Actress Blythe Baird writes about the problem that arises when her dog sees her eating a peanut butter and chocolate chip bagel. Her beloved pet begs for a piece and becomes miserable when it's not forthcoming. Baird is merely demonstrating her love, of course, because she knows that eating chocolate can make canines ill. I suspect that life is bestowing a comparable blessing on you. You may feel mad and sad about being deprived of something you want. But the likely truth is that you will be lucky not to get it.

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All of creation loves you very much. Even now, people you know and people you don't know are collaborating to make sure you have all you need to make your next smart move. But are you willing to start loving life back with an equal intensity? The adoration it offers you has not exactly been unrequited, but there is room for you to be more demonstrative. For help in cultivating this approach, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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You're an immortal freedom fighter who longs to liberate all sentient creatures from their suffering.

You're a fun-loving messiah who wants to help your fellow messiahs claim the ecstatic awareness that is their birthright.

You're a vortex of fluidic light that has temporarily taken on the form of a human being, suffering amnesia about your true origins. And why did you do that?

Read the rest of this oracular essay.

"I do not literally paint that table, but rather the emotion it produces upon me," French artist Henri Matisse told an interviewer. "But what if you don't always have emotion?" she asked him. This is how Matisse replied: "Then I do not paint. This morning, when I came to work, I had no emotion. So I took a horseback ride. When I returned, I felt like painting, and had all the emotion I wanted." This is excellent advice for you to keep in mind, Taurus. Even more than usual, it's crucial that you imbue every important thing you do with pure, strong emotions. If they're not immediately available, go in quest of them.

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What are the obvious secrets you can't quite see? How could you turn your challenges into daily gifts for yourself? For clues to mysteries like these, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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The alchemists said the magic formula for enlightenment was Visita Inferiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem, or "Seek out the lower reaches of the earth, perfect them, and you will find the hidden stone" -- the treasured philosopher's stone.

Jungian psychologists might describe the process this way: Engage in a relationship with the blind and sickly parts of yourself, perfect them, and you will awaken your hidden divinity.

Some night soon, I predict you'll dream of being an enlightened sovereign who presides over an ecologically sustainable paradise. You're a visionary leader who is committed to peace and high culture, so you've never gone to war. You share your wealth with the people in your kingdom. You revere scientists and shamans alike, providing them with what they need to do their good work for the enhancement of the realm. Have fun imagining further details of this dream, Gemini, or else make up your own. Now is an excellent time to visualize a fairy tale version of yourself at the height of your powers, living your dreams and sharing your gifts.

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Grace emerges in the ebb and flow, not just the flow. The waning reveals a different blessing than the waxing. Where are you in the great cycle of your life? For inspiration in figuring it all out, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Abraham Maslow's definition of real listening: to listen "without presupposing, classifying, improving, controverting, evaluating, approving or disapproving, without dueling what is being said, without rehearsing the rebuttal in advance, without free-associating to portions of what is being said so that succeeding portions are not heard at all."

It's not always necessary to have an expansive view of where you have been and where you are going, but it's crucial right now. So I suggest that you take an inventory of the big picture. For guidance, study this advice from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: "What have you truly loved? What has uplifted your soul, what has dominated and delighted it at the same time? Assemble these revered objects in a row before you and they may reveal a law by their nature and their order: the fundamental law of your very self."

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Whether it's your time to ferment in the shadows or sing in the sun, fresh power to transform yourself is on the way. Life always delivers the creative energy you need to change into the new thing you must become. For more help in understanding it all, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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What are mirabilia? They're phenomena that inspire wonder, winsome curiosities, small marvels, eccentric enchantments. Here are a few:

* The National Center for Atmospheric Research reports that the average cloud is the same weight as 100 elephants.

* The average river requires a million years to move a grain of sand 100 miles.

* With every dawn, when first light penetrates the sea, many seahorse colonies perform a dance to the sun.

* A seven-year-old Minnesota boy received patent number 6,368,227 for a new method of swinging on a swing.

* Clown fish can alter their gender as their social status rises.

* In the Hindu epic the Mahabharata, the hero and heroine fall in love without ever gazing upon each other, simply by hearing tales about each other's good deeds.

* Twelve percent of the population believes that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife.

* The closest modern relative of the Tyrannosaurus rex may be the chicken.

* Kind people are more likely than mean people to yawn when someone near them does.

* Singing Gregorian chants can cure dyslexia.

* All the gold ever mined could be molded into a 60-foot bust of your mom.

* The moon smells like exploded firecrackers.

* The most frequently shoplifted book in America is the Bible.

