This blog is about getting back to basics. It is about personal cybernetics...the spin of the Ouroboros. It is about reflection and getting back to who I am at my core and how my life has shaped me. Sometimes, when I just can't seem to see the forest for the trees (which is where I have been much of this semester), I sit and journal without worrying about flow or organization. This morning was one of those times. My writing took me back to the beginning (or very nearly close to it).
One of the things I wanted to do for my final project in both my David Bohm class and my Integral Sustainability class was to update the workbook for my life planning workshop with new information discovered in both classes and other classes in the program I am in at CIIS. However, this has been feeling much too huge. Here is why.
Back in my hippy days in the early 70's, I majored in fine arts. My concentration was in illustration using graphite and ink and water color washes. I also had a love of producing wall hangings, tapestries, using different colored burlap. I pulled threads to create the design. I replaced threads with wool or cloth or rewove or macraméd the burlap to create texture and amplify the design. I kept all the various yarns and cloths and other elements (tectures, colors, visual cues, repeating patterns, etc.) in separate baskets. I never felt compelled to use all of the elements from all of the baskets in every tapestry. In fact, I realized that the design worked better visually to keep the design simple and clean using from 3 to 5 elements.
It occurred to me that I am still doing this work. Even in my 30 years as a technical communicator, I have done this work. In all systems (a tapestry, a user interface, a communication program), there must first be a description of the outputs, an identification of inputs appropriate to the generation of the outputs, and a description of how inputs will be processed to get the outputs described. I already see the end product for my dissertation and subsequent life's work in my mind. Many times I have set out to mind-map what I see as the connections to this end product, but the map keeps getting bigger and bigger. Each element on the map represents a basket for this "tapestry" and these baskets are bursting the seams.
My ultimate goal is to reach the widest possible audience with a transformational method people can use every day to facilitate awareness and the ability to choose to be happy and compassionate. I want to determine the best way to convey the underlying concepts associated with this method without making them too complicated or unusable, but also without resorting to reductionist over-simplification. I fully suspect that this will be a delicate dance.
The good news is, though, that I don't have to use all the elements in all the baskets to weave my tapestries. I can have multiple tapestries that convey different connecting elements. Here is the list of my current BIG "baskets" (in no particular order) as they cover the rooms of my mind and the physical rooms in my house (in the form of books and articles). These baskets are full of elements which interact with other elements in other baskets:
My next post will be an initial list of potential "tapestries" and the elements I will use to "weave" them.
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