Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter http://ezezine.com
Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
November 16, 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
Listen to the podcast here: http://bit.ly/tRRjcK
YOU ARE A PROPHET
Your imagination is the single most important asset you possess. It's your
power to create mental pictures of things that don't exist yet and that
you want to bring into being. It's the magic wand you use to shape your
future.
And so in your own way, you are a prophet. You generate countless
predictions every day. Your imagination is the source, tirelessly churning
out images of what you will be doing later.
The featured prophecy of the moment may be as simple as a psychic
impression of yourself eating a fudge brownie at lunch or as monumental
as a daydream of some year building your dream home by a lake or sea.
Your imagination is a treasure when it spins out scenarios that are aligned
with your deepest desires. In fact, it's an indispensable tool in creating
the life you want; it's what you use to form images of the conditions
you'd like to inhabit and the objects you hope to wield. Nothing manifests
on this planet unless it first exists as a mental picture.
But for most of us, the imagination is as much a curse as a blessing.
We're often just as likely to use it to conjure up premonitions that are at
odds with our conscious values. That's the result of having absorbed toxic
programming from the media and from our parents at an early age and
from other influential people in our past.
Fearful fantasies regularly pop up into our awareness, many disguising
themselves as rational thoughts and genuine intuitions. Those fearful
fantasies may hijack our psychic energy, directing it to exhaust itself in
dead-end meditations.
Every time we entertain a vision of being rejected or hurt or frustrated,
every time we rouse and dwell on a memory of a painful experience, we're
blasting ourselves with a hex.
Meanwhile, ill-suited longings are also lurking in our unconscious mind,
impelling us to want things that aren't good for us and that we don't
really need. Anytime we surrender to the allure of these false and trivial
and counterproductive desires, our imagination is practicing a form of
black magic.
This is the unsavory aspect of the imagination that the Zen Buddhists
deride as the "monkey mind." It's the part of our mental apparatus that
endlessly spins out pictures that zip around with the energy of an
agitated animal. If we can stop locating our sense of self in the relentless
surge of the monkey mind's slapdash chatter, we can be fully attuned to
the life that's right in front of us. Only then are we able to want what we
actually have.
But whether our imagination is in service to our noble desires or in the
thrall of compulsive fears and inappropriate yearnings, there is one
constant: The prophecies of our imagination tend to be accurate. Many of
our visions of the future do come to pass. The situations we expect to
occur and the experiences we rehearse and dwell on are all-too-often
reflected back to us as events that confirm our expectations.
Does that mean our mental projections create the future? Let's consider
that possibility. What if it's at least partially true that what we expect will
happen does tend to materialize?
Here's the logical conclusion: It's downright stupid and self-destructive to
keep infecting our imaginations with pictures of loss and failure, doom and
gloom, fear and loathing. The far more sensible approach is to expect
blessings.
That's one reason why I'm reverent in composing my messages for you. If
I'm to be one of the influences you invite into the intimate sanctuary
where you hatch your self-fulfilling prophecies, I want to conspire with
you to disperse fear and invoke relaxation and joy.
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
WILD STRONG BRAVE YET FUN AND GOOD
A video of people doing amazing things. (You might want to turn down
the music, though.)
http://tinyurl.com/3su7g8j
CREEPING EQUALITY
Women now get more than half of all the doctorates awarded in American
universities, but they're still catching up in the fields of chemistry,
engineering, and math.
http://tinyurl.com/3wo3bt9
WE MAY NOT BE ABLE TO IMAGINE THE WONDERUL TRANSFORMATIONS
LOOMING
Technological breakthroughs happen so often and we adapt to them so
quickly, they make miracles seem commonplace.
http://tinyurl.com/3ukzw5j
(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.
(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 November 17
Copyright 2011 by Rob Brezsny
http://FreeWillAstrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In his poem "Ode to the Present," Pablo
Neruda tells us how to slip free and clear into the luxuriously potent
opportunity of the present moment. The here-and-now is so ripe and
willing, he says, so malleable. "Take a saw to its delicious wooden
perfume," he continues, and then "build a staircase. Yes, a staircase.
Climb into the present, step by step, press your feet onto the resinous
wood of this moment, going up, going up, not very high . . . Don't go all
the way to heaven. Reach for apples, not the clouds." Such good advice
for you, Scorpio! It's a perfect time to learn more about the magic of the
present moment as you free yourself from "the unrepairable past." (Read
the poem at bit.ly/NerudaOde.)
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Seminal psychologist Carl Jung wasn't
afraid of applying his scholarly analytical skills to the phenomena of pop
culture. Late in life, he even wrote a thoughtful book on UFOs called
*Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.* To be as
thorough and careful as he could possibly be about such an elusive
subject, he wrote an afterword to his main argument, to which he added
an epilogue, which in turn was followed by a concluding supplement. I
hope that you are as scrupulous in wrapping up loose ends in the coming
week, Sagittarius, especially when you're dealing with enigmas and riddles.
