Meet Sherry Ackerman

A Talk With Sherry Ackerman, author of

Dressage in the Fourth Dimension

 

How did you come to write Dressage in the Fourth Dimension? What was going on in your life that sparked the book?

I entered the Fourth Dimension, literally, one blustery afternoon in 1993. Let me explain…..as a small child, I had a mystical consciousness. I experienced Oneness as a matter of course. My parents, though, thought that this awareness was immature and childish and, subsequently, thought that ‘good parenting’ involved guiding me away from these ideas. My parents, mainstream community, schools, colleges and graduate institutes all did their part; well intentioned, albeit mistaken, to condition my thinking toward materialistic, dualistic values and beliefs. By 1993, I was a fully conditioned person. In looking back, I can see that I was ego-identified, exteriorized and enculturated. I, though, was clueless, thinking that everything was right on target. In retrospect, however, I can see that I was sadly derailed! One Wintry late afternoon in 1993, I was riding a particularly difficult young horse in my quiet indoor arena through the figures of the manege, when, out of nowhere, I was struck, as if with a lightening bolt, with Pure Awareness. I felt Love pulsating throughout me and I felt as if I was a whole new being. I fused completely with the horse and we were One. There was nothing left of me, and equally nothing left of him. We just Were. Pure Presence. Consciousness. There was only The Moment. I remember, though, wondering what would happen when I dismounted….but what happened was that I continued to see the whole world this way. The boundaries were gone, duality resolved. There was no right and wrong, no male and female, no night and day. I remember, again, wondering what would happen when I had dinner with my family that night. But, I was visibly transformed. My children asked me why I was “glowing”. Love. Finally, I remember wondering if I would feel like this forever….and, for the past 15 years, I have. Sometimes the Light glows softly and sometimes it bursts into full flame, but it is always there. Nothing about my human existence has ever been the same….and all this, thanks to a difficult horse on a late Winter afternoon. Right Here, Right Now!

 

What is Dressage in the Fourth Dimension about? What point are you trying to make in the book?

 

The book is essentially a primer on mysticism. It’s central point is that riding is a path of transformation and that, further, anyone who learns to ride well can’t help but be transformed. Our contemporary mental-rational worldview has conditioned people to believe an illusion. Things are not as they appear to be. The mystical worldview is a glimpse behind that veil. What I call the fourth dimension is a type of consciousness that is aware of greater complexities and higher unities.

Animals are pure…unconditioned by consensual reality, the Maya. They are Present, in The Moment. They have not been conditioned by the strictly third-dimensional sphere of material existence and, consequently, they operate in a higher dimension of existence, a fourth dimension of spirit. This is the lesson that horses offer anyone who wishes to honestly communicate with them. When horse and rider work intimately in this fourth dimension, a creative-zero-point opens up in which consciousness and unconsciousness become momentarily unified. This provides the rider with an opportunity to merge with unitary reality, wherein there is no permanence, because all is transformation. In the fourth dimension, the rider escapes the prison of time and the limitations of ego-bound consciousness. S/he accepts that s/he is spirit, realizing his or her own immortality and, consequently, freedom.

 

Dressage is an Olympic discipline, which means that it is a highly competitive sport, right? So, where does your concept fit in….the idea of a non-competitive style of dressage as a transformational art? Is this idea catching on within the dressage community?

Dressage is one of the Olympic equestrian sports. However, it was only as recently as 1900 when the “military test”, which later evolved into the separate disciplines of dressage, eventing and stadium jumping, first became an Olympic discipline. Prior to that, horses had performed artistically as entertainment for the Royal families of Europe. In this capacity, they not only displayed all of the movements that we currently admit into dressage riding, but many airs above the ground, as well. Later, horses became used more predominantly as mounts for the military. Military horses had to be obedient and maneuverable, so dressage, as first documented in the writing of the Greek Xenophon, was critical to their development. As horses during the late 1800’s were used primarily by the military, it only stood to reason that a test of the military horse be the standard during the inception of the Olympics. The military test included obedience and maneuverability, which evolved into the dressage test, and the ability to jump obstacles. The riders were all male and predominantly military for several decades. After the US Cavalry was disbanded in 1948, the focus for American dressage shifted from military to civilian competition and began to gain momentum. Women as well as men became passionate about dressage and in 1952 the first women were allowed to compete in the Olympics.

