Liberate Your Imagination!

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

Below are excerpts.

Dear Co-Conspirators: Congratulations on having such ambidextrous brains and hearts. Due to your ever-growing ability to blend supple rationality with robust intuition, you're not falling prey to the inane strains of insanity that are going around. Instead you're achieving glorious victory after glorious victory over the fearful fantasies that pass for normalcy.

Best of all, you're increasing your mastery of the art of paradox; more and more you're attuned to the amusing fact that when the mythic shifts hit the fan, the apparent opposites turn inside-out and trade places. The rot prepares the way for the splendor. The chaos becomes the source of the rejuvenation. The end of the world mutates into the beginning of the world.

Please accept the thunderous applause of my one hand clapping. The people who take everything personally and seriously may not recognize your ingenious work, but we connoisseurs of the liberated imagination do.





"Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health. Everything absolute belongs to pathology." So proclaimed Friedrich Nietzsche in *Beyond Good and Evil.*

Note well that he used the adjective "joyous" to describe distrust, not "cynical" or "grumbling" or "sour."

The key to remaining vital and strong while questioning every so-called absolute is to cultivate a cheerful, buoyant mood as you do it.





Sometimes hope is an irrelevant waste of time, even a stupid self-indulgence. Let's say, for instance, that I'm intently hoping that a certain disagreeable person I've got to communicate with won't answer when I call on the phone. That way I can simply leave a message on his voice mail and avoid an unpleasant exchange. But it doesn't matter what I hope. The guy will either answer or not, regardless of what I hope.

But there is another kind of hope that's potentially invigorating. Let's say I hope that we humans will reverse the environmental catastrophes we're perpetrating. Let's say that my hope motivates me to live more sustainably and to inspire others to live more sustainably. Then my hope is a catalyst.

I invite you to give two examples from your life about the two kinds of hope.





People ask me what they should do now that Mercury, 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.





"Lama Surya Das, the ?Buddha from Brooklyn,? is one of the handful of Westerners who have been teaching meditation for decades. And yet, he says we?re doing it wrong.

Lama Surya Das says there are other ways to meditate besides those that are currently popular: "So many people seem to be moving narcissistically into self-centered happiness-seeking and quietism, not to mention the use of mindfulness for mere effectiveness," he says. "True meditation generates wisdom and compassion, which may be very disquieting, at least in the short term."

"'Quiet your mind' or 'calm and clear your mind' are instructions I hear way too much," he says. "Some teachers actually encourage people to try to stop thinking, when in fact meditative awareness means being mindful of thoughts and feelings, not simply trying to reduce, alter or white them out and achieve some kind of oblivion."

"The anti-intellectual meditators, thought-swatters and imagination-suppressors have long ruled meditation-oriented circles in the West," he says. "But authentic meditative practices can enhance and even unleash the creativity and imagination.'

You don?t have to quiet the mind to do many of the types of meditation he proposes. They don't involve trying to find a quiet 'moment of Zen' apart from the messy, noisy world of work, family and children, but rather inviting all of the noise into meditation.

These thoughts are from an article by Jay Michaelson in huffingtonpost.com.

Lama Surya Das's new book.





My first invitation: Weed out the wishy-washy wishes and lukewarm longings that keep you distracted from your burning desires.

My second invitation: Refuse to think that anyone else knows better than you what dreams will keep your life energy humming with maximum efficiency and grace.

Third invitation: Say this out loud to see how it feels: "I know exactly what I want. I know exactly what I don't want. I know exactly what I kind of want but I won't waste my time on it because it sidetracks me from working on what I really want."





"Difficulties illuminate existence, but they must be fresh and of high quality."
- Tom Robbins





"When one has not had a good father, one must create one," said philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. What does that mean? How might you go about "creating" a good father?

Well, you could develop a relationship with an admirable older man who is an inspiring role model.

You could read books by men whose work stirs you to actualize your own potentials.

If you have a vigorous inner life, you could build a fantasy dad in your imagination.

Here's another possibility: Cultivate in yourself the qualities you think a good father should have.

Your ideas?

Even if you actually had a pretty decent father, I'm sure he wasn't perfect. So it still might be interesting to try out some of these ideas.





Dear Beauty and Truth Lab: Help! My old Buick's transmission is dead, my credit cards are maxed, my kid's got to see the dentist real bad, and the one-speed bike I ride everywhere is about to collapse. I'm working two low-paying jobs already, although I just applied for a more lucrative gig as a strip-club dancer, only I'm having so much mysterious pain in my joints I'm not sure how sexy my gyrations will be. Please clue me in to some tricks that will help me keep a pronoiac attitude in the midst of the mess that is my life. - Pickled

Dear Pickled: Here's the first thing I want to tell you: Pronoia does not assume that material comfort is a sign of divine favor. The universe is an equal-opportunity provider, conspiring to shower blessings on every one of us in the same abundance. But while the blessings may come in the form of money and possessions, they're just as likely to consist of other gifts that aren't as concrete.

