Group-centered leadership
Talk to Yourself This Way and Your Life Will Heal | Carl Jung philosophy
“The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parent.”
–Carl Jung
carl jung philosophy May 29, 2026 Talk to Yourself This Way and Your Life Will Heal | Carl Jung philosophy. Your body has never been your enemy. It has been trying to speak to you for years. Carl Jung believed that emotional pain, repression, and unresolved trauma often express themselves through the body. In this video, you will discover how the way you speak to yourself can influence healing, self-awareness, and inner transformation. ????
Universal Intelligence with Edi Bilimoria
New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Jul 19, 2026 Edi Bilimoria, DPhil, FIMechE, CEng, is a Consultant Engineer and has been Project Manager and Head of Design for major projects such as the Channel Tunnel. He is a Trustee of the Scientific and Medical Network, Adviser to the Galileo Commission of the Network, a Trustee and a Council Member of the Francis Bacon Society, and was the Education Manager for the Theosophical Society in Australia. He is author of Mirages in Western Science Resolved by Occult Science, The Snake and the Rope: Problems in Western Science Resolved by Occult Science, his four volume work, Unfolding Consciousness: Exploring the Living Universe and Intelligent Powers in Nature and Humans, and Consciousness Came First: Revealing Evidence for Universal Intelligence and Mind Beyond the Brain. His website is edibilimoria.com. Edi illuminates ancient wisdom and eternal truths from Theosophy suggesting that consciousness is foundational to matter and not separate from it and that even the smallest particle of matter has spirit. By reassessing historical ideologies that have led to detrimental societal effects, we can think with our heart and feel with the brain to value our mental and spiritual well-being over mere physical existence. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:03:32 Worldview of matter foundational to mind 00:07:44 Science raised to metaphysics 00:20:06 Creative and intuitive inspiration 00:39:00 Theosophy: wisdom as possessed by the gods 00:45:35 Uniting with our source 00:54:48 AI and consciousness 01:03:16 Self-awareness and reflection 01:09:21 Primacy of the heart and overuse of intellect 01:22:52 Conclusion New Thinking Allowed CoHost, Emmy Vadnais, OTR/L, is a licensed occupational therapist, intuitive healer and coach, and spiritual guide based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Emmy is the founder of the Intuitive Connections and Holistic OT communities. She is the author of Intuitive Development: How to Trust Your Inner Knowing for Guidance With Relationships, Health, and Spirituality. She offers intuitive coaching to help individuals access their inner guidance for clarity, healing, and meaningful decision-making. Her website is https://emmyvadnais.com (Recorded on May 1, 2026)
Michael Pollen on our Copernican moment
‘Fascism Is Here’: Rubio, Miller Say More Terrorist Designations Coming for ‘Far-Left’ Groups
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller addresses the audience at the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism at the State Department on July 16, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Finn Gomez/Getty Images)
“If you’re not alarmed you’re not paying attention.”
Jul 16, 2026 (CommonDreams.org)
Trump administration officials on Thursday hyped up plans to carry out mass political arrests and prosecutions of people whom it deemed far-left terrorists.
In a speech given at the US State Department, Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, described left-wing political violence as a “fatal cancer to civilization,” and boasted of plans to use state power to suppress people whom he called “political terrorists.”
RECOMMENDED…
Unhinged Trump Calls US Progressives Communist ‘Animals’ Who Will ‘Close Your Churches’ and ‘Kill Your People’
‘New Red Scare’: ICE Protester Gets 30 Years for Leftist Zines Under Trump Antifa Decree
Miller said that the administration would be carrying out this operation under the guidance of National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), a directive signed by Trump in September that demanded a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”
Miller bragged that “for the first time in American history,” NSPM-7 would direct “all of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to work together to disrupt, identify, defund, de-bank, arrest, prosecute these political terrorists that are operating within our country.”
Miller said that the mass arrest of left-wing radicals was necessary to prevent them from carrying out mass arrests of their own.
“Inevitably, left to its course, it always becomes a gulag,” said Miller. “It always becomes the mass imprisonment of political enemies, the stripping of their rights and freedoms, inflicting immense pain, humiliation, suffering, in order to establish complete and total control, control through psychological and physical and actual terror.”
