Be Your Own Prophet

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

Below are some excerpts.

HOW TO BE YOUR OWN PROPHET

I suspect that none of us has the capacity to foretell the future of the human race. No one -- not psychics, not doomsayers, not intelligent optimists, indigenous shamans, no one.

There is a strong case to be made that this is the worst of times, and an equally strong case that this is the best of times; a strong case that everything will collapse into a miserable dystopia and a strong case that we are on the verge of a golden age. It?s impossible to know in any ?objective way? which is ?truer.?

Anyone who asserts they do know is just cherry-picking evidence that rationalizes their emotional bent. The variables are chaotic and abundant and beyond our ken.

In the meantime, I'm doing what I can to create a golden age.

P.S. The best way to prepare for the unpredictable is to cultivate mental and emotional states that ripen us to be ready for anything:

* a commitment to not getting lost inside our own heads;

* a strategy to avoid being enthralled with the hypnotic lure of painful emotions, past events, and worries about the future;

* a trust in empirical evidence over our time-worn beliefs and old habits;

* a talent for turning up our curiosity full blast and tuning in to the raw truth of every moment with our beginner's mind fully engaged;

* and an eagerness to dwell gracefully in the midst of all the interesting questions that tease and teach us.

Everything I just described also happens to be an excellent way to prime yourself for a chronic, low-grade, always-on, simmering-at-low-heat brand of ecstasy -- a state of being more-or-less permanently in the Tao, in the groove, in the zone.





LOVE IS BEING STUPID TOGETHER?

"Love is being stupid together," said French poet Paul Val?ry. While there's a grain of truth to that, it's too corny and decadent for my tastes.

I prefer to focus on a more interesting truth, which is this: Real love is being smart together. If you weave your destiny together with another's, he or she should catalyze your sleeping potentials, sharpen your perceptions, and boost both your emotional and analytical intelligence. Your relationship becomes a crucible in which you deepen your understanding of the way the world works.

Think of an example of your closest approach to this model in your own life. Then formulate a vow in which you promise you'll do what's necessary to more fully embody the principle "Love is being smart together."





THE END OF APOCALYPSE

Many people alive today are convinced that our civilization is in a dark age, cut off from divine favor, and on the verge of collapse. But it's healthy to note that similar beliefs have been common throughout history.

As far back as 2800 BC, an unknown prophet wrote on an Assyrian clay tablet, "Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end." In the seventh century BC, many Romans believed Rome would suffer a cataclysm in 634 BC.

Around 300 BC, Hindus were convinced they lived in an "unfortunate time" known as the Kali Yuga?the lowest point in the great cosmic cycle. In 426 AD, the Christian writer Augustine mourned that this evil world was in its last days. According to the Lotharingian panic-mongers who lived more than a 1,000 years ago, human life on earth would end on March 25, 970.

Astrologers in 16th-century London calculated that the city would be destroyed by a great flood on February 1, 1524. American minister William Miller proclaimed the planet's "purification by fire" would occur in 1844. Anglican minister Michael Baxter assured his followers that the Battle of Armageddon would take place in 1868. The Jehovah's Witnesses anticipated the End of Days in 1910, then 1914, then 1918, then 1925. John Ballou Newbrough ("America's Greatest Prophet") promised mass annihilation and global anarchy for 1947.

The website "A Brief History of the Apocalypse" lists over 200 visions of doom that have spilled from the hysterical imaginations of various prophets in the last two millennia.

Our age may have more of these doomsayers per capita than previous eras, although the proportion of religious extremists among them has declined as more scientists, journalists, and storytellers have taken up the singing of humanity's predicted swan song.

In her book For the Time Being, Annie Dillard says, "It is a weakening and discoloring idea that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time but that it is too late for us. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less. There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree."

Walt Whitman:
?There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.?

I invite you to go sit under that tree by your street.





IMAGINE TRANSFORMATION

"You gotta remember, and I?m sure you do, the forces that are arrayed against anyone trying to alter the hammerlock on the human imagination. There are trillions of dollars out there demotivating people from imagining that a better tomorrow is possible.

"Utopian impulses and utopian horizons have been completely disfigured and everybody now is fluent in dystopia. My young people?s vocabulary . . . their fluency is in dystopic futures. When young people think about the future, they don?t think about a better tomorrow, they think about horrors and end of the worlds and things or worse.

