It's time for your right hand to find out what your left hand has been doing lately, and vice versa. They've been attending to their separate agendas for a while, and now it would be wise to have them work together more closely. As they get reacquainted, a bit of friction would be understandable. You may have to serve as a mediator. Try to get them to play nicely with each other for a while before jumping in to the negotiations about how best they can cooperate in the future. And be very firm with them: no slapping or fighting allowed.

Special Note: My website has been broken for the past week, but it should be all better now. If the recent chaos caused you to miss last week's horoscope, you can find it HERE.

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.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Do you have a negative opinion of clouds? Are you inclined to regard them as symbols of gloom and malaise, interruptions in what you wish would always be clear blue sky?

If so, I'll ask you to revise your view. Consider the fact that in Chinese mythology, there are xiangyun, or "lucky clouds" that are harbingers of great blessings. Deities may even ride on them for pleasure. Among the Zuni Indians, the monster known as the Cloud Eater was feared because he devoured clouds that might bring replenishing rain. And modern meteorologists know that white, fluffy cumulus clouds are signs that fair weather is on the way.

Armed with these ideas, go out in search of your own personal lucky clouds.
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Some relationships that you call "friendships" may be little more than useful connections or status boosters or affiliations that enhance your power and influence. There's no shame in that. But it's also a smart idea to make sure that at least some of your alliances are rooted primarily in pure affection. You need to exchange energy with people who don't serve your ambitions so much as they feed your soul. The coming weeks will be an excellent time to cultivate friendships like that. Take good care of those you have, and be alert for the possibility of starting a new one.

Special Note: My website has been broken for the past week, but it should be all better now. If the recent chaos caused you to miss last week's horoscope, you can find it HERE.

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.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
I give thanks for the dented rusty brown and gray 1967 Chevy 10 pick-up truck that my neighbor parks askew on the shoulder of the road near my house. Its messy beauty snaps me back to sanity when my own perfectionism threatens to de-soul me, or when all the shiny, sleek, polished things of the world are on the verge of hypnotizing me into believing that only they should be considered attractive.

Are there equivalent triggers in your life?
*
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.

Do you remember what you were doing between July 2000 and June 2001? Think back. Did anything happen then that felt like a wild jumpstart, or a series of epiphanies, or a benevolent form of shock therapy? Were you forcibly dislodged from a rut by an adversary who eventually became an ally? Did you wake up from a sleepy trance you didn't even know you had been in? I'm guessing that at least some of those experiences will be returning in the coming months, but on a higher octave this time.

Special Note: My website has been broken for the past week, but it should be all better now. If the recent chaos caused you to miss last week's horoscope, you can find it HERE.

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.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Some people feel polluted when they look at porn; others when they eat Pringles and Twinkies. Personally, I experience a sense of violation after being exposed to celebrity gossip. And yet, if I've learned anything about how to maintain a healthy relationship with purity, it's that a fanatical adherence to it is as dangerous as a compulsive rejection of it. This will be especially true for you as you practice the art of pronoia. I urge you, therefore, to rebel cagily now and then against your urge to be a perfectly nice perpetrator of goodness and beauty and truth and justice.

Here's one method that might work: Use sacred sarcasm to motivate your allies to cooperate more with life's benevolent conspiracy. For instance, you might say the following to a certain female friend, hoping it will prod her to swear off self-punishing behavior forever: "You sure honored your ancestors and left an inspiring legacy for your descendants during the month you spent courting that alcoholic womanizer."

Or say something like this to a person who has not been asking for enough in return for her gifts: "No doubt you impressed the gods and earned a heap of karmic credit for all the free work you gave away to that megalomaniac who ripped you off so brilliantly."
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Author Steven Covey describes your "circle of concern" as everything you're concerned with or worried about. Your "circle of influence," on the other hand, is anything that's within your ability to change right now. For example, you may have general long-term questions or anxieties about the future of your health. That's your circle of concern. But your circle of influence contains specific actions you can take to affect your health today, like eating good food, getting enough sleep, and doing exercise. What I'm seeing for you, Cancerian, is that the coming weeks will be an excellent time to spend less time in your circle of concern and more in your circle of influence. Stop fantasizing about what may or may not happen, and simply take charge of the details that will make a difference.

Special Note: My website has been broken for the past week, but it should be all better now. If the recent chaos caused you to miss last week's horoscope, you can find it HERE.

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.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
"Keep exploring what it takes to be the opposite of who you are," suggests psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of the book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. This advice is one of his ideas about how to get into attunement with the Tao, also known as being in the zone.

