The King of Mind

I

Once upon a time, the King of Mind was angry.

There was a Temple in the Palace where he worshipped at the Altar of The Self - as had generations of Kings and Queens of Mind before him.

The Self would guide them as to how to guide the Kingdom.

But for months, now - maybe even years – The Self kept saying “feel your Own, Unique Experience - feel it in its totality – the people coming and going – the air around you, the birds – the textures of your emotions”.

In the Summer Self had said “feel your Experience - feel the weight of your body”. In the Autumn

“feel your Experience - feel how invisible energies flow through you”. In the Winter “feel your Experience - feel every emotion fully”. In the Spring “feel your Experience - feel how you fit inseperably into everything”. But all year long Self had said “feel your Own Experience: soon you will come to sense that Certainty is an Impossibility - that everything exists beyond definition -

wondrous, resplendent and astonishing - and you will come to love it all!”

II

The King of Mind was not at all happy about the Impossibility of Certainty.

“Of what can I be Certain?” he asked himself. “Nothing!” he replied - and threw his golden sceptre angrily from his throne, skidding across the polished, palatial marble floor.

The King was in an awful mood! “Get out of my sight!” he bellowed at his eager and faithful advisors, who were: The Five Senses – who never left his side. The Sixth Sense – who lived in a tree house in the Palace Gardens. Intelligence – the Palace Librarian. Emotional Awareness who organised the Palace Festivities. And, of course, Preposterous the Pontificate, the Palace Astrologer – often seen dancing with Angels and Dwarves.

“You are all conditioned, and you all have limited perception. You are all therefore fallible and unreliable - and of no use to me at all in ascertaining Certain Truth” the King of Mind lamented, irrefutably.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear” he muttered, down-heartedly, to himself “I can´t even be Certain I can´t be Certain... Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”

III

The King sought respite, like so many Kings before him, in the ancient Royal Tradition of Bullying...

Messengers accompanied by trumpeteers would ride from village to village and proclaim: “Let the person who Knows Certainty come before the King! Come ye who are the Wisest of the Wise! Come ye Greatest of Minds!”

And queues formed around the Palace Walls comparable only to the modern day queues that form around street corners on the issue of a next generation iphone.

And one by one, they who Claimed to Know Certainty would come before the King...

Mocking and humiiating them was indeed a relief. The laughter of the King of Mind would resound around the walls of his audience chambers... “You can´t be serious! You can't be serious about being Certain! Don´t you see the Impossibility of Certainty?! You are self-deceiving, arrogant fools!” he would chuckle, delightedly - before savagely tearing apart their dearmost beliefs – the way he tore up roast hog leg at Palace Banquets.

“I have Certainty because I have a holy book”, the Wisest of the Wise would proffer, meekly. “I have Certainty because I have scientific proof”, the Wisest of the Wise would assert, ingenuously.

“You fools! You fools!” the King would roar, intoxicatedly. “Can´t you see you decide to accept your truth as THE truth based on the advice of your advisors - who (he would repeat, with exaggerated patience) are all conditioned and limited - and therefore fallible and unreliable?!”

Thus one by one, the Wisest of the Wise would be ushered from the King´s audience chambers, the way fat and bones were swept from the Banqueting Hall floor, the next morning, after the banquet was done.

Some who made the Claim to Certainty were almost as stubborn as the King of Mind with his Born-Again Anti-Certainty: “I was blessed with Absolute Knowledge in an NDE - on DMT – while meditating, out of my body - when I accepted Jesus into my heart - when my Guru touched my third eye - so I KNOW!” they would insist, as if by pouring the gravy of inpenetrably-private, unsharably-personal mysticism all over their Experience they could somehow trick the King.

Ha! Of course they couldn´t! The King of Mind was relentless. He was powerful, indomitable, uncontradictable, unconquerable... Almost All Knowing in his Not Knowing!

“Yes, but” he would begin, softly - like a hunter stalking a hog “all you can honestly say is

that among the vast array of vying Certainties, you have chosen YOUR Certainty in consultation with your personal advisors, who are all (… am I repeating myself - my goodness - yes, I think I am!...) - who are ALL CONDITIONED AND LIMITED! You FELT it was God speaking to you - but your feeling is conditioned and limited. You BELIEVED it was Jesus, or Universal Revelation, or The Voice of Absolute Truth - but your believing is conditioned and limited! Yes, therefore, dare I say it, you could be mistaken! You cannot be Certain your Certainty is the most Certain! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear..."

And thus the Greatest Minds in the Kingdom fell before the intellectual might of the King of Mind with predicatable inevitability - and Not Knowing reigned supreme - until, once upon a time...

IV

One day, when the King of Mind was happily, dreamily lost in the well-trimmed bush maze in the Palace Gardens, a Little Dwarf Girl with eyes like stars, and a voice like an underground stream, pulled on the the King´s left trouser leg...

The King looked down, and she looked up - and as she smiled she whispered: "was it not you, my Lord, who said 'I can´t even be Certain I can´t be Certain'"?

The Little Dwarf Girl's sweet voice swirled around the mind of the King of Mind - as if washing it out from within. And with a shocked, horrified expression upon his royal face - the King of Mind fell heavily to the grass - like a big, broken branch.

It was the Truth beyond Truths - the Knowing beyond All Knowings! It was both Ultimate Certainty

and Ultimate Uncertainty - the undeniable, final and complete frustration: yes, it was Imposible to be Certain About Anything At All!

