Where Do You Find Help?

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WHERE DOES HELP COME FROM?

I get many requests from people who are going through challenging times in their lives and would like my personal advice. I wish I could respond to these inquiries, because they are often profound and well-thought-out, demonstrating an ability to define the problems at hand with lucid insight.

Unfortunately, I can't respond. My various lines of work are too demanding to add any other tasks to my life, no matter how interesting they might be. But I've developed a general response to those people who seek my personal input. I'm offering it below.

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I'm honored that you regard me as someone who might be able to provide answers or solace, but I don't think it would be responsible for me to fling advice your way without knowing more about the complexities of your problem. And I'm afraid I can't give the time necessary to explore those complexities.

The only thing I'll suggest, as you seek to clarify your situation, is for you to arrange to go on a retreat. During that time of withdrawal from the world's everyday madness, I urge you to avoid all media and to be as silent and relaxed as it's possible for you to be.

During the first part of your retreat, spend hours visualizing in your mind's eye the entire story of your life, from the earliest memory to the present moment.

During the second phase of your retreat, begin your meditations by establishing contact with the highest source of wisdom and love within you. You can call this source God or Goddess or your Guardian Angel or Higher Self. Spend luxurious time in dialogue with this source, making sure to ask these questions:

1. "What is it I want more than anything else?"

2. "What is the best way to serve the mission I came to Earth to carry out? What are the very best gifts I have to offer other humans?"

3. "What path will allow me to ultimately learn the most about wise love?"

4. "How do I need to change in order to get what I want, carry out my life's mission, and learn about wise love? What influences and attitudes do I need to eliminate?"

During the third phase of the process, write out a mission statement: what you want to accomplish by the time you die many years hence. Then create a master plan of the actions you will take in order to make that mission statement come true. Include three actions you will take in the next month to get more serious about accomplishing your mission.

During the fourth phase, visualize the following scenarios in lush detail: that God/Goddess loves you, that the entire universe is conspiring to give you the lessons and blessings and kicks in the ass and liberations you need exactly when you need them, and that you are ready to welcome that love and guidance with all your heart.

P.S. I'm a big believer in trusting your intuition. Even if it doesn't lead you to what your ego thinks is a successful outcome, your intuition will always guide you to the experiences that your soul needs.





?To love. To be loved. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.?

- Arundhati Roy





"Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end. Our divided, schizophrenic worldview, with no mythology adequate to coordinate our conscious and unconscious ? that is what is coming to an end.

"The exclusivism of there being only one way in which we can be saved, the idea that there is a single religious group that is in sole possession of the truth ? that is the world as we know it that must pass away.

"What is the kingdom? It lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence in our neighbors, in our enemies, in all of us."
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- Joseph Campbell, "Thou Art That, Transforming Religious Metaphor"





SPIRIT GATE

Some acupuncturists identify an energetic point in the ear called the spirit gate. If it's stuck closed, the spirit is locked in; if it's stuck open, the spirit is always coming and going, restless and unsettled.

What's ideal is that the spirit gate is not stuck in any position. Then the spirit can come and go as it needs to, and also have the option of retreating and protecting itself.

I invite you to imagine that right now a skilled acupuncturist is inserting a needle in the top of your left ear, where it will remain for about 20 minutes. In the meantime, visualize your spirit gate being in that state of harmonious health I described.





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

Here are excerpts:

Experimental hypotheses:

1. You don't need anything that shrinks you or deflates you or tames you.

2. Influences that pinch your imagination are taboo, as is anything that squashes your hope or crimps your life force.

3. You have license to gravitate toward situations that pump up your insouciance and energize your whimsy and incite you to express the most benevolent wickedness you can imagine.

4. You may have fun fattening up your soul so it can contain a vaster sense of wonder and a more daring brand of innocence.





ARE YOU CONSPIRING TO PERPETRATE PRONOIA?

Even now, secret allies are cooking up mysteries that will excite you and incite you for years to come.

Even now, the Earth, moon, and sun are collaborating to make sure you have all you need to make your next smart move.

But here's the loaded question: 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.

Half of the art of pronoia is about being improvisationally receptive to life's elaborate scheme to shower you with blessings. The other half is about learning to be a co-conspirator who assists life in doling out blessings?to help everyone else get exactly what they need, exactly when they need it.

Visualize yourself being able to recognize the raw truth about the people you care about. Imagine that you can see how they already embody the beauty their souls' codes have promised as well as how they still fall short of embodying that beauty.

Picture yourself being able to make them feel appreciated even as you inspire them to risk changes that will activate more of their souls' codes.

P.S. All of creation loves you very much.





THIS IS A PERFECT MOMENT

The crisis is dire. The danger is real. The suffering is mounting. And yet, this is also a perfect moment to rise and redeem and resurrect.

Here?s why, according to me:

As we stand on this brink, as we dance on this verge, we cannot let the ruling fools of the dying world sustain their curses. We have to rise up and fight their insane logic; defy, resist, and prevent their tragic magic; erupt with our sacred rage and supercharge it.

Read (or hear) the rest.

