You Create Beauty and Joy

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

Below are excerpts.

What's the Most Important Question for You to Ask Today?

You possess exceptional capacities that are absolutely unique. You're a masterpiece unlike any other that has ever lived in the history of the world.

Furthermore, the precise instructions you need to ripen into your special talents have always been with you, even from the time before you were born. In the words of psychologist James Hillman, you have a soul's code.

You might also call it the mission you came to Earth to carry out; the divine blueprint that contains the open secret of how to be perfectly, unpredictably yourself; the master plan that is your heart's deepest desire.

Would you like help in deciphering it? The Divine Intelligence Formerly Known as God is always on call, ready to help. It's your birthright to ask Her a specific question every day about what you need to do next to express your soul's code; it's also your birthright to receive a response.

The divine revelation may not be as unambiguous as a little voice in your head. It might appear in the form of a TV commercial, an odd dream, or an encounter with a stranger. It could be demanding and difficult, delivering information you'd rather not have to deal with. Or it might show up as a clear and simple feeling of knowing exactly what to do, and it could be easy and fun.

What question will you ask the Divine Wow today?

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P.S. "There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium. It will be lost. The world will not have it.

"It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open."

- Martha Graham, quoted by Agnes de Mille, Dance to the Piper and Promenade Home


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RE-GENIUS YOURSELF?

Although we are all born geniuses, the grind of day-to-day living tends to de-genius us. That's the bad news. The good news is that you have the power to re-genius yourself.

Here's a recording of a ritual I did that you can use to jump-start the process: ReGenius Yourself

Here are videos of the the time I did this ritual at a theater in San Francisco:

You Are a Genius, Part 1

You Are a Genius, Part 2





51% YES

Take inventory of the extent to which your "No" reflex dominates your life. Notice for 24 hours (even in your dreams) how often you say or think:

"No."

"That's not right."

"I don't like them."

"I don't agree with that."

"They don't like me."

"That should be different from what it is."

Wherever you find that NO is a habit, a reflex, a conditioned compulsion, consider the possibility of rebelling against the habit, reflex, or conditioned compulsion with a big red YES.

What would it be like for you to say "YES" at least 51 percent of the time?

Invitation: Say "YES" aloud 22 times right now.





YOU HAVE WHAT YOU NEED

"This body that we have, this very body that's sitting here right now in this room, this very body that perhaps aches, and this mind that we have at this very moment, are exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, and fully alive.

"Furthermore, the emotions that we have right now, the negativity and the positivity, are what we actually need. It is just as if we looked around to find out what would be the greatest wealth that we could possibly possess in order to lead to a decent, good, completely fulfilling, energetic, inspired life, and found it right here."

- Pema Ch?dr?n, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving Kindness





YOU'RE A STAR

You?re a star -- and so am I. I?m a genius -- and so are you. Your success encourages my brilliance, and my charisma enhances your power. Your victory doesn?t require my defeat, and vice versa. Those are the rules in the New World -- quite unlike the rules in the Old World, where zero-sum games are the norm, and only one of us can win each time we play.

In the New World, you don?t have to tone down or apologize for your prowess, because you love it when other people shine. You exult in your own excellence without regarding it as a sign of inherent superiority. As you ripen more and more of your latent aptitude, you inspire the rest of us to claim our own idiosyncratic magnificence.





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 DreamWorks or Disney, so don't let your romantic story be infected by the entertainment industry's simplistic, sentimental myths about intimate relationships.

Anything you'd like to add?





YOU'RE HEREBY RELIEVED

You?re hereby relieved of any responsibility you think you have to keep everyone's illusions afloat (including your own).

See how much fun you can have by telling the lush, pulsating, up-to-the-minute truth with kindness and elegance.





YOUR HOLY GUARDIAN ANGEL

According to the esoteric spiritual tradition of Western hermeticism, you have a personal Holy Guardian Angel who's always ready to give you help, as well as to lovingly kick your ass.

Some modern people snort derisively at this notion. They're fundamentalist materialists, denying the possibility that something can exist if it's not perceptible by our five senses or by instruments that humans have invented.

