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I approach the dock with stars all around me. The lake luminesced of their brightness. I feel my elder friend behind, a spirit sweet and warm I call on frequently.
I wonder how far the water is from me and how deep it might be. I look down and feel the rise in the pit of my body as if I had already jumped. And I know that I must.
I beckon my companion to come along so I don’t have to do the jump alone and they motioned back that I must.
I feel the jump in my chest again, the knowing, the rightness.
I step back. I run.
I jump.
I feel the weight of my body being pulled to earth as it travels down my center - slowly from my throat.
A magnet to my core, it feels like forever.
This familiar feeling of falling.
It always feels like it never ends.
Whether it be in love or down to the ground - I always feel it in the pit of my chest. Swirling and twirling and beat box imploding.
I hit the water and sink.
My weight disappears but I still feel the gravity of my magnetic body. Down, down, the silence of the deep currents – its still. I don’t hear a thing but my own heartbeat magnified by the echo chamber of my ears underwater.
I face the surface with my feet grazing the smooth, slimy grasses and murky soil.
I am stuck. I do not rise like I expect to. I breath in. I gasp a couple times in panic, yet I do not choke. I meditate upon my breath in this new environment, and know that I am ok, resting into the familiar feeling of what it is like to breath.
Yet, I do not hesitate to rise. I run up and up, my pace quickening, water slicking and pressurizing my body as I move as quickly as possible and as I breach the surface, I rise into the air.
Full of my surrender.
My power.
Familiar with the weight of my body I lean back as if I am floating in those same waters – allowing myself to be familiar with the feeling of flying.
How surely gravity’s law,
Strong as an ocean current,
Takes hold of even the strongest thing
And pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing –
Each stone, blossom, child –
Is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
Push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrender
To earth’s intelligence
We could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
In knots of our own making
And struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
To learn from the things
Because they are in God’s heart;
They have never left him.
This is what the things can teach us:
To fall,
Patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
Before he can fly.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
Insight from an Elder
Without the weight and pain of our lives, of the world, we would not know what it takes to fly. When we feel our calling, the deep resonance of what we know to be our next step, we jump. Feeling our heaviness, the weight of ourselves as we jump – our impact on others, on the planet, on our should's and could's and would's – there lies this instinctual reaction to our what if’s – and that is fear. I’ve noticed in my life that I resist these impulses to jump and when I do I come into even more fear, less likely to jump the next time. Really, there is a fear of fear. Fear that, perhaps, “we are powerful beyond measure”, fear that we are alone in this world, fear of so much. What if we lived life without this? Would we allow ourselves to feel fully the weight of the world and our place in it? Can we let gravity take hold of our strongest thing and let it pull us towards the heart of the world?
Let us trust that we have inherent information and guidance that directs us towards our purpose. Let it be and do not let fear get in the way of that which guides you to the heart of the world, to your purpose.