Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter http://ezezine.com
Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
October 19, 2011
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See a pretty version of this newsletter: http://bit.ly/mTiNv9
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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
PRONOIA IS A DANGEROUS TABOO
(to read the whole piece and hear it as a podcast, go here:
http://bit.ly/ccar6C)
The book *PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia* is a conversation, not a
dictation. It's an inquiry, not dogma.
We're explorers in search of the ever-evolving truth, not authorities
proclaiming doctrine from on high. We refuse to be salespeople intent on
getting you to be like us or buy our ideas. In fact, let's look at the
downsides of the perspectives we celebrate.
The first thing you should consider before leaping into a relationship with
pronoia is that it is utterly at odds with conventional wisdom. The 19th-
century poet John Keats said that if something is not beautiful, it is
probably not true. But the vast majority of modern storytellers --
journalists, filmmakers, novelists, talk-show hosts, and poets -- assert the
opposite: If something is not ugly, it is probably not true.
In a world that equates pessimism with acumen and regards stories about
things falling apart as having the highest entertainment value, pronoia is
deviant. It is a taboo so taboo that it's not even recognized as a taboo.
The average American child sees 20,000 simulated murders before
reaching age 18. This is considered normal. There are thousands of films,
television shows, and electronic games that depict people doing terrible
things to each other. If you read newspapers and news sites on the
Internet, you have every right to believe that Bad Nasty Things compose
90 percent of the human experience. The authors of thousands of books
published this year will hope to lure you in through the glamour of killing,
addiction, self-hatred, sexual pathology, shame, betrayal, extortion,
robbery, cancer, arson, and torture.
But you will be hard-pressed to find more than a few novels, films, news
stories, and TV shows that dare to depict life as a gift whose purpose is
to enrich the human soul.
If you cultivate an affinity for pronoia, people you respect may wonder if
you have lost your way. You might appear to them as naive, eccentric,
unrealistic, misguided, or even stupid. Your reputation could suffer and
your social status could decline.
But that may be relatively easy to deal with compared to your struggle to
create a new relationship with yourself. For starters, you will have to
acknowledge that what you previously considered a strong-willed faculty -
- the ability to discern the weakness in everything -- might actually be a
mark of cowardice and laziness. Far from being evidence of your power
and uniqueness, your drive to produce hard-edged opinions stoked by
hostility is likely a sign that you've been brainwashed by the pedestrian
influences of pop nihilism.
Before the onset of pronoia, you may feel fine about the fact that you
generate much of your dynamic energy through anger, agitation,
discomfort, and judgmental scorn. But once the pronoia kicks in, you'll
naturally want more positive feelings to be your high-octane fuel. That will
require extensive retraining. The work could be arduous, delicate, and
time-consuming.
Are you truly ready to shed the values and self-images that keep you
locked into alignment with the dying civilization? Will you have the
stamina and inspiration necessary to dream up bigger, better, more
original sins and wilder, wetter, more interesting problems? Do you realize
how demanding it will be to turn yourself into a wildly disciplined, radically
curious, fiercely tender, ironically sincere, ingeniously loving, aggressively
sensitive, blasphemously reverent, lustfully compassionate master of
rowdy bliss?
TO READ THE REST OF THIS PIECE and hear it as a podcast, go here:
http://bit.ly/ccar6C
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
FIRST-DEGREE PRONOIAC PROGRESS
Hallelujah! The Nobel Prize Committee Blesses Feisty, Spiritual Women
http://tinyurl.com/3gteajs
SMART PEOPLE ARE WORKING BEHIND THE SCENES TO SAVE THE LIVES
OF PEOPLE THEY DON'T KNOW
Researchers have devised a protein "switch" that instructs cancer cells to
produce their own anti-cancer medication.
http://tinyurl.com/3tn87na
YOUR MINIMUM DAILY REQUIREMENT OF BEAUTY
A collection of images that may induce an eyegasm.
