"Don't be angry with the rain," counseled author Vladimir Nabokov. "It simply does not know how to fall upward." In the coming week, I advise you to apply that principle to a host of phenomena, Aries. Don't get all knotted up about any force of nature that insists on being itself, and don't waste your time trying to figure out how to disobey the law of gravity. It's fine if you find it amusing to go against the flow, but don't expect the flow to follow you in your rebellion.

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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Evil is boring. The universe is friendly. Life is on your side. Joy is your birthright.
Cynicism is idiotic. Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy. In fact, all of creation wants you to succeed.
Act as if the universe is a prodigious miracle created for your amusement and illumination. Assume that secret helpers are working behind the scenes to assist you in turning into the gorgeous masterpiece you were born to be. Retrain your senses and intellect so you're able to perceive the fact that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.
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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.

Where will you be in the latter half of 2016? What will you be doing? Now would be an excellent time to fantasize and meditate about questions like those. You're likely to have a good bit of intuitive foresight in the coming days -- some ability to discern the embryonic patterns swirling in the mists. But even more importantly, you will have extra power to dream up potent visions for your best possible future and plant them as seeds in the fertile bed of your subconscious mind.

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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George prayed every day for three years to win the lottery, but never heard from God or hit the jackpot.
Finally, God woke him up in the middle of the night. "George, is that you who's been praying so hard to win the lottery?" the Supreme Being boomed.
"Yes, Lord, desperately!"
God paused for a moment, then said thoughtfully, "George, I'll tell you what. I want you to meet me halfway. Buy a ticket, OK?"
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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 believe you're close to getting permanent immunity from hell, Gemini. Take it as a metaphor if you like, but consider the possibility that there may soon come a time when you will never again be susceptible to getting dragged into the bottomless pit. You will receive the equivalent of a "Get out of jail free" card that forever guarantees you exemption from the worst of the nightmare realms. Please note: I'm not saying you will be forever free of all suffering. But if you simply keep doing the smart things you've been doing lately, you will tap into a reservoir of stabilizing poise so strong that "the devil" will have no further claim on your soul.

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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Is it really healthy to have a shrill, 25-words-or-less opinion about everything, as radio and TV talk shows seem to imply? Would anyone mind if now and then you served as a compassionate witness about the hot-button issues? Is it conceivable that you could simply sit on the fence in the midst of the wars of words and beam articulate sympathy at both sides?

Yes, you can. You have the rebellious resourcefulness to be a freedom fighter without hating anyone. Go out and prove it.
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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 Blood," an episode of the TV show Seinfeld, George tries to go for "the Trifecta": eating a pastrami sandwich and watching TV while having sex. His girlfriend isn't pleased about it, though, so the triple-intense pleasure doesn't materialize in the way George had hoped. But something akin to this scenario could very well work for you in the coming week, Cancerian. You will have a knack for stirring up more fun and pleasure that usual through the inventive use of multitasking.

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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If you're typical, your natural curiosity was virtually extinguished at an early age by mediocre teachers, boring lessons, and oppressive classrooms. Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if your imagination hadn't been squelched? What interesting adventures might you have sought out if your natural love of learning hadn't been crushed?

Let's launch a quest to undo the damage. Imagine I've handed you an undiploma: your official release from the soul-death of your formal education; the beginning of the healing of your wounded love of learning. What's the first thing you'll do to invoke a steady stream of inspired teachers and invigorating lessons?
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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 Wiccan circles, a "familiar" is a supernatural entity or magic animal that serves as a spirit ally. Some witches regard their cats as their familiars. In Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy of fantasy books, the "daemon" (very different from a "demon") plays a similar role: a shapeshifting creature that embodies a person's soul. This would be an excellent time for you to develop a closer relationship with a familiar or daemon or any other uncanny helper, Leo. You have more hidden power at your disposal than you realize, and it's a propitious time to call on it.

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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"Is it bad to live without a hell?" poet Pablo Neruda asks in The Book of Questions. Let's add these queries to his: Is it dangerous to live without an enemy? Is it naive to think you can achieve great success without the driving motivation that comes from having ideas you hate? There are thousands of correct answers to these questions. What are yours?

Consider the issue from another angle. Dentists love tooth decay. Treating cavities provides them with a steady source of income. Likewise, exterminators are dependent on termites, lawyers need crimes, and priests are hungry for sinners. Lots of people have symbiotic connections with nasty stuff. In fact, isn't it true that most of us nurture our feelings for the things we love to despise and fear?

What's your favorite poison or adversary? Assume that your exposure to pronoia is changing you in ways that will require you to update your relationship with it. Speculate on how you'll go about this task.
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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.

