What Makes You Feel Good?

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

Below is an excerpt:

Devotional Pronoia Therapy. Experiments and exercises in becoming a gracefully probing, erotically funny, shockingly friendly Master of Orgasmic Empathy

1. What causes happiness? Brainstorm about it. Map out the foundations of your personal science of joy. Get serious about defining what makes you feel good.

To get you started, I'll name some experiences that might rouse your gratification: engaging in sensual pleasure; seeking the truth; being kind and moral; contemplating the meaning of life; escaping your routine; purging pent-up emotions. Do any of these work for you? Name at least ten more.

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2. Are other people luckier than you? If so, psychologist Richard Wiseman says you can do something about it. His book *The Luck Factor* presents research that proves you can learn to be lucky. It's not a mystical force you're born with, he says, 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 serendipitous opportunities.

Name three specific actions you'll try in order to improve your luck.

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3. Dumb suffering is the kind of suffering you're compulsively drawn back to over and over again out of habit. It's familiar, and thus perversely comfortable. Smart suffering is the kind of pain that surprises you with valuable teachings and inspires you to see the world with new eyes.

While stupid suffering is often born of fear, wise suffering is typically stirred up by love. The dumb, unproductive stuff comes from allowing yourself to be controlled by your early conditioning and from doing things that are out of harmony with your essence. The smart, useful variety arises out of an intention to approach life as an interesting work of art and uncanny game that's worthy of your curiosity.

Come up with two more definitions about the difference between dumb suffering and smart suffering.

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4. Write the following on a piece of red paper and keep it under your pillow. "I, [put your name here], do solemnly swear on this day, [put date here], that I will devote myself for a period of seven days to learning my most important desire. No other thought will be more uppermost in my mind. No other concern will divert me from tracking down every clue that might assist me in my drive to ascertain the one experience in this world that deserves my brilliant passion above all others."

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5. The primary meaning of the word "healing" is "to cure what's diseased or broken." Medical practitioners focus on sick people. Philanthropists donate their money and social workers contribute their time to helping the underprivileged. Psychotherapists wrestle with their clients' traumas and neuroses. I'm in awe of them all. The level of one's spiritual wisdom, I believe, is more accurately measured by helping people in need than by meditation skills, shamanic shapeshifting, supernatural powers, or esoteric knowledge.

But I also believe in a second kind of healing that is largely unrecognized: to supercharge what is already healthy; to lift up what's merely sufficient to a sublime state. Using this definition, describe two acts of healing: one you would enjoy performing on yourself and another you'd like to provide for someone you love.

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6. Is the world a dangerous, chaotic place with no inherent purpose, running on automatic like a malfunctioning machine and fundamentally inimical to your drive to find meaning? Or are you surrounded by helpers in a friendly, enchanted universe that gives you challenges in order to make you smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier?

Trick questions! The answers may depend, at least to some degree, on what you believe is true.

Formulate a series of experiments that will allow you to objectively test the hypothesis that the universe is conspiring to help dissolve your ignorance and liberate you from your suffering.

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7. Those who explore pronoia often find they have a growing capacity to help people laugh at themselves. While few arbiters of morality recognize this skill as a mark of high character, I put it near the top of my list. In my view, inducing people to take themselves less seriously is a supreme virtue.

Do you have any interest in cultivating it? How might you go about it?

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8. Computer programmer Garry Hamilton articulated the following "Game Rules." Give examples of how they have worked in your life.

1. If the game is rigged so you can't win, find another game or invent your own. 2. If you're not winning because you don't know the rules, learn the rules. 3. If you know the rules but aren't willing to follow them, there's either something wrong with the game or you need to change something in yourself. 4. Don't play the game in a half-baked way. Either get all the way in or all the way out. 5. It shouldn't be necessary for others to lose in order for you to win. If others have to lose, re-evaluate the game's goals.

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9. "There are two ways for a person to look for adventure," said the Lone Ranger, an old TV character. "By tearing everything down, or building everything up." Give an example of each from your own life.





In early 2015, I wrote horoscopes for the coming year -- previews of the issues I thought you'd be facing and the opportunities that would come your way in the months ahead. I invite you to review them now and let me know if they were useful.





If you'd ever like to make a contribution to me via Paypal, here's where to do it.





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


Torrential Pronoia Therapy. Experiments and exercises in becoming a blasphemously reverent, lustfully compassionate, eternally changing Master of Transgressive Beauty.

1. Take inventory of the extent to which your "No" reflex dominates your life. Notice for 24 hours (even in your dreams) how often you say or think:
"No."
"That's not right."
"I don't like them."
"I don't agree with that."
"They don't like me."
"That should be different from what it is."
Then retrain yourself to say "YES" at least 51 percent of the time. Start the transformation by saying "YES" aloud 22 times right now.

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2. Become a rapturist, which is the opposite of a terrorist: Conspire to unleash blessings on unsuspecting recipients, causing them to feel good.

