Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
February 14, 2018
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See a pretty version of this newsletter: http://bit.ly/YourBeautifulLife
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You don't have to be anything you don't want to be.
You don't have to live up to anyone's expectations.
There's no need to strive for a kind of perfection that's not very
interesting to you.
You don't have to believe in ideas that make you sad or tormented,
and you don't have to feel emotions that others try to manipulate you
into feeling.
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RADICAL LISTENING
Alert, relaxed listening is the radical act at the heart of our pronoiac
practice.
Curiosity is our primal state of awareness.
Wise innocence is a trick we aspire to master.
Open-hearted skepticism is the light in our eyes.
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MANY DESIRES VERSUS A FEW DESIRES
I don't agree with Jenny Holzer, who wrote "If you have many desires,
your life will be interesting." I find that as I have developed fewer but
stronger desires, my life has become more interesting. What do you
think?
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GOD SHMOD
There is no God. God is dead. God is a drug for people who aren't very
smart. God is an illusion sold to dupes by money-hungry religions. God
is a right-wing conspiracy. God is an infantile fantasy favored by
superstitious cowards who can't face life's existential meaninglessness.
JUST KIDDING! The truth is, anyone who says he knows what God is
or isn't, doesn't really know.
Now read Adolfo Quezada's prayer, then confess what you don't know
about God. "God of the Wild, you are different from what I expected. I
cannot predict you. You are too free to be captured for the sake of my
understanding. I can't find you in the sentimentalism of religion. You
are everywhere I least expect to find you. You are not the force that
saves me from the pain of living; you are the force that brings me life
even in the midst of pain."
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SACRED PRACTICE
Tell jokes to clowns.
Cook gourmet meals for chefs.
Show babies how to crawl.
Sing to the birds.
Play a joke on your fear.
Honor your anger.
Capitalize on your guilt.
Kill your own death.
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The preceding five blips are excerpts from my book
*PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA*
It's available at Amazon: http://bit.ly/Pronoia
or Powells: http://bit.ly/PronoiaPowells
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DAILY TEXT MESSAGE HOROSCOPES
Some people don't know that I write daily horoscopes, available as
text messages sent to your phone. They're shorter than the weekly
'scopes, but on the other hand they're more frequent -- every day of
the week.
My weekly horoscopes are free, but the dailies cost about 67 cents a
day if you sign up for a subscription. If you think you might enjoy
getting regular bursts of inspiration from me to illuminate your
adventures, check them out.
Go to http://RealAstrology.com. Register or log in. On the new page,
click on "Subscribe / Renew" under "Daily Text Message Horoscopes"
in the right-hand column.
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CAN YOUR RELATIONSHIP HEAL THE WORLD?
Andrew Harvey says: The crisis we are facing is a crisis in which the
sacred powers of love in the human soul are being diverted by
distraction, by greed, by ignorance, by the pursuit of power, so that
they never irrigate the world and transform it.
There are seven requirements necessary for a vision of evolutionary
love to emerge into the world.
1. Both beings need to be plunged individually into a deep and
passionate devotion of the Beloved, by whatever name they know the
Beloved, because without both beings centering their life in God, the
relationship will never be able to escape the private circle.
2. Both beings must develop a mastery of solitude.
3. There is an equality of power, and that equality is born out of a
profound experience of the sacredness and dignity of the other
person's soul.
4. If you are going to have a beloved-beloved relationship, you have to
center your whole being and work and evolution in God. You must also
bring the sacred practice of prayer and meditation into the very core of
your life, so that the whole relationship can be enfolded in a mutually
shared sacred enterprise.
5. Both lovers completely abandon any Hollywood sentimentality about
what relationships actually are. Each person is the safe-guarder of the
other's shadow—not the judge of the other's shadow, not the denier of
the other's shadow, but someone who recognizes where the other has
been wounded, and safeguards and protects them with unconditional
compassion without allowing themselves to be mauled or manipulated
by the other.
6. If you are going to enter into the evolutionary process, you have to
accept that it never ends, never stops unfolding.
7. You must make the commitment for your relationship not to be just
a cultivation of an oasis of private pleasure. You must engage
consciously in this relationship to serve the planet, to recognize that it
is a relationship not only grounded in God, not only infused by sacred
practice, but it is from the very beginning dedicated to making both
people more powerful, more reflective, more passionately engaged
with the only serious truth of our time: The world is dying, and we
need a major revolution of the heart to empower everyone to do the
work of reconstruction and re-creation that is desperately needed.
Read the entre essay: https://tinyurl.com/y7qqw7gl
An Excerpt From *Evolutionary Love Relationships: Passion,
Authenticity, and Activism*
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Ten Best Solutions Stories You Might Have Missed. Full details:
https://tinyurl.com/y8ua48pz
1. This Small Town Refused to Settle for Walmart When Its Last Local
Grocery Store Closed. After 10 years without an independent grocery
store, the residents of Iola, Kansas, found a way to bring one back.
