Novel Intuitions Are Erupting from Your Smart Heart

My book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia
is available at Amazon and Powells.

Below are excerpts:

As an experiment, I invite you to say this twice a day for the next ten days: "Novel intuitions are now erupting from my smart heart, awakening me from any trance I've been ensnared in. I am hereby breaking and escaping obstructions that have hindered my ability to express my soul's code. My unique capacities are being liberated, my potentials activated."

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In response to our culture's ever-rising levels of noise and frenzy, rites of purification have become more popular. Many people now recognize the value of taking periodic retreats. Withdrawing from their usual compulsions, they go on fasts, avoid mass media, practice celibacy, or even abstain from speaking. While we applaud cleansing ceremonies like this, we recommend balancing them with periodic outbreaks of an equal and opposite custom: the Bliss Blitz.

During this celebration, you tune out the numbing banality of the daily grind. But instead of shrinking into asceticism, you indulge in uninhibited explorations of joy, release, and expansion. Turning away from the mildly stimulating distractions you seek out when you're bored or worried, you become inexhaustibly resourceful as you search for unsurpassable sources of cathartic pleasure. Try it for a day or a week: the Bliss Blitz.

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The greatest gift you can give might be the gift that you yourself were never given. Give that gift.

The most valuable service you have to offer your fellow humans may be the service you have always wished were performed for you. Offer that service.

An experience that wounded you could move you to help people who've been similarly wounded. Heal yourself by healing others.

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?Nothing?s going right in my life. I feel anxious and paranoid all the time. My relationships are a mess.? In my line of work, people make confessions like that to me.

My first response is usually something like this: ?Do you habitually gobble junk food near bedtime, steal a paltry five hours of sleep per night, gulp two cups of coffee and no breakfast in the morning, then bolt to a workplace where you get no sunlight or exercise and sit in an uncomfortable chair??

They often reply, ?You must be psychic! How did you know?!?

My point is that many psychological troubles stem from our chronic failure to take good care of our physical needs.

Name three things you can do to promote pronoia in yourself by taking better care of your body.



The following isn't from my book, but from Robert Anton Wilson:

"The underlying principle of Robert Anton Wilson's philosophy is 'I know I'm wrong, I want to be less wrong.' This is very different to now, our current internet culture, where the underlying philosophy is 'I'm right, and I want you to know that.'

"And if you go onto any internet discussion, or debate, or things like that, you find people declaring certainties loudly, people with very fixed positions that they can express in 140 characters, that they hunker down and defend, and don't listen to anything else, and attempt to drown out all the others.

"That's so different to Robert Anton Wilson: he believed -- hang on, the word believe is difficult with Bob -- he thought that what you believed imprisoned you, he thought convictions create convicts.

"His philosophy can be called 'multiple-model agnosticism.' That's not just agnosticism about God, that's agnosticism about everything."

http://tinyurl.com/mqg2kme



Below is another excerpt from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

SHADOW SCHOOL

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.

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Astrologer Steven Forrest has a different name for the shadow: stuff. "Work on your stuff," he says, "or your stuff will work on you." He means that it will sabotage you if you're not aggressive about identifying, negotiating with, and transforming it.

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The shadow is not inherently evil. If it is ignored or denied, it may become monstrous to compensate. Only then is it likely to "demonically possess" its owner, leading to compulsive, exaggerated, "evil" behavior.

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"The shadow, which is in conflict with the acknowledged values, cannot be accepted as a negative part of one's own psyche and is therefore projected -- that is, it is transferred to the outside world and experienced as an outside object. It is combated, punished, and exterminated as 'the alien out there' instead of being dealt with as one's own inner problem." -- Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic

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The qualities in ourselves that we deny or dislike are often the very qualities that we most bitterly complain about in other people. So for instance, an old friend of mine named Mark had a special disgust for friends who were unavailable to him when he really needed them. But I was witness to him engaging in the same behavior three different times, disappearing from the lives of his friends just when they needed him most.

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"Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event," said Jung. If you disown a part of your personality, it'll materialize as an unexpected detour.

Everyone who believes in the devil is the devil . . . .

TO READ THE REST OF "SHADOW SCHOOL," go here.



"All I ever wanted in life was to make a difference, conquer the universe, travel the world, meet interesting people, find the missing link, fight the good fight, live for the moment, seize each day, make a fortune, know what really matters, end world hunger, vanquish the dragon, be super popular but too cool to care, be master of my own fate, embrace my destiny, feel as much as I can feel, give too much, and love everything."

- Tatsuya Ishida



Some people put their faith in religion or science or political ideologies. Novelist J.G. Ballard placed his faith elsewhere: in the imagination. "I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world," he wrote, "to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen."



"The Way of Abundance is all too often misconstrued as a shallow sense of 'getting what one wants,' 'eliminating the negative,' or 'being free from pain.' Even the often-touted 'manifesting your dreams,' offers a psychological disposition that generally remains fixated around manifestation as 'the project of me.'

