Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
March 4, 2015
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See a pretty version of this newsletter: http://bit.ly/1M4blWU
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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
Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/PronoiaBN
The e-book edition is available as an ePub directly from me at:
http://bit.ly/eePronoia
Below are excerpts from the book.
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GRATITUDE FEST
Would you like to make yourself smarter and more beautiful? Are you
interested in increasing your capacity for ecstasy and improving your
health? Consider the possibility of celebrating regular Gratitude Fests.
During these orgies of appreciation, you could confer praise and respect
on the creatures, both human and otherwise, that have played seminal
roles in inspiring you to become yourself. You would devote yourself to
invoking and expressing thanks.
Who teaches and helps you? Who sees you for who you really are? Who
nudges you in the direction of your fuller destiny and awakens you to
your signature truths? Who loves you brilliantly?
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EVIL IS BORING
Who are the perpetrators of the genocide of the imagination? I call them
the entertainment criminals.
They're the nihilistic creators and dramatis personae who spread the
propaganda that trouble and strife and disintegration are more worthy of
our attention than integrity and splendor and quantum leaps.
The entertainment criminals are the decadent fools who preach the
bizarre doctrine that witty gloom is the mark of a deep thinker. They are
the educated idiots who try to trick us into believing that optimism is
solely for naive fools with no aptitude for critical thinking.
The visionary philosopher Buckminster Fuller said, "When I am working on
a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only of how to solve the
problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it
is wrong."
To the entertainment criminals, Fuller's perspective is heretical. With the
know-it-all certainty of religious fanatics, they imply with every word and
image they produce that there is rarely such a thing as a beautiful
solution.
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I heard an interview with the German film actor Udo Kier. He specializes in
playing villains. "Evil has no limit," he sneered, blustering like a naughty
genius. "Good has a limit. It is simply not as interesting."
How many times have I heard that idiotic cliché? Most everyone
everywhere seems to agree with Udo Kier. And I'm in a tiny minority in my
belief that evil is boring. There seem to be few thinkers, communicators,
and creators who share my curiosity about exploring the frontiers of
righteous pleasure and amusing truth and boisterous integrity.
Some pretenders do make counterfeit attempts: Hollywood producers
who produce sentimental fantasies with artificially happy endings,
advertising executives who sell the pseudo-positivity of narcissistic
comfort, and New Age gurus who ignore the darkness with their one-
dimensional appeals to sweetness and light.
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The word "imagination" gets little respect. For many people, it connotes
"make-believe" and is primarily the domain of children and artists. But the
truth is that your imagination is the engine of your destiny. It's the single
most important tool you have in your daily campaign to be free. It's the
source of every act of liberation you will ever need to pull off.
That's why it's so disturbing to know that all over the planet, the
imagination is deeply wounded—paralyzed by the media's nonstop
onslaught of toxic psychic waste. How can you generate images that
energize you to create your highest good if your mind's eye is swarming
with dazzling yet vacuous and fear-inducing stories crafted by the most
monumental brainwashing juggernaut in the history of the world?
To get a sense of the growing devastation, I suggest you wander around
a grade school playground at recess. You'll hear kids' conversations
overflowing with the degrading narratives they've absorbed from their
favorite sources of information and stimulation.
I call this ongoing tragedy the genocide of the imagination. Because of it,
many people cannot access their greatest magical power. They have
forsaken the sanctity of their sacred temples, allowing them to be defiled
with soulless images and stories that are at odds with their deepest
desires. As a result they live incoherent lives corroded by chronic anxiety.
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If we hope to prevent the genocide of the imagination, we've got to
perpetrate massive, mirthful attacks of pronoia. But we have to do it
without acting like True Believers, because fanaticism is anathema to our
cause. Our strategy is to be blithe and flexible as we learn not just to
believe, but actually perceive the truth that life is a benevolent conspiracy
designed to keep mutating our immortal souls until they're so far beyond
perfection that perfection is irrelevant.
We will succeed. We will overthrow the doom and gloom fixation and
make the cause of zoom and boom irresistible. Our parties will be better
than theirs. Our jokes will be funnier, our jobs more enjoyable, our
lovemaking more revelatory. We'll dream up tricks to create an
environment in which it's more fun and interesting to talk about wise bliss
than clever cynicism.
We will build shrines devoted to righteous pleasure and amusing truth and
boisterous integrity in the ugliest places we know. We will unleash praise
and gratitude without regard for the taboos we shatter thereby. And we
will perform senseless acts of altruistic chutzpah everywhere we go.
