One of the great shocks encountered in development comes from the realization that your perception of reality and reality itself are often very, very different. Dr. Aquino alludes to this in “Black Magic” in his discussion of cutting a Moebius strip and how what we think will happen is at marked odds with what does happen. Learning the differences between our perception and reality and developing skills for being more capable of perceiving reality underlies the Setian emphasis on learning things like stage magic, mentalism, geometry, and formal logic. This is done not to restrict perception purely to mimic the objective universe but to train it to create clear-sighted focus when needed.
The fundamental system that underlies our experience as humans can be modeled as Self, Others, and Nature. At any point in your existence, your Self will be present, however blurred or focused. At any point in your existence, there will be other perceiving entities with whom you share a capacity to communicate, however explicit or muddled. At any point in your existence, there will be some form of Nature, some form of the objective universe, creating boundary conditions on your experience whether you realize it or not. Each of these fundamental three divisions or domains can affect the other. Your Self can affect the Selves of others, or it can reshape Nature. In turn, there is direct feedback from the affected domain to you, with your effects on others feeding back into your experience of Self or your effects on Nature feeding back into your Self. There can also be indirect effects within such a system. For example, you might directly influence the Selves of others, which leads to changes in Nature, which in turn feed back into your experience of Self.
Looking at the relations of Self, Others, and Nature, directly and indirectly, forms a practical first point for making decisions and understanding impact.
When attempting to make changes within systems, certain pitfalls tend to arise. The first comes in the form of paralysis by analysis. Because systems can be so complex and their effects challenging to see, it is easy to keep analyzing and analyzing the system to the point where no action plan is formed, and nothing is done. The second common pitfall can be considered a kind of “death by planning.” While an end to the analysis of the system has occurred, the focus becomes an obsessive designing of a plan of action, trying to cover every possible outcome. A third pitfall comes from having fallen in love with the plan at the expense of reality. Failures are seen not as a flaw in the plan that needs fixing but rather as a lack of strict adherence to the plan, which must be perfect after so much effort.
The way around these pitfalls is through committing to learning by action. When you have enough of an analysis and a rough action plan, start taking steps to actualize it and integrate feedback from what results. The faster you can do this, and the tighter the loop from analysis to feedback, the faster you can learn and hem your action towards viable results.
Setemheb 