Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
September 24, 2014
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See a pretty version of this newsletter: http://bit.ly/1C7MXyL
Having any trouble seeing or receiving this newsletter? Tell me about it at
Truthrooster@gmail.com.
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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.
To hear it as a spoken-word piece, go here: http://bit.ly/yBmWBg
GLORY IN THE HIGHEST
Thousands of things go right for you every day, beginning the moment
you wake up. Through some magic you don't fully understand, you're still
breathing and your heart is beating, even though you've been
unconscious for many hours. The air is a mix of gases that's just right for
your body's needs, as it was before you fell asleep.
You can see! Light of many colors floods into your eyes, registered by
nerves that took God or evolution or some process millions of years to
perfect.
The interesting gift of these vivid hues is furthermore made possible by
an unimaginably immense globe of fire, the sun, which continually
detonates nuclear explosions in order to convert its own body into light
and heat and energy for your personal use.
Your hands work wonderfully well. Your heart circulates your blood all the
way out to replenish the energy of the muscles and nerves in your fingers
and palms and wrists. And after your blood has delivered its blessings, it
finds its way back to your heart to be refreshed. This wondrous mystery
recurs over and over again without stopping every minute of your life.
You can smell intoxicating aromas. You can hear provocative and soothing
sounds. You can taste a thousand different tastes. How is any of this
possible? You can think thoughts any time you want -- big, wide, colorful
thoughts or tiny dark burrowing thoughts. You can revel and wallow in
great oceans of emotion. What colossal secret intelligence or improbable
series of fabulous accidents conspired to bestow these superpowers upon
you?
TO READ AND HEAR THE REST OF THIS PIECE, go here:
http://bit.ly/yBmWBg
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Thoughts on true skepticism versus pseudo-skepticism:
True skepticism does not carry an undertone of anger, ridicule, and
derision. It is even-tempered, clear-minded, and full of equanimity,
satisfied with showing what's illogical or incorrect in the argument it
critiques.
A true skeptic does not use emotionally charged language in an effort to
portray the person whose argument he's critiquing as a stupid fool.
A true skeptic has no attachment to proving that she is smarter than and
superior to the person whose argument she is critiquing, but rather is
content to have her argument win the day purely on the strength of its
elegant reasoning.
A true skeptic is willing to consider the possibility that there is some
merit, however small, in the argument of the person he's critiquing. He is
not afraid that acknowledging this merit will undermine the absolute truth
he purports to possess.
A true skeptic is not consumed with the certainty that she is always right.
In other words, she resists the temptation to become a fundamentalist.
A true skeptic has a respect for the fact that many questions don't have
final answers. She recognizes how much about the world is mysterious.
A true skeptic is skeptical of his own skepticism.
A true skeptic is as likely to be a woman as a man. (97 percent of the
pseudo-skeptics are men.)
A true skeptic shows humility, in the spirit that Carl Sagan demonstrated
when he said this: "An atheist is someone who is certain that God does
not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of
God. I know of no such compelling evidence.
"Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to
ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the
universe than we do now to be sure that no God exists.
"To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the
nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a
subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little
confidence indeed.
"A wide range of intermediate positions seems admissable.
"Considering the enormous emotional energies with which the subject is
invested, a questing, courageous, and open mind is, I think, the essential
tool for narrowing the range of our collective ignorance on the subject of
the existence of God."
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Homework: Write essays on one or more of these topics:
1. "How I Used My Nightmares to Become Smart and Strong"
2. "How I Exploited My Problems to Become a Spiritual Freedom Fighter"
3. "How I Fed and Fed and Fed My Monsters Until They Ate Themselves to
Death"
4. "How I Turned Envy, Frustration, and Smoldering Anger into Generosity,
Compassion, and Fiery Success"
5. "Why Perfection Sux"
-from my book "The Televisionary Oracle,"http://bit.ly/Televisionary
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Some people put their faith in religion or science or political ideologies.
English novelist J. G. Ballard placed his faith elsewhere: in the imagination.
