I enjoy getting spam emails with outrageous declarations that are at odds with common sense. "Eating salads makes you sick" is one of my favorites, along with "Water is worse for you than vodka" and "Smoking is healthier than exercising." Why do I love reading these laughable claims? Well, they remind me that every day I am barraged by nonsense and delusion from the news media, the Internet, politicians, celebrities, and a host of fanatics. "Smoking is healthier than exercising" is just a more extreme and obvious lie than many others that are better disguised. The moral of the story for you in the coming week: Be alert for exaggerations that clue you in to what's going on discreetly below the surface. Watch carefully for glitches in the Matrix.

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Would you like further inspiration as you scheme and dream to make the most of life's sometimes puzzling opportunities? 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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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?