To determine whether you are aligned with the cosmic flow, please answer the following questions. 1. Would you say that your current situation is more akin to treading water in a mosquito-ridden swamp, or conducting a ritual of purification in a clear mountain stream? 2. Have you been wrestling with boring ghosts and arguing with traditions that have lost most of their meaning? Or have you been transforming your past and developing a riper relationship with your roots? 3. Are you stuck in a gooey muck? Or are you building a flexible new foundation?

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Assume that your drive to experience pleasure isn't a barrier to your spiritual growth, but is in fact essential to it. Proceed on the hypothesis that cultivating joy can make you a more ethical and compassionate person. Imagine that feeling good has something important to teach you every day. For inspiration in practicing this approach, tune in to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week.

I'm also still offering a MID-YEAR BIG-PICTURE PREVIEW -- an audio report about YOUR LONG-TERM DESTINY. To hear it, log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2015." The cost is $6.

What are your visions and plans for your life in the next ten to twelve months? Could you use some inspiration as you mobilize your higher powers? Tune in. (The cost for either the weekly forecast or the long-term report is $6, with discounts for multiple purchases.)

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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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Visualize yourself being able to recognize the raw truth about the people you care about. Imagine that you can see how they already embody the beauty their souls' codes have promised as well as how they still fall short of embodying that beauty.

Picture yourself being able to make them feel appreciated even as you inspire them to risk changes that will activate more of their souls' codes.

Taurus singer Sam Smith won four Grammys this year, largely on the strength of his hit single "Stay with Me." The song has a lush gospel choir backing up his lead vocals, or so it seems. But in fact, every voice in that choir is his own. He recorded twenty separate harmony tracks that were woven together to create the big sound. What would be the equivalent in your world, Taurus? How could you produce a wealth of support for yourself? What might you do to surround yourself with a web of help and nourishment? How can you amplify and intensify your efforts so they have more clout? Now would be an excellent time to explore possibilities like these.

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"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." So begins Charles Dickens' novel David Copperfield. I'd like to inspire you to write a story of your own that begins like that. For help, tune into your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week.

I'm also still offering a MID-YEAR BIG-PICTURE PREVIEW -- an audio report about YOUR LONG-TERM DESTINY. To hear it, log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2015."

What are your visions and plans for your life in the next ten to twelve months? Could you use some inspiration as you mobilize your higher powers? Tune in. (The cost for either the weekly forecast or the long-term report is $6, with discounts for multiple purchases.)

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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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Plant orchids on a strip-mined hill.

Imagine you have a guardian angel who looks like Malcolm X.

Teach an animal to dance.

Hire a puppet troupe to reenact your life story using marionettes in Renaissance costumes.

Make believe you are the ocean king or thunder queen.

Improvise a fresh bedtime story for someone you love.

Put on an inflatable sumo wrestler costume and play a bagpipe as badly as possible.

Watch TV with your third eye.

Sip holy water blessed by a smart teenage girl.

Bear in mind that you are the Chosen One, and so is everyone else.

Born under the sign of Gemini, Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was a French painter who upset traditionalists. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he wasn't interested in creating idealistic art based on historical and religious themes. He focused on earthy subjects about which he had direct experience, like the day-to-day lives of peasants and laborers. So even though he became a highly praised celebrity by his mid-thirties, the arbiters of the art world tried to exclude him. For example, they denied him a place in Exposition Universelle, a major international exhibition in Paris. In response, Courbet built a temporary gallery next door to the main hall, where he displayed his own work. As you strive to get your voice heard, Gemini, I urge you to be equally cheeky and innovative. Buy yourself a megaphone or erect your own clubhouse or launch a new enterprise. Do whatever it takes to show who you really are.

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I invite you to keep a running list of all the ways life delights you and helps you and energizes you. Describe everyday miracles you take for granted . . . the uncanny powers you possess . . . the small joys that occur so routinely you forget how much they mean to you . . . the steady flow of benefits bestowed on you by people you know and don't know. What works for you? What makes you feel at home in the world? For inspiration in this noble effort, tune in to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week.

