"There's always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in," wrote novelist Graham Greene. I'll add to that: There are at least three moments in adulthood when a new door opens and invites the rest of the future in. Judging by the astrological omens, I'm guessing that one such breakthrough lies ahead for you in 2011. What can you do to expedite and encourage fate's summons? Here's one possibility: Surrender to the naked truth of what you love.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2011. Then, beginning December 28, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming 12 months. Tune in!

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The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is composed of stories, not of atoms. The physicist Werner Heisenberg declared that the universe is made of music, not of matter.

And we believe that if you habitually expose yourself to toxic stories and music, you could wind up living in the wrong universe, where it's impossible to become the gorgeous genius you were born to be.

That's why we implore you to nourish yourself with delicious, nutritious tales and tunes that inspire you to exercise your willpower for your highest 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.

If oil companies were given permission to sink their drilling rigs into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the petroleum they produced would ultimately lower gasoline prices by four cents per gallon. To my mind, that's not a good trade-off. Let this scenario serve as a cautionary metaphor for you in 2011, Taurus. Don't share your pristine wilderness or soulful beauty with exploitative types who offer iffy rewards. Instead, hold out for those who appreciate you profoundly and whose own gifts help you to thrive.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2011. Then, beginning December 28, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming 12 months. Tune in!

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Activist and author Naomi Klein tells a story about the time she traveled to Australia at the request of Aboriginal elders. They wanted her to know about their struggle to prevent white people from dumping radioactive wastes on their land.

Her hosts brought her to their beloved wilderness, where they camped under the stars. They showed her "secret sources of fresh water, plants used for bush medicines, hidden eucalyptus-lined rivers where the kangaroos come to drink."

After three days, Klein grew restless. When were they going to get down to business? "Before you can fight," she was told, "you have to know what you are fighting for."
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The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Freud said that among all human endeavors, there were three "impossible professions" that inevitably yielded unsatisfying results. They were child-rearing, the governing of nations, and psychoanalysis. My own experiences don't entirely confirm this. My parents raised me pretty well and I've given my daughter a decent upbringing. Of the nine psychotherapists I've consulted in my life, two were excellent healers and none were damaging. But even those relatively winning projects were sometimes fraught with unsolvable riddles, chronic frustrations, and maddening uncertainties. I bring this up, Gemini, because I think 2011 will be a time when you will generate far more gratification and success than usual in your own versions of "impossible professions." Unsolvable riddles, chronic frustrations, and maddening uncertainties won't be completely absent, but they could very well be at an all-time low.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2011. Then, beginning December 28, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming 12 months. Tune in!

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The Maasai people of Kenya don't have running water, toilets, or electricity, and their per capita income is $300 a year. They use cattle dung as plaster in building their homes because the scent helps repel lions, which dislike it, from venturing too close. And yet they are as happy with their lives as Forbes' magazine's "400 richest Americans" are with theirs -- even though the latter may live in 10,000-square-foot palaces with stained glass windows, French patio doors, limestone kitchen counter tops, spas, wine cellars, and Olympic-sized swimming pools.

This assertion comes from "Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being," a report done by psychologists Ed Diener and Martin E. P. Seligman. On a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 is "extremely dissatisfied," 4 is "neutral," and 7 means "extremely satisfied," the Maasai, the Inuit of northern Greenland, and the wealthiest Americans all scored 5.8.
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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.

"We have to believe in free will. We have no choice." So said author Isaac Bashevis Singer. I encourage you to adopt that puckish thought as your motto in 2011, my fellow Cancerian. According to my reading of the astrological omens, this will be our year to supercharge our willpower and intensify our ability to carry out our plans -- but always with good humor and a highly tuned sense of irony. In fact, one of the best ways to deepen our command over our own unconscious impulses and the caprices of fate will be to take ourselves -- and everything else, too -- less seriously.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2011. Then, beginning December 28, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming 12 months. Tune in!

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Dear Gorgeous Genius: You possess exceptional capacities that are absolutely unique. You're a masterpiece unlike any other that has ever lived in the history of the world.

Furthermore, the precise instructions you need to ripen into your genius have always been with you, even from the time before you were born. In the words of psychologist James Hillman, you have a soul's code.

You might also call it the special mission you came to Earth to carry out; the divine blueprint that contains the open secret of how to be perfectly, unpredictably yourself; the master plan that is your heart's deepest desire.

Would you like help in deciphering it? The Divine Intelligence Formerly Known as God is always on call, ready to help. It's your birthright to ask Her a specific question every day about what you need to do next to express your soul's code; it's also your birthright to receive a response.

The divine revelation may not be as unambiguous as a little voice in your head. It might appear in the form of a TV commercial, an odd dream, or an encounter with a stranger. It could be demanding and difficult, delivering information you'd rather not have to deal with. Or it might show up as a clear and simple feeling of knowing exactly what to do, and it could be easy and fun.
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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.