Before bringing your work as a rapturist to strangers, practice with two close companions. Offer them each a gift that fires up their ambitions. It should not be a practical necessity or consumer fetish, but rather a provocative tool or toy. Give them an imaginative boon they've been hesitant to ask for, a beautiful thing that expands their self-image, a surprising intervention that says, "I love the way you move me."

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3. 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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4. What is the holiest river in the world? Some might say the Ganges in India. Others would propose the Jordan River or the River Nile. But I say the holiest river is the one that's closest to where you are right now.

Go to that river and commune with it. Throw a small treasure into it as an offering. Next, find a holy sidewalk to walk on, praise the holiness in a bus driver, kiss a holy tree, and shop at a holy store.

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5. Have you ever seen the game called "Playing the Dozens"? Participants compete in the exercise of hurling witty insults at each other. Here are some examples: "You're so dumb, if you spoke your mind you'd be speechless." "Your mother is so old, she was a waitress at the Last Supper." "You're so ugly, you couldn't get laid if you were a brick."

I invite you to rebel against any impulse in you that resonates with the spirit of "Playing the Dozens." Instead, try a new game, "Paying the Tributes." Choose worthy targets and ransack your imagination to come up with smart, true, and amusing praise about them.

The best stuff will be specific to the person you're addressing, not generic, but here are some prototypes: "You're so far-seeing, you can probably catch a glimpse of the back of your own head." "You're so ingenious, you could use your nightmares to get rich and famous." "Your mastery of pronoia is so artful, you could convince me to love my worst enemy."

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6. Salvador Dal? once staged a party in which guests were told to come disguised as characters from their nightmares. Do the reverse. Throw a bash in which everyone is invited to arrive dressed as a character from the most glorious dream they remember.

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7. When many people talk about their childhoods, they emphasize the alienating, traumatic experiences they had, and fail to report the good times. This seems dishonest?a testament to the popularity of cynicism rather than a reflection of objective truth.

I don't mean to downplay the way your early encounters with pain demoralized your spirit. But as you reconnoiter the promise of pronoia, it's crucial for you to extol the gifts you were given in your early years: all the helpful encounters, kind teachings, and simple acts of grace that helped you bloom.

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8. "You can't wait for inspiration," proclaimed writer Jack London. "You have to go after it with a club." That sounds too violent to me, though I agree in principle that aggressiveness is the best policy in one's relationship with inspiration.
Try this: Don't wait for inspiration. Go after it with a butterfly net, lasso, sweet treats, fishing rod, court orders, beguiling smells, and sincere flattery.

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9. Go to the ugliest or most forlorn place you know -- a drugstore parking lot, the front porch of a crack house, a toxic waste dump, or the place that symbolizes your secret shame -- and build a shrine devoted to beauty, truth, and love.

Here are some suggestions about what to put in your shrine: a silk scarf; a smooth rock on which you've inscribed a haiku or joke with a felt-tip pen; coconut cookies or ginger candy; pumpkin seeds and an origami crane; a green kite shaped like a dragon; a music CD you love; a photo of your hero; a votive candle carved with your word of power; a rubber ducky; a bouquet of fresh beets; a print of Van Gogh's Starry Night.





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


Being a devotee of pronoia doesn't mean you will never have another difficult or painful experience. It doesn't obligate you to pretend that everything is perfectly right with the world. You don't have to cover your eyes whenever you come into proximity to a daily newspaper.

On the other hand, we're not going to waste our valuable space or your precious energy by giving more than equal time to stories of tragedy, failure, and tumult. They get far more than their fair share of attention everywhere else. Future historians might even conclude that our age suffered from a collective obsessive-compulsive disorder: the pathological need to repetitively seek out reasons for how bad life is.

Still, we feel the need to push a bit further in our acknowledgment of all the confusing evils of the world. It's hard to satisfy the paranoid cynics! Unless we demonstrate that we have some mastery of their ideology, they'll dismiss us as intellectual pussies. They will need proof that we're familiar with the data they favor.

Our Homeopathic Medicine Spells make it harder for the paranoids to dismiss us pronoiacs as naive optimists. They're designed to recognize the evils of the world, but in a controlled manner that prevents them from poisoning you. In this way, we can also practice what we preach, subverting any tendencies we might have toward fanaticism and unilateralism.

Each Homeopathic Medicine Spell consists of a contained space within which lies a recitation of Very Bad Things. The border around each space is a magical seal that we consecrated during a ritual invocation of the Cackling Goddess Who Eternally Creates Us Anew. Inspired through communion with Her fierce jokes, we also surrounded each seal with good mojo in the form of word charms and talismanic symbols.

As you gaze at the Homeopathic Medicine Spells, you'll be building up your protection against the dangers named inside the contained space. You'll also get intuitions about how to dissolve the pop nihilistic toxins within you that resonate with those dangers.

