"Surreal hope" means having faith in a future opportunity that at first appears in an out-of-context situation. Say, for example, that you have an unsettling initial exposure to a stranger whom you will eventually realize is an important ally. Maybe when you see this person for the first time, he or she is looking dazed and disheveled on a street corner with tear stains on the cheek, having just broken up with a lover. And maybe you feel a strange attraction to this weirdo despite his or her unflattering appearance. Having surreal hope, in this instance, would mean that you'd refrain from being dismissive and judgmental, but would instead entertain the possibility that your fascination might portend an interesting link under more favorable circumstances at a later date.

What greater adventure is there than exploring the enigmas of your unique destiny? For more hints, listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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Most people associate innocence with naiveté. Conventional wisdom regards it as belonging to children and fools and rookies who lack the sophistication or experience to know the tough truths about life. But the Beauty and Truth Laboratory recognizes a different kind of innocence. It's based on an understanding that the world is always changing, and therefore deserves to be seen fresh every day. This alternative brand of innocence is fueled by an aggressive determination to empty one's imagination of all preconceptions. "Ignorance is not knowing anything and being attracted to the good," wrote Clarissa Pinkola-Estes in Women Who Run With the Wolves. "Innocence is knowing everything and still being attracted to the good."
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

"Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem," wrote English novelist John Galsworthy. In other words, most people find it easier to stick to their noble beliefs and neat theories when they don't have to deal with the messy details of real life. I trust that you will be a stirring exception to this rule in the coming weeks, Taurus. Judging from the astrological omens, I predict that you'll be a master of utopian pragmatism. As you penetrate further and further into the heart of every matter, you'll come up with workable strategies for bringing out the best in people.

Got enough clues to chew on for a while? If you need more, give yourself the luxury of your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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Mirabilia is a word that refers to events that inspire wonder, marvelous phenomena, small miracles; it's from the Latin mirabilia, "marvels." Here's your mirabilia report for the coming week: The average river requires a million years to move a grain of sand 100 miles. Kind people are more likely than mean people to yawn when someone near them does. There are always so many fragments of spider legs floating in the air that you are constantly inhaling them wherever you go. Gregorian chants can cure dyslexia. Bob Hope donated half a million jokes to the Library of Congress. Bees perform a valuable service for the flowers from which they steal. The moon smells like exploded firecrackers. Physicists in Tennessee coaxed electric signals to travel through coaxial cable at four times the speed of light, even though the equipment they used was cheap stuff from Radio Shack. Revlon makes 177 different shades of lipstick.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

For millions of years, the great rivers of the world have flowed into seas -- or at least they have up until now. Because of their overuse by humans, several ancient rivers are in danger of drying up before they reach their destinations. Among them are China's Yellow River, the Tigris and Euphrates in the Middle East, and America's Rio Grande. I offer this as a cautionary metaphor to consider as you contemplate your long-term future. There are things you can do in the next six weeks to ensure that the river of your life will always connect to a greater source. I suggest you make that a high priority.

How much do you want to know about your destiny? How far do you dare to go? For more insight into your intriguing fate, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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The primary meaning of the word "healing" is "to cure what's diseased or broken." Medical practitioners focus on sick people. Psychotherapists wrestle with their clients' traumas and neuroses. Philanthropists donate their money and social workers contribute their time to helping the underprivileged. I am in awe of them all. The level of one's spiritual enlightenment, I believe, is more accurately measured by helping people in need than by meditation skills, shamanic shapeshifting, supernatural powers, or religious knowledge.

But I also believe in a second kind of healing that is largely unrecognized: to supercharge what is already healthy; to lift up what's merely sufficient to a sublime state. Using this definition, describe two acts of healing: one you would enjoy performing on yourself and another you'd like to provide for someone you love.

Congratulations. Every cell in your perfect animal body is beginning to purr with luminous gratitude for the enormity of the riches you endlessly receive. You are becoming aware that each of your heart's beats originates as a gift of love directly from the Goddess herself. Any residues of hatred that had been tainting your libido are leaving you for good. You are becoming telepathically linked to the world's entire host of secret teachers, pacifist warriors, philosopher clowns, and bodhisattvas disguised as convenience store clerks.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

"Quetzalcoatl instructed the Aztecs to offer hyacinths and copal [a resin] to their idols instead of human flesh," wrote Edward Dahlberg in his book The Sorrows of Priapus. Alas, the priests didn't heed their god's directive. Their predilection for ripping the hearts out of their sacrificial victims is infamous. Now I'm asking you to attend to a less dramatic but comparable matter, Cancerian. You have a prime opportunity to stop making an extreme sacrifice you've been doing for a long time. The gods no longer demand it of you; it serves no holy purpose; and there's a milder and more useful sacrifice you can make instead.

