Knowledge is Power; More to Learn
You probably know someone who has a hard time sticking with things, someone who becomes infatuated with a new fad or style, who picks up a hobby and declares it to be their new lifelong love, who hangs out with a teacher or group long enough to pick up the basics of how to do something, who is then promptly disenchanted with said thing, and has moved on by the next week. There are also people of this sort who move in this way from person to person, or lover to lover. I am one of these people. I have often in my life found it impossible to follow through on something I've made a commitment to simply because whatever it is I've committed to has lost it's charm, or the sparkle and shine of a new thing has faded with just a little wear and tear. Over time as I've grown, I'm beginning to recognize when I do this, and I'd rather not be someone who lives this way, as in the metaphor of currency, the value of a dollar never really changes, but the more money you have, the easier it becomes to move that dollar along to someone else in exchange for something else.
I've picked up a number of hobbies in my life, gymnastics is the earliest I can remember. Beyond that, I remember learning to play the violin, pursuing theatre and choir in performing arts; I remember once beginning to write a fictional novel in the eighth grade which I actually managed to get about a hundred single sided pages into before abandoning it because I couldn't keep straight the details of the characters I'd imagined, let alone the world. Once I learned about Wicca around age 16, I'd barely begun to even out and learn to stick to things and I'm proud to say that I maintain to this day a belief system derived from Wiccanism--although it, still, has changed for me.
Palmistry is another thing I picked up along the way while learning about Wicca, and I have to admit I'm just a little disappointed in my lack of zeal in learning to understand the interpretable aspects of a hand. To this day I have great difficulty identifying the difference between the elemental categories of hang shapes, simply due to my novice skill level, and I'm never certain when identifying signals and omens in the smaller lines on the a hand. However, fortunately, I am yet young and have plenty of time to continue this practice--after learning another thing or two from an entirely different category.
As much as I would love to pursue an education in the powers of metaphysics and witchcraft, there almost certainly does not exist a school that will offer divination classes on palmistry, nor astrology, nor numerology, nor spell casting or potion brewing. These are all legitimate aspects of the real witchcraft that I know real world witches perform, although it isn't nearly as brightly glowing or fantastical as people often expect it to be based on the Hollywood-ized image of magic and witchcraft many are familiar with. If I want to learn about these things, it's going to take a lot of scouring around the edges of the internet and asking many people who may or may not have the same answers as the next person I ask the same question to.
Fortunately, on the other hand, there is an endless plethora of other things I can learn--and many would argue these other things will be more practical. For example, I am just now, finally, ending my educational hiatus and and picking up my academic career once more at my local community college. The courses I'll be taking include quantitative literacy (math), English and writing, and because I'll be pursuing my degrees in primarily Anthropology, culture courses in regards to film, music, and the arts. I'll want to take a language course as well and hopefully become fluent in at least one other language, probably Spanish, as the most useful and practical language for anyone living in the Americas.
While taking the Accuplacer test in order to find out which skill level courses I am prepared to take on, I had to complete what is considered "elementary algebra" problems, involving isolating variables, dividing fractions, identifying like equations, and various combinations of the above. I remember learning about these processes when I was in grade school, but I'm not certain that I would personally consider them "elementary," but apparently that's what it counts as according to some board of education or other. I find it interesting that this is what's considered general and basic in relation to the fast that I have--while living a fairly simple life as a barista--not once had to perform any kind of algebra, or even had an opportunity to aside from any leisurely math I could have chosen to optionally do, yet this is what I'll be learning. I'm not saying that math is irrelevant, but I do absolutely believe that it's a specialty, and I think it should be applied as it becomes relevant to a persons elected course of study. I digress.
I am looking forward to gaining further education in every field, including arithmetic, because everything you learn gets assimilated into your perception of the world, and as they say, knowledge is power. I learned about fractals a while ago, and have enjoyed the newfound perspective of what I would consider sacred geometry, but what would more easily be understood as the maths of nature.
I was listening to a segment of a talk given by Alan Watts once and I remember him describing a scenario wherein someone makes an observation of something that is once thing, and takes a scalpel and cuts the thing into it's parts to "discover" that it is made up of parts, all while completely disregarding the fact that they cut it from one thing into parts that make up another thing that what they are. I often think of this in regards to ego and the function of it, which is, in my understanding, to separate. I've heard and read of psychology that the ego is the sense of self, where means of survival are evaluated and delegated, and while I find this to be entirely real and true, I also find that ego is something that can easily grow out of control and can begin to carry us away with it, disregarding that we are parts of a whole. One thing that I myself have found my ego misleading me to is that I know things. I know nothing.
One might think, Oh, but I know myself. And I know that the sky is blue, and that one plus one equals two, and that if I squash a bug it will die. But I can easily find fallacies in each of these beliefs, just as I can easily find fallacy in any belief I myself hold--and that's all I think we really have, as a people who fancies ourselves to be "intelligent." There are dogmas, certainly, but anything that refuses to change also refuses to grow, and that which does not grow will either die, or was never really alive to begin with, at least to our understanding of what it is to be "alive."
I love someone who told me that she was never going to stop going to school. I feel the same way, although I don't think the "school" I'll be attending will always be entirely academic. There will always be new curriculum to acquire, and the rate of human evolution will continue to accelerate just as the growth of our population has, so kids in early grade school today will probably learn things that I didn't until I was twice their age in my own grade school life, and the pattern persists. One of the most mystifying and enticing qualities of this human experience, in my opinion, is that there will always be more to learn, and this is one generalized statement which I dogmatically believe to be true. There may be some of you who find this exhausting, as I myself am just slightly inclined to, as it means that the learning process will be perpetually relentless, but you can always opt to just take a break, much like I have for the past few years. I didn't really stop learning, but I did find myself getting really good and comfortable with the things I had learned how to do, even as I continued to pick up tiny little lessons here and there. It's perfectly within your ability to maintain that childlike wonder at just how big the world really is, and as I am growing the habit of doing, remember there is so much power in just knowing better. Even if it's algebra you'll never use again.
