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Horoscopes by Rob Brezsny


Week of July 9th, 2015

♊ GEMINI

(May 21-June 20)
"I have gathered about me people who understand how to translate fear into possibility," writes John Keene in his story "Acrobatique." I'd love to see you do the same, Gemini. From an astrological perspective, now is a favorable time to put your worries and trepidations to work for you. You have an extraordinary capacity to use your doubt and dread to generate opportunities. Even if you go it alone, you can accomplish minor miracles, but why not dare to think even bigger? Team up with brave and resourceful allies who want to translate fear into possibility, too.

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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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Conventional wisdom implies that the best problems are those that place you under duress. There's supposedly no gain without pain. Stress is allegedly an incomparable spur for calling on resources that have been previously unavailable or dormant. Nietzsche's aphorism, "That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger," has achieved the status of a maxim.

We half-agree. But it's clear that stress also accompanies many mediocre problems that have little power to make us smarter. Pain frequently generates no gain. We're all prone to become habituated, even addicted, to nagging vexations that go on and on without rousing any of our sleeping genius.

There is, furthermore, another class of difficulty -- let's call it the delightful dilemma -- that neither feeds on angst nor generates it. On the contrary, it's fun and invigorating, and usually blooms when ­you're feeling a profound sense of being at home in the world. The problem of writing this book is a good example. I've had abundant fun handling the perplexing challenges with which it has confronted me.

Imagine a life in which at least half of your quandaries match this profile. Act as if you're most likely to attract useful problems when joy is your predominant mood. Consider the possibility that being in unsettling circumstances may shrink your capacity to dream up the riddles you need most; that maybe it's hard to ask the best questions when you're preoccupied fighting rearguard battles against boring or demeaning annoyances that have plagued you for many moons.

Prediction: As an aspiring lover of pronoia, you will have a growing knack for gravitating toward wilder, wetter, more interesting problems. More and more, you will be drawn to the kind of gain that doesn't require pain. You'll be so alive and awake that you'll cheerfully push yourself out of your comfort zone in the direction of your personal frontier well before you're forced to do so by fate's kicks in the ass.