Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter October 28, 2015

 Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
 October 28, 2015
 FreeWillAstrology.com

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My book PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA
is available at Amazon: bit.ly/Pronoia
or Powells: bit.ly/PronoiaPowells

Below is an excerpt.

Devotional Pronoia Therapy. Experiments and exercises in becoming a gracefully probing, erotically funny, shockingly friendly Master of Orgasmic Empathy

1. What causes happiness? Brainstorm about it. Map out the foundations of your personal science of joy. Get serious about defining what makes you feel good.

To get you started, I'll name some experiences that might rouse your gratification: engaging in sensual pleasure; seeking the truth; being kind and moral; contemplating the meaning of life; escaping your routine; purging pent-up emotions. Do any of these work for you? Name at least ten more.

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2. Are other people luckier than you? If so, psychologist Richard Wiseman says you can do something about it. His book The Luck Factor presents research that proves you can learn to be lucky. It's not a mystical force you're born with, he says, but a habit you can develop.

How? For starters, be open to new experiences, trust your gut wisdom, expect good fortune, see the bright side of challenging events, and master the art of maximizing serendipitous opportunities.

Name three specific actions you'll try in order to improve your luck.

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3. Dumb suffering is the kind of suffering you're compulsively drawn back to over and over again out of habit. It's familiar, and thus perversely comfortable. Smart suffering is the kind of pain that surprises you with valuable teachings and inspires you to see the world with new eyes.

While stupid suffering is often born of fear, wise suffering is typically stirred up by love. The dumb, unproductive stuff comes from allowing yourself to be controlled by your early conditioning and from doing things that are out of harmony with your essence. The smart, useful variety arises out of an intention to approach life as an interesting work of art and uncanny game that's worthy of your curiosity.

Come up with two more definitions about the difference between dumb suffering and smart suffering.

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4. Write the following on a piece of red paper and keep it under your pillow. "I, [put your name here], do solemnly swear on this day, [put date here], that I will devote myself for a period of seven days to learning my most important desire. No other thought will be more uppermost in my mind. No other concern will divert me from tracking down every clue that might assist me in my drive to ascertain the one experience in this world that deserves my brilliant passion above all others."

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5. The primary meaning of the word "healing" is "to cure what's diseased or broken." Medical practitioners focus on sick people. Philanthropists donate their money and social workers contribute their time to helping the underprivileged. Psychotherapists wrestle with their clients' traumas and neuroses. I'm in awe of them all. The level of one's spiritual wisdom, I believe, is more accurately measured by helping people in need than by meditation skills, shamanic shapeshifting, supernatural powers, or esoteric knowledge.

But I also believe in a second kind of healing that is largely unrecognized: to supercharge what is already healthy; to lift up what's merely sufficient to a sublime state. Using this definition, describe two acts of healing: one you would enjoy performing on yourself and another you'd like to provide for someone you love.

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6. Is the world a dangerous, chaotic place with no inherent purpose, running on automatic like a malfunctioning machine and fundamentally inimical to your drive to find meaning? Or are you surrounded by helpers in a friendly, enchanted universe that gives you challenges in order to make you smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier?

Trick questions! The answers may depend, at least to some degree, on what you believe is true.

Formulate a series of experiments that will allow you to objectively test the hypothesis that the universe is conspiring to help dissolve your ignorance and liberate you from your suffering.

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7. Those who explore pronoia often find they have a growing capacity to help people laugh at themselves. While few arbiters of morality recognize this skill as a mark of high character, I put it near the top of my list. In my view, inducing people to take themselves less seriously is a supreme virtue.

Do you have any interest in cultivating it? How might you go about it?

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8. Computer programmer Garry Hamilton articulated the following "Game Rules." Give examples of how they have worked in your life.

1. If the game is rigged so you can't win, find another game or invent your own. 2. If you're not winning because you don't know the rules, learn the rules. 3. If you know the rules but aren't willing to follow them, there's either something wrong with the game or you need to change something in yourself. 4. Don't play the game in a half-baked way. Either get all the way in or all the way out. 5. It shouldn't be necessary for others to lose in order for you to win. If others have to lose, re-evaluate the game's goals.

