Stepping Out

It is always a choice.

A bird steps out from its perch high atop the cliff.  The winds loop, roil, and howl up here.  It is a dangerous first step.  Fear could paralyze the trajectory of the bird.  It knows that if its mind seizes up, everything will become a hopeless jumble; the bird might forget its appointed task.  Dark images begin to crowd to the mind’s eye of how its small body would twist hopelessly through the air not knowing which direction was up or down.  It may even crash into the cliff in the long screech to death.  The plummet would be inevitable.  If that vision were allowed to become concretized in the bird’s imagination it would mean the end for the bird.

Fear takes control.  It breaks the focus and steady contact with our higher self.  Fear disconnects us from our strength.  Fear separates us from us.  Sapping our energy we become pawns to chance winds and malicious designs.  We are prey for evil influences.  At best, we survive.  At worst we fall short of meeting our destiny and wind up despising what we have become.

There is another way.

The bird may gingerly push off from its nook, spread out its wings to catch the breeze.  At once it is in flight, afloat on invisible strings from heaven.  With thoughtful and deliberate motions the wings start to move in tandem with the rising winds.  They are buffeted and pulled upward closer to the clouds.  Upward.  The power is intoxicating.  Soaring, an overwhelming exhilaration takes hold.  It is done. 

“This is who I am!”  “This is my path!” 

The realization brings the bird to the limits of its capability.  No, it brings them closer to their new expanded potential.   The boundaries of the universe have been stretched.

The wings flap and tilt and direction is changed.  Another shift and the flight pattern takes a sudden dive.  Racing even faster than the flow  of air now the bird gleefully pulls out of the rapid descent and once more is borne higher and higher.

It is a choice that has been made. 

Reality itself is a choice.  We choose to be victims.  Or we can be beacons of endless energy and potential.

It is true that there are times we may feel crowded by external factors – people pushing us off the cliff -- but the decision always belongs to us alone.

We decide which road we take.  We choose where we wish to live.  We opt to simmer with rage.  We can choose to forgive.  We make the decision to judge someone favorably.  We can damn them and us.  The endless loops that replay in the mind causing endless bouts of angst are not beyond our control.  

Each of us possess the greatest gift of God; endless potential.

Allow us to step off the edge into the air, Lord Master.  Make us firm in the conviction to trust ourselves and You.   Help us to let go of the earth that binds and constricts our consciousness.  Give us the courage to forgive them.  Grant us the strength to forgive ourselves.  Trust.   Help us to choose, Avinu, our Father, the ultimate path of life.