PREVIEW

Why You Will Want To Read Rethinking

Albert Einstein is the real hero of Rethinking Survival. As the times grow increasingly dangerous, readers worldwide are becoming increasingly ready to heed the prophetic warnings of this universally loved and respected genius. “We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.”

Rethinking Survival answers that urgent need. It appeals to everyone who recognizes that, as Einstein warned, we’re at a crossroads of civilization. Human survival can no longer be taken for granted. We either change how we think or go extinct. Readers everywhere will welcome the Positive Paradigm of Change as a solution to the madness of our conflict-ridden world. Like Einstein’s famous formula, its deceptively simple form belies its powerful potential.

Readers of every age, gender and persuasion will marvel at the irony that Einstein already had the Unified Field Theory. He just didn’t know it. As West reveals here, he missed it because he lacked the Positive Paradigm model of concentric circles into which light, energy and mass are placed in a two-directional, infinite continuum.

Einstein’s fans will rejoice that the Positive Paradigm of Change answers his short-term sorrow. Destructive applications of his inspired theory — horrific atomic bomb explosions — aren’t the end of his story. Here she  gives us the opportunity to offset earlier abuse with opposite and equally unifying results.

Readers looking to simplify and improve their lives can work with Rethinking‘s list of challenging questions. The answers will bring clarity to inner organization and give new perspective to daily life.

The growing international community of yoga teachers and their students will welcome the Positive Paradigm of Change as the optimal “road map for living a more evolved life.” Practitioners can use the Positive Paradigm model to deepen their yoga practice.

Psychologists as well as those employed in the arts and sciences will be especially interested in the dynamics of creativity, inspiration and genius. So will teacher-trainers who want to invoke the creative spirit in their students.

The section called “To Be or Not To Be: Beliefs and Information Make the Difference” is a must-read for anyone troubled by suicidal thoughts. Those who need to understand a friend or help family members on the brink can give them Rethinking Survival as a gift of love and hope.

Readers may also be curious about how the Positive Paradigm of Change came into being. It took an outsider — a non-conformist Jew in pre-Nazi Germany — to give the world the theory of relativity. It’s taken a complimentary voice — a woman non-conformist, a musician who from early years identified with Einstein as a fellow violinist — to complete what he started. Her personal quest for answers lend adventure, humor and human interest to Rethinking, giving balance to its more serious side.

West focuses the Positive Paradigm like a laser beam to illumine a wide range of subjects. These include leadership and the future of democracy, education and discrimination, as well as love and creativity.

Her personal story will especially resonate with readers disillusioned by abuse of authority. Victims of both genders as well as the perpetrators of sexual abuse will read Rethinking for insight as to how authority figures in every walk of life — from parents to politicians, priests and gurus — can go so horribly wrong. Those who have rejected not only religions but the timeless teachings as a result of abuse will find in Rethinking Survival a way to redeem their faith as she did: “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

OVERVIEW

Purpose and Plan

West’s profoundly held purpose is to show as many readers as possible how to find clarity in the midst of confusing, challenging times by:

Informing. Rethinking Survival exposes the underlying causes of worldwide conflict. Dysfunctional paradigms (faulty hardware) and false assumptions (bugs in the software) combine to produce disastrous results.“Garbage in, garbage out.” She warns against ineffective tampering with surface symptoms.

­Entertaining. Personal anecdotes describing travel abroad, in Europe as well as India, and working inside major institutions — including Ross Perot’s EDS Federal — will surprise and amaze. There’s even occasional laugh to lighten up an otherwise heavy subject, providing balance to its challenging side.

Warning. Rethinking warns against the danger of falling into negative traps in reaction to hard times. Fear and anger close the heart and mind, making matters worse. “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.”

Inspiring. Rethinking updates the perennial paradigm with simplicity and clarity, showing its practical applications. It encourages readers to focus on our common humanity, refusing to be blinded by divisive rhetoric. It sees hard times as blessings in disguise. They open windows of opportunity that lead to positive change.

PREMISE

The Danger

Programmed assumptions too often drive our decisions, actions and ultimately, survival options. Even with the best of intentions, misinformed people operating on conflicting beliefs destroy themselves and others. Sometimes the process is quick. Suicide. Murder. Usually it’s slower — atrophy and self-sabotage.

The connection between skewed thinking and disastrous results is mirrored in the global disconnect between policy and practice. Knowledge deficits are directly responsible for bankrupt economies, personal and international alike.

In the United States, politicians of both parties use psychological scare tactics to polarize the public. They warn with phony threats, at the same time, putting all of us at risk. Like Nero who fiddled while Rome burned, leaders alienate us with disgraceful partisan bickering. At the same time, they avoid the real dangers which threaten to burst the bubble of illusory progress with excruciating finality.

Along with an equally culpable media, misinformed leaders are placing us in grave peril. Shifting to a complete and accurate paradigm while there’s still precious time is the best hope of survival.

This is the task West has set out to accomplish in Rethinking Survival: Getting to the Positive Paradigm of Change.

The Opportunity

From personal experience, Pat West argues persuasively that the way out of terminal confusion begins with adopting a correct and complete worldview. For surprisingly powerful answers, West returns to what Aldus Huxley called “the perennial philosophy,” giving it new life.