Want more help in exploring the Great Mystery that is your life? I discuss your coming week in greater depth in your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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Is the world a dangerous, chaotic place with no inherent purpose, running on automatic like a malfunctioning machine and fundamentally inimical to your happiness? Or are you surrounded by helpers in a friendly universe that gives you challenges in order to make you smarter and wilder and kinder? Trick questions! The answers may depend, at least to some degree, on what you believe is true.

Formulate a series of experiments that will allow you to objectively test the hypothesis that the universe is conspiring to help you.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

The geography of your heart is evolving. In places, coastlines are disappearing. Elsewhere, new islands have risen out of the sea. Boundaries are shifting, as some nations dissolve and others are born. Even the climate is changing, with warm winds blowing where once there was year-round chill, and monsoon-like conditions invading desert ecosystems. Roads that formerly led to the center of the action no longer do, and highways that used to be peripheral are now main routes. I suggest you take note of all this by redrawing your map, Leo. Get up to date with your heart's new landscapes.

Want more clues? Need further insight? For more evocative questions and pithy suggestions about your destiny, check out your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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A thousand years from today, everyone you know will be long dead and forgotten. There'll be nothing left of the life you love, no evidence that you ever walked this planet. That, at least, is what the fundamentalist materialists would have you believe. But suppose the truth is very different? What if in fact every little thing you do subtly alters the course of world history? What if your day-to-day decisions will actually help determine how the human species navigates its way through the epic turning point we're living through? And finally, what if you will be alive in a thousand years, reincarnated into a fresh body and in possession of the memories of the person you were back in this era? These are my hypotheses. These are my prophecies. Which is why I say: Live as if your soul is eternal.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was President of the United States for eight years after serving as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II. Early in his career, however, he didn't win many accolades. Referring to his mediocre stint as an undergraduate at the U.S. Military Academy, he said, "If anybody saw signs of greatness in me while at West Point, they kept it to themselves." Keep his story in mind during the coming weeks, Virgo. You may have to summon an extra measure of self-motivation as you keep pushing towards your goal despite a lack of recognition or applause.

Want to hear more about the hidden factors influencing your life? Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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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."

Therapist James Hillman echoes the theme: "Psychology regards all symptoms to be expressing the right thing in the wrong way." A preoccupation with porn or romance novels, for instance, may come to dominate a passionate person whose quest for love has degenerated into an obsession with images of love. "Follow the lead of your symptoms," Hillman suggests, "for there's usually a myth in the mess, and a mess is an expression of soul."
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

In their translation of a poem by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell write, "I'm the chimp of chance, the champ of chance, I'm a chum of chance and a chump of chance." Judging from your astrological omens, Libra, I suspect it'll soon make sense for you to speak those words yourself. Dumb luck and blind fate will be swirling around you, whipping up both unexpected pleasures and knotty challenges. What can you do to be more of a champ and a chum of chance, and not so much of a chimp and a chump of chance? Welcome everything that happens, with no exceptions. Love the easy and the difficult, the playful and the contrived, the lucid and the confusing.

What blessings will life bring you? What challenges will you be invited to dive into? To explore the ripening trends further, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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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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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

I suggest we title this chapter of your life story "The Perplexing Joy of Hundreds of Emotions," or maybe "The Wild Peace of Way Too Many Feelings." That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it's an apt reflection of your immediate future: extreme, expansive, melodramatic, spectacularly educational, and filthy rich with intrigue. You may not break the world's record for most mood shifts in a good cause, but you could very well smash your own personal record.

Need a few more whacks applied to your mental blocks? A few more caresses administered to your growing edge? Cruise on over to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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Life is a vast and intricate conspiracy designed to keep us well supplied with blessings. What kind of blessings? Palatial homes, attractive lovers, lottery winnings, career success? Maybe. But just as likely: interesting surprises, unexpected challenges, gifts we hardly know what to do with, conundrums that force us to get smarter.

