WASHINGTON—A report released Monday by the Pew Research Center revealed that a growing number of American fifth-graders are opting to take a gap year to unwind from the stresses of elementary education and recharge themselves before taking on the rigors of middle school. “We found that it’s increasingly common for kids to put off enrolling in the sixth grade for a year and instead give themselves the freedom to focus all their energy on relaxation and personal growth,” the report read in part, adding that many 11-to-12-year-olds see the break as a time to step back and reflect on what they’ve learned about topics such as the California Gold Rush, decimal place values, and earthquakes, as well as to ponder what they want to get out of their middle school years. “While some fifth-graders still take the classic approach of traveling in the hopes of finding themselves, a significant number prefer to just play out in the yard or visit the zoo a lot. And if the trend continues, it may soon be the norm for kids to spend a year learning a specialized skill, such as getting really good at riding their bike with no hands or seeing how many Twizzlers they can fit in their mouth, rather than reflexively moving up to the next grade.” The report also noted that for many students, the decision was primarily driven by money, as 12 extra months of allowance would provide financial breathing room once they started junior high.
The Lord of Oppression can be a tricky influence, because it indicates blocked energy and thwarted Will – both of these can work against us in our lives, causing frustration and confusion.Very often the reason that this situation arises is because we are unable to clearly communicate our feelings on a given topic, to somebody who has strong influence over our lives. We repress our inmost needs and, instead, present a bland and safe mask to the outside world.So on a day ruled by this card, there are certain processes you need to go through in order to work out what the problem is. First of all, consider whether this is a fleeting effect which will pass tomorrow or the next day. If so, then the chances are that regular use of the affirmation will clear your path.However, if you find that you’ve been feeling a bit frustrated for a while, today is the day to get to grips with that. Isolate the things that you really wish you could tell people around you who matter. Then consider why you might not be speaking your mind.There can be many reasons for this – some of them useful and others damaging. Work out whether your silence is serving you well or ill. For instance, it’s not usually a very good idea to tell your boss that some of his habits drive you insane with frustration 😉 If you discover that you do have unexpressed feelings in a situation where it would not be wise to express yourself out loud, then write everything down, and then vent your annoyance by ripping the paper up into several tiny pieces (don’t go directing it at the person.just at the habit, action or event). That should get some of your irritation out of your system!!If you cannot express your feelings because you’re prevented by circumstance – you are out of touch with the person concerned; you’re angry and frustrated about a world event; there seems to be no possible route to the people you need to talk to… the paper trick could work well again. Or alternatively, visualise the person/people you need to speak with, and then tell them exactly how you feel. This act can have a quirky effect in that it often produces a response from the person on the other side of the discussion!And if, finally, you are not expressing yourself openly because you feel that you do not want to do this, you need to consider why. Are you scared of your reception? Are you worried about upsetting somebody? Are you standing on your pride? Or do you simply see no point in expending the energy?If you’re scared of your reception… well considering the frustration that may be building up – perhaps this is a good moment to feel the fear and do it anyway. If you are worried about upsetting somebody, remember.inadvertently perhaps.they are upsetting you. You can express your truth without being unpleasant if you consider what you’re going to say.If you’re standing on your pride, I expect you’ll have to see whether you think doing that is worth causing you this much irritation. And if you cannot see the point, try the visualisation technique to free yourself from repression, or talk the situation through with a friend. Or write it all down and think it over. One of these will work!! .
Affirmation: “I release all repression so my Will flows freely.”
“In awareness there is no becoming, there is no end to be gained. There is silent observation without choice and condemnation, from which comes understanding.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) Indian Philosopher
AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
Published 5:38 PM EST, Wed March 5, 2025 (edition.cnn.com)
Elon Musk leaves following a luncheon with members of the Senate Republican Conference on Capitol Hill on March 5, 2025. KENT NISHIMURA/REUTERS/REUTERS
A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.CNN —
Americans are still in the dark about the scope and scale of what Elon Musk is doing with DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, which is working to drastically shrink the size of government by aiming to cut $1 trillion or more in government spending.