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9. "There are two ways for a person to look for adventure," said the Lone Ranger, an old TV character. "By tearing everything down, or building everything up." Give an example of each from your own life.

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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

Sikhs Set Up Free Bakery Near War Zone to Feed Fleeing Syrians. The group provides food and water to 14,000 people a day.
tinyurl.com/npey8gz

Mexican Artist Pedro Reyes Reyes went to the deadliest city in Mexico, Culiacán, and asked the people there to exchange guns for certificates they could use towards household appliances or electronics. Then, he melted the weapons down and turned them into shovels to use for planting trees.
tinyurl.com/pyp9256

The Gloucester, Massachusetts police department is using money seized from drug dealers to fund rehab for addicts they once would have locked up simply for using heroin.
tinyurl.com/ngtc64f

This week's Pronoiac Resources come from "Good News Network," a website full of stories about all the good things that are happening in the world right now:
www.goodnewsnetwork.org

(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 October 29

Copyright 2015 by Rob Brezsny
FreeWillAstrology.com

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):

I expect you to be in a state of continual birth for the next four weeks. Awakening and activation will come naturally. Your drive to blossom and create may be irresistible, bordering on unruly. Does that sound overwhelming? I don't think it will be a problem as long as you cultivate a mood of amazed amusement about how strong it feels. To help maintain your poise, keep in mind that your growth spurt is a natural response to the dissolution that preceded it. Halloween costume suggestion: a fountain, an erupting volcano, the growing beanstalk from the "Jack and the Beanstalk" fairy tale.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

"Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again." So says Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield. Can you guess why I'm bringing it to your attention, Sagittarius? It's one of those times when you can do yourself a big favor by sloughing off the stale, worn-out, decaying parts of your past. Luckily for you, you now have an extraordinary talent for doing just that. I suspect you will also receive unexpected help and surprising grace as you proceed. Halloween costume suggestion: a snake molting its skin.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):

Speaking on behalf of your wild mind, I'm letting you know that you're due for an immersion in revelry and festivity. Plugging away at business as usual could become counterproductive unless you take at least brief excursions to the frontiers of pleasure. High integrity may become sterile unless you expose it to an unpredictable adventure or two. Halloween costume suggestion: party animal, hell raiser, social butterfly, god or goddess of delight. Every one of us harbors a touch of crazy genius that periodically needs to be unleashed, and now is that time for you.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):

I hope you will choose a Halloween costume that emboldens you to feel powerful. For the next three weeks, it's in your long-term interest to invoke a visceral sense of potency, dominion, and sovereignty. What clothes and trappings might stimulate these qualities in you? Those of a king or queen? A rock star or CEO? A fairy godmother, superhero, or dragon-tamer? Only you know which archetypal persona will help stir up your untapped reserves of confidence and command.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):

It's time to stretch the boundaries, Pisces. You have license to expand the containers and outgrow the expectations and wage rebellion for the sheer fun of it. The frontiers are calling you. Your enmeshment in small talk and your attachment to trivial wishes are hereby suspended. Your mind yearns to be blown and blown and blown again! I dare you to wander outside your overly safe haven and go in quest of provocative curiosities. Halloween costume suggestions: mad scientist, wild-eyed revolutionary, Dr. Who.

ARIES (March 21-April 19):

On a January morning in 1943, the town of Spearfish, South Dakota experienced very weird weather. At 7:30 a.m. the temperature was minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. In the next two minutes, due to an unusual type of wind sweeping down over nearby Lookout Mountain, thermometers shot up 49 degrees. Over the next hour and a half, the air grew even warmer. But by 9:30, the temperature had plummeted back to minus 4 degrees. I'm wondering if your moods might swing with this much bounce in the coming weeks. As long as you keep in mind that no single feeling is likely to last very long, it doesn't have to be a problem. You may even find a way to enjoy the breathtaking ebbs and flows. Halloween costume suggestion: roller coaster rider, Jekyll and Hyde, warm clothes on one side of your body and shorts or bathing suit on the other.

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PLEASURE IS HOLY?

Assume that your drive to experience pleasure isn't a barrier to your spiritual growth, but is in fact essential to it. Proceed on the hypothesis that cultivating joy can make you a more ethical and compassionate person. Imagine that feeling good has something important to teach you every day.

