Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
January 13, 2021
FreeWillAstrology.com
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DREAM AND SCHEME ABOUT YOUR LONG-RANGE FUTURE
with my 3-part EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES for the Coming Year:
RealAstrology.com
What new influences will be headed your way in 2021? What fresh resources will you be able to draw on? How can you conspire with life to create the best possible future for yourself?
This week, my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES feature Part 3 of the long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2021.
Part 1 and Part 2 of your Big-Picture Predictions, which I offered the last two weeks, are also still available.
What will be the story of your life in 2021? How can you exert your free will to create the adventures that'll bring out the best in you, even as you find graceful ways to cooperate with the tides of destiny?
To listen to your BIG PICTURE horoscopes online, go to RealAstrology.com
Register and/or log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Range Prediction, Part 3"
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The cost for the Expanded Audio Horoscopes is $6 per horoscope. (You can get discounts for multiple purchases.)
You can also listen over the phone by calling 1-877-873-4888. The cost is $1.99 per minute.
Each forecast is 7-9 minutes long.
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P.S. You can also still access my Sneak-Peek at 2021. In these Expanded Audio Horoscopes, I describe some major themes I think you'll be working and playing with in 2021. After you register and/or log in, click on "Three Weeks Ago (Dec 22, 2020)."
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DISAPPEAR YOUR FEAR
Here’s your mantra: “I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity.”
Say it or sing it. Maybe let it flow out of you after you wake each morning and are still lying in bed. Or make it the last sound on your lips as you drop off to sleep.
Have fun with it. Dip into your imagination to come up with different ways to let it fly. Say it as your favorite cartoon character might say it, or like a person with a Swedish accent, like your inner teenager, like a parrot, like the person you’ll be when you’re 84 years old.
“I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity. I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity.”
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FATE BAIT
Sometimes we have a strong sense of what our destiny is calling us to do, but we don't feel quite ready or brave enough to answer the call. We need a push, an intervention, a serendipitous stroke—what you might call "fate bait."
It's a person or event that awakens our dormant willpower and draws us inexorably toward our necessary destiny; it's a thunderbolt or siren song or stage whisper that gives us a good excuse to go do what we know we should do.
Do you have any ideas about how to put yourself in the vicinity of your fate bait?
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YOU ARE THE HIDDEN GOD
You are the hidden God. Wake up in the dream. Read between the lies. To question is the answer. The frontline is everywhere. There are no innocent bystanders. Truth is a three-edged sword. Practice infinite tolerance except for intolerance.
Achieve strength through joy. Embrace your shadow. Change is stability. Creation never ends. Everything is verb. The way in is the way out. All things connect all the time. The going is the goal. Today is the day!
—Reverend Adtrian Cain
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SACRED ACTIVISM
A spirituality that is only private and self-absorbed, one devoid of an authentic political and social consciousness, does little to halt the suicidal juggernaut of history.
On the other hand, an activism that is not purified by profound spiritual and psychological self-awareness will only perpetuate the problem it is trying to solve, however righteous its intentions.
When, however, the deepest and most grounded spiritual vision is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing political, economic and social institutions, a holy force—the power of wisdom and love in action—is born. This force I define as Sacred Activism.
—Andrew Harvey
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Those who attempt to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening their own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others.
They will communicate nothing but the contagion of their own obsessions, their aggressiveness, their ego-centered ambitions, their delusions about ends and means, their doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.
We are living through the greatest crisis in the history of humanity; and this crisis is centered precisely in the country that has made a fetish out of action and has lost (or perhaps never had) the sense of contemplation. Far from being irrelevant, prayer, meditation and contemplation are of the utmost importance in America.
—Thomas Merton
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LET'S COLLABORATE TO PUT THE PANDEMIC BEHIND US
To my dismay, some Americans still downplay the devastation being caused by the virus. This is despite the fact that the US leads the world in number of infections and number of deaths.
Some of the deniers say that the virus only kills a small percentage of the people it infects—thereby ignoring the fact that it damages and disables a substantial percentage of the people it infects but doesn't kill. Many people who haven't been killed by the virus report lingering symptoms that feel disabling.
