The Conjurer, painted by Hieronymus Bosch
Known variously as thimblerig, three shells and a pea or the old army game, the shell game is often misrepresented as a gambling game, but when a wager for money is made, it is almost always a confidence trick used to perpetrate fraud. The sleight of hand skill is highly practiced, as is the use of misdirection, cunning and trickery. The pea or ball is hidden -- we think -- under one of the shuffled cups. But really the pea or ball is hidden in the conjurer's hand. The whole thing is an illusion from top to bottom. It's cunning lay in our acceptance of the terms and conditions proffered by the conjurer, who frames the entire story and sets the stage for the show.
Having been taken by the conjurer's trick on several occasions, a boy carefully watches the conjurer in action, hiding behind the small crowd which gathers around. He sees that all who wager their money always lose. He sees there is no chance involved, but only trickery.
Consider the plot in The Emperor's New Clothes.:
Two swindlers arrive at the capital city of an emperor who spends lavishly on clothing at the expense of state matters. Posing as weavers, they offer to supply him with magnificent clothes that are invisible to those who are stupid or incompetent. The emperor hires them, and they set up looms and go to work. A succession of officials, and then the emperor himself, visit them to check their progress. Each sees that the looms are empty but pretends otherwise to avoid being thought a fool.
Finally, the weavers report that the emperor's suit is finished. They mime dressing him and he sets off in a procession before the whole city. The townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all. The people then realize that everyone has been fooled. Although startled, the emperor continues the procession, walking more proudly than ever. [from Wikipedia]
The boy mentioned in the tale of the conjurer had seen through the illusion and known there to be a fraud at the basis of the shell game. Archetypally, that boy is the same as the child who proclaims that the emperor is, in fact, naked. Isn't it interesting that both are children! I wonder why each is a child? Is it the child's innocence which allows him to see things as they really are -- and then say so?
The child in these tales has a kind of Jester's privilege. He embodies the archetype of the fool and the trickster. But I have no such protections. When I say the emperor is naked I'm mostly just ignored. After all, if it were true that contemporary democracy is mostly nothing more than an illusion which serves as a ruse, what could we possibly do about it? Have you noticed that people don't want to know that they are the victim of some obliquely obscured trickery about which they believe they couldn't do anything to alter the effects of pervasive illusion?
Toto, the cute little dog in The Wizard of Oz, pulled back the curtain to expose the Wizard as nothing more than a cowering public relations officer working for the Naked Emperor. Everyone -- nearly everyone -- works for the Emperor, whose name is social stratification and hierarchy. Everything works on a need to know basis, and those atop the hierarchy don't think boys need to know. And they know boys who know are potentially dangerous to their trickery. And that's why the trickery is all but utterly ubiquitous. The scheme to keep us in the dark is hidden in plain sight. And this is what mesmerizes us. After all, no emperor would cover everything in an invisible suit of magnificent and magical clothes -- would he? No. Rather than cover the whole Earth in leather, we would wear shoes. It just makes perfect sense! Anyway, there is not so much leather in all the world.
Ideologies of various kinds are typically mostly invisible to those who embody them. To paraphrase Albert Einstein, "fish will be the last to discover water." He meant that fish don't notice the water they are immersed in because they would have to leave the water to perceive that it's there -- by contrast.
It has been a very long time since I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I was but a kid when I read it. Let's see here....
Part One of the book finds young Jonathan Livingston frustrated with the meaningless materialism, conformity, and limitations of the seagull life. He is seized with a passion for flight of all kinds, and his soul soars as he experiments with exhilarating challenges of daring aerial feats. Eventually, his lack of conformity to the limited seagull life leads him into conflict with his flock, and they turn their backs on him, casting him out of their society and exiling him. Not deterred by this, Jonathan continues his efforts to reach higher and higher flight goals, finding he is often successful. But eventually, he can fly no higher. He is then met by two radiant, loving seagulls who explain to him that he has learned much, and that they are there now to teach him more. [from Wikipedia]
Basically, Jonathan was not content to live a life of illusion, and went on a hero's quest or journey, in which he learned to experience and perceive the world (and seagull culture) in a new light. He sought freedom for himself ... and eventually he sought to give what he had learned through teaching. This is also archetypal.
Architypes appear everywhere in novels, films, stories, myths. And one of the most popular such stories is the story of the lone hero- sage who comes to save the day. Think Neo (The One).
.... Superman, Batman (with Robin as sidekick), The Lone Ranger (with Tanto as sidekick).... There is always the leading man, the guy who comes with magical powers to save the day.
I have taken the red pill at the Palace of the Wizard of Oz, with Toto as my sidekick. And it wasn't at all like in the movie or the book. There is no such actual singular concentrated moment of decision. The perception of the Conjurer's Trick doesn't unfold in a dramatic 90 minutes, but unfolds over years and years. The drama and characters are distributed over a vastness of space and time. Usually there or no acrobatic, flying jujitsu moves. And when you have been thoroughly cooked by the events in the unfolding plot, the last thing you'd want to do is pretend to be Jesus or Buddha or Neo--or Jonathan Livingston Seagull. And besides, what we learn when we swallow the red pill is that The Conjurur isn't Darth Vader as Lead Antagonist who smokes cigars in the basement of the White House or the Capital Building. The lead antagonist isn't even Steve Bannon! (but Bannon is a very close sidekick to the Conjurer).
