Undomesticating Your Heart

Undomesticating Your Heart

by Ren Hurst, author of The Wisdom of Wildness

We have become a domesticated society full of people and animals exploited for another’s needs, even in our most intimate, personal relationships. The devastating result has been a worldwide forgetting of our true nature as well as the very meaning and power of love. Disconnection from one another has led to massive suffering and destruction all around our world, and we seem to be running out of time faster than ever before. Many of us unknowingly perpetuate this state of disconnection through the very relationships we seek out in order to feel connected. In my book, The Wisdom of Wildness, I aim to help you authentically restore that connection and reclaim the deepest experience of love through your relationship to those who have modeled it for centuries: the animals we think of as family.

Love is what this story is about, and I’m writing it for anyone who has ever cared for or been loved by an animal. Love is wild, and somehow humanity has lost touch, and even become fearful, of what that word means. Real love is embodied in ways I have rarely witnessed outside of a wild setting. It is not a feeling, but a state of being through which no one is seen as outside of the whole.

After walking away from a successful career as a professional horsewoman, I lived for two years with an undomesticated herd of horses in the high desert wilderness. Free of any strong outside influences, I experienced the wild, unconditional nature of love long enough for it to change me forever. Most importantly, though, I learned what it really means to be domesticated, and how few of us are actually free from another’s use and purpose.

Being domesticated creates a limited perspective of reality that keeps one from stepping into the fullness of who and what they really are. The term “domestication” literally means “to control in order to use”; it has little to do with biology, and far more to do with the manipulation of another’s emotional experience. Sadly, many beings, human and nonhuman alike, are created for the purpose of meeting another’s needs. When we are exploited for another’s use, we are robbed of the inherent joy meant to guide us toward our individual and collective destinies. By learning how to undomesticate the herd of horses in my care, I began unraveling my own domestication and uncovering a path that has been leading me back to a power within myself I could not have imagined. However, the horses could only take me so far, because I could choose when and how I interacted with them too easily. It was not until I turned my attention toward those sharing my home and living by my side that deeper answers were revealed.

As a young person, I used horses to feel powerful and in control of my life. It was relatively easy for me to look back at my childhood and find understanding and compassion around that. Dogs represent a much larger body of pain for me. I have also used dogs for power and control, but for as long as I can remember, I used them to feel safe and to feel loved in a world in which I didn’t feel worthy.

While the body of work presented in my book can be applied equally to all species and relationships, I’m going to take you along on my journey with an incredible dog named Denali. Every other chapter will carry you through my experience with her, interwoven with chapters on the more philosophical aspects of an evolving understanding of love and trauma.

Facing the truth of what we do to those we care about the most has been the scariest, most painful process I have ever been through. To look at my love for dogs through a more mature lens was not easy. My hope is that my example and the information I share can help you avoid some of that pain on your own path.

My book, and the body of work it reveals, can help you reclaim your own wild nature, regardless of whether you live off the grid or in a luxury Manhattan apartment. Your wild never left you, and I intend to help you find it by teaching you how to witness the wolf in your dog. Chihuahuas have the same access to wild wisdom that gray wolves do. Their ability to stay connected to it has far more to do with their relationship to us than to their biology, even if we’ve set the Chihuahua up to fail at ever achieving full blown autonomy. However, what we can give the Chihuahua is the opportunity to establish emotional sovereignty, and subsequently model for us, often faster than we can achieve it ourselves, what it looks like to be emotionally whole. That is what it means to be wild.

For far too long, the “wild” has been something used to strike fear into our hearts as a concept more relatable to danger and recklessness than wisdom. In our desire to become civilized and supposedly more advanced in social and cultural development, we’ve moved too far away from our wild roots to realize the harm we’re causing to ourselves, each other, and the planet we all call home. I can think of more than a few reasons why those with tremendous external power would want things to remain this way, but it is not sustainable and serves only a few.

We need to rebalance the system in service to all. When a system with seemingly separate parts behaves holistically, there can only be an overall harmony maintained through that balance. Those who behave independently through abuses of power become an anomaly to the system, wreaking havoc on the health of our shared environment. Interconnection is what keeps a natural system in balance. We are individual, physical forms having both a unique and shared experience through a unified consciousness that exists beyond form.

In other words, we are not completely separate and cannot behave as if we are without grave consequence. The moment we lose touch with our connection to one another, we risk playing God without God consciousness. When we are not being guided by what connects us, our choices contribute to the only sin that has ever existed: believing and behaving as if we are completely separate from Source, and each other. Immeasurable fear and suffering is the result of such widespread experience.

Our bodies are the doorway to freedom; our intuition the most reliable intelligence. Healthy, mature wild animals model this through their present, embodied example of emotional awareness. They have no reason to question that we are all one at an energetic level, because that is the primary way they experience the world around them: through feeling as opposed to thought. Our own species has managed to reverse the priority, allowing the mind to rule over that for which it was intended to be merely a tool.

No matter where we live, the wilderness of our internal landscape remains. As long as we fear the wild and what it has to show us, we will continue to move farther and farther from the connection that makes us whole. The wisdom of the wild is the unexplainable knowledge we gain by staying connected to our soul through our feeling body. It informs beyond ideas of right and wrong in ways that would never inspire unnecessary harm to others, our environment, or ourselves. This wisdom links us to a holistic understanding of our place in the physical world and is vitally important for the health of our planet and her inhabitants. We all have this link when we enter the world. I believe the explanation for how it goes missing can be found in the absence of exploitation among wild creatures. One cannot remain authentically connected to someone they are deeming separate enough to use.

A rewilding of our planet is underway, carried forth by those courageous enough to peel back the layers of their own conditioning. I believe that our collective relationship to animals is one of the biggest obstacles—if not the biggest obstacle—keeping us from a balanced, interconnected existence on Earth. Each one of us has the power to turn it around, beginning in our own homes. The great poet Rumi spoke of a field beyond right and wrong. That field is the wilderness, and my book is an invitation to meet me there.