Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
AUGUST 10, 2011
FreeWillAstrology.com
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"With his book PRONOIA -- an instant pop classic
-- Rob Brezsny offers a positive, participatory, proactive vision
of the workings of our inner and outer universe, which will only
give us as much pleasure, love, and ecstasy as we are prepared
to accept."
- Daniel Pinchbeck, author of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
and Breaking Open the Head
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The piece below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA IS THE
ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA
available at Amazon: bit.ly/Pronoia
or Powells: bit.ly/PronoiaPowells
1. Poet Kay Ryan told the Christian Science Monitor
how she cultivates the inspiration to write. She rouses the sense
of a "self-imposed emergency," thereby calling forth
psychic resources that usually materialize only in response to
a crisis.
Please note that she doesn't provoke an actual emergency: She
doesn't arrange to have a loved one get pinned beneath the wheels
of a car. She doesn't climb out onto the window ledge on the 22nd
story of a high-rise. Instead, she visualizes hypothetical situations
that galvanize her to shift into a dramatically heightened state
of awareness.
What imagined emergencies could you invoke to inspire your deep
self to rise up and make its mark?
2. Beauty and Truth Lab researcher Rebecca Rusche coined the
word "careenstable." Here's her explanation of how it
originated:
"In high school, my mom used to let me use her VW Beetle
to go to basketball practice. One night after practice, a friend
and I were chatting and drinking Coke when we decided to see how
fast we could get the Beetle going down a nearby dirt road. Soon
we were careening at 65 mph, shouting 'careen!' every time we
hit a bump and flew into the air.
"When we arrived back at the gym and got out of the car
half an hour later, we saw my Coke can sitting on the front bumper
next to the license plate. I nudged it softly to see if it was
lodged in there, but it fell right off -- wasn't stuck at all.
I thought, 'There must be a word for this magic,' and thus 'careenstable'
was born. It came to mean anything that maintains its poise in
the midst of wild, fast movement."
Give an example of how you could experiment with making careenstable
work in your own life.
3. "The people of future generations will win many a liberty
of which we do not yet even feel the want," said German philosopher
Max Stirner. See if you can become aware of an interesting freedom
that has not previously been on your radar screen.
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Do you enjoy the images that appear on my horoscope pages? They're
part of the VERTICAL ORACLE DECK, created by my friends Antero
Alli and Sylvi Alli. You can find out more about them here: verticalpool.com/oracle.html
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
CREEPING REDEMPTION
A beautiful rainbow toad species, thought lost for nearly a hundred
years, is found alive and well in Borneo.
tinyurl.com/6cbyqrm
UNSUNG HEROISM
Remarkable women developing solutions and guiding us towards a
sustainable future.
ecoamazons.com
THE ART OF FEELING GOOD
A movie about what makes people happy
thehappymovie.com
(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 August 11
Copyright 2011 by Rob Brezsny
FreeWillAstrology.com
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
For 34 years, a diligent Californian named Scott Weaver worked
on creating a scale model of San Francisco using toothpicks. Meanwhile,
Eric Miklos, of New Brunswick, Canada, was assembling a 40-foot-long
chain of bottle caps. And in 2006, a team of artists constructed
a 67-foot-tall gingerbread house, the world's largest, inside
the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. These are not the
kinds of stupendous feats I advise you to get started on in the
coming weeks, Leo. The astrological omens suggest that you'll
attract blessings into your life if you launch deeply meaningful
masterpieces, not trivial or silly ones.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
Storyteller Clarissa Pinkola Estes loves life's natural rhythms
just as they are. She says we can avoid a lot of suffering if
we understand how those rhythms work. "The cycles are birth,
light, and energy, and then depletion, decline, and death,"
she told Radiance magazine. In other words, everything
thrives and fades, thrives and fades. After each phase of dissipation,
new vitality incubates and blooms again. According to my analysis
of the astrological omens, Virgo, you are currently going through
a period of dwindling and dismantling. The light is dimmer than
usual, and the juice is sparser. But already, in the secret depths,
a new dispensation is stirring.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
Where do you want to be at this time next year? What do you want
to be doing? I encourage you to fantasize and scheme about these
questions, and be alert for clues about possible prospects. Here's
my reasoning, Libra: Some foreshadowings of your future life may
soon float into view, including a far-off whisper or a glimpse
of the horizon that will awaken some of your dormant yearnings.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that these visions must be
acted upon instantly. Instead, ruminate leisurely on them, regarding
them as the early hints of potential long-range developments.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
Let's say, hypothetically speaking, that you can't get The Most
Beautiful Thing. It's out of reach forever. You simply don't have
the connections or wherewithal to bring it into your life. Could
you accept that disappointment with a full heart, and move on?
