Compilations

There is the Scottish saying that mony a mickle maks a muckle. So it is with one-pagers and compilations.

One-pagers can make sense on their own but they can also be compiled in different ways to make larger senses.

I have been churning out one-pagers and compilations for the last 20 years or so. Originally they were objective and for training purposes; more recently they have been subjective and focused on mindfulness, neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. Many of them are freely available on websites and on blogs.

In Lesotho I prepared one-pagers in response to the periodic arrival of new books for an education library project. The one-pagers were stored chronologically. This was not very useful! There were over 600 of them between 1995 and 1988.

 ‘Compilations’ were mainly produced in advance of project workshops. The one-pagers were compiled as a series of handouts that were used either during the workshop or as ‘digging deeper’ notes for home use by educators who were particularly interested.

A workshop compilation document was in essence a one-pager of annotated one-pagers on a given theme. Some examples of the educational compilations from Lesotho are available here.  The following two compilations have been made into websites

• Everybody Wins - an exploration of conflict resolution. A set of 17 one-page handouts to inform discussion.  First used as part of a training programme for education advisors in Lesotho. Prepared in February 1997
• STEEPLeS is an acronym for the seven elements of a holistic and systematic development framework for change for the better: Social  Technological  Environmental  Economic  Political  Legal  Ethical Spiritual. This grew out of work with Hakikazi Catalyst in the early 2000s

After Lesotho some of the one-pagers were recompiled to address the concept of Community Economic Development (CED). They were used as part of a staff training program for the EU funded Banffshire Partnership Ltd Access Project. (Access = Advancing Community Capacity for Enterprise Sustainability and Support) For details see the website.  Also on the CED theme, there is a compilation of 30 one-pagers dealing with Project Planning and Management.

Since 2002 there has been a change of pattern. I have been preparing new one-pagers which have a subjective feel. Stories appear from the unconscious and I blog them – they are then on a chronological stack. Every now and then I review the posts and create compilation booklets on an emerging theme. The fact that this is possible suggests that the unconscious is better organized than it sometimes seems.

The recent compilations have been made available through www.scribd.com . They can be read online or downloaded for free as a pdf file.

• With agency in mind - on the road to easy peace May 2011 (34 pages)   A booklet of a website. A rough guide to mind training and meditation - Let it begin with me.
• Muse flows in the zone- below the tip of the iceberg – 09 June 2011 (47 pages)  A compilation of 22 short articles dealing with the influence of the unconscious on patterns of creative thinking and feeling.
• Witnessing the attention centre - switching on the light – 27 June 2011 (37 pages) This compilation uses a range of figures of speech to deal poetically with the subjective experience of (a) an attention centre inside your head and (b) the enlightening possibility of a conscious witness to the contents of that attention centre
• Towards uncommon sense - a spiritual journey - 25 March 2013 (15 pages)   A compilation of seven short essays dealing with aspects of one man’s spiritual journey.

There is some repetition of thoughts both within and between compilations. But I see this as useful in that it helps to consolidate lines of thought and also to demonstrate the gradual evolution of thoughts and viewpoints. There is no end to making sense.

To hold the ‘spiritual’ one-pagers online there were first websites and then blogs. In the following list the first three are now archives. The 4th gets about three new stories each week.

1. The Essence of Faiths - Whispers from everywhere 
2. Let it begin with me - A rough guide to mind training and meditation
3. Existential Soft Rock - mental re-construction through just sitting - be still and know
4. Changing Minds – thinking outside of the box

The one-pagers are like lego bricks. Different people can compile them in different ways to make different themes.

Indeed, mony mickle ideas mak muckle themes