"But the 'project of me' can never be enough, for it does not meet 'the other,' and real living involves meeting. The touch and contact with all of life, the full freedom of non-separation, the completeness of full relationship, and the radiance of compassionate ecstasy is what we are inherently hungry for."

- Rick Jarow,

Alchemy of Abundance



Think about your relationship to human beings who haven't been born yet. What might you create for them to use? How can you make your life a gift to the future? Can you not only help preserve the wonders we live amidst, but actually enhance them? Keep in mind this thought from Lewis Carroll: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward."



Below are more excerpts from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

I invite you to consider making these pledges:

I pledge:
to push hard to get better and smarter,
grow my devotion to the truth,
fuel my commitment to beauty,
refine my emotions,
hone my dreams,
wrestle with my shadow,
purge my ignorance,
and soften my heart?
even as I always accept myself
for exactly who I am,
with all of my so-called foibles and wobbles.

I pledge:
to wake myself up,
never hold back,
have nothing to lose,
go all the way,
kiss the stormy sky,
be the hero of my own story,
ask for everything I need
and give everything I have,
take myself to the river
when it's time to go to the river,
and take myself to the mountaintop
when it's time to go to the mountaintop.



Unconditional, a poem by Jennifer Welwood:

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,
I gain the embrace of the universe;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.

Each condition I flee from pursues me,
Each condition I welcome transforms me
And becomes itself transformed
Into its radiant jewel-like essence.
I bow to the one who has made it so,
Who has crafted this Master Game;
To play it is purest delight;
To honor its form -- true devotion.

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More poetry by Jennifer Welwood.



An interviewer urged the Dalai Lama to discourse on how to cultivate lovingkindness. His Holiness said, "That may be too much to ask. How about if we just work on getting the 'kindness' part right?"



Aldous Huxley was the renowned 20th-century intellectual who wrote the book *Brave New World,* a dystopian vision of the future. Later in his life he came to regret one thing: how "preposterously serious" he had been when he was younger. "There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet," he ruminated, "trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That?s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling . . . Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you?re feeling deeply."



Are you in quest of an Intimate Ally? A Soul Friend? A Wild Confidante?

Check out Match.com via Free Will Astrology's link:
SoulMatch

Look for a Co-Pilot, Co-Conspirator, or Collaborator . . . an Agent to represent you or a Disciple to worship you . . . a Secret Sharer who'll listen better than anyone or an Amazing Accomplice with whom you can practice the Art of Liberation.



PRONOIA RESOURCES

The coming era of unlimited -- and free -- clean energy.
"Solar power has been doubling every two years for the past 30 years -- as costs have been dropping. Solar energy is only six doublings -- or less than 14 years -- away from meeting 100 percent of today?s energy needs. Energy usage will keep increasing, so this is a moving target. But inexpensive renewable sources will provide more energy than the world needs in less than 20 years. Even then, we will be using only one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the Earth."

A message from comedian and prophet Bill Hicks

At the Cloud Appreciation Society, you can vote for Cloud of the Month and see the gorgeous art that Gaia creates on a regular basis:

More lovely, turbulent, unpredictable clouds.




Below are more excerpts from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

Behind your back, your imaginary friends are plotting with your inner child to overthrow your guilty conscience.

Meanwhile, your future self has time-traveled into the past to enlist the spirits of your ancestors in a secret plan to unlock your sleeping genius.

There's more: The superhero you used to fantasize about being when you felt most helpless has been brought to life by the mad scientist in your psyche's basement. Allies you never imagined you had are gathering there to offer their support.

There's no way you can prevent all of these plotters and schemers from giving you a big crazy dose of assistance.



As much as we might be dismayed by the actions of our political leaders, pronoia says that toppling any particular junta, clique, or elite is irrelevant unless we overthrow the sour, puckered mass hallucination that is mistakenly called ?reality? including the part of that hallucination we foster in ourselves.

The revolution begins at home. If you overthrow yourself again and again, you might earn the right to help overthrow the rest of us.



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.



This perfect moment is brought to you by the mummified middle finger of Galileo's right hand, which is on display at the Museo di Storia del Scienza in Florence, Italy. May it inspire you to flip the metaphorical bird at anyone who proudly embodies the kind of high-level idiocy Galileo had to endure.

See Galileo's mummified middle finger



Below are more excerpts from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

It's Bad Luck to Be Superstitious

Review in painstaking detail the history of your life,
honoring every moment as if you were conducting
a benevolent Judgment Day.

Forgive yourself of every mistake except one.

Create a royal crown for yourself
out of a shower cap, rubber bands, and light bulbs.

Think of the last place on Earth you'd ever want to visit,
and visualize yourself having fun there.

Test to see if people are really listening to you by asserting
that Karl Marx was one of the Marx Brothers.