"Do you really think the lack of utopic imagination doesn?t play into demotivating people from imagining a transformation in the society?"

- Junot D?az, "Art, Race and Capitalism"





YOU'RE A LUCKY, PLUCKY GENIUS

You are constitutionally incapable of adapting nicely to the sour and crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality." You're too amazingly, blazingly insane for that.

You're too crazy smart to lust after the stupidest secrets of the game of life. You're too seriously delirious to wander sobbing through the sterile, perfumed labyrinth looking in vain for the most ultra-perfect mirror. Thank the Goddess that you are a fiercely tender throb of sublimely berserk abracadabra.

You'll never get crammed in a neat little niche in the middle of the road at the end of a nightmare. You refuse to allow your soul's bones to get ground down into dust and used to fertilize the killing fields that proudly dot the ice cream empire of monumentally demeaning luxuries.

You're too brilliantly cracked for that. You're too ingeniously whacked. You're too ineffably godsmacked.

(This is an excerpt from a longer piece. Read the rest here.)





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WHERE THE SPIRITUAL MEETS THE PRACTICAL

"How does my spiritual practice and daily life serve the earth? How does my spiritual practice and daily life affect the poorest third of humanity? How will my spiritual practice and daily life affect the generations to come in the future?"

~ Starhawk





RECEPTIVITY REMEDIES

Alert, relaxed listening is the radical act at the heart of our pronoiac practice.

Curiosity is our primal state of awareness.

Wise innocence is a trick we aspire to master.

Open-hearted skepticism is the light in our eyes.

READ THE REST OF THIS PIECE.





HISTORY OF PRONOIA

My book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings is the only tome that has ever been written about the subject of pronoia. But other authors have worked a bit with the concept.

In his novella Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, J.D. Salinger wrote about pronoia without using the term. "Oh, God," one of his characters says, "if I?m anything by a clinical name, I?m a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.?

The actual term "pronoia" was coined in 1976 by Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow, who defined it as "the suspicion that the universe is a conspiracy on your behalf."

Another early contributor to the concept was psychologist Fraser Clark, founder of the Zippies. In the 1990s he referred to pronoia as "the sneaking hunch that others are conspiring behind your back to help you." Once you have contracted this benevolent virus, he said, the symptoms include "sudden attacks of optimism and outbreaks of goodwill."

Neither Terence McKenna or Robert Anton Wilson ever invoked the word "pronoia" as far as I know, but they both added nuance to the concept. McKenna said, "I believe reality is a marvelous joke staged for my edification and amusement, and everybody is working very hard to make me happy."

Wilson offered advice about the proper way to rehearse a devotion to pronoia: "You should view the world as a conspiracy run by a very closely-knit group of nearly omnipotent people, and you should think of those people as yourself and your friends."

Without using the term "pronoia," Paulo Cuelho added to its meaning: "Know what you want and all the universe conspires to help you achieve it."





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


ELATIONSHIP LOVE SPELLS FOR BEAUTY & TRUTH LAB ALLIES

The Beauty and Truth Lab's rapturists have formulated a batch of personal ads for you to borrow. If you're a Crafty Optimist or Mystical Activist or Ceremonial Teaser who aspires to put the elation back in relationship, check them out here.





"Everyone carries with them at least one piece to someone else's puzzle." So wrote Lawrence Kushner in his book, *Honey from the Rock.*

In other words, you have in your possession certain clues to your loved ones' destinies -- secrets they haven't discovered themselves.

Wouldn't you love to hand over those clues -- to make a gift of the puzzle pieces that are most needed by the people you care about?

Search your depths for insights you've never communicated. Tell truths you haven't found a way to express before now. More than you know, you have the power to mobilize your companions' dreams.





You understand that you can never own love, right? No matter how much someone adores you today, no matter how much you adore someone, you can't force that unique state of grace to keep its shape forever. It will inevitably evolve or mutate, perhaps into a different version of tender caring, but maybe not.

From there it will continue to change, into either yet another version of interesting affection, or who knows what else?

Are you making any progress in getting the hang of this tricky wisdom?





I invite you to act like a person who's in love. Even if you're not currently in the throes of passion for a special someone, pretend you are. Everywhere you go, exude that charismatic blend of shell-shocked contentment and blissful turmoil that comes over you when you're infatuated. Let everyone you meet soak up the delicious wisdom you exude. Dispense free blessings and extra slack like a rich saint high on natural endorphins.





