Rewriting Earth's Future One Page at a Time

The New Paradigm Press Vision:
Three Choices, Three Commitments
 
 

I: A Choice of Paradigms

par·a·digm:   A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline. 

    In his audio presentation The Secrets to Manifesting Your Destiny, Dr. Wayne Dyer identifies two fundamentally different and competing paradigms on which pretty much all human religions, philosophies and cosmological belief systems are based. 

    In the first – the worldview most people born into Western societies have been raised to believe – the universe is a Divine Monarchy, with God as the king and we humans as subjects, inferior to the king in every way, and with animals, plants, rocks, etc. being similarly inferior to us in the Holy pecking order.  Essentially, there is a "Heavenly Boss" – usually envisioned as male – who controls and judges the inhabitants of his kingdom, and who is in every way separate from us and from physical Creation and Nature as we know it.  Whether considered an artist or task-master, a loving father or angry judge, the all-male God of the Divine Monarchy is a wholly supernatural being, large and in charge, separate in every way from his Creation and all the creatures residing within it. 

    Religions based on the Divine Monarchy paradigm (Christianity, Judaism and Islam being the most visible, though by no means the only, examples) mostly teach their adherents that we human subjects of the Divine King are intrinsically untrustworthy, born into sin and corruption, lowly creatures so completely disconnected from our Heavenly Creator that a mechanism for re-linking (the derivational root of the word Religion) is required to grant us any hope of escaping our fallen state.  How this re-linking is to be accomplished, the King's "Salvation Plan" for his "chosen" subjects, differs from Monarchic religion to religion, but the core issue for we humans is the same in each – entering the world as broken, constitutionally flawed beings, conceived in sin, originally stained and untrustworthy, no power on Earth, not even Salvation, can ever really allow us to trust ourselves.  The Divine Monarchy paradigm encourages us to trust God (that "purity" existing wholly beyond our stained selves and world), but never our personal human worth, strength or value. It admonishes us to embrace, trust and follow God's "Word" as revealed in the Bible or Torah or Koran (and as interpreted by the boss's appointed hierarchy of "middle managers," the world's priests, ministers, rabbis, imams, etc.), but never our own insights, understanding, feelings or direct, sensual experience of reality.  Everything good, right and trustworthy, by definition in the Divine Monarchy view of the universe, must come from without.  Such a worldview, starting as it does from a basic assumption of fallenness, of our fundamental separation from and inferiority to Divinity, leads inexorably to personal disempowerment and individual surrender of authority to forces and institutions outside ourselves who at least appear to hold high positions in the Divine King's Holy Court. 

    The competing worldview, in stark contrast to that of the Divine Monarchy, acknowledges no boss or god outside reality, or even necessarily that an "outside" to reality exists at all.  In this second, non-hierarchical view, God (or Goddess; gender is usually either balanced or a simple non-issue in this view) is a force, an energy, a loving, all-embracing intelligence that inhabits and flows through all things, including us.  Not only are we NOT separate from this God/dess-Force, we are it, we're wholly made up of it, as are all things in the universe.  In this wholistic (Holy-istic) worldview, the universe as we know it is energetically alive, Divine, a physical manifestation of God/dess actively, even playfully, using the illusion of separateness to discover and experience him/her/it self through the vehicle of material reality, through the very personal and powerful senses, thoughts, insights, understandings, feelings and direct sensual experience of creatures like you and me (and animals, plants, and rocks, too).   As Dr. Dyer phrases it, "YOU are what God is doing..." 

    This wholistic worldview tells us that true separateness, from God/dess and/or from each other, no matter how strongly we might experience the illusion of disconnection in our daily lives, is in reality the least likely possibility in all the universe –  that all and everything (including us) is made of God/dess, that God/dess is The All, and that there is no place or thing or person anywhere in all the universe that stands truly separate from this all-encompassing God/dess-Force.  Dr. Dyer compares Divinity, in this view, to an ocean, and each individual creature (human, animal, plant, etc.) to a glass.  Dipped into and filled by that ocean of God/dess-Force, what's in the glass is not as big, strong, all knowing, all powerful, etc. as the ocean it's drawn from, but it's still Divine.  It's still Holy, magical, miraculous.  All the glasses, all creatures everywhere, are filled from this same miraculous source, and enough glasses joined together, pouring themselves as one into the task of creating a better world, flowing together in the same consciously-chosen, positive direction, can move mountains, raise continents, carve enduring structures like Arizona's Grand Canyon, and bring glorious new life to once dry and barren landscapes. 

    Some religions embracing this worldview envision reality as a great web, in which individuals are nodes, or swirls of energy, or points of intersection, connected to all other such points by strands of living God/dess-Force.  Others view the universe as one living, intelligent organism, and we creatures (and planets and suns and solar systems and galaxies, etc.) as cells and organs within its body, interconnected and interdependent, all serving the greater life of the One.  The metaphors vary, but what all belief systems centered in the wholistic paradigm have in common, based as they are on an assumption of fundamental interconnectivity, equality and ultimate unity, is that they lead their adherents toward personal, planetary and cosmic empowerment, and to the acceptance of individual responsibility for the health, happiness and successful evolutionary advancement of the whole.