See the Spell





There is no God. God is dead. God is a drug for people who aren't very smart. God is an illusion sold to dupes by money-hungry religions. God is a right-wing conspiracy. God is an infantile fantasy favored by superstitious cowards who can't face life's existential meaninglessness.

JUST KIDDING! The truth is, anyone who says he knows what God is or isn't, doesn't really know.

Now read Adolfo Quezada's prayer, then confess what you don't know about God. "God of the Wild, you are different from what I expected. I cannot predict you. You are too free to be captured for the sake of my understanding. I can't find you in the sentimentalism of religion. You are everywhere I least expect to find you. You are not the force that saves me from the pain of living; you are the force that brings me life even in the midst of pain."

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What if the Creator is like the poet Rainer Maria Rilke's God: "like a webbing made of a hundred roots, that drink in silence"? What if the Source of All Life inhabits both the dark and the light, heals with strange splendor as much as with sweet insight, is hermaphroditic and omnisexual?

What if the Source loves to give you riddles that push you past the boundaries of your understanding, forcing you to change the ways you think about everything? What if, as Rusty Morrison speculates in Poetry Flash, "the sublime can only be glimpsed by pressing through fear's boundary, beyond one's previous conceptions of the beautiful"?

Close your eyes and imagine you can sense the presence of this tender, marvelous, difficult, entertaining intelligence.





One goal of meditation is to empty the mind of its obsessively generated thoughts, habitual rationalizations, and addictive images. Alas, much of the media functions as a reverse meditation machine. Not only does it stir up your own mental clatter, it also floods you with the seething surge of other people's private pandemoniums.

Furthermore, it delivers this rattling racket with entertaining words and brilliant color and crystalline sound, driving it as deeply into your psyche as your own flotsam.

What might heal the effects of the media's reverse meditations? How about a day-long fast from all media once a month -- not just from Facebook, but the thousands of other sources that channel the collective's monkey mind?





Increasing numbers of people are able to cultivate a chronic, low-grade ecstasy that never fully dissipates. This altered state often sensitizes their perceptions to the presence of subtle miracles that are hidden from others people. For these "everyday ecstatics," extraordinary stimulation and peak experiences are not necessary to sustain the constant flow of bliss . . .

[Read the rest of this expos?.]





"We tend to associate the energy of intent with complicated or profoundly meaningful actions that require our full attention and effort in order to succeed. For example, walking a tightrope, taking a test, and taking a vow are all tasks that call us to be fully present and single-minded.

"However, intent can also be applied to everyday events, like eating breakfast or going to work. In fact, everything we do benefits from the presence of intent, which has the power to transform seemingly mundane tasks into profound experiences. You only have to try it to find out.

"From the moment we wake up, we can apply intent to our situation by simply saying to ourselves, 'I am aware that I am now awake.' We can use this simple tool throughout our day, saying, 'I am aware that I am driving to work.' 'I am aware that I am making dinner.' Or even, 'I am aware that I am breathing.'

"As we acknowledge what we are doing in these moments, we come alive to our bodies and to the world, owning our actions instead of habitually performing them. We may realize how often we act without intention and how this disengages us from reality. Applying the energy of intent to even one task a day has the power to transform our lives. Just imagine what would happen if we were able to apply that power to our entire day."

- By Madisyn Taylor of Daily Om





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

From the upcoming book, "The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World," by Steven Radelet:

"We live today at a time of great progress for the global poor. Never before have so many people, in so many developing countries, made so much progress. Most Americans believe the opposite: that the majority of developing countries are hopelessly mired in deep poverty, led by inept dictators, and living with pervasive famine, widespread disease, constant violence, and little hope for change.

"But in fact a major transformation is underway -- and has been for two decades now. Since the early 1990s more than 700 million people have been lifted out of extreme poverty, six million fewer children die every year from disease, tens of millions more girls are in school, millions more people have access to clean water, and democracy -- often fragile and imperfect -- has become the norm in developing countries around the world."

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Many people living in Africa need electricity, but don?t have it. Luckily, something of a solar power revolution is afoot in Africa, triggering a wave of innovation from solar energy entrepreneurs.





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

Here are some healthy, exalted, positive states of being you might want to consider cultivating:

* VIRTUOSO INTEGRATION. Consistently walking your talk; effectively translating your ideals into the specific actions; creating results that are congruous with your intentions; being free of hypocrisy.

* NOT HAVING TO BE RIGHT. Fostering an ability, even a willingness, to be proven wrong about one of your initial perceptions or pet theories; having an eagerness to gather information that may change your mind about something you have fervently believed; cultivating a tendency to enjoy being corrected, especially about ideas that are negative or hostile.

* RELENTLESS UNPRETENTIOUSNESS. Possessing a strong determination to not take yourself too seriously, not take your cherished beliefs too literally, and not take other people's ideas about you too personally.

* SACRED PERCEPTIVENESS. Seeing others for who they really are, in both their immaturity and genius, and articulating your insights to them with care.