The King did not get up. His head was empty - like the sky. He lay looking up, while the Little Dwarf Girl looked down. He took her hand gently in his. And she kissed him upon his brow.

Courtiers would come, and Courtiers would go... "It's time for your bath, great King!" "The Banquet Table is set, great King!" But he sushed them all away. He wanted only to be with the Little Dwarf Girl - who, from time to time, would sing.

Day after day, and night after night, the King of Mind lay on the ground, on the grass path in the bush maze in the Palace Gardens - listening to the Little Dwarf Girl sing, and listening to the sky.

Until, one morning when the Palace Courtiers arrived to announce breakfast, they saw: the King of Mind had gone.

V

In the fairytale tradition of Kings in Disguise - wandering among the peasantry - hooded, in rags - the King of Mind now wandered and watched, and listened and felt.

People were so Certain! People were so Certain about what they believed. People were so Certain about what needed to be done...

They were Certain God existed. They were Cerain God didn´t. They were certain about the Laws of Science, Politics and Football. They were Certain about right and wrong. They were Certain about why and who and how and where and when...

And it was as Self had said it would be: they were wondrous, resplendent, astonishing! “And you will come to love them all!” “And you will come to love them all!”

The King felt a magnificence in their confidence. He had no judgement. He was impressed!

He no longer thought "what fools!" He had not lost his discriminatory capacities. He could still think and decide. But now it seemed that people held their Certainties like newborn babies - oh so tenderly - and that their Certainties lit their hearts... And big, round, unfamiliar tears rolled down his hooded, hidden, royal cheeks.

Now it seemed they held their Certainties tenderly - and yet, simultaneously - like flaming swords - fiercely, protectively...

"This was me!" he mumbled, as tears and mucus flowed from his eyes and nose, compassionately.

"I cradled The Impossibility of Certainty as if it was my child and royal heir - fighting off all pretenders to the throne - and I was so afraid of Uncertainty, I made Uncertainty a Certainty" he confessed.

And the King of Mind looked with love, forgivingly, upon the person he had once been – just as he now looked upon everyone.

And though the King of Mind would always be the King of Mind, and no fool, and alert to intellectual dishonesty, and aware of the Conflictive Consequences of Certainties – his intelectually-undefended heart broke open!

Like great rusty Palace Gates unopened for years - for centuries, even, perhaps - the Gates of the Heart of the King of Mind opened painfully, joyfully - with love.

People were wondrous, resplendent, astonishing! Perhaps they were foolish - perhaps fear had them by the balls (or ovaries) - but they were SO HUMAN! Each one so unique - everyone so the same!

And so it was that - with the Palace Gates of his Heart wide open - the King of Mind wandered on - day after day, night after night - begging for food, sleeping in barns - beyond judgement - overwhelmed by EVERY person's unique, irrepeatable wonderfulness - loving himself, loving us all.

VI

Until... on the final day of his wanderings - on the day before the day he had decided he would return to his throne, to his well-meaning advisors, and to the Angels and Dwarves who played in the Palace Gardens - the reconfigured King of Mind came upon two Knights in Armour, swords drawn from their sheaths - about to duel.

"Keep your distance, beggarman - for the edges of our swords cut through flesh like hog lard!” said the noblemen to the King beyond recognition.

But at that moment – some say most Certainly by meaningful synchonicity, some say most Certainly by meaningless coincidence, some say most Certainly by divine will, some most Certainly by karma, some most Certainly by luck - the light of the midday sun bounced blindingly off of the armour of the duelling Knights - creating a perfectly circular halo around the beggarman's head.

Both Knights fell upon one knee, and lowered their heads - in the posture of a knightly pledge. "Forgive us, oh Saintly One!" they begged - we were so absorbed in our duel, that the obviousness of your saintliness escaped us.

The King of Mind didn't mind being mistaken for a Saint. He didn´t for a moment think it was true. "What is the nature of your duel? he asked.

But as they began to speak, the King of Mind realised that, in the past, in such a situation, his intention (in his most generous of moods) would have been to chop up their Certainties with the Knife of the Impossibility of Certainty, sit them down at the Banquet Table of Humility - and let them feast upon the most delicious Roast Hog of Friendship beyond Certainties...

But as they began to speak the King of Mind realised that he'd left that Chopping Knife in the Palace Gardens bush maze with the Little Dwarf Girl - his Angel of Honesty - and that now he had no intention at all.

The King of Mind had no intention. But he had wonder. And he had love.

“I forgive you, I forgive you!” said the hooded, haloed Beggar King. And without any prior intention to say what he then said - said “now sheath your swords, and bring out your ale. I want to fully understand. Explain to me in full your irreconcilable and duel-worthy differences.”

And so the two Noble Knights, whose similarities far outweighed their differences – as do everyone´s – talked and drank - regaling the Saintly Beggar King with tales of ancestral treacheries, of pacts and betrayals, and dignities lost and refound - until, as sometimes happens in fairytales – they looked around and found: they had been inexplicably transported, and inexplicably seated at the Banqueting Table of the King of Mind – where they were laughing, and slapping each other´s backs, and feasting upon his very best roast hog!

*

Mark Josephs, "Mark the Mystic Activist" Aragon, Spain Summer, 2024

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