The social media account of independent progressive publication The Tennessee Holler expressed alarm at Miller’s speech.
“Fascism is here,” The Tennessee Holler wrote. “If you’re not alarmed you’re not paying attention. ‘Left-wing political terrorism’ will mean those who oppose the regime—while actual right-wing extremism is allowed to grow and thrive. We are very far off the cliff, folks.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also spoke of the event, noted last year that his department “designated four violent far-left extremist groups as foreign terrorist organizations, and there will be more designations soon.”
The administration’s declaration of war against left-wing political violence comes despite decades of research showing that political violence is more commonly carried out by right-wing groups.
A report published last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that, while left-wing political violence has grown since Trump’s first election in 2016, it “remains much lower than historical levels of violence carried out by right-wing and jihadist attackers.”
The report also noted that violence carried out by left-wing individuals or groups was “remarkably less lethal” than violence carried out by right-wing or jihadist individuals or groups.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Brad Reed is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
What Do the Words ‘Gay’ and ‘Queer’ Really Mean?
Readers respond to a guest essay about the labels used to describe those in the L.G.B.T.Q. community.
July 18, 2026 (NYTimes.com)
To the Editor:
Re “I’m Gay, Not Queer. It Matters,” by Matthew Vines (Opinion guest essay, July 2):
In 1990, the year Queer Nation published the manifesto that Mr. Vines quotes in his essay, I was one of that group’s members. I was 19. That same year, the Boy Scouts of America expelled me for being gay, and two years later, I sued.
The case took eight years to reach the Supreme Court, which in 2000 ruled in favor of the Boy Scouts. My Lambda Legal attorney at the time, Evan Wolfson, went on to become a leader in the marriage equality movement that Mr. Vines credits with changing his life.
In his essay, Mr. Vines presents queer confrontation and mainstream acceptance as opposing forces. My life tells a different story. The welcome I found among queer radicals gave me the courage to fight for a place in the most wholesome institution in America. The people in the streets and the people in the courtrooms were the same movement. Often the same people.
I am 55. I survived the AIDS crisis and buried many friends. I have been queer all my life, in the streets and in the courtroom, and I never found those two fights as far apart as Mr. Vines suggests.
James Dale
New York
To the Editor:
Matthew Vines’s guest essay left me with one overriding thought: He’s looking in the wrong direction.
I’ve lived through the fight for marriage equality. The L.G.B.T.Q. community did not win those rights by being polished, restrained or always in agreement. People marched, protested, challenged unjust laws, came out publicly and refused to hide. Some were criticized for being too loud or too radical. History has a way of changing those judgments.
The danger, to me, is a political movement that opposed our equality long before most Americans had ever heard the word “queer.” It is also a movement that keeps finding new groups to target: immigrants, religious minorities, transgender people, people of color and anyone else who does not fit its vision of America.
That is why I struggle with Mr. Vines’s conclusion. Dividing our community into the acceptable and the unacceptable will not change the minds of people who have spent decades trying to roll back our rights. Those coming for us would do so regardless of how polished and restrained our community tried to be.
Garrick Spears
Canaan, N.Y.
To the Editor:
I grew up just south of Matthew Vines in a small town in Oklahoma. I intimately understand the comfort he found in the marriage equality messaging of the 2010s. As an associate legal director at the Human Rights Campaign, I wrote some of it.
We earned legal protections by arguing unthreatening sameness. It would be easy to attribute falling levels of public support to the abandonment of a streamlined gay narrative. But the language we use to describe our community is not the problem. We have hit the limits of legal equality while navigating fraying democratic institutions. The MAGA agenda has made L.G.B.T.Q. lives the villain in an old, predictable, antidemocratic story.
A healthy democracy depends on protecting individuality and expression. It does not prescribe a single vision for living, but rather a set of tools to live differently while thriving together. L.G.B.T.Q. people are beautifully and inescapably different. Queer lives are good for democracy. Our stubborn existence and demand for equal dignity are daily forms of democratic resistance.
Robin Maril
Portland, Ore.
The writer is an assistant professor at Willamette University College of Law and the author of “A Queer Guide to Saving American Democracy.”
