Jumping off

I beg your pardon?

We're jumping off - do you want to come along?

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. They were inviting me to go along for the ride, so to speak, and throw myself off a clifftop with them, and presumably join the large and growing pile of bodies a kilometre or so down on the rocks below.

Er... yeah, I'm game - I hear myself replying.

Did I just say that? I feel my pulse racing, my heart dropping away. Why on Earth did I just agree to join these fanatics... lunatics? What's come over me? I really don't know, but for some reason I realise that a wheel has been set in motion - that I'm committed no matter what.

Now don't think I'm happy about this. I'm still telling myself that I can back out at the last minute, but in my heart of hearts I know that I'm just bluffing. There's no way I'm backing out. Whatever's just happened - it's happening for a reason, though I can't for the life of me explain it.

Just for the record, I have no suicidal tendencies whatsoever. I've always laughed and made fun of the jump-offers as we call them - who have been gathering in increasing numbers at these so called "sacred sites".

There aren't that many cliff tops that qualify. They need a big, and I mean BIG drop and they need to be off the beaten track, in the heart of mother nature. But this isn't a local phenomenon - it's happening around the world. It started a year of two ago - three at tops and rumours fed their way back to the rest of us. There was fear. Outrage. Disgust. They called it a cult. A suicide sect. Other names that needn't be mentioned right now. They said it reflected a growing sense of despair at the economic and environmental changes affecting the planet. They said a lot, they always do, and their fear was impossible to disguise. The phenomenon wasn't short lived. It's growing. It seemed like a kind of virus or mental disorder that affected groups of people, mostly young, causing them to join as a band and converge on a cliff top for their jumping off. They didn't seem to be distraught or suicidal. They were focussed on starting rather than ending something.

And what about the bodies?

That's the thing. There were too few of them. The media makes a hullabaloo about the few bodies recovered, terrifying the public with occasional mangled remains, but there are never enough, mathematically speaking.

Too few?

Yes, most of the jumpers seem to dematerialise in the air before they can fall down.

Er? Are you sure?

Of course I'm sure. And loads of footage has appeared on the internet. Where have you been? Haven't you seen any of this?

No, I've been out of the loop for a while.

You're telling me.

But how can bodies just dematerialise?

No idea. Some of them just seem to vaporise. Others turn into balls of light. A few don't - and those guys crash down onto the rocks below. Still, I assume it's fairly painless at any rate.

But why bother to take the risk? What's the point?

Why do people skydive, or base jump off buildings?

But they're using parachutes.

True, but it's still an unnecessary risk. There's always the slight chance that the chute won't open.

Yes, but it's minimal, whereas this just seems to be suicide.

So you'd imagine, but in reality it turns out to be a lot less suicidal than everyone had previously assumed. I mean, wow - who would have thought that in our day and age, with all our technological progress we'd return to this - and that it's hidden within us - this ancient ability to simply dematerialise. To transcend our physicality.

I still can't believe it's true.

I don't blame you Steve. I couldn't believe it myself, until I'd actually seen it with my own eyes.

You mean you went to one of these sites. How macabre.

Yeah, curiosity got the better of me, although, with hindsight perhaps it wasn't just curiosity.

What? You mean you were contemplating doing the same thing.

No, if I'd been contemplating it I'd never have dared to go. I never admitted as much to myself, but I guess something like that must have been the motivating force sub-consciously.

So now I find myself one of them. I've transitioned an invisible line. Already beyond the pale, I'm looking at the world with entirely different eyes. God it's amazing. I feel so light. I mean, I'm afraid, scared as hell - don't get me wrong - but euphoric. I feel like all the sluggishness and heaviness has been cleared from me. I'm free again. As if I'd always been waiting for this moment - my whole life. Yeah - I'm realising beyond a shadow of doubt that there's no turning back. I couldn't go back to that world even if I wanted to. Yuk. The lies, half-lies, the self-deception, the twisted logic of human beings who are all paralysed by fear, pretending to enjoy themselves, imagining that they're really alive, that their lives have some kind of meaning. Pathetic. Absurd.

