Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there was a king. This king was the ruler of an exceptional kingdom.
The land that he ruled was beautiful and even more importantly all of his subjects were prosperous and happy.
Everyone lived in peace and harmony and perhaps more importantly, they loved their king.
As it so happens, the king had a son, who as we all know makes him the prince.
The prince was exceptionally good looking, intelligent and just about everything that you would expect a prince to be.
There was, however, just one small problem. The prince was unhappy. You see, everything came very easily to the prince and there never arose any opportunities to challenge either his skills or curiosity.
One eventful day, the prince made the decision to leave the kingdom and to explore the world beyond, which is exactly what he did.
As time went on, he wandered further and further away from his father’s kingdom. The result was that the prince had experiences that he never dreamt of.
Unfortunately, many of these experiences were of an unpleasant nature. The prince saw many things that were disconcerting and that never occurred back home.
To make matters even worse, as time went by, the prince began to lose his memory. Also, many of the unpleasant things that he witnessed originally happening to others began to happen to him.
The prince was lost in an ugly land and living the life of anything but a prince.
Back home, the king was worried about his son and decided to do something about it. He called one of his highest advisors to court and ordered him to venture out to the far reaches beyond the kingdom, to find his son and to bring him home safely.
Eventually, after many trials and tribulations of his own, the advisor finds the long lost prince. With no small effort, he convinces the prince of his heritage and birthright and after a very long journey, they find their way home.
Of course, the prince is reunited with his father the king. Needless to say, everyone lives happily every after.
The End.
Now, teaching stories (Sufi, Zen, etc.) by their very nature are not meant to be explained. However, we’re going to break that rule and go ahead and do it anyway!
The king is God, the kingdom is heaven, the prince represents the souls that descend into the material world and the advisor represents those great souls like Jesus, the Buddha and countless others that are less well know that come into the world to liberate our souls (read: saviour, messiah, guru, zen master and so on).
Excerpted from the upcoming book:
“Life – A Theoretical & Practical Treatise On Transformation” by Scott Soloff
