Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
July 20, 2016
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 are excerpts.
Let me remind you who you really are: You're an immortal freedom fighter who longs to liberate all sentient creatures from their suffering. You're a fun-loving messiah who devoutly wants to help all of your fellow messiahs claim the ecstatic awareness that is their birthright.
Try to remember. You're a vortex of fluidic light that has temporarily taken on the form of a human being, suffering amnesia about your true origins. And why did you do that? Because it was the best way to forge the identity that would make you such an elemental force in our 14-billion-year campaign to bring heaven all the way down to earth.
I'm not speaking metaphorically here. You are a mutant deity in disguise—not a Buddha or a Christ exactly, but of the same lineage and conjured from the same fire. You have been around since the beginning of time and will be here after the end. Every day and in every way, you're getting better at playing the preposterously amusing master game we all dreamed up together before the Big Bang bloomed.
Lately, I must admit, our work has seemed almost comically impossible. Many of us have given in to the temptation to believe that everything is upside-down and inside-out. Ignorance and inertia, partially camouflaged as time-honored morality, seem to surround us.
Pessimism is enshrined as a hallmark of worldliness. Compulsive skepticism masquerades as perceptiveness. Mean-spirited irony is chic. Stories about treachery and degradation provoke a visceral thrill in millions of people who think of themselves as reasonable and smart. Beautiful truths are suspect and ugly truths are readily believed.
So no, at this peculiar turning point in the evolution of our 14-billion-year-old master game, it's not easy to carry out our mission. We've got to be both wrathful insurrectionaries and exuberant lovers of life. We've got to cultivate cheerful buoyancy even as we resist the temptation to swallow thousands of delusions that have been carefully crafted and seductively packaged by those messiahs among us who bravely volunteered to play the role of know-it-all deceivers.
We have to learn how to stay in a good yet unruly mood as we overthrow the sour, puckered mass hallucination that is mistakenly referred to as "reality."
Maybe most importantly, we have to be ferociously and single-mindedly dedicated to the cause of beauty and truth and love even as we keep our imaginations wild and hungry and free. We have to be both disciplined and rowdy.
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"The criteria for success: you are free, you live in the present moment, you are useful to the people around you, and you feel love for all humanity."
—Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
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HOW WELL DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE GREAT MYSTERY?
The ever-evolving truth is far too complicated and fluid and slippery and scrambled and gorgeously abundant for one human being to completely master.
I'm lucky to have gotten my percentage of mastery up to about 3%. On a good day, that’s how much I understand of the Maddening and Delightful Mystery we are embedded in.
Here's a hypothesis that's a cornerstone of my 3%: It's smart and healthy to joyfully rebel against everyone who assuredly tells me that they know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
How well do you understand the Great Mystery? What's your percentage?
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THE ACTIVISM OF LOVE
Environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill spent two years living in a redwood tree she named "Luna." Her goal was to save it from being cut down by a logging company. She succeeded both literally and mythically. Luna was spared from death, as was a surrounding three-acre swath of trees. Hill became an inspiring symbol of artful, compassionate protest.
Later she told Benjamin Tong in the DVD "The Taoist and the Activist": "So often activism is based on what we are against, what we don't like, what we don't want. And yet we manifest what we focus on. And so we are manifesting yet ever more of what we don't want, what we don't like, what we want to change.
"So for me, activism is about a spiritual practice as a way of life. And I realized I didn't climb the tree because I was angry at the corporations and the government; I climbed the tree because when I fell in love with the redwoods, I fell in love with the world. So it is my feeling of 'connection' that drives me, instead of my anger and feelings of being disconnected."
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WHAT OPPORTUNITIES ARE AHEAD FOR YOU in the next ten to fifteen months?
EXPLORE THE BIG PICTURE OF YOUR LIFE
with my Expanded Audio Horoscopes for the Second Half of 2016 and onward into 2017.
How can you exert your free will to create the adventures that will bring out the best in you, even as you find graceful ways to cooperate with the tides of destiny?
To listen to my IN-DEPTH, LONG-TERM AUDIO FORECAST for YOUR LIFE during the coming months, register and/or sign in here:
RealAstrology.com
After you log in through the main page, click on the link "Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2016."
