Low down on the Earthly ground one day, the faint hint of a notion surfaced in my thoughts, like a magic 8-ball’s eerie prediction emerging slowly within that little, blue porthole. It said, ‘The self doesn’t exist… at least not the way you’ve been taught. You are not part of the Earth; you are the Earth.’

It felt like the sudden onset of déjà vu because the concept that I was the Earth felt like a memory I had forgotten long ago, perhaps in a past life. I can’t remember what spurred this idea, but I went about my day as normal until the feeling fled. I would have thought nothing of the subtle occurrence, but the innate sense that I wasn’t supposed to be down on this ground returned.

It was a sense that indicated there was more to reality. There was a grand, exponentially more complex scheme hidden behind the ostensible everyday. As Shakespeare had famously said “the world’s a stage,” I certainly felt like one of its players who was waking up to the strings controlling existence from backstage.

My boss, for instance, would have me believe that the work—marketing our stupid products—should be my meaning of life. Her life revolved around the performance of this company. But I could see the ends of these efforts. However well my promotional campaigns performed, the same fact remained—all of our labor merely made old white men richer. The time wasted on these vain endeavors provided my biggest source of inner conflict.

I struggled to hear my true calling.

I would later learn that my metaphysical antenna—the piezoelectric tap into my third eye, the pineal gland—had been damaged early in life. I was exposed to psychological trauma as a child that warped my ability to receive otherworldly signals.

I remembered my mother would say things to me like “You’re not a people person. People aren’t going to like you.” She said this so early in life that I actually believed it for my entire childhood and much of early adulthood.

Harsh words that scrawled across my early subconscious had crippled my ability to let frequencies freely flow into my thoughts. The signs would arrive staticky, only to be ignored.

My suffering was a symptom of this. The universe was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t interpret Her language. I sought to heal my mind and clear the static.

Step one was extinguishing my short fuse. Anger, frustration. These are secondary emotions that result from some internal conflict. At the time, I was working in a humdrum office, performing pointless work, with people who were clueless to higher Truths. Friction, therefore, occurred at nearly every turn of my everyday existence.

So, I quit.

In order to heal my psyche, I had to sever all sources that contributed to my mental strife. I had a bit of savings that could support me for the time being so that I could achieve the necessary, profound quiet required to receive otherworldly signals. The quiet was key, you see, so that I could make my mind like liquid vinyl and let the faint signals from a divine source trace grooves in an album that would rewrite my DNA. Then, I could hone the signal further.

Meditation became a daily practice. I’d sit in perfect quiet, in the center of my ornately patterned Tibetan rug. I’d breathe in and breathe out.

My mantra: om. This is the sound of the universe.

I strove to hear what Mother Earth—my local universe—was trying to tell me. Every day, I sat for hours, concentrating on my mantra and focusing my energy into an orb that formed 20 feet in diameter around my center of gravity. The electromagnetic sphere that manifested from my psychic energy created a Faraday cage that protected my inner peace, blocking out all external noise.

Ironically, once I was able to silence the cacophony distracting me from focus, Mother Earth would tell me that this perceived distortion was merely misdirected energy. If I could refocus these electromagnetic vectors, I’d leverage their power to break free from Her gravity. In other words, stop resisting and let the energy in.

Soon, a sense of my Drop took shape. The Drop, affixed to the hull of the Cheshire spaceship, hung in a Lagrange point in Earth’s orbit, way up above. I was remembering something that had existed long before my Earthly presence on this current planet. I had to believe that this place existed, not just in my mind; it physically hung way up in space above, beckoning me.

It was this place high up in the sky, yes, but more so it was the people aboard and the feelings they evoked that held my affection. They assumed more and more defined shape as I concentrated. Their hearts beckoned mine. My connections with each were what really opened the inroads back to a place that, down on the ground, seemed impossible to reach.

I let all of these thoughts and feelings drift through my mind, as I separated from the internal monologue narrating an earthly life that grounded me. I was not this voice. I did not exist. I was Mother Earth, from the perception of this simple pedestrian perspective, and ready to elevate. The thoughts cleared and I felt as pure consciousness.

