Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
March 1, 2017
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.
It’s reasonable and permissible to explode the past, misquote yourself, create new gods and goddesses from scratch, believe in the opposite of everything, forget the "important" fears that never came true, change the meanings of your code words, misspell your own name, and rewrite the epic twists of your myth.
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GRATITUDE FEST
Would you like to make yourself smarter and more beautiful? Are you interested in increasing your capacity for ecstasy and improving your health? Consider the possibility of celebrating regular Gratitude Fests.
During these orgies of appreciation, you could confer praise and respect on the creatures, both human and otherwise, that have played seminal roles in inspiring you to become yourself. You would devote yourself to invoking and expressing thanks.
Who teaches and helps you? Who sees you for who you really are? Who nudges you in the direction of your fuller destiny and awakens you to your signature truths? Who loves you brilliantly?
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ACQUIRING GOOD PROBLEMS
Acquiring problems is a fundamental human need. It's as crucial to your well-being as getting food, air, water, sleep, and love. You define yourself -- indeed, you make yourself -- through the puzzling dilemmas you attract and solve. The most creative people on the planet are those who frame the biggest, hardest questions and then gather the resources necessary to find the answers.
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IN LOVE WITH ???
"I was often in love with something or someone," wrote Polish poet Czesław Miłosz. "I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With the forest one sees to the right when riding in a cart to Jaszuny. With human beings whose names still move me."
I invite you to experiment with his approach to love. Make it a fun game: See how often you can feel adoration for unexpected characters and creatures. Be infatuated with curious objects . . . with snarky Internet memes . . . with fleeting phenomena like storms and swirling flocks of birds and candy spilled on the floor.
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"When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be."
― Patanjali
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HOW SOON IS NOW?
I like to complain and be outraged as much as the next aspiring bodhisattva. I derive a not-so-taboo pleasure from railing against our new Lord-of-the-Flies President and his snotty but lethal Trumpocalypse.
But I'm also passionate about crafting a new world that will bypass the vortex of nonsense, that will render the institutionalized mayhem defunct. I value Buckminster Fuller's perspective: "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
Another favorite counsel comes from sociologist David Cooperrider: "Almost without exception, everything society has considered a social advance has been prefigured first in some utopian writing."
And that's why I like to commune with idealistic yet practical futurists who envision the best possible civilization we can create.
Now I'm happy to say that one of those rare Big Positive Thinkers is offering a new blessing. With his book How Soon is Now: From Personal Initiation to Global Transformation, Daniel Pinchbeck has secured his place in my Hall of Fame of Positive and Practical Insurrectionaries.
The book is a manifesto. A call to zealous and compassionate action. A well-thought-out and visionary formulization of effective tactics.
Thanks, Daniel!
available at Powells: tinyurl.com/zfg4qpf
available at Amazon: tinyurl.com/j8z6yr8
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Good news from tinyurl.com/j3rcmr9:
1. Say Goodbye to 40% of ocean plastics
2. The giant panda is no longer an endangered species
3. China announced plans to end the ivory trade
4. The US veteran homeless rate declined by 47% in the last 7 years
5. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge funded a medical breakthrough
6. China put a ban on certain coal mines
7. The manatee is longer on the endangered species list
8. The Colombian Government and FARC rebels signed a peace agreement
9. NASA Drone Juno flew 800 million miles
10. Canada protected 85% of the world’s largest coastal temperate rainforest
11. Measles has been eradicated from the Americas
12. Malawi saw its HIV rate drop by 67%
13. 20 countries created protected marine parks
14. Israel produces 55% of fresh water from the sea
15. Scientists developed an Ebola vaccine with a 100 percent success rate
16. World hunger hit a 25-year low
17. Tiger populations are coming back again after 100 years
18. Einstein’s theory of gravitational waves has been proven correct
19. Costa Rica’s electrical grid can run on renewable energy
20. India planted 50 million trees in 24 hours
(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 March 2
Copyright 2017 by Rob Brezsny
FreeWillAstrology.com
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
Your immediate future is too good to be true. Or at least that's what you, with your famous self-doubt, might be inclined to believe if I told you the truth about the favorable developments that are in the works. Therefore, I have come up with some fake anxieties to keep your worry reflex engaged so it won't sabotage the real goodies. Beware of dirty limericks and invisible ladders and upside-down rainbows and psychic bunny rabbits. Be on guard against accountants wearing boxing gloves and clowns singing Broadway show tunes in runaway shopping carts and celebrities telling you classified secrets in your dreams.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
I predict that you will have earned the title of Master Composter no later than March 26. Not necessarily because you will have packed your food scraps, wilted flowers, coffee grounds, and shredded newspapers in, say, a deluxe dual-chamber tumbling compost bin. But rather because you will have dealt efficiently with the rotting emotions, tattered habits, decrepit melodramas, and trivial nonsense that has accumulated; you will have worked hard to transform all that crap into metaphorical fertilizer for your future growth. Time to get started!