2. How Neighbors Turned Unused Buildings Into a Thriving Community
Hub. As rents rise and independent businesses in Minneapolis lose
their leases to large national chains, a first-of-its-kind co-op found a
solution.
3. Los Angeles Preempts Trump's Deportation Plans By Finally
Decriminalizing Street Vending. After years of work, advocates for
immigrant rights rejoiced at the permit process, which will help keep
50,000 street vendors on the right side of the law.
4. An Outside-the-Doctor's-Office Approach to Health Care. Research is
showing that health care can be an engine for community change.
5. In a Rust Belt Town Where Tuition Is Covered, Economy Begins to
Revive. After Kalamazoo, Michigan, offered college tuition for nearly all
high school graduates, dropout rates declined and the city's population
began to rebound.
6. How the Neighborhood That Inspired "The Wire" Is Pulling Its
Residents Out of Poverty. When large institutions like universities and
hospitals agree to hire and spend locally, they can transform
neighborhoods hardest hit by poverty and unemployment.
7. How Chicago Became the First City to Make Reparations to Victims
of Police Violence. The ordinance provides a meaningful model for
creating reparations at the local level.
8. How an Ancient Singing Tradition Helps People Cope With Trauma in
the Modern World. In Finland, lament singing is experiencing a revival,
one sad song at a time.
9. Blackfeet Researcher Leads Her Tribe Back to Traditional Foods.
Forced assimilation destroyed most nations' diets, but now Native
youth are learning to integrate local foods back into their daily lives.
10. This Town Adopted Trauma-Informed Care—And Saw a Decrease
in Crime and Suspension Rates.
(Note: I endorse these pronoia resources because I like them. They
aren't advertisements, and I get no kickbacks.)
Please tell me your own nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Truthrooster@gmail.com.
Read old but still useful archives of Pronoia Resources:
https://pronoiaresources.com
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning February 15
Copyright 2018 by Rob Brezsny
http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The posh magazine *Tatler* came up
with a list of fashionable new names for parents who want to ensure
their babies get a swanky start in life. Since you Aquarians are in a
phase when you can generate good fortune by rebranding yourself or
remaking your image, I figure you might be interested in using one of
these monikers as a nickname or alias. At the very least, hearing them
could whet your imagination to come up with your own ideas. Here are
*Tatler*'s chic avant-garde names for girls: Czar-Czar; Debonaire;
Estonia; Figgy; Gethsemane; Power; Queenie. Here are some boys'
names: Barclay; Euripides; Gustav; Innsbruck; Ra; Uxorious; Wigbert;
Zebedee.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Now that you have finally paid off one of
your debts to the past, you can start window-shopping for the future's
best offers. The coming days will be a transition time as you vacate
the power spot you've outgrown and ramble out to reconnoiter
potential new power spots. So bid your crisp farewells to waning
traditions, lost causes, ghostly temptations, and the deadweight of
people's expectations. Then start preparing a vigorous first impression
to present to promising allies out there in the frontier.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): At 12,388 feet, Mount Fuji is Japan's
highest peak. If you're in good shape, you can reach the top in seven
hours. The return trip can be done in half the time -- if you're
cautious. The loose rocks on the steep trail are more likely to knock
you off your feet on the way down than on the way up. I suspect this
is an apt metaphor for you in the coming weeks, Aries. Your necessary
descent may be deceptively challenging. So make haste slowly! Your
power animals are the rabbit and the snail.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made a
few short jaunts through the air in a flying machine they called the
Flyer. It was a germinal step in a process that ultimately led to your
ability to travel 600 miles per hour while sitting in a chair 30,000 feet
above the earth. Less than 66 years after the Wright Brothers'
breakthrough, American astronauts landed a space capsule on the
moon. They had with them a patch of fabric from the left wing of the
Flyer. I expect that during the coming weeks, you will be climaxing a
long-running process that deserves a comparable ritual. Revisit the
early stages of the work that enabled you to be where you are now.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In 2006, five percent of the world's
astronomers gathered at an international conference and voted to
demote Pluto from a planet to a "dwarf planet." Much of the world
agreed to honor their declaration. Since then, though, there has arisen
a campaign by equally authoritative astronomers to restore Pluto to
full planet status. The crux of the issue is this: How shall we define the
nature of a planet? But for the people of New Mexico, the question has
been resolved. State legislators there formally voted to regard Pluto as
a planet. They didn't accept the demotion. I encourage you to be
inspired by their example, Gemini. Whenever there are good
arguments from opposing sides about important matters, trust your
gut feelings. Stand up for your preferred version of the story.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Ray Bradbury's dystopian bestseller
*Fahrenheit 451* was among the most successful of the 27 novels he
wrote. It won numerous awards and has been adopted into films,
plays, and graphic novels. Bradbury wrote the original version of the
story in nine days, using a typewriter he rented for 20 cents per hour.
