Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
January 27, 2021
FreeWillAstrology.com
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To work with the unknown, some combination of respect, ruthlessness, courage, and cuddling is necessary. —Arnold Mindell
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I've gathered together all of the long-term, big-picture horoscopes I wrote for you in the past weeks, and bundled them in one place. Go here to read a compendium of your forecasts for 2021:
bit.ly/BigPicture2021
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In addition to these, I've created three-part, in-depth EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES about Your Long-Range Future. They go even further in exploring your prospects and challenges in 2021.
Who do you want to become in the coming months? Where do you want to go and what do you want to do? How can you exert your free will to create 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 these three-part, in-depth reports, go here:
RealAstrology.com
Register and/or log in through the main page, and then access the horoscopes by clicking on "Long Range Prediction." (Choose from Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3.)
If you'd like a boost of inspiration to fuel you in your quest for beauty and truth and love and meaning, tune in to my meditations on your Big-Picture outlook.
Each of the three-part reports is seven to nine minutes long. The cost is $6 per report. There are discounts for the purchase of multiple reports.
P.S. You can also listen to a short-term Expanded Audio Horoscope for the coming week.
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PICK YOUR BATTLES
Pick your battles.
Pick fewer battles than that.
Put some battles back.
That's still too many battles.
bit.ly/3nZQlsm
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HOPE AND OPTIMISM
There's still a lot of bad stuff to contend with: racism, misogyny, anti-LGBTQ bigotry, climate catastrophe. rightwing terrorism, the assault on factualness, and much more. And Biden, as wonderful as his actions have been so far, won't be our perfect progressive president.
But now, when we once again have some power to make things right, we need the robust and crafty versions of hope and optimism more than ever. In that spirit, here's some inspiration from Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Julia Butterfly Hill, and Naomi Klein.
"Optimism is a strategy for making a better future," says Noam Chomsky. "Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume there is no hope, you guarantee there will be no hope."
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"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic," Howard Zinn wrote. "It gives us the energy to act.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places -- and there are so many -- where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
"And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
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In the late 1990s, 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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Activist and author Naomi Klein tells a story about the time she traveled to Australia at the request of Aboriginal elders. They wanted her to know about their struggle to prevent white people from dumping radioactive wastes on their land.
Her hosts brought her to their beloved wilderness, where they camped under the stars. They showed her "secret sources of fresh water, plants used for bush medicines, hidden eucalyptus-lined rivers where the kangaroos come to drink."
After three days, Klein grew restless. When were they going to get down to business? "Before you can fight," she was told, "you have to know what you are fighting for."
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MOVIES WITHOUT VIOLENCE
Suggestions for movies without violence:
bit.ly/NonViolentMovies
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These Progressives Helped Keep Hope Alive in 2020—and Prepare Us for 2021.
tinyurl.com/y3a5mg75
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RELATIONSHIP AS SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
Relationship is a crucible for spiritual work.
The practical expression of kindness and compassion and ethical behavior is an essential spiritual practice.
A crucial element of spiritual practice is the empathetic intelligence we bring to the sometimes chaotic and messy details of being human beings in our daily lives.
Taking responsibility for and working to transform our own darkness is a prerequisite for all spiritual work.
Loving and caring for animals and plants and the Earth is a centerpiece of our spiritual practice.
Play and fun and humor are not diversions from "serious" spiritual work, but are at the center of it.
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A GOOD FATHER
"When one has not had a good father, one must create one," said philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. What does that mean? How might you go about "creating" a good father?
Well, you could develop a relationship with an admirable older man who is an inspiring role model.
You could read books by men whose work stirs you to actualize your own potentials.
If you have a vigorous inner life, you could build a fantasy dad in your imagination.
Here's another possibility: Cultivate in yourself the qualities you think a good father should have.
Your ideas?
Even if you actually had a pretty decent father, I'm sure he wasn't perfect. So it still might be interesting to try out some of these ideas.
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BETTER TIMES
The days since January 20 have been very good for me personally. Why?
* Because Dr. Fauci declared himself liberated to speak freely. The US resumed funding and supporting WHO.
* Biden and his team formulated a coherent plan for dealing with Covid-19, and began implementing it.
* The US has returned to the Paris climate accords.
* The Keystone Pipeline had its permit revoked.
* Restrictions on Muslims traveling to the US have been revoked.
* Dreamers -- young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children -- are immediately eligible for green cards.
* The new press secretary of the President isn't spewing endless dirty lies.
* The White House is encouraging people who come to its website to say what pronouns they want to be addressed by.
* Biden expanded LGBTQ protections, protecting millions of LGBTQ people from discrimination.
* The first ever Native American to serve as Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, is poised to take charge.
