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*Warning: Do NOT do what I have done! The 'smart' learn from their own mistakes in life; the 'Wise' learn from other peoples mistakes. Please be Wise and learn from my mistakes rather then repeating them. Due to my illness I sometimes in my life did some crazy things (Not Destructive / violent against another); but this action that I did with this 'Vision' story was and is a bad and wrongful action and MUST not be repeated or ever considered as desirable and is a violation against the living spirit within time and beyond; The Almighty and Highest eternal living spirit gave us life; and to throw that priceless gift back into the creators face regardless of delusional states of mind in depression, paranoia etc. is a terrible violation against oneself and the living spirit that permeates and sustains and exists in higher dimensions (heavens). I feel sure God is merciful in the matter of suicide; but such ruthless ness to oneself I fear does have consequences for oneself in the afterlife (hoping that there is an afterlife). Think of a doctor who mercifully treats a persons self inflicted wound; even though the doctor may be merciful the action of that self inflicted wound still has consequences that can not and do not simply magically disappear because the doctor is willing to show mercy.  So to, committing suicide regardless of ones mind set is an act of both physical and ethical violence against ones life and thus life and the resulting ethical consequences and ethical damages that result within ones own spirit and impact upon others will occur and may be with you when crossing into and beginning ones incorporeal life in eternity. Thus God like the doctor may be merciful; but that will not necessarily cure, change or alter ones self inflicted wound against ones own spirit and ones personal violence against oneself and the attributes and qualities within eternity. What destiny awaits a suicide I do not know; but needless to say I am utterly convinced and persuaded by 'The Being of Light' that to Live for Love is what reality is all about; and to kill oneself is definitely a great mistake and tragedy in these lower dimensions and most probably in my mind may then be a great tragedy for that person within higher dimensions too.

Be patient and gentle with yourself please. I know how severe depressions can distort ones views into delusional territory and paranoia like wise as well as other states of mental illness; I also know how difficult and impossible it can feel to be ill treated by loved ones and supposed friends and to be abandoned and to lose everything you have worked and built over the years; to be unjustly and unfairly condemned without a fair hearing or any hearing at all; for all this happened to me too. I know being friendless; homeless; and bereft of all you hoped to be and do and with all your worldly belongings gone etc. and with a broken mind unable to adequately cope with even daily tasks and to have no more capability of hope or faith and without any vision of seeing any kind of possible positive future again for one self and to see no way for this terrible kind of circumstance to change for the better by oneself or by the intervention of others in your life for it was these kinds of circumstances and powerlessness that I also went through in the 1990's.

So, I learned 'To Keep Going' without hope, without faith, without love. Even though I had lost the capacity to see any possible goodness ahead for myself and my life I 'Kept going'. I also discovered that when one is in the 'bottomless pit' there is still one final option of power available for each of us. I learned that although i could change nothing that had happened to me etc. I still had the ability to make prayer. I still had the power to pray; and I did. My circumstances and life and self did not suddenly change all for the better over night and there was a lot work involved in rebuilding my mind, my heart and life from ground up; however over the course of years my life did change and my circumstances for the better until today 14 years later; I feel and have a life better and more meaningful and enjoyable then I have ever known. Not everything changed for the better; but many unexpected fortunate occurrences bit by bit began to happen and I was prepared to make use of these small opportunities and steadily over time I found that even though my cup was still half empty; there was now again much of value and worth for me to appreciate and be glad about with in my self and my life.

So do not give up to Death; but if you must surrender; do so in prayer to the Creator of this universe; and over time your life may begin to change for the better too; even if you see no way for that to happen; remember the beach sees more than the grain of sand. I understand little and know even less; but have learned that even if most all the friends you have known have thrown you out and have condemned and forgotten you; and you have lost everything of value within your self and world that there is an ultimate living spiritual power called God that will never give up on you; and over time will through what vessels it can work through will help you rebuild yourself and life over time and although it may be inconceivable to you right now, as happened with me, eventually simply by 'Keep going on' and some prayer you too may find the goodness and fun and joy in life restored to you too.

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The Cliff - The Vision - After the Cliff

by Rick - (Please Read Warning First)

The Cliff

It was winter, the night of December 5, 1981, that the most awesome and traumatic event of my life took place. This was the night of the cliff. All of my inner denials, guilt and confusions finally led me to this point.

It is difficult for me now to recall exactly what my state of mind was right before this event, or even to trace all the mental threads which drove me to this step. Still, I will attempt to remember and give to you some sense of why I did what I did.

Standing on top of that cliff, I looked back; and in my depressed frame of mind, all I could see was failure and waste. Failure in my academic work, failure in fulfilling my needs as an artist, failure in my personal relationships. My self-identity was crushed into negatives, self-blame, self-destruction, self-conflict, self-doubt, inability, powerlessness, despair, hopelessness, wasted potential, guilt, etc.