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Here?s why, according to my brother-from-another-mother Mark Morford:

?This is the perfect time. To advance the cause. To birth the warrior. To deepen your resolve for more life at all costs. At the gates of hell, you plant seeds. In the midst of mania, you intend calm.?

Read the rest.





YOUR POWER TO HEAL

"Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another. Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is a supreme creative act."

- Ram Dass





Every week since 2001, I have offered my Free Will Astrology horoscopes for free here in my newsletter. If you would like to support my ongoing work, please visit my Virtual Tip Jar at Paypal


You can also support my work by buying the Expanded Audio Horoscopes I create every week. These forecasts are different in tone and content from the written horoscopes I provide here. They're my four- to five-minute-long ruminations about the current chapter of your life story. They're available here.





WHAT I DO

I love creating a collection of twelve horoscopes each week for my readers. The Good Times newspaper in Santa Cruz, California published my first batch in January 1978, and I would love to keep writing them until at least January of 2038.

In order to live up to that challenge with integrity, I will have to continue doing what I have been doing since January 1978: relentlessly reinvent the way I create them. When I look back at the horoscopes I composed in 1978 and 1985 and 1992 and 2000 and 2008, I am amazed at how different they are from the way I approach my craft now. I could swear it was another person who wrote them.

And that's how it should be. It's good evidence that I'm living up to my ideal of how to be a creative artist. Experimenting with endless revision. Being willing to dispense with the old formulas, even those that have worked pretty well, so as to welcome the surprises life offers. Killing off the old ways so that new ways can emerge.

That's not just a sound strategy for me to pursue as a creative writer. It's also a cornerstone of my plan to master the art of being a human being. The blunt fact is that life has an extreme fondness for change. The Creator likes to keep things moving right along.

So if I hope to cooperate and even collaborate with the Primal Flux, I have to be adept at transformation. I have to celebrate the central formula of Hermetic magick: "Dissolution is the secret of the Great Work." Breaking down psychological fixations is an indispensable spiritual discipline, says the wisdom of the ages. Killing off one's illusions is a prime duty of a devotee of magick.





From the Boulder Weekly: "For 28 years, Rob Brezsny has been covertly practicing poetry in the form of a weekly astrology column. Free Will Astrology runs in more than 100 newspapers nationwide . . ." Read more.





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

Here are excerpts:

WHAT IS THE SOUL?

What's true about the word "God" may apply as well to "soul": Much of the meaning has been sucked out of it. It's a flabby ghost that has lost its life force. Say "soul" and you're liable to numb your listeners' attention. At best you may inspire them to picture a vague floating blob that feels more like an abstract concept than a real presence. That's a shame, because the eminence that's lazily referred to as "soul" is as crucial to you waking up tomorrow as your heart.

"If you need to visualize the soul," wrote Tom Robbins, "think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It's a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you, the Mystery. The one that can never be solved."

As part of the Beauty and Truth Lab's ongoing crusade to wrestle the English language into a more formidable servant of the ecstatic impulse, we're pleased to present some alternate designations for "soul." See if any of the following concoctions feel right coming out of your mouth: 1. undulating superconductor; 2. nectar plasma; 3. golden lather; 4. smoldering crucible; 5. luminous caduceus.

If none of these work for you?or even if they do?create your own terms.

P.S. Here's Robbins' conclusion: "By waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe."





EXPERIMENT: Be scarier than your fears. If an anxious thought pops into your mind, bare your teeth and growl, "Get out of here or I will rip you to shreds!" If a demon visits you in a nightly dream, chase after it with a torch and sword, screaming, "Begone, foul spirit, or I will burn your mangy ass!"

Don't tolerate bullying in any form, whether it comes from a critical little voice in your head or from supposedly nice people who are trying to guilt-trip you. "I am a brave conqueror who cannot be intimidated!" is what you could say, or "I am a monster of love and goodness who will defeat all threats to my integrity!"





MAYBE. MAYBE NOT.

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 JOY OF INTEGRITY

"Picture the Grand Canyon," says Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield. "Every hundred years, a child comes by and throws a mustard seed into it. In the time it takes to fill the hole in the earth with mustard seeds, one maha?kal?pa will have passed. To perfect the virtuous heart?the joy of integrity?takes a thousand mahakalpas."
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If that's true, then we've got a lot of work to do. The good news is that civilization is in the midst of a critical turning point that could tremendously expedite our ripening. So we could make unusually great progress toward the goal of perfecting the virtuous heart in the next 40 years.
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For best results, we might meditate often on the phrase "the joy of integrity." We could get familiar with the pleasurable emotion that comes from acting with impeccability. And we can try out this idea from Gandhi: Integrity is the royal road to our inner freedom.





WHAT IF YOUR EGO IS NOT YOUR ENEMY?

Jeff Brown says: "There is no way to dissolve the ego in its entirety. It is intrinsic to human functioning. This is why the ego bashing fundamental to the spiritual bypass community is so dangerous. They invite seekers to shed aspects that are essential in their daily lives.

"Instead, let's make a conscious distinction between the healthy and the unhealthy ego. When I think of the latter, I think of Trump. This is clearly not a man with a strong, healthy self-concept. This is a man in a perpetual state of self-hatred, so egoically depleted that no achievement will ever bring him peace.

