Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter http://ezezine.com
Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology Newsletter
"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."
—Julia Butterfly Hill
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October 19, 2005
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http://www.freewillastrology.com.
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HERE ARE MY UPCOMING PUBLIC APPEARANCES.
Saturday, November 12
8 pm
Chapel of Sacred Mirrors
540 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10001
212 564 4253
http://www.cosm.org
Sunday, November 20
8 pm
Continental
25 Third Avenue (between St. Marks Place & 9th St.)
New York, NY 10003.
(212) 529-6924
http://www.continentalnyc.com
Open Secret Bookstore
Thursday, October 27
7 pm
923 C Street
San Rafael, CA
415.457.4191
http://www.opensecretbookstore.com
Sunday, November 6
2 pm
Regulator Bookshop
Durham, North Carolina
720 Ninth Street
Durham, NC 27705
Tel: 919-286-2700
http://www.regbook.com
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"Brezsny's new book *PRONOIA* rotates, something like a Tibetan prayer
wheel, around the idea that love underpins being and that it's ours if
only we have the courage to take it. If we don't go to this original
and endless source, then we inherit the classical hell-on-earth of
depression, decay and destruction. Around and around his theme the
verbally acrobatic, mystically literate Brezsny lets fly a thousand
zingers, each with the feel of having been carved with some poetic
effort to express a hard reality instead of a platitude." —San
Francisco Chronicle
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Here's an excerpt from my book
"PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA:
How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings"
PRONOIA NEWS NETWORK
These are our top stories.
TEEN ANGST UPDATE
Crime committed by teenagers has plummeted to its lowest levels in more
than two decades. Drunken teens are still killing themselves while
driving cars, but the rate is half what it was 20 years ago. The
overall teen death rate from accident, homicide, or suicide dropped 28
percent between 1990 and 2000.
In 60 years, there hasn't been a lower birth rate among teenage girls
than there is now. The overall dropout rate among American high school
students has declined by four percent in the last two decades, with an
eight percent improvement among African Americans. Three-fourths of
high school students say they get along very well or extremely well
with their parents, and only three percent say they don't get along
well.
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EPIC COLLABORATION
You are a metropolis of 50 trillion citizens, says biologist Dr. Bruce
Lipton. Each of the cells in your body can be considered a sentient
being in its own right. They all act together as a community,
performing an ongoing act of prodigious collaboration.
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ADORATION REBORN
"The insulted waters of New York City are again sacred passages, as
they once were to Native Americans for millennia. Raw sewage no longer
pours into vital waterways, and industrial pollution has largely been
checked. We are witnessing the ecological resurrection of our rivers
and bays, from the return of wood-eating gribbles and shipworms that
devour our piers to winter visits by a small seal community. People are
coming down to the water again to see rare birds, to kayak and to swim.
And responding to an ancient call, they're coming down to the water to
pray. Among the worshipers are Hindus, Shintoists, African Americans of
the Yoruba-influenced Spiritual Baptist faith, Wiccans, Zoroastrians,
Christians, and Jews." —Erik Baard, Village Voice,
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0223/baard.php
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WHAT IF EVERYTHING'S ALIVE
Yua is a term the Yupiit people of Alaska use for the spirit that
inhabits all things, both animate and inanimate. A rock, for instance,
has as much yua as a caribou, spruce tree, or human being, and
therefore merits the same measure of compassion. If a Yupiit goes out
for a hike and spies a chunk of wood lying on a frozen river bank, she
might pick it up and put it in a new position, allowing its previously
hidden side to get fresh air and sun. In this way, she would bestow a
blessing on the wood's yua. (Source: Earl Shorris, "The Last Word,"
*Harper's,* August 2000)
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GREEDY GIANT VERSUS GENEROUS GIANT
Wal-Mart is famous for the stingy pay and benefits it offers its
employees. But another giant chain store, Costco, takes a different
approach. Full-time workers there average $15.97 per hour, which is
almost 40 percent higher than their Wal-Mart counterparts, who earn
$11.52. After four years, a Costco cashier's yearly salary can rise to
$44,000. The company also covers 92 percent of most of its workers'
health care costs. While the industry-wide turnover rate averages 66
percent, Costco's is just 23 percent.