But there’s some insight into what’s driving Musk — namely, an effort to combat what he referred to as “civilizational suicidal empathy.”
During a three-hour interview with the podcaster Joe Rogan released February 28, Musk talked about his deeply held belief in the conspiracy theory that Democrats are working to import as many undocumented immigrants as possible so that they can take over the US government forever.
“If they had another four years, they would legalize enough illegals in the swing states to make the swing states not swing states,” Musk told Rogan. “They would just, they would be blue states. Then they would … win the presidential; they’d win the House, the Senate and the presidency.”
It’s a wild idea along the same lines as the debunked “replacement theory.” And there are many factual holes in the theory, starting with the fact that it’s illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and there’s no direct pathway to citizenship for people who enter the country illegally.
But what came next in the conversation may shine more of a light on what motivates Musk to cut down the size of government, and it melds with his takeover, purchase and founding of companies in the private sector. It’s the belief that empathy for individuals is costly to the collective.
Musk pointed to California’s move to provide medical insurance even to undocumented people who qualify for its low-income Medi-Cal program.
“We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on,” Musk said, borrowing the term from Gad Saad, a Canadian scholar who is also a frequent Rogan host.
While Musk said he believes in empathy and that “you should care about other people,” he also thinks it’s destroying society.
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk said. “There it’s they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”
Empathy, he said, has been “weaponized.”
It’s an important thing to remember as Musk turns his crusade toward the US government. While President Donald Trump has said cuts will not touch safety net programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, except to root out fraud, Musk made clear during the interview that he believes that the concept of Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.”
Walter Isaacson on Elon Musk’s life, ego and ‘lack of empathy’
Musk’s lack of empathy is a theme in the recent biography for which the writer Walter Isaacson was given access to the billionaire throughout his takeover of Twitter.
And Musk’s disregard for individuals employed at his companies is also a throughline in the book, including on production lines at Tesla and at SpaceX, where he is described as quick to fire people.
At each of those companies, Musk expressed a desire to save humanity: with electric cars in the case of Tesla; by making humanity interplanetary in the case of SpaceX; and by sticking up for the First Amendment in the case of Twitter.
“He likes this notion of helping humanity,” Isaacson told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in 2023. “In fact, he has more empathy for humanity in general than he often has for the 20 people around him.
Musk still has that view of himself as a superhero taking risks; he repeatedly told Rogan about his fear of being killed. Now, instead of saving humanity, he believes he is saving the US government by cutting billions of dollars in spending, even if it impacts many Americans’ daily lives — by costing them their jobs or by curtailing government services — in the process.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The world’s darkest material is Vantablack. This super-black coating absorbs 99.96 percent of visible light, creating a visual void. It has many practical applications, like improving the operation of telescopes, infrared cameras and solar panels. I propose we make Vantablack your symbol of power in the coming weeks. It will signify that an apparent void or absence in your life might actually be a fertile opportunity. An ostensible emptiness may be full of potential.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Among their many sensational qualities, rivers have the power to create through demolition and revision. Over the centuries, they erode rock and earth, making canyons and valleys. Their slow and steady transformative energy can be an inspiration to you in the coming months, Taurus. You, too, will be able to accomplish wonders through the strength of your relentless persistence—and through your resolute insistence that some old approaches will need to be eliminated to make way for new dispensations.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Centuries before European sailors ventured across the seas, Polynesians were making wide-ranging voyages around the South Pacific. Their navigations didn’t use compasses or sextants, but relied on analyzing ocean swells, star configurations, cloud formations, bird movements and wind patterns. I bring their genius to your attention, Gemini, because I believe you are gaining access to new ways to read and understand your environment. Subtleties that weren’t previously clear to you are becoming so. Your perceptual powers seem to be growing, and so is your sensitivity to clues from below the visible surface of things. Your intuition is synergizing with your logical mind.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): The Maeslant Barrier is a gigantic, movable barricade designed to prevent the flooding of the Dutch port of Rotterdam. It’s deployed when storms generate surges that need to be repelled. I think we all need metaphorical versions of this protective fortification, with its balance of unstinting vigilance and timely flexibility. Do you have such psychic structures in place, Cancerian? Now would be a good time to ensure that you have them and they’re working properly. A key factor, as you mull over the prospect I’m suggesting, is knowing that you don’t need to keep all your defenses raised to the max at all times. Rather, you need to sense when it’s crucial to assert limits and boundaries—and when it’s safe and right to allow the flow of connection and opportunity.