To the Editor:
I recognize the shame behind Matthew Vines’s essay. It is devastating to be gay (or lesbian or queer) in a homophobic religious community. Yet Mr. Vines misses the profound connection between queer politics and robust Christianity.
Queer politics is, indeed, anti-normative. But the point is not rebellion for its own sake. Decades of queer scholarship and activism have understood the critique of social norms as a way of exposing systems (like gender and the tax code) that make some lives more livable than others. Questioning those norms allows us to be advocates for the people they harm.
Queer politics, like Christ’s teaching, reminds us that our responsibility is not to those with power, but to those who lack it — all those whom the community rejects. Both call us to support those who have less than we do — those facing violence, homelessness, the withholding of medical care or death. Queer politics asks this; gay identity does not.
Queer politics asks more of us than acceptance for ourselves. It asks us to stand with those who remain excluded. That is not a departure from Christian ethics but a reminder of them.
Shannon Brennan
Milwaukee
The writer is an associate professor of English at Carthage College and an associate editor at Edith Wharton Review.
To the Editor:
I am heterosexual, which seems to mean that Matthew Vines is worried I don’t like him. He avoids calling himself queer as a gay man because he finds the term too “adversarial” toward straight people. Indeed, in Mr. Vines’s eyes, offending heterosexual people — or simply confusing them — appears to be the worst mistake available to a gay person who likes having rights.
I was struck by how limiting Mr. Vines’s ideas are. He certainly did not choose to be gay, but in fretting that gay people will make straight homophobes too mad to stop being homophobic, he has certainly chosen to be fearful. If there is a solution to homophobia, it is not to enforce “clarity and moderation” in the ways that human beings are allowed to identify; it is to enlist straight allies to defend the human right to be fluid and radical.
Griffin Larson-Erf
Skokie, Ill.
To the Editor:
I owe a debt of gratitude for Matthew Vines articulating not only the differences between being gay and being queer, but also for reminding us, especially those who might have forgotten the fact, that being gay “is every bit as dignified and human as being straight.”
Like Mr. Vines, I consider myself to be gay and not queer. What’s more, I often bristle when I’m lumped into what often seems like an amorphous mass of nonheteronormative identities.
Admittedly — and now somewhat ashamedly — never having had a desire to be married, I selfishly considered the issues surrounding same-sex marriage as no concern of mine. With the far right’s onslaught against all manner of human rights, the urgency to fight for L.G.B.T.Q. rights is palpable. I’m left thinking that perhaps it’s time to be a lot more vociferously queer than I’d have ever considered before.
(Rev.) Shaun S. Brown
San Diego
Corrected on
July 18, 2026:
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of the letter by Robin Maril misstated her affiliation. She is a former associate legal director at the Human Rights Campaign, not at the United Nations Human Rights Council.
We acknowledge mistakes in our reporting with corrections. If you spot an error, please let us know at corrections@nytimes.com.Learn more.
A version of this article appears in print on July 19, 2026, Section SR, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Parsing ‘Gay’ and ‘Queer’
(Contributed by Michael Kelly, H.W.)
Book: “Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment”
Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment
Anonymous, Daniel C. Matt (Translator), Moses ben Shem Tov …more
“Paulist Press deserves credit for adding this new dimension to interfaith dialogue.” The Jewish Spectator The Book of Enlightenment edited and translated, with an introduction by Daniel Chanan Matt, preface by Arthur Green So this story of Torah is the garment of Torah. Whoever thinks that the garment is the real Torah and not something else―may his spirit deflate! Zohar (c. 1280-1286) Zohar―”the book of Splendor, Radiance, Enlightenment”―has fascinated readers from its first appearance in thirteenth-century Spain until today. It is the major text of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. To assure the acceptance of his work within the Jewish community, a Spanish scholar named Moses de Leon claimed that Zohar was an ancient work of the school of the famous Rabbi Shim’on son of Yohai. It was not until our own century that critical scholarship demonstrated that the book’s author was Moses de Leon himself. His mosaic of Scripture, Midrash, medieval homily, fiction, and fantasy presents what Professor Daniel Matt describes as “a challenge to the normal workings of consciousness [that] dares one to examine one’s assumptions about tradition, God, and self.”