Here's a hypothetical example. Let's say you have the gift of feeling at home in the world no matter where you are. The universe has determined that it's the exact skill you need in order to fulfill the specific purpose you came to earth to carry out. Having a prestigious job and big salary, on the other hand, might be exactly what you don't need.

The question of what gifts are essential revolves around your precise role in the universal conspiracy to perpetrate blessings.

The second meditation I'll offer you is a passage from the Gospel of Matthew: "Whoever has, shall be given more and more, while whoever has nothing, even what he has will be taken away from him."

Pronoiac translation: Whatever you choose to focus your attention on, you will get more of it. If you often think of everything you lack and how sad you are that you don't have it, you will tend to receive prolific evidence of how true that is. As you obsess on all the ways your life is different from what you wish it would be, you will become an expert in rousing feelings of frustration and you will attract experiences that assist you in rousing frustration.

If, on the other hand, you dwell on the good things you have already had the privilege to experience, you will expand your appreciation for their blessings, which in turn will amplify their beneficent impact on your life. You will also magnetize yourself to receive further good things, making it more likely that they will be attracted into your sphere. At the very least, you will get in the habit of enjoying yourself no matter what the outward circumstances are.

Bear in mind that you are a great wizard. You can use your powers to practice white magic on yourself instead of the other kind. The most basic way to do that is to concentrate on naming, savoring, and feeling gratitude for the blessings you do have?your love for your kid, the pleasures of eating the food you like, the sight of the sky at dusk, the entertaining drama of your unique fate. Don't ignore the bad stuff, but make a point of celebrating the beautiful stuff with all the exuberant devotion you can muster.





Do play soccer in bunny slippers at dawn in a supermarket parking lot with a gang of Vipassana experts who have promised to teach you the Balinese monkey chant.

Don't decorate your thigh with a slipshod tattoo of the devil pushing a lawn mower.

Do wear a T-shirt that says, "Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most."

Don't glide into a bar, scout around for the person whose face has the most pain etched in it, and ask that person to come home with you.

Do shake your fist at the night sky as you call out, "I defy you, stars!"

Don't pile up framed photos of old flames in a vacant lot and drive a monster truck over them.

Do write a cookbook filled with recipes you've channeled from dead celebrities.

Don't gaze into a mirror and spout, "God damn you, why can't you be different from who you are?!"

Don't lie on a floor surrounded by wine-stained poetry books, crumpled Matisse prints, abandoned underwear, and half-eaten bowls of corn flakes as you stare up at the ceiling with a blank gaze, muttering gibberish and waving your hands as if swatting away demons.





Below are more excerpts from Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Everyone's my teacher. Everywhere I go, I'm a student. Everyone is in some way my informant, my revelator, my direction connection to the Divine Wow.

The animals, too: They are my confidants, my beloveds, my spirit guides.

And yes, the plants! My godparents, my role models, my advisers.

I vow to gleefully shut up and listen reverently on a regular basis.

Playful, mysterious intelligences surround me in every direction. I'm available!

(Yes, to you, too, wind and sun and sky and mountain and rivers and oceans and rocks: I greet you daily as my family members, my agent provocateurs, my fellow celebrants.)





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

While stupid pain is often born of fear, wise pain 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 a beautiful, interesting game that's worthy of your curiosity.

I invite you to come up with more definitions about the difference between dumb pain and smart pain.





"We create ourselves by what we choose to notice. Once this work of self-authorship has begun, we inhabit the world we've created. We self-seal. We don't notice anything except those things that confirm what we already think about who we already are.

"Meditative traditions refer to the observer self. When we succeed in moving outside our normal processes of self-reference and can look upon ourselves with self-awareness, then we have a chance at changing. We break the seal. We notice something new."

- Margaret Wheatley





"There is a saying that when the student is ready, the teacher appears," writes Clarissa Pinkola Estes in her book *Women Who Run with the Wolves.*

But the magic of that formula may not unfold with smooth simplicity, she says: "The teacher comes when the soul, not the ego, is ready. The teacher comes when the soul calls, and thank goodness -- for the ego is never fully ready."





"Some people have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy."

- Abraham H. Maslow





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
California Governor Jerry Brown signed six new gun-control bills into law.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves ruled that Mississippi's anti-LGBT "religious objection" hate law is unconstitutional.

NASA putting the Juno probe into Jupiter's orbit after a 1.8 billion-mile journey.

The Department of the Interior issued a rule making it harder for coal companies to dodge royalty payments and shortchange taxpayers when mining on public lands.