* SELF-HONORING. Having an unwillingness to disparage, belittle, or hurt yourself; includes a taboo against speaking phrases like, "I'm such an idiot!" and "What's wrong with me?"

* TRANSCONSUMERISM. An absence of tendencies to predicate
happiness on acquiring material possessions.

* WHEEEE. A serenely boisterous intensely focused chaos of communion with streaming fountains of liquid light hurtling softly through the giggly upbeat tender assurance that all is well and a mysterious unimaginable intelligence is magnetizing us forward into ever-more wonderful throbs of naked truth that bestow the humble happy sight of life as a river of fantastically lucky artful change flowing through us forever.





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.





I don't know how to break this to you . . . and I realize it might come as a shock . . . but . . . are you ready? . . . You are God! The pure raw virgin snake mojo of the Universal Wow Power is flowing through your nervous system as if you were a supremely lovable messiah. You are so thoroughly infused with transcendental froufrou, so attuned to the higher purpose of woowoo, that it is hard if not impossible for you to make mistakes.

Don't fret, though. Your stint as the Wild Sublime Golden Master of Reality probably won't last for more than two eons, three tops. I'm sure that won't be long enough for you to turn into a raving megalomaniac with millions of cult followers.





Is there really such a thing as free will, or are our destinies shaped by forces beyond our control?

Here's one way to think about that question: Maybe some people actually have more free will than others. Not because they have more money. (Many rich folks are under the spell of their instincts, after all.) Not because they have high-status positions. (A boss may have power over others but little power over himself.)

Rather, those with a lot of free will have earned that privilege by taking strong measures to dissolve the conditioning they absorbed while growing up. They've acted on the advice of psychologist Carl Jung: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."





There's a difference between repression and suppression. When you repress a difficult feeling or thought, you drive it so deeply into your unconscious mind that you forget about it. In effect, you hide it from yourself out of fear. And yet because this exiled material is of crucial importance, it refuses to remain buried. It ultimately re-emerges in disguise, often as an addiction or obsession, sometimes as an illness.
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Suppression, on the other hand, is a healthier mechanism. It involves you moving the problematic feeling or thought away from the center of your attention, but remaining aware of it. You're not motivated by fear, but by the intention to deal with the challenge at a time of your choosing.




MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

Six ways Brazil is saving the Amazon.

McDonald?s announced that it will stop using eggs from caged hens in the U.S. and Canada.

Mercy Ships is an international charity. It uses transforms old ocean liners and ferries into floating hospitals. These ships provide free health care, community development projects, community health education, mental health programs, agriculture projects, and palliative care for terminally ill patients in 57 developing nations and 18 developed nations around the world





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

Bless your appetite. May it be voracious and unapologetic.

Much respect for your buried needs and secret yearnings. May they flow into plain view for you to embrace and celebrate.

Congratulations for your willingness to name the unspeakable truths and acknowledge the embarrassing fears. May you be willing to rebel against your self-image for the sake of gaining access to deeper reserves of power and competence.





You came into this world as a radiant bundle of exuberant riddles. You slipped into this dimension as a shimmering burst of spiral hallelujahs. You splashed into this realm as a lush explosion of ecstatic gratitude. And it is your birthright to fulfill those promises.

I'm not pandering to your egotism when I tell you these things. When I urge you to "Be yourself," I don't mean you should be the self that is greedy to win every argument and stockpile a heap of garish treasures and believe in the absolute truth of every hostile, paranoid thought your monkey mind comes up with.

When I say, "Be yourself," I mean the self that says "Thank you!" to the wild irises and the windy rain and the people who grow your food. I mean the rebel creator who's longing to make this entire planet your precious home and protected sanctuary. I mean the dissident bodhisattva who is joyfully struggling to germinate the seeds of divine love that are packed inside every moment.

When I say, "Be yourself," I mean the spiritual freedom fighter who is bustling and finagling and conspiring to relieve your fellow messiahs of their suffering as you shower them with rowdy blessings.




Change yourself in the way you want everyone else to change

Love your enemies in case your friends turn out to be jerks

Avoid thinking about winning the lottery while making love

Brainwash yourself before someone nasty beats you to it

Confess big secrets to people who aren't very interested

Write a love letter to your evil twin during a lunar eclipse

Fool the tricky red beasts guarding the Wheels of Time

Locate the master codex and add erudite graffiti to it

Sell celebrity sperm on the home shopping channel

Dream up wilder, wetter, more interesting problems

Change your name every day for a thousand days

Kill the apocalypse and annihilate Armageddon

Exaggerate your flaws till they turn into virtues

Brag about what you can't do and don't have

Get a vanity license plate that reads KZMYAZ

Bow down to the greatest mystery you know

Make fun of people who make fun of people

See how far you can spit a mouthful of beer

Pick blackberries naked in the pouring rain

Scare yourself with how beautiful you are

Simulate global warming into your pants

Stage a slow-motion water balloon fight

Pretend your wounds are exotic tattoos

Sing anarchist lullabies to lesbian trees

Plunge butcher knives into accordions

Commit a crime that breaks no laws

Sip the tears of someone you love

Build a plush orphanage in Minsk

Feel sorry for a devious lawyer

Rebel against your horoscope

Give yourself another chance

Write your autohagiography

Play games with no rules

Teach animals to dance

Trick your nightmares

Relax and go deeper

Dream like stones

Mock your fears

Drink the sun

Fuck gravity

Sing love

Be mojo

Do jigs

Ask id





"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.