There's another factor the deniers ignore: The more people who are infected, the greater the chances are that the virus will mutate. And some of those mutations (as we have already seen) are more contagious, perhaps more lethal, and could possibly turn out to be immune to the vaccines.
Another factor the deniers ignore: The virus results in so many people being hospitalized, it taxes our medical system and our medical providers. It also makes it harder for people who have other health problems to be treated.
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ONGOING RIDDLE
It's an ongoing riddle about how to deal with people who lack empathy and thrive on delusion. I try my best to be fierce in my boundary-setting in relation to them, but without getting personally riled up.
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WHAT WE BELIEVE IMPRISONS US?
The underlying principle of Robert Anton Wilson's philosophy is "I know I'm wrong; I want to be less wrong." This is very different from internet culture, where the underlying philosophy is "I'm right, and I want you to know that."
Wilson thought that what we believe imprisons us; he thought convictions create convicts.
His philosophy can be called "multiple-model agnosticism." He wasn't merely agnostic about God. He was agnostic about everything.
More: tinyurl.com/mqg2kme
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LIBERATE YOUR IMAGINATION
The fundamentalist takes everything way too seriously and way too personally and way too literally. He divides the world into two camps, those who agree with him and those who don't. There is only one right way to interpret the world, and a million wrong ways. Correct belief is the only virtue.
To the fundamentalist, the liberated imagination is a sinful taboo. He not only enslaves his own imagination to his ideology, but wants to enslave our imaginations, too.
And who are the fundamentalists? Let's not remain under the delusion that they are only the usual suspects -- the religious fanatics of Islam and Christianity and Judaism and Hinduism.
There are many other kinds of fundamentalists, and some of them have gotten away with practicing their tragic magic in a stealth mode. Among the most successful are those who believe in what Robert Anton Wilson calls fundamentalist materialism. This is the faith-based dogma that swears physical matter is the only reality and that nothing exists unless it can be detected by our five senses or by technologies that humans have made.
Life has no transcendent meaning or purpose, the fundamentalist materialists proclaim. There is no such thing as a divine intelligence. The universe is a dumb accidental machine that grinds on endlessly out of blind necessity.
I see spread out before me in every direction a staggeringly sublime miracle lovingly crafted by a supernal consciousness that oversees the evolution of 500 billion galaxies, yet is also available as an intimate companion and daily advisor to every one of us. But to the fundamentalist materialists, my perceptions are indisputably wrong and idiotic.
Many other varieties of fundamentalism thrive and propagate. Every ideology, even some of the ones I like, has its share of true believers -- fanatics who judge all other ideologies as inferior, flawed, and foolish.
I know astrologers who insist there's only one way to do astrology right. I know Buddhists who adamantly decree that the inherent nature of life on Earth is suffering.
I know progressive activists who sincerely believe that every single Republican is either stupid or evil or both. I know college administrators who would excommunicate any psychology professor who dared to discuss the teachings of Carl Jung, who was in my opinion one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. I know pagans who refuse to consider any other version of Jesus Christ beyond the sick parody the Christian right has fabricated.
None of the true believers like to hear that there are at least three sides to every story. They don't want to consider the hypothesis that everyone has a piece of the truth.
And here's the really bad news: We all have our own share of the fundamentalist virus. Each of us is fanatical, rigid, and intolerant about products of the imagination that we don't like. We wish that certain people would not imagine the things they do, and we allow ourselves to beam hateful, war-like thoughts in their direction.
We even wage war against our own imaginations, commanding ourselves, sometimes half-consciously, to ignore possibilities that don't fit into our neatly constructed theories. Each of us sets aside certain precious beliefs and symbols that we give ourselves permission to take very seriously and personally and literally.
Our fundamentalism, yours and mine, may not be as dangerous to the collective welfare as, say, the fundamentalism of Islamic terrorists and right-wing Christian politicians. It may not be as destructive as that of the CEOs who worship financial profit as the supreme measure of value, and the scientists who ignore and deny every mystery that can't be measured, and the journalists, filmmakers, novelists, musicians, and pundits who relentlessly generate rotten visions of the human condition.