"It is crystal clear that something happened to him in his early years, a hole so big that not even the Presidency can fill it.

"Perhaps never before have we been able to so clearly see into the inner world of a fractured, over-compensatory ego. And perhaps never before has it been more obvious that inviting humanity to dissolve the ego is as dangerous as shaming it.

"What we need instead is to support the development of a healthy, balanced ego. One that knows where it ends and the other begins. One that celebrates one's value, without imagining itself 'all that'. One that honors the self, without a need to dishonor others.

"A healthy ego is not the enemy of the sacred. It's the foundation that it stands upon."


- Jeff Brown





MIRABILIA REPORT
(Mirabilia: events that inspire wonder, marvelous phenomena, small miracles, beguiling ephemera, inexplicable joys, changes that inspire quiet awe, eccentric enchantments, unplanned jubilations, sudden deliverance from boring evils; from the Latin *mirabilia,* "marvels.")

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

* The seeds of some trees are so tightly compacted within their protective covering that only the intense heat of a forest fire can free them, allowing them to sprout.

* The average river requires a million years to move a grain of sand 100 miles, says science writer James Trefil.

* Thirty-eight percent of North America is wilderness.

* Anthropologists say that in every culture in history, children have played the game hide and seek.

* 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.

* A chemist in Australia finally succeeded in mixing oil and water.

* Some Christians really do love their enemies, as Jesus recommended.

* 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.

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

* There are always so many fragments of spider legs floating in the air that you are constantly inhaling them wherever you go . . . .

READ THE REST of MIRABILIA REPORT.





WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT THE FACT THAT YOUR BRAIN IS PREDISPOSED TO THINK NEGATIVE THOUGHTS?

"To overcome our neural bias for negativity, we must repetitiously and consciously generate as many positive thoughts as we can."

"When you generate a minimum of five positive thoughts to each negative one, you?ll experience an optimal range of human functioning."

Read the article.





FLUX MOJO

The ever-evolving truth is far too complicated and fluid and slippery and scrambled and gorgeously abundant for one human being to master -- even for genius bodhisattva avatars (I?ve heard rumors that there have been a few of such characters), let alone me and you and virtually everyone else who has ever lived.

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.

That means I don't know 97% about how the Great Mystery actually works. This is despite the fact that my heart and mind have always been greedily curious to learn and experience as much as I can.

Here?s the solution I?ve come up with: I employ an empirical approach to life. I formulate amusing, non-binding hypotheses about what the Great Mystery might be like, and then collect the experimental data that?s generated as I test my hypotheses. I observe and analyze the results to determine how well each hypothesis works the following magic:

1. Does it liberate me from suffering and does it inspire me to help liberate other creatures from their suffering?

2. Does it make me a smarter and kinder and trickier and humbler fool?

3. Does it motivate me to embrace what I call the FLUX MOJO? In other words, does it fuel me to overthrow my own fixations, cooperate enthusiastically with the never-ending change that life asks me to deal with, and continually reinvent my attitudes, perspectives, ideas, and feelings?

4. Does it engender in me a lust for life and a primal urge to respond creatively to the glory of being alive and conscious?

5. Does it fuel my longing to inspire and nurture and play with those who are interested in sharing space with me?





BE A WEAVE

What if there's no contradiction between being your idiosyncratic self in love with your life and serving others with the best gifts you have to give?

What if exploring your inner world to activate your personal genius dovetails perfectly with fighting to recreate the soulless culture we're embedded in?

What if working on your own salvation makes you a more effective force in liberating others from their suffering?





MAKE ROOM FOR MORE

Is your schedule too rigid to allow magic to seep in? Then mutate that schedule, please.

Is your brain so crammed with knowledgeable opinions that no fresh perceptions can crack their way in? Then flush out some of those opinions.

Is your heart so puckered by the stings of the past that it can't burst forth with any expansive new invitations? Then unpucker your heart, for God's sake.





THE HONEY AND VINEGAR TASTERS

John Keats wrote that "if something is not beautiful, it is probably not true." I celebrate that hypothesis in my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

I further propose that the universe is inherently friendly to human beings; that all of creation is set up to liberate us from our suffering and teach us how to love intelligently; and that life always gives us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it (though not necessarily what we want).

Dogmatic cynics are often so mad about my book's title that they can't bring themselves to explore the inside. Why bother to actually read about such a preposterous idea? They accuse me of intellectual dishonesty, disingenuous Pollyannaism, or New Age delusion.

If they do manage to read even a few pages, they find that the blessings I reference in the title are not materialistic fetishes like luxurious vacation homes, high status, and a perfect physique.

I'm more interested in fascinating surprises, dizzying adventures, challenging gifts we hardly know what to do with, and conundrums that compel us to get smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier.

I also enjoy exposing secret miracles, like the way the sun continually detonates nuclear explosions in order to convert its own body into heat, light, and energy for our personal use.

But I don't take the cynics' fury personally. When I suggest that life is a sublime mystery designed to grow us all into strong, supple messiahs, I understand that's the equivalent, for them, of denying the Holocaust. They're addicted to a formulation that's the opposite of Keats': If something is not ugly, it is probably not true.