I've picked up a number of hobbies in my life, gymnastics is the earliest I can remember. Beyond that, I remember learning to play the violin, pursuing theatre and choir in performing arts; I remember once beginning to write a fictional novel in the eighth grade which I actually managed to get about a hundred single sided pages into before abandoning it because I couldn't keep straight the details of the characters I'd imagined, let alone the world. Once I learned about Wicca around age 16, I'd barely begun to even out and learn to stick to things and I'm proud to say that I maintain to this day a belief system derived from Wiccanism--although it, still, has changed for me.
Palmistry is another thing I picked up along the way while learning about Wicca, and I have to admit I'm just a little disappointed in my lack of zeal in learning to understand the interpretable aspects of a hand. To this day I have great difficulty identifying the difference between the elemental categories of hang shapes, simply due to my novice skill level, and I'm never certain when identifying signals and omens in the smaller lines on the a hand. However, fortunately, I am yet young and have plenty of time to continue this practice--after learning another thing or two from an entirely different category.
As much as I would love to pursue an education in the powers of metaphysics and witchcraft, there almost certainly does not exist a school that will offer divination classes on palmistry, nor astrology, nor numerology, nor spell casting or potion brewing. These are all legitimate aspects of the real witchcraft that I know real world witches perform, although it isn't nearly as brightly glowing or fantastical as people often expect it to be based on the Hollywood-ized image of magic and witchcraft many are familiar with. If I want to learn about these things, it's going to take a lot of scouring around the edges of the internet and asking many people who may or may not have the same answers as the next person I ask the same question to.
Fortunately, on the other hand, there is an endless plethora of other things I can learn--and many would argue these other things will be more practical. For example, I am just now, finally, ending my educational hiatus and and picking up my academic career once more at my local community college. The courses I'll be taking include quantitative literacy (math), English and writing, and because I'll be pursuing my degrees in primarily Anthropology, culture courses in regards to film, music, and the arts. I'll want to take a language course as well and hopefully become fluent in at least one other language, probably Spanish, as the most useful and practical language for anyone living in the Americas.
While taking the Accuplacer test in order to find out which skill level courses I am prepared to take on, I had to complete what is considered "elementary algebra" problems, involving isolating variables, dividing fractions, identifying like equations, and various combinations of the above. I remember learning about these processes when I was in grade school, but I'm not certain that I would personally consider them "elementary," but apparently that's what it counts as according to some board of education or other. I find it interesting that this is what's considered general and basic in relation to the fast that I have--while living a fairly simple life as a barista--not once had to perform any kind of algebra, or even had an opportunity to aside from any leisurely math I could have chosen to optionally do, yet this is what I'll be learning. I'm not saying that math is irrelevant, but I do absolutely believe that it's a specialty, and I think it should be applied as it becomes relevant to a persons elected course of study. I digress.
I am looking forward to gaining further education in every field, including arithmetic, because everything you learn gets assimilated into your perception of the world, and as they say, knowledge is power. I learned about fractals a while ago, and have enjoyed the newfound perspective of what I would consider sacred geometry, but what would more easily be understood as the maths of nature.
I was listening to a segment of a talk given by Alan Watts once and I remember him describing a scenario wherein someone makes an observation of something that is once thing, and takes a scalpel and cuts the thing into it's parts to "discover" that it is made up of parts, all while completely disregarding the fact that they cut it from one thing into parts that make up another thing that what they are. I often think of this in regards to ego and the function of it, which is, in my understanding, to separate. I've heard and read of psychology that the ego is the sense of self, where means of survival are evaluated and delegated, and while I find this to be entirely real and true, I also find that ego is something that can easily grow out of control and can begin to carry us away with it, disregarding that we are parts of a whole. One thing that I myself have found my ego misleading me to is that I know things. I know nothing.
One might think, Oh, but I know myself. And I know that the sky is blue, and that one plus one equals two, and that if I squash a bug it will die. But I can easily find fallacies in each of these beliefs, just as I can easily find fallacy in any belief I myself hold--and that's all I think we really have, as a people who fancies ourselves to be "intelligent." There are dogmas, certainly, but anything that refuses to change also refuses to grow, and that which does not grow will either die, or was never really alive to begin with, at least to our understanding of what it is to be "alive."
I love someone who told me that she was never going to stop going to school. I feel the same way, although I don't think the "school" I'll be attending will always be entirely academic. There will always be new curriculum to acquire, and the rate of human evolution will continue to accelerate just as the growth of our population has, so kids in early grade school today will probably learn things that I didn't until I was twice their age in my own grade school life, and the pattern persists. One of the most mystifying and enticing qualities of this human experience, in my opinion, is that there will always be more to learn, and this is one generalized statement which I dogmatically believe to be true. There may be some of you who find this exhausting, as I myself am just slightly inclined to, as it means that the learning process will be perpetually relentless, but you can always opt to just take a break, much like I have for the past few years. I didn't really stop learning, but I did find myself getting really good and comfortable with the things I had learned how to do, even as I continued to pick up tiny little lessons here and there. It's perfectly within your ability to maintain that childlike wonder at just how big the world really is, and as I am growing the habit of doing, remember there is so much power in just knowing better. Even if it's algebra you'll never use again.
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