The Leap!

It's a beautiful morning.  The Sun is up in the clear summer sky, angling in over my left shoulder as I walk to the yoga studio.  The energy of life is all around.  The plants are green with full growth, now busy gathering the Sun's energy they need for the year.  Bees, wasps and flies are pollinating flowers, and birds forage and call all around.  The squirrel runs along the utility wire toward me, approaching a moderate sized tree that reaches its branches up towards the wire, but stopping short.  As the squirrel nears the tree it slows, pausing ever so briefly, and then launches into the air, legs and tail spread, arcing in the pull of gravity out and down into the tiny leafy branchlets, where it gains purchase and scrambles into the branches.  The leap, so fearless and natural, a joyous burst of energy, a moment of surrender into the sky by a creature with no doubt of its abilities and with innate knowledge of the world and how it works.

Another sunlit morning, and a female cardinal flies to a branch, sitting and grooming for a bit, feathers fluffed out, revealing a grayish blue undertone beneath the reddish brown outer feathers.  It draws in, exuding alert energy, and then hops up and out, floating briefly in the air before extending wings for a few skillful strokes to glide into another perch.  So free, so confident, so full of grace.

These creatures simply do what they are naturally able to do.  They move, playing with gravity without analysis, without doubt about their abilities, with apparent effortlessness.  I can do that too.  Not by thinking, or learning more, but by trusting myself and what I innately know about the world.  Making the leap, without a doubt.