U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson blocked the state of Kansas from cutting off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood.

Justin Trudeau was the first Canadian prime minister to march in an LGBT pride parade.





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





Attention, please. This is your ancestors speaking. We've been trying to reach you through your dreams and fantasies, but you haven't responded. That's why we've commandeered this space.

So listen up. We'll make it brief. You're at a crossroads analogous to a dilemma that has baffled your biological line for six generations. We ask you now to master the turning point that none of us have ever figured out how to negotiate. Heal yourself and you heal all of us. We mean that literally. Start brainstorming, please.





LOVE TIPS

Love thrives when neither partner takes things personally, so cultivate a devotion to forgiveness and divest yourself of the urge to blame.

Love is a game in which the rules keep changing, so be crafty and improvisational as you stay alert for each unexpected twist of fate.

Love enmeshes you in your partner's unique set of karmic complications, so make sure you're very interested in his or her problems.

Love is a laboratory where you can uncover secrets about yourself that have previously been hidden, so be ravenously curious.

Love is never a perfect match of totally compatible saints, so don't let sterile fantasies seduce you away from flawed but fecund realities.
Love is not a low-maintenance machine, so work hard on cultivating its unpredictable organic wonders.

Love is not a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hollywood, so don't let your romantic story be infected by the entertainment industry's simplistic, sentimental myths about intimate relationships.





"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change," said psychologist Carl Rogers.





We are dissident bodhisattvas rebelling against all those forces that feed fear and ignore love.

We are spiritual freedom fighters rising up to protect nature and foment peace and demand justice.

We are subversive mystics stoking the cool blue fires of poetry and lobbying for the liberated imagination.

We are militant ecstatics invoking the transformative powers of pleasure to sanctify and beautify our one and only Earth.

We are mutinous purveyors of grace who redistribute the wealth so that all creatures may have the means to thrive.





The world is young, your soul is free, and you're smart enough to fall in love with every experience you have.





TYPES OF LOVE?

The ancient Greeks had a variety of names for different kinds of love. Here are some, according to Lindsay Swope in her review of Richard Idemon's book Through the Looking Glass.

1. "Epithemia" is the basic need to touch and be touched. Our closest approximation is "horniness," though epithemia is not so much a sexual feeling as a sensual one.

2. "Philia" is friendship. It includes the need to admire and respect your friends as a reflection of yourself?like in high school, where you want to hang out with the cool kids because that means you're cool too.

3. "Eros" isn't sexual in the way we usually think, but is more about the emotional gratification that comes from merging souls.

4. "Agape" is a mature, utterly free expression of love that has no possessiveness. It means wanting the best for another person even if it doesn't advance your self-interest.

I invite you to coin some additional new words for other kinds of love.





"Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love."

- Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History





I'm not doing personal horoscope readings, and haven't done them for years. There's too much other fun work to do! Writing my column! Creating audio horoscopes! Authoring books! Recording music! But during the time I did do personal readings, I gave a set of guidelines to those who enlisted my services. I'll provide them below. Maybe they will be of use to you if you're ever shopping for an astrologer to do your chart.

When I do a personal chart-reading, it's crucial that I talk WITH you, not AT you. I perform my best service when I'm in dialog with you. It's also important that I not set myself up as a fount of divine wisdom. For me to act like an all-knowing expert tends to shut down your access to your own hidden sources of knowing.

I've been wary of certain styles of fortune-telling ever since a fortune-telling astrologer told me when I was 19 years old that I was going to die at age 23. I spent that whole year of my life looking for omens of death in my dreams. During the last week before my 24th birthday, I cowered in fear and barely went out of the house.

I survived, of course, and vowed that in my own role as "fortune-telling astrologer," I'd never plant seeds in people's psyches that made them feel they had no control over their destiny. Good astrology doesn't cripple your willpower, but rather pumps it up.

One of my favorite ways to describe the kind of work I do is to say that I predict the present, not the future. In other words, I try to home in on the unconscious patterns and invisible forces that are coming to bear on you now. My job is not to show off my psychic powers by, say, giving you the numbers you should play to win the lottery or revealing when your future soul mate is going to discover you in the checkout line.

I want to help you read your own mind by uncovering secrets buried in your subconscious. I want to inspire you to figure out what part of your own long-term cycles you're in. I want to conspire with you to get to the heart of your highest potentials. Our main goal is not to find all the answers. It's about framing better questions than the ones you've been stuck on.

Astrology isn't a fixed set of strict formulas. It's a gaggle of evocative symbols that should stimulate your imagination and challenge you to create your own true myths. I want us to seize the poetic license to imagine all sorts of wild ideas, some of which can be taken at face value as wise suggestions (but not final solutions), and some of which may be ways to jolt you out of your ruts.