* Biden reversed Trump's rollbacks to vehicle emissions standards; undid decisions to slash the size of several national monuments; enforced a temporary moratorium on oil and natural gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge suspended the sale of oil and gas leases on all federal land.
* Biden has established ethics rules for those who serve in his administration.
* Biden expanded food assistance and delivered stimulus checks to very low-income Americans. He raised the minimum wage to $15 for the federal workers, and restored their collective bargaining power.
* Extended the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures.
* Extended the pause on student loan payments and interest.
* Required non-citizens to be included in the Census and apportionment of congressional representatives.
* Stopped construction of the border wall between US and Mexico.
* PS: I love the strong, specific, practical actions Biden is taking to lift us up. I also love his symbolic actions. In the Oval Office, there are now busts of Mexican American farm labor leader Cesar Chavez and civil rights leader Rosa Parks.
Also new: a sculpture by Allan Houser of the Chiricahua Apache tribe that once belonged to Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) — the first Japanese American elected to both houses of Congress.
Gone: the portrait of Andrew Jackson, the despicable president that the Cherokees called "Indian Killer."
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THE WHOLE WORLD IS ALIVE
Robin Wall Kimmerer writes: "As a scientist, I have been trained to refer to our relatives, the plants and the animals, the water and the Earth herself, as 'it.'
"In Potawatomi languages, we characterize the world into those who are alive and the things which are not. So we speak a grammar of animacy. And that's because in the beautiful verb-based language, a language based on being and changing and agency, the whole world is alive."
Kimmerer says she was driven to study botany because of the central question in her heart: "Why is the world so beautiful?"
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Robin Wall Kimmerer is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants. She is a member of the Potawatomi First Nation and she teaches at the State University of New York in Syracuse.
More: tinyurl.com/ybzxuun8
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FREE STUFF
Do you know about all of my free stuff? Here's a list:
This week's horoscopes: bit.ly/FreeWillAstrology
Archives of my newsletter: bit.ly/YouKnowHowToLove
My Instagram page:
www.instagram.com/rob.brezsny._.truthrooster/
My Twitter page:
twitter.com/FreeWillAstro
My music page:
soundcloud.com/sacreduproar
More of my free music:
freewillastrology.com/music/listen
Excerpts from my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: tinyurl.com/FreePronoia
My entire book The Televisionary Oracle: freewillastrology.com/books/oracle
Videos of my performances:
tinyurl.com/RobVideos
and
tinyurl.com/RobAtSymbiosis
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Women of Color Were Shut Out of Congress For Decades. Now They're Transforming It.
tinyurl.com/y3jarz2l
The Milky Way and Venus above Rural New South Wales, Australia
tinyurl.com/lyby3sb
It’s no Longer Survival of the Fittest, But an Extension of Generosity to Others
tinyurl.com/y8ybrta2
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For a lot more pronoiac resources and ideas, read my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings
Available at Barnes & Noble: tinyurl.com/PronoiaBN
Available at Amazon: bit.ly/Pronoia
A free preview of the book is available here: tinyurl.com/PronoiaPreview
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning January 28
Copyright 2021 by Rob Brezsny
FreeWillAstrology.com
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
"We all want everything to be okay," writes author David Levithan. "We don't even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough." To that mediocre manifesto, I reply, okay. I accept that it's true for many people. But I don't think it will apply to you Aquarians in the coming weeks. According to my assessment of your astrological potentials, you can, if you want, have a series of appointments with the fantastic, the marvelous, and the outstanding. Please keep those appointments! Don't skip them out of timidity or excess humility.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
DON'Ts: Don't keep scratching an old wound until it bleeds. Don't try to snatch away the teddy bear that belongs to the 800-pound gorilla. Don't try to relieve your tension by pounding your head against a wall. Don't try to convince a stone idol to show you some tenderness. DOs: Do ask supposedly naive questions that may yield liberating revelations. Do keep in mind that sometimes things need to be a bit broken before you'll be motivated to give them all the care they need and deserve. Do extinguish the fire on a burning bridge, and then repair the bridge.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
In the 1950 film Harvey, James Stewart plays a middle-aged man named Elwood whose best friend is a tall invisible rabbit named Harvey. The relationship causes problems with the people in Elwood's life. At one point a psychiatrist tries to convince him to "struggle with reality." Elwood replies, "I wrestled with reality for 40 years and I am happy to state that I finally won." I'm happy to tell you this story, Aries, because it's a good lead in to my counsel for you: I suspect that one of your long wrestles with reality will yield at least a partial victory in the coming weeks. And it will be completely real, as opposed to Elwood's Harvey. Congratulations!