Modern storytellers are at the vanguard of promoting this doctrine, which I refer to as pop nihilism. Many journalists, filmmakers, novelists, critics, talk-show hosts, musicians, and pundits act as if breakdown is far more common and far more interesting than breakthrough; that painful twists outnumber redemptive transformations by a wide margin, and are profoundly more entertaining as well.

Earlier in my life, I, too, worshiped the religion of pop nihilism. In the 1980s, for example, I launched a crusade against what I called "the global genocide of the imagination." I railed against the "entertainment criminals" who barrage us with floods of fake information and inane ugliness, decimating and paralyzing our image-making faculties. For years, much of my creative work was stoked by my rage against the machine for its soulless crimes of injustice and greed and rapaciousness and cruelty.

But as the crazy wisdom of pronoia overtook me in the late 1990s, I gradually weaned myself from the gratuitous gratification that wrath offered. Against the grain, I experimented with strategies for motivating myself through crafty joy and purified desire and the longing for freedom. I played with ideas that helped me shed the habit of seeing the worst in everything and everyone. In its place I built a new habit of looking for the best.

But I never formally renounced my affiliation with the religion of cynicism. I didn't become a fundamentalist apostate preaching the doctrine of fanatical optimism. In the back of my wild heart, I knew I couldn't thrive without at least a tincture of the ferocity and outrage that had driven so much of my earlier self-expression.

Even at the height of my infatuation with the beautiful truths that swarmed into me while writing Pronoia , I nurtured a relationship with the awful truths. And I didn't hide that from my readers.

Yes, I did purposely go overboard in championing the cause of liberation and pleasure and ingenuity and integrity and renewal and harmony and love. The book's destiny was, after all, to serve as a counterbalance to the trendy predominance of bad news and paranoid attitudes. It was meant to be an antidote for the pandemic of snark.

But I made sure that Pronoia also contained numerous "Homeopathic Medicine Spells," talismans that cram long lists of the world's evils inside ritually consecrated mandalas. These spells diffuse the hypnotizing lure of doom and gloom by acknowledging the horror with a sardonic wink.

Pronoia also has many variations on a theme captured in William Vollman's testimony: "The most important and enjoyable thing in life is doing something that?s a complicated, tricky problem that you don?t know how to solve."

Furthermore, the book stops far short of calling for the totalitarian imposition of good cheer. I say I can tolerate the news media filling up half their pages and airwaves and bandwidths with poker-faced accounts of decline and degeneration, misery and destruction. All I seek is equal time for stories that inspire us to adore life instead of fearing it. And I'd gladly accept 25 percent. Even 10 percent.

So Pronoia hints at a paradoxical philosophy more complex than a naive quest for beauty and benevolence. It welcomes in a taste of darkness, acknowledging the shadows in the big picture.


READ THE REST OF THIS ESSAY HERE .





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

Below are excerpts.

LETTERS TO THE BEAUTY AND TRUTH LAB,

We who are devoted to pronoia created the Beauty and Truth Lab and not the Beauty and Truth Think Tank because we want to put our ideas to the test in the field -- to apply them in unpredictable situations beyond our control and see whether they're useful to people who aren't necessarily steeped in the mystique of pronoia.

One way we've gone about that is to encourage the public to testify and ask questions about their practical experiences with pronoia. Below is a collection of exchanges that have unfolded since we began discussing pronoiac themes on the BeautyandTruth.com website and in the weekly astrology newsletter.


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DEAR BEAUTY AND TRUTH LAB: I'm a very analytical person, with a doctorate in nuclear physics and a high-tech job. All my training and business savvy tell me that Rob Brezsny's astrology column is superstitious mumbo jumbo, yet every time I've faced a crisis in the last 10 years, his horoscopes have provided accurate wisdom and counsel when things seemed darkest.

The same is true about the book *Pronoia.* The scientist in me knows that you Beauty and Truth Lab people are utopian nutcases. It's absolutely demented to regard the universe as friendly and to fantasize that there's some vast, invisible conspiracy of blessing-bestowers. And yet I have to confess that whenever I try the pronoiac strategies you describe, my life veers in the direction of synchronicity and delight.

On the one hand, none of this makes any sense. On the other hand, I don't care that it doesn't make any sense. Somehow I'm able to draw sustenance from something whose power I don't understand or even believe in. In any case, thank you! - Humble Genius

DEAR HUMBLE GENIUS: You've described a quality that we aspire to in our efforts to cultivate pronoia: the ability to be helped by powers that are beyond our understanding.


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DEAR BEAUTY AND TRUTH LAB: Does pronoia make you feel like you're falling in love? Not just with a person but with life itself? And can that be scary? Is it possible that you might feel a chord of gorgeous terror resound in your gut when you entertain the thought that every person and even every animal and plant and rock in the world is ganging up to make your life interesting -- almost more brilliantly interesting than you can bear? Does pronoia threaten to cause all perceptions, all sensations, all interactions to verge on being orgasmic?

I've been heading in this direction lately and it's freaking me out. Can extreme happiness be dangerous to my well-being? - Butchtastic

DEAR BUTCHTASTIC: First thing we'll say is that while pronoia inevitably feeds the soul, it doesn't necessarily further the agendas of the ego. The anxiety that's welling up may be the result of your old self-image clinging to the shrunken expectations it had gotten used to thinking of as essential to its identity.