Steal lint from dryers in laundromats
and use it to make animal sculptures for someone you admire.

Fantasize you're the child of divine parents
who abandoned you when you were two days old,
but who will soon be coming back to reunite with you.

Meditate on how one of the symbols of plenitude in Nepal
is a mongoose vomiting jewels.

Once a year on the night before your birthday,
say these words into a mirror: "It's bad luck to be superstitious."

Start a club whose purpose is to produce an archive
of controversial jokes and obscene limericks about beauty, truth, and love.



Pronoia doesn't promise uninterrupted progress forever. It's not a slick commercial for a perfect balmy day that never ends. Grace emerges in the ebb and flow, not just the flow. The waning reveals a different kind of blessing than the waxing.

But whether it's our time to ferment in the valley of shadows or rise up singing in the sun-splashed meadow, fresh power to transform ourselves is always on the way. Our suffering won't last, nor will our triumph. Without fail, life will deliver the creative energy we need to change into the new thing we must become.



Many people sincerely think that they will be called before God to account for themselves on Judgment Day. If you yourself have held that belief, you can stop worrying about it. The fact is, according to a survey of over 800 dissident bodhisattvas, urban witch doctors, sacred agents, and undercover geniuses, that you are called before "God" on "Judgment Day" on a regular basis.

Since you still exist, you have apparently passed every test so far. "God" obviously keeps finding you worthy. You shouldn't get overconfident, of course. But maybe from now on you can assume that although there may be a world of pressure on you, that pressure is natural, merciful, and exactly what you need.



"The sign of a beautiful person is that they always see beauty in others."
? Omar Suleiman



"If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change." - Dalai Lama

"If Buddhism proves some aspect of science wrong, science will have to change." - the bodhisattva disguised as a homeless man in the Safeway parking lot



Are you in quest of an Intimate Ally? A Soul Friend? A Wild Confidante?

Check out Match.com via Free Will Astrology's link:
SoulMatch

Look for a Co-Pilot, Co-Conspirator, or Collaborator . . . an Agent to represent you or a Disciple to worship you . . . a Secret Sharer who'll listen better than anyone or an Amazing Accomplice with whom you can practice the Art of Liberation.



Below are more excerpts from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

PLAYING EASILY IN THE DEEP

"We are fully human only while playing, and we play only when we are human in the truest sense of the word." - Rudolf Steiner

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"'Approfondement' is a French word that means 'playing easily in the deep.'" - Tom Robbins

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"The ancient Greeks knew that learning comes from playing," writes Roger von Oech in his book A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative. Their word for education, paideia, he says, was close to their word for play, paidia.

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Psychiatrist Stuart Brown has proposed this simple definition: "Play is spontaneous behavior that has no clear-cut goal and does not conform to a stereotypical pattern. The purpose of play is simply play itself; it appears to be pleasurable."

In a study of 26 convicted murderers, Brown discovered that as children, most of them had suffered either "from the absence of play or abnormal play like bullying, sadism, extreme teasing, or cruelty to animals."

Brown's work led him to explore the biological roots of play. "New and exciting studies of the brain, evolution, and animal behavior," he wrote, "suggest that play may be as important to life?for us and other animals?as sleeping and dreaming."

- Stuart L. Brown, "Animals at Play," National Geographic

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"How much courage is needed
to play forever,
as the ravines play,
as the river plays."

- Boris Pasternak, "Bacchanalia"

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"You can't know fire unless you play with it," says Mark Finney, a math whiz who develops computer models for fighting forest fires.

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Western science and religion have differing views on how the universe was created, but they agree that it happened a long time ago. The mystery schools of the West, on the other hand, assert that the universe is re-created anew in every moment through the divine erotic play of God and Goddess. They say that if we humans treat lovemaking as an experimental sacrament, we can attune ourselves to the union of the two primal deities and, in a sense, participate in the ongoing creation of the world.

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"As a free deed, meditation is naturally individual, uniquely our own. It is where we most fully become ourselves. Its practice is also always individual.

"There are no rules. Just as every potter will elaborate his or her own way of making pots, so every person who meditates will shape his or her own meditation. No two people will do a given meditation in exactly the same way. The same meditation practiced daily will be different every time.

"Every meditation is experimental. One never knows what is going to happen. Improvisation is essential . . . Meditation is something to play with . . . There is no 'wrong' way of doing the meditation, except not doing it!"

- Christopher Bamford, Start Now!: A Book of Soul and Spiritual Exercises

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Monitor the calm, gentle, sweet spirits in your life for the possibility that they may act as agents of deception or passivity. Be inspired by the creator gods and goddesses of ancient myth, who playfully forged millions of beautiful things using wind, mud, tears, and lightning.

