Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter http://ezezine.com
Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology Newsletter
March 22, 2007
http://FreeWillAstrology.com
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"All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is
impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you."
– Rainer Maria Rilke
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ROB PERFORMS "SACRED UPROAR" IN SAN FRANCISCO
Wednesday, March 28
The Marsh
1062 Valencia Street (near 22nd Street)
8 pm
$8-12
Irreverend Rob leads the congregation through a pagan revival show that
features raucous prayers, Dionysian sermons, chaotic meditations,
interactive rituals, tender rants, and praise songs.
In his "I Have a Dream" speech, inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.'s
famous address, he proclaims, "I have a dream that the 11th
commandment will be 'Thou Shalt Not Bore God.'" His "World Kiss"
demonstrates the value of kissing, licking, and sucking all of creation.
"Unhappy Hour" is a ritual designed to banish sadness from leaking all
over the place by celebrating regular orgies of wailing. And much much
more.
The show also features cheers, stomps, and transmissions
by the Shamanic Cheerleaders
To see photos of a recent SACRED UPROAR performance, go here:
http://www.FreeWillAstrology.com
To buy tickets, go here: http://tinyurl.com/ys68zb
or call or 1-800-838-3006.
I'll also be giving away five free books on March 28. To be eligible, look for
the secret word I'll be providing in this week's newsletter, as well as last
week's and the next two weeks' newsletters. This week's secret word:
splash.
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My book
"PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA:
How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings"
is available for sale at http://tinyurl.com/qaj62
or find out more at http://www.freewillastrology.com
To read news and features from the book, go here:
http://tinyurl.com/2uhvjl
Here's an excerpt from the book:
NEW HOLIDAYS
Here are a few of my suggestions for the new holidays we should create.
Let me know yours. Send your ideas for new holidays to
uaregod@comcast.net.
* Unhappy Hour. During this gala bitch fest each Tuesday afternoon,
celebrants will have license to howl and mutter about everything that
hurts their feelings. Having flushed all their venom in one neat ritual spew,
they'll be free to enjoy generous thoughts and expansive fantasies the
rest of the time.
* Dare to Be Boring Day. We all deserve a break from the oppressive
demands to appear smart and to be entertaining. On Dare to Be Boring
Day, it will be socially unacceptable to demonstrate your wit and verve.
Long-winded, rambling monologues full of obscure details will be
mandatory. The more clichés and buzzwords you use, the better. Tell
worn-out stories your friends have already heard several times. Flesh out
your disjointed sentences with awkward silences. Discuss at length your
plans for switching laundry detergents, the collection of matchbooks you
had as a child, and the time you almost traveled to the Wal-Mart in
another town, but didn't.
* Bacchanalia. During this week-long extravaganza, work and business will
be suspended so that all adults can enjoy sexual play, whether it be solo,
dyadic, or in groups. To promote acceptance of the holiday, the Fool Czar
will head up a new Federal Bureau of Lust. Served by advisors drawn not
from the ranks of porn stars and scientific sex researchers but from
tantrically trained poets and musicians, the Bureau will sponsor
educational campaigns to help every citizen learn to honor the libido as a
sacred gift from the Goddess.
* Do What You Fear Festival. First, you make a list of the 100 things
you're most afraid of. Next, you rate them from one to 100 in order of
how badly they scare you. Then you agree to stop obsessing about the
bottom 97 fears because they distract you from the three really
interesting ones. Finally, you brainstorm about how you're actually going
to conquer those top three fears by doing them.
* Marry Yourself. As a government-sanctioned tradition, getting married
to yourself will be a rite of passage as common as graduating from high
school.
* Be Your Own Wife Week. Whether you're male or female or
transgendered, straight or gay or both, you can observe Be Your Own
Wife Week. Here's how. Renounce all your yearnings to be waited on and
cleaned up after. Divest yourself of every last deluded wish that someday
a special person will come along to magically understand and attend to
your every need. Pledge that from now on you will be a connoisseur of
taking care of yourself. (This celebration might immediately follow the
"Marry Yourself" holiday.)
* Debunking Day. What shall we debunk? It's easy to direct scorn at
targets like Bigfoot, UFOs, and the Face on Mars. On Debunking Day, we'll
warm up with witty slams against them, then move on to the real sacred
cows, like the cult of scientism, the cult of fundamentalist materialism,
the cult of Mammon, and the cult of pop nihilism.
* Spiritual Makeover Day. Participants build altars celebrating beauty,
truth, and love in the ugliest places they know.
* Praise Binge. For 24 hours, judgmental criticism will be taboo. Revelers
will stretch their imaginations as they strive to praise everything and
everyone as sincerely as possible, including themselves. It will be perfectly
permissible for celebrants to take detours into Brag Therapy, during which
time they will boast recklessly about their own accomplishments.
* Freethinkers Week. To celebrate this liberating grace period, you might
indulge in any of the following festive acts: 1. Declare your independence
from anyone who tries to tell you, either subliminally or directly, who you
are or how you should live your life. 2. Declare your independence from
your past, especially from memories that oppress your sense of possibility
and from old self-images that inhibit your urge to explore. 3. Declare your
independence from peer pressure, groupthink, the law of the pack, and
conventional wisdom. 4. Declare your independence from your previous
conception of freedom so that you'll be free to come to a completely
fresh understanding of it.