Costco is so unusual in its benevolence that some business gurus
disapprove. "From the perspective of investors, Costco's benefits are
overly generous," says retail analyst Bill Dreher, quoted in The Wall
Street Journal. He thinks that the company's largesse depresses its
stock value because investors are afraid its profit margins aren't as
high as they could be.
But the fact is that Costco is very successful. Its five-year growth
rate has been 10.1 percent annually, better than Wal-Mart's 9.8
percent. Its annual earnings were expected to rise from $41.7 billion
in 2003 to $47.2 billion in 2004.
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THE INNER VOICE SPEAKS
Scientists have confirmed what we all knew: You do indeed have a little
voice in your head that warns you when you're about to do something
dumb. It's called the anterior cingulate cortex, according to
white-coated authorities at Carnegie-Mellon University. If you're
receptive to it, it's as good as having a guardian angel. "Don't do
it," the voice whispers when you're on the verge of locking your keys
in your car or leaving the bar with the cute drunk you just met. "Go
back," it murmurs as you start to walk away from a huge, though
initially inconvenient, opportunity.
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THIS DAY IN PRONOIAC HISTORY
The World Wildlife Fund has fought to save endangered species since
1961. Its logo features a panda bear. The World Wrestling Federation
launched in 1962, and has made a fortune selling staged combats between
steroid-inflamed loonies. One of its best-selling items is the
"Undertaker Big Evil Red Devil T-shirt." So which of these WWFs won the
skirmish between the two? The good guys. A court ruled that the panda
lovers had a superior claim to the initials WWF. The devils had to
change their name. It's now World Wrestling Entertainment.
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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Here's a message from one of our spiritual underwriters, poet James
Broughton.
"I never learned to distinguish between illusion and miracle.
I didn't need to. I trusted in love's confusing joy."
—"Memento of an Amorist," from *Packing Up for Paradise: Selected Poems
1946–1996*
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There are hundreds more stories like this in *PRONOIA Is the Antidote
for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with
Blessings*
To read other pieces from the book, go here:
http://freewillastrology.com/beauty/beauty.main145.shtml
To buy the book, use the links to Amazon.com and Powells, which are on
my homepage at http://www.freewillastrology.com
Or cut and paste the direct links below:
AMAZON
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1583941231/qid=1123690660/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-1737423-7631942?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
POWELLS
http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-1583941231-2
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OTHER PRONOIA RESOURCES:
WEBSITE
Mosaic
http://www.mosaicvoices.org
From Mosaic's founder, Michael Meade: "Finding meaning in contemporary
life means avoiding the trap of cynicism as well as the prison of
simple belief. Amidst mass confusion, the soul winds its ancient, wily
way to meaning and purpose."
BOOK
*Radical Dreaming: Use Your Dreams to Change Your Life*
by John D. Goldhammer
MUSIC
*Soul Meets Body* by Death Cab for Cutie
QUOTE
"Consciousness is not a state, it is not a process, it is a substance."
—Huston Smith
PLACE
The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY
NATURAL PHENOMENON
Sonoluminescence, or the emission of light by bubbles in a liquid
excited by sound.
(Note: I endorse these because I like them. They're not advertisements,
and I get no kickbacks.)
Please tell me your own personal nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES.
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Dear Beauty and Truth Fans,
I'm changing my delivery system for the Free Will Astrology newsletter.
If
you want to keep receiving my free weekly message every Wednesday,
please go to the URL below and resubscribe:
http://www.freewillastrology.com/newsletter/
Some of you have already made the shift. Thanks!