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You are a mutant deity in disguise -- not a Buddha or a Christ exactly, but of the same lineage and conjured from the same fire. You have been around since the beginning of time and will be here after the end. Every day and in every way, you're getting better at playing the preposterously amusing master game we all dreamed up together before the Big Bang bloomed.



American author Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) expressed his mission in the passage below. I aspire to be like him!

I am to invite men drenched in Time to recover themselves and come out of time, and taste their native immortal air.

I am to fire with what skill I can the artillery of sympathy and emotion.

I am to indicate constantly, though all unworthy, the Ideal and Holy Life, the life within life, the Forgotten Good, the Unknown Cause in which we sprawl and sin.

I am to try the magic of sincerity, that luxury permitted only to kings and poets.

I am to celebrate the spiritual powers in their infinite contrast to the mechanical powers and the mechanical philosophy of this time.

I am to console the brave sufferers under evils whose end they cannot see, by appeals to the great optimism, self-affirmed in all bosoms.



FATE BAIT

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?



Here's how cartoonist Matt Groening feels about love: "Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine gun."

Here, on the other hand, is what composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart believed: "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius."

Which do you vote for?



Below is another excerpt from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

To hear it as a spoken-word piece, go here.

GLORY IN THE HIGHEST

Thousands of things go right for you every day, beginning the moment you wake up. Through some magic you don?t fully understand, you?re still breathing and your heart is beating, even though you?ve been unconscious for many hours. The air is a mix of gases that's just right for your body's needs, as it was before you fell asleep.

You can see! Light of many colors floods into your eyes, registered by nerves that took God or evolution or some process millions of years to perfect.

The interesting gift of these vivid hues is furthermore made possible by an unimaginably immense globe of fire, the sun, which continually detonates nuclear explosions in order to convert its own body into light and heat and energy for your personal use.

Your hands work wonderfully well. Your heart circulates your blood all the way out to replenish the energy of the muscles and nerves in your fingers and palms and wrists. And after your blood has delivered its blessings, it finds its way back to your heart to be refreshed. This wondrous mystery recurs over and over again without stopping every minute of your life.

You can smell intoxicating aromas. You can hear provocative and soothing sounds. You can taste a thousand different tastes. How is any of this possible? You can think thoughts any time you want -- big, wide, colorful thoughts or tiny dark burrowing thoughts. You can revel and wallow in great oceans of emotion. What colossal secret intelligence or improbable series of fabulous accidents conspired to bestow these superpowers upon you?

TO READ AND HEAR THE REST OF THIS PIECE.



Thoughts on true skepticism versus pseudo-skepticism:

True skepticism does not carry an undertone of anger, ridicule, and derision. It is even-tempered, clear-minded, and full of equanimity, satisfied with showing what's illogical or incorrect in the argument it critiques.

A true skeptic does not use emotionally charged language in an effort to portray the person whose argument he's critiquing as a stupid fool.

A true skeptic has no attachment to proving that she is smarter than and superior to the person whose argument she is critiquing, but rather is content to have her argument win the day purely on the strength of its elegant reasoning.

A true skeptic is willing to consider the possibility that there is some merit, however small, in the argument of the person he's critiquing. He is not afraid that acknowledging this merit will undermine the absolute truth he purports to possess.

A true skeptic is not consumed with the certainty that she is always right. In other words, she resists the temptation to become a fundamentalist.

A true skeptic has a respect for the fact that many questions don't have final answers. She recognizes how much about the world is mysterious.

A true skeptic is skeptical of his own skepticism.

A true skeptic is as likely to be a woman as a man. (97 percent of the pseudo-skeptics are men.)

A true skeptic shows humility, in the spirit that Carl Sagan demonstrated when he said this: "An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence.


"Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no God exists.

"To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.

"A wide range of intermediate positions seems admissable.

"Considering the enormous emotional energies with which the subject is invested, a questing, courageous, and open mind is, I think, the essential tool for narrowing the range of our collective ignorance on the subject of the existence of God."



Homework: Write essays on one or more of these topics:

1. ?How I Used My Nightmares to Become Smart and Strong?

2. ?How I Exploited My Problems to Become a Spiritual Freedom Fighter?

3. ?How I Fed and Fed and Fed My Monsters Until They Ate Themselves to Death?

4. ?How I Turned Envy, Frustration, and Smoldering Anger into Generosity, Compassion, and Fiery Success?

5. ?Why Perfection Sux?

-from my book The Televisionary Oracle.



Some people put their faith in religion or science or political ideologies. English novelist J. G. Ballard placed his faith elsewhere: in the imagination. "I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world," he wrote, "to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen."



Here's another excerpt from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

What is the "soul," anyway? Is it a ghostly blob of magic stuff within us that keeps us connected to the world of dreams and the divine realms? Is it an amorphous metaphor for the secret source of our spiritual power? Is it a part of us the rational mind can't pin down and control, ensuring that we remain accessible to the numinous?

