Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter http://ezezine.com
Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
August 21, 2013
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See a pretty version of this newsletter: http://bit.ly/19ERNc1
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My book
*PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA*
is available at Amazon: http://bit.ly/Pronoia
or Powells: http://bit.ly/PronoiaPowells
Below is an excerpt. It's from the piece called "Subterranean Pronoia
Therapy."
1. "We are attracted to people who express the qualities we deny or
repress in ourselves," says creativity expert Shakti Gawain. Using this idea
as your hypothesis, take an inventory of the people you're most drawn
to. Ask yourself whether they have talents and dreams that you wish
could come alive in you. If you find this to be the case, consider the
possibility that it's time to claim those talents or dreams as your own.
2. All of us are eminently fallible nobodies. We're crammed with delusions
and base emotions. We give ourselves more slack than we give anyone
else, and we're brilliant at justifying our irrational biases with seemingly
logical explanations. Yet it's equally true that every one of us is a
magnificently enigmatic creation unlike any other in the history of the
world. We're stars with vast potential, gods and goddesses in the making.
Dramatize this paradox. Tomorrow, buy and wear ugly, threadbare clothes
from the same thrift store where you got your hand puppet. Eat the
cheapest junk food possible and do the most menial tasks you can find.
The next day, attire yourself in your best clothes, wear a crown or
diadem, and treat yourself to an expensive gourmet meal. Enjoy a
massage, a pedicure, and other luxuries that require people to wait on
you.
On the third day, switch back and forth between the previous two days'
modes every couple of hours. As you do, cultivate a passionate
indifference to the question of whether you are ultimately an unimportant
nobody or a captivating hero.
3. "Don't eat any food that's incapable of rotting," says Michael Pollan in
his book *In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.* In other words,
highly processed foods with a long shelf life don't contribute to your
optimum vitality.
I'd like to expand this rule to make it an all-purpose guideline for life. Try
out this hypothesis: If you're involved with any person or situation that
never decays, or if there is some part of you that never decays, that's
highly suspicious and may be a problem. Like growth, rot is a natural
phenomenon. Indeed, every advancement requires or brings the
disintegration of whatever it replaces. You can't grow if you don't rot.
The "perfection" of stasis can be hazardous to your health.
What's ripe to rot in your world?
4. Some of my readers complain when I draw inspiration from a public
figure they consider a bad person. Once I cited philosopher Bertrand
Russell, and a woman from Austin went ballistic: "Russell was a terrible
father! How dare you give him any credence?" Another time I invoked the
wisdom of ex-U.S. president Teddy Roosevelt. "What possessed you to
quote such a militaristic bully?" wrote an outraged emailer. Here's how I
respond to these grumbles: If I refused to learn from people unless I
agreed with everything they had ever said and done, I would never learn
from anyone.
What about you? Have you set up your life so that everyone is either on
or off your good list? If so, try something new: Cultivate a capacity to
derive help and insight from people who aren't perfect.
Here are examples of some of the other people from whom I have drawn
important teachings and inspiration despite their sins:
Dr. Seuss had an affair with another woman while his wife was suffering
from cancer, and his wife subsequently committed suicide.
Einstein cheated on his wife and treated her horrendously.
William Blake lived in absolute filth.
Edgar Allan Poe married his 13-year-old cousin when he was 26.
One biographer of Carl Jung said Jung was a racist, an anti-Semite, and a
misogynist.
Martin Luther King Jr. cheated on his wife.
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Here's a talisman to attract beauty and truth and love into your life:
http://bit.ly/16FfDPb
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Are you in quest of an Intimate Ally? A Soul Friend? A Wild Confidante?
Check out Match.com via Free Will Astrology's link:
http://bit.ly/SoulMatch
Look for a Co-Pilot, Co-Conspirator, or Collaborator . . . an Agent to
represent you or a Disciple to worship you . . . a Secret Sharer who'll
listen better than anyone or an Amazing Accomplice with whom you can
practice the Art of Liberation.
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
What if gay tolerance spreads to small-town America? Stephen Colbert
shows us.
http://tinyurl.com/mlvrumf
Models of Sustainability: Sweden Runs Out of Garbage:
http://tinyurl.com/cc5ph3j
This site lists major scientific breakthroughs day by day. Amazing pronoia
here!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_in_science
(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 August 22
Copyright 2013 by Rob Brezsny
http://FreeWillAstrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Novelist James Joyce once articulated an
extreme wish that other writers have probably felt but never actually said.
"The demand that I make of my reader," said Joyce, "is that he should
devote his whole life to reading my works." Was he being mischievous?
Maybe. But he never apologized or issued a retraction. Your assignment,
Virgo, is to conjure up your own version of that wild desire: a clear
statement of exactly what you really, really want in all of its extravagant
glory. I think it'll be healthy for you to identify this pure and naked
longing. (P.S. I'm not implying that you should immediately try to get it
fulfilled, though. For now, the important thing is knowing what it is.)
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Now and then a British Libra named Lloyd Scott
dresses up in funny costumes while competing in long-distance races. He
does it to raise money for charity. In the 2011 London Marathon, he wore
a nine-foot snail outfit for the duration of the course. It took him 27 days
to finish. I suggest you draw inspiration from his heroic effort. From a
cosmic perspective, it would make sense for you to take your time as you
engage in amusing activities that benefit your fellow humans.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): What will you do now that you have acquired
more clout and visibility? Will you mostly just pump up your self-love and
bask in the increased attention? There's nothing wrong with that, of
course. But if those are the only ways you cash in on your added power,
the power won't last. I suggest you take advantage of your enhanced
influence by engaging in radical acts of magnanimity. Perform good deeds
and spread big ideas. The more blessings you bestow on your fellow
humans, the more enduring your new perks will be.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): You've been pretty wild and uncontained
lately, and that's OK. I've loved seeing how much permission you've given
yourself to ramble free, experiment with the improbable, and risk being a
fool. I suspect that history will judge a majority of your recent
explorations as tonic. But now, Sagittarius, the tenor of the time is
shifting. To continue being in alignment with your highest good, I believe
you will have to rein in your wanderlust and start attending to the care
and cultivation of your power spot. Can you find a way to enjoy taking on
more responsibility?
