Jim Moran (1908-1999) called himself a publicist, but I regard him as a pioneer performance artist. At various times in his colorful career, he led a bull through a china shop in New York City, changed horses in midstream in Nevada's Truckee River, and looked for a needle in a haystack until he found it. You might want to draw inspiration from his work in the coming weeks, Aries. You will not only have a knack for mutating cliches and scrambling conventional wisdom. In doing so, you could also pull off feats that might seem improbable.

What is the obvious secret you can't quite see? How could you turn your challenges into daily gifts for yourself? For clues to mysteries like these, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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In his book Starbucked, Taylor Clark says there's a woman who goes to a Seattle Starbucks every morning and orders a "decaf single grande extra vanilla two-percent extra caramel 185-degrees with whipped cream caramel macchiato."

Maybe her request seems overly fussy and demanding, but it could be a good act for you to mimic. Try this: For a given time, say 12 days, be equally as exacting in asking for what you want. Assume that you have a poetic license to be extremely specific as you go about your quest for fulfillment.
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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.

One possible way to tap into the current cosmic opportunities would be to seek out storegasms -- the ecstatic feelings released while exercising one's buyological urges in consumer temples crammed with an obscene abundance of colorful material goods. But I advise you against doing that. It wouldn't be a very creative solution to the epic yearnings that are welling up in your down-below-and-deep-inside parts. Instead, I offer a potentially far more satisfying recommendation: Routinely maneuver yourself into positions where your primal self will be filled up with sublime wonder, mysterious beauty, and smart love.

Grace emerges in the ebb and flow, not just the flow. The waning reveals a different blessing than the waxing. Where are you in the great cycle of your life? For inspiration in figuring it all out, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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"Why, I don't even respect myself, I tell ya," said comedian Rodney Dangerfield. "When I make love, I have to fantasize that I am somebody else!"

Experiment with just the second half of that formulation. While you're making love, fantasize that you're somebody else. But do it because you care deeply about yourself -- so deeply that you want to transcend your customary reactions and expand your identity. Do it because you dare to awaken to previously unknown possibilities of who you might be.
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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'm not an either-or type of person. I don't think that there are just two sides of every story and that you have to align yourself with one or the other. That's one reason why, as an America voter, I reject the idea that I must either sympathize with the goals of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. It's also why I'm bored by the trumped-up squabble between the atheists and the fundamentalist Christians, and the predictable arguments between dogmatic cynics and fanatical optimists. I urge you to try my approach in the coming weeks, Gemini. Find a third way between any two sides that tend to divide the world into Us against Them.

Whether it's your time to ferment in the shadows or sing in the sun, fresh power to transform yourself is on the way. Life always delivers the creative energy you need to change into the new thing you must become. For more help in understanding it all, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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There was an indignant uproar after revelations in 2006 that James Frey's best-selling "memoir" A Million Little Pieces contains fabrications. He hadn't actually lived all of the experiences he depicted therein.

Hearing about it prompted me to ruminate on whether there's any such thing as a completely accurate account of any person's life. My conclusion: no.

In every autobiography and biography ever written, the author imaginatively strings together selectively chosen details to conjure up artificially coherent narratives rather than depicting the crazy-quilt ambiguity that actually characterizes everyone's journey.

If you and nine writers set out to tell your life story, you'd produce 10 wildly different tales, each rife with subjective interpretation, misplaced emphasis, unintentional distortions, and exorbitant extrapolations from insufficient data.

Celebrate the malleability of reality. Regale listeners with stories about the time you worked as a pirate in the Indian Ocean, or rode the rails through Kansas as a hobo, or gave a down-on-his-luck CIA agent sage advice in an elevator. When you call to get pizza delivered and the clerk who takes your order asks your name, say you're Brad Pitt or Paris Hilton. When someone you're meeting is annoyed because you're late, say you couldn't help it because you were smoking crack in the bus station bathroom with your mom's guru and lost track of time. If asked how much education you have, say you have three PhDs, one each in astrobiology, Russian literature, and whale songs.
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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.

o one actually looks like the retouched images of the seemingly perfect people in sexy ads. It's impossible to be that flawless, with no wrinkles, blemishes, and scars. Acknowledging this fact, the iconic supermodel Cindy Crawford once said, "I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford." Our unconscious inclination to compare ourselves to such unrealistic ideals is the source of a lot of mischief in our lives. Your assignment in the coming week, Cancerian, is to divest yourself, as much as possible, of all standards of perfection that alienate you from yourself or cause you to feel shame about who you really are. (More fodder to motivate you.)

