"Here's how you can tell if you have a bad psychotherapist or counselor," says my friend Laura. "She or he buys into all your BS, never questions your delusions, and builds your self-esteem even if that makes you into an a**hole." I agree with Laura's assessment, which is why I'm going to spend our short time together today calling you on your BS, prodding you to get introspective about your delusions, and not pumping up the parts of your ego that really should be melted down. Next week maybe we'll get back to gazing adoringly into each other's eyes, but right now you'll benefit from some tough love.

Want to explore the coming week even further? Dig deeper? Push harder? Consider tuning in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES

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You are a metropolis of 50 trillion citizens, says biologist Dr. Bruce Lipton. Each of the cells in your body can be considered a sentient being in its own right. They all act together as a community, performing an ongoing act of prodigious collaboration.
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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 Powells.

This will be an excellent time to read five books simultaneously, snack constantly on delicacies while avoiding heavy meals, climb a tree with an adventurous friend and make careful yet wild love right there, refuse to practice any form of meditation that doesn't involve laughing, buy ten cheap alarm clocks and smash them with a hammer out in the middle of a meadow, pretend to be a feral teenager who's allergic to civilization, and throw invisible stones at any god, angel, or genie who won't help you get the love you want.

Need more help with your riddles? Crave more support in your efforts to build your courage? Check out you EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES

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Thousands of amazing, inexplicable, wondrous, and even supernatural events occur every day. And yet most are unreported by the media. The few that are cited are ridiculed. Why? Here's one possible reason: The people most likely to believe in miracles are superstitious, uneducated, and prone to having a blind, literalist faith in their religions' myths. Those who are least likely to believe in miracles are skilled at analytical thought, well-educated, and yet prone to having a blind, literalist faith in the ideology of materialism, which dogmatically asserts that the universe consists entirely of things that can be perceived by the five human senses or detected by instruments that scientists have thus far invented.

The media is largely composed of people from the second group. It's virtually impossible for them to admit to the possibility of miracles, let alone experience them. If anyone from this group manages to escape peer pressure and cultivate a receptivity to miracles, it's because they have successfully fought against being demoralized by the unsophisticated way miracles are framed by the first group.

At the Beauty and Truth Laboratory we're immune to the double-barreled ignorance. When we behold astonishing synchronicities and numinous breakthroughs that seem to violate natural law, we're willing to consider the possibility that our understanding of natural law is too narrow. And yet we also refrain from lapsing into irrational gullibility; we actively seek mundane explanations for apparent miracles.
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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 Powells.

American poet William Stafford, winner of the National Book Award in 1963, wrote a poem every morning for 40 years. "I keep following the hidden river of my life," he said. "And I don't have any sense of its coming to a crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along." I'd like to nominate Stafford to be your honorary role model, Gemini. Here's your assignment: Every morning for the next 20 days, carry out a brief ritual (no more than a few minutes long) that feeds your lust for life and engenders a blessing for yourself or someone you care about.

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

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You Are Almost Everything

You taste delicious

Animals understand you

Your importance is unusual

The funny faces you make are interesting to look at

You fight for power in all the right ways

Gratitude pours out of you

You have strong feet

No one can overflow as well as you can

You are famous with God

A lost tribe salutes you from the other side of the veil

You belong to yourself
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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 Powells.

Your assignment in the coming week is simple but tricky: Take devalued ideas or trivial objects or demeaning words, and transform them into things that are fun, interesting, or useful. Here are some precedents to inspire you: what the punk movement did when it made safety pins into earrings; what gays did when they mutated the insulting term "queer" into a word of power; what the resourceful TV hero MacGyver did when he put powdered make-up into a confetti cannon and shot it at evil CIA operatives, temporarily blinding them and allowing him to escape.

