Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter November 30, 2016

 Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
 November 30, 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 is an excerpt.

Thousands of things go right for you every day, beginning the moment you wake up. Through some hocus-pocus you don't fully understand, you are still breathing and your heart is beating, even though you have been unconscious for many hours. The air is a mix of gases that's just right for your body's needs, as it was before you fell asleep.

Glory Glory Hallelujah

You can see! Light of many colors and shapes floods into your eyes, registered and transmitted to your brain by a complex web of neurons that took Goddess or evolution billions of years to perfect.

Glory Glory Hallelujah

The interesting gift of these vivid colors and shapes is made possible by an unimaginably immense globe of fire, the sun, which ceaselessly detonates nuclear explosions in order to convert its own body into light and heat and energy for your personal use.

Glory Glory Hallelujah

You can raise a glass of water to your lips. You can button your shirt. You can wash your hair and beat on a drum and draw infinity signs on a piece of paper. Your hands work wonderfully well. Your heart circulates your blood all the way out to replenish the energy of the muscles and nerves in your fingers and palms and wrists. And after your blood has delivered its blessings, it finds its way back to your heart to be refreshed. This astonishing mystery recurs over and over again without stopping every minute of your life.

Glory Glory Hallelujah

Language is another stupendous marvel. Millions of souls have cooperated intricately for untold centuries to cultivate a system of communication that you understand very well. Your ability to speak and read and write makes you feel strong and dynamic. It provides you with a crucial resource to make sense of the riotous cavalcade that always surrounds you. It enables you to indulge in one of your favorite pleasures, which is to hear and tell stories.

Glory Glory Hallelujah

According to my inside sources, you have personal possession of the universe's most monumental and mysterious accomplishment.
We take it for granted and refer to it with the pedestrian term "consciousness" . . . but this mercurial flash and dazzle that whirls around inside your head is outlandishly spectacular. You can think thoughts any time you want to -- soaring, luminescent, flamboyant thoughts or shriveled, rusty, burrowing thoughts . . . thoughts that can invent or destroy, corrupt or redeem, bless or curse.

Glory Glory Hallelujah

But wait. There's more. You can revel and wallow in great oceans of emotion. Whether they are poignant or intoxicating or somewhere in between, you relish the fact that you can harbor so much intensity. You cherish the privilege of commanding such extravagant life force.

Glory Glory Hallelujah

The best part of being in possession of the universe's most monumental and mysterious accomplishment is this: You have at your disposal a prodigiously potent creative tool. It's called your imagination. If there's a specific experience or object you want to bring into your world, the first thing you do is visualize it. The practical actions you take to live the life you want to live always refer back to the pictures in your mind's eye.

And so every goal you fulfill, every quest you carry out, every liberation you achieve, begins as an inner vision. Your imagination is the engine of your destiny. It's the catalyst with which you design your future.

I've got to ask you: How is any of this even possible? What colossal secret intelligence or improbable series of fabulous accidents conspired to bestow upon you all these superpowers?

Glory Glory Hallelujah

Of the millions of things that have gone right for you during your time on Earth, the first was your birth. It was a difficult miracle that involved many people who worked very hard on your behalf. No less amazing is the fact that you have continued to bloom ever since then, with new cells being born within you all the time to replace the old cells that are dying.

At this very moment, there are 50 trillion cells in your body, and each of them is really a sentient being in its own right. They all act together as a community, consecrating you with their breathtaking collaboration. It's just like magic.

Glory Glory Hallelujah

To celebrate our extreme good fortune, I invite you to sing praises and exaltations. Please repeat after me.

Everywhere we look: glory

Every time we move: glory

Every step we take: soaring glory

Every breath we take: roaring glory

Soaring roaring uproarious glory
is our story

Soaring roaring uproarious glory
is our story
 

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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

What you can do to help save America from tyranny, by Timothy Snyder:

* Do not obey in advance. Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without being asked. You've already done this, haven't you? Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.

* Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

* Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come to understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

* Take responsibility for the face of the world. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

* Give regularly to good causes, if you can. Pick a charity and set up autopay. Then you will know that you have made a free choice that is supporting civil society helping others doing something good.

* Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying.

* Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

* Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble. Authoritarianism works as a blackmail state, looking for the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have too many hooks.

* Learn from others in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends abroad. The present difficulties here are an element of a general trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.

* Watch out for the paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching around with torches and pictures of a Leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-Leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the game is over.

Read more: tinyurl.com/jdddt5b
 

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
 Week beginning December 1

Copyright 2016 by Rob Brezsny
FreeWillAstrology.com
 

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

A journalist dared composer John Cage to "summarize himself in a nutshell." Cage said, "Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in." He might have added, "Avoid the nutshells that anyone tries to put you in." This is always fun work to attend to, of course, but I especially recommend it to you Sagittarians right now. You're in the time of year that's close to the moment when you first barged out of your mom's womb, where you had been housed for months. The coming weeks will be an excellent phase to attempt a similar if somewhat less extravagant trick.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):

Hundreds of years ago, the Catholic Church's observance of Lent imposed a heavy burden. During this six-week period, extending from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, believers were expected to cleanse their sins through acts of self-denial. For example, they weren't supposed to eat meat on Fridays. Their menus could include fish, however. And this loophole was expanded even further in the 17th century when the Church redefined beavers as being fish. (They swim well, after all.) I'm in favor of you contemplating a new loophole in regard to your own self-limiting behaviors, Capricorn. Is there a taboo you observe that no longer makes perfect sense? Out of habit, do you deny yourself a pleasure or indulgence that might actually be good for you? Wriggle free of the constraints.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):