http://tinyurl.com/3wdv6xo
THE EVIDENCE KEEPS ACCUMULATING
Here's a whole flood of pronoia:
http://pronoiaresources.com/
(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 20
Copyright 2011 by Rob Brezsny
http://FreeWillAstrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Your nightly dreams provide useful clues
about your waking life. They can show you hidden patterns and
unconscious motivations that your daytime mind hasn't noticed. On rare
occasions, they may even offer more literal guidance. That's what
happened for David Brown, a British man who one morning woke up from
a dream of seeing a mysterious phone number. As an experiment, he sent
a text message to that very number: "Did I meet you last night?" Michelle
Kitson, the stranger on the other end, responded with a text, and then
Brown texted back. More exchanges ensued, followed by a face-to-face
encounter, and eventually the two were married. I can't guarantee
anything quite as dramatic for you, Scorpio, but I do expect your dreams
will be unusually helpful.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In addition to reading your astrological
omens, I did a Tarot reading, consulted the I Ching, and threw the runes.
They all gave me the same message: The coming week would be a good
time for you to spend quality time mulling over the Biggest Mystery of
Your Life. It's not mandatory that you do so. You won't cause a disaster if
you refuse. Still, wouldn't it be fun? Life is inviting you to get re-excited
about your personal version of the quest for the Holy Grail. Your future
self is calling and calling and calling for you to dive into the ancient riddle
you've been working on since before you were born. The mists are
parting.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In Sue Allison's theater piece "Lies I've
Told," two actors take turns telling each other some classic whoppers.
Here are a few: 1. "It would be no trouble at all." 2. "This will only take a
second." 3. "I didn't get your message." 4. "I have no idea how that got
here." 5. "I thought you said 'the 16th.'" 6. "Would I lie to you?" See if
you can avoid fibs like those, Capricorn. I'm not asking you to be a
superstar of candor -- that's unrealistic -- but I do encourage you to cut
back on white lies and casual dishonesties as much as possible. This is a
time when you really need to know the whole truth and nothing but. And
the best way to work toward that goal is to be forthright yourself. That's
how karma operates.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Last June, Northern California artist Mary
Sobrina Kuder did a gallery show of her paintings. She called it "Offerings
of Grace and Mischief." That would be an excellent title for the story of
your life in the coming week, Aquarius. I believe that you will be receiving
offerings of grace and mischief, and I hope you will also be making such
offerings. For best results, remember this: The grace and mischief are not
contradictory or at odds. In fact, they need each other and belong
together.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Do you realize how many connections to
remote places you have? Are you aware of how routinely you are touched
by distant events? As science writer David Bodanis reminds us, "We inhale
many hundreds of particles in each breath we take. Salt crystals from
ocean whitecaps, dust scraped off distant mountains, micro bits of cooled
magma blown from volcanoes, and charred microfragments from tropical
forest fires." I urge you to use that as your metaphorical theme this
week, Pisces. Let your imagination run free as you renew your
connections with faraway sources of nourishment. Revivify your intimacy
with departed influences that continue to define you. Dream about the
tantalizing future.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): If you have been resisting the command to go
deeper, now is the time to surrender. If you have been hoping that the
pesky little voice in your head will shut up and stop bugging you to get
more involved, you'd better stop hoping. If you've been fantasizing about
how to escape the growing pressure to give more of yourself, I suggest
that instead you fantasize about how you could intensify your
commitments. The time has come to explore what has been missing and
what needs more love.
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Free Will Astrology's
EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES
feature suggestions to help you get in touch
with parts of your soul
that you have neglected
or misplaced
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Try them at http://RealAstrology.com.
They're available by phone at 1-877-873-4888
or 1-900-950-7700.
They're $6 if you access them on the Web, or $1.99 per minute over the
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"Your Expanded Audio Horoscopes help me get insights into what I don't
understand about myself." - Abraham P., Seattle
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TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Did you know it is illegal to break *into*
prison? That was the charge leveled against a Georgia man, Harry
Jackson, who was arrested as he tried to sneak back into the jail from
which he had escaped only a short time before. During his brief taste of
freedom, Jackson allegedly stole 14 packs of cigarettes from a nearby
store. Maybe that was his intention from the beginning -- to do an errand
and return "home." Please don't be like him in the coming weeks, Taurus.