Imagine that the merger of you and your best ally has created a third thing that hovers near you, protecting and guiding the two of you. Call this third thing an angel. Or call it the soul of your connection or the inspirational force of your relationship. Or call it the special work the two of you can accomplish together. And let this magical presence be the third point of your love triangle.





"For a relationship to stay alive, love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining."
- James Hillman





Gertrude Stein defined love as "the skillful audacity required to share an inner life." It suggests that expressing the truth about who you are is not something that amateurs do very well. Practice and ingenuity are required.

It also implies that courage is an essential element of successful intimacy. You've got to be adventurous if you want to weave your life together with another's.





"You are my inspiration and my folly. You are my light across the sea, my million nameless joys, and my day's wage. You are my divinity, my madness, my selfishness, my transfiguration and purification. You are my rapscallionly fellow vagabond, my tempter and star. I want you."

- George Bernard Shaw





Whenever I write about romance and togetherness, I attract a storm of complaints from readers who are solitary. "How dare you imply that everyone has or should have a partner!?" is a typical protest. "I'm quite content being alone!" is another.

Let it be known that I do not believe your happiness depends on having a spouse or lover. What I do suspect, though, is that your soul needs some sacred relationship in order to thrive, whether it's with a good friend, a beloved animal, a beautiful patch of earth, the Divine Wow, or anything that's not you.

Whenever I invite you to seek deeper, wilder communion, feel free to interpret it as a call to explore any kind of intimacy that draws you closer to the secret heart of the world.





"The Orgasmic Roots of Pronoia" is one of the few NC-17-rated pieces in my book. Here's a link.

NSFW! PROCEED WITH CAUTION! This material has graphic references to love, lust, tenderness, bliss, and rapture.





Dear Readers,

I've gathered together all the Free Will Astrology horoscopes that address the far-reaching themes of your destiny in the coming months. Read a compendium of your written horoscopes for 2016.

In addition to these, I've created three-part, in-depth EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES about Your Long-Range Future. They go even further in exploring your prospects and challenges in 2016.

Who do you want to become in the coming months? Where do you want to go and what do you want to do? How can you exert your free will to create adventures that'll bring out the best in you, even as you find graceful ways to cooperate with the tides of destiny?

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.

P.S. You can also listen to an Expanded Audio Horoscope for the coming week.





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

"Don't be concerned about being disloyal to your pain by being joyous."

- Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

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"I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own ashes to the mountains; I invented a brighter flame for myself. And behold, then this ghost fled from me."

- Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufman

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"I don?t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces 'intelligence.'"

- Susan Sontag

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"Magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love, and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen."

- W. Somerset Maugham

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"Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation."

- Andre Gide

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"My idolatry: I?ve lusted after goodness. Wanting it here, now, absolutely, increasingly."

- Susan Sontag

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"Only a shipwrecked person who has just escaped drowning could understand the psychology of someone who breaks out in laughter just because he is able to breathe."

- Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

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"To cut through the charades of this world, to despise it, may be the aim of great thinkers. My only goal in life is to be able to love this world, to see it and myself and all beings with the eyes of love and admiration and reverence."

? Hermann Hesse

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"I like to cry. After I cry hard it?s like it?s morning again and I?m starting the day over."

- Ray Bradbury





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


CLOWN CHAKRA

Dionysian scientists at the Crazy Wisdom Institute of Applied Surpiseology have discovered the existence of the Clown Chakra. Located between the Gut and Sex Chakras, it houses the sense of humor and determines one's capacity for spiritually cleansing laughter.

Sadly, it's largely shut down in many people, resulting in the current global epidemic of taking things too damn seriously.

(P.S. I have embedded a subliminal prompt within this message that is designed to awaken and arouse any part of your own clown chakra that may be dormant.)





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?





LOVING THE CHANGES?

Whether you're a fan of a monotheistic God or a pluralistic
Goddess, you've undoubtedly noticed a deeply rooted quirk about
the Divine Temperament: an extreme fondness for change. The
Creator really likes to keep things moving right along.

Earlier in my life, I bore a grudge against this incorrigible
inclination. But after repeatedly having my karma crumpled for
resisting it, I realized I'd better get used to it. In recent years,
I've come a long way in retraining myself to be cheerfully
cooperative with the primal flux.

