There is a saying: They beat you and they beat you and they don't even let you cry.  But why do they beat you?  One reason might be to get you to see the truth.  Picking up the truth of life is referred to as «the school of hard knocks».  

You know that our psyche is assimilated to our body … so all psychological qualities are actually physical qualities.  A person is hard, warm, brittle, bouncy, deep, &c.  In a similar way, psychologically, a truth that affects your self-esteem is experienced as a blow. 

This little story is by way of an introduction and an admission that, unlike many, I am not a perfect person.  When I described my experience of reviewing my wonderful insights as shock-horror! in that recent blog, I was not 100% honest. More...

If you can help with WILLINGNESS, you will simultaneously help me in my struggle to grasp CHANGE.  Both are intrinsic to pursuing our endeavours.

I explained in my last blog how I try to get things progressively clearer.

A crucial feature is ensuring the pattern is right: which means that other elements in the system work well.  I call this structural corroboration.  

So right now, I want help for something in Personal Endeavour that may be so approximate that it is wrong and misleading.  Understanding Endeavour depends on properly appreciating the seven Root Levels that constitute it and define it fully.  Of these, CHANGE has proved to be the toughest nut to crack.  I'm depending on work in other areas to provide more clues before I launch an assault on its bastions.More...

Getting going on any framework is difficult.  What is so obvious at the end of the inquiry is almost wholly obscure at the outset.  I feel like a person who is blindfolded in a multi-dimensional maze.  Insight seems absent. 

My experience and knowledge give me the courage to start.  But they never take me very far.  I find that I have to move forward using two methods in intense discussions.  These are: successive approximation and structural checking.

Successive approximation means that I make a stab at knowing—a name for something, or a formulation, or a property—and see how it works.  Usually not very well.  So I think about how to improve it … and then make another stab.  That will probably More...

One of the ideas of the website, was that the essential work of being critical of formulations and properties could be partly taken up by others—by at least a few, perhaps tens, even hundreds of others.  However, I now realize that the Internet doesn’t work that way.  Creativity, we are told again and again, depends on not criticizing ideas.  Common politeness respects personal autonomy and demands restraint—there is something in that.

But, oh dear, does that mean the evolution of ideas based on competitive battles, necessarily red in tooth and claw, must give way to consensus on the lowest common denominator of expedience, fashion or what feels good?  Not really.  It just means that I have to be my own biggest enemy.  So I am playing the role of hitman today on More...

Here is something maddening. A puzzle solved has created a puzzle.

I have worked out why there are so many structures with 7 levels in the Taxonomy.  That was a relief because it was the commonest criticism.  I would be accused of a love affair with 7, or just laughed at.  

However, the reason is simpler and more fascinating than love. Nor does it deserve ridicule.  It occurs because  More...