* Black sheep have a better sense of smell than white sheep.

* There are about 60,000 miles of blood vessels in your body. Every square inch of your body has an average of 32 million bacteria on it.

* French author and statesman André Malraux observed that Jesus Christ was the only anarchist who ever really succeeded.

* In his book The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead, physicist Frank J. Tipler offers what he says is scientific proof that every human being who has ever lived will be resurrected from the dead at the end of time.

"Your illusions are a part of you like your bones and flesh and memory," writes William Faulkner in his novel Absalom, Absalom! If that's true, Leo, you now have a chance to be a miracle worker. In the coming weeks, you can summon the uncanny power to rip at least two of your illusions out by the roots -- without causing any permanent damage! You may temporarily feel a stinging sensation, but that will be a sign that healing is underway. Congratulations in advance for getting rid of the dead weight.

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You can learn to be lucky. It's not a mystical force you're born with, but a habit you can develop. How? For starters, be open to new experiences, trust your gut wisdom, expect good fortune, see the bright side of challenging events, and master the art of maximizing serendipitous opportunities. For more help, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Would you like to make yourself smarter and more beautiful? Are you interested in increasing your capacity for ecstasy and improving your health? 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. You would devote yourself to invoking and expressing thanks.

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?

"There isn't enough of anything as long as we live," wrote Raymond Carver. "But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance, prevails." According to my analysis of the astrological omens, Virgo, you'll soon be gliding through one of these intervals. Now and then you may even experience the strange sensation of being completely satisfied with the quality and amount of sweetness that arrives. To ensure optimal results, be as free from greed as you can possibly be.

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Somewhere there's a treasure that has no value to anyone but you, and a secret that's meaningless to everyone except you, and a frontier that harbors a revelation only you would know how to exploit. Why not go in search of those things? For inspiration, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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I invite you to meditate on the relentlessness of your yearning for love. Recognize the fact that your eternal longing will never leave you in peace. Accept that it will forever delight you, torment you, inspire you, and bewilder you -- whether you are alone or in the throes of a complicated relationship.

Understand that your desire for love will just keep coming and coming and coming, keeping you slightly off-balance and pushing you to constantly revise your ideas about who you are.

Now read this declaration from the poet Rilke and claim it as your own: "My blood is alive with many voices that tell me I am made of longing."

"For a wound to heal, you have to clean it out," says author Yasmin Mogahed. "Again, and again, and again. And this cleaning process stings. The cleaning of a wound hurts. Yes. Healing takes so much work. So much persistence. And so much patience." According to my analysis, Libra, you should be attending to this tough but glorious task. Although the work might be hard, it won't be anywhere near as hard as it usually is. And you are likely to make more progress than you would be able to at other times.

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When they say "Be yourself," which self do they mean? Certainly not the self that wants to win every game and use up every resource and stand alone at the end of time on a mountain of pretty garbage. So which self is it? For guidance, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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 other day, lying in bed," writes poet Rodger Kamenetz, "I felt my heart beating for the first time in a long while. I realized how little I live in my body, how much in my mind." He speaks for the majority of us. We spend much of our lives entranced by the relentless jabber that unfolds between our ears. But I want to let you know, Scorpio, that the moment is ripe to rebel against this tendency in yourself. In the coming weeks, you will have a natural talent for celebrating your body. You'll be able to commune deeply with its sensations, to learn more abut how it works, and to exult in the pleasure it gives you and the wisdom it provides.

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

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Traditionally, the Seven Deadly Sins -- actions most likely to wound the soul -- are pride, lust, gluttony, anger, envy, sloth, and covetousness. We have formulated a fresh set of soul-harmers, the Four Foolish Virtues. They are as follows:

1. being analytical to such extremes that you repress your intuition;

2. sacrificing your pleasure through a compulsive attachment to duty;

3. tolerating excessive stress because you assume it helps you accomplish more;

4. being so knowledgeable and opinionated that you neglect to be curious.

Any others you'd like to add?

In his "Dream Song 67," poet John Berryman confesses, "I am obliged to perform in complete darkness operations of great delicacy on my self." I hope you will consider embarking on similar heroics, Sagittarius. It's not an especially favorable time to overhaul your environment or try to get people to change in accordance with your wishes. But it's a perfect moment to spruce up your inner world -- to tinker with and refine it so that everything in there works with more grace. And unlike Berryman, you won't have to proceed in darkness. The light might not be bright, but there'll be enough of a glow to see what you're doing.