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): "The person who can't visualize a horse
galloping on a tomato is an idiot," said the founder of Surrealism, writer
André Breton. I wouldn't go so far as to call such an imagination-deprived
soul an "idiot," but I do agree with the gist of his declaration. One of the
essential facets of intelligence is the ability to conjure up vivid and
creative images in one's mind. When daily life has grown a bit staid or
stuck or overly serious, this skill becomes even more crucial. Now is one
of those times for you, Capricorn. If you have any trouble visualizing a
horse galloping on a tomato, take measures to boost the fertility of your
imagination.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): "I want to be with those who know the
secret things, or else alone," wrote the eccentric ecstatic poet Rainer
Maria Rilke. That wouldn't be a good rule for you Aquarians to live by all
the time. To thrive, you need a variety of cohorts and allies, including
those who know and care little about secret things. But I suspect that for
the next few weeks, an affinity for those who know secret things might
suit you well. More than that, they may be exactly the accomplices who
will help you attend to your number one assignment: exploratory holy
work in the depths.
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LISTEN TO AN EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE
Factual information and reasonable thinking alone are not sufficient to
guide you through life's labyrinthine tests. You need and deserve regular
deliveries of uncanny revelation.
One of your inalienable rights as a human being should therefore be to
receive mysteriously useful omens on a regular basis. In this spirit, I offer
you the free weekly horoscopes you read here.
If you ever want more, and think it's worth paying for, try my EXPANDED
AUDIO HOROSCOPES. They're available here: http://RealAstrology.com
Register and/or sign in at http://RealAstrology.com.
You can also access them by phone:
1-877-873-4888
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PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): To launch your horoscope, I'll steal a line from
a Thomas Pynchon novel: *A revelation trembles just beyond the
threshold of your understanding.* To continue your oracle, I'll borrow a
message I heard in my dream last night: *A breakthrough shivers just
beyond the edge of your courage.* Next, I'll use words I think I heard
while eavesdropping on a conversation at Whole Foods: *If you want to
cook up the ultimate love feast, you're still missing one ingredient.* And
to finish this oracle, Pisces, I'll say that if you want to precipitate the
trembling revelation, activate the shivering breakthrough, and acquire the
missing ingredient, imitate what I've done in creating this horoscope.
Assume the whole world is offering you useful clues, and listen closely.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): An Indian student named Sankalp Sinha has
invented the "Good Morning Sing N Shock." It's an alarm clock that plays
you a song and gives you a small electrical jolt when you hit the snooze
button. The voltage applied is far less intense than, say, a taser, and is
designed to energize you rather than disable you. I encourage you to seek
out wake-up calls like the kind this device administers, Aries: fairly gentle,
yet sufficiently dramatic to get your attention. The alternative would be
to wait around for blind fate to provide the wake-up calls. They might be
a bit more strenuous.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): If you google the statement "I can change
overnight," most of the results that come up are negative, like "It's not
something I can change overnight" or "I don't think I can change
overnight." But there's one google link to "I can change overnight." It's a
declaration made by Taurus painter Willem de Kooning. He was referring
to how unattached he was to defining his work and how easy it was for
him to mutate his artistic style. I wouldn't normally advise you Tauruses
to use "I can change overnight" as your battle cry. But for the
foreseeable future you do have the power to make some rather rapid and
thorough transformations.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): "The artist is by necessity a collector," said
graphic designer Paul Rand. "He accumulates things with the same ardor
and curiosity with which a boy stuffs his pockets. He borrows from the
sea and from the scrap heap; he takes snapshots, makes mental notes,
and records impressions on tablecloths and newspapers. He has a taste
for children's wall scrawling as appreciative as that for prehistoric cave
painting." Whether or not you're an artist, Gemini, this would be an
excellent approach for you in the coming days. You're in a phase when
you can thrive by being a gatherer of everything that attracts and
fascinates you. You don't need to know yet why you're assembling all
these clues. That will be revealed in good time.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Can you remember the last time you bumped
up against a limitation caused by your lack of knowledge? What did it feel
like? I expect that sometime soon you will have that experience again.
You may shiver with worry as you contemplate the potential
consequences of your continued ignorance. But you may also feel the
thrill of hungry curiosity rising up in you. If all goes well, the fear and
curiosity will motivate you to get further educated. You will set to work
on a practical plan to make it happen.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): "My story isn't sweet and harmonious like
invented stories," wrote novelist Herman Hesse. "It tastes of folly and
bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no
longer want to lie to themselves." As interesting as Hesse's declaration is,
let's not take it as gospel. Let's instead envision the possibility that when
people reduce the number of lies they tell themselves, their lives may
become sweeter and more harmonious as a result. I propose that exact
scenario for you right now, Leo. There might be a rough adjustment
period as you cut back on your self-deceptions, but eventually your folly
and bewilderment will diminish as the sweet harmony grows.
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Homework: Do you have a liability that could be turned into an asset with
a little (or a lot of) work? Testify at Freewillastrology.com.
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2013 Rob Brezsny
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