Time magazine asked Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough why he started writing a biography of Pablo Picasso but never finished it. McCullough said it was because the famous artist turned out to be boring. He attracted a steady flow of new lovers, and he made hundreds of paintings, but he didn't actually live an interesting life. I'm urging you to be the anti-Picasso in the coming weeks, Aries. Put the emphasis on the quality of your adventures more than on what you produce. Regard your life as your most important work of art.

Need more help in figuring out the questions life is asking you? Crave more support in your efforts to build your courage? Check out your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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 book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

"Let's celebrate the first time you cried naked in someone else's bed," is a message on an e-card I found at Someecards.com. You might want to send that proposal to yourself, Taurus. It's an excellent time to commemorate the rousing catharses of the past. You may find that revisiting the breakthrough epiphanies of yesteryear will help put you in the right frame of mind (and heart) to conjure up a fresh batch.

What fresh blessings will life bring you? What questions should you be asking? To explore the ripening trends further, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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.

Why is it so hard for Westerners of the last two centuries to feel the intimate presence of the divine intelligences? Every other culture in the history of the world has had a more vital connection with the realm of spirit. According to poet Gary Snyder, California's Yana Indians explained it this way: The gods have retreated to the volcanic recesses of Mt. Lassen, passing the time playing gambling games with magic sticks. They're simply waiting for such a time when human beings will "reform themselves and become 'real people' that spirits might want to associate with once again." Here's why I'm bringing this up, Gemini: I think that right now is a special time in your life when you have the power to become a "real person" with whom the spirits will want to have closer communion.

Want to explore this chapter of your life story even further? Dig deeper? Push harder? Consider tuning in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES.

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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.

I strongly advise you against purchasing and reading what some observers have called "the saddest book in the universe." It's a recipe book by Sonia Allison called Microwave for One. No matter how inclined you might be to opt for excessive self-sufficiency right now, no matter how peeved you are at the human race for being so clumsy and ignorant, I believe you must keep trying to reach out and touch those who are touchable, even if they're barely so. You need what people have to offer you, even if it's sloppy, wimpy, or kooky.

You're got more strength and intelligence than you realize. For help in accessing those untapped inner resources, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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.

Science writer K.C. Cole asks this question: "How would you hold 100 tons of water in thin air with no visible means of support?" Here's her answer: "Build a cloud." What you have before you right now, Leo, is a comparable scenario. Your assignment is to materialize a phenomenon that from a certain viewpoint may appear to be laughably impossible. And yet, with the proper attitude on your part and nature's help, the project at hand is eminently achievable. It won't necessarily be fast and easy, mind you -- but you wouldn't want it to be, because then it wouldn't be able to teach you all the precious wisdom it has to impart.

How are you going to change what needs to be changed and accept what needs to be accepted? To get some support from me, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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.

"Dear Astrology Guy: Thank you kindly for your assistance. One of your horoscopes gave me a kick in the butt that propelled me free of a trap I had stupidly agreed to stay stuck in. At the same time, I also have to tell you to go to hell, because no one, including me, likes hearing the awful, embarrassing truth. As much healing as your words helped bring me, they also stung my pride. Love and hate, Virgo." Dear Virgo: You're welcome and I'm sorry. It's good to hear you're able to appreciate the gifts of paradox. Let's hope that will keep you creatively humble as you slip into an expansive building phase when your ego may be understandably prone to a bit of inflation.

Sometimes it's a challenge to try to figure out what's important and what's not important. If you'd like more of my input, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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.

Newsweek reported a fact that few Westerners know about: Nigeria is accustomed to major oil spills. Every year since the 1960s, the Niger Delta has been slammed with a spill as extensive as the Exxon Valdez, which was the second biggest oil catastrophe in U.S. history. "Large purple slicks cover once fertile fields," said Newsweek, "and rivers are clogged with oil leaked decades ago." My purpose in bringing this to your attention is not to depress you, Libra, but rather to inspire you. In the coming weeks, I hope you will make it your passion to uncover injustices you've been unaware of, including those close to home. I think you'll be amazed at how much this buoys your spirits. P.S.: You'll get extra credit if you actually take action to address the unfairness.

How well is your imagination working these days? Could it use a boost? A prod? A jolt of inspiration? Try tuning in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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 uaregod@comcast.net. 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.

In the song "Fantasy World," the lead singer of the band Pissed Jeans imagines himself in his happy place. "It's Friday night and Saturday morning in my fantasy world / Sitting near piles of clothes and drinking a soda / with a slice of pizza in my fantasy world." He's not describing some unrealistic paradise where he can fly like an eagle and seduce anyone he wants and find gold bars under his pillow in the morning. Rather, he's content with the simple, familiar pleasures. I urge you to follow his lead as you imagine and create your own fantasy world this week. Love what you've got.

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

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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.

The highest unclimbed mountain in the world is Gangkhar Puensum, an almost 25,000-foot-tall beauty in Bhutan. It will remain free of human influence indefinitely, as local authorities are keen on preventing the environmental degradation that has occurred on popular peaks like Mt. Everest, where climbers have left lots of trash. What's the equivalent in your sphere, Sagittarius? The most prominent unconquered prize? The Grail that still remains elusive? The virgin treasure your quest has not yet won? According to my analysis, you now have the potential to make tangible progress toward that goal. Unlike the case with Gangkhar Puensum, there are no rules or laws preventing you.

How much do you want to know about your life? How far do you dare to go in your quest for self-mastery? For more insight into your intriguing fate, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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.

"Mommy, are scientists real?" the boy asked his mother. "Yes, son, they are," she replied. "Do they make stuff that is dangerous?" continued the boy. "Sometimes they do," said the mom. "Then I want to be one when I grow up," concluded the boy. In the coming weeks, Capricorn, I see you as being like the boy. You'll be in the mood to brainstorm about what you might like to evolve into, and your fantasies will tend to move in the direction of what's most adventurous and exciting. I urge you to fully indulge in those flights of fancy. It's time to dream really big and really free.

Would you like to hear more about the hidden factors influencing your life? Do you want to uncover the secrets you've been hiding even from yourself? Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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.

"I got expelled from college for cheating during my metaphysics final," joked Woody Allen. "I got caught looking into the soul of the guy next to me." Even if you're not taking a big test for a metaphysics class, Aquarius, I urge you to do a lot of what Allen claimed he did: Gaze into the souls of those around you. It's an excellent time, astrologically speaking, for you to escape the enclosed container of your own inner world and survey the raw truths and deep feelings that other people hold dear.

Do you wish you could get more clarity about the foggy, ambiguous situations you're dealing with? 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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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.

"I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine," said pioneering geneticist J.B.S. Haldane. I share that view, and I think it's good to keep in mind whenever we're tempted to rearrange our lives in accordance with the visions of those who predict the future, whether they be New Age prophets, indigenous elders, scientific experts, or political pundits. Nobody knows much of anything about how it's all going to unfold! The future is not set in stone, but is totally up for grabs. The sooner you make that an everyday reminder, the more aggressive you'll become about creating the life you want. Now is an excellent time to get the hang of it.

Do you want further explorations of the intriguing twists and turns of your personal evolution? Would you like help in solving the riddles that confuse you? Check out your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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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.