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
The light of the North Star takes a long time to reach us, even though it's traveling 186,000 miles per second. The beams it shows us tonight first embarked when Shakespeare was alive on Earth. And yet that glow seems so fresh and pure. Are there any other phenomena in your life that are metaphorically comparable? Perhaps an experience you had months ago that is only now revealing its complete meaning? Or a seed you planted years ago that is finally ripening into its mature expression? The coming weeks will be an excellent time to take inventory of such things, Taurus. It will also be a favorable phase to initiate innovations that will take some time to become fully useful for you.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
In 1971, astronaut Alan Shepard had the great privilege of landing on the moon in a spacecraft, then walking on the lunar surface. How did he celebrate this epic holy adventure? By reciting a stirring passage from Shakespeare or the Talmud? By placing a framed photo of Amelia Earhart or a statue of Icarus in the dirt? By saying a prayer to his God or thoughtfully thanking the people who helped put him there? No. Shepard used this sublime one-of-a-kind moment to hit a golf ball with a golf club. I'll ask you not to regard him as a role model in the coming weeks. When your sacred or lofty moments arrive, offer proper homage and honor. Be righteously appreciative of your blessings.
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
William Shakespeare worked with another playwright in creating three plays: Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and Cardenio. The lucky collaborator was John Fletcher, who was popular and influential in his era. I propose that we name him one of your role models in 2021. Here's why: You will have an enhanced potential to engage in fertile partnerships with allies who are quite worthy of you. I encourage you to be on the lookout for opportunities to thrive on symbiosis and synergy.
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EXPLORING THE BIG PICTURE OF YOUR LONG-RANGE FUTURE
Would you like some inspiration as you muse and wonder about your upcoming adventures in 2021?
You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in the coming months. Each report in the three-part series is 7 to 9 minutes long.
Go to RealAstrology.com
Register and/or log in through the main page, and then access the horoscopes by clicking on "Long Range Prediction." (Choose from Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3.)
A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.
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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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LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
Canadian journalist Nick Ashdown is amazed that white people in North America are so inhibited about revealing their real feelings. He writes, "How bizarre that in English, the word 'emotional' is used pejoratively, as though passion implies some sort of weakness." He marvels that the culture seems to "worship nonchalance" and regard intense expressiveness as uncool or unprofessional. I'm going to encourage you to embody a different approach in the coming days. I don't mean to suggest that you should be an out-of-control maniac constantly exploding with intensity. But I do hope you will take extra measures to respect and explore and reveal the spirited truth about yourself.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
Virgo actor Ingrid Bergman appeared in three movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In Notorious, set after the end of World War II, she played the daughter of a Nazi spy. During the filming, Bergman had trouble with a particular scene. She explained her doubts to Hitchcock, saying, "I don't think I can do that naturally." Hitchcock seemed receptive to her input, but in the end had an unexpected response: "All right," he told her. "If you can't do it naturally, then fake it." I'm going to suggest that you follow Hitchcock's advice during the next two weeks, Virgo. "Fake it till you make it" is an acceptable—probably preferable—approach.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
The 17th-century Libran polymath Thomas Browne had a brilliant, well-educated mind. He authored many books on various subjects, from science to religion, and was second only to Shakespeare in the art of coining new words. He did have a blind spot, however. He referred to sex as the "trivial and vulgar way of union" and "the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life." Most of us have pockets of ignorance like that—aspects that qualify as learning disabilities or intellectual black holes. And now and then there come times when we benefit from checking in with these deficiencies and deciding whether to take any fresh steps to wisen them up. Now is such a time for you.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
"There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it," declares actor and comedian Mindy Kaling. Is that an unromantic sentiment? Maybe. But more importantly, it's evidence that she treasures her sleep. And that's admirable! She is devoted to giving her body the nurturing it needs to be healthy. Let's make Kaling your patron saint for now. It's a favorable time to upgrade your strategies for taking very good care of yourself.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
All of us go through phases when our brains work at a higher level than usual. I'm guessing that you're about to enjoy one of these times. In fact, I won't be shocked if you string together a series of ingenious thoughts and actions. I hope you use your enhanced intelligence for important matters—like making practical improvements in your life! Please don't waste it on trivial matters like arguments on Facebook or Twitter.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Today the Capricorn artist Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) is regarded as an important and influential painter. Early in his career, though, he was rejected and even ridiculed by critics. One reason was that he loved making still-life paintings, which were considered low art. Of his 584 works, about 200 of them were of inanimate, commonplace objects. Fruit was his specialty. Typically he might spend 100 separate sessions in perfecting a particular bowl of apples. "Don't you want to take a vacation from painting fruit?" he was asked. In response, he said that simply shifting the location of his easel in relation to his subject matter was almost more excitement than he could bear. That's the kind of focused, detailed attitude I hope you'll cultivate toward your own labors of love during the coming weeks, Capricorn.
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HOMEWORK:
True or false: You can't get what you want from another person until you're able to give it to yourself. Explain why or why not. 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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