I believe your persuasive powers will be stronger than usual in the weeks ahead. The words coming out of your mouth will sound especially interesting. I also suspect that your intelligence will get at least a temporary upgrade. The clarity of your thoughts will intensify. You will see truths you have been blind to in the past. Innovative solutions to long-running dilemmas are likely to occur to you. The only potential snag is that you might neglect to nurture your emotional riches. You could become a bit too dry and hard. But now that I've warned you of that possibility, let's hope you will take steps to ensure it won't happen.

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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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.

If there was a Hall of Fame for scientists, physicist Isaac Newton (1642-1727) would have been the charter member. He was like Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry were to rock and roll, like Babe Ruth was to baseball. The theory of gravity and the three laws of motion were his gifts to the world. He made major contributions to mathematics and optics, and was a central figure in defining modern science. There is also a legend that he invented the cat door, inspired by his pet felines. Whether or not that's true, it serves as an excellent metaphor for this horoscope. It's an excellent time for you to apply your finest talents and highest intelligence to dream up small, mundane, but practical innovations.

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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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.

During the next 12 months you will have exceptional opportunities to soak up knowledge, add to your skill set, and get the training you need to pursue interesting kinds of success in the coming six to eight years. What's the best way to prepare? Develop an exciting new plan for your future education. To get in the mood, try the following: make a list of your most promising but still unripe potentials; meditate on the subjects that evoke your greatest curiosity; brainstorm about what kinds of experiences would give you more control over your destiny; and study three people you know who have improved their lives by taking aggressive steps to enhance their proficiency.

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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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?

The moon shows us a different phase every 24 hours, which makes it seem changeable. But in fact, not much actually happens on the moon. It has no atmosphere, no weather, no wind, no plant life, no seasons. There is some water, but it's all frozen. Is there anything like this in your own life, Cancerian? Something that on the surface of things seems to be in constant motion, but whose underlying state never actually shifts or develops? According to my analysis, now would be an excellent time for you to revise the way you understand this part of your world, and then update your relationship with it.

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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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.

Have you thought of organizing a crowdfunding campaign to boost your pet project or labor of love? I suggest you get serious about it in the next four weeks. This coming phase of your cycle will be a favorable time to expand your audience, attract new allies, and build a buzz. You will have a sixth sense about how to wield your personal charm to serve your long-term goals. More than usual, your selfish interests will dovetail with the greater good -- perhaps in unexpected ways.

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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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.

Years ago I had a Virgo friend who was a talented singer. She had technical skill, stylistic flair, and animal magnetism, making her worthy of being a lead vocalist in almost any great band. And yet when she was asleep and had dreams of performing, she often found herself standing in the shadows, barely visible and singing tentatively, while her back-up singers hogged the spotlight at center stage. Moral of the story: Some of you Virgos are shy about claiming your full authority. It doesn't always come easy for you to shine your light and radiate your power. And yet you can most definitely learn to do so. The coming weeks will be an excellent time to make progress in this direction.

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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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.

"There is always an enormous temptation in all of life," writes Annie Dillard, "to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end . . . I won't have it. The world is wider than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright." Your assignment in the coming weeks, Libra, is to transcend whatever is itsy-bitsy about your life. The alternative? Head toward the frontier and drum up experiences that will thrill your heart and blow your mind.

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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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.

"We are all searching for someone whose demons play well with ours," writes novelist Heidi R. Kling. That's good advice for you to keep in mind these days, Scorpio. Those little imps and rascals that live within you may get you into bad trouble if they feel bored. But if you arrange for them to have play dates with the imps and rascals of people you trust, they are far more likely to get you into good trouble. They may even provide you with bits of gritty inspiration. What's that you say? You don't have any demons? Not true. Everyone has them.

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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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."

"When people tell you who they are, believe them," writes blogger Maria Popova (Brainpickings.org). "Just as importantly, however, when people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them." Those suggestions are especially crucial for you to keep in mind these days. You are entering a phase when your best relationships will be up for review and revision and revitalization. To foster an environment in which intimacy will thrive, you've got to be extra receptive, curious, tolerant, and tender. That's all! Not hard, right? A good place to start is to proceed as if your allies know who they are better than you do -- even as you ask them to return the favor.

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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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.

"Kludge" (pronounced klooj) is a slang word that refers to a clumsy but effective fix for an engineering problem. It's a cobbled-together solution that works fine, at least temporarily, even though it is inelegant or seems farfetched. Let's use this concept in a metaphorical way to apply to you. I'm guessing that you will be a kludge master in the coming days. You will be skilled at making the best of mediocre situations. You may have surprising success at doing things that don't come naturally, and I bet you will find unexpected ways to correct glitches that no one else has any idea about how to fix.

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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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.

I hesitate to compare you to your fellow Aquarian Kim Jong-il. When he was alive and ruling North Korea, he was an egomaniacal tyrant. You're definitely not that. But there are certain descriptions of him in his official biography that remind me of the kinds of powers you may soon exhibit. He was called The Great Sun of Life and Highest Incarnation of Revolutionary Comradely Love, for instance. Titles like that might suit you. It is said that he invented the hamburger. He could command rain to fall from the sky. He once shot eleven holes-in-one in a single round of golf, was a master of gliding down waterslides, and never had to use a toilet because he produced no waste. You may be able to express comparable feats in the coming weeks. (Do it without falling prey to excessive pride, OK?)

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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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.

Even if you had a sensitive, nurturing mommy when you were growing up, and even if she continues to play an important role in your life, now would be a good time to learn how to mother yourself better. You are finally ready to appreciate how important it is to be your own primary caregiver. And I'm hoping you are no longer resistant to or embarrassed about the idea that part of you is still like a child who needs unconditional love 24/7. So get started! Treat yourself with the expert tenderness that a crafty maternal goddess would provide.

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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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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.