My name is Pat West. I’m a boundary-spanner by nature and created my personal interdisciplinary learning program to fill in what’s missing from traditional schools. I earned a Ph.D. in Educational Administration for the credential to help others do the same. My vision: a School-Without-Walls where mentors from all walks of life link with self-responsible students to design a purpose-based program of study, to identify and tap into the resources required to achieve their learning goals, and then earn a degree as proof of competence.

What you need to know about me and my work is summed up in You Are Already ENOUGH:

My WHY at the center of the Life Wheel is to pay the life-saving benefits of what I’ve learned in life forward.

My HOW at the middle,  e = energy level of the Wheel is to share this information by publishing books and creating a YouTube channel – Rethinking Change.When funds are available, I will market Life Flow, a game similar to Robert Kiyasaki’s Cash Flow, to reincarnate the Book of Change as an entertaining educational tool.

My WHAT on the material, m = mass level,  is to succeed in communicating worldwide to as many as possible the powerful potential for good inherent in the Life Wheel. Associating this vision of wholeness and inborn unity with our deepest desires kindles the courage to overcome fear of change, eliminate the illusion of “not-enoughness” and heal the emptiness we feel but don’t know how to fill.

My envisioned end RESULT, then, is to redeem Einstein’s formula with the positive applications Buckminster Fuller foresaw, restoring sanity to a fractured world, one person at a time.

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What +A Offers

Books on Positive Change from the +A Positive Action Press present useful tools for self-analysis and decision-making.

• The Common Sense Book of Change is an easy-to-read introduction to the time-tested decision-making manual, the Chinese I Ching.

• Two Sides of a Coin: Lao Tze’s Common Sense Way of Change is a version of the Tao Te Ching that underscores its connection to I Ching and yoga science.

• You Are Already Enough! How Would Your Life CHANGE If You Really Believed It? links the world’s most successful transformational systems, enduring wisdom traditions and quantum physics to validate the genius of the Life Wheel which embodies Einstein’s Unified Field Theory.

• Rethinking Survival: Getting to the Positive Paradigm of Change is a personal reflection on Einstein’s warning, “We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” It offers an innovative structure and helpful method for approaching personal change.

• The Positive Paradigm Handbook shows how change agents can personalize the Wheel of Change. It includes a step-by-step method for putting the Life Wheel into action and introduces the MPI (Motive–Purpose–Intent) Standard used to increase self-awareness.

The Author

This work reflects my personal evolution. Einstein, a fellow violinist, along with the biblical musician-poet-warrior King David, were early heroes. I earned my B.A. At Oberlin College with equal emphasis on comparative world history, literature and philosophy, at the same time performing in the Conservatory Orchestra and string ensembles as an amateur.

Shakespeare, whose musical language was surely based on familiarity with string instruments, was the focus of an M.A. In English Literature from the UW-Madison. Travel abroad further deepened my understanding of human nature. I practiced yoga on the banks of the river Ganges in Rishikesh, India. In Düsseldorf, Germany, I participated in Sandor Vegh’s international violin class at the Robert Schumann Konservatorium. During this time I also became acquainted with Jung’s work, including his classic introduction to the Wilhem/Baynes translation of the Chinese I Ching.

At the UW-Madison, the process of earning a Ph.D. in Educational Administration exposed me to the politics of education. Though unpopular at the time (!), my response to Affirmative Action was that it missed the point. Not only was it unenforceable. It would trigger backlash. I recommended Positive Action as a viable alternative for achieving the legislation’s valid goals. Hence the name of the Positive Action Press.

Later, while working in healthcare jobs, I trained along-side pioneers of the holistic health movement. There were benefits and abuses on both sides. In addition, temporary job assignments gave me abundant opportunities to combine ethnology research methods with I Ching analysis to grow my understanding of workplace dynamics.

During the “yoga years,” I spent personal time in Spring Green, enjoying the hospitality of an extended family of Frank Lloyd Wright apprentices. These adventures, along with many others, are shared in the memoir section of Rethinking Survival.

I’m currently retired, content to live quietly in rural Wisconsin, writing as time permits.