The paradoxical nature of ignorance reveals itself in its unique ontological status - unlike knowledge, which can be traced to specific discoveries, ignorance manifests as both absence and presence, operating simultaneously as a void of understanding and an active force shaping perception. We cannot meaningfully ask when ignorance of gravity or quantum mechanics began, for ignorance represents not an acquired condition but mind's default state, requiring no explanation for its presence just as existence itself needs no origin story. This profound recognition suggests that genuine understanding requires not merely accumulating knowledge but transcending the very perceptual habits and conceptual frameworks that constitute ignorance itself - a process that illuminates both scientific investigation and contemplative inquiry by revealing how our unexamined assumptions actively shape what we take to be natural ways of seeing.