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How's your fight for freedom going? Are you making progress in liberating yourself from your unconscious obsessions, bad habits, and conditioned responses? For assistance and inspiration, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Every act of genius, Carl Jung said, is an act "contra naturam": against nature. Indeed, every effort to achieve psychological integration requires a knack for breaking out of the trance of normal daily life -- to do what doesn't come natural.

The eighteenth-century mystic Jacob Boehme had a similar perspective. The great secret to becoming enlightened, he said, is "to walk in all things contrary to the world."

Qabalist teacher Paul Foster Case agreed. He said that living an ethical and spiritually intelligent life demands that we reverse the usual ways of thinking, speaking, and doing.

The way I see it, tending to my sanity and being in service to the world require me to be in a chronic state of rebellion.

But here's an important caveat: While the rebellion can and should be partially fueled by anger at the consensual mass hallucination that's mistakenly referred to as "reality," it must be primarily motivated by love and joy and the desire to bestow blessings. A healthy proportion, at least for me, seems to be 15% rage, indignation, and complaint, and 85% compassion, celebration, and lust for life.

Here's the dictionary's definition of the word "indelible": "having the quality of being difficult to remove, wash away, blot out, or efface; incapable of being canceled, lost, or forgotten." The word is often used in reference to unpleasant matters: stains on clothes, biases that distort the truth, superstitions held with unshakable conviction, or painful memories of romantic break-ups. I am happy to let you know that you now have more power than usual to dissolve seemingly indelible stuff like that. Here's a trick that might help you: Find a new teacher or teaching that uplifts you with indelible epiphanies.

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

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Acquiring problems is a fundamental human need. It's as crucial to your well-being as getting food, air, water, sleep, and love. You define yourself -- indeed, you make yourself -- through the puzzling dilemmas you attract and solve. The most creative people on the planet are those who frame the biggest, hardest questions and then gather the resources necessary to find the answers.

ccording to poet Tony Hoagland, most of us rarely "manage to finish a thought or a feeling; we usually get lazy or distracted and quit halfway through." Why? Hoagland theorizes that we "don't have the time to complete the process, and we dislike the difficulty and discomfort of the task." There's a cost for this negligence: "We walk around full of half-finished experiences." That's why Hoagland became a poet. He says that "poems model the possibility of feeling all the way through an emotional process" and "thinking all the way through a thought." The coming weeks will be a favorable time to get more in the habit of finishing your own feelings and thoughts, Aquarius. It will also be more important than usual that you do so! (Hoagland's comments appeared in Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts.)

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

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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This is a perfect moment.

It's a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you and I are waking up from our sleepwalking, thumb-sucking, dumb-clucking collusion with the masters of delusion and destruction.

Thanks to them, from whom the painful blessings flow, we are waking up.

Their wars and tortures, their crimes against nature, extinctions of species and brand new diseases.

Their spying and lying in the name of the father, sterilizing seeds and trademarking water.

Molestations of God, celebrations of shame, stealing our dreams and changing our names.

Their cunning commercials and blood-sucking hustles, their endless rehearsals for the end of the world.

Thanks to them, from whom the painful blessings flow, we are waking up.

Their painful blessings are cracking open more and more gashes in the shrunken and crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality." And through the fractures, ripe eternity is flooding in; news of the soul's true home is pouring in; our allies from the other side of the veil are swarming in, inspiring us to become smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier.

We are waking up.

Hear or read the rest of "This Is a Perfect Moment."

Unless you work at night and sleep by day, you experience the morning on a regular basis. You may have a love-hate relationship with it, because on the one hand you don't like to leave your comfortable bed so early, and on the other hand you enjoy anticipating the interesting events ahead of you. But aside from your personal associations with the morning, this time of day has always been a potent symbol of awakenings and beginnings. Throughout history, poets have invoked it to signify purity and promise. In myth and legend, it often represents the chance to see things afresh, to be free of the past's burdens, to love life unconditionally. Dream interpreters might suggest that a dream of morning indicates a renewed capacity to trust oneself. All of these meanings are especially apropos for you right now, Pisces.

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

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Brainwash yourself before someone nasty beats you to it. Study the difference between wise suffering and dumb suffering until you get it right. Commit crimes that don't break any laws. Visualize Buddha at the moment of orgasm. Build illusions that make people feel so beautiful they can't stand to be near you.

Pretend to be crazy so you can get away with doing what's right. Sing anarchist lullabies to homosexual trees. Love your enemies in case your friends turn out to be jerks. Review in detail the history of your life, honoring every moment as if you were conducting a benevolent Judgment Day. Eat money. Drink the sun. Dream like a stone. Sing in the acid rain.