Wheel of Fortune is a TV game show in which players vie to guess a mystery phrase that is revealed letter by letter. On one episode not too long ago, a highly intuitive contestant solved the puzzle even though just one letter had been unveiled. The winning answer was "I've got a good feeling about this." From what I can tell, Virgo, you've got a similar aptitude these days -- an ability to foresee how things are ultimately going to develop simply by extrapolating from a few clues. I encourage you to make liberal use of your temporary superpower. (P.S. I've got a good feeling about this.)

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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The factor most likely to drive us to addiction or illness is a lack of intimate contact with spirit. We all need a daily dose of vastness. Paradoxically, many of us would also benefit from more microscopic vision. Because we're so deprived of divine connection, we're half-dreaming all the time; our unconscious pining for the eternal source distracts us from the vivid little glories that are splayed out around us. And so we miss the Divine Wow from both directions.

Try this: Prime your connection with spirit by focusing your attention on tones and shapes you usually miss: reflections in windows, the sky between the oak tree's branches, the shadows on the water, the two different emotions in a friend's eyes and mouth.
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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.

You have about 100 billion neurons in your brain. That also happens to be the approximate number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Coincidence? I think not. As the mystic dictum reminds us, "As above, so below." The macrocosm and microcosm are mirrors of each other. Everything that happens on a collective level has an intimately personal impact. The better you know yourself, the more likely you are to understand how the world works -- and vice versa. I urge you to be alert for concrete evidence of this principle, Libra. Your week will be successful if you make it your background meditation.

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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Have you ever had permission to indulge in a marathon of braggadocio? Have you ever gotten an invitation to bluster on endlessly about your own charms without feeling even a touch of guilt or inhibition? I hereby grant you such a license right now.

When you're ready, carry out the exercise called Brag Therapy. Grab a good listener or a recording device, and boast extravagantly about yourself for at least 20 minutes. Expound in exhaustive detail why you're so wonderful and why the world would be a better place if everyone would just act more like you.

Don't be humble or cautious. Go too far. Heap extreme glory on yourself. Brazenly proclaim the fabulous qualities about you that no one has ever fully articulated or appreciated. Don't forget to extol the prodigious flaws and vices that make you so special.

What does this have to do with pronoia? When you audaciously identify your existing gifts, you set yourself up to become a magnet for even greater abundance. In fact, we recommend that you treat yourself to a Brag Therapy session regularly.

To whet your imagination, read an excerpt from the boast of Eric Baer, a participant in a Brag Therapy session I hosted in Milwaukee. "I have opposable thumbs," Eric exulted. "I can read. I breathe all the way through the night even though I'm asleep. I have access to emporiums where I can choose from 25 different brands of toilet paper. I know how to turn food into energy. I live where knuckleheads run everything and yet nothing ever blows up."
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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.

"By the year 2021, the complete gratification of sexual desires will be as easy and stress-free as drinking a glass of water." That was one of 25 prophecies delivered to me by a polite, well-spoken madman I met on a July morning in a cafe in Earls Court, London back in 1990. Sixteen of his other predictions have come true so far (like "America will have a black president by 2010," "You will become a famous astrologer," "60-year-old women will be able to give birth"), so I'm thinking that the one about easy sexual gratification could turn out to be accurate as well. Until then, Scorpio, you may sometimes have to deal with periodic struggles in getting your needs met. Having said that, though, I'm happy to announce that the coming weeks are shaping up as one of your closest approximations to the supposed 2021 levels of erotic bliss.

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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Don't make nasty comments about yourself behind your own back.

Do play soccer in bunny slippers at dawn in a supermarket parking lot with a gang of sadomasochistic stockbrokers who've promised to teach you the Balinese monkey chant.

Don't decorate your thigh with a sloppy tattoo of the devil pushing a lawn mower.

Do wear a t-shirt that says, "Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most."

Don't glide into a bar, scout around for the person whose face has the most pain etched in it, and ask that person to come home with you.

Do eat ripe organic strawberries that have been genetically modified and irradiated, and do chain-smoke Marlboros as you peddle your exercise bicycle, and do wander through a garbage dump while listening to Mozart on your iPod.

Don't get hooked on the fantasy that there are only two kinds of people, those who align themselves with the forces of light and those who align themselves with the forces of darkness.

Do start an organization called POMP (Proud Owners of Multiple Personalities), dedicated to erasing negative stereotypes about healthy non-schizophrenics who enjoy being a community of many different selves.

Don't lie on a floor surrounded by wine-stained poetry books, crumpled Matisse prints, abandoned underwear, and half-eaten bowls of corn flakes as you stare up at the ceiling with a mad gaze, muttering gibberish and waving your hands as if swatting away demons.

Do run along the tops of cars during a traffic jam, escaping from bad guys as you make your way to a helicopter that takes you to a spot hovering over an erupting volcano, into which you drop the Buns of Steel video.

Don't put your soul up for auction on eBay.

Do write a cookbook filled with recipes you've channeled from dead celebrities.

