Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter http://ezezine.com
Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
October 7, 2009
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http://FreeWillAstrology.com
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"My own definition of Dada: an insane lyrical impulse to remain light and
carefree, always looking for something to wonder or marvel at, or love, or
laugh at, but always remaining illogical and joyous in a world gone mad
with too much logic, seriousness, science, newspapers, war, and
destruction."
- Irving Stettner
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The revised and expanded version of my book *PRONOIA IS THE
ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA* is now available.
With 55% fresh material beyond the original edition (60,000 additional
words and 75 new illustrations), it basically has a whole new extra
book inside it.
Order it here:
Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/lxpnyt
Barnes and Noble: http://tinyurl.com/kkadtb
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Here's a piece from the book.
A Global Array of Further Pronoiac Resources
In recent years, the doom and gloom prophets have become even more
strident and brazen in blurting out their cacophony of curses.
Joining them in the mad rush to shower condemnation on the entire
human enterprise have been millions of emboldened everyday complainers
who've also become addicted to the sick thrill of chronic rage.
I'm sometimes tempted to view the growing hordes of fulminators as a
black magic army flinging hexes and maledictions on everything they see.
But whenever I brush up against that fear, I stop my mind from its
careening and refocus my inner eyes. Breathing out the jive and breathing
in the love, I survey all the evidence I've been gathering of an antidotal
force rising up.
When my book on pronoia first came out in 2005, I felt isolated in my
seemingly eccentric invitation to celebrate the glory we're surrounded by,
to name the thousands of ways that the universe proves its love for us,
to notice all the miracles and help we receive.
But I soon realized that I was by no means a lone crank crying in the
wilderness. I became aware of an ever-growing rebel crusade -- swarms of
pilgrims and activists and artists and creative optimists who had signed
on to the conspiracy to shower blessings, devoting themselves to the
work of not just saving the world but making it more beautiful and
mysterious and interesting.
I wasn't under any illusion that they were suddenly arising because of my
influence. Rather, my sense was that my book was just one symptom of
an energy that was awakening in the whole world. I was a current in the
flood.
For years, I've been compiling data about other currents in the flood,
making them known through this free weekly email newsletter. A Beauty
and Truth Lab researcher named Darin Wilson has created a website that
is archiving these pronoiac resources. The posts are categorized and
tagged, and there's built-in search. You can find the site here:
http://www.pronoiaresources.com.
Please note that when I praise all these purveyors of beauty and truth and
love and justice, I do so simply because I like them. My endorsements are
not advertisements, and I get no kickbacks.
Let me know about your own nominations for pronoiac resources. I'm at
beautyandtruth@freewillastrology.com.
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Sources of good news are proliferating. In fact, their increasing abundance
is proof that there's no longer any excuse for steeping yourself in the
perverse life-hating obsession that infects the mainstream media.
Here's my challenge to you: For the period of one week, I dare you to
refrain from sucking in the nihilism that pours out of mainstream news
sources. Instead, for those seven days, get all your news from the
pronoiac websites below.
Good News Network
http://goodnewsnetwork.org
Change the World News
http://cthings.com
Great News Network
http://greatnewsnetwork.org
Positive News
http://positivenewsus.org
Ode magazine
http://www.odemagazine.com/
Yes! magazine
http://www.yesmagazine.org/
Gimundo
http://gimundo.com
Good News Daily
http://goodnewsdaily.com
Good News Blog
http://goodnewsblog.com
Happy News
http://happynews.com
Heroic Stories
http://heroicstories.com
Positive Economic News
http://positiveeconomicnews.com
Good News Economist
http://goodnewseconomist.com
NPR report on good news
http://tinyurl.com/d5mkuw
New "positive change" magazines thrive
http://tinyurl.com/y9hen3d
(Note: I endorse these because I like them. They are not advertisements,
and I get no kickbacks.)
Please tell me your own personal nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES.
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning October 8
Copyright 2009 by Rob Brezsny
http://FreeWillAstrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): The sun shines brighter on my new home. The
old place had resemblances to a cave and was surrounded by tall trees.
My new space has many broad windows and soaks up the solar radiance
from dawn to dusk. As you might expect, my 15 plants need to drink a lot
more than they used to. The watering ritual at the old house used to
come once a week, but now it's every other day. According to my reading
of the astrological omens, a comparable shift is occurring in your rhythm,
Libra. Metaphorically speaking, more heat and light are coming your way.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Amazingly enough, the good deeds you do in
the next 21 days could alone qualify you for a permanent exemption from
hell. It seems God has cooked up some imminent tests that will give you a
chance to garner some ridiculously sublime karma. What's that you say?
You don't believe in either God or hell? Well then, interpret the
opportunity this way: The good deeds you perform in the coming three
weeks could practically ensure that the sins you've committed thus far in
your life will not stain the world or be passed on as IOUs to the next
generation.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In 1968, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn finished
his book *The Gulag Archipelago,* a scorching indictment of the
oppression that he and his countrymen suffered under the totalitarian
regime of the Soviet Union. Banned for years, it was never formally
published in his home country until 1989. Even after that, the new
Russian government tried to control the teaching of history by
suppressing texts like Solzhenitsyn's. This year, all that changed. *The
Gulag Archipelago* became required reading in Russian high schools. At
last, the truth is officially available. (Maybe one day the equivalent will
happen in the U.S., with alternate histories by Howard Zinn and Noam
Chomsky finding their way into the curriculum.) I celebrate this
breakthrough as a symbol of the events that are about to unfold in your
personal life: the long-lost truth finally revealed.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): John, a colleague of mine, is a skillful
psychotherapist. His father is in a similar occupation, psychoanalysis. If
you ask John whether his dad gave him a good understanding of the
human psyche while he was growing up, John quotes the old maxim: "The
shoemaker's son has no shoes." Is there any comparable theme in your
own life, Capricorn? Some talent or knowledge or knack that should have
been but was not a part of your inheritance; a natural gift you were
somehow cheated out of in your early environment? If so, the coming
weeks will be an excellent time to start recovering from your loss and
getting the good stuff you have coming to you.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Let's imagine that an independent
filmmaker has been following you around, gathering footage for a movie
based on the story of your life. This week he or she would face a dilemma.