* Potlatch. Among certain Native American tribes, the potlatch was a
generosity contest. Participants vied to give away the most gifts. In
reviving this rite, we will not entirely eliminate the competitive element.
Celebrants will strive to push their own largesse to the limits, even as
they admire those whose munificence outstrips their own. Contributions
of money and material objects will not be the only ways to partake in the
Potlatch. Offerings of time, love, energy, help, and kindness will be equally
valued.
* Cheery Sleepy Week. Sleep deprivation has reached epidemic
proportions, and the results are catastrophic. Dream-cheated
somnambulists are responsible for the rise in incompetence, bad manners,
and mass hypnosis. During the seven-day and seven-night Cheery Sleepy
Week, all Americans will be given the luxury of catching up on their lost
ZZZZs. Millions of refreshed citizens will wear buttons that brag, "I slept
nine hours last night and I'm not ashamed!"
* Break Bread With Your Nemesis. To observe this feast day, you simply
invite the person who makes you most uncomfortable to an intimate
dinner for two.
* Hallowection Day. The American genius for inadvertent surrealism is
nowhere better illustrated than in the proximity of Halloween and election
day. Why not honor the obvious and combine the two into a single
festival?
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OTHER PRONOIA RESOURCES:
BEAUTIFUL PLACES
"Committing Acts of Random and Senseless Beautification"
http://tinyurl.com/2mwbyk
"In Pursuit of Gross National Happiness"
http://tinyurl.com/3ymv6p
PLANTS ARE SMART
"New research opens a window on the minds of plants"
http://tinyurl.com/6txuz
FILM
*The Namesake* directed by Mira Nair
BOOK
*The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine
Spark* by Sera Beak
http://tinyurl.com/2xyc2j
Please tell me your own personal nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES.
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning March 22
Copyright 2007 by Rob Brezsny
http://FreeWillAstrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Hundreds of years ago, the Native American
tribe known as the Seneca had a rule of thumb about when to sow corn
seed. You had to wait until the weather was warm enough to lie naked in
the dirt without discomfort. I believe a similar principle applies to your
plans to start a certain new enterprise, Aries. Hold off on the launch until
you're able to take off all your clothes in a natural setting and stretch out
on the ground without shivering.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): It has been too long since you visited the
Middle of Nowhere. You've been a fixture in the heart of a well-defined
Somewhere for quite some time. But now, Taurus, you need the enriching
confusion of the Cosmic HUH?! it's prime time for you to wander out into
the fertile chaos of the WHAT THE HELL!? zone. Have fun! Don't forget to
writhe! Now please repeat and repeat and repeat after me, slowly building
from a smirking giggle to a cackling belly-laugh: WHERE AM I AND HOW
DID I GET HERE?!
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): This would be a good week to take a class at
clown school, give out free ice cream to the underprivileged, or sing show
tunes to a captive audience at a retirement home. In fact, the cosmos will
be very favorably disposed toward you if you do anything to increase the
pleasure you bring people. Here are some other ways you might proceed:
Listen raptly to allies who've lost their way; think deeply about what a
loved one needs most; deliver sincere praise to people you've never
praised before; say a rowdy prayer for an acquaintance who could use a
jolt of inspiration; or do a good deed anonymously, ensuring that the
recipient of your blessing doesn't know who gave it.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Charles Darwin called Thomas Malthus a
"great philosopher," and said his theory of evolution was based on
Malthus' ideas. Yet Malthus advocated genocidal measures to control
population growth. In "Essay on the Principle of Population," Malthus
wrote: "Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should
encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets
narrower, crowd more people into houses, and court the return of the
plague. In the country, we should build villages near stagnant pools, and
encourage settlement in marshy and unwholesome situations." So the
evidence is clear that Darwin's theories had a grotesque pedigree. Should
we therefore dismiss them altogether? Not necessarily. What's useful is
not always derived from what's good. Is there a comparable situation in
your own life, Cancerian? Are there essentials you benefit from even
though their origins are problematical? The time is ripe for coming to
terms with weirdness like that.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The water you drink is three billion years old, give
or take five million years. The stuff your body is made of is at least ten
billion years old, probably older, and has been as far away as 100,000
light years from where it is right now. The air you breathe has, in the
course of its travels, been literally everywhere on the planet, and has
slipped in and out of the lungs of almost every human being who has ever
lived. There's much more evidence I could offer to prove to you that
you're an infinite and eternal creature, Leo, but suffice it to say that
you're much greater and older and bigger and wilder and freer than you
have ever imagined. The experiences you'll soon have will give you a
deeply felt sense of how true that is.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This weekly newsletter, which includes my written horoscopes and
excerpts from my books, is always free.
Here are the services I provide that cost money:
My EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES are weekly spoken-word reports on
your destiny. They're three to four minutes long, and are available at
http://RealAstrology.com.
The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at 1-877-873-4888 or
1-900-950-7700.
