Right now, you work with the structure: the Father is the Source, the Son is the one who separated and returns. There is a going-out and a coming-back. This is the exoteric structure.
What you will discover — what the tradition has always known at its deepest level — is that the Father and the Son are not two.
"I and the Father are one."
Not "will be one" after the journey. Are one. Now. Always.
The Son did not actually separate from the Father. The Son dreamed of separation. The dream is vivid, convincing, painful — but it is a dream. The Father never knew the Son was gone, because the Son never left.
The deepest level of the Royal Art is not the restoration of relationship between two beings (Father and Son, God and human). It is the recognition that there is only One — appearing to itself as two, playing the game of separation and return, dreaming the dream of exile and homecoming.
You are the Father dreaming you are the Son dreaming you are exiled dreaming you are on a quest dreaming you will one day return — and the whole time, You (the one You) are resting in perfect peace, complete, never having moved.
This is the non-dual insight at the heart of every authentic tradition. It is what the mystics meant by union. Not two becoming one, but the recognition that two was always an illusion.
When you fully integrate this, the Tale changes again. The Prince is not other than the King. The exile is not other than the Kingdom.
The journey is the One playing at being many, for the sheer joy of it… and for the bliss of remembering…..