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


Here's a motto worth trying: "I refuse to dehumanize anyone, even those who dehumanize me." Aside from the ripples of delight that sends through the collective unconscious, it provides a great selfish benefit. Feeling even low levels of contempt and disdain tends to shut down your intuition, so if you instead practice being tolerant of people who are intolerant of you, you may find yourself getting smarter.

P.S. What would it be like to promote what you love at least as much as you bash what you hate?

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Activist and author Naomi Klein tells a story about the time she traveled to Australia at the request of Aboriginal elders. They wanted her to know about their struggle to prevent white people from dumping radioactive wastes on their land.

Her hosts brought her to their beloved wilderness, where they camped under the stars. They showed her "secret sources of fresh water, plants used for bush medicines, hidden eucalyptus-lined rivers where the kangaroos come to drink."

After three days, Klein grew restless. When were they going to get down to business? "Before you can fight," she was told, "you have to know what you are fighting for."





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.





How Apocalyptic Thinking Prevents Us from Taking Political Action. Over-reliance on the apocalyptic narrative causes us to fear the wrong things, and stifles effective activism.

"The deeper we entangle the challenges of the 21st century with apocalyptic fantasy, the more likely we are to paralyze ourselves with inaction -- or with the wrong course of action. We react to the idea of the apocalypse -- rather than to the underlying issues activating the apocalyptic storyline to begin with -- by either denying its reality ('global warming isn't real') or by despairing at its inevitability ('why bother recycling when the whole world is burning up?')."

Read the entire essay, which I didn't write but almost totally agree with:





The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is composed of stories, not of atoms. The physicist Werner Heisenberg declared that the universe is made of music, not of matter.

And we believe that if you habitually expose yourself to toxic stories and music, you could wind up living in the wrong universe, where it's impossible to become the gorgeous genius you were born to be.

That's why we implore you to nourish yourself with delicious, nutritious tales and tunes that inspire you to exercise your willpower for your highest good.


- Listen to the above rap.





UNCONDITIONAL, 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 pure delight,
To honor its form -- true devotion.

- by psychotherapist Jennifer Welwood





1. Expect nothing, but ask for everything.

2. Gently but gleefully smash an unnecessary personal taboo.

3. Jump for joy and click your heels together in a building that has always felt oppressive.

4. Buck tradition with wit and compassion, not wrath and cynicism.

5. Refuse to occupy the old, worn-out niches, especially the ones you have trapped yourself in for the sake of peace and harmony.

6. Carry two gifts with you at all times in case you run into any fresh beauties who aren't lost in their own heads.





"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

"Everything I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything exists, only because I love." - Leo Tolstoy

"Until you have loved, you cannot become yourself." - Emily Dickinson

"Love imperfectly. Be a love idiot. Let yourself forget any love ideal." - Sark

"For one human being to love another is the most difficult task. It is the work for which all other work is mere preparation." - Rainer Maria Rilke, Translated by Stephen Mitchell

"If you do not love too much, you do not love enough." - Blaise Pascal

"Love is everything it's cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more." - Erica Jong

"Fall in love over and over again every day. Love your family, your neighbors, your enemies, and yourself. And don't stop with humans. Love animals, plants, stones, even galaxies." - Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

"To love is to tilt with the lightning, two bodies routed by a single honey's sweet."
- Pablo Neruda

"The most vital right is the right to love and be loved." - Emma Goldman





The Beauty and Truth Lab researchers' sunny dispositions are made possible in part by the mantra, "I don't know." It's an unparalleled source of power, a declaration of independence from the pressure to have an opinion about every single subject.

It's fun to say. Try it: "I don't know."

Let go of the drive to have it all figured out: "I don't know."

Proclaim the only truth you can be totally sure of: "I don't know."

Empty your mind and lift your heart: "I don't know."

Use it as a battle cry, a joyous affirmation of your oneness with the Great Mystery: "I don't know."




Do you have an unconscious belief that the forces of evil are loud, vigorous, and strong, while good is quiet, gentle, and passive? Gather evidence that contradicts this irrational prejudice.

Are you secretly suspicious of joy because you think it's inevitably rooted in wishful thinking and a willful ignorance about the true nature of reality? Expose these suspicions as superstitions that aren't grounded in any objective data you can actually prove.