That's because unexpected new sub-plots may arise, veering off in
directions that seem to be far afield from the core themes. The acting of
the central players won't be bad or unskillful, but it might be out of
character with what they've done before. And there could be anomalous
intrusions that impinge on the main scenes, like a bug landing on your
nose during an intense conversation. Yet I can't help wondering if this
chapter of the tale won't be intriguing for just these reasons.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): "Tenderness and rot / share a border," writes
the U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan in one of her poems. "And rot is an /
aggressive neighbor / whose iridescence / keeps creeping over." Your job
in the coming week, Pisces, is to reinforce that border -- with a triple-
thick wall, if necessary -- so that the rot cannot possibly ooze over and
infect tenderness. It is especially important right now that the sweet,
deep intimacy you dole out and stimulate will not get corrupted by
falseness or sentimentality. I urge you to stir up the smartest affection
you have ever created.
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LISTEN TO AN EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE
Since I put all my heart and soul into the written horoscopes I send out in
this newsletter, they're pretty nutritious. You may never need any of the
other stuff I create.
But if you ever do crave an added boost, you may want to sample my
Expanded Audio Horoscopes. They're different in tone and intent than the
written scopes, imbued with a little more of the psychologist in me, and a
little less of the poet.
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.
"Your Expanded Audio Horoscopes provide me with the Rest of the Story.
I'm not necessarily a believer in the scientific accuracy of astrology, but I
do think you've got a lot of practical wisdom to impart."
- M. Tennenbaum, New York
"No one knows more about me than me. But you're right up there near
the top of the list of people who do understand something about how I
tick. How is that possible?"
- R. Goren, Albuquerque
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ARIES (March 21-April 19): The poet Stephen Mallarmé wrote the
following in a letter to a friend: "I don't know which of my internal
climates I should explore in order to find you and meet you." I love that
passage. It alludes to one of the central facts about the nature of reality:
The quality of your consciousness is crucial in determining whether you'll
be able to attract the resources that are essential to your dreams coming
true. In order to get what you want, you have to work on yourself at least
as hard as you work on the world around you. This is always true, of
course, but it's especially true for you now, Aries.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Is there anything in your life that you don't
really want but nevertheless find it hard to part with? A situation or
experience that gives you a perverse sense of comfort because of its
familiarity, even though it has a steep emotional cost and doesn't serve
your higher dreams? If so, the coming week will be an excellent time to
change your relationship with it. You will make dramatic progress if you
brainstorm about how you could break up the stagnant energy that keeps
you entranced and entrapped.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): One of my New Age friends says she has it on
good authority that the Seven Lords of Time will reconvene in their
Himalayan sanctuary on December 21, 2012 and reinvent the nature of
time, as they last did back in 3114 BC. I have no idea if that's true or not,
but if it is, I say "hallelujah!" We would all benefit from some big-time
reinvention of time. But that happy event, even if it actually does come
to pass, is still more than three years away. What to do in the meantime?
Luckily, you Geminis now have major personal power to do some time
reinvention of your own. To get started, ask yourself what three things
you could do to stop fighting time and start loving it better.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Soup is your metaphor for the week,
Cancerian. Symbolically speaking, it's the key to your personal power and
a model for the approach you should take in everything you do. On the
most basic level, you might want to eat some soup every day. That will
make potent suggestions to your subconscious mind about how to mix
lots of ingredients together so that their value and beauty as a totality
are more than the sum of their parts. Not just in the kitchen, but in every
area of your life, blend many little miscellaneous things into one big
interesting thing.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Change your password. Take a different way
home. Ask a question you've never asked. Dream up a new nickname for
yourself. Choose a new lucky number. Change the way you tell the story
about an important event in your past. Make it a little more difficult for
people to have you pegged. Eat a type of food you've never tried. Do the
research necessary to discover why one of your opinions may be wrong.
Add a new step to your grooming ritual. Feel appreciation for a person
whose charms you've become numb to. Surprise yourself at least once a
day.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): One of the best modern Turkish poets was
Seyfettin Bascillar, who worked as a meat inspector in New Jersey for
many years before his death in 2002. Nobel Prize-winning poet Czes_aw
Mi_osz lived in Berkeley, California for over four decades while writing his
books in Polish, his native tongue. Iceland's great poet of the 20th
century, Stephan G. Stephansson, lived in Canada most of his life but
always wrote in Icelandic. These people remind me of what you're going
through: striving to do what comes natural and authentic in a situation
very different from the place where you first learned to be natural and
authentic. The interesting fact of the matter is that this feeling of
displacement could very well be key to your success.
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HOMEWORK: To try the exercises and experiments in "Pronoia Therapy,"
an excerpt from my new book, go here: http://tinyurl.com/95ykn.
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WANT TO GET YOUR CHART DONE?
I'm not doing personal charts, but I highly recommend my 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://YourSoulJourney.com
She can also be reached at roloughran@comcast.net
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P.S. I totally respect your privacy. I'll never sell or give away your address
to anyone.
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Submissions sent to the Free Will Astrology Weekly Newsletter
or in response to "homework assignments" may be
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2009 Rob Brezsny
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