You can learn to be lucky. It's not a mystical force you're born with, but a habit you can develop. How? For starters, be open to new experiences, trust your gut wisdom, expect good fortune, see the bright side of challenging events, and master the art of maximizing serendipitous opportunities. For more help, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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George III was King of England from 1760 to 1820. During the last years of his reign, he gradually became more and more detached from reality, talking to himself for hours on end and addressing trees as if they were people. When he first began losing his mind, his servants and assistants made a conscious decision to help him feel more comfortable by acting eccentric themselves.

Their collusion with George's pathology is an extreme example of a situation that all of us are at risk of. Our associates and loved ones may fall into a rhythm of going along with our odd ideas and bad habits, encouraging us to continue doing what we probably shouldn't do.

Are your allies refraining from busting you or calling your bluff, when they probably should? Bust yourself. Call your own bluff.
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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.

Barney Oldfield (1878-1946) was a pioneer car racer who was the first ever to run a 100-mile-per-hour lap at the Indianapolis 500. He was a much better driver while setting speed records and beating other cars on racetracks than he was at moseying through regular street traffic. Why? He said he couldn't think clearly if he was traveling at less than 100 miles per hour. I suspect you may temporarily have a similar quirk, Leo -- not in the way you drive but rather in the way you live and work and play. To achieve maximum lucidity, you may have to be moving pretty fast.

Somewhere there's a treasure that has no value to anyone but you, and a secret that's meaningless to everyone except you, and a frontier that harbors a revelation only you would know how to exploit. Why not go in search of those things? For inspiration, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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If a cow is given a name by her owner, she generates more milk than a cow that's treated as an anonymous member of the herd. That's the conclusion of a study done by researchers at Newcastle University in the UK. "Placing more importance on knowing the individual animals and calling them by name," said Dr. Catherine Douglas, "can significantly increase milk production."

Building on that principle, I suggest that you give everything in your world names, including (but not limited to) houseplants, insects, cars, appliances, and trees. It will help you get more up-close and personal with all of creation, which is an effective way to cultivate pronoia.
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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.

Back in August 2010, there was an 11-day traffic snarl on a Chinese highway. At one point the stuck vehicles stretched for 60 miles and inched along at the rate of a mile per day. In that light, your current jam isn't so bad. It may be true that your progress has been glacial lately, but at least you've had a bed to sleep in and a bathroom to use, which is more than can be said for the stranded Chinese motorists and truck drivers. Plus I'm predicting that your own personal jam is going to disperse sometime in the next few days. Be prepped and ready to rumble on.

When they say "Be yourself," which self do they mean? Certainly not the self that wants to win every game and use up every resource and stand alone at the end of time on a mountain of pretty garbage. So which self is it? For guidance, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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Sometimes the best gift you can give your ego is to tell it you're not going to be its slave anymore. You say to it, "I'm tired of being whipped around by every one of your ever-shifting little needs, and I'm sick of having to kowtow to your inexhaustible demands. I want to be free of your insatiable craving to be appreciated, recognized, and adored. Go away and leave me alone. I'm just going to be who I am without worrying about you at all."

Delivering this message may stimulate a healing crisis. Your ego could be temporarily rendered numb and irrelevant by its near death experience, and you'll get to go off and do what your soul wants to do.

Tell your ego you won't be its slave for a period of three days.
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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.