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The reading I'll do with you consists of two sessions: the exploratory session, which is always by phone, and then the main reading. During the exploratory session, I get to know you a little better and find out what you want out of your reading. Because a chart can be read on so many different levels, this first step is crucial.

During the exploratory session, I'll ask you to give me four questions or issues you want to have addressed during your reading. Please think about these beforehand. This is an important part of the process that is emblematic of my approach to doing a reading. I don't want you to be a passive sponge, attributing to me a kind of divine expertise. I expect you to participate with a strong and passionate quest to uncover new ways to look at your life.

During this exploratory session, I'd also love it if you can tell me an important dream or series of dreams you've had. They'll help further focus our investigations into your mysteries. But if you don't have any dreams to bring, don't worry about it.

The main reading itself usually lasts one and a half hours. If we've had a good exploratory session, I'll probably come into the reading with some strong intuitions about where to go and how to proceed. But I encourage you to interrupt me, question me, or add your own input at any time during the process.





In her book Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Est?s suggests that we all need to periodically go cheerfully and enthusiastically out of our minds. Make sure, she says, that at least one part of you always remains untamed, uncategorizable, and unsubjugated by routine. Be adamant in your determination to stay intimately connected to all that's inexplicable and mysterious about your life.

At the same time, though, Est?s believes you need to keep your unusual urges clear and ordered. Discipline your wildness, in other words, and don't let it degenerate into careless disorder.





Can a stretch of land be a person in the eyes of the law? Can a body of water?

In New Zealand, they can. A former national park has been granted personhood, and a river system is expected to receive the same soon.

The unusual designations, something like the legal status that corporations possess, came out of agreements between New Zealand?s government and Maori groups. The two sides have argued for years over guardianship of the country?s natural features.

Chris Finlayson, New Zealand?s attorney general, said the issue was resolved by taking the Maori mind-set into account. ?In their worldview, ?I am the river and the river is me,?? he said. ?Their geographic region is part and parcel of who they are.?


MORE . . .


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Bolivia is set to pass the world's first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country's rich mineral deposits as "blessings" and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.

The country, which has been pilloried by the US and Britain in the UN climate talks for demanding steep carbon emission cuts, will establish 11 new rights for nature. They include: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.

Controversially, it will also enshrine the right of nature "to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities."

MORE . . .





"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





Below are more excerpts from Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.


WHAT NOURISHES YOU EMOTIONALLY AND SPIRITUALLY?

I'm not talking about what entertains you or flatters you or takes your mind off your problems.

I'm referring to the influences that make you stronger and the people who see you for who you really are and the situations that teach you life-long lessons.

I mean the beauty that replenishes your psyche and the symbols that consistently restore your balance and the memories that keep feeding your ability to rise to each new challenge.

I invite you to take inventory of these precious assets. And then make a special point of nurturing them back.





WHERE IS MAGIC?

I hope you can obtain the Avatar Elixir stashed in the golden obelisk in the underground fortress beneath the glass mountain. It will allow you to produce the "triple-helix" energy that will give you the power to cross freely back and forth through the gateway between universes.

Then wild creatures will seek out your influence. Rivers and winds will become your allies. The cells of your body will communicate with you clearly and joyfully. Every star in the sky will shine directly on you.

And if for some reason you're not able to get your hands on that Avatar Elixir, you may be able to achieve similar results by drinking a bottle of beer stashed in the lower left rear section of the beverage cooler at a convenience store within five miles of your home.

Magic might be wherever you think it is.





"I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out."

- Erich Fried





THE SEASONS OF ROT AND REGENERATION

Each one of us is a blend of life and death. In the most literal sense, our bodies always contain old cells that are dying and new cells that are emerging as replacements.

From a more metaphorical perspective, our familiar ways of seeing and thinking and feeling are constantly atrophying, even as fresh modes emerge. Both losing and winning are woven into every day; sinking down and rising up; shrinking and expanding.

In any given phase of our lives, one or the other polarity is often more pronounced. But sometimes they are evenly balanced; the Seasons of Rot and of Regeneration happen at the same time.

Where are you at in the cycle right now?





IT'S ALL ALIVE

Yua is a term the Yupiit 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, August 2000)





Below are more excerpts from Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Let me remind you who you really are: You're an immortal freedom fighter who longs to liberate all sentient creatures from their suffering. You're a fun-loving messiah who devoutly wants to help all of your fellow messiahs claim the ecstatic awareness that is their birthright.

Try to remember. 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? Because it was the best way to forge the identity that would make you such an elemental force in our 14-billion-year campaign to bring heaven all the way down to earth.

I'm not speaking metaphorically here. You are a mutant deity in disguise?not a Buddha or a Christ exactly, but of the same lineage and conjured from the same fire. You have been around since the beginning of time and will be here after the end. Every day and in every way, you're getting better at playing the preposterously amusing master game we all dreamed up together before the Big Bang bloomed.