As a reward, the Cackling Goddess (my current favorite name for
the Sublime Mystery) has blessed me with a relentless series of opportunities to prove how well I've learned my lesson. She just keeps throwing changes my way, daring me to adjust with as much skill and grace as I can muster.

And you?





VOWS

I invite you to speak these vows out loud:

"As long as I live, I vow to die and be reborn, die and be reborn, die and be reborn, over and over again, forever reinventing myself.

"I promise to be stronger than hate, wetter than water, deeper than the abyss, and wilder than the sun.

"I pledge to remember that I am not only a sweating, half-asleep, excitable, bumbling jumble of desires, but that I am also an immortal four-dimensional messiah in continuous telepathic touch with all of creation.

"I vow to love and honor my highs and my lows my yeses and noes, my give and my take, the life I wish I had and the life I actually have.

"I promise to push hard to get better and smarter, grow my devotion to the truth, fuel my commitment to beauty, refine my emotions, hone my dreams, wrestle with my shadow, purge my ignorance, and soften my heart -- even as I always accept myself for exactly who I am, with all of my so-called foibles and wobbles."





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


UNLEASH YOURSELF

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.





GREAT AWAKENING

Civilization may be unraveling in a lot of areas; some of its structures may be collapsing; but it is also in the midst of a tremendous upheaval of creativity -- a flood of innovation and genius and love pouring out of millions upon millions of people -- a Great Awakening that is far louder and stronger and more interesting than the sleepy resignation and corrosive maliciousness and ignominious decline that the media prefers to focus on.





YOUR HOLIEST DESIRE

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.





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."





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

Eleven Reasons Why 2015 Was a Great Year For Humanity:

1. We got a lot closer to global, universal education

2. Extreme poverty dropped below 10%  --  the lowest rate ever

3. More people got connected to the internet than ever before

4. Millions of people gained access to finance for the first time

5. AIDS deaths came down for the 15th year in a row

6. Malaria death rates are at an all time low

7. Polio is about to be eradicated forever

8. Fewer people went hungry this year than ever before

9. More people have access to clean water

10. Child mortality plunged for the 43rd year in a row

11. We reached a tipping point in the fight against climate change

Read more.





THE BEST THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN 2015

Slate has created a compendium of the best things that happened each day in 2015. Here are ten of the best:

1. Nigeria bans female genital mutilation.
2. HIV protection is effective in African women.
3. Hunger has become much less severe in the past 15 years.
4. States? juvenile prison populations drop.
5. Homelessness declined 11 percent in the U.S. from 2010 to 2015.
6. Reforestation effort in Ecuador breaks world record.
7. Africa has its first polio-free year.
8. New Ebola vaccine is highly effective.
9. Energy storage technology, which is crucial for solar power, is making great progress.
10. People taking pre-exposure prophylaxis are staying HIV-free

See the best events of the other 355 days.

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SIX HOPEFUL BREAKTHROUGHS IN 2015

From the brilliant Yes! magazine:

1. The world set ambitious goals for climate stabilization, and real leadership came from the grassroots.

2. Black Lives Matters changed hearts, minds, and policing practices.

3. Bernie Sanders forced inequality and the power of Wall Street into the national debate.

4. The politics of scapegoating ran short of scapegoats.

5. Americans reassessed the U.S. role abroad.

6. The United States began a turn away from a prison state.

Read more.

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AN ABUNDANCE OF GOOD NEWS

"There are fewer wars. Inter-state war has virtually disappeared. More countries around the world are democratic; more provide basic services like health care, clean water, and immunizations to their citizens; most adhere to a basic set of global rules and norms, participate in international institutions, and are integrated into an interdependent global economy."

Read more.

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THINGS ARE ACTUALLY GETTING BETTER, DESPITE WHAT THE MEDIA WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE

"The news is a systematically misleading way to understand the world," Steven Pinker says.

"Wars are far less common and deadly than in the recent past, terrorism is rare, and the European refugee crisis is nothing new.

"In the past five years alone, conflicts have ended in Chad, Peru, Iran, India, Sri Lanka, India, and Angola, and if peace talks currently underway in Colombia are a success, war will have vanished from the Western hemisphere.

"Attacks of the kind that killed civilians in Paris, Ankara, California, Beirut and Garissa in Kenya this year are big news because they are rare.

"Rampage shootings generate a huge amount of media publicity but account for a relatively tiny number of deaths."

Read more.