Not so - Merry.

Oh - who's that? Another voice seems to have entered my conscious-awareness. A voice that encourages me to look at my fellow humans with love and compassion. I follow it's energy signature rather than it's line of reasoning, and yes, I see things differently in an instant. I see the beauty, the magic, the love in spite of the fear and lies. I see the people now as delicate flowers buffeted by cold winds on the mountain slope of life, striving towards the sun, desperately trying to open, trying to extract a little mineral sustenance from the rocky soil, trying to share some trace of the power and beauty contained within each and everyone of them. My heart goes out to them all and I know that they are a part of me and what I am now doing. They carried the baton and passed it to me so I can cross the finishing line with a final leap. I know that my transcension is no less theirs - that we are truly, truly One.

That's better - the voice smiles goldenly.

I don't bother to ask who it is. It's not that I know for sure, but I know enough to know I don't need to know any more. That it's a voice of the Oneness, the allness that is I am.

Correct, it silently, caressingly breezes through me, telepathically.

Are you alright there Merry?

Oh yes Steve, couldn't be better - and I'm looking at Steve with shining eyes. I observe a look of shock, or is it awe and wonder cross his face. Knowing that I'll be jumping off tomorrow means that the ego seems to have taken a vacation. I don't feel big or important. I'm genuinely happy that Steve can feel and see my peace and my growing sense that all is truly Well.

Steve is obviously going through his own mental process. Funny isn't it? The mental process is just the gateway, the narthex leading to the inner-state of conscious-awareness - a state of knowing what is, a state of peace and acceptance as opposed to resistance and antagonism where we seemed to spend most of our lives. This jumping-off thing has definitely wrought a powerful change in me. Bizarre, isn't it, that only by agreeing to leave this world - to offer back my life - am I finally present in the world in a way I've never been until now. The sense of wonder and joy deepens, expands, carries me beyond the three dimensions that have been the limits of my conscious-awareness for the greater part of my Earthly existence.

I'm joining you - Steve quietly informs me. I think I'd have heard his words even if they'd been absolutely silent. He was speaking from the power of pure intent.

Yes... that's good.

And it is. Steve has been absent for a few years, but he's been an important part of my life. He was there at the start when we were kids playing together. He's a kind of soul brother if you like. I realise now that our bond goes deep indeed. It's not chance that he turned up out of the blue two days ago when all this unexpectedly transpired. A guiding force is present throughout our lives and clearly Steve and I are meant to do this together. It feels right. We embrace, alone in the vastness of Now, and the shining grows even more intense, lifting us into a higher conscious-awareness of the moment - a moment that spans the whole of our life, lifting us out of linear time somewhere else.

It's all going to make sense, isn't it, when we jump off tomorrow.

Yes. It is.

You know, the heart is still beating hammer and tongs and the fear is still there, but the sense of anticipation, excitement, joy is growing, wave by wave, mounting to frequencies I'd never have believed possible. God knows what it's going to be like at dawn tomorrow when we make the jump - when we give ourselves back to All that is, and affirm our absolute certainty that the physical aspect of body and matter is the least of what we amount to. The Spirit has wings.

IT has always carried us through life, but has been caged by fear and prevented from spreading those wings. Tomorrow we are setting it free. Tomorrow we announce to the world that we no longer choose to be participants in a blind tyranny of fear. Tomorrow our love of life carries us back to the isness of be - wherever, whatever that might be.

And how we climb the mountain in the dark, 70 or more of us, and assemble at the sacred site - and how we learn that it has been used before, many times in the past for the same - and how we feel the sun rushing towards us - to witness our flight - and how we feel the unity of each and every one in our group - knowing that we're a family of light, gathered to help transform the planet and shift the storyline back to One with All, how we leap and feel our wings unfurl - I cannot say but you can surely know, if you are ready to transcend the soulless No, if you're simply dying to Know.