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I've gathered all of the big-picture horoscopes I wrote for you, and
bundled them in one place. Go here to read a compendium of your long-
range, big-picture forecasts for 2015:
http://bit.ly/BigView2015
If you like, you can also review the long-range, big-picture horoscopes I
wrote for you in January 2014. You can see whether my forecasts back
then turned out to be accurate and helpful during the course of 2014.
They're here: http://bit.ly/BigLife2014
More? If you'd like to go even further back to see how my oracles jibed
with your actual destiny, here's a compendium of your forecasts for
2013:
http://bit.ly/BigLife2013
One more blast from the past: the long-range horoscopes I offered at the
beginning of 2012. They're here: http://bit.ly/BigPic2012
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Are you in quest of an Intimate Ally? A Soul Friend? A Wild Confidante?
Check out Matchmaker.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:
Bigger Than Science, Bigger Than Religion
We're closer to environmental disaster than ever before. We need a new
story for our relationship with the Earth, one that goes beyond science
and religion. Here's a start: The universe is not a random assemblage of
dead matter and empty space, but is alive, intelligent, and continually
evolving.
Not only is the world alive, it is alive in us. "We bear the universe in our
beings," said Thomas Berry, "as the universe bears us in its being." In
Berry's view, we are the eyes, the minds, and the hearts that the cosmos
is evolving so that it can come to know itself ever more perfectly through
us.
http://tinyurl.com/knqyqd9
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In praise of the brave people who do good acts that they risk being
demonized for. "Contemptible heroes" often suffer terrible isolation for
standing up for what's right.
http://tinyurl.com/mlr6l2j
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What Does It Take to Start a Worker Co-Op? A Practical Video Guide to
Democratizing Our Economy. A new film asks whether practicing
workplace democracy would be easier if our media gave us as many
visions of collaboration as they do of competition?
http://tinyurl.com/mcdmqda
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(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 March 5
Copyright 2015 by Rob Brezsny
http://FreeWillAstrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): When Arnold Schwarzenegger became
Governor of California in 2003, the state had the eighth largest economy
in the world, right behind Italy and just ahead of Brazil. Schwarzenegger
had never before held political office. When Cambodian doctor Haing Nor
performed in the film *The Killing Fields,* for which he ultimately won an
Oscar, he had no training as an actor. He was a novice. Will you try to
follow in their footsteps, Pisces? Is it possible you could take on a role for
which you have no preparation or seasoning? According to my divinations,
the answer is yes. But is it a good idea? That's a more complex issue.
Trust your gut.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): To depict what lay beyond the limits of the
known world, medieval mapmakers sometimes drew pictures of dragons
and sea serpents. Their images conveyed the sense that these territories
were uncharted and perhaps risky to explore. There were no actual
beasties out there, of course. I think it's possible you're facing a
comparable situation. The frontier realm you are wandering through may
seem to harbor real dragons, but I'm guessing they are all of the
imaginary variety. That's not to say you should entirely let down your
guard. Mix some craftiness in with your courage. Beware of your mind
playing tricks.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Whenever I close my eyes and seek psychic
visions of your near future, I see heroic Biblical scenes. Moses is parting
the Red Sea. Joseph is interpreting Pharaoh's dream. Jesus is feeding
5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish. What's the meaning
of my reveries? Well, this psychic stuff is tricky, and I hesitate to draw
definitive conclusions. But if I had to guess, I'd speculate that you are ripe
to provide a major blessing or perform an unprecedented service for
people you care about.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In a *New Yorker* cartoon, Tom Gauld outlines
"The Four Undramatic Plot Structures": 1. "The hero is confronted by an
antagonistic force and ignores it until it goes away." 2. "The protagonist
is accused of wrongdoing, but it's not a big thing and soon gets sorted
out." 3. "The heroine is faced with a problem but it's really difficult so she
gives up." 4. "A man wants something. Later, he's not so sure. By
suppertime he's forgotten all about it." In my astrological opinion, Gemini,
you should dynamically avoid all four of those fates. Now is a time for you
to take brave, forceful action as you create dramatic plot twists that
serve your big dreams.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): "To be happy is to be able to become aware
of oneself without fright," said heavyweight German philosopher Walter
Benjamin, a fellow Cancerian. I am happy to report that there's a good
chance you will soon be blessed with an extraordinary measure of this
worry-free self-awareness. And when you do -- when you are basking in an
expanded self-knowledge infused with self-love and self-appreciation --
some of your chronic fear will drop away, and you will have at your
disposal a very useful variety of happiness.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): "As you get older, the heart sheds its leaves like a
tree," said French novelist Gustave Flaubert. "You cannot hold out against
certain winds. Each day tears away a few more leaves; and then there are
the storms that break off several branches at one go. And while nature's
greenery grows back again in the spring, that of the heart never grows
back." Do you agree with Flaubert, Leo? I don't. I say that you can live
with such resilient innocence that your heart's leaves grow back after a
big wind, and become ever-more lush and hardy as you age. You can send
down such deep, strong roots and stretch your branches toward the sun
with such vigor that your heart always has access to the replenishment it
needs to flourish. The coming weeks will provide evidence that what I say
is true.