I'm also still offering a MID-YEAR BIG-PICTURE PREVIEW -- an audio report about YOUR LONG-TERM DESTINY. To hear it, log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2015."

What are your visions and plans for your life in the next ten to twelve months? Could you use some inspiration as you mobilize your higher powers? Tune in. (The cost for either the weekly forecast or the long-term report is $6, with discounts for multiple purchases.)

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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 dangers of excessive politeness are perfectly exemplified in the medieval legend of Parzival, Arthur's purest knight. His quest for the Holy Grail leads him to a castle where he is welcomed by a wounded lord. At dinner, a mysterious bowl captivates Parzival's attention. He's dying to know more about it, but he holds his tongue. His training as a knight has taught him that it's uncourteous to express too much curiosity.

Tragically, he doesn't realize that he has arrived at the very place where his quest could be satisfied. The wounded lord is actually the Fisher King, the marvelous bowl is the Grail, and he is being presented with a magical test. The test consists of a simple task: to ask about the bowl. Because Parzival fails to do so, the king does not reveal the secret and does not give him the Grail.

The next morning, Parzival wakes up to find the castle empty, and he leaves having missed the very opportunity he wanted most.

"I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I am doing," said composer John Cage in describing his creative process. That's excellent counsel for you to meditate on, Cancerian. The less expertise and certainty you have about the rough magic you're experimenting with, the more likely it is that this magic will lead you to useful breakthroughs. To bolster Cage's advice and help you get the most from your period of self-reinvention, I offer you this quote from Picasso: "I imitate everyone except myself."

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What new influences are heading your way? How do you want to create your life story? How can you exert your free will to seek out the adventures that will bring out the best in you, even as you find graceful ways to cooperate with the tides of destiny? I discuss the possibilities in your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the coming week.

I'm also still offering a MID-YEAR BIG-PICTURE PREVIEW -- an audio report about YOUR LONG-TERM DESTINY. To hear it, log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2015."

What are your visions and plans for your life in the next ten to twelve months? Could you use some inspiration as you mobilize your higher powers? Tune in. (The cost for either the weekly forecast or the long-term report is $6, with discounts for multiple purchases.)

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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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"I've been practicing radical authenticity lately," my friend Brandon told me. "I'm revealing the blunt truth about unmentionable subjects to everyone I know. It's been pretty hellish -- no one likes having the social masks stripped away -- but it's been ultimately rewarding."

"I admire your boldness in naming the currents flowing beneath the surface," I replied, "but I'm curious as to why you imply they're all negative. To practice radical authenticity, shouldn't you also express the raw truth about what's right, good, and beautiful? Shouldn't you unleash the praise and gratitude that normally go unspoken?"

Your words of wisdom come from Leo artist Andy Warhol: "Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years, when they could just say, 'so what.' That’s one of my favorite things to say. 'So what.'" Can I interest you in that approach, Leo? It has similarities to the Buddhist strategy of cultivating non-attachment -- of dropping your fixations about matters that can't be controlled or changed. But I suspect you would draw special benefits from the breezy, devil-may-care spirit of Warhol's version. So start there.

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Want to go further in exploring and understanding the Great Mystery that is your life? I discuss the possibilities for the week ahead in your Expanded Audio Horoscope.

I'm also still offering a MID-YEAR BIG-PICTURE PREVIEW -- an audio report about YOUR LONG-TERM DESTINY. To hear it, log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2015."

What are your visions and plans for your life in the next ten to twelve months? Could you use some inspiration as you mobilize your higher powers? Tune in. (The cost for either the weekly forecast or the long-term report is $6, with discounts for multiple purchases.)

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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 Tibetan Buddhism's "Four Dignities of the Warrior's Path," courage and ferocity are absent. In fact, the qualities regarded as essential for being a warrior have nothing in common with the training regimens of Marines or football players or lobbyists.

The first dignity is often translated in English as meekness, but that word doesn't convey its full meaning. "Relaxed confidence" is a more precise formulation -- a humble feeling of being at home in one's body.

