Two seven-year-old girls showed me three tricks I could use to avoid taking myself too seriously and getting too attached to my dignity. I'm offering these tricks to you just in time for the letting-go phase of your astrological cycle. Trick #1: Speak in a made-up language for at least ten minutes. Example: "Groftyp hulbnu wivgeeri proot xud amasterulius. Quoshibojor frovid zemplissit." Trick #2: Put a different kind of shoe and sock on each foot and pretend you're two people stuck in a single body. Give each side of you a unique nickname. Trick #3: Place an unopened bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips on a table, then bash your fist down on it, detonating a loud popping sound and unleashing a spray of crumbs out the ends of the bag. Don't clean up the mess for at least an hour.

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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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Somewhere in the world is a tree that has been struck by lightning in such a way that the scorch marks show your initials. Find that tree.

Somewhere in this world, there is a treasure that has no value to anyone but you, and a secret that is meaningless to everyone except you, and a frontier that possesses a revelation only you know how to exploit. Go in search of those things.

Somewhere in this world, there is a person who could ask you the precise question you need to hear in order to catalyze the next phase of your evolution. Do what's necessary to run into that person.

In accordance with the astrological omens, I suggest you spend less energy dwelling in profane time so you expand your relationship with sacred time. If that's of interest to you, consider the following definitions. PROFANE TIME happens when you're engulfed in the daily grind. Swarmed by a relentless flurry of immediate concerns, you are held hostage by the chatter of your monkey mind. Being in SACRED TIME attunes you to the relaxing hum of eternity. It enables you to be in intimate contact with your soul's deeper agenda, and affords you extra power to transform yourself in harmony with your noble desires and beautiful intentions.

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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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The Indian activist Mahatma Gandhi lead many peaceful rebellions against oppressive governments, first in South Africa and later in British-controlled India. At first he called his strategy "passive resistance," but later disavowed that term because it had negative implications. He ultimately chose the Sanskrit word satyagraha, meaning "love force" or "truth force." "Truth (satya) implies love," he said, "and firmness (agraha) is a synonym for force. Satyagraha is thus the force which is born of truth and love."

Give an example of how you have employed satyagraha in the past, and another example of how you might invoke it in the future.

About 1.7 million years ago, our human ancestors began using primitive hand axes made from rocks. This technology remained in use for over 60,000 generations before anyone invented more sophisticated tools and implements. Science writer Marcus Chown refers to this period as "the million years of boredom." Its slow pace contrasts sharply with technology's brisk evolution in the last 140 years. In 1880, there were no cars, planes, electric lights, telephones, TVs, or Internet. I surmise that you're leaving your own phase of relatively slow progress, Gemini. In the coming months, I expect your transformations will progress with increasing speed -- starting soon.

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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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"Nothing's going right in my life. I feel anxious and paranoid all the time. My relationships are a mess." In my line of work, people make confessions like that to me. My first response is usually something like this: "Do you habitually gobble junk food near bedtime, steal a paltry five hours of sleep per night, gulp two cups of coffee and no breakfast in the morning, then bolt to a workplace where you get no sunlight or exercise and sit in an uncomfortable chair?" They often reply, "You must be psychic! How did you know?!" My point is that many psychological troubles stem from our chronic failure to take good care of our physical needs.

Name three things you can do to promote pronoia in yourself by taking better care of your body.

Prediction #1: You will attract truckloads of good luck by working to upgrade and refine the way you communicate. Prediction #2: You will tickle the attention of interesting people who could ultimately provide you with clues you will need to thrive in 2017. #3: You will discover secrets of how to articulate complicated feelings and subtle ideas that have been locked inside you. Prediction #4: You'll begin a vibrant conversation that will continue to evolve for a long time.

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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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May you eat an unfamiliar dessert in a strange land at least once every three years.

May you wake up to salsa music one summer morning, and start dancing while you're still half-asleep.

May you spray-paint Rilke poems as graffiti on highway overpasses.

May you mix stripes with plaids, floral patterns with checks, and yellowish-green with brownish-purple.

May you learn to identify by name 20 flowers, 15 trees, 10 clouds, and one extrasolar planet.

May you put a bumper sticker on your car or bike that says, "My god can kick your god's ass!"

If you bury your face in your tear-stained pillow and beg God to please send you your soul mate, may you not slur your words in such a way that they sound like "cell mate."

May you dream of taking a trip to the moon in a gondola powered by firecrackers and wild swans.

May you actually kiss the earth now and then.

May you find many good excuses to say what physicist Niels Bohr once did: "Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true."

You know you have a second brain in your gut, right? (If not, read this.) During the past three weeks, I have been beaming telepathic instructions toward this smart part of you. Here's an edited version of the message I've been sending: "Cultivate your tenacity, darling. Build up your stamina, sweetheart. Feed your ability to follow through on what you've started, beautiful. Be persistent and spunky and gritty, my dear." Alas, I'm not sure my psychic broadcasts have been as effective as I'd hoped. I think you need further encouragement. So please summon more fortitude and staying power, you gutsy stalwart. Be staunch and dogged and resolute, you stouthearted powerhouse.

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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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In an article about storytellers in the Los Angeles Times, Leslie Berger profiled a high school teacher named Luigi Jannuzzi. "He once saved the life of a student who was choking on a Life Saver," Berger wrote, "and thus discovered his own gift of gab: He told the kid a joke so funny that his laughter popped the candy out of his throat."

Make up a story in which your sense of humor saves someone's life.