Here's a joke from Woody Allen's movie Annie Hall: "Two elderly women are in a Catskills Mountain resort and one of them says: 'Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other one says, 'Yeah, I know -- and such small portions.'" Is it possible you're acting like the second woman, Libra? Are you being influenced to find fault with something that you actually kind of like? Are you ignoring your own preferences simply because you think it might help you to be close to those whose preferences are different? I urge you not to do that in the coming week. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, it's very important that you know how you feel and stay true to your feelings.

Take inventory of the extent that "No" dominates your life. Notice how often you say or think: 1. "That's not right." 2. "I don't like that." 3. "I don't agree with that." 4. "They don't like me." 5. "I'm not very good." 6. "That should be different from what it is." For help in retraining yourself to say "Yes!" at least 51% of the time, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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In American psychotherapy, the first question many practitioners ask their new clients is essentially, "What did your parents do to you to mess you up so badly?" One of my Japanese friends tells me that in his country, a therapist is more likely to ask, "What did your parents do for you? How did they nurture and support you?"

Without dismissing the possibility that your mom and dad did inflict damage on you, I'll ask you to concentrate on the Japanese-style inquiry for now. What are the best things that happened to you when you were growing up? What did your family and community give you that you've never fully appreciated?
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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 Los Angeles school district dramatically downgraded the role that homework plays in the life of its students. Beginning this fall, the assignments kids do after school account for only 10 percent of their final grade. As far as you're concerned, Scorpio, that's not a good trend to follow. In fact, I think you should go in the opposite direction. During the enhanced learning phase you're now entering, your homework will be more important than ever. In order to take full advantage of the rich educational opportunities that will be flowing your way, you should do lots of research, think hard about what it all means, and in general be very well-prepared. The period between late 2011 and early 2012 is homework time for you.

How's your fight for freedom going? Are you making progress in liberating yourself from your unconscious obsessions, bad habits, and conditioned responses? For assistance and inspiration, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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Beauty and Truth Lab researcher Beth had a dream that she and her tribe were living peacefully at the foot of a mountain. Without warning, fiery ash and lava erupted. Everyone fled, desperate to escape. But before she had gone far, Beth heard a voice in her head say, "Run toward the volcano; it's your only safety." Feeling an inexplicable trust in the voice, she turned around and started heading back, whereupon the dream ended and she woke up. Soon after getting out of bed, she felt moved to face up to a certain dilemma she'd been ignoring in her waking life. When she solved the problem a day later, she felt gratitude for the dream that had spurred her to do the right thing: Run toward the volcano.

What would be the equivalent in your own life?
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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 Amazon is the second longest river in the world, and has such a voluminous flow that it comprises 20 percent of all river water in the world. And yet there is not a single bridge that crosses it. I love that fact. It comforts and inspires me to know that humans have not conquered this natural wonder. Which leads me to my advice for you this week, Sagittarius. Please consider keeping the wild part of you wild. It's certainly not at all crucial for you to civilize it.

Assume that your drive to experience pleasure isn't a barrier to your spiritual growth, but is in fact essential to it. Proceed on the hypothesis that cultivating joy can make you a more ethical and compassionate person. Imagine that feeling good has something important to teach you every day. For inspiration in practicing this approach, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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"The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words," said Terence McKenna in Alien Dreamtime, "and that if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish." Here's my version of that hypothesis: What world you end up living in depends at least in part on your use of language.

Do you want to move and breathe amidst infertile chaos where nothing makes sense and no one really loves anyone? Then speak with unconscious carelessness, expressing yourself lazily. Constantly materialize and entertain angry thoughts in the privacy of your own imagination, beaming silent curses out into eternity.

Or would you prefer to live in a realm that's rich with fluid epiphanies and intriguing coincidences and mysterious harmonies? Then be discerning and inventive in how you speak, primed to name the unexpected codes that are always being born right in front of your eyes. Turn your imagination into an ebullient laboratory where the somethings you create out of nothings are tinctured with the secret light you see in your dreams of invisible fire.
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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.

