As I hike through the wilderness at dusk, the crickets always seem to be humming in the distance. No matter where I go, their sound is farther off, never right up close to me. How can that be? Do they move away from me as I approach? I doubt it. I sense no leaping insects in the underbrush. Here's how this pertains to you: My relationship with the crickets' song is similar to a certain mystery in your life. There's an experience that calls to you but forever seems just out of reach. You think you're drawing nearer, about to touch it and be in its midst, but it inevitably eludes you. Now here's the good news: A change is coming for you. It will be like what would happen if I suddenly found myself intimately surrounded by hundreds of chirping crickets.

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In the film Fight Club, the character played by Brad Pitt storms into a convenience store with a gun, then herds the clerk out back and threatens to execute him. While the poor man quivers in terror, Pitt asks him questions about himself, extracting the confession that he'd once wanted to be a veterinarian but dropped out of school. After a few minutes, Pitt frees the clerk without harming him, but says that unless he takes steps to return to veterinary school in the next six weeks, he will hunt him down and kill him.

In my opinion, that's an overly extreme way to motivate someone to do what's good for him. I wish I could come up with a less shocking approach to coax you into resuming the quest for your deferred dreams. Can you think of anything?

In three years, you will comprehend truths about yourself and your life that you don't have the capacity to grasp now. By then, past events that have been confusing to you will make sense. You'll know what their purpose was and why they occurred. Can you wait that long? If you'd rather not, I have an idea: Do a meditation in which you visualize yourself as you will be three years from today. Imagine asking your future self to tell you what he or she has discovered. The revelations may take a while to start rolling in, but I predict that a whole series of insights will have arrived by this time next week.

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"The important thing," said French critic Charles Du Bos, "is to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."

Did he really mean at any moment? Like while we're in a convenience store buying a magazine? While we're lying in bed ready for sleep and reviewing the events of the day? While we're adrift in apathetic melancholy, watching too much TV and neglecting our friends? At any moment?! I say yes. At all times and in all places be ready to sacrifice what you are for what you could become.

The journey that awaits you is succinct but epic. It will last a relatively short time but take months to fully understand. You may feel natural and ordinary as you go through it, even as you are being rather heroic. Prepare as best as you can, but keep in mind that no amount of preparation will get you completely ready for the spontaneous moves you'll be called on to perform. Don't be nervous! I bet you will receive help from an unexpected source. Feelings of deja-vu may crop up and provide a sense of familiarity -- even though none of what occurs will have any precedents.

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Lie on your back with your arms outstretched and have a friend measure the distance from the tip of one middle finger to the other. Do you have a wingspan similar to that of a hawk? Eagle? Osprey? The mythical thunderbird? Pterodactyl? Close your eyes and visualize yourself hovering and swooping above the treetops. What do you see below you?

In the wild, very few oysters produce pearls -- about one in every 10,000. Most commercial pearls come from farmed oysters whose pearls have been induced by human intervention. As you might expect, the natural jewel is regarded as far more precious. Let's use these facts as metaphors while we speculate about your fate in the next eight months. I believe you will acquire or generate a beautiful new source of value for yourself. There's a small chance you will stumble upon a treasure equivalent to the wild pearl. But I suggest you take the more secure route: working hard to create a treasure that's like a cultivated pearl.

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Russian scientists have discovered gold deposits in the dust of decayed tree stumps. The phenomenon occurs in forests growing in ground where there is gold ore. Over the course of centuries, the trees' roots suck in minute quantities of the precious metal, eventually accumulating nuggets.

Describe a metaphorically comparable process you could carry out in your own life over the course of the next 20 years. What invisible part of you is like a tree's roots? What's the gold you'd like to suck up?

In June 2012, a U.S. Senator introduced a bill that would require all members of Congress to actually read or listen to a reading of any bill before they voted on it. The proposal has been in limbo ever since, and it's unlikely it will ever be treated seriously. This is confusing to me. Shouldn't it be a fundamental requirement that all lawmakers know what's in the laws they pass? Don't make a similar error, Leo. Understand exactly what you are getting into, whether it's a new agreement, an interesting invitation, or a tempting opportunity. Be thoroughly informed.

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Visualize in detail your dream lover . . . your ideal soul mate . . . the embodiment of everything you find attractive.

