Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter February 10, 2010

Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
FEBRUARY 10, 2010
FreeWillAstrology.com

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Main website: FreeWillAstrology.com
Expanded Audio Horoscopes: RealAstrology.com
Facebook fan page: bit.ly/8qoqVG
Sign up for the RSS feed: bit.ly/615CND
Read the long-term forecasts for 2010: bit.ly/BigLife

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The revised and expanded version of my book PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA is available at Amazon: bit.ly/Pronoia

Below is an excerpt. To read the whole text, go here: bit.ly/LoveAd

ELATIONSHIP LOVE SPELLS FOR BEAUTY AND TRUTH RESEARCHERS

This Valentine Season, are you in quest of an Intimate Ally or a Soul Friend? A Wild Confidante or a Kiss Buddy? A Secret Sharer who'll listen better than anyone ever or an Amazing Accomplice with whom you can practice the Art of Liberation? Try these Elationship Love Spells, scientifically formulated by the Beauty and Truth Lab's top exhilarationists.
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OUR SECRET FREEDOM
Me: the soul of a musician, the stamina of a long-distance runner, and the psychological expertise of a veterinarian. You: the body of a feral kickboxer, the eyes of a jet pilot, and the holder of a PhD in Ingenious Love. In matters of the heart, you always know exactly when to sweat and when to cry. You like to play in the sandbox as much as you enjoy working in the trenches -- and you don't mind getting dirty. Send me an image of your face pressed against the copy machine, and I'll get started reading your mind. In the meantime, I'll be here in my lab dreaming up experiments we can do to tenderly shock ourselves ever-more awake from what the cynics call "the nightmare of history."
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MYSTIC ACTIVIST SEEKS PRIMORDIAL GOSSIPER
I'm the one! Pick me for your mission impossible! I'm the one! Pick me to help you storm the kingdom of heaven! Everybody's somebody's fool; let me be yours! I have no shame and I have no qualms! I give not until it hurts but until it exalts my libido, and if you're smart you'll let me teach you the method in that madness! So electrify me in a sanctuary, you stunning ravisher! Amaze me in a labyrinth! Undress me on an altar! Engorge me in a way station! And I'll resurrect you wherever you want!
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SACRED AGENT SEEKS FREAKY CONSORT
Tired of both boringly nice goodie-goodies and menacing lunatics trying to pass off their pathologies as "sexy"? I'm the happy medium: a straddler of the mysterious edge where bliss and struggle overlap, where the difference between light and dark just ain't that simple. I feel too deeply to pretend that every question has a correct answer. I cry too easily and love too much. And you? Are you smart enough to be guided by your sacred dreams of transgression? Are you free enough to surrender over and over again to the waters of life? If you've got the courage, I've got the secrets. I'll be your wild-eyed, smart-mouthed, spread-eagled muse if you'll be mine.
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FAIRY TALE WITH MARKETING POTENTIAL
Future lottery winner and full-time thrill-designer is hunting for a brainteasing emancipator to share risky stunts and international scandals that have lucrative marketing potential. Let's do a reality TV show that features us hiking through China in our Halloween costumes as we distribute alms for the poor, or air-drop Anaïs Nin books on Bible Belt colleges as we ride in a hot-air balloon over Mississippi and Alabama. In the great tradition of Picasso, the richest Communist artist who ever lived, we'll become wealthy pranksters together, poking and prodding the edges of reality.

TO READ THE BEST OF THE LOVE SPELLS, GO HERE: bit.ly/LoveAd

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LOVE PROMPTS FOR THE VALENTINE DAZE

"Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body's deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body's superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity."
- Henri Nouwen

"Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out."
- Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

"We are pain and what cures pain, both. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours. I want to hold you close like a lute, so that we can cry out with loving. Would you rather throw stones at a mirror? I am your mirror and here are the stones."
- Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

"I love you between shadow and soul. I love you as the plant that hasn't bloomed yet, and carries hidden within itself the light of flowers. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. Because of you, the dense fragrance that rises from the earth lives in my body, rioting with hunger for the eternity of our victorious kisses."
- Pablo Neruda, translated by Stephen Tapscott

"The desire to force love to live only in its most positive form is what causes love ultimately to fall over dead."
- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

"For a relationship to stay alive, love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining."
- James Hillman