If your temperament and training align you with the materialists' ideology, I'll ask you to temporarily suspend your skepticism so that you might try the following experiment:

Act as if you have a personal Holy Guardian Angel whose job it is to help you lose your illusions, liberate you from suffering, and make you smarter.

What clarifying questions will you ask the HGA? What precise assistance will you request?





YOU NEED MAGIC EVERY DAY

Every day, you have to wade through a relentless surge of soul-less facts. The experience tends to shut down your sense of wonder.

Every day, you're over-exposed to cynical narratives that have been sucked free of delight and mystery.

But here's the news: YOU NEED MAGIC EVERY DAY.

That's why you have to make such strenuous efforts to keep your world enchanted.

How do you do it? If you feel moved to tell me, please do at Truthrooster@gmail.com.

P.S. Is it possible that you will eventually develop beautiful capacities and sublime understandings that you can't even imagine right now?





WHAT DO YOU WANT?

I invite you to write the following on a piece of paper and keep it under your pillow.

"I, [put your name here], do solemnly swear on this day [put date here] that I will devote myself for a period of seven days to learning my most important desire. No other thought will be more uppermost in my mind. No other concern will divert me from tracking down every clue that might assist me in my drive to ascertain the one experience in this world that deserves my brilliant passion above all others."





ADMIRE AS MUCH AS YOU CAN!

"Admire as much as you can. Most people do not admire enough."
- Vincent van Gogh


Admiring people who are worthy of our admiration doesn't cost us anything. Same with admiring animals and plants and natural phenomena: no pain involved. Same with admiring great accomplishments by our fellow humans: no agony or agitation required.





WANT TO GET YOUR PERSONAL CHART READ?

Do I give personal astrology readings? Although I love to, I'm not doing them these days. In addition to writing "Free Will Astrology" and my expanded audio horoscopes, I'm also working on new books and attending to that high art referred to as "having a life." There's no time left over!

If you want your chart done, I recommend a colleague whose approach to reading astrology charts closely matches my own. She's my wife, RO LOUGHRAN. We've been enjoying regular conversations about astrology since 1989! Her website's here.

Ro utilizes a blend of well-trained intuition, emotional warmth, and a high degree of technical proficiency in horoscope interpretation. She is skilled at exploring the mysteries of your life's purpose and nurturing your connection with your own inner wisdom.

In addition to over 30 years of astrological experience, Ro has been a licensed psychotherapist for 17 years. This enables her to integrate psychological insight with the cosmological perspective that astrology offers.

Ro is based in California, but can do phone consultations and otherwise work with you regardless of geographic boundaries.

Check out Ro's website.





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

- Rainer Maria Rilke





"There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one." So says a character in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel *The Unconsoled.*





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

U.N. solution for a pollution free planet: polluters should pick up the bill. "The profit of destroying nature or polluting the planet is nearly always privatized, while the costs of polluting the planet or the cost of destroying ecosystems is nearly always socialized."

Colorado's investment in IUDs and other birth control produced a "miracle." Teen births and abortions dropped by nearly 50%, and the birth-rate among teens who were already mothers fell by 58%; there were also dramatic reductions in high-risk births.

The Turkish town where the poor never go hungry. Restaurants in a small eastern Anatolian town are offering free meals to those in need, a tradition that has carried on for decade.


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CREATING A GOLDEN AGE

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

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

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

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





SYNERGY

Hypothesis: There's no contradiction between being:

a highly individuated, creative person devoted to developing your own maximum potential and enjoying life to the fullest

AND

a spiritual freedom fighter dedicated to the liberation of other humans and to the transformation of civilization into a paradise that serves and exalts all creatures.

In fact, the two tasks can blend together quite well.





TAKE TIME TO STOP AND BE THE FLOWERS

"Take time to stop and smell the flowers," says an old homily. Albert Hoffman, the Swiss scientist who discovered LSD and lived to age 102, had a different approach. "Take the time to stop and be the flowers," he said.