Novelist William Vollman referred to the latter types of blessings when he said that "the most important and enjoyable thing in life is doing something that’s a complicated, tricky problem for you that you don’t know how to solve."
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Imagine what it feels like to rub your hand over the stubble that's just beginning to spring from the skin you shaved. Visualize a single small purple flower jutting through the dry brown stalks lining the trail you're hiking along. Remember a moment, after an argument with an ally, when the first tentative spark of reconciliation flowed between your eyes and his or hers. These are good metaphors for the kinds of experiences you should seek out, cultivate, and concentrate on in the coming week.

Where do you want to go? Who do you want to be? For more clues, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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Below you'll find three messages. One is an authentic communiqué from the Divine Wow, which I channeled while in ecstatic trance. The other two are fakes that I made up. If you’re as thoroughly in tune with your inner purpose as you need to be, you won't have any trouble knowing which is the true Word of the Creator.

Message #1: "I, the Supreme Designer of Heaven and Earth, am totally pissed off at your lazy sins and lack of faith. Cut the crap and shape up."

Message #2: "I, untouchable and unknowable CEO of the Universe, couldn’t care less what you do. Don’t bother me."

Message #3: "I, the Universal Jokester who runs all of creation on the fuel of my sublime pleasure, am well-entertained by the stories you've been living. Thanks! I can’t wait to see what you do next."
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

You've gotten a little addicted to habits that are rooted in fear and worry. I suggest we resort to exotic measures to pry you out of your rut. After you read the proposed actions below, compose four more of a similar nature, then go out and actually do at least half of them. (1) On an empty milk carton, paste a collage of cut-out images and phrases that symbolize your anxieties. Then put it on the floor and stomp it to death as you growl. (2) Slap your own hand briskly ten times as you bark, "Stop being such a wuss!" (3) Everywhere you go, visualize yourself being accompanied by three great warriors who're dedicated to your well-being. (4) Gaze at a picture of a person who makes you nervous and yell "I'm not afraid of you, you mysterious slime-sucking bastard."

Do you want further explorations of the intriguing twists and turns of your personal evolution? Check out your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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Many people believe that happiness is a rare commodity attainable only through dumb luck. "One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness," said novelist Willa Cather. "One only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere." I disagree. My perspective is the same as the Buddhist researchers Rick Foster and Greg Hicks. In their book How We Choose to Be Happy: The 9 Choices of Extremely Happy People, they reveal that the number one trait of happy people is a serious determination to be happy. Bliss is a habit you can cultivate, in other words, not an accident that you stumble upon by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

In 18th-century France, the public was sometimes invited to watch when the women of the king's family gave birth. Can you imagine the modern-day equivalent? As the actresses and pop stars of Hollywood brought their babies into the world, TV news teams would be there on the scene, their cameras rolling. It's probably not going to happen anytime soon (though be on the alert if you hear Paris Hilton is pregnant). But I suggest you seek out the nearest metaphorical equivalent in the coming week. You'll really benefit from being in the presence of a primal, ecstatic, royal hatching.

Need more help with your riddles? Crave more support in your efforts to build your courage? Check out your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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Meditate naked under a waterfall.
Relive the last day of your childhood.
Sip the tears of someone you love.
Rebel against your horoscope.
Create a luxurious orphanage in Romania.
Pick blackberries in the rain.
Feel sorry for a devious lawyer.
See how far you can spit a mouthful of beer.
Give yourself another chance.
Dream of stealing the peaches of immortality from a dragon guarding Plato's cave.
Write a love letter to your evil twin during a lunar eclipse.
Sing the first song you ever heard.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

In the ancient Gnostic Gospel of Philip, discovered in Egypt last century, the author writes of the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. In one place, he says, "Jesus often kissed Mary on the . . . ." Unfortunately, there's a hole in the original document right where that next word was. Did Jesus kiss her on the cheek? The mouth? The neck? Unless other versions of the old text are found, we'll never know. On the other hand, I predict that you will soon solve a comparable mystery in your own love life. Some gap that has long mystified you will be filled in. A missing clue will turn up.

No one knows you better than you do. But maybe you'll be inspired to dig up even more self-knowledge if you tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the week ahead.

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Robin Norwood's self-help book Women Who Love Too Much deals with a theme that has gotten a lot of play in recent decades: If you're too generous to someone who doesn't appreciate it and at the expense of your own needs, you can make yourself sick.

An alternative perspective comes from Blaise Pascal, who said, "When one does not love too much, one does not love enough." He was primarily addressing psychologically healthy altruists, but it's a good ideal for pronoia lovers to keep in mind.

Decide whether you need to move more in the direction of Norwood's or Pascal's advice. Develop a game plan to carry out your resolve, then take action.
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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. It's available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.