Leap of Faith
By Ellen Frankel

I try to imagine who I would be if I had lived all my life here at this Temple by the river. I wonder what I would want if I had grown up without ads telling me my heart’s desires: to be thinner, richer, sexier, look better, smell better, be all that I can be, have a faster car, a brighter smile, lighter hair, whiter whites, hurry now, don’t miss out, take advantage of this special offer. If instead I had spent twenty-four years absorbing the silent weight of the mountains, the constant pull of the river, the sound of hot white light burning into black rocks. Jamie Zeppa, Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

I used to have this dream over and over. It started around college. Sometimes I would have the dream every few months. Other times, it might not visit me for over a year. Always, it was the same.

I am dancing. Dressed in my leotards and tights, I am dancing, feeling the pulse of the music within my body. And then I go to leap. In dance classes, from high school through today, I can do a full split leap. But in my dream, as I go to leap, I cannot lift my feet or body at all. It is as if weights have been attached to my shoes, or my feet have stepped into crazy glue on the floor and will not budge. It is terrifying for me to watch. My arms are in position. My body is prepared, my focus is set, but I can’t for the life of me get off the floor. I want to soar through the air, and I can’t leave the ground.

When I would awaken from this dream, I always felt exhausted and defeated and anxious. Over the past few years when this dream would visit, I spent a lot of waking time reflecting upon its multiple meanings. Though I hated the dream, I embraced it as well. It started to feel like a “good hurt,” like when someone massages a sore neck muscle and the pain feels good.

I knew that this dream offered an important message for me, and that I could learn something from its many re-runs. I knew it wasn’t only about a fear of not accomplishing goals, of being unable to perform to certain standards, or free-floating anxiety. It held, for me, a spiritual dimension. I think I feared my soul, my spirit, was grounded in the same way, trapped in that box of conformity and expectations.

We live in a culture that focuses on the external, on appearance and economic success. There is very little focus on the internal, on spiritual questioning or spiritual paths. And while religion plays an important role in our society, too many organized religions have unfortunately become more concerned with the externals and trappings of religion than with religion itself. Christmas has become a time of heightened consumerism, and Bar and Bat Mitzvahs have turned into glitzy $50,000 parties. Religion has become yet another label that serves to identify and then separate us into groups, and away from each other.

I think my dream was really a wake-up call; your soul wants to rise up and soar into the expansive space of Earth and sky, timeless, suspended. How are you going to set it free?

I think this dream had its origins in my childhood, during the time I was experimenting with meditation, studying comparative religion, and writing. Instead of following those passions, I learned to not rock the boat. I learned that where I grew up, girls were rewarded for looking pretty and smiling. By behaving nicely, appropriately.

That was when my internal self, my spiritual self, felt large and split wide open. When the adults in my life relabeled these passions as rebellious and tried to tame and quiet them. It was a time when my external self, my physical body, was focused upon. I was too small, too short, each measurement confirmed. And the doctors and my parents tried with great effort to make me bigger. Meanwhile, my spiritual body, pregnant and growing with life energy, was deemed inappropriate, and the implicit message was to make it smaller.

That’s what I think my leaping dream was about. To leap, the physical body must be strong, strong enough to glide through the air and defy the forces of gravity if only for a split second; to allow the soul that moment in time where it is suspended between Earth and heaven and cannot be touched by anyone. That leap breaks the rules of gravity. That leap is the merging of the physical and spiritual bodies.

I surprise people when I leap.

The height I reach, the split extension of my legs, my arms in flight. I think this dream expressed my fear that I won’t reach my height. Not in the concrete measurement of inches, but in the immeasurable yearnings of my heart and soul. That the years of stereotypes, jokes, teasing, and expectations around my shortness, and my own internalization of those messages, would ground me, immobilize me.

How I feared living a life where I kept my heart, soul, and passions locked deep inside, hidden and boxed like a majestic tiger confined to a tiny cage in a zoo. Back and forth she paces, humiliated at the claustrophobic space that constricts her movements as well as her nature and spirit, while people look on and point.

How I feared being ready to leap, and not being able to move.

“Leap of Faith” is an excerpt from Beyond Measure: A Memoir About Short Stature and Inner Growth, published by Pearlsong Press (2006). ©2006 Ellen Frankel, www.beyondmeasureamemoir.com
Reprinted with permission.
First appeared in Apr/May 07 issue of aspire… Magazine