Perkiness, or irrepressible joy, is the second dignity. To develop it, a warrior cultivates the habit of seeing the best in everything and works diligently to avoid the self-indulgence of cynicism.

The third is outrageousness. The warrior who embodies this dignity loves to experiment, is not addicted to strategies that have been successful in the past, and has a passionate objectivity that's free of the irrelevant emotions of hope and fear.

The fourth dignity is inscrutability, or a skill at evading the pigeonholes and simplistic definitions that might limit the warrior's inventiveness while fighting for his or her moral vision.

In her late twenties, J. K. Rowling was a single mother living on welfare. That's when she began work on her Harry Potter books. Craig Newmark had turned 42 by the time he founded Craigslist. One of the world's most oft-visited websites is HuffingtonPost.com, which Arianna Huffington established when she was 54. As for Harland Sanders, creator of KFC: He didn't begin building the global empire of fried-chicken restaurants until the age of 65. I hope the preceding serves as a pep talk, Virgo, reminding you that it's never to late to instigate the project of a lifetime. The time between now and your birthday in 2016 will be an especially favorable phase to do so. Start ruminating on what it might be.

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What are the obvious secrets you can't quite see? How could you turn your challenges into daily gifts for yourself? I discuss the possibilities for the week ahead in your Expanded Audio Horoscope.

I'm also still offering a MID-YEAR BIG-PICTURE PREVIEW -- an audio report about YOUR LONG-TERM DESTINY. To hear it, log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2015."

What are your visions and plans for your life in the next ten to twelve months? Could you use some inspiration as you mobilize your higher powers? Tune in. (The cost for either the weekly forecast or the long-term report is $6, with discounts for multiple purchases.)

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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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Here's one of the Beauty and Truth Laboratory's favorite rules for evaluating the information that comes our way: Assume that it's a blend of truth and falsehood and every shade of half-truth in between. That applies equally to stories in The New York Times and to the raving spiels of the homeless Gulf War vet who hangs out at the local post office.

While I suspect that the Times has a much higher proportion of accurate data, I can never be sure what distortions are embedded in its reports. Its unconscious devotion to pop nihilism means that it routinely ignores vast realms of human experience. And there are odd days when the homeless guy's rants spit out gems of poetic wisdom that give me the chills and change the way I understand the world.

Moral of the story: Useful messages may come from anywhere. I'm more likely to recognize them if I'm simultaneously curious and discriminating.

It's the power-building phase of your astrological cycle. To take maximum advantage, convey the following message to your subconscious mind: "I know you will provide me with an abundance of insight, inspiration, and energy for whatever intention I choose to focus on. And during the next four weeks, my intention will be to cultivate, expand, and refine my personal power. I will especially focus on what author Stephen R. Covey called 'the capacity to overcome deeply embedded habits and to cultivate higher, more effective ones.'"

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Grace emerges in the ebb and flow, not just the flow. The waning reveals a different blessing than the waxing. Where are you in the great cycle of your life? I discuss the possibilities for the week ahead in your Expanded Audio Horoscope.

I'm also still offering a MID-YEAR BIG-PICTURE PREVIEW -- an audio report about YOUR LONG-TERM DESTINY. To hear it, log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2015."

What are your visions and plans for your life in the next ten to twelve months? Could you use some inspiration as you mobilize your higher powers? Tune in. (The cost for either the weekly forecast or the long-term report is $6, with discounts for multiple purchases.)

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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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To achieve what the Zen Buddhists call "beginner's mind," you dispense with all preconceptions and enter each situation as if seeing it for the first time. "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities," wrote Shunryu Suzuki in his book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, "but in the expert's there are few."

As much as I love beginner's mind, though, I advocate an additional discipline: cultivating a beginner's heart. That means approaching every encounter imbued with a freshly invoked wave of love that is as pure as if you're feeling it for the first time.

I'm a big fan of science and logic and objective thinking. Most of us need more of that good stuff. The world would be a saner, safer place if we all got regular lessons on how to be more reasonable and rational. But in the immediate future, Scorpio, I'll steer you in a different direction. I believe you will benefit from injecting your imagination with primal raw crazy wild mojo. For example, you might read utopian science fiction and fairy tales about talking animals and poetry that scrambles your intellectual constructs. You could remember your dreams and ruminate about them as if they were revelations from the Great Beyond. You may also find it healthy to fantasize profusely about forbidden and impossible and hilarious adventures.