Do you fear that when you're in the presence of love and beauty you tend to become softheaded, whereas you're likely to feel smart and powerful when you're sneering at the ugliness around you? As an antidote, for a given amount of time, say a week or a month or a year, act as if the following hypothesis were true: that you're more likely to grow smarter when you're in the presence of love and beauty.




"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it."
- Helen Keller

"Sit quietly and listen with only one purpose: to allow the other person to express himself and find relief from his suffering."
- Thich Nhat Hạnh





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


REVERSAL WISDOM

So it turns out that the "blemish" is actually essential to the beauty. The "deviation" is at the core of the strength. The "wrong turn" was crucial to you getting you back on the path with heart.





BLESSINGS COME IN MANY GUISES

Pronoia doesn't promise uninterrupted progress forever. It's not a slick commercial for a perfect summer 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.

Read the rest.





GRATITUDE FESTS

Consider the possibility of celebrating regular Gratitude Fests. During these orgies of appreciation, you could confer praise and respect on the creatures, both human and otherwise, that have played seminal roles in inspiring you to become yourself.

Who teaches and helps you? Who sees you for who you really are? Who nudges you in the direction of your fuller destiny and awakens you to your signature truths? Who loves you brilliantly?

(P.S. Cultivating gratitude primes your power to experience ecstasy.)





GO WITH WHAT FLOW?

When they say "Go with the flow," what "flow" are they talking about? Do they mean the flow of your early childhood conditioning? The flow of your friends' opinions? The latest cultural trends? Your immediate instinctual needs?

When they say "Go with the flow," are they urging you to keep doing what's easiest to do and what will win you the most ego points, even if it keeps you from being true to your soul's code?

Consider the possibility that there are many flows to go with, but only one of them is correct for you. Do you know which one? Maybe it's the one flowing in an underground cavern, far from the maddening crowd.





SPIRIT IN ALL THINGS

Yua is a term the Yupik people of Alaska use for the spirit that inhabits all things, both animate and inanimate. A rock, for instance, has as much yua as a caribou, spruce tree, or human being, and therefore merits the same measure of compassion.

If a Yupiit goes out for a hike and spies a chunk of wood lying on a frozen river bank, she might pick it up and put it in a new position, allowing its previously hidden side to get fresh air and sun. In this way, she would bestow a blessing on the wood's yua.

(Source: Earl Shorris, "The Last Word," Harper's,)





DAFFY DUCK SAYS

"That makes no sense, and so do I."
- Daffy Duck





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

200 coal plants announced to retire since 2010 in U.S. That's almost 40% of the country's coal plants.

India Virtually Eliminates Tetanus as a Killer.


At the World's First Empathy Museum,

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


LOVE COMING YOUR WAY

Have you ever been loved? I bet you have been loved so much and so deeply that you have become blas? about the enormity 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.

Do you "believe" in angels and other divine beings? Whether or not you do, I can assure you that there are hordes of them beaming their uncanny consecrations your way. You are awash in torrents of love.

As tremendous a gift it is to get love, giving love is an equal boon. Many scientific studies demonstrate that whenever you bestow blessings on other people, you bless yourself. Expressing practical compassion not only strengthens your immune system and bolsters your health, but also promotes self-esteem, enhances longevity, and stimulates tranquility and even euphoria.

As the scientists say, we humans are hardwired to benefit from altruism. (Read more about the subject.)

What's your position on making love? Do you regard it as one of the nicer fringe benefits of being alive? Or are you more inclined to see it as a central proof of the primal magnanimity of the universe? I'm more aligned with the latter view.

Imagine yourself in the fluidic blaze of that intimate spectacle right now. Savor the fantasy of entwining bodies and hearts and minds with an appealing partner who has the power to enchant you. What better way do you know of to dwell in sacred space while immersed in your body's delight? To commune with the Divine Wow while having fun? To tap into your own deeper knowing while at the same time gazing into the mysterious light of a fellow creature?




Firgun is a Hebrew word that means the act of sharing in or even contributing to someone else's pleasure or fortune, with a purely generous heart and without jealousy; or of sharing credit fairly.

(Here's Wikipedia's entry on firgun.)

Mudita is word from Sanskrit and Pali that means sympathetic or unselfish joy, or joy in the good fortune of others.

(More info.)

(Still more info.)





See a photo of me doing Reverse Panhandling. This the time I stood at an exit ramp in San Rafael and offered passing motorists free money.





Mythologist Michael Meade says that the essential nature of every human soul is gifted, noble, and wounded.

I agree. Cynics who exaggerate how messed-up we all are, ignoring our beauty, are just as unrealistic as naive optimists.

But because the cynics have a disproportionately potent influence on the zeitgeist, they make it harder for us to evaluate our problems with a wise and balanced perspective. Many of us feel cursed by the apparent incurability of our wounds, while others, rebelling against the curse, underestimate how wounded they are.