The second thing is that when people invite pronoia to take over their perceptual filters, they often feel as if they're falling in love with a Scary Yet Friendly Vastness that kicks their butts until they wake up to the secret beauty they've been ignoring.


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DEAR BEAUTY AND TRUTH LAB: I'm battling mixed emotions. On the one hand, I have frequent surges of intense compassion that make me want to build houses for poor folks. On the other hand, I'm beset by flashes of vanity that make me want to spend my money on Prada shoes and expensive jewelry rather than on trips to Third World countries to help Habitat for Humanity. Is it crazy and self-defeating to want both things? - Torn and Guilty

DEAR TORN AND GUILTY: Try honoring both your urge to express beauty and your desire to aid your fellow humans. We have a vision of you wearing a gold tiara and Prada's Sculpted d'Orsay pumps as you wield your hammer, framing a wall for a new house in Haiti.


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DEAR BEAUTY AND TRUTH LAB: In your book *Pronoia,* you say, 'The universe always gives us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it.' I have a different view. I often find that I disagree with what the Universe decides is best for me. But that usually turns out to be a good thing. It's fun for me to always be arguing with God! I learn a lot and generate a lot of high energy from trying to outmaneuver the divine will. What do you think about that? - Cagey Dissident

DEAR CAGEY: Congratulations! You are the thousandth dissident to testify that pronoia is not, in fact, the One Truth and the Only Way -- thereby proving to our satisfaction that we have successfully prevented our beloved Beauty and Truth Lab from being a shill for a fundamentalist ideology. Please accept our most fantastic thanks. Your prize will be on its way to you soon!


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DEAR BEAUTY AND TRUTH LAB: The chemo treatments burned out all the math skills in my brain, which were already pretty meager. On the other hand, they awakened my ability to feel perfectly at ease while in the midst of paradoxical situations that everyone else finds maddening and uncomfortable.

The chemo also made me ridiculously tolerant of people's contradictions, sometimes even their hypocrisies, and freed me to enjoy life as an entertaining movie with lots of interesting plot twists rather than as a pitched battle between everything I like and everything I don't like. I guess I could say that my cancer helped turn me into a pronoiac! - The Chaos Artist Formerly Known as Risa Kline





ASKING FOR YOUR INPUT!

I'd love to hear you riff on how it feels and what it's like for you to be the astrological sign that you are. Send your descriptions to me at Truthrooster@gmail.com.

Here are some examples: readers' thoughts on "How to Be a Sagittarius."

"Know how to have fun even when life sucks." - Mandy O.

"Embrace optimism for both its beauty and its tactical advantages." - Sam Austin, Staten Island

"Be a pompous ass, then laugh at yourself for being a pompous ass." - Peter Yates-Hodshon and Mare Hodshon-Yates, Tucson

"Give names like 'Stinky' and 'Cubby' to your fears." - Joanne Helfrid, Upper Darby, PA

"The best way to be like me, is not try to be like me at all, but to be true to yourself." - Catherine King, Greenfield, MA

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Here's an example of a Gemini who told me how she went about being the best Gemini he could possibly be:

"Be amazed with and in awe of yourself. And try to keep doing new things to justify your amazement and awe.

"Be like the Native American heyoka who rode his horse backward, wearing only an apron in a blizzard, with sweat running down his chest.

"Talk to yourself; people can join in if they want to. Have a large papier mach? ego; redecorate it often.

"Be like Grandmother Spider who created the world by imagining it. Be like Pygmalion and fall in love with your creation.

"Never imitate. Be a tricky, sticky tickler. No one will ever solve the Sphinx's precious riddle if she doesn't know the answer herself."

- Shimmering Elf





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

Below is an excerpt. You can listen to a podcast of it here.

PROCEDURE: Act as if the universe is a prodigious miracle created for your amusement and illumination. Assume that secret helpers are working behind the scenes to assist you in turning into the gorgeous masterpiece you were born to be. Join the conspiracy to shower all of creation with blessings.

HYPOTHESES: Evil is boring. Cynicism is idiotic. Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy. Joy is fascinating. Love is an act of heroic genius. Pleasure is your birthright. Receptivity is a superpower.

DEFINITION: Pronoia is the antidote for paranoia. It's the understanding that the universe is fundamentally friendly. It's a mode of training your senses and intellect so you're able to perceive the fact that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.

OBJECTIVE OF PRONOIA: To explore the secrets of becoming a wildly disciplined, fiercely tender, ironically sincere, scrupulously curious, aggressively sensitive, blasphemously reverent, lyrically logical, lustfully compassionate Master of Rowdy Bliss.

GUIDING QUESTION: "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?

UNDIGNIFIED MEDITATIONS TO KEEP YOU HONEST: Brag about what you can't do and don't have. Confess profound secrets to people who aren't particularly interested. Pray for the success of your enemies while you're making love. Change your name every day for a thousand days.