Lately, I must admit, our work has seemed almost comically impossible. Many of us have given in to the temptation to believe that everything is upside-down and inside-out. Ignorance and inertia, partially camouflaged as time-honored morality, seem to surround us.

Pessimism is enshrined as a hallmark of worldliness. Compulsive skepticism masquerades as perceptiveness. Mean-spirited irony is chic. Stories about treachery and degradation provoke a visceral thrill in millions of people who think of themselves as reasonable and smart. Beautiful truths are suspect and ugly truths are readily believed.

So no, at this peculiar turning point in the evolution of our 14-billion-year-old master game, it's not easy to carry out our mission. We've got to be both wrathful insurrectionaries and exuberant lovers of life. We've got to cultivate cheerful buoyancy even as we resist the temptation to swallow thousands of delusions that have been carefully crafted and seductively packaged by those messiahs among us who bravely volunteered to play the role of know-it-all deceivers.

We have to learn how to stay in a good yet unruly mood as we overthrow the sour, puckered mass hallucination that is mistakenly referred to as "reality."

Maybe most importantly, we have to be ferociously and single-mindedly dedicated to the cause of beauty and truth and love even as we keep our imaginations wild and hungry and free. We have to be both disciplined and rowdy.





"The criteria for success: you are free, you live in the present moment, you are useful to the people around you, and you feel love for all humanity."

?Sri Sri Ravi Shankar





HOW WELL DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE GREAT MYSTERY?

The ever-evolving truth is far too complicated and fluid and slippery and scrambled and gorgeously abundant for one human being to completely master.

I'm lucky to have gotten my percentage of mastery up to about 3%. On a good day, that?s how much I understand of the Maddening and Delightful Mystery we are embedded in.

Here's a hypothesis that's a cornerstone of my 3%: It's smart and healthy to joyfully rebel against everyone who assuredly tells me that they know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

How well do you understand the Great Mystery? What's your percentage?





THE ACTIVISM OF LOVE

Environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill spent two years living in a redwood tree she named "Luna." Her goal was to save it from being cut down by a logging company. She succeeded both literally and mythically. Luna was spared from death, as was a surrounding three-acre swath of trees. Hill became an inspiring symbol of artful, compassionate protest.

Later she told Benjamin Tong in the DVD "The Taoist and the Activist": "So often activism is based on what we are against, what we don't like, what we don't want. And yet we manifest what we focus on. And so we are manifesting yet ever more of what we don't want, what we don't like, what we want to change.

"So for me, activism is about a spiritual practice as a way of life. And I realized I didn't climb the tree because I was angry at the corporations and the government; I climbed the tree because when I fell in love with the redwoods, I fell in love with the world. So it is my feeling of 'connection' that drives me, instead of my anger and feelings of being disconnected."




You may be interested in reviewing the long-term horoscopes I wrote for you early this year. They discuss your best potential destiny for all of 2016. To see them, go here.





Below are more excerpts from Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

EXPERIMENT: 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, simulate that state.

Everywhere you go, exude the 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. Wield compassion like a performance artist who exults in carving up pessimism and cynicism.

Dispense free blessings and extra slack like a rich saint high on natural endorphins.

Without straining, direct your perceptions to discern the most noble and attractive qualities in each creature you encounter.





GOOD PROBLEMS

Is there anything more dangerous than getting up in the morning and having nothing to worry about, no problems to solve, no friction to heat you up? That state can be a threat to your health, because if untreated it incites an unconscious yearning for any old dumb trouble that might rouse some excitement.

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 riddles 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.

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

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

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

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

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





"In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined."

- Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin

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"I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's."

- William Blake

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"If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet," said author Toni Morrison, "then you must write it."





Today I speak and feel and act on Cesar Chavez's famous prayer:

Show me the suffering of the most miserable;
So I will know my people's plight.

Free me to pray for others;
For you are present in every person.

Help me take responsibility for my own life;
So that I can feel free at last.

Grant me courage to serve others;
For in service there is true life.

Give me honesty and patience;
So that I can work with other workers.

Bring forth song and celebration;
So that the Spirit will be alive among us.

Let the Spirit flourish and grow;
So that we will never tire of the struggle.

Let us remember those who have died for justice;
For they have given us life.

Help us love even those who hate us;
So we can change the world.





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

The Antarctic Ozone Hole Is on the Mend. Global regulation of chlorine compounds is giving the atmosphere time to heal.

