Week of February 5th, 2015
Who Do You Want To Be?
Dear Readers,I've gathered together all of the Big-Picture Horoscopes I wrote for you in the past few weeks, and bundled them in one place. Read
a compendium of your written long-range forecasts for 2015.
In addition to these, I've created EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES that go even further in Exploring Your Long-Term Destiny in 2015.
What will be the story of your life in the coming months? What new influences will be headed your way? What fresh resources will you be able to draw on? How can you conspire with life to create the best possible future for yourself?
To listen to these three-part, in-depth reports, go here.
Register and/or log in through the main page, and then access the horoscopes by clicking on "Long Range Prediction." (Choose from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.)
If you'd like a boost of inspiration to fuel you in your quest for beauty and truth and love and meaning, tune in to my meditations on your Big-Picture outlook.
Each of the three-part reports is seven to nine minutes long. The cost is $6 per report. There are discounts for the purchase of multiple reports.
"I've found a nice balance," writes EarthMover, one of my readers, "between living like someone who has overdosed on delusional optimism and someone who thinks everything and everyone sucks. I can see things as they really are instead of through either rose-colored glasses or crap-colored glasses.
"That means I can cultivate true objectivity, not the fake cynical kind. I free myself from negative emotional biases that used to cloud my ability to see the partially hidden beauty all around me.
"At the same time, I'm not addicted to the idea that I should be eternally happy and blithe and sweet. When the dark moods descend on me, I trust them. I know they are openings into equally sacred perceptions and insights."
"In purely spiritual matters, God grants all desires," said philosopher and activist Simone Weil. "Those who have less have asked for less." I think this is a worthy hypothesis for you to try out.
To be clear: It doesn't necessarily mean you will get a dream job and perfect lover and ten million dollars. What it does suggest is this: You can have any relationship with the Divine Wow that you dare to imagine; you can get all the grace you need to understand why your life is the way it is; you can make tremendous progress as you do the life-long work of liberating yourself from your suffering.
I invite you to repeat the following line as many times as necessary:
"I will never again cast a curse on myself."
A good follow-up to the above affirmation is this one: "I always cast a positive spell on myself."
A reader calling herself Rebellioness collaborated with me to come up with five revolutionized approaches to the art of rebellion. I present them here for your use.
1. Experiment with uppity, mischievous optimism.
2. Invoke insurrectionary levels of wildly interesting generosity.
3. Indulge in an insolent refusal to be chronically fearful.
4. Pursue a cheeky ambition to be as wide-awake as a dissident young messiah.
5. Bring reckless levels of creative intelligence to all expressions of love.
Maybe you're better than you think you are at gliding, flowing, leaping, skipping, twirling, undulating, reverberating, galloping, and rub-a-dub-dubbing.
It's possible that with just a small attitude adjustment you could be an expert at rumbling, romping, rollicking, cavorting, and zip-a-dap-doodling.
If you really love your body and throw off some of the inhibitions you might have about celebrating your instinctual nature, you may drop to the low end of the scale in performing these activities: shuffling, drooping, mumbling, wallowing, pigeonholing, and pussyfooting.
If I ever produce a self-help manual called "The Reverse Psychology of Getting Everything You Want," it will discuss the following paradoxes:
a. People are more willing to accommodate your longings if you're not greedy or grasping.
b. A good way to achieve your desires is to cultivate the feeling that you have already achieved them.
c. Whatever you're longing for has been changed by your pursuit of it. It's different from what it was when you felt the first pangs of desire. To make it yours, then, you'll have to modify your ideas about it.
d. Be careful what you wish for because if your wish does materialize it will require you to change in ways you didn't foresee.
Any others you can think of?
"The lesson that life constantly enforces is 'Look underfoot.' You are always nearer to the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Don't despise your own place and hour. Every place is the center of the world." - naturalist John Burroughs
Have you ever been loved? I bet you have been loved so much and so deeply that you have become blas? about the immensity of the grace it confers.
So let me remind you: To be loved is a privilege and prize equivalent to being born. If you're smart, you pause regularly to bask in the astonishing knowledge that there are many people out there who care for you and want you to thrive and hold you in their thoughts with fondness. Animals, too: You have been the recipient of their boundless affection. The spirits of allies who've left this world continue to send their tender regards, as well.
- from my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.