I believed that I had only brought hurt to those whom I had loved; that, in living, I had caused only pain and harm to those lives which I had touched; and that this was all my fault, my blame, my shame. For this to continue further was, for me, intolerable. In my confusion, it seemed that I had hurt more than helped, this life which I had been given, this gift of self-awareness. It seemed that perhaps those I loved and those who loved me might be better served by my life ending rather than by my life continuing on. Although I did not know this to be true, I came to this determination: if the sum of my life had been detrimental rather than a positive influence to other lives, then to destroy my life before I caused any additional harm to others was the one positive act left to me. I know that I was not capable of making such an absolute Judgement on my life, and, yet, I felt it necessary for Judgement to be rendered.

There was another train of thought running through my mind that night which had been with me throughout the past year. The sources for this other train of thought were: 1) all the reading I'd done on existentialism at Grinnell, and 2) my feeling that to embrace fully one's experiences in life, no matter how difficult, was a necessary and proper attitude for an artist.

It seemed that I had been falling into the void for some time; and it felt right that, if I could not climb back up, then perhaps the courageous path would be for me to actually choose to fall deeper and faster, to try to face the deep unconscious roots of my conscious despair. It seemed that the base of my life, the foundation of human consciousness itself, was nothingåonly this infinite void in which I was falling from nowhere to nowhere, lost.

If you know of Nietzsche's description of "the bottomless pit that exists within each of us," and, if you've heard of Kierkegaard and his "leap of faith," then perhaps you can see why, in my confused state, I chose this moment to emulate these past explorers in such a drastic way. This moment, on top of this cliff, was not just a moment of despair; it was also an opportunity; an opportunity to learn whether that "spark of the Divine" did, in fact, exist.

I wanted to be whole, from bottom up. So, I chose to dive into myself, seeking an inner light, reaching towards the bottom of the pit without end. I chose to surrender the judgement of my life to God, Chance, Fate. My perception was that I was giving up my life and placing my trust completely into the hands of my God. I did not think of this act as the taking of my own life, but as the surrendering of my life to a higher power.

I drove off a 300-foot cliff.

It was an act of faith without any expectations of living or of dying, of salvation or of damnation.

As I already stated, I was very confused and had been suffering intensely for almost two years. I was tired and felt that I was giving up the burden of my life to a power greater than myself. This power's name was not Death, nor was it Life, but was a power beyond my mortal prescriptions. I was not seeking a cure to my mental condition, nor was I trying to end this condition with my death. I was not seeking God, nor did I hope for rebirth.

As I dropped downwards faster and faster, time seemed to move slower and slower until, at the bottom, it seemed that split seconds lasted for minutes. Then, all was silent. I opened my eyes, and I beheld the meeting of two worlds. This experience might have been a deep hallucination, a vision, or a revelation. I only know that it was real. In fact, it was more real and concrete than the reality we normally live in.

If it was a dream, then life is but a shadow of that dream.

The Vision

"To look at life without words is not to lose the ability to form words"
  -Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

To use words to describe that which words, by their nature, cannot describe seems a useless enterprise, but I shall make an attempt.

I awoke at the bottom of the cliff. I looked at myself and saw my body and what I now think of as my "spirit." My spirit was a self-contained field of vibrating energy-light.

I filtered out of my body and left it, and the car, for a place perhaps thirty feet away and stood watching. I seemed to be in suspension. Time had no meaning; there was no movement. Verbs did not exist in this state of being. There was no sense of becoming, only the continuity of being timeless. I could perceive the world about as before, but there were differences.

The world appeared to be like a facade rather than a world of substance. In front of me, reality seemed to rip apart; and, from this torn doorway, a radiance of pure white light poured forth into the night. This light was terribly bright in comparison to the light of my spirit, which, in contrast, seemed quite pale. This light was a background of diffused energy. It was like taking a two-dimensional piece of paper, placing a light bulb behind it, and then ripping the paper apart, tearing it into the shape of a doorway, allowing the bulb's light to pour forth. It was like I existed outside of three dimensions and, in this state of being, could treat three-dimensional reality the way we treat a piece of paper, two-dimensional reality.

A Being of Light appeared within this gateway, and we conversed. Like myself, this Being was composed of this white light, but his spirit was incredibly intenseåbrighter than 10,000 suns compressed together. He was like a white dwarf star in humanoid form. I was very meager and very pale in comparison, yet we both were made of the same substance. We were, in a fundamental sense, one.

It seemed to surprise him slightly that I was there before him, as if he expected me but that this meeting was premature. If you have ever arrived at a dinner party an hour too early, the expression on the host's face might be similar; yet this Being had no specific features that I could discern.

His radiance streamed forth like rays of sunlight, outward from his being. A long and narrow path streamed forth from his feet, extending outward through the space that separated us, ending a couple of inches from my own feet. His feet seemed to act like prisms, because this was a path of colors; it was a rainbow bridge from him to me. All I had to do was step upon this rainbow path and I'm certain that I would have left this world and entered his.