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
It's a good time for you to wield your emotional intelligence with leadership and flair. The people you care about need more of your sensitive influence. Any posse or tribe you're part of will benefit from your thoughtful intervention. So get out there and build up the group morale, Taurus. Assert your healing ideals with panache. Tamp down the insidious power of peer pressure and fashionable nonsense. You have a mandate to wake up sleepy allies and activate the dormant potential of collective efforts.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
If you were ever in your life going to be awarded an honorary PhD from a top university, it would happen in the next few weeks. If there were even a remote possibility that you would someday be given one of those MacArthur Fellowship "genius" grants, now would be the time. Likewise if you had any hopes of being selected as one of "The World's Sexiest Chameleons" or "The Fastest, Sweetest Talkers on Earth" or "The Planet's Most Virtuoso Vacillators," the moment has arrived. And even if none of those things happen, I'm still pretty sure that your reputation and status will be on the rise.
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
You're wandering into places you've always thought you should be wary of or skeptical about. Good for you! As long as you protect your innocence, I encourage you to keep exploring. To my delight, you have also been fantasizing about accomplishments that used to be off-limits. Again, I say: Good for you! As long as you don't overreach, I invite you to dream boldly, even brazenly. And since you seem to be in the mood for big thinking, here are other revolutionary activities to consider: dissolving nonessential wishes; transcending shrunken expectations; escaping the boring past; busting irrelevant taboos.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
I did a good job of raising my daughter. She turned out to be a thoughtful, intelligent adult with high integrity and interesting skills. But I'm not sure my parenting would have been as effective if I'd had more kids. I discussed this issue with Nathan, a guy I know. His six offspring are all grown up, too. "How did you do it?" I asked him. "Having just one child was a challenging job for me." "I'll tell you my secret," Nathan told me. "I'm a bad father. I didn't work very hard on raising my kids. And now they never let me forget it." In the coming weeks and months, Leo, I recommend that you pursue my approach in your chosen field, not Nathan's. Aim for high-quality intensity rather than scattershot quantity.
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LOVE YOUR LIFE!
How's your fight for freedom going? Are you making progress in liberating yourself from your unconscious obsessions, bad habits, and conditioned responses? Are you turning out to be the hero of your own life?
For assistance and inspiration, tune in to my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES.
These forecasts are different in tone and format from the written horoscopes you read here in the newsletter. They're longer and more leisurely in tone. They tend to bring out more of the patient counselor in me, and have a bit less of the poet.
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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VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
In her poem "Not Anyone Who Says," Virgo writer Mary Oliver looks down on people who declare, "I'm going to be careful and smart in matters of love." She disparages the passion of anyone who asserts, "I'm going to choose slowly." Instead she champions those who are "chosen by something invisible and powerful and uncontrollable and beautiful and possibly even unsuitable." Here's my response: Her preferred formula sounds glamorous and dramatic and romantic -- especially the powerful and beautiful part. But in practice it rarely works out well -- maybe just ten percent of the time -- mostly because of the uncontrollable and unsuitable part. And now is not one of those times for you, Virgo. Be careful and smart in matters of love, and choose slowly.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke bemoaned the fact that so many of us "squander our sorrows." Out of self-pity or lazy self-indulgence, we wallow in memories of experiences that didn't turn out the way we wished they would have. We paralyze ourselves with repetitions of depleting thoughts. Here's an alternative to that approach: We could use our sadness and frustrations to transform ourselves. We could treat them as fuel to motivate our escape from what doesn't work, to inspire our determination to rise above what demoralizes and demeans us. I mention this, Libra, because now is an excellent time to do exactly that.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
It's time for the Bliss Blitz -- a new holiday just for you Scorpios. To celebrate it properly, get as buoyant as you dare; be greedy for euphoria; launch a sacred quest for pleasure. Ah, but here's the big question: Can you handle this much relief and release? Are you strong enough to open yourself to massive outbreaks of educational delight and natural highs? Some of you may not be prepared. You may prefer to remain ensconced in your protective sheath of cool cynicism. But if you think you can bear the shock of unprecedented exaltation and jubilation, then go ahead and risk it. Experiment with the unruly happiness of the Bliss Blitz.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
In his book The Horologicon, Mark Forsyth gathered "obscure but necessary" words that he dug out of old dictionaries. One of his discoveries is a perfect fit for you right now. It's "snudge," a verb that means to walk around with a pensive look on your face, appearing to be busy or in the midst of productive activity, when in fact you're just goofing off. I recommend it for two reasons: 1. It's important for your mental and physical health that you do a lot of nothing; that you bless yourself with a healing supply of refreshing emptiness. 2. It's important for your mental and physical health that you do this on the sly as much as possible; that you avoid being judged or criticized for it by others.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
I wish your breakfast cereal came in boxes decorated with Matisse and Picasso paintings. I wish songbirds would greet you each morning with sweet tunes. I wish you'd see that you have more power than you realize. I wish you knew how uniquely beautiful you are. I wish you'd get intoxicated with the small miracles that are happening all around you. I wish that when you made a bold move to improve your life, everyone greeted it with curiosity and excitement. And I wish you would let your imagination go half-wild with fascinating fantasies during this, the Capricorn wishing season.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
"You're a different human being to everybody you meet," says novelist Chuck Palahniuk. Now is an excellent time to contemplate the intricacies and implications of that amazing truth -- and start taking better advantage of how much freedom it gives you. Say the following statements out loud and see how they feel: 1. "My identity isn't as narrowly circumscribed as I think it is." 2. "I know at least 200 people, so there must be at least 200 facets to my character." 3. "I am too complicated to be completely comprehended by any one person." 4. "Consistency is overrated."
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HOMEWORK:
What's the best surprise you could give yourself right now? Testify 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 2017 Rob Brezsny
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