Yes. And also: The soul is a perspective that pushes us to go deeper and see further and live wilder. It's what drives our imagination to flesh out our raw experience, transforming that chaotic stuff into rich storylines that animate our love of life. With the gently propulsive force of the soul, we probe beyond the surface level of things, working to find the hidden meaning and truer feeling.

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"If you need to visualize the soul," wrote Tom Robbins, "think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It's a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you, the Mystery. The one that can never be solved."

P.S. Here's Robbins' conclusion: "By waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe."

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As part of the Beauty and Truth Lab's ongoing crusade to wrestle the English language into a more formidable servant of the ecstatic impulse, we're pleased to present some alternate designations for "soul." See if any of the following concoctions feel right coming out of your mouth: 1. undulating superconductor; 2. nectar plasma; 3. golden lather; 4. smoldering crucible; 5. luminous caduceus.



"I tell you the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."

-Vincent van Gogh



Pablo Neruda says: "To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weakness -- that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things."

- as reported by Lewis Hyde in his book "The Gift"


While you commune with us here at the Conspiracy to Commit Insurrectionary Beauty and Smart Love:

Your favorite phrase is "flux gusto"

The colors of your soul are sable, vermilion, ivory, and jade

Your special emotion is skeptical faith

Your magic talisman is a thousand-year-old Joshua tree whose flowers blossom just one night each year and can only be pollinated by the yucca moth

The garage sale item you most resemble is an old but beautiful and sonorous accordion with a broken key

Your sweet spot is in between the true believers and the scoffing skeptics

Your sacred fungus is yeast and your soil of destiny is peat moss

The shape of your life is oval with soft dark sparks

Your lucky number is 3.14159265

Your lucky phobia is arachibutyrophobia, or the fear of peanut butter adhering to the roof of your mouth

Your holiest pain comes from your yearning to change yourself in the exact way you'd like the world around you to change

from my book The Televisionary Oracle



Are you in quest of an Intimate Ally? A Soul Friend? A Wild Confidante?

Check out Match.com via Free Will Astrology's link:
SoulMatch

Look for a Co-Pilot, Co-Conspirator, or Collaborator . . . an Agent to represent you or a Disciple to worship you . . . a Secret Sharer who'll listen better than anyone or an Amazing Accomplice with whom you can practice the Art of Liberation.



Here's another excerpt from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

LET'S MAKE MORALITY FUN

Are you turned off by the authoritarian, libido-mistrusting perversity of the right-wing moral code, but equally reluctant to embrace the atheism embedded in the left wing's code of goodness?

Are you hungry for a value system rooted in beauty, love, pleasure, and liberation instead of order, control, politeness, and fear, but allergic to the sophistry of the New Age?

Are you apathetic toward the saccharine goodness evangelized by sentimental, superstitious fanatics, but equally bored by the intellectuals who worship at the empty-hearted shrine of scientific materialism?

It may be time for you to whip up your very own moral code. If you do, you might want to keep the following guidelines in mind:

1. A moral code becomes immoral unless it can thrive without a devil and enemy.

2. A moral code grows ugly unless it prescribes good-natured rebellion against automaton-like behavior offered in its support.

3. A moral code becomes murderous unless it's built on a love for the fact that EVERYTHING CHANGES ALL THE TIME, and unless it perpetually adjusts its reasons for being true.

4. A moral code will corrupt its users unless it ensures that their primary motivation for being good is because it's fun.

5. A moral code deadens the soul of everyone it touches unless it has a built-in sense of humor.



"Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other people, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving."

- Albert Einstein



"Why is it so hard to find a soulmate?" asks psychologist Carolyn Godschild Miller in her book "Soulmates." Her answer: "Because most of us are actually searching for egomates instead. We place the most limited and unloving aspect of our minds in charge of our search for love, and then wonder why we aren't succeeding. To the degree that we identify with this false sense of self, and operate on the basis of its limited point of view, we aren't looking for someone to love so much as recruiting fellow actors to take on supporting roles in a favorite melodrama."



None of us is in danger of losing sight of the world's suffering. Every form of news media, art, and entertainment relentlessly barrages us with reminders. The rebels and iconoclasts offer an alternative truth that sometimes rises above the nihilistic propaganda: that the world is beautiful, that humans are miraculous, that we are doing amazingly well as we carry out this impossible experiment called life.



"Love the earth and the sun and animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your income and labors to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and mothers of families, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency, not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

- Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass*



I want to call your attention to one of the few NC-17-rated pieces in my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia. It's called "THE ORGASMIC ROOTS OF PRONOIA."

"THE ORGASMIC ROOTS OF PRONOIA."

If I quoted from it here in the newsletter, however, it would trigger all the spam filters that lie between me and you, preventing the text from reaching you.

Instead, I will give you
a place to read it online.

PROCEED WITH CAUTION! This material has graphic references to love, lust, tenderness, bliss, and rapture.



