I recently read something about King Arthur - I don't remember where, probably The New Yorker or the Illuminatus book - and it made me think about the whole Knights of the Round Table. I never really understood it when I was younger, the significance of the *round* table (although I'm sure I probably liked to dress up as a Medieval princess), and then later, when I did, I don't think I ever really grasped the entire importance of the big picture story until a few years ago, when I read the T.H. White's The Once and Future King. The novel is both funny and semi-scholarly, and when I was younger, my ex-husband read it out loud to me once, but I fell asleep a lot and missed some of the more political sections.
Which, as it turned out, talked a lot about Arthur's political theory, and how when he was a kid, being raised as the ward of good Sir Kaye, after Uther (Arthur's father) died, Merlin appeared. And rumor is, all that Merlin stuff was part of the theory, which basically was against the Strong Arm. At that time in human (well, Western civilization) development, the idea was Might Makes Right - the stronger arm wins. That was the agreed-upon way to settle stuff - and, shamefully, in many ways, it still is.
But Arthur - or Merlin, perhaps - had the idea of giving men something to do other than kill each other. He invented The Quest, and sold it to them as a total concept - instead of killing people and getting land, we'll achieve difficult tasks and feats of skill and strength, and get honor. This was his idea. We won't decide things by fighting. OK, Jesus had the same idea, as did The Buddha, but also Arthur, and if you think of how brutal the Dark Ages in England (out of which Arthur rose) were, you get the full picture, and see his little idea was pretty revolutionary.
Ironically, many people, over the years - like Gandhi, and King, and John Lennon - who have advocated the simple (and, you'd think, universally approved) idea that violence is NOT an acceptable method of problem-solving have themselves suffered violent deaths. Well, it's not really ironic, just unfortunate. I wish it were ironic, because then it would at at least funny but it's just sadly true.
But Arthur had the idea of equality (at least, among the lords), with the round table - no one would bicker, you see, over position, over proximity to Arthur. It's very Zen, really, what "Wart" (as they called him as a child) came up with: just chill out, you knights. See the circle? No beginning and end. No hierarchy. The center of the sphere is everywhere....although whether or not the Knights of the Round Table knew about the earth being round or not, I don't know. (Actually, I just googled it and apparently, there's lots of controversy about who discovered the earth was round and when.) My point is, Arthur was a real visionary, because it worked. Not forever, not for everyone, yes - we still have violence. The whole idea of violence is, to me, so lamely basic and just plain childish I can't believe anyone does it and takes it seriously, but they do. But Arthur's people got the idea, and we still retain some if it....honor, duty, glory, etc. Romantic love, even, right? Courtly love was also Arthur's idea (and I won't even go into the whole Grail Legend).
So I was thinking about this, recently, and just musing over it. We should be talking more about the Strong Arm, how it manifests now - and also pointing out that we could all just start agreeing, all the time, that the stronger arm does not have to win, and determine truth. We need to get rid of the Strong Arm. Although I wasn't so super hot about Arthur's substitution qualities of duty, glory and so on as they can really have a dark side, but we in our modern age can go even further than Arthur.
Just what, you ask? What could be the motivating factor behind human action? If it's not brute strength and it's not the incestuous land and paternal attachment inherent in the old idea of "the land and the king are one," then what is it? What should be the universally motivating factor of our times, effective in any situation?
Well, you know what I'm going to say. Naturally, it has to be love. Are you acting in accordance with a path that will allow you to release, accept, make, enjoy, give, take and experience all the love you possibly can? Instead of ownership, we'll have stewardship (as my partner says). We'll have a sense of connection, which is all love really is. Did you ever wonder why we use the same word for how we feel about our husbands and children as we do for talking about how very tasty we find coconut ice cream? The thing we do to Paris in the spring and the thing that is in the air and the thing that we hope you will still do to us when we are 64 - those are all the SAME thing. How could that be?
Because they are simply all different types and flavors of connection - I feel very connected to my partner, and I feel connected to heirloom tomatoes, and I feel very connected to Stephen Colbert. But not in the same way, naturally. But when I am connected, it's my love that decides things, and not the Strong Arm, and it's much, much nicer, and certainly more healthy.
Now, I know there are critics of love. You can't believe it, because it really seems like a no-brainer. If everyone just treated everyone with love, we'd all be fine. But it happens that some people don't know how to love, or don't want to, or won't admit it when they do. There's a whole litany of reasons people fail to love, fail to connect.
Recently, I mentioned a workshop during which I'd had some pretty big revelations and breakthroughs, and afterwards, because of what had happened, I was feeling extremely connected - I was really opened up, and had a new vision, and a new perspective, for days and days afterwards. And it was so good...so good, but temporary. I knew it would go away - glows fade; that is what glows do - but I was sad when it did.
However, love. Let me mention this again (remember, I said earlier, I may talk more specifically and at length about love, because of my recent experiences, and you can skip all this love stuff if you have to, and you know who you are): love. It's been a while, now, since I lost my glow, and then today, I saw my friend D, who not only had encouraged me to go to the workshop - or, rather, gave me some reliable information in areas that were uncomfortable unknowns, and that info decided me - but also was much in my mind during, and afterward, because he's been to workshops like this one, and he is a peer, and he enjoyed them. And this gave me hope. If you're trying to get though something, and you can talk to someone who has been though it, and they survived, or even better, had a positive experience, it can really help. In this case, D helped.
Our visit was brief but satisfying and then something happened - right at the end, D did something which made me laugh, a few times, each one richer and more satisfying, and do you know, when I got in the car, still laughing, I saw that my altered state had spontaneously returned. I had just been driving earlier that day and remembering way back when I felt complete connection to the infinite, almost in a nostalgic way. It had to pass, and I knew it would, but I thougt it was going to be gone forever, or until another workshop. Then, unexpectedly, here it was again. It came back! Only about a tenth as strong as that first day, and only for half an hour instead of a week, but it was there.
This was great news. When an epiphany is very recent, you sometimes want to find out as soon as you can if it's going to stick, or cause greater problems, or greater epiphanies, or what. Sometimes it departs so soon you can even forgot you had it. If, like me, you journal, I guarantee you'd had that experience of reading something in an old journal that seems wise, and you think, wow, if only I'd known that - only to realize, at some point, you did. You forgot. We forgot. In fact, that's the whole game of Hide and Seek: you're playing around and the game is "I forgot who I really am." I used to believe that, and now I know it instead, which is much better.
I had no idea that an intense moment of feeling loved by one person for a moment could bring back the altered state of feeling connected and in love with all of creation, but I was grateful and surprised to have the clarity back, if only for a little while. I didn't do anything with it - I just enjoyed it. Clarity can be the most relaxing thing in the world.
So, now we can all talk about the Strong Arm, and point out when it's happening, and suggest possible alternative ways of setting disputes. You don't have to offer up love, because most people will think you're crazy, but you can ACT with love, on your own, and maybe you'll give someone a shot of clarity, like I got, or maybe you'll get one yourself. Anyway, that's what I've been thinking about lately.
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