Is "Big Bang" the best term we can come up with to reference the beginning of the universe? It sounds violent and messy -- like a random, accidental splatter. I would much prefer a term that suggests sublime elegance and playful power -- language that would capture the awe and reverence I feel as I contemplate the sacred mystery we are privileged to inhabit. What if we used a different name for the birth of creation, like the "Primal Billow" or the "Blooming Ha Ha" or the "Majestic Bouquet"? By the way, I recommend that you consider those last three terms as being suitable titles for your own personal life story in the coming weeks. A great awakening and activation are imminent.

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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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In the Greek epic, The Odyssey, Odysseus and his men become stranded on an island belonging to the sorceress Circe, who uses her magic to transform the men into pigs. Later, though, she changes them back into men—only they're younger and taller and better-looking than before they were pigs.

Tell an analogous story from your own life: an experience in which you were turned into a pig for a while, and became a more beautiful version of yourself when the spell was broken.

The last few weeks have been fraught with rich plot twists, naked dates with destiny, and fertile turning points. I expect there will be further intrigue in the near future. A fierce and tender decision at a crossroads? The unexpected arrival of a hot link to the future? A karmic debt that's canceled or forgiven? In light of the likelihood that the sweet-and-sour, confusing-and-revelatory drama will continue, I encourage you to keep your levels of relaxed intensity turned up high. More than I've seen in a long time, you have the magic and the opportunity to transform what needs to be transformed.

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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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The novelist Willa Cather once said: "One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness. One only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere."

But I disagree with Willa Cather. I share the view of Rick Foster and Greg Hicks, who wrote the book, How We Choose to Be Happy: The 9 Choices of Extremely Happy People. They say that the number one trait of happy people is a serious determination to be happy. In other words, they say bliss is not an accident that you stumble upon by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere. Bliss is a habit that you can cultivate. Which theory would you prefer to believe?

Here's what I say. Terence McKenna said it for me: "I believe reality is a marvelous joke staged for my edification and amusement, and everybody is working very hard to make me happy."

In the coming days, you will have more than your usual access to help and guidance. Divine interventions are possible. Special dispensations and charmed coincidences, too. If you don't believe in fairy dust, magic beans, and lucky potions, maybe you should set that prejudice aside for a while. Subtle miracles are more likely to bestow their gifts if your reasonable theories don't get in the way. Here's an additional tip: Don't get greedy. Use the openings you're offered with humility and gratitude.

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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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While you and I are together here:

Your favorite phrase is flux gusto

The colors of your soul are sable, vermilion, ivory, 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 yearning to change yourself in the exact way you'd like the world around you to change

Your soil of destiny is peat moss

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

Your lucky number is 13 to the 13th power

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

A clutch of frog eggs from an unpolluted river is your auspicious hair-care product

The anonymous celebrity with whom you have most in common is the jester who followed Buddha around and kept him loose

The question that perks you up when your routine becomes too rote is this: What possesses the bar-tailed godwit to migrate annually from Alaska to New Zealand by hitching rides on gale-force winds?

When my daughter Zoe was growing up, I wanted her to be familiar with the origins of ordinary stuff that she benefited from. That's why I took her to small farms where she could observe the growth and harvest of organic food crops. We visited manufacturing facilities where cars, furniture, toys, and kitchen sinks were built. She saw bootmakers creating boots and professional musicians producing songs in recording studios. And much more. I would love it if you would give yourself comparable experiences in the coming weeks, Sagittarius. It's an excellent time to commune with the sources of things that nurture you and make your life better.

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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 secret of life," said sculptor Henry Moore to poet Donald Hall, "is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is -- it must be something you cannot possibly do." What is that task for you?

Unless you were brought up by a herd of feral donkeys, the coming weeks will be an excellent time to embark on your second childhood. Unless you're allergic to new ideas, the foreseeable future will bring you strokes of curious luck that inspire you to change and change and change your mind. And unless you are addicted to your same old stale comforts, life will offer you chances to explore frontiers that could expose you to thrilling new comforts.

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

These days, my dear, your eccentric beauty is even more unkempt than usual. I like it. It entertains and charms me. And as for your idiosyncratic intelligence: That, too, is messier and cuter and even more interesting than ever before. I'm inclined to encourage you to milk this unruly streak for all its potential. Maybe it will provoke you to experiment in situations where you've been too accepting of the stagnant status quo. And perhaps it will embolden you to look for love and money in more of the right places.

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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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"Whoever has, shall be given more and more," reads the Gospel of Matthew, "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 abundant evidence of how true that is.

If, on the other hand, you dwell on the good things that make you feel grateful to be alive, they will probably multiply.

I'm giving you an ultimatum, Pisces: Within the next 144 hours, I demand that you become at least 33 percent happier. Fifty percent would be even better. Somehow you've got to figure out what you can do to enhance your sense of well-being and increase your enjoyment of life. I'm sort of joking, but on the other hand I'm completely serious. From my perspective, it's essential that you feel really good in the coming days. Abundant pleasure is not merely a luxury, but rather a necessity. Do you have any ideas about how to make this happen? Start here: 1. Identify your four most delightful memories, and re-enact them in your imagination. 2. Go see the people whose influences most thoroughly animate your self-love.

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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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Contrary to what the Bible says, it won't be the meek who shall inherit the earth. On the other hand, the arrogant power mongers won't collect the legacy either. Neither the indecisive wimps nor the acquisitive bullies will contribute much to creating the New World.

Who, then, will inherit the earth? What kind of human beings are best-equipped to thrive in the evolving game of life? We say it will be the well-disciplined pleasure-seekers who are in vigorous dialogue with their own dark sides, who balance the masculine and feminine aspects of their natures, and who master the fine arts of working at their play and playing at their work.

Assume our definition has some validity for you. What would you have to do to become more like one of the inheritors of the earth?