Imagine that although this person feels the same way about you, there is a very good reason why the two of you can't make love or be together as a couple for a long time. Feel the sweet torment of your unquenched longing for each other, the impossible ache of fiery ­tenderness.

Picture all the ways you will work on yourself in the coming years to refine your soul and perfect your love, so that when the two of you can finally be united, you will have made yourself into the gorgeous genius you were born to be -- a pure blessing and uncanny gift for your beloved.

Oliver Evans (1755-1819) was a prolific Virgo inventor who came up with brilliant ideas for steam engines, urban gas lighting, refrigeration, and automated machines. He made a radical prediction: "The time will come when people will travel in stages moved by steam engines, almost as fast as birds fly, 15 or 20 miles an hour." We may be surprised that a visionary innovator like Evans dramatically minimized the future's possibilities. In the same way, I suspect that later in your life, you might laugh at how much you are underestimating your potentials right now. In telling you this, I'm hoping you will stop underestimating.

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I hope you can obtain the Avatar Elixir stashed in the golden obelisk in the underground fortress beneath the glass mountain. It will allow you to produce the "triple-helix" energy that will give you the power to cross freely back and forth through the gateway between universes. Then wild beasts will obey your commands. Rivers will become your allies. Every star in the sky will shine directly on you. And if for some reason you're not able to get your hands on that Avatar Elixir, you may be able to achieve similar results by drinking a bottle of beer stashed in the lower left rear section of the beverage cooler at a convenience store within five miles of your home.

Magic might be wherever you think it is.

When Jimmy Fallon was a senior in high school, he received a weird graduation gift: a troll doll, one of those plastic figurines with frizzy, brightly colored hair. Around the same time, his mother urged him to enter an upcoming comedy contest at a nearby club. Jimmy decided that would be fun. He worked up a routine in which he imitated various celebrities auditioning to become a spokesperson for troll dolls. With the doll by his side, he won the contest, launching his career as a comedian. I foresee the possibility of a comparable development in your life: an odd blessing or unexpected gift that inspires you to express one of your talents on a higher level.

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After rejecting proposals from many directors, Bob Dylan finally authorized Oscar-nominated Todd Haynes to make a film about his life, I'm Not There. Five different actors and one actress portrayed Dylan, including Richard Gere, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw, and Christian Bale. "I set out to explode the idea that anybody can be depicted in a single self," Haynes told The Sunday Times.

Name the six actors and actresses you would choose to play you in the movie about your life.

"Dear So-Called Astrologer: Your horoscopes are worse than useless. Mostly they are crammed with philosophical and poetic crap that doesn't apply to my daily life. Please cut way back on the fancy metaphors. Just let me know if there is money or love or trouble coming my way -- like what regular horoscopes say! -Skeptical Scorpio." Dear Skeptical: In my astrological opinion, you and your fellow Scorpios will soon feel the kind of pressure you just directed at me. People will ask you to be different from what you actually are. My advice? Do not acquiesce to them.

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Lewis Thomas was a physician who wrote elegantly about biology in books like The Lives of a Cell. I want to bring your attention to his meditation on warts. "Nothing in the body has so much the look of toughness and permanence as a wart," he wrote. And yet "they can be made to go away by something that can only be called thinking ... Warts can be ordered off the skin by hypnotic suggestion." Thomas regarded this phenomenon as "absolutely astonishing, more of a surprise than cloning or recombinant DNA."

Using your mind power, go ahead and shrink, dissolve, or banish a wart or wart-like vexation.

Tomatoes are a staple of Italian cuisine now, but there weren't any tomatoes in Europe until the 16th century, when Spanish explorers brought them from Central and South America. Likewise, Malaysia has become a major producer of rubber, but it had no rubber trees until seeds were smuggled out of Brazil in the 19th century. And bananas are currently a major crop in Ecuador thanks to 16th-century Portuguese sailors, who transported them from West Africa. I foresee the possibility of comparable cross-fertilizations happening for you in the coming months, Sagittarius. Do you have your eye on any remote resources you'd like to bring back home?

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I hope the oracle above provides you with the inspiration you need to do what you've got to do and change what needs to be changed. But if you need more clues, listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE, where I go further in exploring your mysteries.

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Meditation teacher Wes Nisker helps students learn to calm the frenetic chatter of their minds. As earnest as he is in this heroic work, though, he also appreciates the importance of not trying too hard. As you pursue your pronoia practice, call on his influence now and then. It'll keep you honest and prevent your anal sphincter from getting too high-strung.