But still: We are all infected, you and I. We are fueling the war against the imagination. What's your version of the virus?
How might we start curing ourselves of the fundamentalist virus and move in the direction of becoming more festive and relentless champions of the liberated imagination?
For starters, we can take everything less seriously and less personally and less literally.
We can laugh at ourselves at least as much as we laugh at other people. We can blaspheme our own gods and burn our own flags and mock our own hypocrisy and satirize our own fads and fixations.
And we can enjoy and share the tonic pleasures of healing mischief, friendly shocks, compassionate tricks, irreverent devotion, holy pranks, playful experiments, and crazy wisdom.
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TO READ THE REST OF THIS ESSAY, GO HERE: bit.ly/Liberate
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This is excerpted from my book PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings
It's available at Amazon: bit.ly/Pronoia
or Barnes & Noble: tinyurl.com/PronoiaBN
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Beautiful Earth. The Kalalau Valley, Kauai, Hawaii.
i.imgur.com/7m0r79s.jpg
Empathy Heroes: 5 People Who Changed the World By Taking Compassion to the Extreme.
tinyurl.com/nh563yf
Listen to Forests From Around the World With Tree.fm
tinyurl.com/ycn3cwas
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning January 14
Copyright 2021 by Rob Brezsny
FreeWillAstrology.com
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Capricorn author Edgar Allan Poe named "four conditions for happiness: life in the open air; love of another human being; freedom from all ambition; creation." I'm accomplished in three of those categories, but a failure in being free of all ambitions. In fact, I'm eternally delighted by all the exciting creative projects I'm working on. I'm VERY ambitious. What about you, Capricorn? I'm going to contradict Poe and speculate that your happiness in the coming months will require you to be at least somewhat ambitious. That's what the planetary omens are telling me. So what are the best goals and dreams for you to be ambitious about?
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
It's time to launch Operation Supple Watchdog. That means you should be tenderly vigilant as you take extra good care of everyone and everything that provide you with meaning and sustenance. It means you should exercise rigorous but good-humored discernment about any oppressive or demeaning ideas that are flying around. You should protect and preserve the vulnerable parts of your life, but do so with tough-minded compassion, not ornery overreactions. Be skeptical, but warm; breezily resilient but always ready to stand up for what's right. (P.S. The better you shield yourself against weird surprises, the more likely it is you'll attract interesting surprises.)
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
The atoms that compose your body have existed for billions of years. Originally created by a star, they have been part of many forms before you. But they are exactly the same in structure as they have ever been. So in a very real sense, you are billions of years old. Now that you know that, how do you feel? Any different? Stronger? More expansive? More eternal? I bring these thoughts to your attention, Pisces, because 2021 will be an excellent year for you to come to a more profound and detailed understanding of your true nature. I hope you will regularly meditate on the possibility that your soul is immortal, that your identity is not confined to this historical era, that you have been alive and will be alive for far longer than you've been taught to believe.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
As you ripen into a more fully embodied version of yourself, you will summon ever-greater discrimination about where to seek your inspiration. I trust that you will increasingly divest yourself of any tendency you might have to play around with just any old mediocre fire. More and more, you will be drawn to high-quality blazes that provide just the right amount of heat and light—neither too much nor too little. And you will steadfastly refrain from jumping into the flames, as glamorously dramatic as that might seem—and instead be a master of deft maneuvers that enable you to get the exact energy you need.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
Dentsu is a major Japanese advertising agency headquartered in Tokyo. Annually since 1925, its new employees and freshly promoted executives have carried out a company ritual: climbing 12,388-foot-high Mount Fuji, Japan's tallest peak. The theme of the strenuous workout is this: "We are going to conquer the symbol that represents Japan more than anything else. And, once we do that, it will signify that we can do anything." In anticipation of what I suspect will be a year of career gains for you, Taurus, I invite you to do the following: Sometime in the next six weeks, go out in nature and perform an equivalent feat.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Today I received a new email from a Gemini friend who lives in London. It was date-stamped January 15, 2015. Weird! In it, she talked about applying for a new job at a publishing company. That was double weird, because February 2015 was in fact the time she had gotten the editing job that she still has. Her email also conveyed other details about her life that I knew to be old history. So why did it arrive now, six years late? I called her on the phone to see if we could unravel the mystery. In the end we concluded that her email had time-traveled in some inexplicable way. I predict that a comparable event or two will soon happen in your life, Gemini. Blasts from the past will pop in as if yesterday were today.