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

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The 17th-century surgeon Wilhelm Hilden had an interesting theory about healing. He developed a medicinal salve that he applied not to the wound itself but rather to the weapon that inflicted it. Though today we may sneer at such foolishness, the fact is that Hilden's approach has great potential if used for psychic wounds. Jesus understood this when he articulated the revolutionary formula, "Love your enemy." More than any other action, this strategy has the power to cure you of the distortions your enemy has unleashed in you. Try it out
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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 Powells.

It's a perfect time to work more intensely on cultivating a healthy relationship between money and your soul. For inspiration, read this wise counsel, articulated by Margaret Young and quoted in Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. "Many people attempt to live their lives backwards. They try to have more money in order to do more of what they want so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want."

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

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The English language is in a state of rapid ferment. New words are barging into the dictionary at an unprecedented rate, even as old familiars fall into disuse. There's one exception to this trend: profanity. Hoary favorites like "fuck," "shit," and "asshole" have gained an acceptance unthinkable 30 years ago, but fresh curse words are rarely coined.

At the Beauty and Truth Lab, we find the overused classics inadequate for expressing our evolving rage at injustice, ignorance, and ugliness. Furthermore, as deadening clichés, they don't satisfy the pronoiac mandate to use language with sonorous precision.

There's another problem. Anger has become one of the trendiest emotions of all. In moderation it can be a righteous force for constructive change. But its hackneyed omnipresence means the vast majority of its outbreaks are trivial. The paucity of colorful obscenities is aggravated by an abundance of frivolous fury.

How can you purge the clichéd ire that dilutes the useful, inspired stuff? One good method is to make fun of it by expressing it bigger than life. Try this. Go alone to a place where it's safe to feel blind rage. Envision a person or thing you love to hate, then unleash the following mantra 15 times in the most vulgar tones possible: "You miasmic heap of shaved-off cemetery warts. You mangled preen of politicians' tongue scabs. You brackish tripe of experts' ego tinkles. You fragile crap of orphaned tyrants. You demented cluster of fickle weasel vows. You curdled slosh of rotting fracas-spawned opinions."
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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 Powells.

"There have never in history been so many opportunities to do so many things that aren't worth doing," wrote novelist William Gaddis. That's important for you to keep in mind during the coming weeks. You'll receive a flood of invitations, but only some of them will be intimately related to the unique work you're here on Earth to do. Those few may be so amazingly useful, though, that they could dramatically change your life for the better. Please say no to all the others so you can attend to the good stuff with your heart on fire and your mind as fluid as a mountain stream.

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

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In order to live, you've got to be a demolisher. You take plants and animals that were once alive and rip them apart with your teeth, then disintegrate them in your digestive system.

Your body is literally on fire inside, burning up the oxygen you suck into your lungs.

You didn't actually cut down the trees used to make your house and furniture, but you colluded with their demise.

Then there's the psychological liquidation you've done: killing off old beliefs you've outgrown, for instance.

I'm not trying to make you feel guilty—just pointing out that you have a lot of experience with positive expressions of destruction.

Can you think of other forms this magic takes? As an aspiring master of pronoia, it's one of your specialties--a talent you have a duty to wield with energetic grace.
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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 Powells.

Have you ever heard of the First Law of Holes? It says that if you get in a hole, you should stop digging. Please obey that law in the coming week, Libra. Once you realize there's no other place to go but down if you continue your course of action, nothing -- not even your pride -- should keep you committed to that course. Now here's the Second Law of Holes: If you are able to scramble up out of the hole before it gets too deep, you should then spend some time filling it in so that you don't fall into it if you come back that way later in the dark.

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

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Cancer cells are constantly developing in our bodies. Luckily, our immune systems routinely kill them off. Similarly, our minds always harbor pockets of crazy-making misconceptions and faulty imprints. They usually don't rise up and render us insane thanks to the psychic versions of our immune systems.