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The authentic alchemists of medieval times were not foolishly hoping to transmute literal lead and other cheap metals into literal gold. In fact, their goal was to change the wounded, ignorant, unripe qualities of their psyches into beautiful, radiant aspects. The coming weeks will be an excellent time for you to do such magic. Life will provide you with help and inspiration as you try to brighten your shadows. We all need to do this challenging work, Leo! Now is one of your periodic chances to do it really well.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Cosmic rhythms are authorizing you to be extra demanding in the coming days—as long as you are not frivolous, rude or unreasonable. You have permission to ask for bigger and better privileges that you have previously felt were beyond your grasp. You should assume you have finally earned rights you had not fully earned before now. My advice is to be discerning about how you wield this extra power. Don’t waste it on trivial or petty matters. Use it to generate significant adjustments that will change your life for the better.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In North America, starlings are an invasive species introduced from Europe in the nineteenth century. They are problematic, competing with native species for resources. They can damage crops and spread diseases that affect livestock. Yet starlings also create the breathtakingly beautiful marvel known as a murmuration. They make mesmerizing, ever-shifting patterns in the sky while moving as one cohesive unit. We all have starling-like phenomena in our lives—people, situations and experiences that arouse deeply paradoxical responses, that we both enjoy and disapprove of. According to my analysis, the coming weeks will be prime time to transform and evolve your relationships with these things. It’s unwise to sustain the status quo. I’m not necessarily advising you to banish them—simply to change your connection.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Buildings and walls in the old Incan city of Machu Picchu feature monumental stone blocks that fit together precisely. You can’t slip a piece of paper between them. Most are irregularly shaped and weigh many tons. Whoever constructed these prodigious structures benefited from massive amounts of ingenuity and patience. I invite you to summon some of the same blend of diligence and brilliance as you work on your growing masterpiece in the coming weeks and months. My prediction: What you create in 2025 will last a very long time.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Bioluminescence is light emitted from living creatures. They don’t reflect the light of the sun or moon, but produce it themselves. Fireflies do it, and so do glow-worms and certain fungi. If you go to Puerto Rico’s Mosquito Bay, you may also spy the glimmer of marine plankton known as dinoflagellates. The best time to see them show what they can do is on a cloudy night during a new moon, when the deep murk reveals their full power. I believe their glory is a good metaphor for you in the coming days. Your beauty will be most visible and your illumination most valuable when the darkness is at a peak.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Capricorn-born Shah Jahan I was the Emperor of Hindustan from 1628 to 1658. During his reign, he commissioned the Taj Mahal, a magnificent garden and building complex to honor his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. This spectacular “jewel of Islamic art” is still a major tourist attraction. In the spirit of Shah Jahan’s adoration, I invite you to dream and scheme about expressing your devotion to what you love. What stirs your heart and nourishes your soul? Find tangible ways to celebrate and fortify your deepest passions.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Over 2,100 years ago, Greek scientists created an analog computer that could track astronomical movements and events decades in advance. Referred to now as the Antikythera mechanism, it was a unique, groundbreaking invention. Similar machines didn’t appear again until Europe in the fourteenth century. If it’s OK with you, I will compare you with the Antikythera mechanism. Why? You are often ahead of your time with your innovative approaches. People may regard you as complex, inscrutable or unusual, when in fact you are simply alert for and homing in on future developments. These qualities of yours will be especially needed in the coming weeks and months.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): No cars drove through London’s streets in 1868. That invention was still years away. But the roads were crammed with pedestrians and horses. To improve safety amidst the heavy traffic, a mechanical traffic light was installed—the first in the world. But it had a breakdown a month later, injured a police officer, and was discontinued. Traffic lights didn’t become common for fifty years after that. I believe your imminent innovations will have better luck and good timing, Pisces. Unlike the premature traffic signal, your creations and improvements will have the right context to succeed. Don’t be shy about pushing your good ideas! They could revamp the daily routine.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks during a protest in support of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, February 10, 2025, at the CFPB headquarters in Washington.