I invite you to have an improbable quest playing at the edge of your imagination: a heroic task that provokes deep thoughts and noble passions even if it incites smoldering torment . . . an extravagant dream that's a bit farfetched but not entirely insane . . . a goal that stretches your possibilities and opens your mind . . . a wild hope whose pursuit makes you smarter and stronger even if you never fully accomplish it.
"Enlightenment remains unrealized so long as it is considered as a specific state to be attained, and for which there are standards of success."
- Alan Watts
"All of us who?ve become artists, musicians, poets, dancers, film directors -- God knows what -- we were all once children who loved to delve into our other ego, where anarchy and limitlessness reigns.?
- Mamma Andersson
"I make no apologies for how I chose to repair what you broke,"
said Meredith Grey.
"You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention."
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
Christopher Bamford says: "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!"
Find out more.
The best news of 2014 you never heard about:
1. Child mortality rate has fallen dramatically
2. More people getting HIV treatment than people getting infected
3. New tuberculosis treatment will dramatically reduce curing time
4. Nigeria has almost eradicated polio and is now Ebola free
Read all about it.
YOUR ILLUSIONS
Some of your illusions seeped into you before you learned to talk. Others sneaked into you later, while you were busy figuring out how to become yourself. Eventually, you even made conscious choices to adopt certain illusions because they provided you with comfort and consolation.
There's no need to be ashamed of this. It's a natural part of being a human being.
Now here's the good news: You have the power to shed at least some of your illusions in ways that don't shatter your foundations.
To begin the process, declare this intention at noon every Sunday for the next six months: "I am calling on all the power I have at my disposal, both conscious and unconscious, to dissolve my illusions."
MAKE THE INVISIBLE DARK FORCE BEAUTIFUL
Make the invisible dark force beautiful. Create a song out of your moans. Brag about your wounds. Dance reverently on the graves of your enemies. Sneak a gift to your bad self. Dissolve the ties that bind you to hollow intelligence.
Train yourself in the art of unpredictability. Play forever in time's blessing. Lift up your heart unto the wild sun. Distribute your favors to the little ones who can never pay you back. Fall out of love with fear. Make beautiful messes in the midst of ugly messes.
Anything I missed?
MY WISHES FOR YOU
I wish you joyous and mysterious eruptions of profound gratification and gratitude.
I wish you fluid insights and "ah-ha!" revelations that lead to cathartic integrations on a regular basis.
I wish you the ripening of lucky trends you've worked hard to earn, resulting in the kind of healing that allows your generosity to flow.
I wish you captivating yet relaxing adventures that enable you to weave together diverse threads of your experience, inspiring you to feel at home in the world.
Even if you don't call yourself an artist, you have the potential to be a dynamic creator who is always hatching new plans, coming up with fresh ideas, and shifting your approach to everything you do as you adjust to life's ceaseless invitation to change.
It's to this part of you -- the restless, inventive spirit -- that I address the following: Unleash yourself! Don't be satisfied with the world the way it is; don't sit back passively and blankly complain about the dead weight of the mediocre status quo.
Instead, call on your curiosity and charisma and expressiveness and lust for life as you tinker with and rebuild everything you see so that it's in greater harmony with the laws of love and more hospitable to your soul's code.
Wake up
Kick ass.
Be kind.
Repeat.
"Enter each day with the expectation that the happenings of the day may contain a clandestine message addressed to you personally. Expect omens, epiphanies, casual blessings, and teachers who unknowingly speak to your condition."
- Sam Keen
Homework: Think of examples to illustrate the differences between trivial, useless "pleasure" and smart, life-exalting pleasure.
your debts forgiven
your wounds healed
your apologies accepted
your generosity expanded
your love educated
your desires clarified
your uniqueness unleashed
your untold stories heard
your insight heightened
your load lightened
your wildness rejuvenated
your leaks plugged
your courage stoked
your fears dissolved
your imagination fed
your creativity uncorked
I invite you to devote five minutes to visualizing the fulfillment of your holiest desire, followed by five minutes of visualizing the fulfillment of a loved one's holiest desire.
Kenneth Patchen suggests:
1. Discourage all traces of shame.
2. Bear no cross.
3. Extend all boundaries.
4. Blush perpetually in gaping innocence.
5. Burrow beneath the subconscious.
6. Pass from one world to another in carefree devotion.
7. Exhaust the primitive.
8. Generate the free brain.
9. Forego no succulent filth.
10. Verify the irrational.
11. Acquire a sublime reputation.
12. Make one monster at least.
13. Multiply all opinions.
14. Inhabit everyone.
See the rest of Kenneth Patchen's recommendations.
