You Trust Yourself

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

Below are excerpts.

The concept of pronoia proposes the hypothesis that life is a vast and intricate conspiracy designed to keep us well supplied with blessings. What kind of blessings?

Ten million dollars, a gorgeous physique, a perfect marriage, a luxurious home, and high status? Maybe.

But just as likely:
interesting surprises,
dizzying adventures,
gifts you hardly know what to do with,
challenges that dare you to free yourself from the debilitating aspects of your suffering,
and conundrums that dare you to get smarter.

Novelist William Vollman referred to the latter types of blessings when he said that "the most important and enjoyable thing in life is doing something that's a complicated, tricky problem for you that you don't know how to solve."

The Christian writer C. S. Lewis once said: "I thank God that He hasn't given me all the things I've prayed for, because as I look back now I realize it would have been disastrous to have received some of them."

Pronoia provides the boons and prods your soul needs, not necessarily those your ego craves.

Pronoia doesn't promise uninterrupted progress forever. It's not a slick commercial for a perfect summer daythat never ends.

Grace emerges in the ebb and flow, not just the flow. The waning reveals a different kind of blessing than the waxing.

But whether it's our time to ferment in the valley of shadows or rise up singing in the sun-splashed meadow, fresh power to transform ourselves is always on the way.

Our suffering won't last, nor will our triumph.

Without fail, life will deliver the creative energy we need to change into the new thing we must become.

Pronoia works because there is a Divine Being who comprises the entire universe.

When I say, "Life is a conspiracy to shower us with blessings," I understand that this Divine Being is the Chief Architect, Builder, and Manager of the conspiracy.

She oversees the evolution of 500 billion galaxies and every single thing in them, yet is also available as an intimate companion and daily advisor to each one of us humans.

Some lovers of pronoia don't like this part of my rap. They want pronoia to be free of anything that smacks of God. Atheism works better for them. That's OK with me. No hard feelings.

Other lovers of pronoia don't appreciate me referring to the Creator as "She." They either want to stick with the pronoun that has been used for hundreds of years, or else don't want any gender associations whatsoever. That's OK with me. No hard feelings.

The Maker of the conspiracy constantly tinkers, always keeping the big, 14-billion-year-long picture in mind and moving in the direction of ultimate blessings for all concerned.

But the Maker also loves getting help from us. To the degree that we co-conspire, the inevitable blessings ripen more lyrically and in greater fullness.

Pronoia asks us to be awake to the shifting conditions of the Wild Divine's ever-fresh creation. It encourages us to be quite happy about regularly divesting ourselves of the beliefs and theories that guided us yesterday so that we can see clearly what's right in front of us today.

As much as we might be dismayed by the actions of our political leaders pronoia says that toppling any particular junta, clique, or elite is irrelevant unless we overthrow the sour, puckered mass hallucinationthat is mistakenly called "reality" including the part of that hallucination we foster in ourselves.

The revolution begins at home. If you overthrow yourself again and again, you might earn the right to help overthrow the rest of us.

Pronoia will change your past if you let it. It's the language you study at night in your dreams, the open secret of how to live forever, the Last Judgment transformed into a daily gift.

Pronoia is a gnostic art: Everyone is potentially a visionary capable of revealing more of its mysteries.





THE FATHERING YOU NEED

A lot of people never got the mothering they needed in order to grow up into the confident, secure lovers of life they have the potential to become.

But even greater numbers suffer from a lack of smart fathering. And that may be a deprivation that's important for you to address.

Was there anything missing in the guidance and mentoring you got from your actual daddy? If so, I invite you to brainstorm about how you could make up for it.

For starters, here's one idea: Is there any father figure out there who could inspire you to become more of your own father figure?





FAKE REALITY

"Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash, and I'm happy to say I have no grasp of it whatsoever."

- The Baron in the film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen





LIFE IS BOTH WRETCHED AND GLORIOUS
BY Pema Ch?dr?n

?Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected.

?But if that?s all that?s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction.

?On the other hand, wretchedness?life?s painful aspect?softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody?s eyes because you feel you haven?t got anything to lose?you?re just there.

?The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We?d be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn?t have enough energy to eat an apple.

?Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.?

