This excerpt from Rethinking Survival follows the sections on Alien Invaders, We’re in a Terrible Mess, and Fresh Start.
It’s written in the voice of who I was in 2014, which now feels like a lifetime ago. But the substance is just as relevant to now as it was then.
Einstein’s New Way of Thinking
Barring biological deformity, everyone everywhere is born with the ability to Think Like Royalty. Einstein exercised this privilege. Using time-tested methods, with discipline and determination, so can the rest of us.
Partaking of our universal inheritance is a matter of individual self-control, not controlling anyone else.
The secret to becoming a genius has been known for thousands of years. Yogis call it Raja Yoga. “Raja” is the Sanskrit word for “king.” “Yoga” means “link” or “union.”
Modern medical researchers correlate ancient teachings with brain science. Breath control methods balance, harmonize and stimulate the right and left hemispheres of the brain. This links the inward and outgoing qualities of intuition and reason. It unites artistic with mathematical aptitudes. It completes the circle of yin and yang. It makes of a half-brain a whole person. A new Adam.
On rare occasions, it’s possible to get the same results naturally or by accident, without being able to articulate the dynamics that explain one’s good fortune. Both sides of Einstein’s brain, for example, were fully operational.
He was a born boundary-spanner. He was an accomplished violinist and philosopher as well as a physicist. Smoking cigars probably gave him some of the benefits of deep breathing. But to the best of our knowledge, at least in this lifetime, he never took yoga classes.
For most of us, however, systematic discipline and interdisciplinary studies accelerate the process. Why is it so important to link the hemispheres of the brain? What’s the ultimate spiritual benefit? It opens up the two-way street of the “highway to heaven.”
As imaged in the Quantum Life Wheel, it links the outer world of daily experience with the inner world of inspiration and guidance. It gives one the capacity to both hear and do. It makes philosophers of kings, and kings of philosophers. The best of both worlds are combined to achieve Aristotle’s ideal of a philosopher king.
This heightened human ability actualizes the scriptural promise, “With God, all things are possible.” The emphasis is on “with.” Lacking Divine Connection, human existence remains incomplete, an empty shell of unfilled dreams.
The ability to think like a genius isn’t a guarantee that life will always be peachy, however. In his wisdom, God the Father doesn’t always gives his kids whatever they want.
We can always ask. But we may not always like the answers. Nor, from our limited perspective, can we comprehend them.
But the facts of life remain the same: it’s a two-way street.
Living on the surface, blocking out conscience and ignoring the center has awful consequences. So does rejecting the world. There’s hell to pay for turning the responsibility for government over to others. Survival depends on balancing and coordinating the hemispheres of the brain, and on linking the three levels of Creation.
Listen!
In high school, I wrote this angst poem:
Somewhere, / Somehow, Something / Is terribly wrong.
Where to look? / What to fight?”
Revisiting it in the ’80s, I added:
Have I called not loud enough,
Searched not far enough?
And then an answer:
In shouting you missed it.
You listened not quiet enough.
Still later, in 2000:
Look no further. / No need to fight, / when you’re focused
on what’s eternally right.
The Quantum Life Wheel images the viable, inward way out of endless revolutionary cycles which only replace one set of tyrants with another. Clever social theories and angry rhetoric make matters worse. On the surface of the wheel of fortune, attempts at qualitative change are futile. The key is missing. It lies within.
Daily life is often fragmented and noisy to the point of being life-threatening. Those who intend to survive need to step away from the fray to start over with a quiet attitude of truth seeking.
They will need to be armed with courage and willingness to follow where their conclusions lead.
This requires the ability to ignore distractions. Cultivating mindful quietness is essential. This is one of the benefits of working with the Book of Change or the next generation Quantum Life Wheel as a decision-making tool.
Atheist intellectuals who depend exclusively on reason put themselves at risk. They’ve forfeited their native inheritance. They’re so busy running around inside their heads that they get no deeper. By blocking out inner levels with denials, they’ve become deaf to the still inner voice of conscience.
But survival depends on the ability to LISTEN! Really listen.
There are many resources describing the process of meditation. Initially, dwelling on artifacts, pictures or mantras may help quiet the noisy mind. But going really deep requires more. It entails summoning up the courage to quiet the physical senses and delve deeper yet.
Use The Quantum Life Wheel as a Measuring Stick
The Quantum Paradigm offers a contemporary approach to thinking in a holistic, integrated way. Here are a few basics:
- No either – ors. A valid worldview satisfies both head and heart, intellect and intuition. If a belief system offends reason, it’s not complete. If it offends the heart, lacks compassion. or is counter-intuitive, that’s also not the comprehensive, positive way.
- No more dividing the world into all good or all bad, white collar versus blue collar, jocks versus nerds, saints or sinners.
Humans on Planet Earth are complicated mixes of contradictory qualities that surface in different ways at different times over the course of a lifetime. So:
- No hero-worshiping. No scapegoating. Give the benefit of the doubt. Give people a chance. Hope for the best.
- Keep the open mind, not closed. Relax. Take a calm approach. Work for the pinnacle overview. Work for moderation, with respect for all sides.
- Step back from the noisy, conflict-generating approach. Truth-seeking is not a fight or a contest. It’s a search for what’s helpful and hopeful.
- Look at the world around you with the fresh eyes of a curious child as Einstein did. Connect the dots. Look for underlying similarities. Ask, How do things work?
- KISS. “Keep it simple, stupid.” Back to the truly basic, with an attitude of humility.
- Thou shalt not adulterate. Don’t accept only what’s convenient and reject the challenging. Don’t tamper with the facts or the teachings, and never ever be tempted to spin (i.e., deceive either yourself or others).
At this point in time, the world’s belief systems have been adulterated, distorted and misrepresented. So accept that familiar, comfortable beliefs are bound to be an admix. They’re approximately thirty percent TRUTH to seventy parts dross. Make it your responsibility to choose wisely:
- Cleave to the best. Leave the rest. Never, however, be conned into quitting. Don’t throw the precious baby out with the dirty bath water. Dig deeper than vested interests in ego and nationality-turf. Where human survival is concerned, there are no patent rights.
- Don’t act on the false premise that because knowledge is power, it’s okay to hide it, hoard it, and make people pay out the nose for your version of it. Depend instead on the truth written in your heart, into your very DNA. The rest will follow.
- Let go of intellectual pride. Release the baggage of fanatical attachments to one’s own ways and aversion to everyone else’s. Think deeper than social constructs. Both divine right and class struggle theories are man-made, self-serving static. They distract away from the heart of truth.
Seeing through the filters of fanatical extremes is blinding. They’re generated at gut level, not from head or heart. So:
- Settle down. SHUT UP! Think. Really think. Then ask, “Where am I centered?” If from the gut, look higher. GO DEEP. Like a truth explorer, travel to where the right answers are to be found.
- No more us-versus-them, aligning with allies (right or wrong) and rejecting outsiders on the basis of national-political affiliation.
We’re all at risk on the same endangered planet. If the misguided Titanic sinks, we all go down.
The real enemies are the alien invaders and their agents. They’re embedded in every land, in every organization and every class, clandestinely working to undermine conscience and steer the human species towards extinction. It takes a quiet focused mind to recognize who’s who.
We’re never alone. But both sides are broadcasting. Be sure you’re tuned in to the survival station.
Patricia West is author of The Common Sense Book of Change and Two Sides of a Coin: Lao Tze’s Common Sense Way of Change. She’s current working The Phoenix Response: Dying To Be Reborn – in the Same Lifetime.