That's a sweet invitation: Don't just set aside a few stolen moments to sniff the snapdragons, taste the rain, chase the wind, watch the hummingbirds, and listen to a friend.

Use your imagination to actually be the snapdragons and rain and wind and hummingbirds and friend. Don't just behold the Other; become the Other.





SECRET HEROISM

Jeff Brown says: Most of the greatest achievements on the planet are unknown to others ? private overcomings, silent attempts at belief, re-opening a shattered heart.

The real path of champions truly lies within ? the transforming of suffering into expansion, the clearing of horrifying debris, the building of a healthy self-concept without tools.

The greatest achievers have found a way to believe in something good despite being traumatized and fractured on life's battlefields. No matter what else they accomplish in their lives, they are already champions.

One day the world will realize that it is much harder to heal a shattered heart than excel at athletics. Go(l)d medals all around.

- Jeff Brown, excerpted from his book Love It Forward





BENEVOLENT CONSPIRACY ON YOUR BEHALF

Behind your back, your imaginary friend is plotting with your inner child to overthrow your guilty conscience.

Meanwhile, your future self has time-traveled into the past to enlist the spirits of your ancestors in a plot to unlock your sleeping genius.

There's more: The superhero you used to fantasize about being when you felt most helpless has been brought to life by the mad scientist in your psyche's basement.

There's no way you can prevent them all from giving you a big crazy dose of assistance.

P.S. Your hair is mysterious.





MANY GOOD REASONS TO CRY

It's life-affirming to cry when you're sad about your life.

There are many other good reasons to cry, too.

Have you ever burst into tears after having a sudden rush of insight into a nagging problem?

If you traveled to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and stood in front of the artist's paintings, chances are you would sob in appreciation for the raw beauty.

I have a friend who regards her crying spells as surrogate orgasms. They bring a surging release of pent-up emotions, and leave her deeply relaxed and in love with life.

NASA's chief scientist for Mars exploration confessed what stirs his emotions up from the depths. "When I first gazed at the images of the Martian landscape from Surveyor's camera," said Jim Garvin, "I was moved to tears."

Myself, I experience my tears as a well-earned triumph, whether they're driven by loss or fullness and joy; they're the sign of the inner work I've done to feel things deeply.

I've found, too, that sadness is often at the root of my anger. When I feel rage at Trump's latest cruel and ignorant behavior, for example, it's because I'm profoundly sad about the dire consequences that his actions have and will have for human beings. I'm heartbroken about the suffering he perpetrates.

I'm not saying that sadness is "better" than anger. But I think it's important to understand that our anger often comes out of our sadness, and that we need to feel the sadness as much as the anger.





YOUR PRIMAL LONGING

Recently I wrote about the pleasures that can come from cultivating a robust relationship with one?s primal longing. "What is a 'primal longing' exactly?" a reader asked me.

I replied: Your primal longing is the deepest yearning you have; the essential desire that brought you here to earth; the reason why you're alive; the goal that's most important for you to strive for this lifetime; your core driving force.





WHAT CONSTITUTES INTEGRITY?

Characteristics of People Who Have True Integrity,
by Awareness Act

1. They value other people?s time.

2. They give credit where it is due.

3. They are authentic.

4. They are honest.

5. They don?t take advantage of others.

6. They talk through disagreements in a civil manner.

7. They give most people the benefit of the doubt.

8. They know when something is bothering someone.

9. They accept your word as truth until it is disproven.

10. If they have done something wrong they will come to you and apologize.

11. They are humble.

12. They do good when they can.

13. They are kind.

14. They follow through with whatever they said they would do. Keep commitments.

15. They do not manipulate others.

16. They are able to be vulnerable and can express it, and hold space for others to be vulnerable as well.


Do you have any characteristics to add?

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE





NO NEED TO KEEP ILLUSIONS AFLOAT

You're hereby relieved of any responsibility you think you have to keep everyone's illusions afloat (including your own).

See how much fun you can have by telling the lush, pulsating, up-to-the-minute truth with kindness and elegance.