I'll be shutting down the old system for good soon. If you
want to stay connected to this regular dose of beauty and truth,
migrate
over to the new one.
Rob Brezsny
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning October 20
Copyright 2005 by Rob Brezsny
http://www.freewillastrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
ARIES (March 21-April 19): "Honey, This Mirror Isn't Big Enough for the
Two of Us," is the title of a song by the band My Chemical Romance. If
you'd like to place yourself in alignment with cosmic rhythms, you
should say the exact opposite of that to someone you care
about--something like this: "Honey, this mirror *is* big enough for the
two of us, and I want us to gaze into it together." In other words,
enlist a loved one to join you in taking an inventory of your
relationship. Study how you fit together, and brainstorm about how you
can make your connection work even better.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Curses abound. When we're children, our
parents and relatives manipulate us into being different from what we
naturally are. As we grow up, teachers and coaches regularly remind us
of how we're not living up to their expectations. Meanwhile, the news
media assaults us with relentless propaganda about how nasty and
brutish life is, and storytellers in the entertainment industry barrage
us with visions of the worst aspects of human nature. Finally, our
enemies slip us their own unique brands of maledictions. That's the bad
news, Taurus. The good news is that you now have unprecedented power to
defuse the curses that have been cast on you. Follow your intuition to
cleanse yourself of their insidious influence.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Brazil's Ryoki Inoue may not be the best
novelist in the world, but he's definitely the most prolific. He
averages about 100 new works of pulp fiction every year. On one
particularly creative day, it took him eight hours to churn out an
entire 195-page story about crooked cops and drug dealers. He's your
role model for the coming week, Gemini. Whatever your field of endeavor
is, try to supercharge your productivity. The astrological omens
suggest that not only can you do so, but also that it will be good for
you to do so. Your other role model is Marcel Proust, who was one of
history's *best* novelists. Be as fast as Inoue and as brilliant as
Proust.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Five years ago, artist Dale Chihuly shipped
64 tons of Alaskan ice to Jerusalem. He used it to erect a giant wall
in the place where the Arab and Jewish sections of the city joined. The
desert heat melted his preposterous construction in three days. Treat
this as an apt symbol for a situation that's going on in your vicinity,
Cancerian. There is an improbable barrier between two parts of your
life that should be connected. That barrier has now begun to collapse
at a rapid rate, and will be gone soon as long as you and yours don't
make a foolish attempt to try to shore it up.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Medieval language expert Alexandra Gillespie
writes that "English is a bastard tongue, an unruly mix of corrupted
Latin, Anglo-Saxon, French (in particular Middle Norman), Brythonic and
Goideleic Gaelic, Welsh, and other forms of the Celtic tongues." In
other words, the most widely used language on the planet was cobbled
together from a hodgepodge of disparate influences. I hope that
inspires you, Leo, to take full advantage of the mishmash you're
nurturing. As you borrow and patch, appropriate and blend, scavenge and
integrate, be mindful of the rich potentials inherent in your hybrid
creation.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): It's high time for you to lose control--in
the most constructive way possible, please. You can no longer afford to
be as tightly wound as you've been lately. To get yourself in the mood
for breakthroughs that will prevent breakdowns, consider carrying out
some of the following acts. Fingerpaint on your TV screen. Dance on
your bed, imitating a black bear that has drunk a bottle of vodka. Ask
an intimate friend to use lipstick to write "I am inscrutable" on your
belly. Have dinner with a person who makes you uncomfortable in an
interesting way. Buy a bull penis walking stick at Bumsteer.com and use
it on a stroll to the corner store. Write candid confessional letters
to people from whom you've been hiding an important truth, but don't
mail the letters.
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AUDIO LOVE LETTERS
In addition to the horoscopes that come to you in this newsletter, I
create more in-depth audio horoscopes for your inspiration. I like to
think of them as my love letters to you. They're $6 if you access them
on the Web, or $1.99 per minute over the phone.
