Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
March 31, 2021
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See a pretty version of this newsletter:
http://bit.ly/YourBestLove
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firgun (n.) the act of sharing in or contributing to someone else's
pleasure or fortune, with a purely generous heart and without jealousy;
or of sharing credit fairly. (From the Hebrew.)
mudita (n.) sympathetic, vicarious joy; happiness rather than
resentment at someone else's well-being or good fortune; the opposite of
schadenfreude. (From the Sanskrit.)
unne (adj.) to be happy on someone else’s behalf. (From the Norwegian.)
compersion (n.) an empathetic state of happiness and joy experienced
when another individual experiences happiness and joy. (From the
English.)
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BE LIKE YOUR BEST SELF
Someone paid me the highest compliment. She said, "I want to make sure
I tell you how often your process of being you has helped me in my
process of being me."
One essential element of my teachings is that I don't want you to be like
me; I want you to be like you—to the fullest, deepest, most glorious and
sacred and eccentric extent possible.
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FOR ANOTHER 60 YEARS
I’m probably going to write my horoscopes for only another 60 years.
My tentative plans are to retire in 2081.
Don’t worry about it, though. I’m sure that by then, I will have
conspired with cyberhackers to create an ultimate Artificial Intelligence
that will generate "Rob Brezsny"-style horoscopes until the sun
explodes in about 7.5 billion years.
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THE EVER-EVOLVING TRUTH
The ever-evolving truth is far too complicated and fluid and slippery and
scrambled and gorgeously abundant for one human being to master—even
for genius bodhisattva avatars (I’ve heard rumors that there have been a
few of such characters), let alone me and you and virtually everyone
else who has ever lived.
I'm lucky to have gotten my percentage of mastery up to about 3%. On a
good day, that’s how much I understand of the Maddening and Delightful
Mystery we are embedded in.
That means I don't know 97% about how the Great Mystery actually
works. This is despite the fact that my heart and mind have always been
greedily curious to learn and experience as much as I can.
Here’s the solution I’ve come up with: I employ an empirical approach to
life. I formulate amusing, non-binding hypotheses about what the Great
Mystery might be like, and then collect the experimental data that’s
generated as I test my hypotheses. I observe and analyze the results to
determine how well each hypothesis works the following magic:
1. Does it liberate me from suffering and does it inspire me to help
liberate other creatures from their suffering?
2. Does it make me a smarter and kinder and trickier and humbler fool?
3. Does it motivate me to embrace what I call the FLUX MOJO? In other
words, does it fuel me to overthrow my own fixations, cooperate
enthusiastically with the never-ending change that life asks me to deal
with, and continually reinvent my attitudes, perspectives, ideas, and
feelings?
4. Does it engender in me a lust for life and a primal urge to respond
creatively to the glory of being alive and conscious?
5. Does it fuel my longing to inspire and nurture and play with those who
are interested in sharing space with me?
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DAILY TEXT MESSAGE HOROSCOPES
I write daily horoscopes, available as text messages sent to your phone.
They're shorter than the weekly Free Will Astrology 'scopes, but more
frequent. They're called SUNBURSTS.
You can get these regular bursts of inspiration for 67 cents a day if you
sign up for a subscription.
Go to https://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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THE EDUCATION OF DESIRE
A famous Sufi teacher named Hazrat Inayat Khan said, "All that produces
longing in the heart deprives the heart of freedom." I am in fervent
disagreement with that idea.
In my experience, longing in the heart is the single greatest motivator in
my own quest for liberation from delusion and suffering.
The longing of the heart is a treasure, a divine blessing, a joy that
inspires me to love the world, myself, and everything in it.
Here's another Sufi teacher, Pir Zia Inayat-Khan, whose thoughts match
mine: "From a Sufi perspective, the whole universe is a phenomenon of
desire. The Divine desire pervades all things and beings, empowering
each according to its capacity. For the mystic, the truest education is the
education of desire. By means of this education the indwelling Divine
desire is liberated from the constraints of the ego and becomes a force
for the transfiguration of the world."
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Here's an excerpt from a review of one of my favorite books, Daniel
Odier's *Desire: The Tantric Path to Awakening*:
"The old saw in Buddhism is that desire is the noxious weed that keeps us
lurching from one unsatisfactory pleasure to the next, and that
uprooting it is the only way to liberation.
"Daniel Odier, a scholar and teacher of tantra, turns this wisdom on its
head in Desire: The Tantric Path to Awakening, saying that desire is the
only true path to liberation.
"Odier objects to any religion that pretends to offer liberation in any
form other than simple, personal experience."
More by Daniel Odier: https://tinyurl.com/v6vft782
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Some religious traditions teach the doctrine, "Kill off your longings." In
their view, attachment to desire is at the root of human suffering.