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THE U.S. IS SAFER THAN ANY MAJOR POWER HAS EVER BEEN

"When Americans look out at the world, they see a swarm of threats. China seems resurgent and ambitious. Russia is aggressive. Iran menaces our allies. Middle East nations we once relied on are collapsing in flames. Latin American leaders sound steadily more anti-Yankee. Terror groups capture territory and commit horrific atrocities. We fight Ebola with one hand while fending off Central American children with the other.

"In fact, this world of threats is an illusion. The United States has no potent enemies. We are not only safe, but safer than any big power has been in all of modern history."

Read more.

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OVERREACTION TO TERRORISM IS MUCH MORE DANGEROUS THAN TERRORISM

"Why do otherwise intelligent people keep saying silly things, like, 'We are probably in the most serious period of turmoil in our lifetime.'?

"Overreaction to terrorism is the true threat"

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SOURCES OF UNDER-REPORTED GOOD NEWS

Uplifting News

Good News Network





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

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





In 2016, 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.





Every January 1, many people make New Year's resolutions, promising to embark on programs of self-improvement. But your assignment now, should you choose to accept it, is to create a list of ANTI-resolutions.

Here are some questions to guide you:

1. What outlandish urges and controversial tendencies do you promise to cultivate in the coming months?

2. What nagging irritations will you ignore and avoid with even greater ingenuity?

3. What problems do you promise to exploit in order to have even more fun as you make the status quo accountable for its corruption?

4. What boring rules and traditions will you thumb your nose at, paving the way for exciting encounters with strange attractors?





Imagine it's 30 years from now. You're looking back at the history of your relationship with desire. There was a certain watershed moment when you clearly saw that some of your desires were mediocre, inferior, and wasteful, while others were pure, righteous, and invigorating.

Beginning then, you made it a life goal to purge the former and cultivate the latter.

Thereafter, you occasionally wandered down dead ends trying to gratify yearnings that weren't worthy of you, but usually you wielded your passions with discrimination, dedicating them to serve the highest and most interesting good.





One of the blessings I hope you can conjure up in 2016 is a growing skill in the right use of memory. What would that involve exactly?

On the one hand, it would mean you'd cultivate a strong grasp of historical patterns; you'd be a keen student of the twists and turns of your own life's journey.

On the other hand, you wouldn't force every new event to be evaluated solely in terms of what has happened in the past; you'd recognize that some experiences may be mostly fresh.

Other ideas?





Forgive yourself for the blindness that put you in the path of those who betrayed you.





I wish I could do more than just fantasize about helping you achieve greater freedom.

In my dreams, I am obliterating delusions that keep you moored to false idols. I am setting fire to the unnecessary burdens you lug around. And I am tearing you away from the galling compromises you made once upon a time to please people who don't deserve it.

But it's actually a good thing I can't just wave a magic wand. Here's a much better solution: YOU will clarify your analysis of the binds you're in, supercharge your willpower, and set yourself free.





Resolved: In 2016, you will experience miracles at the rate of about one every two weeks.





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

Take some paper and write "I am doing everything in my power to attract all the help and resources I need as I accomplish the following goal." Then compose a declaration that crisply describes exactly what satisfying, growth-inducing experiences you want most in 2016 -- and are willing to work hard for and even change yourself to attract, if necessary. Keep a copy of this magic formula under your pillow or in your wallet.





Experiment: Imprint yourself with the intention that in 2016, you will seek out the GOOD news at least as often as you seek out the BAD stuff -- that you will regard tales of affliction and mayhem and corruption and tragedy as no more interesting or worthy of your attention than tales of triumph and liberation and pleasure and ingenuity.

If this idea appeals to you, here are sources of GOOD news to get you started:

Yes magazine

Reddit Uplifting News

Good News Network

Heroic Stories





In 2016 I wish you joyous eruptions of profound gratification and gratitude; a constant flow of fluid insights and "ah-ha!" revelations that lead to cathartic integrations; a coming together of several different lucky trends, resulting in an exquisite healing; and captivating yet relaxing adventures that allow you to weave together diverse threads of your experience, inspiring you to feel at home in the world.





"You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. That's a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control."

? Elizabeth Gilbert





RE-DREAMING CHRIST

Some Christians might be shocked to learn that Jesus Christ is one of the Main High Magicians in the Beauty and Truth Lab's pantheon of deities and avatars.