For inspiration in practicing this approach, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES. They're four-to-five-minute meditations on the current state of your destiny.

To listen to your Expanded Audio Horoscope online, go to RealAstrology.com.

Register and/or log in through the main page.

You can also listen over the phone by calling 1-877-873-4888.

The cost is $6 per sign on the Web (discounts available for bulk purchases), or $1.99 per minute by phone.

The Expanded Audio Horoscopes work on most smart phones and tablets.

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"The best part about your audio horoscopes is that they pat me on the head and kick me in the ass at the same time." - Rita L., San Diego

"Your audio oracles go beyond helping me find the truth -- they inspire me to find the WILD truth." - Patrick K., Montreal

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TAURUS (April 20-May 20):

How dare you be so magnetic and tempting? What were you thinking when you turned up the intensity of your charm to such a high level? I suggest you consider exercising more caution about expressing your radiance. People may have other things to do besides daydreaming about you. But if you really can't bring yourself to be a little less attractive -- if you absolutely refuse to tone yourself down -- please at least try to be extra kind and generous. Share your emotional wealth. Overflow with more than your usual allotments of blessings. Halloween costume suggestion: a shamanic Santa Claus; a witchy Easter Bunny.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20):

In the last ten days of November and the month of December, I suspect there will be wild-card interludes when you can enjoy smart gambles, daring stunts, cute tricks, and mythic escapades. But the next three weeks will not be like that. On the contrary. For the immediate future, I think you should be an upstanding citizen, a well-behaved helper, and a dutiful truth-teller. Can you handle that? If so, I bet you will get sneak peaks of the fun and productive mischief that could be yours in the last six weeks of 2015. Halloween costume suggestion: the most normal person in the world.

CANCER (June 21-July 22):

Members of the gazelle species known as the springbok periodically engage in a behavior known as pronking. They leap into the air and propel themselves a great distance with all four feet off the ground, bounding around with abandon. What evolutionary purpose does this serve? Some scientists are puzzled, but not naturalist David Attenborough. In the documentary film Africa, he follows a springbok herd as it wanders through the desert for months, hoping to find a rare rainstorm. Finally it happens. As if in celebration, the springboks erupt with an outbreak of pronking. "They are dancing for joy," Attenborough declares. Given the lucky breaks and creative breakthroughs coming your way, Cancerian, I foresee you doing something similar. Halloween costume suggestion: a pronking gazelle, a hippety-hopping bunny, a boisterous baby goat.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):

"A very little key will open a very heavy door," wrote Charles Dickens in his short story "Hunted Down." Make that one of your guiding meditations in the coming days, Leo. In the back of your mind, keep visualizing the image of a little key opening a heavy door. Doing so will help ensure that you'll be alert when clues about the real key's location become available. You will have a keen intuitive sense of how you'll need to respond if you want to procure it. Halloween costume suggestion: proud and protective possessor of a magic key.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):

The ancient Hindu text known as the Kama Sutra gives extensive advice about many subjects, including love and sex. "Though a man loves a woman ever so much," reads a passage in chapter four, "he never succeeds in winning her without a great deal of talking." Take that as your cue, Virgo. In the coming weeks, stir up the intimacy you want with a great deal of incisive talking that beguiles and entertains. Furthermore, use the same approach to round up any other experience you yearn for. The way you play with language will be crucial in your efforts to fulfill your wishes. Luckily, I expect your persuasive powers to be even greater than they usually are. Halloween costume suggestion: the ultimate salesperson.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):

I encourage you to be super rhythmical and melodious in the coming days. Don't just sing in the shower and in the car. Hum and warble and whistle while shopping for vegetables and washing the dishes and walking the dog. Allot yourself more than enough time to shimmy and cavort, not just on the dance floor but anywhere else you can get away with it. For extra credit, experiment with lyrical flourishes whenever you're in bed doing the jizzle-skazzle. Halloween costume suggestion: wandering troubadour, street musician, free-styling rapper, operatic diva, medicine woman who heals with sound.

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HOMEWORK:

What is your greatest fear? Make fun of it this Halloween. Tell me about it at FreeWillAstrology.com.

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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 2015 Rob Brezsny

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