How would you go about being the opposite of who you are? Try it and see if it drives you into a state of euphoria.
*
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 a wild zoo about two hours northwest of Seattle. After paying your fee, you can drive your car through acres of land where large animals are allowed to roam free. When I took the tour, I stopped my rented Dodge Stratus by the side of the road to get a better look at a humongous buffalo with a humped back and a long woolly beard. It lumbered over to where I was parked and for the next five minutes thoroughly licked my windshield with its enormous purple tongue. My head was just inches away from its primal power, and yet I was safe and relaxed and perfectly amused. I wouldn't be surprised if you had a comparable experience sometime soon, Leo.

Special Note: My website has been broken for the past week, but it should be all better now. If the recent chaos caused you to miss last week's horoscope, you can find it HERE.

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.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
When playing the card game known as bridge, you're fortunate if you're dealt no cards of any particular suit. It allows you to use the trump suit to win tricks.

Identify a situation in your own life where a lack of a certain resource can work to your advantage, allowing you to be a free agent, an X-factor, a wild card; freeing you to capitalize on loopholes that aren't normally available; giving you access to luck that comes to you through what you're missing.
*
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 Biblical book of Genesis, Jacob had a dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder that went up to heaven. I recommend that you try to incubate a similar dream, or else do some meditations in which you visualize that scene. It would help prime your psyche for one of this week's top assignments, which is to be adaptable as you go back and forth between very high places and very low places. Heaven and earth need to be better connected. So do the faraway and the close-at-hand, as well as the ideal and the practical. And you're the right person for the job.

Special Note: My website has been broken for the past week, but it should be all better now. If the recent chaos caused you to miss last week's horoscope, you can find it HERE.

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.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
I was never the class clown. I am not a troubled but devilishly handsome wastrel living on a trust fund. I've never beaten up anyone, have steadfastly not aspired to write like Raymond Carver, and have never played strip Scrabble with a junkie violinist on a leaky waterbed in a Key West penthouse. There are so many things I am not and will never be, and I'm glad I know about them. It helps me stay focused on exactly who I am. What about you? Who aren't you? Fantasize about all the paths you will never take. Put it in writing.
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Thomas Edison said something to the effect that a person who is thoroughly satisfied is probably a failure. I guess he meant that if you're not always pushing to make your life better, you must not have very high standards or passionate goals. While I can see the large grains of truth in that theory, I don't think it applies in all cases -- like for you right now, for instance. During the upcoming grace period, it will make sense for you to be perfectly content with the state of your life just as it is. To do so won't make you lazy and complacent. Just the opposite, in fact: It will charge your psychic batteries and create a reservoir of motivational energy for the second half of 2012.

Special Note: My website has been broken for the past week, but it should be all better now. If the recent chaos caused you to miss last week's horoscope, you can find it HERE.

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.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Do you have an unconscious belief that the forces of evil are loud, vigorous, and strong, while good is quiet, gentle, and passive? Gather evidence that contradicts this irrational prejudice.

Are you secretly suspicious of joy because you think it's inevitably rooted in wishful thinking and a willful ignorance about the true nature of reality? Expose these suspicions as superstitions that aren't grounded in any objective data you can actually prove.

Do you fear that when you're in the presence of love and beauty you tend to become softheaded, whereas you're likely to feel smart and powerful when you're sneering at the ugliness around you? As an antidote, for a given amount of time, say a week or a month or a year, act as if the following hypothesis were true: that you're more likely to grow smarter when you're in the presence of love and beauty.
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Twenty-four-year-old actress Annalynne McCord has risen up in rebellion against what she calls "Hollywood's perfection requirement." Lately she has been brazenly appearing in public without any make-up on. She has even encouraged paparazzi to snap photos of her in her natural state. "I'm not perfect," she says, "and that's okay with me." I nominate her to be your role model in the coming weeks, Scorpio. You will be able to stir up useful blessings for yourself by being loyal to the raw truth. You can gain power by not hiding anything. (And yes, I realize that last statement is in conflict with the core Scorpionic philosophy.) Here's my guarantee: It'll be fun to be free of unrealistic images and showy deceptions.

Special Note: My website has been broken for the past week, but it should be all better now. If the recent chaos caused you to miss last week's horoscope, you can find it HERE.

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.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
My friend Riley was the first member of her family to attend college. None of her hardscrabble Irish forebears had ever pursued higher education. In her senior year, Riley began having nightmares of her relatives trying to stop her from finishing school. In one recurring dream, her great-grandfather burned all her textbooks. In another, a mob of aunts and uncles tackled her and held her down as she tried to get to class.

