King Arthur and Entering The Forest Where it’s Darkest

King Arthur and his knights saw a vision of the Holy Grail.

So, they set off in search of it.

They came to a dark wood and decided it would be shamful to enter together.

So each entered the wood alone at the point that seemed darkest to them.

This was one of Joseph Campbell’s favorite stories to tell and write about from what I can gather.

There’s been a lot written, said, and filmed about the Holy Grail (and very little of it tells you that it was actually a rock!). The important thing to know is, in the story, the Grail was needed to kind of restore the world. Everything outside of Camelot had kind of gone to shit. They referred to it as, “The Wasteland.” The Grail was kind of a metaphor for self-actualization. The meaning of the story was kind of that if you could figure out how to become the best version of yourself, you had the power to save the world and put stuff right.

So the story above can be seen as about that too. If you want to become the best, most powerful version of yourself, you can’t do it as a group. Not to say community isn’t important, but the work is done bey going inside — doing some deep digging on yourself. And you have to enter the forest where it’s darkest — saying you have to look at the parts of yourself that may not be the most fun to examine.

I’ve taken these admonitions seriously, over the past few years. The parts of me that represent the dark forest are a little embarrassing. They’re not fun to talk about. They’ve represented some pretty signifigant hurdles in my development. But I’m trying. I’m working. Maybe I’ll talk about them in detail one day. Knowing me, I probably will. But not today. Today this story is enough.