"Your face is true and your hair is perfect and I love you. You make boats in my dreams and you speak without words and I love you. Your fears unnerve me and your questions amuse me and I love you. I love you not only for who you are, but for the interesting person I become when I'm with you. I say I love you and love you and love you until the words become the constant song of your voice in my head and the original ache of memory in my soul. I love you more than life and death, more than everything that's in between the light and the dark. Do you believe me? Try harder. Do you believe me now? I'm always with you, which is why I know you will never abandon yourself."
- PRONOIA

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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

NATURE TRIES OUT THE HUMAN VERSION OF PRONOIA
Three cheetahs spare tiny antelope's life, and play with him instead
tinyurl.com/yhasybt

EVOLUTION PLAYS PRONOIAC TRICKS?
Social scientists build case for "survival of the kindest"
tinyurl.com/yc9ox9b

PEOPLE YOU DON'T KNOW ARE WORKING BEHIND THE SCENES TO SAVE PEOPLE YOU DON'T KNOW
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
tinyurl.com/ya8n2s9

(Note: I endorse these because I like them. They are not advertisements, and I get no kickbacks.)

Please tell me your own personal nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES.

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning February 11

Copyright 2010 by Rob Brezsny
FreeWillAstrology.com

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):

Happy Valentine Daze, Aquarius! In my search for the counsel that would be of greatest help to your love life in the coming months, I decided on this observation by psychologist Albert Ellis: "The art of love is largely the art of persistence." I hope you take that in the spirit in which I'm offering it. It's not meant to suggest that you will be deprived of love's burning, churning pleasures; I just want to make sure you know that your best bet for experiencing burning, churning pleasures is to be dogged and devoted and disciplined in your cultivation of burning, churning pleasures.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):

In 2010, you will have more cosmic assistance than you've had in a long time whenever you seek to increase your experience of pleasure. Do you want to get more sensual joy out of eating and drinking and dancing and listening to music? This is your year. Do you want to heighten your perceptiveness and find more beauty in the world and cultivate new ways to stimulate positive feelings and liberating emotions? This is your year. Do you want to intensify your orgasms and have more of them and learn how to use them to enhance your spiritual power? This is your year. And the coming weeks will be one of the best times in 2010 to move from charging up your pleasure to supercharging it. Happy Valentine Daze, Pisces!

ARIES (March 21-April 19):

"Hate leaves ugly scars," wrote author Mignon McLaughlin, but "love leaves beautiful ones." If I'm reading the astrological omens correctly, Aries, you're scheduled to receive at least one of the beautiful kind of scars in the coming months -- maybe even two or three. In fact, I think they'll be such lovely booboos that they will markedly add to your overall attractiveness. Rarely if ever have you been privileged to hurt as good as you will in 2010 -- thanks to the benevolent jolts of love. Happy Valentine Daze!

TAURUS (April 20-May 20):

In my view, 2010 is the year you should expand your world. That could mean enlarging your circle of allies or building a bigger web of connections. It might mean broadening your appeal or widening your frame of reference or opening your mind to possibilities you've been closed to. It may even involve extending your territory or increasing the range of your travels. However you choose to expand, Taurus, I urge you to put love at the heart of your efforts. Love should be the fuel that motivates you and the reference point that ensures you're always making smart moves. For inspiration, memorize this line by poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning: "I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach." In your case, Taurus, "thee" should mean the whole world.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20):

Of all the signs of the zodiac, you Geminis are most likely to thrive if you experiment with new approaches to kissing in the coming weeks. To whip up your fervor, read incendiary texts like William Cane's The Art of Kissing. Conspire with an imaginative partner to conjure up a new kissing game or even a sacred kissing ritual. And come up with your own interpretations of the following kiss techniques: the throbbing kiss, the sip kiss, the butterfly kiss, the tiger kiss, the whispering kiss. Happy Valentine Daze!

CANCER (June 21-July 22):

Happy Valentine Daze, Cancerian! After meditating about what advice would be most valuable for your love life in the coming months, I decided on this challenge from poet William Butler Yeats: "True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self." In other words, create in your imagination a detailed picture of your loved ones at their best. Each day, make it a point to feel joy and gratitude for their most excellent beauty and power -- as well as the beauty and power that are still ripening and will one day appear in full bloom.

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IF YOU WANT MORE FREE WILL ASTROLOGY,
TRY THE EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES

The horoscopes you read in this newsletter may be plenty for your needs. But if you'd like to experience more of my thoughts about your current situation, you might want to try my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES. They're 4 to 5 minute meditations on the state of your life and where you're going.

Sign in and access them here: RealAstrology.com

If you like you can get both a reading about the days ahead and a long-term rumination on your destiny in 2010.