The coming year will be a time to think big -- maybe even bigger than you've dared to think in over a decade. That doesn't mean you should be rash, reckless, or unrealistic. On the contrary. Your expansive dreams should be carefully wrought and anchored in a detailed understanding of how things actually work. As an example of what not to do, learn from Snoop Dogg. The rapper wanted to rent all 62 square miles of the small European nation of Liechtenstein so he could film his music video there. Liechtenstein authorities turned him down, but only because his team didn't ask far enough in advance. Had he been better organized, the whole country could have been his.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2011. Then, beginning December 28, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming 12 months. Tune in!

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You know beyond any doubt that each of your heart's beats originates as a gift of love directly from the Goddess herself. You understand that the laws of physics are fine-tuned to create a universe in which you can thrive. You realize with visceral lucidity that everything you see is permeated with a single, unified conscious intelligence, of which you partake intimately. This intelligence is immortal, and thus, so are you. As you register the shocking joy of these truths imprinting themselves on your perfect body, every one of your cells purrs with luminous gratitude.
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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.

An Oregon man named Don Wesson stopped his truck by the side of the road and took home a 40-pound rock that caught his eye. That was more than a decade ago. For years he used it as part of a border to prevent his dog from messing up his garden. Then he saw a TV show about meteorites and brought the rock to scientists. They told him it was a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite that fell to earth long ago and originally came from the asteroid belt. Other experts told him he could probably sell the exotic artifact for as much as $40,000. I predict a metaphorically similar development in your life during the coming year: the discovery of a valuable old thing from far away that you will underestimate at first.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2011. Then, beginning December 28, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming 12 months. Tune in!

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In honor of your enhanced power to be yourself, I hereby reward you with a host of fresh titles. From now on you will be known as the Senior Vice President of Strawberry Fields and Hummingbirds, and the Deputy Director of Green Lights and Purple Hearts. Consider yourself, as well, to be the new Puzzle-Master Supreme, the Chief Custodian of Secret Weapons, and Field Commander of Free Lunches and Poetic Licenses.
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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.

Richard Grossinger is my friend, my teacher, and the brilliant author of numerous books. (His latest is called 2013: Raising the Earth to the Next Vibration.) He is also a humble adept in the high art of gratitude. On his website, he has a page devoted to expressing vivid appreciation for the 71 best teachers of his life. His testimony is a riveting and touching reminder of how each of us is a creation of all the important people we've loved and hated. Compiling such a list should, I think, be a rite of passage for anyone who aspires to be an authentic human being. There will never be a better time than 2011 for you to do this work yourself, Libra.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2011. Then, beginning December 28, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming 12 months. Tune in!

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Consider the possibility that the people who seem to slow us down and hold us back are actually preventing things from happening too fast. Imagine that the evolution of your life or our culture is like a pregnancy: It needs to reach its full term. Just as a child isn't ready to be born after five months of gestation, the New Earth we're creating has to ripen in its own time. The recalcitrant reactionaries who resist the inevitable birth are simply making sure that the far-seeing revolutionaries don't conjure the future too suddenly. They serve the greater 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.

"Just when I found out the meaning of life," said comedian George Carlin, "they changed it." I'm hoping that will be one of your top inspirational jokes in 2011, Scorpio. If all goes well, you will no longer be content with all your previous answers to the question "What is the meaning of life?" -- either because "they changed it," as Carlin suggested, or because it's no longer interesting or useful to you. This is very good news, in my opinion. You will have the invigorating privilege of going off in search of fresh answers to the riddle of the ages!

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2011. Then, beginning December 28, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming 12 months. Tune in!

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If you have encountered examples of the following evidence, tell us about it. Send your testimony to the Beauty and Truth Lab at Truthrooster@gmail.com. You might want to include the following:

1. bliss that flows toward you because you've made a habit of expecting it and cultivating it;

2. good news that's really interesting; fascinating stories that provide an antidote to the media's obsession with hardship, anguish, deterioration, and death;

3. states of emotional wealth and psychological health: raw material for the manual that will be the corrective for the DSM-IV; the missing half of the story;

4. mirabilia: mysterious revelations, rejuvenating prodigies, ineffable breakthroughs, beguiling ephemera, sudden deliverance from boring evils;

5. plain old everyday miracles;

6. the good news you've gone out and created.
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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.

The United Nations has declared that 2011 will be the International Year of Chemistry -- a time to honor the role chemistry plays in our lives. Meanwhile, you Sagittarians will be celebrating your own personal Year of Chemistry, although in a different sense of the word -- the sense that means natural attraction, spontaneous connection, intuitive allure, and uncanny synchronicity. Don't let this abundance of grace make you overconfident, and don't just sit back and let it run wild. Be a master chemist intent on rigorously cultivating the very best experiments.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2011. Then, beginning December 28, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming 12 months. Tune in!