Notwithstanding that competition offers wholesome sport opportunities, it is based on a dualistic worldview. There is necessarily a “winner” and, thus, a “loser”. Since the modern Western mind is not comfortable with “losing”, competitive riders became increasingly concerned with end-gaining. This view is reinforced by year-end awards, high point awards and medals earned for certain levels of accomplishment. When the ends begin to outweigh the means, however, people are tempted to resort to shortcuts or gimmicks that compromise the integrity of the work. And, it is the horses who pay the price…in lameness, sourness, or, this year for example, with three dead horses at the Rolex 3 Day Event. As this trend exacerbated over the years and competitive riding claimed more and more casualties…physically, psychologically and emotionally…in both horses and riders, a current of concern began to be heard from conscious, classically trained riders and teachers around the world. This collective voice called the riding community back to its classical, pre-militaristic artistic origins. Teachers such as, for example, Henri van Schaik and Egon von Neindorff urged riders to practice “art for the sake of art” as opposed to riding for prizes. Through the influence of these, and other, strong advocates of dressage as an art, rather than a sport, the idea of a non-competitive style of dressage as a transformational art began to evolve.

Although the lineage for the idea of dressage as a transformational art was definitely the classical, as opposed to competitive, school, my particular concept of it is even outside of those parameters. I regularly tell my students that they need to stop talking about classical equestrian ideals, as that just makes them dressage fundamentalists. I remind them to Be Here, Now. I tell them that they are not stuck in the boxes created by previous century masters. This is not the Renaissance…it is This Moment. I tell them, borrowing from the Zen parable, that dressage is the Moon that they have to find on their own. I implore them to deconstruct everything that they have ever been taught and reconstruct it as they experience it…to own it.

As I wrote in Dressage in the Fourth Dimension, “we are living in radical times, poised on the edge of a new paradigm. The lure of materialism is losing its potency as people awaken to the limitlessness of consciousness.” Bob Dylan said the same thing another way when he wrote, “the times they are a-changin’”. These changing times…as an emerging new paradigm…are facilitating the acceptance of the idea of dressage as a transformational art within the dressage community. The veil is thick and consciousness comes slowly, but it is assured. I would like to share a story that I heard recently from a Tibetan Monk. The Monk talked about a man who was trapped in the “lowest, darkest rung of hell”, saying that the man was “doing the best he could”. The Monk reminded us that the man “didn’t even know what he didn’t know”…that “we don’t awaken until we awaken”. This, though, while seemingly tragic is actually okay, because every one…every one….is working toward Enlightenment, in their own way and time, whether they know it or not. That being true, higher truths about horses and dressage are guaranteed to catch on….one person at a time, as people…in their own time and in their own way…make their way toward Enlightenment.

 

You have often been cited for mentioning what you call “new paradigm thinking”, what do you mean by this phrase? What is a new paradigm thinker?

 

A paradigm is a worldview. The word “paradigm” was originally one of those obscure academic terms that underwent many changes in meaning over the centuries. It was used by the classical Greeks to refer to an original archetype or ideal. Later it came to refer to a grammatical term. In the early 1960’s Thomas Kuhn wrote a ground breaking book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he demonstrated that science does not progress in an orderly fashion from lesser to greater truth, but rather remains fixated on a particular dogma or explanation—a paradigm—which is only overthrown with great difficulty and a new paradigm established. The overthrowing of a particular dogma or worldview is called a paradigm shift and occurs when anomalies or inconsistencies arise within a given paradigm and present problems that people are unable to solve within that paradigm. Any paradigm shift…that is, the gradual collapse of an old, dysfunctional paradigm and the resultant emergence of a new paradigm…results in the need for people to change their view of reality, as well as their perceptions, thoughts, and values about the world. New paradigms require people to take on new assumptions and expectations that will transform older theories, traditions, rules and standards of practice. New paradigms arise in order to solve the seemingly unsolvable problems of the older paradigm. The new paradigm that is currently coming into creation, due to the obvious failure of that which has been the dominant paradigm for the past several hundred years, is one based on cooperation, instead of competition; unity, instead of separateness; community, instead of individualism; environmental awareness, instead of consumerism; equality, instead of hierarchy; and love, instead of fear.