Would you be able to forgive life for not providing you with your
number one heart's desire, and then make your way into the future
with no hard feelings? If so, Scorpio, I bet you would be well-primed
to cultivate a relationship with The Second Most Beautiful Thing.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
What images would be most helpful for you to fill your imagination
up with? What scenes would heal and activate your subconscious
mind, inspiring you in just the right ways? I invite you to make
a list of at least five of these, and then visualize them often
in the coming days. Here are a few possibilities to get you warmed
up: peach trees filled with ripe fruit; the planet Jupiter as
seen through a powerful telescope; a magnificent suspension bridge
at dawn or dusk; a large chorus animatedly singing a song you
love; the blissful face of a person you love.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Scientists have proved beyond a doubt that heavenly bodies cannot
possibly exert forces that affect events on earth, right? Well,
no, actually, according to research reported in the December 24,
2009 edition of the science journal Nature. It turns
out that the gravitational tug of the sun and moon sends significant
tremors through California's San Andreas Fault, and could potentially
trigger full-blown earthquakes. Speaking as a poet, not a scientist,
I speculate that those two luminaries, the sun and moon, may also
generate a lurching but medicinal effect on you sometime soon.
Are you ready for a healing jolt? It will relieve the tension
that has been building up between two of your "tectonic plates."
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LIFE IS BIGGER AND BETTER THAN ANY OF US CAN IMAGINE
In addition to the horoscopes you're reading here, I create more
in-depth audio horoscopes for your inspiration. Find out more
at RealAstrology.com.
The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at 1-877-873-4888.
"Your Expanded Audio Horoscopes provide me with the Rest
of the Story. I'm not necessarily a believer in the scientific
accuracy of astrology, but I do think you've got a lot of practical
wisdom to impart."
- M. Tennenbaum, New York
"No one knows more about me than me. But you're right up
there near the top of the list of people who do understand something
about how I tick. How is that possible?"
- R. Goren, Albuquerque
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AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
"Follow your dreams," read the headline on some random
blog I stumbled upon, "except for the one in which you're
giving a speech in your underwear." In the comments section,
someone named "Mystic Fool" had posted a dissenting
view: "I would much rather have a dream of giving a speech
in my underwear than of being naked and drunk and inarticulate
at a cocktail party, trying to hide behind the furniture."
Mystic Fool's attitude would serve you well in the coming week,
Aquarius. Expressing yourself in a public way, even if you don't
feel fully prepared, will actually be a pretty good course of
action -- especially as compared to keeping silent and hiding.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
Some substances that seem to be rock solid are in fact fluids
that move verrrryyy slowly. Bitumen is one example. It's a form
of petroleum also known as pitch. In a famous experiment, an Australian
researcher set up an apparatus that allowed a blob of pitch to
gradually drip into a container below it. Since the experiment
began in 1927, eight drops have fallen. I like to think you're
engaged in a similar long-term process, Pisces. And from what
I can tell, a new drop is about to drip.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
Dr. Larry Dossey thinks we shouldn't just automatically dismiss
the voices that speak to us in the privacy of our own heads. Some
of them may actually have wise counsel, or at least interesting
evidence about the state of our inner world. Besides, says Dossey,
"it is vital for our mental health to keep the channels open,
because when the voices of the gods are shut out, the devils often
take up residence." This would be good advice for you to
observe in the coming days, Aries. Don't let the nagging, blustering,
or unhinged murmurs in your head drown out the still, small voice
of lucid intuition. (Dossey's book is The Extraordinary Healing
Power of Ordinary Things: Fourteen Natural Steps.)
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
What are you going to do to attract or induce the phenomena I
name in the list below? At least three of them could come your
way in the days ahead: 1. a "limitation" that leads
to more freedom; 2. an imaginative surrender that empowers you
to make a seemingly impossible breakthrough; 3. a healthy shock
to the system that tenderizes your emotions; 4. a tough task that
clarifies and fine-tunes your ambition; 5. a seemingly lost chance
that leads to a fresh promise through the vigorous intervention
of your creative willpower.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Thirteen will be your lucky number for the foreseeable future.
In fact, a host of things for which the average person has an
irrational aversion could be helpful to you. For that matter,
influences that you yourself may have considered in the past to
be unsympathetic or uncongenial could very well be on your side,
and may even conspire to enlighten and delight you. At least temporarily,
I urge you to shed your superstitions, suspend your iffy biases,
and dismiss your outworn fears.
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
Anne Cushman wrote a book called Enlightenment for Idiots.
It wasn't a how-to book, but rather a novel about a spiritual
truth-seeker wandering through India. As far as I know, no one
has written an actual instructional manual with the theme she
named in her title. If anyone could do it, though, it would be
you right now. Lately, you've been getting smarter by doing the
most ordinary things. You've been drawing life-enhancing lessons
from events that others might regard as inconsequential or unsophisticated.
I suspect that this trend will continue in the coming days. Through
the power of simplicity and directness, you will succeed at tasks
that might have defeated you if you had allowed yourself to get
lost in complicated theories and overly-thought-out approaches.
Congrats!
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HOMEWORK:
Give yourself some slack in a situation where you typically back
yourself into a corner and tie yourself up. Report on your experience
at Freewillastrology.com.
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2011 Rob Brezsny
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