- Pema Ch?dr?n, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living





CAN THE IMAGINATION SAVE US?
by Susan Griffin

I heard the following story from a survivor of the holocaust: Along with many others who are crowded into the bed of a large truck, the surrealist poet Robert Desnos is being taken away from the barracks of the concentration camp where he has been held prisoner. The mood is somber; everyone knows the truck is headed for the gas chambers.

When the truck arrives at its destination, no one can speak at all; even the guards fall silent. But this silence is soon interrupted by an energetic man, Robert Desnos, who begins reading the palm of one of his fellow prisoners.

Oh, he says, I see you have a very long lifeline. And you are going to have three children. He is exuberant. And his excitement is contagious. First one man, then another, offers up his hand, and Desnos predicts longevity, more children, abundant joy.

As Desnos reads more palms, not only does the mood of the prisoners change, but also the moods of the guards. How can one explain it? Perhaps the element of surprise has planted a shadow of doubt in their minds. They are in any case so disoriented by this sudden change of mood among those they are about to kill that they are unable to go through with the executions.

So all the men, along with Desnos, are packed back onto the truck and taken back to the barracks. Desnos has saved his own life and the lives of others by using his imagination.

This story poses a question in my mind. Can the imagination save us?

Robert Desnos was famous for his belief in the imagination. He believed it could transform society. And what a wild leap this was, at the mouth of the gas chambers, to imagine a long life! In his mind he simply stepped outside the world as it was created by the SS.

Full story by Susan Griffin.





WANT TO GET YOUR 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.





"We should not think of our past as definitely settled, for we are not a stone or a tree," wrote poet Czeslaw Milosz. "My past changes every minute according to the meaning given it now, in this moment.?

So, yes, you have the power to re-vision and reinterpret your past. Keep the following question in mind as you go about your work: "How can I recreate my history so as to make my willpower stronger, my love of life more intense, and my future more interesting?"





GENUINE LISTENING

?Genuine listening requires that you willingly bear witness to what someone else needs to say while simultaneously sparing them of your own solution, defense, dismissal, alternative reality, rebuttal, counterpoint, comparable story or more extreme example.

This kind of listening is a very ?active? part to play in a conversation. You have to believe for those moments that none of the things you might say could possibly be as valuable as hearing someone out.

You may need to employ every ounce of your strength of character to actually pay attention and not butt-in with your own bit. That kind of attention paid to another is powerful medicine.?

~ Gil Hedley, Integral Anatomy





BESTOWING BLESSING

You don't have to be a highly evolved paragon of enlightenment in order to ease suffering and bestow blessings.

- Caroline Myss





PURIFICATION

You could say this: "I no longer want to be a compost heap for sickening images."




Readers of my horoscope column "Free Will Astrology" are sometimes surprised when I say I only believe in astrology about 80 percent. "You're a quack?!" they cry.

Not at all, I explain. I've been a passionate student of the ancient art for decades. About the time my over-educated young brain was on the verge of desertification, crazy wisdom showed up in the guise of astrology, moistening my soul just in time to save it.

"But what about the other 20 percent?" they press on. "Are you saying your horoscopes are only partially true?"

I assure them that my doubt proves my love. By cultivating a tender, cheerful skepticism, I inoculate myself against the virus of fanaticism. This ensures that astrology will be a supple tool in my hands, an adaptable art form, and not a rigid, explain-it-all dogma that over-literalizes and distorts the mysteries it seeks to illuminate.

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P.S.: I use the same 80-20 approach with every belief system I love and benefit from: science, psychology, feminism, and various spiritual traditions like Qabalah, Buddhism, paganism, and magick.

I take what's useful from each, but am not so deluded as to think that any single system is the holy grail that the physicists call the "Theory of Everything."

Unconditional, unskeptical faith is the path of the fanatic and fundamentalist, and I aspire to be a rowdy philosophical anarchist, aflame with objectivity and committed to the truth that the truth is always evolving.





NO SUCH THING

There's no such thing as an inherently bad astrological configuration or an aspect in your chart that justifies fear. Avoid doomsayers.





CHANGING YOUR MIND

"Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."
- George Bernard Shaw

"The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind." - William Blake

"Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind." - W. Somerset Maugham

"The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large ?- I contain multitudes." - Walt Whitman
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ARE YOU BEAUTIFUL?

"The sign of a beautiful person is that they see beauty in others."

-Omar Suleiman





This perfect moment is brought to you by the imaginary lightning bolts you can fling from your fingers any time you want to.





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





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.