They may believe that people like us -- Goddess-worshiping tantric Sufi Qabalist pagans who hang around with Zen trickster witches and espouse a socialist libertarian political philosophy -- couldn't possibly have an intimate and vivid relationship with the cosmic hero they claim to own. They act as if they have commandeered the trademark of one of the smartest wild men in history.

Christ was a champion of women's rights, an antidote to the established and corrupt political order, and a radical spiritual activist who worked outside religious institutions.

He was a passionate advocate for the poor and underprivileged. He owned nothing and had no use for the idea of "private property." He was uncompromisingly opposed to violence and war. Besides that, he was a master of love and he devoted his life to serving the Divine Intelligence. He even went so far as to say, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you, and give away all your possessions."

I want to be like Jesus Christ when I grow up!

(But it's quite OK with us if you don't want to be like him. The good thing about adoring Christ's pronoiac glory but not being a Christian is that we don't have any investment in wanting you to do as we do. We want you to do as you do!)

Is there any hijacked hero you'd like to liberate? Any spoiled treasure you hope to redeem? Any detoured savior you want to get back on track?

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"The whole point of Jesus's life was not that we should become exactly like him, but that we should become ourselves in the same way he became himself. Jesus was not the great exception but the great example."

- Carl Jung

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"When Jesus said 'I and the Father are one,' he meant that he was connected to the raw data feed of pure experience."

- Tim Boucher





Here's a holiday gift you could give yourself: Resist and deflect and dissolve wrong-headed opinions about who you are and how you should live your life. (And I mean your own wrong-headed opinions as well as other people's.)





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

FREE MIND, WILD HEART

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."

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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.





DIONYSIAN MANIFESTO

I kick my own ass and wash my own brain.
I push my own buttons and trick my own pain.
I burn my own flags and roast my own heroes.
I mock my own fears and cheer my own zeroes.

Nothing can stop me from teasing my shadow.
I'm full of empty and backwards bravado.
My wounds are tattoos that reveal my true beauty.
I turn tragic to magic and make bliss my duty.

I honor my faults till they become virtues.
I play jokes on my nightmares
till I'm sure they won?t hurt you.
I sing anarchist lullabies to lesbian trees
and love songs with punch lines
to anonymous seas.

I won't accept gifts that infringe on my freedom.
I shun sacred places that stir up my boredom.
I change my name daily, pretend to be nobody.
I fight for the truth if it's majestically rowdy.

I brag about what I can't do and don't know.
I take off my clothes to those I oppose.
I'm so far beyond lazy, I work like a god.
I'm totally crazy; in fact that's my job.

Read the unexpurgated version of the above poem.





THE BEAUTY OF IRREGULAR THINGS

When you're an aspiring master of pronoia, you see the cracks in the facades as opportunities; inspiration erupts as you careen over bumps in the road; you love the enticing magic that flows from situations that other people regard as rough or crooked.

"That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal," wrote poet Charles Baudelaire, "from which it follows that irregularity -- that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment -- is an essential part and characteristic of beauty."





YEAR REVIEW

How has 2015 gone for you? Have you been exerting your free will to create adventures that bring out the best in you, even as you have found graceful ways to cooperate with the tides of destiny?

If you'd like to review the Long-Range, Big-Picture Horoscopes I offered at the beginning of this year, check them out here.





LAST NIGHT AS I WAS SLEEPING
by Antonio Machado, translated by Robert Bly (excerpt)

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -- marvelous error! --
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.

And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures





YOUR LUCKY NUMBER

Your lucky number is 3.14159265

Your secret name is "Flux Luster"

The colors of your soul are sable, vermilion, and jade

Your magic talisman is a thousand-year-old Joshua tree whose flowers blossom just one night each year and can only be pollinated by the Yucca moth.

Your holiest pain comes from your ability to sense other people's cracked notions about you

Your sweet spot is in between the true believers and the scoffing skeptics.





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

Animals bridges, which may also be known as ecoducts or wildlife crossings, are structures that allow animals to safely cross human-made barriers like highways. A wildlife crossing can include: underpass tunnels, viaducts, overpasses and bridges, amphibian tunnels, fish ladders, culvets and green roofs.

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How Solar Power Could Slay the Fossil Fuel Empire by 2030.

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The Las Vegas Police Department had a history of deadly force incidents that drew the criticism of experts, civil rights leaders, and the Las Vegas community. Today, they?ve curbed the trend of excessive force and serve as a model for law enforcement agencies.