TOP-SECRET ALLIES: Sacred janitors, benevolent pranksters, apathy debunkers, lyrical logicians, ethical outlaws, aspiring masters of curiosity, homeless millionaires, humble megalomaniacs, hedonistic midwives, lunatic saints, sly optimists, mystical scientists, dissident bodhisattvas, macho feminists, and socialist libertarians who possess inside information about the big bang.

DAILY PRACTICE: Push hard to get better, become smarter, grow your devotion to the truth, fuel your commitment to beauty, refine your emotional intelligence, hone your dreams, negotiate with your shadow, cure your ignorance, shed your pettiness, heighten your drive to look for the best in people, and soften your heart -- even as you always accept yourself for exactly who you are with all of your so-called imperfections.

HEAR OR READ THE REST.





YOUR HOLIEST DESIRE

I invite you to devote five minutes to visualizing the fulfillment of your holiest desire, followed by five minutes of visualizing the fulfillment of a loved one's holiest desire.





A spirituality that is only private and self-absorbed, one devoid of an authentic political and social consciousness, does little to halt the suicidal juggernaut of history.

"On the other hand, an activism that is not purified by profound spiritual and psychological self-awareness will only perpetuate the problem it is trying to solve, however righteous its intentions."

- Andrew Harvey





"Psychological work focuses more on what has gone wrong: how we have been wounded in our relations with others and how to go about addressing that." So says psychologist John Welwood.

He continues: "Spiritual work focuses more on what is intrinsically right: how we have infinite resources at the core of our nature that we can cultivate in order to live more expansively. If psychological work thins the clouds, spiritual work invokes the sun."

P.S. We need both!





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
17 Goals To Build A Better World:

1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere

2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.

4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.

8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.

9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.

10. Reduce inequality within and among countries.

11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.

13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.

14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.

15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.

16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.

17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.


Read more about this.





WORLD KISS

All of creation is alive and conscious, and all of creation deserves our burning, churning, yearning love. All of creation. Not just little parts of it. Not just the special people and creatures and things that we personally find beautiful and helpful and interesting. But everything. All of creation deserves our burning churning yearning love.

If we want to fully evolve into the gorgeous geniuses we were born to be, if we want to give back as many blessings as we are given, we've got to be in love with every single part of the Goddess's extravagant masterpiece.

And so we can't possibly be mere heterosexuals. We can't possibly be mere homosexuals or bisexuals.

If we want to commune with the world the way the Goddess does, we've got to be Pantheosexuals -- we've got to be experts in the art of Polymorphous Perverse Kaleidoscopic and Omnidirectional Goddess Nuzzling. Anything less is a lie, an obscene limitation.

With this in mind, I invite you to perform the ritual of the World Kiss. To do the World Kiss, conjure up your most expansive feeling of tenderness -- like what you might experience when you're infatuated with a new lover -- and then blow kisses to all of creation.

Blow kisses to the oak trees and sparrows and elephants and weeds. Blow kisses to the wind and rain and rocks and machines. Blow kisses to the gardens and jails, the cars and the toys. the politicians and saints, to the girls and the boys and every gender in between.

And with each World Kiss you bestow, keep uppermost in your emotions a mood of irreverent adoration and horny compassion. And remember that it's not enough simply to perform the outer gesture; you've got to have a heart-on in each of your seven chakras.

Hear the song





15% REBELLIOUS RAGE, 85% COMPASSION AND CELEBRATION

Tending to my sanity and being in compassionate 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.





DAILY REMEMBRANCE

"A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others."

- Albert Einstein





SECRET FREEDOM

"Freedom is in the unknown. If you believe there is an unknown everywhere, in your own body, in your relationships with other people, in political institutions, in the universe, then you have maximum freedom."

- John Lilly

"My doctrine is to think the thought that is unthinkable, to practice the deed that is unperformable, to speak the speech that is inexpressible, and to be trained in the discipline that is beyond discipline."

- Buddha, "The Sutra of Forty-two Sections"





SHOCKING HEROES

Liviu Librescu, a Romanian-born Israeli and American scientist, teacher, and Holocaust survivor, held the door of his classroom closed during the Virginia Tech shootings, sacrificing his life while the gunman continuously shot through the door. 22 of his 23 students were able to flee out the window, reaching safety, as Librescu delayed the gunman.

First-grade teacher Victoria Soto hid all of her students in cabinets and cupboards during the Sandy Hook shooting, and stood blocking the door to her classroom when the shooter arrived. The shooter killed her, but every one of her students survived.


More about Librescu

More about Soto





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

Below are excerpts.

It?s reasonable and permissible to explode the past, misquote yourself, create new gods and goddesses from scratch, believe in the opposite of everything, forget the "important" fears that never came true, change the meanings of your code words, misspell your own name, and rewrite the epic twists of your myth.





GRATITUDE FEST

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?





ACQUIRING GOOD PROBLEMS

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.





IN LOVE WITH ???

"I was often in love with something or someone," wrote Polish poet Czesław Miłosz. "I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With the forest one sees to the right when riding in a cart to Jaszuny. With human beings whose names still move me."

I invite you to experiment with his approach to love. Make it a fun game: See how often you can feel adoration for unexpected characters and creatures. Be infatuated with curious objects . . . with snarky Internet memes . . . with fleeting phenomena like storms and swirling flocks of birds and candy spilled on the floor.