The horoscopes cost $6 apiece. Discounts are available for multiple purchases.
You can also listen to your short-term forecast for the coming week by clicking on "This week (July 19, 2016)."
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Whether or not you want to listen to those Big Picture audio reports for the rest of 2016 and beyond, you may be interested in reviewing the long-term horoscopes I wrote for you early this year. They discuss your best potential destiny for all of 2016. To see them, go here:
bit.ly/BigPicture2016
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
U.S. ordered to lower Navy sonar levels to protect whales
tinyurl.com/j52z5s6
These 18 Amazing Street Murals In Detroit Rival Anything In The World
tinyurl.com/nzru2wy
Solar Seawater Distiller Turns Salt Water Into Drinking Water Using Only Sunlight
tinyurl.com/jxdft25
(Note: I endorse these because I like them. They aren’t advertisements, and I get no kickbacks.)
Please tell me your own nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES: Truthrooster@gmail.com.
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning July 21
Copyright 2016 by Rob Brezsny
FreeWillAstrology.com
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
My friend's 12-year-old daughter Brianna got a "B" on her summer school math test. She might have earned an "A" if it weren't for a problem her teacher had with some of her work. "You got the right answer by making two mistakes that happened to cancel each other out," he wrote on her paper next to question seven. I suspect you will soon have a similar experience. Leo. But the difference between you and Brianna is that I'm giving you an "A." All that matters in the end is that you succeed. I don't care if your strategy is a bit funky.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
Have ever fantasized about being a different gender or race or astrological sign? Do you suspect it might be fun and liberating to completely change your wardrobe or your hairstyle or your body language? The coming weeks will be an excellent time to experiment with these variables, and with any others that would enable you to play with your identity and mutate your self-image. You have a cosmic exemption from imitating what you have done in the past. In this spirit, feel free to read all the other signs’ horoscopes, and act on the one you like best. Your word of power is "shapeshifter."
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
The Golden Goose Award is given annually to "scientists whose work may have been considered silly, odd, or obscure when first conducted," but which ultimately produced dramatic advances. Entomologists Raymond Bushland and Edward Knipling were this year's winners. More than 60 years ago they started tinkering with the sex life of the screwworm fly in an effort to stop the pest from killing livestock and wildlife throughout the American South. At first their ideas were laughed at, even ridiculed. In time they were lauded for their pioneering breakthroughs. I suspect you'll be blessed with a vindication of your own in the coming weeks, Libra. It may not be as monumental as Bushland's and Knipling's, but I bet it'll be deeply meaningful for you.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
I hope it doesn't sound too paradoxical when I urge you to intensify your commitment to relaxation. I will love it, and more importantly your guardian angel will love it, if you become a fierce devotee of slowing down and chilling out. Get looser and cozier and more spacious, damn it! Snuggle more. Cut back on overthinking and trying too hard. Vow to become a high master of the mystic art of I-don't-give-a-f*ck. It's your sacred duty to steal more slack from the soul-anesthetizing grind.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
I regularly travel back through time from the year 2036 so as to be here with you. It's tough to be away from the thrilling transformations that are underway there. But it's in a good cause. The bedraggled era that you live in needs frequent doses of the vigorous optimism that's so widespread in 2036, and I'm happy to disseminate it. Why am I confessing this? Because I suspect you now have an extra talent for gazing into the unknown and exploring undiscovered possibilities. You also have an unprecedented power to set definite intentions about the life you want to be living in the future. Who will you be five years from today? Ten years? Twenty years? Be brave. Be visionary. Be precise.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Here's one strategy you could pursue, I guess: You could spank the Devil with a feather duster as you try to coax him to promise that he will never again trick you with a bogus temptation. But I don't think that would work, frankly. It may have minor shock value, in which case the Devil might leave you in peace for a short time. Here's what I suggest instead: Work at raising your discernment so high that you can quickly identify, in the future, which temptations will deliver you unto evil confusion, and which will feed and hone your most noble desires.