But the religion of materialism takes the opposite tack, asserting that
the meaning of life is to be found in indulging desires. Its creed is, "Feed
your cravings like a French foie gras farmer cramming eight pounds of
maize down a goose's gullet every day."
At the Beauty and Truth Lab, we walk a middle path. We believe there are
both degrading desires that enslave you and sacred desires that liberate
you.
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Psychologist Carl Jung believed that all desires have a sacred origin, no
matter how odd they may seem. Frustration and ignorance may contort
them into distorted caricatures, but it is always possible to locate the
divine source from which they arose.
In describing one of his addictive patients, Jung said: "His craving for
alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst for
wholeness, or as expressed in medieval language: the union with God."
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"The primordial fire that sparked millions of galaxies is the same fire
that sparks the human creative impulse."
—Cindy Spring
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"The human reproductive drive is a watered-down version of the godsex
that spawned our solar system."
—Lieutenant Anfortas, the homeless man in the Safeway parking lot
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"Mad! One must become mad with love in order to realize God. When a
person attains ecstatic love of God, all the pores of the skin, even the
roots of the hair, become like so many sex organs, and in every pore the
aspirant enjoys the happiness of communion with the Supreme
Universal Self."
—Ramakrishna
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Like all of us, you have desires for things that you don't really need and
aren't good for you. But you shouldn't disparage yourself for having
them, nor should you conclude that every desire is tainted.
Rather, think of your misguided longings as the bumbling, amateur
expressions of a faculty that will one day be far more expert.
They're how you practice as you work toward the goal of becoming a
master of desire. It may take a while, but eventually you will get the
hang of wanting things that are really good for you, and good for everyone
else, too.
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To become a master of desire, keep talking yourself out of being attached
to trivial goals and keep talking yourself into being thrilled about the
precious few goals that are really important.
Here's another way to say it: Wean yourself from ego-driven desires and
pour your libido into a longing for beauty, truth, goodness, justice,
integrity, creativity, love, and an intimate relationship with the Wild
Divine.
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"God has desires. Since I want to be close to God and to model myself after
God, I therefore don't aspire to extinguish my desires, but rather to
make my desires more God-like: i.e., imbued with an inexorable
ambition to create the greatest and most interesting blessings for
everyone and everything."
—Collin Klamper
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John Botiller_ writes: "There are a lot of false beliefs about Buddhism
which make it seem unpalatable. I've used it successfully to improve my
life when I need to. I don't identify as a Buddhist, but it pleases me to
share this misinformation with you if you are interested in reading. I
correct 3 big misunderstandings that exist in the American cultural
narrative. My source is as close to the original as possible-Theravada
Buddhism.
"1) Buddha didn't teach that all life is suffering. He acknowledges the
pleasures that exist. What he taught is that suffering does exist and it
happens when we try to hold onto things that are subject to change.
That's all. We can all agree.
"2) Buddha didn't teach that desire is at the root of suffering. He taught
that craving, which means the plans you formulate to make contact with
pleasurable sense objects, is the cause of suffering, not desires. He said
desires are conditioned by nature. If you want to have sex, you want food,
you want companionship, you want to see beauty, hear awesome sounds,
feel tactile pleasures, you want to because of nature. You can't undo these
things. You might as well hold your breath.
"3) Buddha didn't teach that there is or isn't a self. He taught a strategy
called the not-self strategy. He did this because you can get attached to a
sense of self that is destined to change and if you cling to it you will
suffer. So he has you look at what's happening in the present moment and
see that whatever's in front of you has a cause and that cause isn't a self.
"Everything is a series of causes and effects that happen through a body,
but there's never a self you discover that's doing it. Everything has a
logical basis.
"That doesn't mean that a self does or does not exist. He puts all
existential questions of existence/non-existence (is there a god, is there
a self, is existence real?) aside as not belonging to what he teaches--
Stress and the cessation of stress."
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WHO OWNS THE LAND?
I've known conservative white men who place great emphasis on the fact
that throughout history the migration of people from one land to another
has always been common. Everyone on earth originated somewhere else,
they say. From an historical perspective, it's not unusual or
problematic that Native Americans were displaced by invading
Europeans. After all, Indians had originally wandered to the Americas
from original homes on another continent.
Amusingly, the conservative white men who make this argument are
usually worshipers of the right to own land. For them the concept of
private property is a sacred dispensation. They also neglect to notice the
huge distinction between humans migrating into previously uninhabited
land and humans invading land already occupied by great numbers of
humans.
Their hypocrisy would be hilarious if it weren't so astoundingly
ignorant. They sputter and go blank when I remind them that the
ancestors of modern Native Americans arrived in what's now the United
States at least 15,000 years ago—600 generations. They seem unable to
acknowledge the truth that even if their forebears reached the "New
World" as early as the 17th century, their people have occupied the land
for a mere 16 generations—less than three percent of the indigenous
span.