Here is the principal magical power which the Conjurer has: He is everywhere and nowhere. He has the power to be distributed into a vast network as near infinite nodal points. In this way, you can compare this villain to Indra's Net of Jewels. There is almost nowhere where this villain cannot be found. Some of him is in me and you!
There is no point whatsoever in grasping after the One Ring. To become powerful as but one, merely one, ("the one" in the case of Neo) is to be robbed of one's power.
This is why there can be no Savior Hero riding in on a White Horse to save the day. And this brings us to the final architype I will mention in this tale.
"The Next Buddha will be a sangha,"
said Vietnamese Zen master
Thich Nhat Hanh.
The villain is everywhere, distributed. And the Sangha is everywhere, distributed. Neither have a singular center. Each is a living architype in a net consisting largely of stories, perceptions, ideas, beliefs.... The power is within us to awaken from illusions, and to give our awakening to the field of relations which we are. But let us not become lone heros! Our magical power is distribution, being everywhere at once. I am in you. You are in me. We are never alone. This is why it is that our greatest longing is not to "get" but to give. No wonder we are so hungry! We tend to hang this upside down.
We do not have movies or novels in which the savior-hero archtype is a sangha which has the power of being everywhere at once, and which is everywhere at once because all of its participants are Dancing as Wholeness, in awakened and enlivened true relationship with one another, serving each person's liberation from the Conjurer who seeks hierarchy and domination and exploitation wherever he appears.
This is what popping that red pill taught me, gradually, over years. Our awakening from the trance of our powerlessness is identical with our awakening from the trance of our separateness. And guess what?! No one can do this as a lone hero. Our non-separateness is the reason we can be sure that Nature did not arrange us into hierarchies of power with Darth Vader or Lex Luthor as Supervillain or bête noire.
Power concentrated into hierarchies has no center, but is a distributed phenomenon, and it is distributed throughout the field of relations which is our whole world. The pattern of it is that of the fractal. It appears at all of the scales of our observation of it. And it isn't just "out there". It's also in here, in each of us. The one ring of power is always available for us to reach for, but when we know what our appetite is really for, we will not reach for power as "the one" (as anything other than sangha). We will spit out the blue pill. We are allergic.
We do not need to be Buddhists to be a member of The Sangha -- the sangha of which I am speaking. The Sangha I speak of is the architype of Awakened (and always awakening) Wholeness which distributes empowerment, knowledge, wisdom, love, kindness... because any of the refractory jewels in Indra's net reveals the Jewel in myself as the same Jewel in you. I am because you are, because we are. I am the Entire Net of Jewels, as are you, because we are not apart from one another in any essential way. We are 'one'. But we are not The One (apart). We'd not swallow that pill.
Our real power is love.
Love is relationship -- or wholeness.
Democracy really is the ideal form of governance. But it isn't what we think. It is not arranged into a center or a hierarchy. It doesn't strive to accumulate power as "the one". It seeks to empower everyone in a distributed way. And that, my friends, is real power. It is the power of love. Real democracy doesn't form hierarchies of power which rob some and enrich others with power.
So there is no non-revolutionary pathway to democracy. Democracy is love. At root, it is.
Let us teach one another -- all of us. Even that boy watching the Conjurers trickery is our guru. For the Teacher is everywhere, always, and I call Her by the name of Wholeness (Holiness).
"Cleave a piece of wood, I am there; lift up the stone and you will find me there." -- Jesus, Gospel of Thomas
When we know that real power--and all that we hunger for--is the power of love and kindness, what we mistake for 'democracy' will evaporate like a bad dream from which we have awakened -- together.
Leonard Cohen - Democracy - YouTube
So why, then, have I not told a story here of particular things we can do to embody this love-as-power and to thus transform pseudo-democracy into actual democracy? And why have I not said anything about how to deal with real villains?
Well, in a way I have. There is but one core praxis, and that is to find any node or micro-node in the complex web of relations where power concentrates itself in a centripetal pattern of concentration into a nodal point, as an act of separation, and to see right through the illusion of the Conjurer's Trick. See the nature of the illusion. Which is to look with Whole Eyes. Which is to meet the event with a heart wide to the mystery of it all. And then Dance. Which is to say, enact wholeness as a kind and gentle act of repair. Which is to say live the wholeness at that nodal point in the web of relations. Which is to say -- invert the usual power relations from a centripetal pattern to a centrifugal one. Use your imagination. Bring lovingkindness to this node in the network. Be willing to risk flight. Be carried on the wind. Let go. Trust. And give.
To empower others is to empower yourself. This is an inversion of the usual pattern of (mis-) perception. Empowering others is an act of love.
Love is the revolution.
The revolution is love.