About the author
Anonymous
Books can be attributed to “Anonymous” for several reasons:
* They are officially published under that name
* They are traditional stories not attributed to a specific author
* They are religious texts not generally attributed to a specific author
Books whose authorship is merely uncertain should be attributed to Unknown.
See also: Anonymous
(Goodreads.com)
Excerpts from Aldous Huxley’s “The Perennial Philosophy”
(Image from Amazon.com)
[H]ow significant it is that in the Indo-European languages . . . the root meaning “two” should connote badness. The Greek prefix dys- (as in dyspepsia) and the latin dis- (as in dishonorable) are both derived from “duo.” The cognate bis-gives a pejorative sense to such modern French words as bévue (“blunder,” literally “two-sight”). Traces of that “second which leads you astray” can be found in “dubious,” “doubt” and Zweifel--for to doubt is to be double-minded. . . . Obscurely and unconsciously wise, our language confirms the findings of the mystics and proclaims the essential badness of division–a word, incidentally, in which our old enemy “two” makes another decisive appearance.
“When Bayazid was asked how old he was, he replied, ‘Four years.’ They said, ‘How can that be?’ He answered, ‘I have been veiled from God by the world for seventy years, but I have seen Him during the last four years. The period during which one is veiled does not belong to one’s life.'”
“For my part, I think the chief reason which prompted the invisible God to become visible in the flesh and to hold converse with men was to lead carnal men, who are only able to love carnally, to the healthful love of his flesh, and afterwards, little by little, to spiritual love.” –St. Bernard
“Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you awake in Heaven; see yourself in your Father’s palace; and look upon the skies, the earth and the air as celestial joys; having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the Angels. The bride fo a monarch, in her husband’s chamber, hath no such causes of delight as you.
“You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars; and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you.
“Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and kings in sceptres, you can never enjoy the world. Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all ages as with your walk and table; till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made; till you love men so as to desire their happiness with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own; till you delight in God for being good to all; you never enjoy the world.
“Till you more feel it than your private estate, and are more present in the hemisphere, considering the glories and the beauties there, than in your own house; till you remember how lately you were made, and how wonderful it was when you came into it; and more rejoice in the palace of your glory than if it had been made today morning.
“Yet further, you never enjoyed the world aright, till you so love the beauty of enjoying it, that you are covetous and earnest to persuade others to enjoy it. And so perfectly hate the abominable corruption of men in despising it that you had rather suffer the flames of hell than willingly be guilty of their error.” –Thomas Traherne
“Therefore I give you still another thought, which is yet purer and more spiritual. In the Kingdom of Heaven all is in all, all is one, and all is ours.” –Eckhart
“Love is infallible; it has no errors, for all errors are the want of love.”
–William Law
Love is a mode of knowledge.
[M]an’s obsessive consciousness of, and insistence on being, a separate self is the final and most formidable obstacle to the unitive knowledge of God.
“The sect of lovers is distinct from all others; Lovers have a religion and a faith all their own.” –Jalal-uddin Rumi
“Temperance is love surrendering itself wholly to Him who is its object; courage is love bearing all things gladly for the sake of Him who is its object; justice is love serving only Him who is its object, and therefore rightly ruling; prudence is love making wise distinction between what hinders and what helps itself.” –St. Augustine
“Our kingdom go” is the necessary and unavoidable corollary of “Thy kingdom come.”
“The rout and destruction of the passions, while a good, is not the ultimate good; the discovery of Wisdom is the surpassing good. When this is found, all the people will sing.” –Philo
It is by losing the egocentric life that we save the hitherto latent and undiscovered life which, in the spiritual part of our being, we share with the divine Ground. This new-found life is “more abundant” than the other, and of a different and higher kind. Its possession is liberation into the eternal, and liberation is beatitude [happiness].