Here are some things that wre working pretty well:

* Low-income shoppers now get discount at California farmer markets

* San Francisco just issued the country?s broadest ban on styrofoam

* Gizmo attaches to garbage disposals, turns food waste into compost

* One teen?s crusade to make sure his classmates get enough rest

* inside the Chicago program that is slashing youth crime rates





Below are more excerpts from Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Why the World Is Better Than You Think, by Peter Diamandis:

"We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded by negative news from every angle. If you turn on CNN (what I call the Crisis News Network), you'll predominantly hear about death, terrorism, airplane crashes, bombings, financial crisis and political scandal.

"I think of the news as a drug pusher, and negative news as their drug. There's a reason for this. We humans are wired to pay 10x more attention to negative news than positive news.

"Being able to rapidly notice and pay attention to negative news (like a predator or a dangerous fire) was an evolutionary advantage to keep you alive on the savannas of Africa millions of years ago.

"Today, we still pay more attention to negative news, and the news media knows this. They take advantage of it to drive our eyeballs to their advertisers. Typically, good news networks fail as businesses.

"It's not that the news media is lying ? it's just not a balanced view of what's going on in the world.

"And because your mindset matters a lot, my purpose of my work is to share with you the data supporting the positive side of the equation and to give you insight to some fundamental truths about where humanity really is going. The truth is, driven by advances in exponential technologies, things are getting much better around the world at an accelerating rate.

"NOTE: This is not to say that there aren't major issues we still face, like climate crisis, religious radicalism, terrorism, and so on. It's just that we forget and romanticize the world in centuries past ? and life back then was short and brutal."

Read more . . . .





THE INCREMENTAL APPROACH

I'm all about the gradual, slow-simmering approach to just about everything.

My aspiration is to be reverential and devotional toward the cumulative effects of small minute-by-minute meditations in the midst of "ordinary" life and the manageable day-to-day self-transformations that are hard but not too hard.

When I was young I loved to cultivate senses-reeling ecstatic breakthrough, but now I'm more inclined to commune with the chronic, low-level ecstatic union that thrives on opening to every little experience I encounter. Neither is "better," of course. I'm just talking about what has been right for me in recent years.

I would love to practice tantra 24/7, worshiping and drawing inspiration from each small gift the daily rhythm brings.

An important prod that led me in this direction was my 18+ years as a householder -- when I transitioned from being a rock and roll singer leading ecstatic magick-based communal rituals to being a writer and living with my partner and our child.

I don't recommend that for everyone, but it worked for me. Learning to communicate with a child and be fully alive in an intimate relationship were crucial in me learning to expand and deepen my capacity to communicate with a wide variety of beings.

Another way to think about my work as an oracle is that my Qabalistic studies and magickal work have, more and more, been grounded in the challenges of daily life. I'm more qualified than I used to be to speak about the tests and trials of being a human being, and that has rendered the wild, transcendent aspects of my knowing more useful.





"kisemanito," a Cree word whose meaning is "the great positive good force in the universe."





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

Fantastic pronoiac news, as reported in the new book The Humane Economy: The fight against human cruelty to animals is being won.

Examples: Petco and PetSmart have turned the conventional pet store model on its head by forswearing puppy mill suppliers in favor of shelter dogs;

the Body Shop uses safe ingredients instead of animal tests for their cosmetics;

major food retailers like Whole Foods, Chipotle, and even Costco and Walmart are embracing animal welfare standards that are one by one unwinding the horrors of the factory farm.

More info . . . .





Below are more excerpts from Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

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.





USEFUL REVERENCE

Reverence is one of the most useful emotions. When you respectfully acknowledge the sublime beauty of something greater than yourself, you do yourself a big favor. You generate authentic humility and sincere gratitude, which are healthy for your body as well as your soul.

Please note that reverence is not solely the province of religious people. A biologist may venerate the scientific method. An atheist might experience a devout sense of awe toward geniuses who have bequeathed to us their brilliant ideas.

What about you? What excites your reverence? I invite you to explore the deeper mysteries of this altered state of consciousness.





GLOBALIZATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

More than 240,000 people died in the earthquake that struck Tangshan, China in 1976. The relief effort was negligible compared to the help that arrived in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. This clued me in to the possibility that a dramatic globalization of consciousness is underway.

People currently living on the planet are increasingly aware of how intimately interdependent we all are. Thirty years ago no one had heard of the butterfly effect -- the theory that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Japan can affect the weather in Texas. Now millions understand the principle.

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In his well-researched book Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, Paul Hawken argues that organized political action devoted to advancing the rights of others is a relatively new phenomenon. The drive to abolish slavery was where it began. In recent decades it has grown exponentially, becoming a global crusade to improve social justice, economic conditions, human rights, and environmental health.

By Hawken's estimates, there are well over a million organizations engaged in the effort, which thrives without centralized leadership, charismatic front men, or a fixed ideology. Because of its grass-roots ubiquity, it is largely invisible to the mass media and underestimated by politicians.