How can you stay strong in your ability to fight off sickness and madness? You know the drill: Eat healthy food, sleep well, get physical exercise, minimize stress, give and receive love. But as an aspiring pronoiac, you have at your disposal other actions that can provide powerful boosts to your immune system. Here are examples:

Scheme to put yourself in the path of beautiful landscapes, buildings, art, and creatures.

Exercise your imagination regularly. Get in the habit of feeding your mind's eye images that fill you with wonder and vitality.

Eliminate uhs, you knows, I means, and other junk words from your speech. Avoid saying things you don't really mean and haven't thought out. Stop yourself when tempted to make scornful assertions about people.

Every night before you fall asleep, review the day's activities in your mind's eye. As if watching a movie about yourself, try to be calmly objective as you observe your memories from the previous 16 hours. Be especially alert for moments when you strayed from your purpose and didn't live up to your highest standards.

With a companion, sit in front of a turned-off TV as you make up a pronoiac story that features tricky benevolence, scintillating harmony, and amusing redemption. Speak this tale aloud or write it down.

Take on an additional job title, beautifier. Put it on your business card and do something every day to cultivate your skill. If you're a people person, bring grace and intrigue into your conversations; ask unexpected questions that provoke original thoughts. If you're an artist, leave samples of your finest work in public places. If you're a psychologist or sociologist, point out the institutions and relationships that are working really well. Whatever you do best, be alert for how you can refine it and offer it up to those who'll benefit from it.

If you're going through a phase when you feel you have nothing especially beautiful to offer, or if you think it would be self-indulgent to inject your own aesthetic into shared environments, turn for help to great artists and thinkers. Sneak O'Keeffe or Chagall prints onto unadorned walls in public places, for instance. Memorize poems by Rilke and Hafiz, and slip them into your conversations when appropriate. Program your cell phone so that its ring is Vivaldi's Stabat Mater in C Minor. Scrawl passages from Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk on the walls of public lavatories.
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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 Powells.

Most intelligent people realize that global warming is underway. This awakening is good, but I'm worried that it may be diverting attention from a more profound crisis: the Mass Extinction Event that's killing off animal and plant species at a pace unmatched since the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. While 87 percent of the population knows about global warming, less than five percent realize this bigger tragedy is unfolding. And that's crazy. The prospect of there being future draughts, rising ocean levels, and savage weather is daunting, but the far more devastating fact is that Earth's precious eco-diversity is dying now -- not just from global warming, but from pollution and a host of other mischief caused by humans. Our species is killing off thousands of creatures and plants that have shared the planet with us for millennia. The precipitous loss of frogs and bees alone suggests that we should be staging regular rituals of grieving, with symbolic million-mourner funeral processions. And what does this have to do with your horoscope, I mean besides it being a call to expand your understanding of our planet's environmental crisis? This: The scenario I've described is a metaphor for your personal life. What important issue might you be obsessing on in a way that blinds you to an even more all-encompassing issue? (P.S. For more information about the Mass Extinction Event, check out the website of my friend David Ulansey.)

Want more clues? Need further insight? For more evocative questions and pithy suggestions about your destiny in the coming week, check out your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES

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The Shinto monks of Iso, Japan, have a curious custom. Every 20 years since the year 772, they've dismantled their central shrine and rebuilt it from scratch. In so doing, they pass down the knowledge of their sacred construction techniques from generation to generation. It's also an effective way for the monks to participate eagerly in the transitoriness of life, rather than merely being resigned to it. They practice the art of death and rebirth not just in meditation but through a practical long-term ritual.

Can you think of an analogous custom you might create for your personal use?
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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 Powells.

The largest rubber duck race in history took place last year on Ireland's River Liffey, with 150,000 yellow vinyl contestants vying to cross the finish line first. It was a charity event to raise money for sick children. I mention this, Sagittarius, because if anyone could organize an adventure that would top that extravaganza, it would be you in your current state. You're at the peak of your power to marshal the forces of playfulness in a holy cause.