Mead says: "Those who think they are not wounded in ways that need conscious attention and careful healing are usually the most wounded of all."

Your task -- and your talent -- is to make realistic appraisals of your wounds.





Revolutionizing the art of rebellion.

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 trickster messiah.

5. Bring reckless levels of creative intelligence to all expressions of love.





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

YOUR FIVE MOST ECSTATIC MOMENTS

I invite you to write down brief descriptions of the five most pleasurable moments you've ever experienced in your life. Let your imagination dwell lovingly on these memories for, say, 20 minutes. And keep them close to the surface of your awareness in the next three days.

If you ever catch yourself slipping into a negative train of thought, interrupt it immediately and compel yourself to fantasize about those Big Five Ecstatic Moments.





YOU MAY BE A MAGICIAN

When many people think of a magician, they picture a stage performer who pulls rabbits out of top hats, does card tricks, and makes things disappear.

Other folks, more mystically inclined, visualize a wizard who uses incantatory spells to command spirits and attain occult power.

There is a third kind of magician. It's anyone who aspires to control her own thoughts, ceaselessly shepherding her psychic energy in a direction that will serve her highest values. For this kind of wonderworker, magic is the art of creating desirable practical changes.




YOUR MOST IMPORTANT DESIRE

I invite you to write the following on a piece of red paper and keep it under your pillow. "I, [put your name here], do solemnly swear on this day [put date here] that I will devote myself for a period of seven days to learning my most important desire. No other thought will be more uppermost in my mind. No other concern will divert me from tracking down every clue that might assist me in my drive to ascertain the one experience in this world that deserves my brilliant passion above all others."




If you're not feeling amazed, maybe you're not seeing wildly enough

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"If you are a poet, you will see that there is a cloud in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper."

?Thich Nhat Hanh, "Peace Is Every Step"





"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 three reasons why this is the best of times. Send to Truthrooster@gmail.com.

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





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

Study Shows Mindful Meditation Helps Reduce Racial Bias.

The Most Generous Bride on Earth: Couple Feeds 4,000 Syrian Refugees on Their Wedding Day. This luminous Turkish newlywed spent her wedding day running a bread line for thousands of starving Syrian refugees.

American Geochemist Clair Patterson helped reduce lead levels within the blood of Americans by approximately 80% by the late 90s, after spending decades of fighting the industrial use of lead.





If you'd ever like to make a contribution to me via Paypal, here's where to do it.





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


YOUR ADDICTION

Your addiction is obstructing you from your destiny, and yet it's also your ally.

What?! How can both be true?

On the downside, your addiction diverts your energy from a deeper desire that it superficially resembles. For instance, if you're an alcoholic, your urge to get loaded may be an inferior substitute for and a poor imitation of your buried longing to commune with spirit.

On the upside, your addiction is your ally, because it dares you to get strong and smart enough to wrestle free of its grip; it pushes you to summon the uncanny willpower necessary to defeat the darkness within you that saps your ability to follow the path with heart.

(P.S. Don't tell me you have no addictions. Each of us is addicted to some sensation, feeling, thought, or action, if not to an actual substance.)





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, and $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 of this.





If you'd like to see a recent photo of me with my extra special good buddy and a big bowl of peaches, go here.





"Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way." - Alan Watts





LOVE TIPS

Hypothesis: The exciting qualities that attract you to someone in the first place may make you half-crazy if you go on to develop a long-term relationship.

That doesn't mean you should avoid seeking connections with intriguing people who captivate your imagination. It does suggest you should have no illusions about what you are getting yourself into.

It also implies you should cultivate a sense of humor about how the things that rouse our most intense love and passion often bring us the greatest tests and trials.





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

I invite you to say any or all of the following lines out loud:

I love everything about me

I love my uncanny beauty and my bewildering pain

I love my hungry soul and my wounded longing

I love my flaws, my fears, and my scary frontiers

I will never forsake, betray, or deceive myself

I will always adore, forgive, and believe in myself

I will never refuse, abandon, or scorn myself

I will always amuse, delight, and redeem myself


To read the rest of this piece, go here.





Here's an excerpt of a letter I wrote to America's richest woman, Oprah Winfrey.

"Dear Oprah," I began. "Please buy up all the Pizza Huts and convert them into a network of Menstrual Huts. Create 10,000 or 100,000 local neighborhood sanctuaries where women can retreat while they're in the throes of their monthly appointment with dying and purification -- or any time they need a break from the tyranny of the clock.

"Let the men come, too. They need sabbaticals. We're all desperate for a regular chance to drop out of the crazy-making grind, to find respite from civilizations' crimes against the rhythms of sleep and love and play.

"Men may actually need the Menstrual Huts even more than women. They mistakenly imagine that they can drive themselves on and on and on. Their poor bodies don't have a built-in menstrual mechanism to cyclically slow them down. And so they mostly never stop to peer into the heart of their own darkness. Which is why so many of them tend to find evil everywhere else except in themselves, and fight it everywhere else except in themselves.