New Paradigm Press is committed to publishing and promoting the work of authors who fearlessly explore and enthusiastically endorse this second, wholistic paradigm, in all its ancient and contemporary expressions in human belief. 
 
 

The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.

    As our species evolves to embrace wholistic spiritual and scientific paradigms, the first and perhaps greatest roadblock we are likely to encounter is the entrenchment of the Divine Monarchy model in the structure of pretty much all our current social and cultural institutions.  From rigidly hierarchical corporations, government agencies and military organizations, to strict nuclear models of the "Traditional Family," to economies, laws and closed social networks favoring one race over others, men over women, rich over poor, the reflection of the Divine King's top-down rule can be seen underlying every core institution of Western society. 

    The predictable end-goal of Divine Monarchy culture, and of the religious, military, governmental and business institutions embodying it in every country, is homogenous globalism , i.e., planetary unity based on the imposition on all individuals and cultures of the Divine King's perceived values and prescribed way of life.  The motto of Divine Monarchy is Unity Through Conformity.  The religious zealot seeking to "win the world for Christ," or "kill infidels for Allah," the corporate billionaire dreaming of a Capitalist planet of hypnotized, happy consumers, and the U.S. President carrying "Democracy" to foreign lands at the end of a tank muzzle all share the same core belief that, "The world will be happier/freer/safer/better when everybody looks, thinks, works, shops, worships, loves and lives just like me!" ... and, of course, just like the very "me-like" god they invariably imagine to be in charge of the universe. 

    Homogenous globalism creates unity by oppressing or erasing difference, whether accomplished through wholesale genocide, through social stratification based on racial, gender or economic factors, or even through "social sabotage," as when the U.S. Government gives free televisions to Native Americans in a bid to entice their youth to embrace pop-culture, thus breaking the power of Tribal tradition and its influence on beliefs about right use of Native-owned lands. Homogenous globalism's base metaphor is that of the machine, mindlessly consuming resources, people and cultures, and punching out in its wake an endless stream of identical human replacement cogs to ensure its own unchanging, eternal survival. 

    The end-goal of wholistic paradigm culture, on the other hand, is diverse globalism, or planetary unity built on a fundamental assumption of individual and cultural equality, and on the conscious maintenance and celebration of difference.  The motto of diverse globalism is Unity Through Respect.  Agreeing that the God/dess-Force inhabits and flows through all things (and all people), there can be no reason or justification for oppression.  Diversity becomes a valued teacher, granting us, in Humanity's rainbow spectrum of beliefs, lifestyles and cultural nuances, an ever-deepening understanding of the God/dess-Force in all his/her/its awesome complexity.  Recognizing that that there is no place or thing or person anywhere in all the universe that stands truly separate from this all-encompassing God/dess-Force, we come together as one, without sacrificing individuality or our unique cultural identities.  Together, we create a global human culture and identity whose base metaphor is organism: 

An organized being; a living body, either vegetable or animal, composed of different organs or parts with functions which are separate, but mutually dependent, and essential to the life of the individual.

New Paradigm Press is committed to publishing and promoting the work of authors pursuing a clear-minded study of human culture, who initiate the re-examination and "Organic Re-visioning" of all present social and cultural institutions, and who work hard toward the creation and long-term nurturing of a diverse global society based on the principle of Unity Through Respect.
 
 

    It is not only we human subjects of the Divine King who find ourselves judged broken, flawed, incapable of self-repair and therefore in need of Salvation from without under the Divine Monarchy worldview – all of Nature is similarly cursed.  Such thinking seems to lead quite "naturally" to the belief that the Earth itself, all of physical Creation, is defective and somehow inherently evil, and that not only are the "things of the flesh" (sexual pleasure, dancing, intoxication etc.) somehow "unclean" and to be avoided, all of Nature is equally "stained" and must eventually be "recycled" through a process of "Tribulation" and Apocalyptic destruction that people should not only NOT work to avoid, but that they can potentially reap Heavenly rewards for helping to manifest. 

    This sad combination of personal disempowerment and rejection of Nature (or, stated actively, longing for Apocalypse) creates a volatile recipe for exactly the kind of religious Fundamentalism (extreme lack of self-trust) and the associated terrorism we see inspiring larger and larger chunks of Earth's population every day ("terrorism" defined here as violence serving the goal of elevating one's accepted Divine King to global prominence and imposing his unique brand of homogenous globalism on the world –  a definition that as accurately describes Christian/Capitalist America's 2003 war against Iraq as it does the more obvious Islam-inspired violence of Al-Qaeda and similar groups we more freely assign the "terrorist" label.  The dark seeds of this violent End-Times vision can be found as rampantly sown within the literature of the New Age movement, where "Apocalypse" and "Tribulation" have been renamed "Earth Changes" and "Planetary Cleansing," as in the most frightening pronouncements of American AM "Bible Prophecy Radio" broadcasts or Talaban declarations of Jihad against the West, so it's no simple "Us VS Them," "East VS West, or "ancient VS modern" scenario. 