If you come upon a lamp with a genie in it, don't wish you had a magic wand.
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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 beauty contests in Saudi Arabia don't judge women on the basis of their physical appearance. A recent winner, Aya Ali al-Mulla, was crowned "Queen of Beautiful Morals" without ever revealing the face and form shrouded beneath her black head-to-toe garment. Instead, her excellence emerged during a series of psychological and social tests that evaluated her strength of character and service to family and society. I'd like to borrow this idea and apply it to you. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, you could and should be a paragon of moral beauty in the coming week -- a shining example and inspiration to all the other signs of the zodiac.

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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Every fundamentalist divides the world into two camps, those who agree with him and like him and help him, and those who don't. There is only one right way to interpret the world -- according to the ideas the fundamentalist believes to be true -- and a million wrong ways.

The fundamental attitude of all fundamentalists is to take everything way too seriously and too personally and too literally. Imagination is a sin and a crime. Correct belief is the only virtue. Every fundamentalist is committed to waging war against the imagination unless the imagination is enslaved to his or her belief system.

And here's the bad news: Like almost everyone in the world, each of us has our own share of the fundamentalist virus. It may not be as dangerous to the collective welfare as, say, the fundamentalism of Islamic terrorists or Christian politicians or CEOs who act as if making a financial profit is the supreme good or scientists who deny the existence of the 96 percent of reality imperceptible to the five senses. Our fundamentalism is not as virulent as theirs.

But still: We are infected, you and I, with fundamentalism. What are we going to do about it?

I say we practice taking everything less seriously and less personally and less literally.
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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.

Philip Marinovich calls his poetry book And If You Don't Go Crazy I'll Meet You Here Tomorrow. I'm borrowing that title for this horoscope. So here goes: If you don't go crazy in the coming days, Capricorn, I'll meet you here again next week. To be clear: There is an excellent chance you will be able to keep our appointment. The astrological omens suggest you'll call on reserves of wisdom that haven't been accessible before, and that alone could prevent you from a brush with lunacy. You're also primed to be nimble in your dealings with paradoxes, which, again, should keep you from descending into fairy-tale-style madness. But even if you do take a partial detour into the land of kooky, I think it will have an oddly healing effect on you. See you next time!

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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Receptivity is not a passive state. Nor is it a blank, empty waiting around for whatever happens to come along. In urging you to cultivate receptivity, I don't mean you should become a lazy do-nothing bereft of goals, reacting blindly to whatever life throws in front of you. Receptivity is a robust readiness to be surprised and moved; a vigorous intention to be awake to everything you can't control. When you're receptive in the pronoiac style, you have strong ideas and a powerful will and an eagerness to disseminate your unique blessings, but you're also animated by the humble certainty that you have a lot to learn.
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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.

There's no better way to inform you of your task right now than to cite Hexagram 18 of the I Ching, the ancient Chinese book of divination. The title of the oracle is "Work on What Has Been Spoiled." Here's an interpretation by the I Ching's translator Richard Wilhelm, with a little help from me: "What has been spoiled through human mistakes can be made good again through human work. It is not immutable fate that has caused the state of corruption, but rather the abuse of human freedom. Toil that is done to correct the situation bodes well, because it is in harmony with cosmic potentials. Success depends on diligent deliberation followed by vigorous action."

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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Where exactly does happiness come from? That's the riddle posed by David Meyers and Ed Diener in their article, "The Science of Happiness," published in The Futurist magazine. I invite you to write your own answers to their question. Map out the foundations of your own science of happiness. Get serious about defining what makes you feel good. What specific experiences arouse your deepest gratification? Physical pleasure? Seeking the truth? Being a good person? Contemplating the meaning of life? Enjoying the fruits of your accomplishments? Purging pent-up emotion?
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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.

Breaking the rules could be a boon for your closest relationships if it's done out of deep caring and not out of anger or boredom. Can you commit to that high standard, Pisces? I hope so, because it's prime time to shake up and reinvigorate stale concepts about togetherness. You will never know how much more interesting your intimate alliances can be unless you put that vivacious imagination of yours to work. Would you be willing to buy tickets for a joint excursion to the frontier? Go hunting for surprises that recalibrate the dynamic between you and yours? Take a collaborative risk you'd never want to face alone?

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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Whatever you choose to focus your attention on, you will get more of it. If you often think of everything you lack and how sad you are that you don't have it, you will tend to receive prolific evidence of how true that is. As you obsess on all the ways your life is different from what you wish it would be, you will become an expert in rousing feelings of frustration and you will attract experiences that assist you in rousing frustration.

If, on the other hand, you dwell on the good things you have already had the privilege to experience, you will expand your appreciation for their blessings, which in turn will amplify their beneficent impact on your life. You will also magnetize yourself to receive further good things, making it more likely that they will be attracted into your sphere. At the very least, you will get in the habit of enjoying yourself no matter what the outward circumstances are.
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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.