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Tip Jar for Me




IMPOSSIBILITIES

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
- Charles H. Duell, Director of US Patent Office, 1899

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
- Harry M. Warner, Warner Bros Pictures, 1927

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."
- Robert Miliham, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923

"Heavier than air flying machines are impossible."
- Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895

"The horse is here today, but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad."
- President of Michigan Savings Bank advising against investing in the Ford Motor Company

"Video won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."
- Daryl F. Zanuck, 20th Century Fox, commenting on television in 1946

"Space travel is utter bilge."
- Sir Richard van der Riet Wooley, The Astronomer Royal (1956)

"Rail travel at high speeds is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia."
- Dionysius Lardner, English scientist (1793-1859)

"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility."
- Lee DeForest, American inventor (1873-1961)

"Guitar music is on the way out."
- Decca Records turning down the Beatles, 1962.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
- Spencer Silver, originator of Post-It Notepads.

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology, 1872.

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote."
- Grover Cleveland, 1905

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon".
- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
- Bill Gates, 1981

"Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress."
- Sir William Siemens, electrical engineer, upon hearing Edison's announcement of a successful light bulb.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, president of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

"I believe all the music that can be written has already been written. We're just repeating the past." - Tschaikovsky in a letter to his brother



Below is an excerpt of a piece from my book: UNHAPPY HOUR.
(Hear me perform the whole thing)

You're invited to celebrate Unhappy Hour. It's a ceremony that gives you a poetic license to rant and whine and howl and sob about everything that hurts you and makes you feel bad.

During this perverse grace period, there's no need for you to be inhibited as you unleash your tortured squalls. You don't have to tone down the extremity of your desolate clamors. Unhappy Hour is a ritually consecrated excursion devoted to the full disclosure of your primal clash and jangle.

Here's the catch: It's brief. It's concise. It's crisp. You dive into your darkness for no more than 60 minutes, then climb back out, free and clear. It's called Unhappy Hour, not Unhappy Day or Unhappy Week or Unhappy Year.

Do you have the cheeky temerity to drench yourself in your paroxysmal alienation from life? Unhappy Hour invites you to plunge in and surrender. It dares you to scurry and squirm all the way down to the bottom of your pain, break through the bottom of your pain, and fall down flailing in the soggy, searing abyss, yelping and cringing and wallowing.

That's where you let your pain tell you every story it has to tell you. You let your pain teach you every lesson it has to teach you.
But then it's over. The ritual ordeal is complete. And your pain has to take a vacation until the next Unhappy Hour, which isn't until next week sometime, or maybe next month.

You see the way the game works? Between this Unhappy Hour and the next one, your pain has to shut up. It's not allowed to creep and seep all over everything, staining the flow of your daily life. It doesn't have free reign to infect you whenever it's itching for more power.

Your pain gets its succinct blast of glory, its resplendent climax, but leaves you alone the rest of the time.

If performed regularly, Unhappy Hour serves as an exorcism that empties you of psychic toxins, while at the same time -- miracle of miracles -- it helps you squeeze every last drop of blessed catharsis out of those psychic toxins.

Pronoia will then be able to flourish as you luxuriate more frequently in rosy moods and broad-minded visions. You'll develop a knack for cultivating smart joy and cagey optimism as your normal states of mind.

Now let's get you warmed up for Unhappy Hour . . . .

READ (and hear) THE REST OF THIS PIECE

See me perform "Unhappy Hour" at The Marsh theater in San Francisco.

Or buy the book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia



EVERYONE'S A NOBODY . . . AND NOBOY'S PERFECT

Some of my readers complain when I quote a public figure they consider a bad person. Once I cited philosopher Bertrand Russell, and a woman from Austin berated me: "Russell was a terrible father! How dare you give him any credence?"

Another time I invoked the wisdom of ex-U.S. president Teddy Roosevelt. "What possessed you to quote such a militaristic bully?" wrote an outraged emailer.

Recently, some readers of FB became enraged when I quoted William S. Burroughs and Carlos Castaneda. "Terrible men!" they said.

Last week, some readers were miffed because I quoted the evangelical pastor Rick Warren in the Pisces horoscope.

Here's how I respond to these grumbles: If I refused to learn from people unless I agreed with everything they had ever said and done, I would never learn from anyone.

Furthermore, I don't necessarily agree with every nuance of every quote I cite. They may teach me, rile me up, and provoke me to think, but that doesn't mean I endorse them 100 percent. What's more likely is that I question some aspect of their thought.

What about you? Have you set up your life so that everyone is either on or off your good list? If so, consider the possibility of cultivating a capacity to derive insight from people who aren't perfect. Have fun learning from people you partially agree with and partially disagree with.

Here are examples of some of the other people from whom I have drawn important teachings and inspiration despite their sins:

Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owned slaves until they died, and Benjamin Franklin owned slaves most of his adult life.