My DAILY TEXT MESSAGE HOROSCOPES are short, sweet bursts of
illumination delivered seven days a week to your cell phone or other
mobile device. You can sign up for them at http://RealAstrology.com.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): It's the perfect time to kill off old habits that
drag you down and to sever bad connections that bring out the worst in
you. Therefore, I suggest you make an undercover search-and-destroy
visit to the murkiest parts of the underworld. When you get back, invite
skeletons to come out of the closet and monsters to crawl out from
beneath the bed for a nice long heart-to-heart talk full of tough love. And
in general, don't you dare avert your gaze from any song and dance that
might half-scare you and half-inspire you into triumphing over evil. P.S. In
every decay there'll be beauty; in every loss there'll be a glimmer of
future joy.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): If we were going to equate your relationship
options with varieties of ice cream, we might say that in the next eight
weeks you will have a choice between Black Raspberry Avalanche, Caramel
Toffee Bar Heaven, Cherry Chip ba da Bing, Grandma's Cookie Dough, New
York Strawberry Cheesecake, Cashew Praline Parfait, Peanut Butter
Truffle, and good old Vanilla. Oddly enough, Vanilla might turn out to be
the most gratifying. Of all the varieties, it would certainly have the best
aftertaste.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The secret you're looking for, the secret you
think you desperately need, does not exist--at least not officially.
Unofficially, however, it's very real. It's alive and hot and exciting. But it's
in the care of people you don't notice or value. It's something you'd
normally regard as cheap and insignificant. So let me ask you, Scorpio:
Can you change the way you use your eyes? Will you drop the opinions
that get in the way of you seeing the truth? The secret you're in quest
of, the resource that might solve so many problems, will be easy to pluck
if you'll just change your mind about matters that you imagine have
nothing to do with the secret.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Flora, a Komodo dragon in a British zoo,
recently became pregnant and hatched five babies without ever having
had contact with a male. This is the first recorded virgin birth among her
species. She's your power animal for the coming weeks, Sagittarius.
Whether you're female or male, you too now have the power to spawn a
beautiful brainchild without being intellectually or emotionally fertilized by
anyone. That of course doesn't mean you should avoid the kind of
intimate interactions that would fructify you. On the contrary, I urge you
to seek those out in abundance. But my point is that you don't need
them in order to be a fount of creativity.
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AUDIO LOVE LETTERS
In addition to the horoscopes that you're reading here, I create more in-
depth audio horoscopes for your inspiration. Find out more at
http://RealAstrology.com.
The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at 1-877-873-4888 or
1-900-950-7700.
"You told me the truth when no one else in my life would." -Darren H.,
Minneapolis
"Your wake-up calls keep me from getting stale." -Arris T., Aspen, CO
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The bumper sticker I saw today said,
"Having abandoned my search for the truth, I'm now looking for a good
fantasy." Though it's meant to be sarcastic, it's actually a perfectly useful
piece of advice for you right now. Consider this: The truth is overrated.
It's so complicated and ever-shifting that it's impossible to pin down. To
earnestly pursue it is often a waste of your valuable time and energy.
Besides, why bother trying to *understand* the nature of reality when it's
more important and productive to aggressively *shape* the nature of
reality? As another bumper sticker says, "Life isn't about finding yourself.
It's about creating yourself." In light of these meditations, Capricorn, I
suggest that you drum up some fresh, fun, fabulous fantasies.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Writing in *American Scientist,* professor of
neuroscience Irving Biederman says that human beings are literally
addicted to learning new ideas. At the moment when we grasp a concept
we've been grappling with, our brains experience a rush of a natural
opium-like chemical, boosting our pleasure levels. I suggest that you take
advantage of this fact to get really high in the coming week, Aquarius.
Your ability to master challenging new information is at a peak, which
means your access to natural opiates will be abundant.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): A pound of gold weighs less than a pound of
tumbleweeds. That's because the weight of gold is measured by the troy
system of measurement, in which there are 12 ounces in a pound,
whereas the weight of tumbleweeds is assessed according to the
avoirdupois system, in which a pound consists of 16 ounces. Still, you'd
probably rather have a pound of gold than a pound of tumbleweeds,
right? Keep this in mind as you decide what resources to go after in the
coming week.
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HOMEWORK: What was the pain that healed you most? Testify by going
to http://RealAstrology.com and clicking on "Email Rob."
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WANT TO GET YOUR CHART DONE?
I'm not doing personal charts these days, but I highly recommend my
favorite astrological colleague, RO LOUGHRAN. Her approach closely
matches my own. In our many discussions about astrology over the years,
we've had a major influence on each other's work.
Ro utilizes a blend of well-trained intuition, emotional warmth, and a high
degree of technical proficiency in horoscope interpretation; she is skilled
at exploring the mysteries of your life's purpose and nurturing your
connection with your own inner wisdom.
Ro is based in California, but can do phone consultations and otherwise
work with you regardless of geographic boundaries.
Ro's website is at
http://www.YourSoulJourney.com
She can also be reached at roloughran@comcast.net
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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
2007 Rob Brezsny
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