Want to hear more about the hidden factors influencing your life in the coming week? Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES

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Oceans are not exactly teeming with life. In fact, they're mostly barren, and could rightly be called "wet deserts." Likewise, not all your emotions, even those that come in floods, are fertile. Some are automatic reactions that have discharged thousands of times since they were first programmed into you many years ago. They're mechanical, not organic. They became fixtures when you were a very different person than you are now. Identify these.
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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 Powells.

Last November, Major League Baseball announced that New York Mets' pitcher Guillermo Mota had tested positive for steroids and would therefore be suspended for 50 games at the beginning of the new season. A month later, the Mets signed Mota to a new, two-year $5 million contract, despite knowing that his recent accomplishments on the baseball field had almost certainly been inflated by the steroids' boost. I foresee a comparable scenario unfolding in your life, Capricorn. You'll be rewarded in the wake of a penalty or limitation that was imposed on you, and the gain will outstrip the loss. It may even be the case that the good thing coming your way will be related to or aided by the "bad" thing you did.

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

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Celebrate Unhappy Hour at least once a month. During this ritual blowout, you have license to complain and rant about everything that's driving you crazy. Get a sympathetic listener to be your receptacle or deliver your blast straight into the mirror. If you prefer, write it all down. One way or another, grouse nonstop about your secret shame, raw sorrow, bottomless wrath, unspeakable guilt, and unnerving twists of destiny. Feel free to unleash guttural moans or rueful cackles.

If performed regularly, Unhappy Hour serves as an exorcism that empties you of psychic toxins. Pronoia will then have a chance to flourish as you luxuriate more frequently in rosy moods and broad-minded visions.
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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 Powells.

"I'm interested in the boundaries where things change into other things," writes Orene, one of my MySpace friends. Those boundaries should be your primary hang-out in the coming weeks, Aquarius. They are where all the most interesting action will be, as well as the teachings you need most. Would you like some foreshadowing about what things will be changing into other things? Pay close attention to your dreams for clues, and muse on this list: goodbyes that morph into awakenings; banishments that become pilgrimages; adversaries who transform into allies; decay that alchemizes into splendor; and serpent energy that turns into spiritual fire.

Need a few more whacks applied to your mental blocks in the coming week? A few more caresses administered to your growing edge? Cruise on over to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES

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Yua is a term the Yupiit people of Alaska use for the spirit that inhabits all things, both animate and inanimate. A rock, for instance, has as much yua as a caribou, spruce tree, or human being, and therefore merits the same measure of compassion. If a Yupiit goes out for a hike and spies a chunk of wood lying on a frozen river bank, she might pick it up and put it in a new position, allowing its previously hidden side to get fresh air and sun. In this way, she would bestow a blessing on the wood's yua. (Source: Earl Shorris, "The Last Word," Harper's, August 2000)
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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 Powells.

While snorkeling in the ocean off the coast of Hawaii's Big Island, I had a conversation with a dolphin. She gave me clarity concerning a question I've been wondering about. I asked her, "What can Pisceans do to make sure their overflowing emotions don't cause the kind of chaos that undermines their ability to get things done?" I swear the dolphin answered me telepathically, because even though I couldn't understand the hubbub of shrieks and clicks she unleashed in response to my inquiry, my mind was suddenly filled with the following thoughts: Pisceans must love their oceanic emotions unconditionally . . . must see their endless inundation as a privilege and a blessing . . . must learn to surf the endless tidal wave not with a fearful sense of being a victim but with an exhilarated gratitude for the primal power of the adventure.

Where do you want to go in the coming week? Who do you want to be? For more clues, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES

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If you've ever watched The Simpsons TV show, you've probably heard Homer Simpson's favorite toast. "To alcohol," he proclaims, "the cause of and solution to all of life's problems." My own salute is different. "To the Divine Trickster formerly known as God," I say, "the cause of and solution to all of life's problems." Compose a prayer in which you simultaneously curse and thank the Primal Source.
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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 Powells.