"Just a theory to consider: If men got a chance to have periodic breakdowns and negotiate in a safe place with the toxic feelings that just naturally build up inside everyone over time, maybe they wouldn't wreak so much havoc out in the world. Maybe Menstrual Huts would save the world."

My letter to Oprah went on for two more pages, but you get the gist. She has not yet responded to my plea.

In the meantime, I suggest that anyone who's interested create their own local Moon Lodges and Menstrual Huts. Here's a list of self-inquiries that could help to guide the time in the sanctuary

1. What feelings and intuitions have you been trying to ignore lately?

2. Which parts of your life are overdue for death?

3. What messages has life been trying to convey to you but which you've chosen to ignore?

4. What red herrings, straw men, and scapegoats have you chased after obsessively in order to avoid dissolving your most well-rationalized delusions?

5. What unripe parts of yourself are you most ashamed or fearful of? How can you give those parts more ingenious love?

6. What parts of yourself have the least integrity and don't act in harmony with what you regard as your highest values? How can you bring them into alignment with your true desires?

7. Is it possible that in repressing things about yourself that you don't like, you have also disowned potentially strong and beautiful aspects of yourself? What are they?

8. Are those really flaws that are bugging you about the people whose destinies are entwined with yours, or just incompletely developed talents? Are those really flaws that are bugging you about yourself, or merely incompletely developed talents?

9. Some people try to deny their portion of the world's darkness and project it onto individuals or groups they dislike. Others acknowledge its power so readily that they allow themselves to be overwhelmed by it. We believe in taking an in-between position, accepting it as an unworked gift that can serve our liberation. Where do you stand?

10. It's easy to see fanaticism, rigidity, and intolerance in other people, but harder to acknowledge them in yourself. Do you dare?





People ask me what they should do now that Venus, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are all retrograde. Here's one possible answer: Stick to drinking low-fat water; avoid the high-fat H20 whenever possible. Likewise, inhale only the kind of oxygen that's low in cholesterol, and don't allow your eyes to take in fatty landscapes or other calorie-rich sights.





"You are the hidden God. Wake up in the dream. Read between the lies. To question is the answer. The frontline is everywhere. There are no innocent bystanders. Truth is a three-edged sword. Practice infinite tolerance except for intolerance. Achieve strength through joy. Embrace your shadow. Change is stability. Creation never ends. Everything is verb. The way in is the way out. All things fornicate all the time. The going is the goal. Today is the day!"

- Reverend Adrian Cain





A while back I sent my book The Televisionary Oracle to novelist Tom Robbins, and asked him if he would consider endorsing it. To my surprise, he replied. To my shock, he liked it a lot. He wrote this blurb for me: "I've seen the future of American literature and its name is Rob Brezsny"

The book he's talking about is here.





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

DAILY PRACTICE: Are you willing to push hard to get better, become smarter, grow your devotion to the truth, fuel your commitment to beauty, refine your emotional intelligence, hone your dreams, negotiate with your shadow, cure your ignorance, shed your pettiness, heighten your drive to look for the best in people, and soften your heart -- even as you always accept yourself for exactly who you are with all of your so-called imperfections, never demeaning the present by comparing it to an idealized past or future?

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POSSIBLE REWARDS FOR BEING YOU: You will be able to claim the rewards promised you at the beginning of time?not just any old beauty, wisdom, goodness, love, freedom, and justice, but rather: exhilarating beauty that incites you to be true to yourself; crazy wisdom that immunizes you against the temptation to believe your ideals are ultimate truths; outrageous goodness that inspires you to experiment with irrepressible empathy; generous freedom that keeps you alert for opportunities to share your wealth; insurrectionary love that endlessly transforms you; and a lust for justice that's leavened with a knack for comedy, keeping you honest as you work humbly to liberate everyone in the world from ignorance and suffering.





Many of us have a superficial notion of the nature of healing, writes Peter Kingsley in his book "In the Dark Places of Wisdom." We think that "healing is what makes us comfortable and eases the pain."

But the truth is, "what we want to be healed of is often what will heal us if we can stand the discomfort and the pain."

I invite you to experiment with this theme. See if you can stave off your urge for ease as you marinate longer in the aching confusion.

"If we really face our sadness," says Kingsley, "we find it speaks with the voice of our deepest longing. And if we face it a little longer we find that it teaches us the way to attain what we long for."





"Dear Rob: I sure don't like so much God stuff mixed into my horoscopes. Can you cut it out, please? I understand it's common for the desperate masses to believe in an Ultra Being, but you? Pul-lease. You're smarter than that. I just can't abide all the 'Divine Wow' and 'Cackling Goddess' nonsense that you dispense; it doesn't jibe with the practical, sensible, unsuperstitious, non-mushy world that I hold dear -- and that I see represented mostly accurately in your horoscopes. -Sa