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


You don?t have to be anything you don?t want to be. You don?t have to live up to anyone?s expectations. There?s no need to strive for a kind of perfection that?s not very interesting to you. You don?t have to believe in ideas that make you sad or tormented, and you don?t have to feel emotions that others try to manipulate you into feeling.





Aldous Huxley was the renowned 20th-century intellectual who wrote the book *Brave New World,* a dystopian vision of the future. Later in his life he came to regret one thing: how "preposterously serious" he had been when he was younger. "There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet," he ruminated, "trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That?s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling . . . Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you?re feeling deeply."

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"When Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh was invited to the San Francisco Zen Center, the students asked him what they could do to improve their practice. He had entered a monastery at age sixteen, was an ordained monk, and had endured the horrors of the war in Vietnam. I imagine they expected some rigorous prescription for deepening their spiritual life.

"Thich Nhat Han's response: 'You guys get up too early for one thing; you should get up a little later. And your practice is too grim. I have just two instructions for you. One is to breathe, and one is to smile.'"

- from "True Refuge," by Tara Brach.





A conversation between two of the characters in my book The Televisionary Oracle:

"Remember, there is a difference between grateful anger and dehumanizing hatred," he shouted above the din.

"What do you mean?" I yelled back.

"Grateful anger is good darkness. Dehumanizing hatred is bad darkness."

"More clues, please."

"Grateful anger flows when you have engaged and studied your shadow. Dehumanizing hatred flows when you have ignored and denied your shadow. One is fertile, the other hysterical."

A mathematical formula: I liked that. I assumed he meant the shadow that Carl Jung described. The unripe and unillumined corners of the soul.

He continued: "Grateful anger is when you feel thankful for the irritating people and sickening situations that have spurred you to clarity and righteous action. Dehumanizing hatred is when you are so in love with your terrible emotion that you forget what needs to be changed and turn yourself into your enemy."

- The Televisionary Oracle





"I became aware of the world?s tenderness, the profound beneficence of all that surrounded me, the blissful bond between me and all of creation, and I realized that the joy I sought in you was not only secreted within you, but breathed around me everywhere, in the speeding street sounds, in the hem of a comically lifted skirt, in the metallic yet tender drone of the wind, in the autumn clouds bloated with rain.

"I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all, or a predaceous sequence of chance events, but the shimmering bliss, beneficent trepidation, a gift bestowed upon us and unappreciated."

- Vladimir Nabokov, "Beneficence" in "The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov"

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"Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement . . . get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible. Never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed."
- Abraham Joshua Heschel, Jewish theologian and civil rights activist

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"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."
- Rainer Maria Rilke

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"The whole world is a series of miracles, but we?re so used to seeing them that we call them ordinary things."
- Hans Christian Anderson

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"I will wade out till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers. I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air, alive, with closed eyes."
- E.E. Cummings

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"The whole existence is celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight."
- Osho

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"For aren't you and I gods? Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Release life's rapture. Everything is blooming. Everything is flying. Everything is screaming. Laughter. Running."
- Vladimir Nabokov





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. Write to Truthrooster@gmail.com.





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.


The phrase "new roses" can serve as an antidote to neurosis -- as a kind of magical spell. You might invoke it when you're in danger of getting undermined by either your own neurosis or someone else's.

If you notice, for instance, that your subconscious mind is spiraling down into a sour fantasy stirred up by one of your habitual fears, you could mutter a cheerful round of "new roses, new roses, new roses."

If your allies slip into the same compulsive behavior that they tend to get stuck in whenever stress overflows, you could chant "new roses, new roses, new roses" in a tuneful, affectionate tone.





You don't have to tone down or apologize for your prowess, because you love it when other people shine. You exult in your own excellence without regarding it as a sign of inherent superiority. As you ripen more and more of your latent aptitude, you inspire the rest of us to claim our own idiosyncratic magnificence.

You're a star -- and so am I. My success encourages your brilliance, and vice versa. Your charisma enhances my power -- and vice versa.





Life is a vast and intricate conspiracy designed to keep us well-supplied with blessings. What kind of blessings? Ten million dollars, a gorgeous physique, a perfect marriage, a luxurious home, and high status? Maybe.

But just as likely: interesting surprises, dizzying adventures, gifts you hardly know what to do with, and conundrums that dare you to get smarter. Novelist William Vollman referred to the latter types of blessings when he said that "the most important and enjoyable thing in life is doing something that's a complicated, tricky problem for you that you don't know how to solve."