Some day, maybe 500 years from now, our descendants will have installed the art and science of universal compassion as the first law of civilization. And I bet they will give honor to us, the people alive on the planet today, as the heroes who gave critical mass to their prime directive.

For those who are dogmatically predisposed to thinking that the world is a hellhole and life is a bitch, no amount of contrary evidence will change their minds. The cynic who asked me the following question didn't really want an answer: "Tell me how your pronoia explains a child in Darfur starving to death after watching soldiers kill his mommy?"

While I don't claim to have the authoritative response to that accusation, I think it's worthwhile to consider the possibility that suffering is, among other things, a difficult gift we humans are given in order to prod our evolution.

On a personal level, our longing to escape our suffering is a primal force in making us smarter. On a collective level, nothing refines and ennobles us more than our passion to keep others from suffering. For every dead child in Darfur, 100 people in other places on the planet have responded with a commitment to create a world in which future Darfurs won't happen.





"If the Angel decides to come it will be because you have convinced her, not by tears, but by your humble resolve to be always beginning; to be a beginner."

- Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell





Below are more excerpts from Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.


How Pronoia Works: There was once a poor farmer who could afford to own just one horse. He cared well for the animal, but one summer night, the horse escaped through a weak fence and ran away.

When his neighbors discovered what had happened, they visited to offer their condolences. "What bad luck!" they exclaimed. The farmer replied, "Maybe. Maybe not."

A week later, the fugitive horse sauntered back to the homestead, accompanied by six wild horses. The farmer and his son managed to corral all of them. Again the neighbors descended. "What great luck!" they exclaimed. "Maybe," the farmer replied. "Maybe not."

Soon the farmer's son began the work of taming the new arrivals. While attempting to ride the roan stallion, he was thrown to the ground and half-trampled. His leg was badly broken. The neighbors came to investigate. "What terrible luck!" they exclaimed. The farmer replied, "Maybe. Maybe not."

The next day, soldiers visited the farmer's village. Strife had recently broken out between two warlords, and one of them had come to conscript all the local young men. Though every other son was commandeered, the farmer's boy was exempted because of his injury. The neighbors gathered again. "What fantastic luck!" they exclaimed. "Maybe," the farmer said. "Maybe not."

-Source: an old Taoist folktale





The Italian city of Florence harbors the richest trove of art treasures in the world. Its many museums are hot spots for outbreaks of a rare psychological disorder. Foreign tourists sometimes experience breakdowns while standing in the presence of the tremendous beauty, and are rushed to the psychiatric ward of Florence's Santa Maria Nuova Hospital.

"Many visitors panic before a Raphael painting," reports Reuters. "Others collapse at the feet of Michelangelo's statue of David."

Psychiatrists have referred to this pathology as the Stendhal syndrome, named after the French novelist who wrote about his emotional breakdown during a visit to the city's art collection in 1817.

As you embark on your explorations of pronoia, you should protect yourself against this risk. Proceed cautiously as you expose yourself to the splendor that has been invisible or unavailable to you all these years.





What you may need is a more curious and mysterious sweetness. A wilder, stronger sweetness. A sweetness that shatters illusions.





If you?ve ever watched The Simpsons TV show, you?ve probably heard Homer Simpson?s favorite toast. ?To alcohol,? he proclaims, ?the cause of and solution to all of life?s problems.?

My own salute is different. ?To the Divine Trickster formerly known as God,? I say, ?the cause of and solution to all of life?s problems.?

I invite you to compose a prayer in which you simultaneously curse and thank the Primal Source.





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

Researchers at Rowan University announced a blood test they say can diagnose early-stage Alzheimer?s in patients with 100 percent accuracy.

Former President Jimmy Carter's campaign to rid the world of Guinea worm disease has resulted in a reduction to just two cases -- down from three million.

The Washington D.C. city council approved the phase-in of a $15 minimum wage.

John Oliver and the crew at HBO's Last Week Tonight highlighted unscrupulous debt collectors by setting up a debt-buying business and absolving 9,000 people of their medical debt.

U.S. District Judge Callie Granade entered a permanent injunction barring backwoods Alabama judges like state Chief Justice Roy Moore from enforcing any laws barring same-sex marriage rights.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the 2nd Amendment doesn?t guarantee the right to carry concealed weapons.

All the above are from dailykos.com.





Below are more excerpts from Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.