If you do manage to spring yourself from a trap or bust out of your
servitude (and I expect you will do just that), don't come crawling back
later and beg to be allowed back in.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): As I was meditating on your horoscope this
afternoon, I gazed out my window at the creek flowing nearby. The tide
was coming in, which meant that the current was surging swiftly south.
Row upon row of small waves were coursing through the water. Then I
spied a lone duck swimming north against the tide. I couldn't imagine
what her motivation was. Why not just relax and float downstream? She
wasn't in a hurry and wasn't in the least flustered. Ever forward she went,
determined to push on. And then it struck me, as I thought of your
current astrological omens, that her approach would also suit you quite
well right now. Go steadily and casually against the flow, Gemini.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Herbert Kitchener served as the British
Consul-General in Egypt early last century. He wasn't impressed with the
creativity of the ancient nation's art. "I can't think much of the people
who drew cats the same for 4,000 years," he remarked. Is there an
equivalent to this lack of development in your own life, Cancerian? Among
your own activities, are there any whose history has shown no
progression? Did you reach a certain skill level in some area of your life
and then stop pushing to improve? This would be an excellent time to
identify that knot of excess stability, and then get started on dissolving
it.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): I'm not warning you to cut down on all the leaping
and cavorting you've been doing lately; I'm just saying that maybe you
should add some ballast to your foundation and some gravitas to your
demeanor. And I don't mean to guilt-trip you into toning down your lust
to connect with everyone and everything that tickles your synapses. But I
do suggest you consider the possibility that beginning very soon variety
will not be quite as spicy as it has been; your deft zigzags may need to be
carried out with gentler zigs and slightly more cautious zags.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): The autocorrect feature sometimes distorts
the text messages people send on their smart phones. It tries to fix
supposedly misspelled words that aren't really misspelled, thereby
creating awkward variations that can cause a ruckus when they're
received, like changing "I don't want to leave" to "I don't want to live."
*Damn You, Autocorrect!* is a book documenting some of the most
outrageous examples, many NSFW. Be vigilant for metaphorical versions
of this wayward autocorrect phenomenon, Virgo. Be sure that in your
efforts to make things better, you don't render them worse or weird.
Consider the possibility that stuff is fine just the way it is.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): *Meraki* is a Greek word that refers to the bliss
you feel when you're engaged in a task that's important to you and that
you're doing really well. It's your theme right now, Libra. According to my
reading of the astrological omens, everything's in place for you to
experience *meraki* in abundance. Furthermore, that's exactly what your
destiny is pushing for. So please get out there and do everything you can
to cooperate: Make this a *meraki*-filled week.
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Homework: What's the most beautiful thing you've ever done? What's the
most beautiful thing you've never done? Testify! Go to Realastrology.com
and click on "Email Rob."
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THE BEST DREAM WORKER I'VE EVER KNOWN
If you've ever had an intuition that maybe you'd like to delve deeper into
your dreams, I recommend Jonathan Zap. He's the best dream worker I
know.
Highly intuitive, schooled in the wisdom of archetypes, and really smart,
Jonathan has helped me crack the codes of some of my major dreams. His
cost is quite reasonable, too. I exuberantly recommend his services.
(He's not paying me to say this. I'm simply motivated by the desire to
share his treasure with my readers.)
You can reach Jonathan to inquire about dream interpretations at
jonathanzap@hotmail.com
His homepage is at:
http://www.zaporacle.com
Info about his dream work and other services are at:
http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/shop
Jonathan has also created the Zap Oracle, an uncanny divination tool you
can use to do readings for yourself. Because he has such a cagey,
interesting, and holy mind, I trust the spirit behind his oracles.
Cast your own divination by going to http://www.zaporacle.com and
clicking on ORACLE.
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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
2011 Rob Brezsny
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