For Web access, go here:
http://www.relationshipnetwork.com/horo/index.asp?client_id=50700
From the United States, call
1-900-950-7700
or if you prefer to pay by credit card
1-877-873-4888
If you live in Canada, call 1-888-499-4425 to purchase a Block of Time
with your credit card.
"Your expanded astrology thingees help me remember who I really am."
-Gareth N., Toronto
"I never knew it was possible to get my butt kicked and my head patted
at the same time -- until I listened to you, Rob." -Kristi P.,
Portland, OR
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LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In the estimation of many fashionistas,
Libran rock singer Gwen Stefani is a style queen. *The New Yorker*
recently put her on the cover of its fashion supplement, and she's at
the top of many best-dressed lists. She doesn't fully enjoy the fruits
of her success, though. "I still think of myself as a fat little dorky
kid from Orange County desperately wanting to be cool," she told *OK*
magazine. If Stefani called me up for a consultation right now, I'd
tell her what I'll say to you: This is a perfect astrological moment to
use your willpower, your imagination, and your sense of humor to shed
your old self-images--especially those that are acutely at odds with
the reality of the person you have become.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): I used to have a Scorpio friend who liked to
spout the ecstatic mystic poetry of Rumi. (Sometimes he added his own
rapturous improvisations, and so I was never sure where Rumi left off
and his words began.) Since you're currently in a phase when the
potential for euphoric release and delirious catharsis are high, I've
selected five of these quotes that are in alignment with your
astrological omens. (1) "Close your eyes and see with your other eyes."
(2) "If you want to be held, open up your arms." (3) "Quit acting like
wolves and let the shepherd's love fill you." (4) "We're not here to
seek approval but disgrace and celebration." (5) "Let the beauty you
love be what you do."
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): I suggest you find a way to study the
behavior of predators without exposing yourself to danger. You'll
really benefit from being in an impregnable safety zone as you take a
close look at creatures that are dominated by their lust for power.
Why? Knowing more about these types will allow you to protect yourself
from them in the future, especially if there ever comes a time when
you're not so well-insulated. And right now is the perfect astrological
moment to study them risk-free.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): To be completely aligned with cosmic
rhythms in the coming weeks, you'd arrange for rose petals to be thrown
at you each time you opened a door. A gourmet cook would provide a
steady stream of tastes you've never experienced before. A great band
or chamber orchestra would come to your home to play for the best party
you've ever thrown. A friend would read you stories that deepened your
appreciation for how courageous you've been in dealing with your own
struggles. And you would enlist the services of your own royal fool,
who'd be responsible for telling you jokes, identifying incongruities,
and keeping you flexible.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You cannot possibly accomplish anything
good by force right now. Your strengths may temporarily become
liabilities, and you'll have to exercise your talents with profound
humility in order to keep from going astray. To achieve success, you've
got to renounce all your definitions of success and open your mind to
previously unimaginable new definitions. You also must become as fluid
as a water snake, as sensitive as a psychotherapist advising a beloved
patient, and as free as a woman who has just given birth.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): "Who can convince the sea to be reasonable?"
asks poet Pablo Neruda in *The Book of Questions.* Here's my answer: If
anyone can do it, you can. For the next two weeks, your powers of
persuasion will be almost supernaturally strong. Furthermore, you'll be
able to achieve a mind meld with elemental forces of nature like wind,
fire, and rivers. Further furthermore, you'll have the power to achieve
a state of such transcendental lucidity that you will flirt with the
ability to see things the way the Goddess does. I hereby dub you the
*sea whisperer.*
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HOMEWORK:
What pose would it be a big relief for you to drop? In what part of
your life are you faking, and what could you do to escape that bind?
Testify by going to http://www.freewillastrology.com and clicking on
"Email Rob."
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Submissions sent to the Free Will Astrology Weekly Newsletter
or in response to "homework assignments" may be
published in a variety of formats at Rob Brezsny's discretion,
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2005 Rob Brezsny
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