centre if this loose collection of herds. There must be a thousand wild horses here. All around me is the spirit, the Avatar, of Equus.
I feel love bursting out of me like a star being born. I feel energy rushing in, connecting me to that which I adore, identifying me.
I throw back my head, hold out my arms to the sky, and let go of all physical sensation. Submerging my mind, my love, my soul, utterly into the all pervading feeling of 'horse' that surrounds me and fills me.
For a moment, I am blessed. Just a tiny instant of time but it seems in my memory to stretch out accross all the great, wide vistas of Earth's long life.
The spirit of Equus enters into me for a moment, and I feel everything that it is to be a horse.
Dashing accross open plains, fleeing from predators, rolling in the dust, scraping for sustinence in the cold frozen ground, making love together in the open fields of spring, dancing like a fool in a mid-summer madness, flicking flies, grooming of partners, sheltering among dark trees from the driving rain of a pitch dark winter night, the warm earthy smell of damp horses huddling for warmth against the cold forest night.
I breathe a single breath of air, as a horse.
Nothing will ever be the same... after this.