"The Pacific Ocean was overflowing the borders of the map," wrote Pablo Neruda in his poem "The Sea." "There was no place to put it," he continued. "It was so large, wild and blue that it didn't fit anywhere. That's why it was left in front of my window." This passage is a lyrical approximation of what your life could be like in 2017. In other words, lavish, elemental, expansive experiences will be steadily available to you. Adventures that may have seemed impossibly big and unwieldy in the past will be just the right size. And it all begins soon.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):

"I have a deep fear of being too much," writes poet Michelle K. "That one day I will find my someone, and they will realize that I am a hurricane. That they will step back and be intimidated by my muchness." Given the recent astrological omens, Pisces, I wouldn't be shocked if you've been having similar feelings. But now here's the good news: Given the astrological omens of the next nine months, I suspect the odds will be higher than usual that you'll encounter brave souls who'll be able to handle your muchness. They may or may not be soulmates or your one-and-only. I suggest you welcome them as they are, with all of their muchness.

ARIES (March 21-April 19):

"I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow," wrote naturalist Henry David Thoreau in Walden, "to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines." I'd love to see you summon that level of commitment to your important rendezvous in the coming weeks, Aries. Please keep in mind, though, that your "most important rendezvous" are more likely to be with wild things, unruly wisdom, or primal breakthroughs than with pillars of stability, committee meetings, and business-as-usual.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20):

For you Tauruses, December is "I Accept and Love and Celebrate Myself Exactly How I Am Right Now" Month. To galvanize yourself, play around with this declaration by Oscar-winning Taurus actress Audrey Hepburn: "I'm a long way from the human being I'd like to be, but I've decided I'm not so bad after all." Here are other thoughts to draw on during the festivities: 1. "If you aren't good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone." - Barbara De Angelis. 2. "The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else." - E. E. Cummings. 3. "To accept ourselves as we are means to value our imperfections as much as our perfections." - Sandra Bierig. 4. "We cannot change anything until we accept it." - Carl Jung.

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YOU'VE ALWAYS GOT MORE HELP AVAILABLE THAN YOU IMAGINE

What do you want to be when you grow up? Is it possible that you will eventually develop beautiful capacities and sublime understandings that you can't even imagine right now?

I might be able to help you move in the direction of becoming more of the person you were born to be.

Tune in to my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES

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. Each forecast is 4-5 minutes long.

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

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"I always feel like I know myself better after listening to your audio 'scopes."
-June R., Austin, TX

"Your audio horoscopes calm me down when I'm too manic and pep me up when I'm down."
-Arthur T., Cleveland, OH

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GEMINI (May 21-June 20):

Are your collaborative projects (including the romantic kind) evolving at a slower pace than you expected? Have they not grown as deep and strong as you've wished they would? If so, I hope you're perturbed about it. Maybe that will motivate you to stop tolerating the stagnation. Here's my recommendation: Don't adopt a more serious and intense attitude. Instead, get loose and frisky. Inject a dose of blithe spirits into your togetherness, maybe even some high jinks and rowdy experimentation. The cosmos has authorized you to initiate ingenious surprises.

CANCER (June 21-July 22):

I don't recommend that you buy a cat-o'-nine-tails and whip yourself in a misguided effort to exorcize your demons. The truth is, those insidious troublemakers exult when you abuse yourself. They draw perverse sustenance from it. In fact, their strategy is to fool you into treating yourself badly. So, no. If you hope to drive away the saboteurs huddled in the sacred temple of your psyche, your best bet is to shower yourself with tender care, even luxurious blessings. The pests won't like that, and -- if you commit to this crusade for an extended time -- they will eventually flee.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel García Márquez loved yellow roses. He often had a fresh bloom on his writing desk as he worked, placed there every morning by his wife Mercedes Barcha. In accordance with the astrological omens, I invite you to consider initiating a comparable ritual. Is there a touch of beauty you would like to inspire you on a regular basis? It there a poetic gesture you could faithfully perform for a person you love?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):

"For a year I watched as something entered and then left my body," testified Jane Hirshfield in her poem "The Envoy." What was that mysterious something? Terror or happiness? She didn't know. Nor could she decipher "how it came in" or "how it went out." It hovered "where words could not reach it. It slept where light could not go." Her experience led her to conclude that "There are openings in our lives of which we know nothing." I bring this meditation to your attention, Virgo, because I suspect you are about to tune in to a mysterious opening. But unlike Hirshfield, I think you'll figure out what it is. And then you will respond to it with verve and intelligence.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):

A reporter at the magazine Vanity Fair asked David Bowie, "What do you consider your greatest achievement?" Bowie didn't name any of his albums, videos, or performances. Rather, he answered, "Discovering morning." I suspect that you Libras will attract and generate marvels if you experiment with accomplishments like that in the coming weeks. So yes, try to discover or rediscover morning. Delve into the thrills of beginnings. Magnify your appreciation for natural wonders that you usually take for granted. Be seduced by sources that emanate light and heat. Gravitate toward what's fresh, blossoming, just-in-its-early-stages.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):

According to traditional astrology, you Scorpios are not prone to optimism. You're more often portrayed as connoisseurs of smoldering enigmas and shadowy intrigue and deep questions. But one of the most creative and successful Scorpios of the 20th century did not completely fit this description. French artist Claude Monet was renowned for his delightful paintings of sensuous outdoor landscapes. "Every day I discover even more beautiful things," he testified. "It is intoxicating me, and I want to paint it all. My head is bursting." Monet is your patron saint in the coming weeks. You will have more potential to see as he did than you've had in a long time.
 

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HOMEWORK:

If you had a baby clone of yourself to take care of, what would be your child-rearing strategy? Tell me at Freewillastrology.com.

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Submissions sent to Rob Brezsny's Astrology 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 submissions for length, style, and content. 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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