    However dissimilar their descriptive details, all human belief systems rooted in the Divine Monarchy worldview follow remarkably resonant paths to the same dark future, in which a series of increasingly violent clashes leads to a "final battle" in which one "King" wins out and subjugates the world.  Whether the "King" in question is Yahweh, Allah, Uncle Sam, Corporate Hegemony or an angry Gaia shaking off overpopulated humans like fleas or cancer cells is largely irrelevant.  The end-goal is the same, as is the underlying paradigm.  Divine Monarchy belief systems see history as a linear process unfolding in time, moving always from the past toward the future, away from a perceived ancient "Golden Age" through various periods of increasing chaos and degradation, toward an inevitable collapse and (in most cases) renewal in a new Golden Age reflecting the values of the particular system's chosen Divine King.  Each Tradition divides winners from losers, sheep from goats, the saved from the damned differently, but they all keep such score cards, pretty much all guaranteeing their own adherents top, or even sole billing in the winner's column. 

    The inevitable future for life on Earth under the Divine Monarchy paradigm, in all its guises, is no future at all –  escalating warfare and destruction culminating in mass extinction, to be followed for the "chosen few," in even the very "best case scenario," by the imposition on survivors of a homogenous global theocracy. 

    Systems based on the wholistic paradigm view the concepts of time and history in a variety of ways, from a circle or spiral turning endlessly back around on itself (as reflected in cycles of reincarnation, in the Earth's changing seasons, or the great spinning wheels of the galaxies in motion), to a necessary device God/dess-Force built into the universe to "divide eternity" and make the illusion of separateness convincing in order to create a "temporal playground" where God/dess-Force might encounter him/her/it self, to a complete sham all together, perpetrated by our brains' taking note of entropic decay in our physical environment.  But none embrace a one-directional, linear model, not even "brass tacks" physics, which postulates any number of conditions under which time may move backward, where decaying closed systems can be spontaneously renewed, and in which the simultaneous existence of past, present and future might one day allow for real-world human travel along the "time line." 

    Wholism sees all life as dynamically evolving, physically, socially and spiritually, which is the exact opposite of the "progressive decay" model embraced by Divine Monarchy.  Wholism accepts no "set" future, no final judgment, no inescapable damnation or inevitable global destruction.  Wholistic paradigm belief systems may view reality as a school, a game, a growing organism pulsing with life, or any number of other disparate metaphors, but the common core message is that the world is good, life is good, Nature is good, people are good, and that all reality, including us, is constructed in such a way as to not only allow for, but to encourage and support human growth, health, abundance, and the continual strengthening, deepening, development and expansion of every individual, in service to that greater ocean of God/dess-Force from which each of our personal "glasses" have been drawn, and to which we return again and again for renewal as we progress along our evolutionary journey. 

    There is no "inevitable future" for Humanity or life on Earth under the wholistic paradigm.  In this view, the future is an unwritten page, a potential work we progressively author, individually and collectively, with the "pen" of our every choice, thought and action. 

    Wholism offers a choice of futures.  If Humanity's destiny is to be destroyed in violence, tribulation and apocalyptic fire, it will be because we have chosen that future for ourselves and have worked hard to bring it about.  If our destiny is to evolve toward full humanity in a peaceful world that nurtures life, values growth, and stands as a fitting tribute to both the glorious Cosmos we inhabit and our own highest potential as a species, it will be because we have chosen this future and worked hard to bring it into being...  Or as the late, great shaman, author, teacher and cultural anthropologist Carlos Castaneda wisely phrased it, "We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same." 

    Wholism encourages recognition that human destiny is not going anywhere on its own –  it is being driven, toward apocalypse or toward evolution, by every concrete, real-world choice made in each moment by individual, flesh and blood human beings.  We are not, as famed 18th Century Divine Monarchy orator Jonathan Edwards preached, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God..."  We are, instead, human beings held securely in our own and each other's very capable hands, bearing full responsibility for every detail of the Heavens or Hells we choose to create, for ourselves and for all the living creatures with whom we share Earth's biosphere.  Nature has equipped us with everything we need to evolve endlessly and unfettered, as individuals and as a species, to work our way to presently unimaginable heights of consciousness and community.  Whether we choose to invest these resources in the creation of miracles or horrors, in the manifestation of our brightest dreams or darkest nightmares, is entirely up to us. 

New Paradigm Press is committed to publishing and promoting the work of authors who are actively and wholistically rewriting Earth's future – authors whose work encourages individuals to at all times express their highest personal potential, while making daily efforts toward awakening all Humanity to an evolutionary view of time, history and our individual and collective responsibility for the conscious creation of a future worthy of our highest ideals as a species.