Dr. Seuss had an affair with another woman while his wife was suffering from cancer, and his wife subsequently committed suicide.

Einstein cheated on his wife and treated her horrendously.

William Blake lived in absolute filth.

Edgar Allan Poe married his 13-year-old cousin when he was 26.

One biographer of Carl Jung said Jung was a racist, an anti-Semite, and a misogynist.

Martin Luther King Jr. cheated on his wife.

The painter Peter Paul Rubens married a 16-year-old female when he was 53.

D. H. Lawrence didn't include a single laugh, chuckle, or grin in the entirety of his literary work.



Are you in quest of an Intimate Ally? A Soul Friend? A Wild Confidante?

Check out Match.com via Free Will Astrology's link:
SoulMatch

Look for a Co-Pilot, Co-Conspirator, or Collaborator . . . an Agent to represent you or a Disciple to worship you . . . a Secret Sharer who'll listen better than anyone or an Amazing Accomplice with whom you can practice the Art of Liberation.



MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

States That Slashed Their Prison Populations Have Seen Disproportionate Drops In Crime, Too.

Lessons From the Low-Tech Defeat of the Guinea Worm

"The corporate answer to the food crisis has been to introduce genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in an effort to expand crop sizes and yields. However, on a local level, scientist Joe Breskin has found a solution for dramatically increasing vegetable yields in greenhouses, doubling the length of growing seasons and feeding more people for less money -- all while using cutting-edge energy efficiency techniques."

A compendium of pronoiac news.

(Note: I endorse these because I like them. They are not advertisements, and I get no kickbacks.)




You have at least a million relatives as close as tenth cousin, and no one on Earth is any further removed than your fiftieth cousin.

With each breath, you take into your body 10 sextillion atoms, and, owing to the wind's circulation, every year you have intimate relations with oxygen molecules exhaled by every person alive, as well as by everyone who ever lived.

Right now you may be carrying atoms that were once inside the lungs of Malcolm X, William Shakespeare, Joan of Arc, and Cleopatra.

(Source: Guy Murchie, The Seven Mysteries of Life

Here's the accompanying photo by Fernan Federici

+

As I stood by the creek at dusk, the silhouette of a woman in a kayak flowed my way. The last crease of the orange sun hovered on the horizon behind her. I spied the reflection of the first star shimmering in the violet water before I saw it in the sky.

The temperature was balmy. A translucent spider floated on a mild breeze at the end of an airborne silk strand. Nine geese in v-formation trumpeted as they soared overhead.

The woman drew close enough for us to see each other's faces, and addressed me. "We win!" she exclaimed jubilantly, standing up in her kayak and raising her arms. Her announcement delivered, she paddled away.

Here's the accompanying photo by Ro Loughran

+

I invite you to think about your relationship to human beings who haven't been born yet. What might you create for them to use? How can you make your life a gift to the future? Can you not only help preserve the wonders we live amidst, but actually enhance them?

Lewis Carroll: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward."

Image by Dietmar Voorworld

+

The Divine Awkward in me honors the Divine Awkward in you

+

"Freedom is in the unknown. If you believe there is an unknown everywhere, in your own body, in your relationships with other people, in political institutions, in the universe, then you have maximum freedom." - philosopher John C. Lilly

Photo by Fernan Federici

+

Great work of art: the 89-year-old face of Lauren Bacall




Here's another excerpt from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

WHAT IS PRONOIA?
To hear this piece, go here.

OBJECTIVE: To explore the secrets of becoming a wildly disciplined, fiercely tender, ironically sincere, scrupulously curious, aggressively sensitive, blasphemously reverent, lyrically logical, lustfully compassionate Master of Rowdy Bliss.

DEFINITION: Pronoia is the antidote for paranoia. It's the understanding that the universe is fundamentally friendly. It's a mode of training 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.

HYPOTHESES: Evil is boring. Cynicism is idiotic. Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy. Joy is fascinating. Love is an act of heroic genius. Pleasure is your birthright. Receptivity is a superpower.

PROCEDURE: 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. Join the conspiracy to shower all of creation with blessings.

GUIDING QUESTION: "The secret of life," said sculptor Henry Moore to poet Donald Hall, "is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is -- it must be something you cannot possibly do." What is that task for you?

UNDIGNIFIED MEDITATIONS TO KEEP YOU HONEST: Brag about what you can't do and don't have. Confess profound secrets to people who aren't particularly interested. Pray for the success of your enemies while you're making love. Change your name every day for a thousand days.

TO READ AND HEAR THE REST OF THIS PIECE, go here.



Here's another excerpt from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

SHADOW BLESSINGS

Life is a vast and intricate conspiracy guaranteed to keep you well-supplied with blessings. What kind of blessings? A gorgeous physique, perfect marriage, luxurious home, high status, & $10 million? Maybe.