The Revolving Door Project, a Prospect partner, scrutinizes the executive branch and presidential power. Follow them at therevolvingdoorproject.org.
During his March 4th address to Congress, President Donald Trump defended the first six weeks of his already disastrous second stint in the White House the way he defends all of his indefensible actions: by bullshitting into a mic. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in turn tapped Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) to deliver the Democratic Party’s rebuttal, a troubling continuation of the ostensible opposition party’s “opposition” to Trump 2.0.
Slotkin, an ex-CIA agent who served as a national security adviser in the Bush-Cheney administration—a precursor to Trump’s bloodthirsty, anti-intellectual, and authoritarian reign—holds the distinction of being the first Democrat endorsed by Dick Cheney’s daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY). Even though the elder Cheney’s 2024 endorsement of Kamala Harris hurt her chances of defeating Trump in November, Schumer remains committed to his ill-fated strategy of courting “moderate” Republican voters in wealthy suburbs rather than focusing on the Democratic base, including disaffected working-class voters who have been leaving the party in droves.
Slotkin’s support for some of Trump’s cabinet nominees and for the GOP’s Laken Riley Act, which eliminates due process for immigrants accused of crimes, gives her the bipartisan credentials fetishized by the likes of Schumer. And those same right-wing votes make her ill-suited to combat Trumpism. At a time when we need a full-throated defense of public institutions that are under attack, Slotkin paid lip service to the need for “a more efficient government,” going so far as to praise Ronald Reagan—a key figure in the neoliberal counterrevolution against the New Deal.
If Schumer-esque appeals to the “good ole days” of bipartisan comity are destined to fail, what’s the way forward for Democrats? Contra James Carville, Democratic officials inside and outside of Congress ought to be taking action simultaneously on three overlapping planes: ideological, rhetorical, and practical. This activity—ideally coordinated by a “shadow cabinet” of progressive counterparts to Trump’s ghoulish cabinet members—should convey to the electorate that Democrats, not Republicans, care about working people and are going to improve their lives if given the chance in coming years.
Ideological Work
Ideologically, Democrats need to frame themselves as the anti-billionaire party. This shouldn’t be hard to do because Elon Musk is the personification of billionaire avarice. Democrats need to foster and harness growing public disgust at how Musk, his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) austerity squad, and members of Trump’s billionaire cabinet are decimating the public good to benefit themselves and a tiny minority of super-wealthy elites.
Musk, a bona fide eugenicist with unprecedented access to government data, has anointed himself the sole arbiter of which public services are worthy of taxpayer support and who is an undeserving “parasite.” At home, DOGE and the White House have put virtually every good thing the government does in their crosshairs, from public health and anti-poverty programs to bank regulation, tax law enforcement, weather forecasting, and public lands management. In the world’s poorest countries, the richest man in history is literally “snatching nutrient paste out of the mouths of starving babies,” as the Prospect’s Ryan Cooper put it.
Before Musk became ubiquitous, left-wing critiques of billionaire power may have seemed abstract. Now that Musk has purchased the U.S. government and is trying to annihilate people and projects he deems inferior, the existential danger of allowing a handful of individuals to accumulate economic and political power without restraint should be obvious to everyone.
