The joys of ignorance

I’m not talking about the comfort value of wilful ignorance here, but something else entirely. Partly inspired by Red’s recent post – http://theanimistscraft.wordpress.com... partly by the John Michael Greer book I’m reading. I’ve found that every time I learn something, if I’m paying attention then it tends to flag up more possibilities, things I don’t know, questions to ask and so forth. My belief is that the potential for knowledge is therefore infinite. One of the surest signs that I’ve not been paying attention, is if I start to feel like I really know and understand a thing, or a person, situation etc. There are often more questions to ask.

In many ways, feeling like I know something is not a happy place to be. Where do you go next? It was always my problem with games, for example, that once I understand how to play and what it takes to win, my interest in playing or even winning pretty much dries up. I find the same thing with people – once I’ve heard all of someone’s stories for the third time, I start to look around and wander off. Some of this is probably laziness on my part, but as my friend Bill says, there are people who turn out to have hidden shallows. Sometimes, there isn’t any more to know, as with really drab board games. I’ve also been caught in situations where failure to understand has held my interest, when the more sensible option would have been to recognise that a person was just bat shit crazy and therefore not making any sense and that there was no discovery to make.

The experience of learning and discovering is one that I love, but the best thing is this: When a great vista of the unknown opens up before me. It’s like getting to the top of a mountain and finding there’s a whole new country on the far side. These are wild moments. Of course then follows the climbing down and slogging through the details, which tends to be more like work and not as numinous, but it’s good too.

There are always moments in any journey when it feels like you’re not going anywhere. I’ve had a couple of years now of resettling in this landscape, shifting from leading rituals to being solitary in my practice. I’ve learned new way of working with and relating to the land and I’ve spent a lot of time working on the space inside my head, but there’s been a growing feeling of lost direction. What is my Druidry, these days? Where am I going? What am I doing? And then, the John Michael Greer book showed me the view from a mountain top. It’s just been a glimpse, and I know if I want to get a proper look at that country, I’m going to need to do some work. But I know it’s there. The rush of ignorance, the realisation that there’s so much I don’t know, so much to be done, this is a very happy thing for me.