In light of these thoughts, here are three questions for us:
• Let's say you bought the property and home where you now live, or
else inherited it from your family. Is that place more thoroughly your
personal property than, say, the places inhabited by the Dwamish
people, circa 1800, who had been living in what's now the Seattle area
for at least 390 generations?
• Imagine this scenario: An invading army of extraterrestrial beings
with highly advanced technology arrives on Earth. They seize your land
and home, and force you to flee. Do you complain? Do you fight back?
I guess it's possible you might say to yourself, "Oh, well, the migration
of people from one land to another has been common throughout history.
I'm just another example. Guess it's time for me to move on."
• How well do you know the land and the ecology of the place where you
live? Can you name ten local species of trees and plants? Ten species of
birds and insects? Do you know the geological history? What are five
bodies of water near you? Do you know which indigenous people once
dwelled where you do now?
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Why indigenous folklore can save animals’ lives.
https://tinyurl.com/37fpvhu2
Culturally significant island in Salish Sea returns to First Nations.
https://tinyurl.com/4msrtew5
"Reserved as Confucius was about the supernatural, he was not without
it; somewhere in the universe there was a power that was on the side of
right."
—religious scholar Huston Smith
"I am a center of expression for the Primal Will to Good, which
eternally creates and sustains the universe."
—affirmation by Qabalistic author Paul Foster Case
More affirmations: https://tinyurl.com/336zdu22
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For a lot more pronoiac resources and ideas, read my book *Pronoia Is
the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower
You with Blessings*
Available at Barnes & Noble: https://tinyurl.com/PronoiaBN
Available at Amazon: https://bit.ly/Pronoia
A free preview of the book is available here:
https://tinyurl.com/PronoiaPreview
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Please tell me your own nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Truthrooster@gmail.com.
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning April 1
Copyright 2021 by Rob Brezsny
https://FreeWillAstrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Playwright August Strindberg
(1849–1912) was a maverick innovator who loved to experiment with
plot and language. One of his stories takes place in a dream and the hero
is the Christ-like daughter of a Vedic god. He once said that he felt "an
immense need to become a savage and create a new world." Given your
current astrological potentials, Aries, I suspect that might be an apt
motto for you right now. APRIL FOOL! I half-lied. There's no need for you
to become a savage. In fact, it's better if you don't. But the coming weeks
will definitely be a good time to create a new world.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Who says all Tauruses are dependable,
gentle, risk-avoidant, sensible, and reliable? Taurus author Mary
MacLane (1861–1929), known as the "Wild Woman of Butte, Montana,"
authored shocking, scandalous books. In *I Await the Devil's Coming*,
she testified, "I am not good. I am not virtuous. I am not generous. I am
merely a creature of intense passionate feeling. I feel—everything. It is
my genius. It burns me like fire." Can I convince you, Taurus, to make
her your role model for the coming weeks? APRIL FOOL! I don't think
you should be EXACTLY like MacLane. Please leave out the part about "I
am not good. I am not virtuous. I am not generous," as well as the "I await
the devil's coming" part. But yes, do be a creature of intensely
passionate feeling. Let your feelings be your genius, burning in you like
a fire.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Poet Emily Dickinson had a good sense of
humor, so she was probably making a wry joke when she wrote, "The
lovely flowers embarrass me. They make me regret I am not a bee." But
who knows? Maybe Emily was being a bit sincere, too. In any case, I
advise you to make a list of all the things you regret not being—all the
qualities and assets you wish you had, but don't. It's a favorable time to
wallow in remorse. APRIL FOOL! I was totally lying! In fact, I hope you
will do the reverse: Engage in an orgy of self-appreciation, celebrating
yourself for being exactly who you are.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Provocation specialist Lydia Lunch is a
singer and poet who's skilled at generating interesting mischief. She
testifies, "My daily existence is a battlecade of extreme fluctuations
where chaos clobbers apathy, which beats the s--- out of depression
which follows irritability which slams into anger which eclipses ecstasy
which slips through my fingers far too often." In the coming weeks,
Cancerian, I recommend you adopt her melodramatic approach to living
the intense life. APRIL FOOL! I lied. Please don't be like Lydia Lunch in
the near future. On the contrary: Cultivate regal elegance, sovereign
poise, and dynamic equanimity.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In 1692, a Swedish man named Thiess of
Kaltenbrun was put on trial for being a werewolf. He claimed to be a
noble werewolf, however. He said he regularly went down to Hell to do
holy combat against the Devil. I suggest you make him your inspirational
role model in the coming weeks. Be as weird as you need to be in order to
fight for what's good and right. APRIL FOOL! I half-lied. What I really
meant to say was: Be as weird as you need to be, but without turning into
a werewolf, zombie, vampire, goblin, or other supernatural monster.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): _I want to hear raucous music, to brush
against bodies, to drink fiery Benedictine," wrote author Anais Nin.