Democrats must vocally oppose the current, grisly manifestation of plutocracy if they want to convince voters that they care about small-d democracy. Corporate and billionaire-friendly Democrats who complain should be made to answer which they fear more: downward redistribution or full-fledged fascism?
Rather than letting Trump and Musk set the terms of public debate—for instance, ludicrously and offensively calling the January 29 plane crash in Washington, D.C., a “DEI crash”—Democrats need to go on offense. While the investigation into that aviation disaster is ongoing, there’s no reason why Democrats can’t warn people about the escalating risk of “DOGE crashes” brought about by the Trump-Musk assault on federal workers.
What’s happening in the aviation sphere reveals the “logic” of Musk’s smash-and-grab operation. Two days after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy fired hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration workers, including those who maintain air traffic control infrastructure, he announced that he was inviting private-sector consultants to help “deliver a new, world-class air traffic control system that will be the envy of the world.” And who do you suppose was first on the list of invitees? Of course, it was none other than SpaceX, one of Musk’s companies. You break it, you get it!
As Osita Nwanevu pointed out recently, Musk’s overarching innovation is that he has, through DOGE, deregulated and privatized the work of deregulation and privatization. For Democrats to credibly criticize Trump and Musk’s war on the public good, they can’t favor a return to the status quo ante of government-led deregulation and privatization over today’s unelected billionaire-led versions. They need to oppose any further enclosure of the commons, advocating for the restoration of New Deal institutions that have been sacrificed at the altar of financialization—and for the creation of new ones to expand the public domain and reduce market dependence.
Practical Work
Practically, Democratic officials need to inconvenience everyone involved in advancing Trump’s objectives, including the rogue Musk. Democratic attorneys general have slowed the Trump-Musk assault via lawsuits. We need to see the same energy from congressional Democrats, who have so far failed to meet the moment. Indivisible has explained how House Democrats and Senate Democrats can “delay and defy” Trump’s agenda. Democrats may not control either chamber, but contrary to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s (D-NY) claims, they do have multiple points of leverage to disempower Musk and protect crucial programs.
The message from congressional Democrats should be as follows: Either Trump and Musk follow existing laws, or we stop participating in the development of new laws. That means Democrats should be a “no” on everything until DOGE stops sabotaging the government and starts following the law.
Congressional Democrats can also spotlight abuses and ask the Government Accountability Office to conduct investigations at every turn, as my colleague KJ Boyle wrote recently. The important follow-up step is to use those requests to garner headlines and media appearances to amplify their message.
The same goes for formal hearings, where congressional Democrats can invite expert witnesses—such as fired former government officials—to explain the negative impacts of DOGE’s rampage, as well as informal hearings, like the one held last week by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) with former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officials.
Finally, Democrats can also take long shots, such as trying to impeach Trump personnel like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has supported and evidently lied about Musk’s infiltration of the federal payments system. While unlikely to be successful, such a move would raise the issue’s salience and force Republicans to defend it.
A Shadow Cabinet to Coordinate Opposition to the Trump-Musk Barrage
The three planes of action outlined above are intertwined, and apart from congressional oversight, none are limited to Democrats on Capitol Hill. There’s plenty for state and local Democrats—governors, AGs, legislators, mayors, and other officials—as well as prominent party members to do.
Moving forward, Democrats could take inspiration from parliamentary systems and set up a “shadow cabinet” full of energetic progressives who ruthlessly criticize every bad move made by their official Trump counterparts. Of course, to emulate such a model, there needs to be a “shadow prime minister” who organizes these efforts. If one thing is clear, it’s that neither Schumer nor Jeffries seems interested in providing that leadership.