When his publisher urged him to double the manuscript's length, he
spent another nine days doing so. According to my reading of the
planetary configurations, you Cancerians now have a similar potential
to be surprisingly efficient and economical as you work on an
interesting creation or breakthrough -- especially if you mix a lot of
play and delight into your labors.
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LOVE YOUR LIFE!
How's your fight for freedom going? Are you making progress in
liberating yourself from your unconscious obsessions, bad habits, and
conditioned responses? Are you turning out to be the hero of your own
life?
For assistance and inspiration, tune in to my EXPANDED AUDIO
HOROSCOPES.
These forecasts are different in tone and format from the written
horoscopes you read here in the newsletter. They're longer and more
leisurely in tone. They tend to bring out more of the patient counselor
in me, and have a bit less of the poet.
To listen to your Expanded Audio Horoscope online, go to
http://RealAstrology.com.
Register and/or log in through the main page.
You can also listen over the phone by calling 1-877-873-4888.
The cost is $6 per sign on the Web (discounts available for bulk
purchases), or $1.99 per minute by phone. Each forecast is 4-5
minutes long.
The Expanded Audio Horoscopes work on most smart phones and
tablets.
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"I don't much believe in astrology. But that doesn't seem to get in the
way of me deriving a whole lot of benefits from your expanded audio
horoscopes."
- A. Arrosto, Indianapolis
"You have an amazing aptitude for cutting through the lies I tell
myself. Thanks for the gentle shocks."
- T. Preneris, Toronto
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LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Poet Louise Glück has characterized herself as
"afflicted with longing yet incapable of forming durable attachments."
If there is anything in you that even partially fits that description, I
have good news: In the coming weeks, you're likely to feel blessed by
longing rather than afflicted by it. The foreseeable future will also be
prime time for you to increase your motivation and capacity to form
durable attachments. Take full advantage of this fertile grace period!
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In 2004, a man named Jerry Lynn tied a
battery-operated alarm clock to a string and dangled it down a vent in
his house. He was hoping that when the alarm sounded, he would get
a sense of the best place to drill a hole in his wall to run a wire for his
TV. But the knot he'd made wasn't perfect, and the clock slipped off
and plunged into an inaccessible spot behind the wall. Then, every
night for 13 years, the alarm rang for a minute. The battery was
unusually strong! A few months ago, Lynn decided to end the mild but
constant irritation. Calling on the help of duct specialists, he retrieved
the persistent clock. With this story as your inspiration, and in
accordance with astrological omens, I urge you Virgos to finally put an
end to your equivalent of the maddening alarm clock. (Read the story:
tinyurl.com/alarmclockmadness.)
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Was Napoléon Bonaparte an oppressor or
liberator? The answer is both. His work in the world hurt a lot of
people and helped a lot of people. One of his more magnanimous
escapades transpired in June 1798, when he and his naval forces
invaded the island of Malta. During his six-day stay, he released
political prisoners, abolished slavery, granted religious freedom to
Jews, opened 15 schools, established the right to free speech, and
shut down the Inquisition. What do his heroics have to do with you? I
don't want to exaggerate, but I expect that you, too, now have the
power to unleash a blizzard of benevolence in your sphere. Do it in
your own style, of course, not Napoléon's.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): "Trees that are slow to grow bear the
best fruit," said French playwright Molière. I'm going to make that
your motto for now, Scorpio. You have pursued a gradual, steady
approach to ripening, and soon it will pay off in the form of big bright
blooms. Congratulations on having the faith to keep plugging away in
the dark! I applaud your determination to be dogged and persistent
about following your intuition even though few people have
appreciated what you were doing.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The growth you can and should
foster in the coming weeks will be stimulated by quirky and
unexpected prods. To get you started, here are a few such prods. 1.
What's your hidden or dormant talent, and what could you do to
awaken and mobilize it? 2. What's something you're afraid of but
might be able to turn into a resource? 3. If you were a different gender
for a week, what would you do and what would your life be like? 4.
Visualize a dream you'd like to have while you're asleep tonight. 5. If
you could transform anything about yourself, what would it be? 6.
Imagine you've won a free vacation to anywhere you want. Where
would you go?
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You may think you have uncovered the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But according to my
analysis of the astrological omens, you're just a bit more than halfway
there. In order to get the rest of the goods, you'll have to ignore your
itch to be done with the search. You'll have to be unattached to being
right and smart and authoritative. So please cultivate patience. Be
expansive and magnanimous as you dig deeper. For best results, align
yourself with poet Richard Siken's definition: "The truth is complicated.
It's two-toned, multi-vocal, bittersweet."
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Homework: Confess, brag, and expostulate about what inspires you to
love. Got to freewillastrology.com and click on "Email Rob."
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Submissions sent to Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
or in response to "homework assignments" may be
published in a variety of formats at Rob Brezsny's discretion,
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2018 Rob Brezsny
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