"When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be."

― Patanjali





HOW SOON IS NOW?

I like to complain and be outraged as much as the next aspiring bodhisattva. I derive a not-so-taboo pleasure from railing against our new Lord-of-the-Flies President and his snotty but lethal Trumpocalypse.

But I'm also passionate about crafting a new world that will bypass the vortex of nonsense, that will render the institutionalized mayhem defunct. I value Buckminster Fuller's perspective: "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

Another favorite counsel comes from sociologist David Cooperrider: "Almost without exception, everything society has considered a social advance has been prefigured first in some utopian writing."

And that's why I like to commune with idealistic yet practical futurists who envision the best possible civilization we can create.

Now I'm happy to say that one of those rare Big Positive Thinkers is offering a new blessing. With his book How Soon is Now: From Personal Initiation to Global Transformation, Daniel Pinchbeck has secured his place in my Hall of Fame of Positive and Practical Insurrectionaries.

The book is a manifesto. A call to zealous and compassionate action. A well-thought-out and visionary formulization of effective tactics.

Thanks, Daniel!

available at Powells

available at Amazon





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

Good news:

1. Say Goodbye to 40% of ocean plastics

2. The giant panda is no longer an endangered species

3. China announced plans to end the ivory trade

4. The US veteran homeless rate declined by 47% in the last 7 years

5. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge funded a medical breakthrough

6. China put a ban on certain coal mines

7. The manatee is longer on the endangered species list

8. The Colombian Government and FARC rebels signed a peace agreement

9. NASA Drone Juno flew 800 million miles

10. Canada protected 85% of the world?s largest coastal temperate rainforest

11. Measles has been eradicated from the Americas

12. Malawi saw its HIV rate drop by 67%

13. 20 countries created protected marine parks

14. Israel produces 55% of fresh water from the sea

15. Scientists developed an Ebola vaccine with a 100 percent success rate

16. World hunger hit a 25-year low

17. Tiger populations are coming back again after 100 years

18. Einstein?s theory of gravitational waves has been proven correct

19. Costa Rica?s electrical grid can run on renewable energy

20. India planted 50 million trees in 24 hours








What's the difference between the old edition and the Revised and Expanded version of my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia?

The Revised and Expanded version has over 63,500 new words and 73 new illustrations -- 55% additional material beyond what the first edition had. Basically, there's a whole extra new book crammed into it.

There are 2 extra chapters, 18 completely new pieces, plus 14 new
Sacred Advertisements. Many of the original pieces of the book were revised and expanded, as well. There are 73 new illustrations.

A central piece in the book, "Glory in the Highest," is nine times longer than it was in the original.





The newer edition of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia is available at Amazon and Powells.

Below is an excerpt.

THE OUTLAW CATALOG OF CAGEY OPTIMISM

(The complete text is here.)

Psychiatry and psychotherapy obsess on what's wrong with people and give short shrift to what's right. The manual of these professions is a 991-page textbook called the *DSM-V.* It identifies scores of pathological states but no healthy ones.

Some time back, I began to complain about this fact, and asked readers to help me compile material for a proposed antidote, the Anti-DSM -- a compendium of healthy, exalted, positive states of being. As their entries came in, we at the Beauty and Truth Laboratory were inspired to dream up some of our own. Below is part one of our initial attempt at creating an *Anti-DSM-V,* or as we also like to call it, "The Outlaw Catalog of Cagey Optimism."

* ACUTE FLUENCY. Happily immersed in artistic creation or scientific exploration; lost in a trance-like state of inventiveness that's both blissful and taxing; surrendered to a state of grace in which you're fully engaged in a productive, compelling, and delightful activity. The joy of this demanding, rewarding state is intensified by a sense that time has been suspended, and is rounder and deeper than usual. (Suggested by H. H. Holiday, who reports that extensive studies in this state have been done by Mihaly Cziscenmihaliy in his book, *Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.*)

* AESTHETIC BLISS. Vividly experiencing the colors, textures, tones, scents, and rhythms of the world around you, creating a symbiotic intimacy that dissolves the psychological barriers between you and what you observe. (Suggested by Jeanne Grossetti.)

* AGGRESSIVE SENSITIVITY. Animated by a strong determination to be receptive and empathetic.

* ALIGNMENT WITH THE INFINITY OF THE MOMENT. Reveling in the liberating realization that we are all exactly where we need to be at all times, even if some of us are temporarily in the midst of trial or tribulation, and that human evolution is proceeding exactly as it should, even if we can't see the big picture of the puzzle that would clarify how all the pieces fit together perfectly. (Suggested by Meredith Jones.)

* AUTONOMOUS NURTURING. Not waiting for someone to give you what you can give yourself. (Suggested by Shannen Davis.)

* BASKING IN ELDER WISDOM. A state of expansive ripeness achieved through listening to the stories of elders. (Suggested by Annabelle Aavard.)

* BIBLIOBLISS. Transported into states of transcendent pleasure while immersed in reading a favorite book. (Suggested by Catherine Kaikowska.)

* BLASPHEMOUS REVERENCE. Acting on the knowledge that the most efficacious form of devotion to the Divine Wow is tinctured with playful or mischievous behavior that prevents the buildup of fanaticism.