"I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world," he wrote,
"to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend
death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist
the confidences of madmen."
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
"In a stunning example of how a political movement can actually change
lives, the Strike Debt project has raised over $100 thousand to purchase
and abolish student loans for a group of recent grads with a punishing
amount of debt. They hope to turn this into a national movement."
http://tinyurl.com/o6ktao9
Top 10 Solutions to Cut Poverty and Grow the Middle Class
http://tinyurl.com/phvhy5q
Rockefellers, Heirs to an Oil Fortune, Divest Charity From Fossil Fuels
http://tinyurl.com/lvohqw3
A compendium of pronoiac news.
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 September 25
Copyright 2014 by Rob Brezsny
http://FreeWillAstrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): "I am a seed about to break," wrote Sylvia
Plath in her poem "Three Women." That's how I see you right now, Libra.
You are teeming with the buoyant energy that throbs when a seed is
ready to sprout. You have been biding your time, gathering the
nourishment you need, waiting for the right circumstances to burst open
with your new flavor. And now that nervous, hopeful, ecstatic moment is
about to arrive. Be brave!
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The English verb "cicurate" is defined as "to
tame or domesticate" or "to make mild or innocuous." But it once had an
additional sense: "to reclaim from wildness." It was derived from the Latin
word *cicurare,* which meant "to bring back from madness, to draw out
of the wilderness." For your purposes, Scorpio, we will make cicurate your
theme, but concentrate on these definitions: "to reclaim from wildness, to
bring back from madness, to draw out of the wilderness." In the coming
weeks, you will be exploring rough, luxuriant areas of unknown territory.
You will be wrangling with primitive, sometimes turbulent energy. I urge
you to extract the raw vitality you find there, and harness it to serve your
daily rhythm and your long-term goals.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): "You can exert no influence if you are
not susceptible to influence," said psychologist Carl Jung. Extrapolating
from that idea, we can hypothesize that the more willing and able you are
to be influenced, the greater your influence might be. Let's make this
your key theme in the coming weeks. It will be an excellent time to
increase your clout, wield more authority, and claim more of a say in the
creation of your shared environments. For best results, you should open
your mind, be very receptive, and listen well.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Congratulations, Capricorn. Your current
dilemmas are more useful and interesting than any that you have had for
a long time. If you can even partially solve them, the changes you set in
motion will improve your entire life, not just the circumstances they
immediately affect. Of the several dividends you may reap, one of my
favorites is this: You could liberate yourself from a messed-up kind of
beauty and become available for a more soothing and delightful kind.
Here's another potential benefit: You may transform yourself in ways that
will help you attract more useful and interesting dilemmas in the future.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Alan Moore is the British author who wrote
the graphic novels *Watchmen* and *V for Vendetta.* He is now nearing
completion of *Jerusalem,* a novel he has been working on for six years.
It will be more than a million words long, almost double the size of
Tolstoy's *War and Peace,* and 200,000 words bigger than the Bible.
"Any editor worth their salt would tell me to cut two-thirds of this book,"
Moore told the *New Statesman,* "but that's not going to happen."
Referring to the author of *Moby Dick,* Moore adds, "I doubt that Herman
Melville had an editor. If he had, that editor would have told him to get rid
of all that boring stuff about whaling: 'Cut to the chase, Herman.'" Let's
make Moore and Melville your role models in the coming week, Aquarius.
You have permission to sprawl, ramble, and expand. Do NOT cut to the
chase.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): For a long time, an Illinois writer named
ArLynn Leiber Presser didn't go out much. She had 325 friends on
Facebook and was content to get her social needs met in the virtual
realm. But then she embarked on a year-long project in which she sought
face-to-face meetings with all of her online buddies. The experiment
yielded sometimes complicated but mostly interesting results. It took her
to 51 cities around the world. I suggest we make her your inspirational
role model for the coming weeks, Pisces. In at least one way, it's time for
you to move out of your imagination and into the real world. You're
primed to turn fantasies into actions, dreams into practical pursuits.