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MY OTHER HOROSCOPES
Factual information and reasonable thinking alone are not sufficient to guide you through life’s labyrinthine tests. You need and deserve regular deliveries of uncanny revelation.
One of your inalienable rights as a human being should therefore be to receive mysteriously useful omens on a regular basis. In this spirit, I offer you the free weekly horoscopes you read here.
If you ever want more, and think it's worth paying for, try my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES. They're four-to-five-minute meditations on the current state of your destiny and where you're headed.
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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"Your audio horoscopes help me love myself better, and I mean that in a non-narcissistic way.”
-Deva P., Indianapolis
"I'm really grateful for the way you pick up my telepathic requests and answer them in your expanded audio 'scopes.”
-Marion H., Birmingham, AL
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AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
After a cool, dry period, you'll soon be slipping into a hot, wet phase. The reasonable explanations that generated so much apathy are about to get turned inside-out. The seemingly good excuses that provided cover for your timidity will be exposed as impractical lies. Are you ready for your passion to roar back into fashion? Will you know what to do when suppressed yearnings erupt and the chemicals of love start rampaging through your soft, warm animal body? I hereby warn you about the oncoming surge of weird delight -- and sing "Hallelujah!" for the revelatory fun it will bring.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
I'm composing your horoscope on my iPhone after midnight on a crowded bus that's crammed with sweaty revelers. We're being transported back to civilization from a rural hideaway where we spent the last 12 hours at a raging party. I still feel ecstatic from the recent bacchanal, but the ride is uncomfortable. I'm pinned against a window by a sleepy, drunken dude who's not in full control of his body. But do I allow my predicament to interfere with my holy meditation on your destiny? I do not -- just as I trust you will keep stoking the fires of your own inspiration in the face of comparable irritations. You have been on a hot streak, my dear. Don't let anything tamp it down!
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
You now have more luxuriant access to divine luck than you've had in a long time. For the foreseeable future, you could be able to induce semi-miraculous twists of fate that might normally be beyond your capacities. But here's a caveat: The good fortune swirling in your vicinity may be odd or irregular or hard-to-understand. To harvest it, you will have to expand your ideas about what constitutes good fortune. It may bestow powers you didn't even realize it was possible to have. For example, what if you temporarily have an acute talent for gravitating toward situations where smart love is in full play?
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
A directory published by the U.S. Department of Labor says that my gig as an astrologer shares a category with jugglers, rodeo clowns, acrobats, carnival barkers, and stuntpersons. Am I, therefore, just a charming buffoon? An amusing goofball who provides diversion from life's serious matters? I'm fine with that. I may prefer to regard myself as a sly oracle inflamed with holy madness, but the service I provide is probably more effective if my ego doesn't get the specific glory it yearns for. In this way, I have certain resemblances to the Taurus tribe during the next four weeks. Is it OK if you achieve success without receiving all of the credit you think you deserve?
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Over the course of a 57-year career, Japanese movie director Akira Kurosawa won 78 major awards for his work, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oscars. Among the filmmakers who've named him as an inspirational influence are heavyweights like Ingmar Bergman, Werner Herzog, Bernardo Bertolucci, Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese. But Kurosawa wasn't too haughty to create lighter fare. At age 86, he departed from his epic dramas to create a 30-second commercial for a yogurt drink. Did that compromise his artistic integrity? I say no. Even a genius can't be expected to create non-stop masterpieces. Be inspired by Kurosawa, Gemini. In the coming weeks, give your best to even the most modest projects.
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
Capricorns may be the hardest workers of the zodiac, and Tauruses the most dogged. But in the coming weeks, I suspect you Cancerians will be the smartest workers. You will efficiently surmise the precise nature of the tasks at hand, and do what's necessary to accomplish them. There'll be no false starts or reliance on iffy data or slapdash trial-and-error experiments. You'll have a light touch as you find innovative short cuts that produce better results than would be possible via the grind-it-out approach.
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HOMEWORK:
Which actor or actress would be the best choice to play you in a film about your life? Go to Realastrology.com and click "Email Rob."
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Requests for anonymity will be honored. We are not responsible for unsolicited submission of any creative material.
Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright 2016 Rob Brezsny
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