Here's a blurb for one of his workshops. "This day will be of absolutely no use to you. Nothing will be furthered or accomplished by coming. Expect a time of effortlessness, relaxation, and poetry, hanging out, maybe a little mindfulness meditation -- all for nothing. Some might understand this as a protest against our culture's speedy, goal-driven nature, but we know it won't amount to a hill of beans. Good intentions and purposefulness must be checked at the door."

Years ago, you experienced an event that was so overwhelming you could not fully deal with it, let alone understand it. All this time it has been simmering and smoldering in the depths of your unconscious mind, emitting ghostly steam and smoke even as it has remained difficult for you to integrate. But I predict that will change in the coming months. You will finally find a way to bring it into your conscious awareness and explore it with courage and grace. Of course it will be scary for you to do so. But I assure you that the fear is a residue from your old confusion, not a sign of real danger. To achieve maximum liberation, begin your quest soon.

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"I am a devout atheist," writes Tom of Ohio, "but I have to explain to my atheist friends that I do pray to the 'GodIdontbelievein.'

"My first direct contact with this Divinity arrived when I was coming out of anesthesia after surgery. I was somehow aware of my existence but totally ­sensory-deprived. As I emerged from total unconsciousness, a tiny flickering Tinkerbell-like creature in the form of a shimmering globe of light fluttered into my consciousness and hovered irresistibly before my internal eyes. I was in love with it and it loved me.

"In fact it was me, or at least the manifestation of cosmic energy that settles in me and is my being. It gave me a blessing of good will, then went about its business of operating my body. In parting, it gave me the assurance that it would always be there for me and with me, and would join me after it shut the body down for the last time.

"Since that first encounter, I commune with the little sparkling wonder every so often. I thank it for its presence and it thanks me for mine, though we are actually one and the same. I find myself praying to it, though there's really no need to -- it knows me better than I do, and guides me toward my goals, though I know not what they are."

Inspired by Tom's report, write a love note or an expression of appreciation for the shimmering globe of wonder that animates your life.

This is prime time to do things that aren't exactly easy and relaxing, but that on the other hand aren't actually painful. Examples: Extend peace offerings to adversaries. Seek reconciliation with valuable resources from which you have been separated and potential allies from whom you have become alienated. Try out new games you would eventually like to be good at, but aren't yet. Get a better read on interesting people you don't understand very well. Catch my drift, Aquarius? For now, at least, leaving your comfort zone is likely to be invigorating, not arduous.

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At New York's Museum of Modern Art, I brought my face to within a few inches of Vincent van Gogh's painting The Starry Night. It looked delicious. I wanted to kiss it. I wanted to eat it. Its stars were throbbing and voluptuous. The night sky shimmered with spiral currents. In the foreground, the cypress tree flared like a shadowy flame.

I could also see that the artist had been less than thorough in applying his paint. Especially on the edges, but also in the middle of the painting, slivers of untouched canvas showed through. Fierce, innocent, nourishing, reckless, unfinished, this priceless work drank my attention for a long time, constantly refreshing my eyes with its ceaseless movement.

Can you be at peace with the fact that your masterpiece may always be unfinished?

Your oracle is built around the epigrams of conceptual artist Jenny Holzer. From her hundreds of pithy quotes, I have selected six that offer the exact wisdom you need most right now. Your job is to weave them all together into a symphonic whole. 1. "It's crucial to have an active fantasy life." 2. "Ensure that your life stays in flux." 3. "I have every kind of thought, and that is no embarrassment." 4. "Animalism is perfectly healthy." 5. "Finding extreme pleasure will make you a better person if you're careful about what thrills you." 6. "Listen when your body talks."

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What exactly are you looking for? How would you describe the experiences you want more than anything else? It's possible my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE could give you additional help in figuring that out.

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"I usually solve problems by letting them devour me," wrote Franz Kafka. That's an interesting approach, I guess, and though it might work for a tiny minority of introverted, melancholy, hypersensitive artists, it's probably not a wise policy for you. It may be better to fervently resist any temptation you might have to allow your problems to gobble you up.

Instead, why not be like a gargantuan sea monster in the midst of a perfect storm? Rise up as high as the dark sky and growl back at the thunder. Shoot flames from your mouth at the lightning. Become too big and ancient and wild to ever be devoured.