I know this all sounds too fantastic to be true, but it became, for me, the foundation of all truth. I ask you not to think of my experience in any prescribed manner. Over the past years, I formulated a half dozen different perspectives on this experience. To limit one's view of the experience to a simple religious viewpoint or to a complex psychological viewpoint is, I think, a mistake. I've tended to look at this experience through the eyes of a mystic and the eyes of a physicist. As best I can, I just want to communicate to you this experience, which became the center of my mind and heart.

Well, we conversed, but not in speech. Our discourse was accomplished without the use of symbols or referents of any sort. It was a direct communication; in silence our thoughts impressed and responded. This conversation was a terribly subtle and complex one. It was as if our minds could meet and exchange thoughts, feelings, half-formed images, and complex impressions. Much of our discussion I can either but vaguely recall or it is almost untranslatable into words; yet some of our interchange I recall quite exactly.

As this interchange continued, I began to feel a "pull" towards the gateway, towards this Being. The pull began to slowly build in force; and so I began to step forward, intending to walk this path into the light. Immediately the "Entity" responded, sending a powerful surge of commanding force through me. I can very easily translate this commanding force into words:
"No! Not yet. It is not yet your time."

With this command, the pull which I had felt was silenced, and I stepped back. Soon after this, the interchange between this Being of Light and myself came to an end. I quickly returned to my still body and filtered back into it. The moment that I was completely reabsorbed into my physical self, I merged, and then opened my eyes.

After the Cliff

Since this experience, I have not again felt such an intense degree of health and such an intense force of love as I did immediately after the cliff. Still, even if my daily vitality lacks in comparison to that moment, I remember and shall never forget.

After waking, I crawled out of what was left of the car, climbed the cliff, and hitched a ride back into town to check myself out at the local hospital. I was found to be in good health, except for scratches and a ragged cut upon my forehead. I had driven off a 300-foot cliff at about 60 miles and hour, and my worst injury was a cut needing two stitches. Of course, the police had to file a report. Later, I was permitted to read it, and I quote: "It's a billion to one that he still has arms and legs, much less is alive."

Briefly, from December 1981 through February 1982, I moved to Minneapolis and was a patient at Hennepin County Mental Health Center. There, they put me through a series of tests to assess my mental condition. Certainly, anyone who drives off a 300-foot cliff and survives has little choice in this matter.

Well, their test results were rather different than what they were expecting. Up to that point, I had been unable to convince anyone there that I was sane, glad, and healthy in mind and body. After all, I had driven off a cliff; and it is reasonable to expect that any euphoria that resulted would be skin deep and temporary. The test results showed that, not only were there no hidden flaws in my outward calm and apparent inward peace and gladness, but I was also impossibly healthy of mind. Comparing tests taken before the cliff to these tests taken after the cliff was like comparing black with white. Still, they continued to be concerned that this apparent transformation, although not shallow, might yet be only temporary.

They were right, although it wasn't until after we began to see each other that I realized this.

The cliff occurred in December of '81; and from that time until I met you this winter, its effect on me remained constant and undiminished. If anything, I made it such an integral part of my daily life, in my actions and in my thoughts, that, rather than diminishing in its positive and unifying influence in my life, it increased to the point where I could no longer discern myself apart from it. I do not mean to imply that it became some kind of crutch for me, but rather the heart of that experience became a foundation upon which I could stand, and walk.

Now before I continue further, I need to explain that my perspective on what happened to me at the cliff has changed significantly since meeting you. Essentially, what happened is that I had been stripped of all my previous feelings by the trauma, and they were "permanently" sealed off. When I woke up, the only feeling existing within me was what I'd experienced in the heart of light. My conscious self had no depths, no feelings, and no real recall or ability to focus back into the volatile past. My consciousness resided only in the present, seeming to be pressed into my senses, directly behind my eyes, in my fingertips, in the moment. My self was totally on the surface, and there wasn't anything underneath.

The split had occurred, and an inner barrier now separated my then present consciousness from my past. To me, it seemed that I had been "miraculously" healed. Suddenly I was okay, free of what I'd been, free of all that had happened, free to become what I chose, free to rebuild a shattered life with a self that was whole, healthy and well.

That is exactly what I did for these past nine years. I built and rebuilt, setting to right every mistake and broken commitment that was within my power to right or mend. I began to work towards creating a new life for myself with new dreams and new hopes.

As my outer world was slowly and steadily transformed by the work of my efforts, my inner world also grew and increased. It was like a decayed and dying plant had left a seed at the bottom of that cliff; and I was that seed, growing into a plant of real beauty, nourished by a memory of a vision of life that seemed to provide me with unlimited inner resources and strength to face any challenge in a manner that never violated another person's dignity.