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LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):

A friend of mine has woven her life together with a Leo who doesn't fully appreciate the ways she expresses her adoration. She asked me to use my bully pulpit as a horoscope writer to convey a message to her lover, and I agreed, because I think it's excellent advice for all of the Leo tribe this Valentine season. Here's what she said: "Just because somebody doesn't always love you the way you wish they would, doesn't mean they don't love you the best they can and with all they have." Are you willing to consider the possibility that maybe you should take that plea to heart, Leo? I hope so, because then you'll be able to get some of the good loving you've closed yourself off from.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):

Happy Valentine Daze, Virgo! I meditated on what message might best energize your love life, and what I came up with is a declaration by author Mignon McLaughlin: "Love unlocks doors and opens windows that weren't even there before." In other words, the love you should be most interested in during the coming months is the kind that opens your eyes to sights that were previously invisible and that creates new possibilities you've barely imagined.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):

Happy Valentine Daze, Libra! My astrological hunch is that you'd benefit from the specific teaching that would come from exploring a three-way relationship. But wait. Don't jump to conclusions. Here's the form I think it should take: Fantasize that the merger of you and your lover or ally has created a third thing that hovers near you, protecting and guiding the two of you. Call this third thing an angel. Or call it the soul of your connection or the inspirational force of your relationship. Or call it the special work the two of you can accomplish together. And let this magical presence be the third point of your love triangle.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):

Happy Valentine Daze, Scorpio! After meditating on what advice would best serve your love life, I decided to offer you the words of psychologist Carl Jung: "The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves." As I see it, my dear, acting on Jung's wisdom will help you carry out your primary task in the coming months, which is to bring novel experiences and fresh perspectives to your most engaging relationship. The best way to accomplish that is not with non-stop serious talk and intense analysis, but with a generous dose of playful improvisation and experimental fun.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

To prepare your Valentine horoscope, I did a lengthy meditation on your love life. I wish I could offer you a 20-page treatise on my conclusions, but there's not enough room. So instead I'll give you the single most important piece of advice I came up with: The coming week will be an excellent time for you to survey the history of your love life, starting with the first moment you ever fell in love. I mean you should actually stream the memories across your mind's eye as if you were watching a movie. Feel all the feelings roused by each scene, but also try to maintain some objectivity about it all. Watch for recurring themes. Be especially alert for unexpected insights that emerge about the past. And through it all, be wildly compassionate toward yourself and your co-stars.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):

"If I love you, what business is it of yours?" wrote Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Now I'm offering his words for you to use as your mantra in the coming months. Your main job, as I see it, is simply to be a lover of pretty much everything -- to generate, cultivate, and express love in abundance -- and not to worry about whether your love is reciprocated or how it's regarded. It's a tall order, I know -- one of the most difficult assignments I've ever suggested. And yet I think you have the soul power and the crafty intelligence necessary to accomplish it. Happy Valentine Daze, Capricorn!

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HOMEWORK:

Send your letters, notes, haikus, rants, dreams, and whoops to the beloved of your choice, including yourself. It's an old-fashioned Shout Out, a chance to share your feelings for your snuggle-bunny / freaky consort / sweetiekins / co-conspirator. Go to FreeWillAstrology.com and click on "Email Rob."

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WANT TO GET YOUR CHART DONE?

I'm not doing personal charts, but I highly recommend my astrological colleague, RO LOUGHRAN. Her approach closely matches my own. In our many discussions about astrology over the years, we've had a major influence on each other's work.

Ro utilizes a blend of well-trained intuition, emotional warmth, and a high degree of technical proficiency in horoscope interpretation; she is skilled at exploring the mysteries of your life's purpose and nurturing your connection with your own inner wisdom.

Ro is based in California, but can do phone consultations and otherwise work with you regardless of geographic boundaries.

Ro's website is at YourSoulJourney.com

She can also be reached at roloughran@comcast.net

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Submissions sent to the Free Will Astrology Weekly Newsletter or in response to "homework assignments" may be published in a variety of formats at Rob Brezsny's discretion, including but not limited to newsletters, books, the Free Will Astrology column, and Free Will Astrology website. We reserve the right to edit such submissions for length, style, and content. Requests for anonymity will be honored with submissions; otherwise, reader names, screen names, or initials will be used. Please be sure to note your preference when sending to us. We are not responsible for unsolicited submission of any creative material.

Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright 2010 Rob Brezsny

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