By contrast, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is already off to a good start with his anti-oligarchy tour. At stops around the country, he’s explaining to working people in districts that flipped from Biden to Trump how the Republican president and Musk are making their lives worse. Though she was denied a leadership position on the House Oversight Committee by the Democratic Party’s corporate-friendly old guard, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has also been a frequent and vocal critic of Trump, Musk, and DOGE. Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-TX), or another like-minded lawmaker would make a fine “shadow PM.” So too would former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who was barely ousted from the Senate by a deluge of corporate money, or flight attendant union president Sara Nelson.
Imagine a shadow Treasury secretary explaining the tangible downsides of Bessent’s pro-billionaire actions; a shadow interior secretary condemning Doug Burgum’s public lands giveaways; a shadow labor secretary denouncing Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s attacks on worker protections; a shadow transportation secretary underscoring how Musk stands to benefit from the privatization of air traffic control infrastructure; a shadow health and human services secretary defending public health from RFK Jr.’s ill-informed blitz; a shadow housing and urban development secretary slamming Scott Turner’s attempts to hurt low-income tenants; a shadow Environmental Protection Agency administrator ripping Lee Zeldin’s accommodation of polluting corporations; and a shadow U.S. trade representative explaining how Trump policy is undermining a nascent manufacturing renaissance.
Now picture all of that happening during a daily press conference, held on Capitol Hill or at televised town halls across the United States. At each one, shadow secretaries are flanked by displaced government workers who describe how they used to protect the public before Musk’s coup made it impossible to do so, and what they would do if given sufficient resources.
That kind of past-, present-, and future-oriented storytelling and organizing is necessary to defeat the fascist threat. If Democrats think that sucking up to Big Tech executives and promoting a purportedly centrist agenda devoid of economic populism is the way to go, we’re doomed.
Trump’s regressive policies—including the incoherent tariffs and Musk’s evisceration of the government functions that enable broad economic prosperity—have already made a recession more likely. When that happens, Trump and his co-conspirators must be made as infamous as FDR made Herbert Hoover. A shadow cabinet can do that.
We, none of us, choose the century we are born in, or the skin we are born in, or the chromosomes we are born with. We don’t choose the incredibly narrow band of homeostasis within which we can be alive at all — in bodies that die when their temperature rises above 40 degrees Celsius or drops below 20, living on a planet that would be the volcanic inferno of Venus or the frigid desert of Mars if it were just a little closer to or farther from its star.
And yet, within these narrow parameters of being, nothing appeals to us more than the notion of freedom — the feeling that we are free, that intoxicating illusion with which we blunt the hard fact that we are not. The more abstract and ideological the realm, the more vehemently we can insist that moral choice in specific situations within narrow parameters proves a totality of freedom. But the closer the question moves to the core of our being, the more clearly and catastrophically the illusion crumbles — nowhere more helplessly than in the most intimate realm of experience: love. Try to will yourself into — or out of — loving someone, try to will someone into loving you, and you collide with the fundamental fact that we do not choose whom we love. We could not choose, because we do not choose who and what we are, and in any love that is truly love, we love with everything we are.
James Baldwin (August 2, 1924–December 1, 1987) was a young man — young and brilliant and aflame with life, blazing against society’s illusion of stability and control — when he composed his stunning semi-autobiographical novel Giovanni’s Room (public library), making the paradox of freedom its animating theme.
Baldwin writes:
Nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
To bear the unbearable, Baldwin intimates, we construct and cling to artificial structures of choice, personal and social — habits, routines, the contractual commitment of marriage, the moralistic frameworks that indict one kind of love as good and another as bad. Today, Giovanni’s Room is celebrated as a pioneering liberation and representation of LGBTQ+ love — a term that did not exist in Baldwin’s day, for it speaks to a cultural silence so deep then that there was no adequate language for it. (The language we use today is hardly adequate — but language is always a placeholder for a culture’s evolving understanding of itself, the space in which we work out our concepts as we learn how to think about them in learning how to speak of them.) Baldwin rose against a tidal force of cowardice from publishers at a time when the Bible of psychiatry — the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders — classified love as so many of us know it as a “sociopathic personality disturbance.” At the center of his act of courage and resistance is the recognition that the experience of love is our most primal confrontation with the illusion of freedom.