* BOO-DUH NATURE. Dwelling in the blithe understanding of the fact that worry is useless because most of what we worry about never happens. (Suggested by Timothy S. Wallace.)

* COMIC INTROSPECTION. Being fully aware of your own foibles while still loving yourself tenderly and maintaining confidence in your ability to give your specific genius to the world. To paraphrase Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral: following the Byzantine ploys of your ego with compassion and humor as it tries to make itself the center of everything, even of its own suffering and struggle.

* COMPASSIONATE DISCRIMINATION. Having astute judgment without being scornfully judgmental; seeing difficult truths about a situation or person without closing your heart or feeling superior. In the words of Alan Jones: having the ability "to smell a rat without allowing your ability to discern deception sour your vision of the glory and joy that is everyone's birthright."

* CRAZED KINDNESS. Having frequent, overpowering urges to bestow gifts, disseminate inspiration, and perpetrate random acts of benevolence.

* ECSTATIC GRATITUDE. Feeling genuine thankfulness with such resplendent intensity that you generate a surge of endorphins in your body and slip into a full-scale outbreak of euphoria.

* EMANCIPATED SURRENDER. Letting go of an attachment without harboring resentment toward the stimuli that led to the necessity of letting go. (Suggested by Timothy S. Wallace.)

* FRIENDLY SHOCK. Welcoming a surprise that will ultimately have benevolent effects.

* HIGHWAY EQUANIMITY. Feeling serene, polite, and benevolent while driving in heavy traffic. (Suggested by Shannen Davis.)

* HOLY LISTENING. Hearing the words of another human being as if they were a direct communication from the Divine Wow to you.

* IMAGINATIVE TRUTH-TELLING. Conveying the truth of any specific situation from multiple angles, thereby mitigating the distortions that result from assuming the truth can be told from a single viewpoint.

* IMPULSIVE LOVE SPREADING. Characterized by a fierce determination to never withhold well-deserved praise, inspirational encouragement, positive feedback, or loving thoughts; often includes a tendency to write love letters on the spur of the moment and on any medium, including napkins, grocery bags, and skin. (Suggested by Laurie Burton.)

* INADVERTENT NATURE WORSHIP. Experiencing the rapture that comes from being outside for extended periods of time. (Suggested by Sue Carol Robinson.)

* INGENIOUS INTIMACY. Having an ability to consistently create deep connections with other human beings, and to use the lush, reverential excitement stimulated by such exchanges to further deepen the connections. A well-crafted talent for dissolving your sense of separateness and enjoying the innocent exultation that erupts in the wake of the dissolution. (Suggested by Sue Carol Robinson.)

* JOYFUL POIGNANCE. Feeling buoyantly joyful about the beauty and mystery of life while remaining aware of the sadness, injustices, wounds, and future fears that form the challenges in an examined life. (Suggested by Alka Bhargava.)

* LATE LATE-BLOOMING. Having a capacity for growth spurts well into old age, long past the time that conventional wisdom says they're possible.

* LEARNING DELIGHT. Experiencing the brain-reeling pleasure that comes from learning something new. (Suggested by Sue Carol Robinson.)

* LUCID DREAM PATRIOTISM. A love of country rooted in the fact that it provides the ideal conditions for learning lucid dreaming. (Suggested by Kenneth Kelzer, author of *The Sun and the Shadow: My Experiment With Lucid Dreaming.*)

* LYRICAL CONSONANCE. Experiencing the visceral yet also cerebral excitement that comes from listening to live music played impeccably by skilled musicians. (Suggested by Susan E. Nace.)


TO SEE THE REST OF THE EXALTED, POSITIVE STATES, GO HERE.)





Subterranean Pronoia Therapy

1. The greatest gift you can give might be the gift that you yourself were never given. Give that gift.

The most valuable service you have to offer your fellow humans may be the service you have always wished were performed for you. Offer that service.

An experience that wounded you could move you to help people who've been similarly wounded. Heal yourself by healing others.

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2. Declare amnesty for the part of you that you don't love very well. Forgive that poor sucker. Hold its hand and take it out to dinner and a movie. Tactfully offer it a chance to make amends for the dumb things it has done.

And then do a dramatic reading of this proclamation by the playwright Theodore Rubin: "I must learn to love the fool in me -- the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool."

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3. No matter how holy and good, everyone in the world has a portion of the world's sickness inside them. It's known by many names: neurosis, shadow, demon, devil. Many people try to deny that it inhabits them. Others acknowledge its power so readily that they allow themselves to be overwhelmed and distorted by it.

At the Beauty and Truth Lab, we take a position between those two positions. We accept the fact that the evil is part of us, but treat it with compassionate amusement and flexible vigilance. Our stance is partly that of loving parents and partly that of warriors.

Once you make a commitment to explore the mysteries of pronoia, your shadow will try to play tricks on you that it has never tried before. How will you respond? We recommend an aggressive, tender, improvisational approach. Be ready for anything. Avoid both blithe excesses of tolerance and grave fundamentalism.

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4. Philosopher William James proposed that if our culture ever hoped to shed the deeply ingrained habit