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Whether it's your time to ferment in the shadows or sing in the sun, fresh power to transform yourself is on the way. Life always delivers the creative energy you need to change into the new thing you must become. I discuss the possibilities for the week ahead in your Expanded Audio Horoscope.

I'm also still offering a MID-YEAR BIG-PICTURE PREVIEW -- an audio report about YOUR LONG-TERM DESTINY. To hear it, log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2015."

What are your visions and plans for your life in the next ten to twelve months? Could you use some inspiration as you mobilize your higher powers? Tune in. (The cost for either the weekly forecast or the long-term report is $6, with discounts for multiple purchases.)

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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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To be the best pronoiac explorer you can be, I suggest you adopt an outlook that combines the rigorous objectivity of a scientist, the "beginner's mind" of Zen Buddhism, the "beginner's heart" of pronoia, and the compassionate friendliness of the Dalai Lama. Blend a scrupulously dispassionate curiosity with a skepticism driven by expansiveness, not spleen.

To pull this off, you'll have to be willing to regularly suspend your brilliant theories about the way the world works. Accept with good humor the possibility that what you've learned in the past may not be a reliable guide to understanding the fresh phenomenon that's right in front of you. Be suspicious of your biases, even the rational and benevolent ones. Open your heart as you strip away the interpretations that your emotions might be inclined to impose.

"Before we can receive the unbiased truth about anything," wrote my teacher Ann Davies, "we have to be ready to ignore what we would like to be true."

At the same time, don't turn into a hard-ass, poker-faced robot. Keep your feelings moist and receptive. Remember your natural affection for all of creation. Enjoy the power of tender sympathy as it drives you to probe for the unimaginable revelations of every new moment. "Before we can receive the entire truth about anything," said Ann Davies, "we have to love it."

There are lots of inquiries and invitations coming your way -- perhaps too many. I don't think you should pursue all of them. In fact, I suspect that only one would ultimately make you a better human being and a braver explorer and a wiser lover. And that one, at first glance, may have not as much initial appeal as some of the others. So your first task is to dig deep to identify the propositions that are attractive on the surface but not very substantial. Then you're more likely to recognize the offer that will have lasting value even if it doesn't make a spectacular first impression.

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You can learn to be lucky. It's not a mystical force you're born with, but a habit you can develop. How? For starters, be open to new experiences, trust your gut wisdom, expect good fortune, see the bright side of challenging events, and master the art of maximizing opportunities. I discuss the possibilities for the week ahead in your Expanded Audio Horoscope.

I'm also still offering a MID-YEAR BIG-PICTURE PREVIEW -- an audio report about YOUR LONG-TERM DESTINY. To hear it, log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2015."

What are your visions and plans for your life in the next ten to twelve months? Could you use some inspiration as you mobilize your higher powers? Tune in. (The cost for either the weekly forecast or the long-term report is $6, with discounts for multiple purchases.)

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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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Receptivity is not a passive state. Nor is it a blank emptiness, waiting around for whatever happens to come along. In urging you to cultivate receptivity, I don't mean you should become a lazy do-nothing bereft of goals, reacting blindly to whatever life throws in front of you.

Receptivity is a robust readiness to be surprised and moved, a vigorous intention to be awake to everything you can't control. When you're receptive in the pronoiac style, you have strong ideas and a powerful will and an eagerness to disseminate your unique blessings, but you're also animated by the humble certainty that you have a lot to learn.

"I find a lot of people physically attractive, but finding people mentally and spiritually attractive is different and much harder for me." So says 40ozshawty on her Tumblr page. If you share that frustration, I have good news. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you're due to encounter a higher-than-usual percentage of mentally and spiritually attractive people in the next six weeks. But I wonder how you'll deal with this abundance. Will you run away from it, feeling overwhelmed by the prospect that your life could get more interesting and complicated? Or will you embrace it, daringly welcoming the interesting complications?