People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.
Paradoxically, to say Yes to life is to assent that you have no say — that life makes the crucial choices for you, and you narrate them with the illusion of choice, and you call that narrative freedom. He writes:
People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all — a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named — but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not.
In the final years of his life, he would look back on the crucible of these ideas, describing Giovanni’s Room as a book not about one kind of love or another but “about what happens to you if you’re afraid to love anybody.” In his most intimate interview, he would recount the best advice he ever received on the transcendent, terrifying choicelessness of love and the implicit, seemingly paradoxical demand for choice within it — advice given him by an old friend:
You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.
The Hanged Man is one of those Major Arcana cards which tend to have a rather poor reputation – undeservedly, in my opinion. He represents the necessary process of surrender and sacrifice, which is probably why he is not greeted with open arms. Yet both actions are a part of everyday life. We just fail to understand that, every time we make a choice between two equally desirable options, we sacrifice one in order to have the other. We surrender one state to achieve another.In fact, the Hanged Man can often indicate a period of apparent inertia, where new concepts and tenets are being absorbed. Once we have digested this new material, we can emerge from our period of inactivity with a fresh approach to things. So sometimes the Hanged Man presents us with an important method of self-development.In most Tarot decks, there’s an important visual link between the Emperor and the Hanged Man – both these figures are depicted with their legs forming the figure 4. 4 is a number connected to ideas about material stability. The Emperor often represents a man who has achieved much in the material sphere. He is usually a dynamic and energetic person who forcefully directs his will toward the attainment of his desires.In a sense, we can see the Hanged Man as an outgrowth of the Emperor – though now it is not the material world which is the object of his aspiration – it is the spiritual realm in which he is interested.So, on a day ruled by the Hanged Man, take a little time out to consider what your current spiritual aspirations are. Write them down and think them over. Think back to the last time you attempted to assess your current journey and see whether you feel you have achieved some of the things you aimed for.And above all, recognise something. This journey of the spirit is like any other – we achieve it step by step, moment by moment. We will always be surrendering things along the way – and we need always to be open to new input, new concepts, new pages to be written in the book of life.
Affirmation: “I pause. And in pausing, I see differently.”
New Thinking • Mar 2, 2025 Grant Cameron has been investigating the paranormal for several decades. He is author of many books, including Charlie Red Star, The Clinton UFO Storybook, Breakthrough: The Psilocybin School, The Portals and UFOs of Mount Shasta, Contact Modalities, Jimmy Carter Paranormal and UFO tales, The Canadian Government UFO Story, Triangles Aliens and Messages, and Inspired: The Paranormal World of Creativity, Weird: Paranormal Tales of Apports and Manifestations. Today we are focusing on his book UFO Sky Pilots. His websites are https://itsallconnected.weebly.com/bo… and https://open.spotify.com/show/2iZhuwu… Here he shares findings from over thirty individuals who claim to have had the experience of piloting UFOs. Many of these people regard their experiences as having occurred in a dreamlike state. Nevertheless their reports are consistent with whistleblower accounts of “psionic assets” working for covert special access programs. Above all, Cameron argues that we must seek to understand the consciousness-related aspects of the phenomena. 00:00 Introduction 03:15 Is this really possible? 07:23 Conscious AI, not based on today’s technology 15:14 Travel at the speed of thought 21:30 Everything is consciousness 25:03 Covert psionic assets 35:37 People being trained from childhood, or before 40:55 Learning from autistic savants 48:49 Is it a dream or is it physical? 57:12 Conclusion New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on February 13, 2025)
Consciousness, sexuality, androgyny, futurism, space, the arts, science, astrology, democracy, humor, books, movies and more
Nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.
