Spiritual bungee jumping

I had an idea many years ago for a t-shirt design. It was to picture a black line drawing of a scared, skinny guy standing on the edge of a cliff with a huge elastic tied around his ankles and his hands together, as if in prayer but standing out at right angles from his solar plexus. His hair is in disarray, his knees knobby, his feet without shoes, and his eyes are bugged out. Under his picture it was to say, "spiritual bungee jumping". I had this idea in 1988 when I did my first degree of Reiki. I guess you could say I've been sitting on it for a while.

I never drew it because I didn't have the artistic skill to make the picture look exactly the way I could see it in my head. So it has stayed in my head even though I have described it to people many times. We so often talk about the physical, intellectual or emotional 'jumps' in life but we rarely talk about the spiritual ones. They're important though. I could argue that they are the most important. They are, after all, the ones that the sciptures of all the major faiths of the world are concerned with.

Perhaps 'spiritual bungee jumping' encompasses all of the others by using them as a metaphor for the great leaps of faith that spiritual exploration requires. Take an initiation rite as an example. It involves a physical, emotional and sometimes intellectual task where an individual comes face to face with themselves and their limiting beliefs, and meet the challenge. Anything can be a 'spiritual bungee jump' if we choose to frame it that way.

One thing is for sure and that's that the jump takes courage. Life is full of challenges, great and small but it isn't just the great ones that require courage. That's because the definitions of great and small are in the eyes of the beholder.

Here's a thought to sit with and ponder: What great 'spiritual bungee jumps' have you taken in your life? Or is there one that you've been sidling up to, flirting with? Are you ready to jump yet? What do you believe it would do for you if you jumped? What's holding you back?

But never mind the ones you haven't taken yet. Let's see the glass as half full ... have you celebrated the ones you have taken?