Bud The Horse Teaches About Universal Love

Since moving to Kamloops in 2022, I’ve been lucky enough to meet some wonderful practitioners offering meditative retreats, yoga, reiki, crystal bowls, and more. After living in Winnipeg for 50 years, I forgot how hard it can be to find heart-centered folks in a new place. It took almost two years to really find my tribe.

Two of those tribe members were practitioners holding a meditative retreat with horses. I’ve been to these day retreats before, and every time I’ve been around the horses, something inside me shifts deeply. Usually, I’m processing heavily for days afterward. The healing ability and energy of horses is profound—a vast knowledge base I’m only beginning to explore. I’m deeply grateful I stumbled upon this work; it has helped me face and integrate layers of sexual trauma I’d dissociated from during my three-year sabbatical (2022–2025).

This visit was different. It wasn’t about releasing trauma—it was about communion. A reverence for the moment. A realization that these horses hold frequencies so much higher than ours as humans, and that I was in the presence of a messenger. It felt no different than when I’m channeling my guides. Wisdom higher than my own was flowing through me as I connected with Bud, a beautiful horse I’d met before. In past visits he’d sometimes acknowledged me briefly, then wandered off. On this day, though, his attention landed on me in a way it hadn’t before.

The facilitators, Vivian and Katelyn, had us meditate in a field, sitting on yoga mats while the horses interacted with us as they wished. Like “meditation with goats” or “with puppies,” but on a different energetic scale. The facilitators would guide us through meditation with a theme, yet allow the horses to bring in their healing magic as well during the workshop.

As we entered the field, the horses approached the group—except Bud. He hung back. My attention locked onto him. Everyone else set up their mats, but I stood there, watching. Then he started walking toward us—toward me. He beelined straight to where I stood. Instead of laying out my mat, I waited. By then, everyone else was sitting in a circle, with two other horses wandering among them. Bud came right up beside me and stopped, close enough that we could look directly into each other’s eyes. And then… he stayed.

He didn’t move for what felt like 30 minutes (it may have been less, but it was by far the longest we’d ever been together). His energy was so strong and profound that sitting down would have felt dismissive. So I stood, open, receiving whatever he was offering.

After a few minutes, a feeling of peace washed over me—unlike anything I’d felt with him before. “Universal love, universal love, universal love,” I heard over and over in my mind. Was this what Universal Love felt like? I had never consciously tuned into it before. Love, yes—but always colored by my personal fears and history. This was different. His energy was so pure and steady that my usual defenses couldn’t shut it down. It filled me completely. My nervous system relaxed. I felt deeply fulfilled, like everything was right with the world.

I wondered: how could a horse know this? Do horses who live freely in herds—without the pressures of racing or competition—live in this frequency all the time?

The practitioners often say, “Horses have no ego.” I am learning that they live in the present moment. They do what they want. You can’t move a horse that doesn’t want to move. What must it be like to live that assuredly—fully in communion with the elements, and the elements with you?

In that stillness, my guides gently said: 
“You can teach others to ask for this frequency. It’s different from Source itself—it’s a frequency within Source. Universal Love is shared; anyone, anywhere, can recognize it. That’s why it’s called universal.”

I thought about all the different kinds of love—romantic, familial, platonic, communal—and realized this was something else entirely. A love that exists beyond personal story, available to anyone, any time, if we simply ask to connect with it.

I thanked Bud for mirroring this to me. My body, which often lives in a dysregulated state, felt loose, free, open. My heart felt like it was soaring. It was so peaceful it almost felt like a near-death experience—like what people describe when they say they didn’t want to return.

I grounded the frequency by pressing my feet into the earth, breathing deeply. It felt foreign, like my body was encountering it for the first time. Bud stayed with me, sometimes leaning in closer, as if sealing the transmission. It felt like a quiet initiation: 
“Here is what this frequency feels like, Maureen. You can return to it every day. Spread the word.”

So that’s what I’m doing. I drove home in silence, not wanting the radio to break the spell. At home, I didn’t rush to do anything; I simply sat in the feeling. I went to bed that night hoping it would remain—and it did, for most of the next day. Instead of the usual post-horse exhaustion, I felt peaceful awe.

By evening, the intensity faded, as I knew it would. But I discovered something precious: if I take a few minutes each day to consciously commune with the frequency of Universal Love, I can return very close to that all-encompassing feeling again.

So…want to try? Enjoy my audio meditation to connect in with the frequency of universal love.