Despite these psychic obstacles, Riley persevered in her studies and eventually got her diploma. The week after graduation, she had another dream: A host of her ancestors came to her in the form of a great choir singing songs in praise of her success.

Riley's psychotherapist speculated that the dream meant she had not only overcome the inertia of her heritage, but had also healed an ancient wound of her family going back many generations. Is there a similar accomplishment you're capable of? What is it?
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Nineteenth-century Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev once called his fellow novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky a "pimple on the face of literature." But more than a hundred years after that crude dismissal, Dostoyevsky is a much more highly regarded and influential writer than Turgenev. Use this as inspiration, Sagittarius, if you have to deal with anyone's judgmental appraisals of you in the coming days. Their opinions will say more about them than about you. Refresh your understanding of the phenomenon of "projection," in which people superimpose their fantasies and delusions on realities they don't see clearly.

Special Note: My website has been broken for the past week, but it should be all better now. If the recent chaos caused you to miss last week's horoscope, you can find it HERE.

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.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Is the universe inherently friendly to humans? The answer's got to be either "yes, definitely" or "no, not really." It can't be in between. Whatever you may be inclined to believe, you've got to agree that there's no way to know which is true with absolute certainty.

So then isn't it stupid and self-destructive to live your life as if the universe is unfriendly? Doing so tends to cast a pall over everything. But if on the other hand you proceed on the hypothesis that the universe is friendly, you're inclined to interpret everything that occurs as a gift, however challenging it may be to figure out its purpose at first.
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Take a few deep breaths. It's important not to get overly worked up about your recent diversion from the Truth and the Way. I mean it's not like you sold heroin to high school students or dumped toxic waste into a mountain stream, right? It's true that you've incurred a minor karmic debt that will ultimately have to be repaid. And yes, you've been reminded that you can't allow yourself to lower your standards even slightly. But I doubt any of it will matter in five years -- especially if you atone now. So please go ahead and give yourself a spanking, make a definitive plan to correct your error, and start cruising in the direction of the next chapter of your life story.

Special Note: My website has been broken for the past week, but it should be all better now. If the recent chaos caused you to miss last week's horoscope, you can find it HERE.

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.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
"The seed cannot sprout upwards without simultaneously sending roots into the ground," says an Egyptian proverb. Keep that thought in mind as you head into your next phase of growth. What part of you needs to deepen as you rise up? What growth needs to unfold in the hidden places as you gravitate toward the light? How can you go about balancing and stabilizing your ascension with a downward penetration?
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Have you ever tried to drink from a fire hose? The sheer amount and force of the water shooting out the end makes it hard to actually get any moisture in your mouth, let alone enjoy the process. On the other hand, it is kind of entertaining, and it does provide a lot of material to tell funny stories about later on. But are those good enough reasons to go ahead and do it? I say no. That's why I advise you, metaphorically speaking, to draw your sustenance from a more contained flow in the coming week. Cultivate a relationship with a resource that gives you what you really need.

Special Note: My website has been broken for the past week, but it should be all better now. If the recent chaos caused you to miss last week's horoscope, you can find it HERE.

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.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
A golden eagle with a seven-foot wingspan shot down out of the overcast sky and dived at my friend Maura's pet cockatoo, which was perched on the branch of an oak tree not 30 feet from her back door. Five of us watched with alarm from the outdoor table where we were sipping tea. We leaped up and began howling, hoping to scare the giant predator away. I ran to grab a baseball bat that Maura's son had left lying near the tree.

Then the unexpected happened. The eagle did not attack the cockatoo, but settled down peacefully beside it. Nor did the cockatoo flee. The two sat there together like old friends for about 10 minutes before the bigger bird flew away.

Are you the eagle or the cockatoo?
*
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 week will be an excellent time to declare your independence from anything that depresses you, obsesses you, or oppresses you. You will attract help from unexpected sources if you take that brave action. At the same time, it'll be a perfect moment to declare your interdependence with anything that fires up your imagination, stirs up smart hope, or fills you with a desire to create masterpieces. Be adventurous as you dream about blending your energies with the very best influences.

Special Note: My website has been broken for the past week, but it should be all better now. If the recent chaos caused you to miss last week's horoscope, you can find it HERE.

"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.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
"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 the awakening force that an enemy provides? Is it naive to think you can achieve great success without the driving motivation that comes from thinking about ideas you hate?

Consider the issue from another angle. Dentists love tooth decay. Treating cavities provides them with a steady income. Likewise, exterminators are dependent on termites, lawyers need crime, and priests crave 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.
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.