In the context of this enduring tradition, she shows that the world-loved Tao Te Ching and Einstein’s famous formula, e = mc^2, both express the same dynamics which are also encoded in the ancient Chinese Book of Change.

The three variables of Einstein’s formula are each assigned its correct place within the Positive Paradigm Wheel. She then defines light, energy and mass both in terms of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the Yoga Sutras. This model pictures an elegantly simple yet complete reality map. It meets the Occam’s Razor standard: maximum inclusiveness with greatest brevity.

To the left-brain, this sounds a bit complicated at first. However, complimentary illustrations which speak to the right side of the brain make this process intuitively easy to understand, even obvious.

The result answers the dilemma and possible solution suggested by comparative religion legend Joseph Campbell:

We don’t have a mythology for people recognizing the humanity of a person on the other side of the hemisphere. I’ve often wondered if some of the notions coming out of quantum physics, quantum interconnectedness, don’t express that.

The Positive Paradigm is:

. . . a new, inclusive reality map, one people worldwide can easily comprehend and agree upon. It is equally compatible with scriptures and science, bridging the gap between them. It fulfills Einstein’s intuited search for the Unified Field Theory, picturing how all parts of creation are related, interwoven and interdependent.

Working with the Positive Paradigm empowers the “substantially new manner of thinking,” which, Einstein said, is necessary “if mankind is to survive.”

For thousands of years, this genesis formula, the very heart of the creative process, was hidden as the secret treasure of initiates. Its knowledge was transmitted exclusively to qualified students in the inner circles of monastic schools. When Einstein intuited the theory of relativity and made it available to the general public, its long-foreseen abuse materialized. To Einstein’s horror, it was misused to explode atomic bombs.

This context justifies making the positive application of Einstein’s inspired vision equally public now. For in its traditional context, this three-part formula is an essential piece of the knowledge puzzle. It has the powerful potential to offset earlier abuse with opposite and equally unifying results. A timely shift to the Positive Paradigm could tip the scales of history in favor of human survival.

The Positive Paradigm of Change also offers the practical means for completing John F. Kennedy’s unfinished work. When he went toe-to-toe with Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy succeeded in averting the threat of thermonuclear war — Einstein’s worst nightmare. However, the President’s vision of the future, outlined in a speech that should have been given the night of November 22, 1963, the date his assassination, remains as our legacy and responsibility:

. . . our duty as a Party is not to our Party alone, but to the nation, and, indeed, to all mankind. Our duty is not merely the preservation of political power but the preservation of peace and freedom. So let us not be petty when our cause is so great. Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our Nation’s future is at stake.¹

West is adamant that the timeless teachings are the common heritage of all humanity. They aren’t the exclusive property of a particular culture or class. The most powerful ideas are, paradoxically, the most simple. They deserve to be expressed in the clearest language with fewest words possible, free of cultural bias and distortions – accessible to anyone with basic reading skills and an open heart.

This was the premise of her Common Sense Book of Change and now, its further distillation in the Positive Paradigm of Change. Among its virtually limitless applications, the Positive Paradigm Wheel — like the venerable I Ching — is an effective method for introspection and decision-making. It’s well-suited to the short attention span of the current fractured times, but yields many of the same benefits.

West concludes: The Positive Paradigm of Change is the ultimate answer to the ultimate question, “What is that, knowing which, all else is known?” It’s proof that humans are made in the image of the Creator — the microcosm mirrors the macro. It’s the universal confirmation that everyone everywhere is inherently okay.

In sum: Just as the Titanic’s designers failed to recognize the ship’s fatal flaw, today’s religious and political leaders, acting on misinformation, are steering the planet ever closer to the brink of destruction. Presented here for the first time, the Positive Paradigm of Change offers the hopeful opportunity to rethink our collective future, shift away from the current collision course towards disaster and ensure human survival.

THE FORMAT

Three sections approach the Positive Paradigm of Change from different perspectives:

PART ONE: GETTING THERE: WHO I AM TO SAY is autobiographical. It tells the story of how my ideas evolved. It was written to answer readers’ questions. Who wrote this? What is the author’s personal background? What are her professional qualifications? How did she choose this subject? Why is she writing, and why did she wait so long to do so?

This section was originally written as the blueprint for an expanded version. However, I’ve opted to keep it simple. Too many pages increase the production costs, and in turn, the book’s price. What’s relevant to the paradigm has been included. What isn’t has been saved, perhaps for another day.

PART TWO, THE POSITIVE PARADIGM, describes the Positive Paradigm of Change in depth. Readers are invited to work with the model to instill Einstein’s “new way of thinking.” The paradigm wheel is used to define key concepts like creativity and love. Democracy is also subject to the laser scrutiny of the Positive Paradigm.

PART THREE. ATHEISM ANSWERED takes atheism head on, putting it in Positive Paradigm context. “Atheists who deny the existence of God might as well argue that atoms have no nucleus, or that the solar system has no sun.” Gladwell’s David and Goliath is also placed in Positive Paradigm Context. Open letters to Vladimir Putin, George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Glenn Beck demonstrate the connection between between ideas, practical politics and survival. Readers are called on to participate actively as connectors and salesmen, tipping us in the direction of a Positive Paradigm shift.