As you seek resolution and completion, go well beyond the bare minimum.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): A great deal of land in the Netherlands has
been reclaimed from the sea by human effort. But the system of dikes
that holds back the primal flow is not a foolproof or permanent guarantee
against flooding. That's why more and more people are building homes
that can float if they have to. "We are actually trying to move away from
fighting against the water," says architect Koen Olthuis. "We are
beginning to make friends with the water." I recommend you adopt this as
a useful metaphor, Capricorn. During the coming months, you should be
doing a lot of foundation work. What can you do to add buoyancy?
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): According to my old philosophy professor
Norman O. Brown, "Our real choice is between holy and unholy madness:
open your eyes and look around you -- madness is in the saddle anyhow."
Let's take this hypothesis as our starting point, Aquarius. I propose that
in the coming weeks you make an effort to get more accustomed to and
comfortable with the understanding that the entire world is in the throes
of utter lunacy. Once you are at peace with that, I hope you will commit
yourself to the sacred kind of lunacy -- the kind that bestows wild
blessings and perpetrates unreasonable beauty and cultivates the healing
power of outlandish pleasure.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): It won't be enough to simply maintain your
current levels of strength, clarity, and intelligence in the coming weeks.
To stay healthy, to keep up with the rapidly evolving trends swirling in
and around you, you will have to actively push to get stronger, clearer,
and smarter. No pressure, right? Don't worry, the universe will be
conspiring to help you accomplish it all. To trigger the boost you'll need,
imagine that you have a reservoir of blue liquid lightning in the place
between your heart and gut. Picture yourself drawing judiciously from
that high-octane fuel as you need it, bringing it first to your heart and
then to your brain.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): If you go into a major art museum that
displays Europe's great oil paintings, you'll find that virtually every
masterpiece is surrounded by an ornate wooden frame, often painted
gold. Why? To me, the enclosure is distracting and unnecessary. Why
can't I just enjoy the arresting composition on the naked canvas,
unburdened by the overwrought excess? I urge you to take my approach
in the coming weeks, Aries. Push and even fight to get the goodies
exactly as they are, free of all the irrelevant filler, extraneous buffers, and
pretentious puffery.
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TAURUS (April 20-May 20): "Judge a moth by the beauty of its candle,"
said the 13th-century poet Rumi. More prosaically put: Evaluate people
according to the nobility and integrity of the desires they're obsessed
with. Do you want to hang around with someone whose primary focus is
to make too much money or please her parents or build a shrine to his
own ego? Or would you prefer to be in a sphere of influence created by a
person who longs to make a useful product or help alleviate suffering or
make interesting works of art? It's an excellent time to ponder these
issues, Taurus -- and then take action to ensure you're surrounded by
moths that favor beautiful candles.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In Santa Cruz there used to be a nightclub that
featured live rock bands on a big stage but enforced a strict policy
forbidding its patrons from dancing. The one time I went there, the music
was loud and infectious, and I naturally felt the urge to move in vigorous
rhythm. Moments after I launched into my groove, a bouncer accosted me
and forced me to stop. I think this situation has certain resemblances to
the one you're in now, Gemini. Some natural response mechanism in you is
being unduly inhibited; some organic inclination is being unreasonably
restrained or dampened. Why should you continue to accept this?
CANCER (June 21-July 22): During the time a blue crab is growing to
maturity, it is very skilled at transforming itself. It sheds its exoskeleton
an average of once every 18 days for an entire year. You're in a phase
with some similarities to that period of rapid ripening, Cancerian. Your
commitment to change doesn't have to be quite as heroic, but it should
be pretty vigorous. Could you manage, say, two moltings over the course
of the next 30 days? If done in a spirit of adventure, it will be liberating,
not oppressively demanding.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): "Progress isn't made by early risers," wrote
author Robert Heinlein. "It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways
to do something." That's exactly the kind of progress you are in an
excellent position to stir up in the coming weeks. You don't have to
match the stress levels of the Type A people who might seem to have an
advantage over you, and you won't help yourself at all by worrying or
trying too hard. The single best thing you can do to supercharge your
creativity is to think of yourself as a "happy-go-lucky" person while you
go around dreaming up ways to have more fun.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): "Our elders know you don't find the answer by
asking thousands of questions," says an essay on the website of the
environmentalist group The Last Tree (thelasttree.net). "The wise way is
to ask the right question in the beginning." I recommend this approach for
you in the coming weeks, Virgo. Given the sparkly mysteriousness that
now confronts you, I know you may be tempted to simultaneously try a
lot of different routes to greater clarity. But the more effective strategy
in the long run is to cultivate silence and stillness as you wait expectantly
for the intuition that will reveal the simple, direct path.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In a review of James Gleick's book *The
Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood,* *The Week* magazine reported
that "the world now produces more information in 48 hours than it did
throughout all human history to 2003." From that dizzying factoid, we
can infer that you are more inundated with data than were all of your
ancestors put together. And the surge will probably intensify in the
coming weeks. You are in a phase of your astrological cycle when you'll be
asked to absorb and integrate a voluminous amount of interesting stuff.
Don't be hard on yourself if you sometimes need to slow down to digest
what you've been taking in.
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HOMEWORK: What thing do you desperately want that would also benefit
other people? Testify by going to http://FreeWillAstrology.com and
clicking 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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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2011 Rob Brezsny
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