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LET'S IMAGINE WHAT INTERESTING MYSTERIES
MIGHT BE COMING YOUR WAY IN THE COMING YEAR
Who do you want to become in 2021? Where do you want to go and what do you want to do? Would you like some inspiration as you muse and wonder about your upcoming adventures?
In this week's EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES, I offer you Part 3 of MY long-term, in-depth exploration of your destiny in the coming year.
Part 1 and Part 2 are still available.
To listen to your BIG PICTURE horoscopes online, go to RealAstrology.com
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The cost for the Expanded Audio Horoscopes is $6 per sign. (You can get discounts for multiple purchases.)
Each forecast is 7-9 minutes long.
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"Your long-range audio horoscopes encouraged me to think bigger about my life. As I listened, I could feel my shrunken expectations melting away."
—Therese Pembroke, San Diego
"Your big-picture horoscopes filled the gaps in my imagination. They woke up the fun plot twists that had been just on the tip of my ability to visualize."
—Ani Kraft, Brattleboro, VT
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CANCER (June 21-July 22):
Eugene Sue (1804–1857) was a popular French author whose stories often offered sympathetic portrayals of the harsh living conditions endured by people of the lower economic class. Writing generously about those downtrodden folks made him quite wealthy. I'd love to see you employ a comparable strategy in the coming year. What services might you perform that would increase your access to money and resources? How could you benefit yourself by helping and uplifting others?
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
The beautiful and luxurious fabric known as silk comes from cocoons spun by insect larvae. Sadly for the creatures that provide the raw material, they're usually killed by humans harvesting their handiwork—either by being stabbed or boiled alive. However, there is a special kind of silk in which manufacturers spare the lives of their benefactors. The insects are allowed to mature into moths and escape. I propose that we make them your spirit creatures in the coming weeks. It's an excellent time for you to take an inventory of everything you do, and evaluate how well it upholds the noble principle of "Do no harm."
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
"Any time that is not spent on love is wasted," declared the Italian poet Torquato Tasso. Although I am sympathetic with his sentiment, I can't agree that acts of love are the only things ever worth doing. Sometimes it's healthy to be motivated by anger or sadness or skepticism, for example. But I do suspect the coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to be in intense devotion to Tasso's counsel. All the important successes you achieve will be rooted in an intention to express love and compassion.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
I heard a story about how a music aficionado took a Zen Buddhist monk to a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5. The monk wasn't impressed. "Not enough silence!" he complained. I'm puzzled by that response. If the monk were referring to a busy intersection in a major city, I might agree with him, or the cacophony of a political argument among fanatics on Facebook. But to want more silence in one of history's greatest pieces of music? That's perverse. With this in mind, Libra, and in accordance with astrological omens, I encourage you to seek extra protection from useless noise and commotion during the coming weeks—even as you hungrily seek out rich sources of beautiful information, sound, and art.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
"Some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal," wrote Scorpio author Albert Camus. If you're one of those folks, I'm happy to inform you that you have cosmic permission to relax. The coming weeks will be an excellent time to explore the pleasures of NOT being conventional, standard, ordinary, average, routine, prosaic, or common. As you expansively practice non-normalcy, you will enhance your health, sharpen your wits, and clarify your decisions.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
Our lives tend to be shaped by the stories about ourselves that we create and harbor in our imaginations. The adventures we actually experience, the problems we actually face, are often (not always) in alignment with the tales we tell ourselves about our epic fates. And here's the crux of the matter: We can change the stories we tell ourselves. We can discard tales that reinforce our pain, and dream up revised tales that are more meaningful and pleasurable. I believe 2021 will be an excellent time for you to attend to this fun work. Your assignment: Be a self-nurturing storyteller.
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HOMEWORK:
What's the first adventure you will embark on when the pandemic subsides? 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 2021 Rob Brezsny
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