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Somewhere there's a treasure that has no value to anyone but you, and a secret that's meaningless to everyone except you, and a frontier that harbors a revelation only you would know how to exploit. Why not go in search of those things? I discuss the possibilities for the week ahead in your Expanded Audio Horoscope.

I'm also still offering a MID-YEAR BIG-PICTURE PREVIEW -- an audio report about YOUR LONG-TERM DESTINY. To hear it, log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2015."

What are your visions and plans for your life in the next ten to twelve months? Could you use some inspiration as you mobilize your higher powers? Tune in. (The cost for either the weekly forecast or the long-term report is $6, with discounts for multiple purchases.)

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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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Most people associate innocence with naivete. Conventional wisdom regards it as belonging to children and fools and rookies who lack the sophistication or experience to know the tough truths about life.

But the Beauty and Truth Lab recognizes a different kind of innocence. It's based on an understanding that the world is always changing, and therefore deserves to be seen fresh every day. This alternative brand of innocence is fueled by an aggressive determination to keep clearing one's imagination of all preconceptions.

"Ignorance is not knowing anything and being attracted to the good," wrote Clarissa Pinkola Estes in Women Who Run with the Wolves. "Innocence is knowing everything and still being attracted to the good.

I think you will generate good fortune for yourself by choosing between two equally invigorating but challenging tasks: losing your illusion or using your illusion. Both are quite worthy of your attention and intelligence. To succeed at either would fuel your emotional growth for months to come. You probably can't do them both, however. So which will it be: Will you purge the illusion, or put it to work for you?

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Take inventory of the extent that "No" dominates your life. Notice how often you say or think: 1. "That's not right." 2. "I don't like that." 3. "I don't agree with that." 4. "They don't like me." 5. "I'm not very good." 6. "That should be different from what it is." For help in retraining yourself to say "Yes!" at least 51% of the time, tune in to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the coming week.

I'm also still offering a MID-YEAR BIG-PICTURE PREVIEW -- an audio report about YOUR LONG-TERM DESTINY. To hear it, log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2015."

What are your visions and plans for your life in the next ten to twelve months? Could you use some inspiration as you mobilize your higher powers? Tune in. (The cost for either the weekly forecast or the long-term report is $6, with discounts for multiple purchases.)

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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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"Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health. Everything absolute belongs to pathology." So proclaimed Friedrich Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil. Note well that he used the adjective "joyous" to describe distrust, not "cynical" or "grumbling" or "sour." The key to remaining vital and strong while questioning every so-called absolute is to cultivate a cheerful, buoyant mood as you do it.

Do you sometimes imagine yourself to be an underachieving underdog? If so, I suggest you start weaning yourself from that fantasy. Do you on occasion allow people to take advantage of you? It's time to outgrow that role. Do you ever flirt with being a self-pitying martyr? Say bye-bye to that temptation. Cosmic forces are conspiring to relieve you of tendencies to act in any or all of those ways. I'm not saying you will instantly transform into a swashbuckling hero who knocks people over with your radiant self-assurance. But you will, at the very least, be ready to learn much, much more about how to wield your vulnerability as a superpower.

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How's your fight for freedom going? Are you making progress in liberating yourself from your unconscious obsessions, bad habits, and conditioned responses? I discuss the possibilities for the week ahead in your Expanded Audio Horoscope.

I'm also still offering a MID-YEAR BIG-PICTURE PREVIEW -- an audio report about YOUR LONG-TERM DESTINY. To hear it, log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2015."

What are your visions and plans for your life in the next ten to twelve months? Could you use some inspiration as you mobilize your higher powers? Tune in. (The cost for either the weekly forecast or the long-term report is $6, with discounts for multiple purchases.)

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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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Here are three of our deepest spiritual aspirations, which we invite you to steal for your own use: 1. to develop the capacity to thrive in the midst of raging contradictions; 2. to be discerning as we protect ourselves from people's flaws while at the same time being generous as we celebrate their beauty; 3. to refrain from dividing the world into two groups, those who help and agree with us and those who don't.