Fourth Dimension talks about transcending the ego. This is lofty language. What would it mean, in very practical terms, for a person to move toward transcendence of the ego?

 

The concept of transcending the ego is a notion that has caused an inordinate amount of confusion. Egolessness does not mean the absence of a functional self….as Ken Wilber points out, that would be a psychotic, not a sage! It means, instead, that one is no longer exclusively identified with the self, the individual, separate sense of “me”. Likewise, transcending the ego does not mean “less than personal”. It means, quite to the contrary, “more than personal”….all of the normal personal qualities, plus some transpersonal ones. In practical terms, the ego is transcended when a person is plugged into a radiant Cosmic Source. You can see and feel it in a person when you are in their presence.

As I wrote in Dressage in the Fourth Dimension, the path to liberation requires letting go of self and surrendering totally and unconditionally to the unitive power of love. The ego is the dualist in us. It is the habit we have of seeing ourselves over and against someone else. The ego is highly invested in comparing, categorizing and criticizing. This has some very practical considerations when applied to dressage. If, for example, a person is highly invested in show scores, this would be a manifestation of ego-identified behavior. Another person, interested simply in pursuing excellence in the art of dressage with no concerns about “judgments” tendered by others, would be more indicative of a person who had made some significant progress in transcending the ego.

In order to get a better handle on understanding this, let’s look at the whole process of ego development and, ultimately, ego transcendence. When a baby is born, it can’t tell the difference between self and not-self. The child has no boundaries, and the experience is one of being undifferentiated from the material world. Everything is self. But as the baby interacts with the environment, it makes the distinction between self and not-self.

The next developmental stage, between ages 6 and 12, is one of the adoption of roles, generally those of mythic gods and goddesses, characters in fairy tales or other literature, and even in cartoons. The child discovers and learns to follow the rules associated with the various available roles. As this happens, the focus of what is the self changes. The next stage is the development of a personal and individual identity, generally during the teenage years. No longer defined only by roles and their rules, the person creates an individual identity which is independent of, or at least less dependent upon, conventional ethics, rules, and roles.

In the next stage (and it is important to note that a person may or may not develop through all of these stages–for a variety of reasons development could stop at any stage) the sense of self moves from individualistic awareness (the individual identity) to a more global “all of us”, community awareness.

Successive stages involve the development and integration of what are called transpersonal stages, where awareness of self goes beyond “all of us” to include what most people think of as the “spiritual dimensions” (like, eg, the fourth dimension) that are larger than just humanity. These levels include oneness with all of the material universe, as well as with all of the non-material, spiritual realms, and finally beyond the whole manifest universe to the entirely non-dual.

The entire journey revolves around one entering pure awareness and residing there. Seer and seen merge into a cosmic awareness which excludes nothing, has no center and no separation between observer and observed. The ego evaporates. Unfiltered, unfettered consciousness replaces ego as the organizing structure of the person. When true seeing opens, it is both a magnificent surprise and patently obvious. Problems dissolve, and joy, wonder, and compassion arise naturally.

What is your current relationship to dressage? And, to horses?

I am launching a new clinic and workshop initiative in 2009, based on Dressage in the Fourth Dimension. This initiative will focus on animal spirituality and the transformational aspects of the horse-human relationship. I am interested in raising consciousness about the potential of dressage for human transformation and evolution. This work will be much more holistic than the dressage teaching that I have done for the past several decades. It’s time for me to be much more integrated about my horse-related interests than simply “teaching dressage”. At this point, seeing dressage as “just dressage” is too reductionistic and makes me feel, as Sartre might say, a bit “practico-inert”. It is, quite simply, too third dimensional….Flatland. Seeing the horse-human relationship as a path to transformation and evolution breathes life into riding and is where my head is really at. I’m ready to ride…and live…in the fourth dimension. The primary emphasis will be on the real stuff of riding…the inner work and the horses’ contribution to facilitating our transformation. I don’t want to just teach people how to weight their inside seatbone and keep their shoulders back anymore. I want to show them how horses can teach them to deal with their pain-body and/or shadow. Time is short and horses could save the Planet. They don’t really care if riders keep their heels down and their sternums up. They want them to open their heart chakras.

For more information:

Contact: Monique Muhlenkamp

New World Library

800-972-6657 ext. 15

Monique@newworldlibrary.com