Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter http://ezezine.com
Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
July 6, 2011
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My long-term audio horoscopes are still available. There's more
information about them below.
Whether or not you want to tune in to those Big Picture reports for the
rest of 2011, you may be interested in reviewing the long-term
horoscopes I wrote for you last December and January.
To check in with the predictions I made for you at the beginning of the
year, go here:
http://bit.ly/BigPicture2011
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See a pretty version of this newsletter:
http://bit.ly/lXhRah
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WHAT'S AHEAD FOR YOU in the next six months?
To hear my IN-DEPTH, LONG-TERM AUDIO FORECAST for YOUR LIFE
between now and January 2012, go here:
http://RealAstrology.com
Log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Term
Forecast for Second Half of 2011."
What areas of your life are likely to receive unexpected assistance and
divine inspiration?
Where are the prime sources of motivation that will be welling up from
your depths?
How can you best cooperate with the cosmic rhythms?
Where are you likely to find most success?
Tune in.
You can also listen to your short-term forecast for the coming week by
clicking on "This week (July 5, 2011)."
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The piece below is excerpted from my book
*PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA*
available at Amazon: http://bit.ly/Pronoia
or Powells: http://bit.ly/PronoiaPowells
ECSTATIC STUDY GUIDE, Part 5
Strategies for plying a chronic, low-key, blissful union with everything
you're not
1. "If everything seems under control," said auto racer Mario Andretti,
"you're probably not moving fast enough." I second that emotion. It
applies to the entire human race, which is swirling through evolutionary
tipping points at an accelerating speed. But it's doubly apropos for you
spiritual freedom fighters and renegade bodhisattvas, because you're the
vanguard shock troops fighting to merge heaven with earth.
For your edification and amusement, we will add three corollaries to
Andretti's wisdom: 1. If you're not pretty much always half-confused,
most likely you're not thinking deeply enough. 2. If you're not feeling
forever amazed, maybe you're not seeing wildly enough. 3. The truth is
fluid, slippery, vagrant, scrambled, promiscuous, kaleidoscopic, and
outrageously abundant.
How might you go about using these tricks to marinate yourself in a
gentle state of ecstasy pretty much all the time?
2. "Take time to stop and smell the flowers," says an old homily. Albert
Hoffman, the Swiss scientist who discovered LSD and lived to age 102,
had a different approach. "Take the time to stop and *be* the flowers,"
he said.
That's my advice to you. Don't just set aside a few stolen moments to
sniff the snapdragons, taste the rain, chase the wind, watch the
hummingbirds, and listen to a friend. Use your imagination to actually
*be* the snapdragons and rain and wind and hummingbirds and friend.
Don't just behold the Other; become the Other.
3. Question: Which part of you is too tame, overcivilized, and super-
domesticated, and what are you going to do about it?
Answer, from a reader named Jason R.: "I was like a mole in a suburban
backyard. I had just one little path I trod each day: to the compost pile
and back. I chewed on orange rinds and leftover cabbage. I was tamed by
the comfort of my familiar environment, content to have a narrow vision.
But then I was eaten by a hawk, and became part of a wild, free body.
Now I perch on the tops of trees and the peaks of roofs. I survey giddy-
wide horizons, from the river to the mesa and far beyond. I have a wealth
of choices. Where to fly? What to hunt? Who are my allies? My thoughts
breathe deep, like the slow explosion of sun on the morning lake."
How would you answer the same question?
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
EXPANDING OUR MINDS ABOUT WHAT'S NATURAL
Donating retired subway trains to the little-known cause of creating
artificial reefs.
http://tinyurl.com/634anz6
GLIMMERS OF TRUE PATRIOTISM
USAA, CVS Caremark, Costco, UnitedHealth Group and Berkshire
Hathaway are among the few multi-billion dollar American corporations
that actually pay their fair share of taxes and don't hide their money
offshore.
http://tinyurl.com/3h6wve7
EVERYTHING CAN BE FRESH
New Rules:
Consider everything an experiment . . . .
http://tinyurl.com/ytaooj
(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 July 7
Copyright 2011 by Rob Brezsny
http://FreeWillAstrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
CANCER (June 21-July 22): While listening to the sound collage radio
program "Over the Edge" on KPFA, I learned that a new primary color has
been detected. Quite different from red, yellow, or blue, it has its own
distinct hue that's impossible to describe. You really have to see it to
appreciate its essence. The discoverer of this marvel is Dr. Wohan Squant,
who has named the color "squant." (Full details here: bit.ly/Squant.) I
wish I could predict you're about to create or find something equally
revolutionary, Cancerian, but I can't go quite that far. Nevertheless,
you've entered a phase when you have the power to tinker with and even
transform fundamental laws of your universe. So who knows? Maybe
you're on the verge of a shift almost as revolutionary as the discovery of
squant.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Are you feeling the sting of disappointment,
railing at life for reneging on one of its promises to you? Are you in the
throes of unleashing a great accusation, suffering the twisty ache that
comes from having your pet theories disproved? Maybe you should
consider the possibility that you are simply getting an opportunity to
correct a misunderstanding -- that life isn't being mean to you and you're
not being punished. I'd like to propose that you are, in fact, in the first
phase of your healing. Listen to Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore: "We
read the world wrong and say that it deceives us."
