We Westerners are in such an extroverted culture that we might be surprised to learn that some of our legends and myths are pointing to the spiritual journey.
One of the big ones is the myth of the Holy Grail,
Or the legend of the Holy Grail,
And there's several different versions of it,
And there are versions where the hero doesn't find the Grail,
He's just in search,
And there are versions where he does find the Grail,
And there are different heroes,
Different characters even.
You know,
Over a few hundred years in the 12th century,
Early 13th century,
This was really up.
And it is the story of the hero's journey,
And it's a story actually of embodying our soul energy,
Although,
You know,
We in the West,
We're so materialist.
We might not see this,
But it still operates in our psyches,
All these myths and legends coming down.
They all operate.
They all help us organize our experience of life.
Yeah.
So,
In one of them,
There's Sir Galahad.
Now,
Sir Galahad was the out-of-wedlock son of Sir Lancelot,
You know,
Another very brave Knight of the Round Table,
And a woman named Elaine.
Now,
Lancelot's true love was Genevieve,
Or Guinevere,
But he was persuaded with Elaine somehow,
And they had Sir Galahad,
Who is also a very brave Knight of the Round Table.
Now,
He had the characteristic of real purity of heart.
So,
Again,
From the point of view of the spiritual journey,
Being a little bit of an outsider,
Being born out of wedlock is key.
A lot of what sets people on the journey,
On the spiritual journey,
Is they feel the confines of the culture.
They feel like the culture isn't enough for them.
They don't want to drink the Kool-Aid anymore of whatever the culture's ideal is.
They think there's something more,
And that sets them off on the spiritual journey.
It's like a disillusionment with the culture.
Many of these people feel like outsiders,
Whether they've got jobs or not.
I know a self-realized person who's a neurologist,
So,
You know,
There's no limits on who can become self-realized.
Anyway,
The other thing about Sir Galahad is he was very pure of heart,
And then this gives you the courage,
Gives people the courage to pursue something beyond themselves.
Now,
The grail was one of the versions,
A common version,
Is that it was the cup out of which Jesus drank in the Last Supper.
He would have drank from this cup in full acceptance and understanding that he was going to be crucified the next day.
The whole thing about the search for the Holy Grail points to coming to an acceptance and trust of life,
And trust in the bigger picture beyond this life that maybe our lives are indeed in the Creator's hands.
So that's,
You know,
One version.
There's another version,
And the character is Percival.
Now,
Percival was kind of like the fool in the fairy tale.
He was a very innocent,
Good-hearted man,
And at the time of where he goes searching for the grail,
He's beginning to realize what the world's like.
So in this story,
He goes to the grail castle,
Which is the castle of the Fisher King,
Who's part of a long line of kings who've been in charge of the grail,
But the grail's been lost,
And the kingdom is falling into real disrepair.
Like the climate,
You know,
Mother Nature's got blights,
There's droughts,
Nothing's growing,
And the king has been wounded in the groin.
And in some version,
It's in his thigh,
But that was code at the time for the groin.
You weren't allowed to say groin.
Anyway,
So he's wounded.
He's wounded physically,
Emotionally,
And his kingdom is in trouble,
And he's waiting for kind of a night healer to ask him a healing question.
This is the.
.
.
It's like he can't do it himself.
He needs help.
And so Percival comes along,
And now he doesn't ask the question.
He comes to the grail castle,
But he doesn't ask any question,
Because his mother taught him not to ask questions.
And again,
This reflects how females behave in the patriarchy.
It's like they behave themselves.
They've learned,
You know,
Through bound feed or,
You know,
The witch burnings and everything,
That they have to sort of toe the line and don't ask questions.
They just do what's required.
And it makes women,
They kind of are docile this way.
You know,
A woman might be a very competent lawyer and very able to fight for her clients,
But she may not be fighting for the truth of herself.
She may have clamped over that.
Not always,
But sometimes she would have clamped over that and telling her true self to come in,
Sit down,
Shut up.
And then being a ferocious lawyer on top of that,
That's,
You know,
That can happen.
Anyway,
So the mom had chosen,
Had encouraged Percival not to ask questions,
So he didn't.
And so there was no healing that took place.
So Percival went off for many years,
And then he achieved enlightenment in his travels,
And he came back to the grail castle and asked a question.
Now,
Again,
In all the versions of the questions,
There are two different questions.
One is,
Who does the grail serve?
And you see,
It's a metaphor for that when we find the truth of our hearts,
We serve humanity.
We don't just serve ourselves and focus on accumulating things.
We serve all of life.
Yeah.
An awakened person is always serving all of life.
They're never using true knowledge.
If they're authentic,
They're never using true knowledge to accumulate things.
The other question is that Percival asked the king with full,
And it's really important,
He asked in full humility and compassion.
And he asked the king,
Why do you suffer?
And that actually is the question that maybe we could all ask ourselves.
Why do we suffer?
You know,
What are the beliefs that we're holding that make us think that status is more important than our humanity?
Or makes us think the person with the most toys wins?
You know,
We're in this area of like,
We've got this very few billionaires on the planet and huge amounts of the planet's money.
And then a whole bunch of the population is just struggling.
It's in our belief system.
It's the question,
Why do we suffer?
It's because of our beliefs,
Rather than listening to what our heart's telling us,
Which will be that we're all part of God and every human being on the planet is precious.
All of life is precious.
So Percival asks the Fisher King this question,
Why do you suffer?
And the Fisher King looks inside,
So he turns his attention inside and looks and is healed.
He resolves his problem.
He resolves his pain and his groin.
His masculinity is healed.
See when the masculinity goes off,
The whole culture suffers.
But you could say that the masculinity goes off also as a result of all the femininity going off because the males are the sons of females.
So if the females aren't being true to themselves,
How can they raise their children to be true to themselves?
So the whole thing,
Our hearts just get lost.
Anyway,
The kingdom flourished and Percival achieved enlightenment and saved the day.
So it is a metaphor for what the inner journey's like and that there are lots of challenges and it takes a long time.
You know,
It was when Percival came back to the castle a second time after many years of wandering that he asked the right question.
And maybe,
You know,
The king was ready to hear it then.
So it takes a long time,
But it's healable and we can heal by turning inside and maybe questioning some of the beliefs that we've been operating under and questioning about what's really important.
Okay,
Well I just thought this might be interesting and might shine a light because even our legends are pointing to a spiritual journey.
I mean,
That's how real it is.
It's not a bit of woo-woo.
It's the main game.
And it's not even a game,
Obviously.
It's the real reason we're here.
Yeah.
Okay.
Bless your hearts.