Your lucky number is 3.14159

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 special time of the day is the moment just before the mist evaporates

You have fire in your blood and sea salt in your tears

Your vision of power is the red-tailed hawk soaring over the shopping mall

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

Your soil of destiny is peat moss

The legendary deed that most resembles the method in your madness is the story of the hero who tames the monster without touching it

You have a secret name that will be revealed to you very soon

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

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

Your magic verbs are dig, descend, and disclose

The garage sale item you most resemble is an old but beautiful and sonorous accordion with a broken key

Your mythic symbol is a treasure chest dislodged from its hiding place in the earth by a flood





I heard an interview with the German film actor Udo Kier. He specializes in playing villains. "Evil has no limit," he sneered, blustering like a naughty genius. "Good has a limit. It is simply not as interesting."

How many times have I heard that idiotic clich?? Most everyone everywhere seems to agree with Udo Kier. And I'm in a tiny minority in my belief that evil is boring. There seem to be few thinkers, communicators, and creators who share my curiosity about exploring the frontiers of righteous pleasure and amusing truth and boisterous integrity.

Some pretenders do make counterfeit attempts: Hollywood producers who produce sentimental fantasies with artificially happy endings, advertising executives who sell the pseudo-positivity of narcissistic comfort, and New Age gurus who ignore the darkness with their one-dimensional appeals to sweetness and light.

But how dare Udo Kier -- and all his like-minded devotees of the entertainment value of evil -- proceed on the assumption that "good has a limit" and that "good ?isn't as interesting" when there are so few smart artists and thinkers who are brave and resourceful enough to explore the frontiers of beauty and truth and joy and compassion?





An article at io9.com lists 12 of the most common and pernicious cognitive biases that that prevent us from being rational. One is "Negativity Bias":

"People tend to pay more attention to bad news ? and it's not just because we're morbid. Social scientists theorize that it's on account of our selective attention and that, given the choice, we perceive negative news as being more important or profound.

"We also tend to give more credibility to bad news, perhaps because we're suspicious (or bored) of proclamations to the contrary. More evolutionarily, heeding bad news may be more adaptive than ignoring good news (e.g. "saber tooth tigers suck" vs. "this berry tastes good"). Today, we run the risk of dwelling on negativity at the expense of genuinely good news.

"Steven Pinker, in his book *The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,* argues that crime, violence, war, and other injustices are steadily declining, yet most people would argue that things are getting worse -- what is a perfect example of the negativity bias at work."

Read the article for more info on the other 11 cognitive biases.

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I consistently see people react to ideas about pronoia with anger and bile -- pissed off that I have the temerity to suggest that life is a great blessing. They are deeply committed to the idea that life is mostly just a terrible ordeal.

In the course of trying to understand this attitude, I have come across a lot of evidence that the brain is indeed hard-wired to overemphasize negativity. The articles I cite below are just some of many sources suggesting this.

My point in bringing it up is to reinforce what I say in my book: It takes hard work to cultivate the pronoiac frame of mind.

Scientists believe that your brain has a built-in "negativity bias."

The brain is hard-wired to be negative.

We may be hard-wired for bad news.





Everything I love most happens most every day."

~ Howard Norman, translator of Algonquin, Cree, and Inuit folklore





Here's the beginning of a story on me from the San Francisco Chronicle:

"Rob Brezsny says the apocalypse is now, so let's dance.

"'We are in fact living through the apocalypse,' the astrology columnist-author-musician declares in his radically optimistic self-help bible, *Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings,* a surprise top-1,000 seller on Amazon.com.

"The biblical idea of apocalypse is the terrifying end of things, followed by judgment. Brezsny's version takes away the fear and the finality and redefines apocalypse as a slow, subtle, revolving process of death and rebirth in which we're all invited to take part.

"In the end, according to him, we can't lose.

"But -- and this is the trick -- first we have to be willing to play the game.

"Brezsny argues that the game is stacked in favor not so much of steady happiness as happy accidents -- iridescent streams of fruitful, fulfilling or inspiring moments in the mundane. He wrote the book in order to provide evidence, tips and inspiration for people who sense that theory is right but who find that media and education provide little in the way of guidance.

"'We're not looking for starry-eyed optimism and repressed boosterism,' Brezsny said. 'Pronoia is not boosterism for empty-brained people. I think the media tend to emphasize that part of human experience that doesn't work. There are a lot of people who don't identify that as their primary state of existence.'

"The writer, whose weekly Free Will Astrology column runs in over 100 newspapers, marshals evidence that beyond the daily grind's bland unease unfold alternate states rich with intimacy, hilarity and good luck. 'More wonderful things happen,' he said, 'than anybody seems to be willing to admit.'"


Read the rest of the story from the San Francisco Chronicle.





Below are more excerpts from Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Congratulations. Every cell in your perfect animal body is beginning to purr with luminous gratitude for the enormity of the riches you endlessly receive.

You are becoming aware that each of your heart's beats originates as a gift of love directly from the Goddess herself.

Any residues of hatred that had been tainting your libido are leaving you for good.

You are becoming telepathically linked to the world's entire host of