Beyond the details


Thoughts and feelings

I've been thinking about this book a lot.

I've also been thinking about writing one on liberty at the same time to balance my brain.

Almost everything I've read and almost everyone I have talked to agree on one thing, if I write a "Pagan" book I need to limit the scope of what I write.

That strikes me as wrong. Radically wrong.

And I can't get the blasted book to work that way.

I don't know. I keep getting hung up on the Expert and Master thing. Here's the original Zed Shaw essay I talked about in that entry. This is the telling paragraph.

The main thing I noticed about the experts I’ve encountered is they are into impressing you with their abilities. They are usually incredibly good, but their need for recognition gets in the way of mastery. Everything they do is an attempt to prove themselves and in order to do this they must perform like an actor on stage. There’s nothing wrong with this, and I don’t think the expert can become a master without going through this stage in life. At some point though, the expert becomes comfortable with themselves or fed up with impressing everyone and starts to look inward to the core of their art.

Most Pagan books I've read have been about the details. Those books are the works of experts, not masters. It's true for almost every religious book I've read as well. None them reflect "doing more with less."

Elegant. Simple. Mastery. No wasted energy.

Now I don't claim to be a master. Blazes, in most cases I can't claim to be an expert. What I can say is that I'm certain there is something more, something beyond the details and much more flexible. But just because I can perceive it dimly doesn't mean I can write it.

It comes full circle you know.

One of the things I used to do even before I named myself Pagan was look for a ur-faith, the set of underlying principles and thoughts that drove humans to seek the Divine. And now, I'm doing the same thing, from a different angle and without the roadmaps. Decades later.

There is something there. Maybe I will never experience it, never live it well enough to share. But even the promise is enough to show me that if I narrow my focus, I'll never reach it. It's something more than Pagan, something more than religion and faith.

And for someone who is all about control and patterns and roadmaps, that particular leap of faith is terrifying.

Study brought me to the mountain. Logic and reasoning brought me to the edge. Now I just have to find the path across. With my eyes closed.

I've been here before.
I think.

Maybe.

Posted: Tue - August 31, 2010 at 12:54 PM
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