Emotion is the resource we treasure when we're young, says poet Naomi Shihab Nye, but eventually what we thrive on even more is energy. "Energy is everything," she says, "not emotion." And where does energy come from? Often, from juxtaposition, says Nye. "Rubbing happy and sad together creates energy; rubbing one image against another." That's what she loves about being a poet. Her specialty is to conjure magic through juxtaposition. "Our brains are desperate for that kind of energy," she concludes. I mention this, Capricorn, because the coming weeks will be prime time for you to drum up the vigor and vitality that come from mixing and melding and merging, particularly in unexpected or uncommon ways.

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." So begins Charles Dickens' novel David Copperfield. I'd like to inspire you to write a story of your own that begins like that. For help, tune into your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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As a boy, renowned Spanish matador Manolete was a sissy. He rarely played outside, preferring to be near his mother as he read books and painted pictures.

Psychologist James Hillman explains this by suggesting that the youthful Manolete had already sensed his destiny, intuiting that one day he would be alone in the ring facing down angry 2,000-pound bulls. His childhood behavior was a way of marshaling his strength and shielding him from the enormity of the challenges he would seek out one day.

Is it possible that what you have considered a weakness or vulnerability has actually been preparing you to express a signature strength?
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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.

Studies show that if you're sharing a meal with one other person, you're likely to eat up to 35 percent more food than if you're dining alone. If you sit down at the table with four companions, you'll probably devour 75 percent extra, and if you're with a party of eight, your consumption may double. As I contemplate your horoscope, these facts give me pause. While I do suspect you will benefit from socializing more intensely and prolifically, I also think it'll be important to raise your commitment to your own physical health. Can you figure out a way to do both, please?

I invite you to keep a running list of all the ways life delights you and helps you and energizes you. Describe everyday miracles you take for granted . . . the uncanny powers you possess . . . the small joys that occur so routinely you forget how much they mean to you . . . the steady flow of benefits bestowed on you by people you know and don't know. What works for you? What makes you feel at home in the world? For inspiration in this noble effort, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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Sometimes we have a strong sense of what our destiny is calling us to do, but we don't feel quite ready or brave enough to answer the call. We need a push, an intervention, a serendipitous stroke -- what you might call "fate bait." It's a person or event that awakens our dormant willpower and draws us inexorably toward our necessary destiny; it's a thunderbolt or siren song or stage whisper that gives us a good excuse to go do what we know we should do.

Do you have any ideas about how to put yourself in the vicinity of your fate bait?
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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.

"Were it not for the leaping and twinkling of the soul," said psychologist Carl Jung, "human beings would rot away in their greatest passion, idleness." To that edgy observation I would add this corollary: One of the greatest and most secret forms of idleness comes from being endlessly busy at unimportant tasks. If you are way too wrapped up in doing a thousand little things that have nothing to do with your life's primary mission, you are, in my opinion, profoundly idle. All the above is prelude for the climactic advice of this week's horoscope, which goes as follows: Give everything you have to stimulate the leaping and twinkling of your soul.

All of creation loves you very much. Even now, people you know and people you don't know are collaborating to make sure you have all you need to make your next smart move. But are you willing to start loving life back with an equal intensity? The adoration it offers you has not exactly been unrequited, but there is room for you to be more demonstrative. For help in cultivating this approach, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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During my years in college, I enjoyed watching the evolution of Richard, a shy geek in my creative writing classes. Long before he penned a single good poem, he was a bohemian art poseur. On his backpack there was a button with the image of rock poet Patti Smith. He often wore a T-shirt bearing a quote from poetry icon Allen Ginsberg, and he was never without his book of Rimbaud poems. Everywhere I went I saw him scribbling ostentatiously in his journal as he chain-smoked clove cigarettes.

To my surprise, Richard's work gradually began to match his persona. By sophomore year he'd spawned some evocative poems, and soon after he graduated, he published a fine chapbook. In his development I witnessed a perfect example of the saying, "You become what you pretend to be."

Your assignment: Decide what you want to become, and start pretending to be that thing. Or else: Be careful what you're unconsciously pretending to be, because you just might become 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.