The clean slate of my thought soon transcended silence, into the movierain. The movierain is the torrent of possible worlds that precipitate by the existential surfer gliding through the downpour. The movierain exists everywhere and always, ever ready for its passenger to step up into its field. Each droplet represents another Earth version. Like lightning, I astrally leapt between them.

All the while, my physical body remained sat in the lotus position, in my quiet living room down on Earth (the version that bore me this time). But my astral self soared high above.

I concentrated on my Drop, as countless droplet worlds flew by. This was my impossible destination—as perceived from the ground below—that now seemed attainable flitting through the multiversal movierain intermediary.

I’d practice this meditation nightly. Though the Drop would emerge, as I surfed the movierain, I couldn’t seem to make the leap. I couldn’t fully commit. Something was holding me back. It was an asymptote of perfection—unattainable, but pursued often. Perfection was the red herring of goals—supposedly worthwhile, but difficult to achieve. It was not only difficult; it was impossible, I thought, unfocused. I kept waiting for the perfect moment, when my Drop would appear as clear as day, when all the pieces would fall into place, and I could step up into its divine shell. At last, I would return home.

The reality was, like perfection itself, the perfect moment did not exist. If I were to wait for this elusive event, I’d remain sat on my living room floor until death.

And then I recalled what Mother Earth had hinted to me, when my mind finally cleared to hear Her message. I could leverage the noise, the stressors imposing distraction and discord on my peace of mind. I could redirect their energy to my advantage. My boss’s ill-guided pressure to prioritize her business over my well-being. Colleagues and contemporaries’ piddly goals distracting them and me from the true destination. My own self doubt. These were all perceived as opposing forces. But what if I conducted their electromagnetic torrents reeking havoc on my consciousness down into the points of my inner ankles? What if this energy—perceived as negative—actually produced a positive, white-hot charge in between my feet that ignited ball lightning at my heels.

I imagined this orb of electromagnetic gravity as an energetic ball my astral self could balance upon. I had already surfed the movierain, but that was only the equivalent of a 3-foot ocean wave. The unbridled energy I was now harnessing, between my feet, swelled to the water wall of a 100-foot tsunami. My spirit elevated, escalating quickly. And my Drop appeared more vividly, more rapidly than ever before. It seemed as though I had enough metaphysical propulsion to reach this formerly unattainable ledge.

Like never before, the Drop held steady in my purview. Astrally, I stood on the precipice between the physical ground below and this higher reality above.

I leapt.

Everything went dark—my inner monologue, the movierain, my sense of self and Mother Earth. Pure blackness for a beat filled every crevice of existence.

Another beat.

Innately, I felt the compulsion to open my eyes, yet I had no eyes to open in this elevated state. Still, I attempted the subtle gesture. Eyes opened that weren’t of my Earthly body down on the ground; they were set in some enlightened head. Brilliant light, brighter than anything I had ever experienced down on Earth, filled my entire perspective. I squinted to rack focus on what appeared to be entirely new whereabouts.

Once my brand new eyes adjusted to the light, surroundings began to take shape. I was sat in my Drop, amidst a zen garden with a gentle waterfall pattering nearby. The Drop was a giant orb, 50 feet in diameter. This heavenly place felt familiar, yet I had no memory of it, only my Earthly life from down below.

I had finally reached my destination. And I hoped there was some kind of blueprint of my former life here, in the Drop and on the spaceship Cheshire. I looked behind me, still sat in the lotus position within the zen garden, to see a mahogany desk where a laptop lied. Possibly, it contained intel into my life up here, before descending down to Earth those many decades ago.

As I stood, I felt my new legs—powerful and completely healed from all injuries sustained on Earth below. My entire enlightened body felt like some tightly wrapped carbon fiber wire bundle that could withstand the oppressive gravity of a super massive black hole. I had truly been reborn anew in this Drop, way up high in space.

Now, all I had to do was access the blueprint of this former life. I must reacquaint with my eternal soul, I thought.

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This short story emanates from the universe of the novel “Big Cat.” If you liked this tale, you might like the book…

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