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MY OTHER HOROSCOPES
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 four-to-five-minute meditations on the
current state of your destiny and where you're headed.
They're available here:
http://RealAstrology.com
You can also access them by phone:
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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VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): "I will not wait to love as best as I can," says
writer Dave Eggers. "We thought we were young and that there would be
time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It
is no way to live, to wait to love." That's your keynote for the coming
weeks, Virgo. That's your wake-up call and the rose-scented note under
your pillow and the message scrawled in lipstick on your bathroom mirror.
If there is any part of you that believes love will be better or fuller or
more perfect in the future, tell that part of you to shut up and embrace
this tender command: Now is the time to love with all of your heart and all
of your soul and all of your mind.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I love the song "Shine On You Crazy Diamond,"
by Pink Floyd. Other favorites are Tool's "Third Eye" and Yo La Tengo's
"Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind." But all of these tunes have a
similar problem. They're more than ten minutes long. Even before my
attention span got shrunk by the Internet, listening to them tested my
patience. Now I have to forcefully induce a state of preternatural
relaxation if I want to hear them all the way through. In the coming days,
Libra, don't be like a too-much-of-a-good-thing song. Be willing to edit
yourself. Observe concise boundaries. Get to the point quickly. (You'll be
rewarded for it.)
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Sneaking around isn't necessary, Scorpio.
There's no useful power to be gained by hiding information or pursuing
secret agendas. This is not a time when it's essential for you to be a
master of manipulation who's ten steps ahead of everyone else. For now,
you are likely to achieve maximum success and enjoy your life the most if
you are curious, excitable, and transparent. I invite you to embody the
mindset of a creative, precocious child who has a loving mommy and
daddy.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing
Norgay became the first humans to reach the summit of Mount Everest. It
took them seven weeks to climb the 29,029-foot peak. In 1960, Jacques
Piccard and Don Walsh got into a bathyscaphe and sailed to the lowest
point on the planet, the Mariana Trench at the bottom of the Pacific
Ocean. It took them four hours and 47 minutes to go down 36,070 feet.
Based on my analysis of your astrological omens, I think the operative
metaphor for you in the coming weeks should be the deep descent, not
the steep ascent. It's time to explore and hang out in the depths rather
than the heights.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The African country of Ivory Coast has two
different capital cities. Yamoussoukro is the official capital, while Abidjan
is the actual capital, where the main governmental action takes place. I
suspect there's a comparable split in your personal realm, Capricorn: a
case of mixed dominance. Maybe that's a good thing; maybe it allows for
a balance of power between competing interests. Or perhaps it's a bit
confusing, causing a split in your attention that hampers you from
expressing a unified purpose. Now would be a favorable time to think
about how well the division is working for you, and to tinker with it if
necessary.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I've gone on three book tours and done my
spoken-word show in scores of bookstores. But one of my favorite author
events took place at the Avenue C Laundromat in New York City's East
Village. There I performed with two other writers as part of the "Dirty
Laundry: Loads of Prose" reading series. It was a boisterous event. All of
us authors were extra loose and goofy, and the audience offered a lot of
funny, good-nature heckling. The unusual location freed everyone up to
have maximum amusement. I see the coming weeks as a time when you,
too, might thrive by doing what you do best in seemingly out-of-context
situations. If you're not outright invited to do so, I suggest you invite
yourself.
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Homework: Devise a plan not to get back to where you once belonged,
but rather to where you must some day belong. Testify at
FreeWillAstrology.com.
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2015 Rob Brezsny
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