The Christian writer C. S. Lewis said: "I thank God that He hasn't given me all the things I've prayed for, because as I look back now I realize it would have been disastrous to have received some of them."
Pronoia provides the boons and prods your soul needs, not necessarily those your ego craves.

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.





"If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold ever-more wonders."

-Andrew Harvey, *The Return of the Mother*

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"To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weakness -- that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things."

-Pablo Neruda, *The Book of Virtues*

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"No work is more worthwhile than to be a sign of divine joy and a fountain of divine love."

-Andrew Harvey





"We live in a world of theophanies. Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. Life wants to lead you from crumbs to angels, but this can happen only if you are willing to unwrap the ordinary by staying with it long enough to harvest its treasure."

-Macrina Wiederkehr





"Start doing the things you think should be done, and start being what you think society should become. Do you believe in free speech? Then speak freely. Do you love the truth? Then tell it. Do you believe in an open society? Then act in the open. Do you believe in a decent and humane society? Then behave decently and humanely."

- Adam Michnik




"Give us this day our daily hunger," prayed French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. "Give us this day our holy longings," prayed me.





This is what my Goddess friend Durga told me, and I believe her:

"1. I vow to Siamese-twin together my bad-ass, no-hype, wide-eyed self with my tricky, strategic, puzzle-loving self.

"2. I vow to rage on like a dancing warrior in the urban wilderness, keeping peak experiences and total slaphappy victory at the top of my priority list, while at the same time I play hide-and-seek with the dark delicious secrets that fuel my soul's lust for wicked meaning.

"3. I vow to deepen the collaborative efforts of my suck-out-the-marrow-and-spit-out-the-bones craziness and my listen-carefully-to-the-flow-of-the-underground-river caginess."





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

Rojava is a Kurdish region in Northern Syria that?s ruled by feminists. Rojava?s constitution enshrines gender equality and religious freedom. Recruits to Rojava?s 6,000-strong police force receive their weapons only after two weeks of feminist instruction.

Wind-power company to replace bird-killing Altamont turbines.

California bans antibiotics in meat.





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

The people I trust the most are those who are always tenderly wrestling and negotiating with their own shadows, making preemptive strikes on their personal share of the world's evil, fighting the good fight to keep from spewing their darkness on those around them. I aspire to be like that, which is why I regularly kick my own ass.

How-to-kick-your-own-ass lessons are available at 2:20 of this video:

How-to-kick-your-own-ass lessons are also available at 7:30 of this video:

Here's the "Kick Your Own Ass" anthem.





"I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people, to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole."

- Lauren Oliver

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"We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger."

- T. S. Eliot, "The Cocktail Party"





"The truest form of love is how you behave toward someone, not how you feel about them."

- Steve Hall

An interviewer urged the Dalai Lama to discourse on how to cultivate lovingkindness. His Holiness said, "That may be too much to ask. How about if we just work on getting the 'kindness' part right?"





It seems that we are more often frightened than hurt, and that we tend to suffer more from imagination than from reality. ?
?Lucius Annaeus Seneca





"Imaginal hygiene is the inner art of self-managing the imagination, to defend it from forces that compromise, pollute, colonize, shrink, and sterilize it, and to cultivate those that illuminate, expand, and nourish it."

The above is an excerpt from a wonderful piece by M. T. Xen, which I highly recommend.

You can also listen to my six-minute take on the power of your imagination.

Or read my piece here.





I mourn the bad news, and also offer a lot of good news.





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


LIBERATE YOUR IMAGINATION

The fundamentalist takes everything way too seriously and way too personally and way too literally. He divides the world into two camps, those who agree with him and those who don't. There is only one right way to interpret the world, and a million wrong ways. Correct belief is the only virtue.

To the fundamentalist, the liberated imagination is a sinful taboo. He not only enslaves his own imagination to his ideology, but wants to enslave our imaginations, too.

And who are the fundamentalists? Let's not remain under the delusion that they are only the usual suspects -- the religious fanatics of Islam and Christianity and Judaism and Hinduism.

There are many other kinds of fundamentalists, and some of them have gotten away with practicing their tragic magic in a stealth mode. Among the most successful are those who believe in what Robert Anton Wilson calls fundamentalist materialism. This is the faith-based dogma that swears physical matter is the only reality and that nothing exists un