Continue reading Excerpts from Aldous Huxley’s “The Perennial Philosophy”Uma’s father, Robert Thurman, on the “Supernormal”
Wisdom is Bliss with Robert Thurman (1941-2026) Jul 18, 2026 Psychology and Psychotherapy Robert Thurman, PhD, passed on June 16 of this year. He was a shining light of love and joy, and a friend to the New Thinking Allowed family. We are grateful to have known him and to be touched by his warmth and passion. He was professor emeritus at Columbia University where he was a teaching professor for 50 years on Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies. He was the first Westerner Tibetan Buddhist monk, ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He authored many books, including Why the Dalai Lama Matters: His Act of Truth as the Solution for China, Tibet, and the Whole World and Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within. His most recent book is Wisdom is Bliss: Four Friendly Fun Facts That Can Change Your Life. His website is bobthurman.com. In this video, rebooted from 2023, Robert shares how wisdom is bliss. Ignorance is not bliss and can cause suffering. He describes the four noble truths of Buddhism as four friendly fun facts and encourages you to use your life to become generous, compassionate, and enlightened. New Thinking Allowed CoHost, Emmy Vadnais, OTR/L, is a licensed occupational therapist, intuitive healer and coach, and spiritual guide based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Emmy is the founder of the Intuitive Connections and Holistic OT communities. She is the author of Intuitive Development: How to Trust Your Inner Knowing for Guidance With Relationships, Health, and Spirituality. She offers intuitive coaching to help individuals access their inner guidance for clarity, healing, and meaningful decision-making. Her website is https://emmyvadnais.com (Recorded on February 24, 2023)
My conversation with ChatGPT about the struggle between those with institutional power and those who have exciting new ideas
By Mike Zonta, BB editor
Me:
The DNC is always saying that is wants to excite young people. Then when somehting like the emergence of DSA happens, they say, “Oh, no, not like that.” Is this related to some kind of astrological transit?
ChatGPT:
That’s a witty way of putting it, and it points to a real political tension.
From a political science perspective, there’s a straightforward explanation: the Democratic Party is a broad coalition. Party leaders often want higher youth turnout because younger voters tend to vote Democratic more often than Republicans. At the same time, many party leaders also want to maintain control over the party’s direction and avoid positions they think could alienate moderate voters or major donors.
The Democratic Socialists of America attracts many younger activists with a more left-wing agenda. So when DSA-backed candidates gain influence, some Democratic leaders welcome the new energy, while others worry it could hurt the party in swing districts or shift the party away from its preferred platform. Those two goals—energizing young voters and maintaining a broad electoral coalition—can come into conflict.
As for astrology: if you view events through an astrological lens, some astrologers might describe this kind of situation as reflecting transits involving Uranus (youth, rebellion, disruption), Pluto (power struggles and transformation), or Saturn (established institutions resisting change). They might say a Uranus–Pluto or Uranus–Saturn dynamic symbolizes a clash between a rising generation and an entrenched establishment.
However, it’s important to note that there is no scientific evidence that astrological transits cause or predict political events. Astrology can be a symbolic framework that some people find meaningful, but it isn’t an evidence-based explanation for why political parties behave as they do.
So whether you see it politically or astrologically, the pattern you’re describing—a party wanting youthful enthusiasm but being wary when that enthusiasm challenges existing leadership—is a recurring one in many political organizations.
Me:
What are the current Saturn, Pluto and Uranus transits?
ChatGPT:
If you’re asking in terms of mundane (world) astrology, these are the major outer-planet transits as of today, July 18, 2026:
- Saturn in Aries (about 14°). Saturn entered Aries earlier this year, marking a shift toward themes of new beginnings, leadership, responsibility, and rebuilding structures.
- Uranus in Gemini (about 2°). Uranus recently entered Gemini, a seven-year transit that astrologers associate with disruption in communication, technology, education, and the exchange of ideas.
- Pluto retrograde in Aquarius (about 7°). Pluto in Aquarius is commonly interpreted as a long-term transformation of institutions, social networks, technology, and collective power.
One of the biggest aspects today is:
- Uranus trine Pluto (Gemini to Aquarius), an exact aspect that many astrologers interpret as a harmonious opportunity for innovation, societal change, and reform. Because it’s a trine, it’s generally viewed as making transformation easier than a square or opposition would.
If you’re thinking about the tension you mentioned between the Democratic establishment and the DSA, a mundane astrologer might see Uranus in Gemini trine Pluto in Aquarius as symbolizing new political ideas and grassroots movements reshaping existing power structures. Saturn in Aries could be seen as established institutions trying to define boundaries and maintain order while adapting to change.