But it's just as likely that the blessings will be interesting surprises, dizzying adventures, gifts you hardly know what to do with, & conundrums that dare you to get smarter.

Novelist William Vollman referred to these types of blessings when he said that "the most important and enjoyable thing in life is grappling with a complicated, tricky problem that you don't know how to solve."

Sculptor Henry Moore had a similar idea. He said, "The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is -- it must be something you cannot possibly do."

So in other words, pronoia does not guarantee that you will forevermore be free of all difficult experiences . . . .

Read or hear the rest.



There are at least three kinds of darkness:
1. pathology and evil;
2. the mysterious unknown;
3. the shadowy, unripe parts of our psyches that are on their way to becoming more interesting and useful but are still awkward and inarticulate.

You can help prevent outbreaks of the first kind of darkness by developing a closer personal relationship with the second and third types.



Here's the homework I gave my readers: "Guess what age you'll be when you finally know exactly who you are."

In response, a woman named Bridjet wrote this: "I hope I NEVER completely know who I am! I love discovering new mysteries about myself; I love to change as everything else around me changes. It's one of the most beautifully thrilling things about life -- that the only constant is change. If I ever know completely who I am, it'll be a sad day -- because it will mean that I haven't changed in a long time, that I've become stagnant."



"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." That's the opening sentence of Charles Dickens' bestselling novel "A Tale of Two Cities." The author was describing the period of the French Revolution in the late 18th century, but he could just as well have been talking about our time -- or any other time, for that matter.

Of course many modern cynics reject the idea that our era could in any way be construed to be the best of times. They obsess on the idea that ours is the worst of all the worst times that have ever been.

Here's my request: Even if you are one of those cynics, be rebellious and come up with five reasons why this is the best of times.

If you like, you may balance your testimony with a litany of why this is the worst of times.

More from Dickens:
It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness . . .



Why is it so hard for Westerners of the last century to feel the intimate presence of the divine intelligences? Every other culture in the history of the world has had a more vital connection with the realm of spirit.

According to poet Gary Snyder, California's Yana Indians explained it this way: The gods have retreated to the volcanic recesses of Mt. Lassen, passing the time playing gambling games with magic sticks. They're simply waiting for such a time when human beings will "reform themselves and become 'real people' that spirits might want to associate with once again."



As someone who loves science, I understand why scientists get impatient and riled up about those who reject the overwhelming evidence for evolution and human-caused climate change. I, too, am disturbed about the damage done by fanatical believers who not only insist on cultivating their ignorance, but also want to foist it on others.

But I am far less sanguine about the scientists and science-lovers who wax arrogant and authoritative as they dogmatically dismiss all "alternative medicine" as pseudo-science that can't possible work . . .

I am perplexed by the scientists and science-lovers who assert with an angry omniscience that there are absolutely no concerns, none, never, about the safety of genetically engineered foods . . .

I am amazed by the scientists and science-lovers who pontificate with unskeptical certainty, with a despotic and doctrinaire condescension more befitting a religious fundamentalist, that all so-called paranormal phenomena is impossible, that all consciousness stems solely from the activities of brain chemicals, that there is and cannot be any such thing as a "soul" or non-material intelligences or life after death.

Ideas about evolution and human-caused climate change may come as close as we humans can approach to absolute truth about the material world. But those other things I mentioned don't belong in the same category. To vehemently insist that they do is not warranted or logical. And it's certainly not scientific.



In Plato's Theaetetus, the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates spoke derisively about people who are eu a-mousoi, an ancient Greek term that literally means "happily without muses." These are the plodding materialists who have no hunger for divine inspiration and no need of higher insights about reality. They mistakenly believe that in order to be real, a thing must be perceivable by the five senses. They aren't trustworthy.

"Socrates argues that the invisible world is the most intelligible and that the visible world is the least knowable, and the most obscure." - Wikipedia

One of the worst consequences of religious fundamentalism, in my opinion, has been to give justification to the rise of militant cults of plodding materialists who are eu a-mousoi.



"You have more freedom than you are using," says artist Dan Attoe.

I hope that taunt gets under your skin and riles you up. Maybe it will motivate you to lay claim to all the potential spaciousness and independence and leeway that are just lying around going to waste.



"Maverick biologist" Rupert Sheldrake thinks there is a big problem in science, caused by those who employ it as a belief system, rather than using it as a method of inquiry. He thinks science is being held back by the former, and in his book *Science Set Free* he offers the "ten dogmas of science" that he thinks need to be treated with more suspicion than they currently are:

1. That nature is mechanical.
2. That matter is unconscious.
3. The laws of nature are fixed.
4. The totally amount of matter and energy are always the same.
5. That nature is purposeless.
6. Biological inheritance is material.
7. That memories are stored as material traces.
8. The mind is in the brain.
9. Telepathy and other psychic phenomena are illusory.
10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

The