"Beautiful women and handsome men arouse fierce desires in me. I want
to dance. I want drugs. I want to know perverse people, to be intimate
with them. I want to bite into life, and to be torn by it._ All that sounds
like perfect counsel for you to consider right now, dear Virgo! APRIL
FOOL! I lied. Nin's exuberant testimony might be an interesting
perspective to flirt with—*if* the COVID-19 virus had been completely
tamed. But it hasn't. So I must instead suggest that you find ways to
express this lively, unruly energy in safe and sublimated ways.
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DAILY TEXT MESSAGE HOROSCOPES
Did you know that I write daily horoscopes, available as text messages
sent to your phone? They're shorter than the weekly 'scopes, but more
frequent. They're called SUNBURSTS.
You can get these regular bursts of inspiration for 67 cents a day if you
sign up for a subscription.
Go to https://RealAstrology.com. Register or log in. On the new page,
click on "Subscribe / Renew" under "Daily Text Message Horoscopes" in
the right-hand column.
As always, you can also buy and listen to my Expanded Audio Horoscopes,
also available at https://RealAstrology.com.
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LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Here are affirmations that will serve you
well in the coming days. 1. "I am willing to make mistakes if someone
else is willing to learn from them." 2. "I am grateful that I'm not as
judgmental as all the shortsighted, self-righteous people." 3. "I assume
full responsibility for my actions, except those that are someone else's
fault." 4. "A good scapegoat is as welcome as a solution to the problem."
APRIL FOOL! All the preceding affirmations are total bunk! Don't you
dare use them. Use these instead: 1. "I enjoy taking responsibility for
my actions." 2. "Rather than indulging in the reflex to blame, I turn my
attention to fixing the problem." 3. "No one can make me feel something I
don't want to feel." 4. "I'm free from believing in the images people have
of me."
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): According to author Kahlil Gibran, "If we
were all to sit in a circle and confess our sins, we would laugh at each
other for lack of originality." But I challenge you Scorpios to refute that
theory in the coming days. For the sake of your sanity and health, you
need to commit highly original sins—the more, the better. APRIL FOOL! I
lied. Save your novel, imaginative sinning for later. The truth is that
now is an excellent time to explore the joyous and healthy practice of
being *extremely* virtuous. Imitate author Susan Sontag: "My idolatry:
I've lusted after goodness. Wanting it here, now, absolutely,
increasingly."
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The coming months would be a great
time to start your own university and then award yourself a PhD in
Drugless Healing or Mathematical Reincarnation or Political
Metaphysics—or any other subject you'd like to be considered an expert
in. Hey, why not give yourself three PhDs and call yourself a Professor
Emeritus? APRIL FOOL! I'm just joking. The coming months will indeed
be an extremely favorable time to advance your education, but with real
learning, not fake credentials.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): After his Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain
committed suicide, Capricorn drummer Dave Grohl was depressed for
months. To cheer himself up, he wrote and recorded an album's worth of
songs, playing almost all the instruments himself: drums, lead guitar,
rhythm guitar, bass, and vocals. I think you should try a similar
spectacularly heroic solo task in the coming weeks. APRIL FOOL! I lied.
Here's my true and actual advice: Now is a time when you should gather
all the support and help and cooperation you can possibly garner for a
beloved project.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik told
her psychoanalyst León Ostrov that if she were going to steal something,
it would be "the façade of a certain collapsed house in a little town called
Fontenay-aux-Roses [near Paris]." What was so special about this
façade? Its windows were made of "magical" lilac-colored glass that was
"like a beautiful dream." In accordance with astrological omens, I invite
you, too, to decide what marvel you would steal—and then go steal it!
APRIL FOOL! I half-lied. Yes, definitely decide what you would steal—it's
important to give your imagination permission to be outrageous—but
don't actually steal it.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): I've never understood the appeal of
singer-songwriter Morrissey, especially since he began endorsing
bigoted far-right politicians. However, I want to recommend that you
adopt the attitude he once expressed in a letter to a friend. "It was a
terrible blow to hear that you actually worked," he wrote. "It’s so old-
fashioned to work. I’d much rather lounge about the house all day looking
fascinating." Be like that in the coming weeks, Pisces! APRIL FOOL! I
lied. In fact, you'd be making a silly mistake to lie around the house
looking fascinating. It's a highly favorable time for you to find ways to
work harder and smarter.
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Homework. Send the secrets you could only tell a stranger.
FreeWillAstrology.com
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2021 Rob Brezsny
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