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): "The more one dwells on oneself," says
psychoanalyst Adam Phillips in his book *Going Sane,* "the more one is
likely to suffer." He thinks people need encouragement to avoid excessive
introspection. "My project as a psychoanalyst," he writes, "is to free them
to not have to think about their lives so much." While I feel he overstates
the case, I do suspect his message would be good for you to heed in the
coming weeks. For maximum success and robust mental health, take a
generous portion of your attention off yourself and focus it on living your
life with compassion, curiosity, and concern for others.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): "One must choose in life between boredom and
suffering," proclaimed author Madame de Staƫl (1766-1817). I beg to
differ with her, however. As evidence, I present the course of your life
during the next few weeks. After analyzing the astrological omens, I
expect you will consistently steer a middle course between boredom and
suffering, being able to enjoy some interesting departures from the
routine that don't hurt a bit. There may even be pain-free excursions into
high adventure mixed in, along with a fascinating riddle that taxes your
imagination in rather pleasurable ways.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): I accompanied a friend and his family to a
small fairgound where a local school was having a fundraiser. There were
rides and games for younger kids. Right away we came to a challenging
activity that involved climbing a ladder made out of rubber and coated
with some slippery substance. One girl, about seven years old, was having
a moment of rowdy bliss as she tried to ascend. "It's impossible -- but
fun!" she cried out to her mom. Your assignment in the coming week is to
find an adventure like that: one that's impossible but fun.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): "It is not always needful for truth to
take a definite shape," wrote Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. "It is enough
if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted
through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly." With this quote,
I'm alerting you to the fact that a new truth is now floating into your
world, Sagittarius. It'll be misty and sparkly, yet somehow also decisive
and lucid. It will comfort you and yours, but also be a bit shocking. It will
be sharply tonic, like good, strong medicine that has a pungent yet oddly
delicious flavor you've never tasted before.
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WHAT'S TO COME?
BRAINSTORM ABOUT THE BIG PICTURE OF YOUR LIFE
with my Expanded Audio Horoscopes for the Second Half of 2011:
http://RealAstrology.com
What will be the story of your life during the rest of 2011? 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?
If you'd like a high-octane boost of inspiration to fuel you in your quest
for beauty and truth and love and justice and meaning, tune in to my
meditations on your long-term outlook.
Go here:
http://RealAstrology.com
Log in and click on the link
"Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2011"
You can also listen to your short-term forecast for the coming week by
clicking on "This week (July 5, 2011)."
"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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CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): If there were a useful website with the
domain name AmIAGoodPersonOrNot.com, I would advise you to go check
it out. The same is true if there were websites like
AmIAuthenticOrNot.com, AmIYummyOrNot.com,
AmIEnlightenedOrNot.com, or AmIAGorgeousGeniusOrNot.com. What I'm
trying to tell you, Capricorn, is that this would be an excellent time for
you to find out more about yourself from objective sources -- or any
other kind of sources, for that matter. Solicit feedback, my beautiful
darling. Ask for updates on how you're doing.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Ninety-six percent of all adults say they
would change something about their appearance if they could. That
statistic is one factor that leads philosopher Jonathan Zap to make this
observation: "Suffering associated with body image has reached such
epidemic proportions in our culture that it must be counted as one of the
greatest spiritual plagues ever to be visited upon mankind." That's the
bad news, Aquarius. The good news is that the coming months will be an
excellent time for learning to be at more peace with how you look. I invite
you to formulate a three-point plan that will help you come to a
perspective in which you will love your body exactly the way it is.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): On her website Reuniting.info, Marnia
Robinson reported on a discovery she made that may be useful to you.
Wandering around a county fair, she went to a reptile exhibit where she
encountered an animal trainer who had an alligator resting serenely on his
lap. She asked him why the creature was so well-behaved. "I pet it daily,"
he said. "If I didn't, it would quickly be wild again, and wouldn't allow this."
Apply that lesson in your own life, Pisces. Bestow regular tenderness and
loving touch to the feral, untamed, primitive influences in your life --
including any that may reside within you.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): It's my observation that women find it easier
than men to tune into their natural rhythms. The menstrual cycle helps
cultivate that ability. We men experience less dramatic physical shifts, and
that seems to give us license to override messages from our bodies for
the sake of ambition, laziness, or convenience. Having acknowledged that,
I must say that I know men who are highly sensitive and responsive to
somatic cues, and women who aren't. Whatever gender you are, I believe
that in the coming weeks it's crucial for you to be acutely aware of what's
going on inside your beloved flesh-and-blood vehicle. This is one time
when you need to be intimately aligned with its needs.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): One of the greatest kings of the ancient
Persian Sassanid Empire was Shapur II (309-379). Shortly after his father
died, he was made king while still in his mother's womb. Since he could
not yet wear his crown, officials set it upon his mother's pregnant belly.
He ruled from then until the day he died, 70 years later. I'm naming him
your patron saint for the second half of 2011, Taurus. My sense is that
the seed of some great accomplishment is already germinating within you.
It may take a while to be fully born, but I suggest we consecrate its bright
future now.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): I've got no problem with the real world. I spend
a lot of time there, enjoy its chewy riddles, and take it quite seriously. But
I also consider myself a militant lobbyist for all the Other Worlds -- the
domain of everything that's invisible to the naked eye and irrelevant to
the schemes of the rational ego. These alternate realities consist of the
unconscious, the dreamtime, the spiritual sphere, the intelligence of
nature, and the realm of the ancestors. In my astrological opinion, you're
due for a major upgrade in your relationship with these dimensions in the
next 12 months. Now would be a good time to get started.
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Homework: Say "I love you" at least 15 times a day for the next seven
days. Report your results to www.freewillastrology.com.
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2011 Rob Brezsny
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