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You're a gorgeous mystery with a wild heart and a lofty purpose. But like all of us, you also have a dark side -- a part of your psyche that snarls and bites, that's unconscious and irrational, that is motivated by ill will or twisted passions or instinctual fears. It's your own personal portion of the world's sickness: a mess of repressed longings, enervating wounds, ignorant delusions, and unripe powers. You'd prefer to ignore it because it's unflattering or uncomfortable or very different from what you imagine yourself to be.

If you acknowledge its existence at all (many of us don't), you might call it the devil, your evil twin, your inner monster, or your personal demon. Psychologist Carl Jung referred to it as the shadow. He regarded it as the lead that the authentic alchemists of the Middle Ages sought to transmute into gold.

How are you doing on your work of changing your own personal lead into gold?
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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.

I have tracked down a formula that I think should be one of your central ongoing meditations in 2011. It's from newsman David Brinkley: "A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her." In the coming months you will be extra smart about knowing which of these bricks to use and how exactly to position them in your foundation. And more than that, Capricorn: You will have special insight not only about bricks that have been flung fairly recently, but also about those that have been hurled at any time in your life.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2011. Then, beginning December 28, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming 12 months. Tune in!

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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 Lab 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.

The city of Stockholm, Sweden consists of 14 islands that are spanned by more than 50 bridges. It's a beautiful, clean, culturally rich place that's ranked among the best urban centers in the world. I'm hoping that in the coming year you will develop a certain resemblance to it. With a little luck and a clear intention to forge strong new links, you will connect the many fragmented areas of your life, creating a unified network that ensures each part is humming in resonance with the whole. In fact, let's call 2011 your Bridge-Building Year.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2011. Then, beginning December 28, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming 12 months. Tune in!

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Conventional wisdom implies that the best problems are those that place you under duress. There's supposedly no gain without pain. Stress is allegedly an incomparable spur for calling on resources that have been previously unavailable or dormant. Nietzsche's aphorism, "That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger," has achieved the status of a maxim.

We half-agree. But it's clear that stress also accompanies many mediocre problems that have little power to make us smarter. Pain frequently generates no gain. We're all prone to become habituated, even addicted, to nagging vexations that go on and on without rousing any of our sleeping genius.

There is, furthermore, another class of difficulty -- let's call it the delightful dilemma -- that neither feeds on angst nor generates it. On the contrary, it's fun and invigorating, and usually blooms when you're feeling a profound sense of being at home in the world. The problem of writing this book is a good example. I've had abundant fun handling the perplexing challenges with which it has confronted me.

Imagine a life in which at least half of your quandaries match this profile. Act as if you're most likely to attract useful problems when joy is your predominant mood. Consider the possibility that being in unsettling circumstances may shrink your capacity to dream up the riddles you need most; that maybe it's hard to ask the best questions when you're preoccupied fighting rearguard battles against boring or demeaning annoyances that have plagued you for many moons.

Prediction: As an aspiring lover of pronoia, you will have a growing knack for gravitating toward wilder, wetter, more interesting problems. More and more, you will be drawn to the kind of gain that doesn't require pain. You'll be so alive and awake that you'll cheerfully push yourself out of your comfort zone in the direction of your personal frontier well before you're forced to do so by fate's kicks in the ass.
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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.

At age 19, I wanted to be a poet when I grew up. My goal was to write a poem every day forever. And yet I had almost no ambition to get published. I was satisfied to bask in the ecstatic epiphany that accompanied each fresh poetic eruption. Then one day I was browsing in a bookshop and saw a flyer for a big upcoming poetry reading. It included every major poet in my then-hometown of Santa Cruz -- except me. I was shocked and hurt. Why was I left out? Eventually I realized it was because all the other poets listed had written a book. From that moment on I was obsessively driven to publish my own tome. A year later, after much hard work, it came to pass. I would love to see you experience a similar wake-up call in 2011, Pisces: a friendly jolt that motivates you to rise to the next level.

This week my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES offer you a teaser look at some of the major themes you will be working and playing with in 2011. Then, beginning December 28, I will devote three consecutive weeks of EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES to an in-depth discussion of your long-range outlook for the coming 12 months. Tune in!

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The Yanyuwa Aboriginal people live along the coast of Australia's Northern Territory. Their word for "fat" is nalu-ngiliny. It doesn't merely refer to the greasy stuff that grows naturally under the skin of animal bodies. It's also a metaphysical term for vitality.

Anything that's rich in nalu-ngiliny is healthy. A certain landscape may be considered fat, for instance, which means that it's fertile and sacred. When acacia flowers bloom each year, it's a sign that sea turtles and the marine mammals known as dugongs, favorite foods of the Yanyuwa, are "fat" and ready to be hunted.

I have a fantasy that you will identify the things in your life that are nalu-ngiliny, and give them the honor and gratitude they deserve.
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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.