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FEELING JOY STIMULATES YOUR COMPASSION?
Assume that your drive to experience pleasure isn't a barrier to your
spiritual growth, but is in fact essential to it. Proceed on the hypothesis
that cultivating joy can make you a more ethical and compassionate
person. Imagine that feeling good has something important to teach you
every day.
For inspiration in practicing this approach, tune in to your Expanded Audio
Horoscopes. They're four-to-five-minute meditations on the current state
of your destiny. The cost is $6 per reading, with a discount for multiple
purchases.
Go here to register and/or sign in: http://RealAstrology.com/
They're available on your tablets and smart phones as well as your
computers.
You can also listen over the phone by calling
1-877-873-4888
"I always feel like I know myself better after listening to your audio
'scopes."
-June R., Austin, TX
"Your audio horoscopes calm me down when I'm too manic and pep me up
when I'm down."
-Arthur T., Cleveland, OH
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ARIES (March 21-April 19): It's no secret. The wealthy one percent of the
population has been getting progressively wealthier. Meanwhile, the poor
are becoming steadily poorer. I'm worried there is a metaphorically similar
trend in your life. Am I right? If so, please do all you can to reverse it.
Borrow energy from the rich and abundant parts of your life so as to lift
up the neglected and underendowed parts. Here's one example of how
you could proceed: For a while, be less concerned with people who think
you're a star, and give more attention to those who accept and love your
shadow side.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): "I choose a lazy person to do a hard job,"
says Bill Gates, the world's second-richest man, "because a lazy person
will find an easy way to do it." That's good counsel for you right now,
Taurus. You'd be wise to get in touch with your inner lazy bum. Let the
slacker within you uncover the least stressful way to accomplish your
difficult task. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, there is
no need for you to suffer and strain as you deal with your dilemma.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): If you don't identify and express your
conscious desires, your unconscious desires will dominate your life. I will
say that again in different language, because it's crucial you understand
the principle. You've got to be very clear about what you really want, and
install a shining vision of what you really want at the core of your
everyday life. If you don't do that, you will end up being controlled by
your habits and old programming. So be imperious, Gemini. Define your
dearest, strongest longing, and be ruthlessly devoted to it.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) was an
influential French photographer, a pioneer of photojournalism who helped
transform photography into an art form. In 1986 he was invited to
Palermo, Sicily to accept a prize for his work. The hotel he stayed in
seemed oddly familiar to him, although he didn't understand why. It was
only later he discovered that the hotel had been the place at which his
mother and father stayed on their honeymoon. It was where he was
conceived. I foresee a comparable development on the horizon for you,
Cancerian: a return to origins, perhaps inadvertent; an evocative
encounter with your roots; a reunification with an influence that helped
make you who you are today.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): With expert execution, musician Ben Lee can play
15 notes per second on his violin. Superstar eater Pete Czerwinski needs
just 34 seconds to devour a 12-inch pizza. When Jerry Miculek is holding
his rifle, he can get off eight crack shots at four targets in a little more
than one second. While upside-down, Aichi Ono is capable of doing 135
perfect head spins in a minute. I don't expect you to be quite so lightning
fast and utterly flawless as these people in the coming weeks, Leo, but I
do think you will be unusually quick and skillful. For the foreseeable future,
speed and efficiency are your specialties.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): As the makeup artist for the film *Dallas
Buyers Club,* Robin Mathews had a daunting task. During the 23 days of
shooting, she had to constantly transform lead actors Matthew
McConaughey and Jared Leto so that they appeared either deathly ill or
relatively healthy. Sometimes she had to switch them back and forth five
times a day. She was so skillful in accomplishing this feat that she won
the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. Her budget? A
meager $250. The film was a shoestring indie production. I'm naming her
your inspirational role model for the next few weeks, Virgo. I believe that
you, too, can create magic without a wealth of resources.
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Homework: What's your favorite excuse? Try not to say it or think it
during the coming week. Report results to Truthrooster@gmail.com.
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2014 Rob Brezsny
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