"climb every mountain..."
Jul. 13th, 2006 01:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonOkay, I'll take off the Mother Abbess costume now... ("Sound of Music" for those who didn't catch the reference)
From a comment made in a friend's LJ, about expanding one's magickal practice:
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I'm left feeling alot like an adolescent again. I don't feel like I know enough.
lol. I'd say that's a sign you're perceiving the universe accurately ;>
In other words, the more you know, the more you know you don't know.
And there is a great deal of real value, IMO, in magickal paths that emphasize structure and discipline, at the least as a balance to the more free-flow ecstatic, "fake it 'till you make it" essence of Reclaiming. Someone mapping it to the Tree of Life might phrase it as Netzach needing the balance of Hod, a psychologist might say the goal is right-brain/left-brain balance and integration. It all comes down to recognizing that any magickal, philosophical or spiritual approach, being a finite set of beliefs, practices, and techniques intended to help finite embodied humans grapple with the wonder of an infinite universe, will each be fundamentally incomplete. Or put another way, anyone who says they (or their religion/tradition/path) have all the answers is full of it, and probably selling something...
One of my early magickal notes goes something like, "The more time goes on, the more I come to realize that I know less and less about more and more. Perhaps eventually I will realize that I know nothing about everything (or everything about nothing) ;>
About ten years later, I put it more simply: "I look back at myself ten years ago and go, 'wow, I was stupid back then.' And I figure that in ten more years, I'll do exactly the same thing." Ah-yup.
Honestly, I think it really is about the journey, not the destination -- because like false summits on a mountain, as soon you get to the "top," you find there's always another, higher, further summit behind the one you're on, no less challenging to attempt.
From a comment made in a friend's LJ, about expanding one's magickal practice:
-------
I'm left feeling alot like an adolescent again. I don't feel like I know enough.
lol. I'd say that's a sign you're perceiving the universe accurately ;>
In other words, the more you know, the more you know you don't know.
And there is a great deal of real value, IMO, in magickal paths that emphasize structure and discipline, at the least as a balance to the more free-flow ecstatic, "fake it 'till you make it" essence of Reclaiming. Someone mapping it to the Tree of Life might phrase it as Netzach needing the balance of Hod, a psychologist might say the goal is right-brain/left-brain balance and integration. It all comes down to recognizing that any magickal, philosophical or spiritual approach, being a finite set of beliefs, practices, and techniques intended to help finite embodied humans grapple with the wonder of an infinite universe, will each be fundamentally incomplete. Or put another way, anyone who says they (or their religion/tradition/path) have all the answers is full of it, and probably selling something...
One of my early magickal notes goes something like, "The more time goes on, the more I come to realize that I know less and less about more and more. Perhaps eventually I will realize that I know nothing about everything (or everything about nothing) ;>
About ten years later, I put it more simply: "I look back at myself ten years ago and go, 'wow, I was stupid back then.' And I figure that in ten more years, I'll do exactly the same thing." Ah-yup.
Honestly, I think it really is about the journey, not the destination -- because like false summits on a mountain, as soon you get to the "top," you find there's always another, higher, further summit behind the one you're on, no less challenging to attempt.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-13 08:41 pm (UTC)But so soon as I had achieved the entire course of study at the close of which one is usually received into the ranks of the learned ... I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than the increasing discovery of my own ignorance.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-13 08:52 pm (UTC)But I guess in this case, we'd be talking about putting Decartes after the course... ;> (ow)
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Date: 2006-07-13 09:59 pm (UTC)(Ah, the things they teach you in philosophy degrees...)
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Date: 2006-07-14 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-15 08:40 pm (UTC)THanks for the giggle
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Date: 2006-07-18 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-14 01:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-14 05:00 pm (UTC)