Celebrate Your Mysterious Future!

EXPLORE YOUR LONG-RANGE FUTURE

I've gathered together all of the Long-Range, Big-Picture Horoscopes I wrote for you in the past few weeks, and bundled them in one place. Go here to read a compendium of your forecasts for 2018:

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In addition to these, I've created EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES that go even further in Exploring Your Long-Term Destiny in 2018.

What will be the story of your life in the coming months? What new influences will be headed your way? What fresh resources will you be able to draw on? How can you conspire with life to create the best possible future for yourself?

To listen to these three-part, in-depth reports, go here.

Register and/or log in through the main page, and then access the horoscopes by clicking on "Long Range Prediction." Choose from Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Each part is a standalone report, not dependent on the other two.

If you'd like a boost of inspiration to fuel you in your quest for beauty and truth and love and meaning, tune in to my meditations on your Big-Picture outlook.

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Each of the three-part reports is seven to nine minutes long. The cost is $6 per report. There are discounts for the purchase of multiple reports.

P.S. You can also listen to a short-term Expanded Audio Horoscope for the coming week.





WHAT DID I FORESEE FOR YOU A YEAR AGO?

A year ago, at the beginning of 2017, I wrote big-picture horoscopes that envisioned the opportunities and challenges you?d face in months to come. I thought you might like to re-read them and see how apropos they turned out to be: Big Picture 2017





WHAT'S WORKING WELL AND GOING RIGHT

Nicholas Kristof says: Every other day this year, I promise to weep and scream in outrage at all the things going wrong. But today, let?s consider what?s going right.

Every day, the number of people around the world living in extreme poverty (less than about $2 a day) goes down by 217,000.

Every day, 325,000 more people gain access to electricity. And 300,000 more gain access to clean drinking water.

As recently as the 1960s, a majority of humans had always been illiterate and lived in extreme poverty. Now fewer than 15 percent are illiterate, and fewer than 10 percent live in extreme poverty.

In another 15 years, illiteracy and extreme poverty will be mostly gone. After thousands of generations, they are pretty much disappearing on our watch.

In the 1950s, but not today, the U.S. had segregation, polio, and bans on interracial marriage, gay sex, and birth control. Most of the world lived under dictatorships, two-thirds of parents had a child die before age 5, and it was a time of nuclear standoffs, of pea soup smog, of frequent wars, of stifling limits on women and of the worst famine in history.

Read more





NINE WAYS THE WORLD GOT A LOT BETTER IN 2017

1) There was less famine

2) There were fewer war deaths

3) Fewer deaths from natural disasters

4) Progress against pestilence

5) Greater life expectancy

6) More democracy

7) Expanding rights for women and sexual minorities

8) Fewer people living on $2 a day

9) Greener energy


Read about the details.





THE 99 BEST THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN 2017:

Read all about it.





DIMINISHING POVERTY

In 1981 more than half of the world population was living in poverty. In the 19th century, the figure was close to 95 percent. Today the proportion of the global population living in poverty is down to 21%.

Read about it.





BEAUTY MAKES YOU SMART?

Do you have an unconscious belief that the forces of evil are loud, vigorous, and strong, while good is quiet, gentle, and passive? Gather evidence that contradicts this irrational prejudice.

Are you secretly suspicious of joy because you think it's inevitably rooted in wishful thinking and a willful ignorance about the true nature of reality? Expose these suspicions as superstitions that aren't grounded in any objective data you can actually prove.

Do you fear that when you're in the presence of love and beauty you tend to become softheaded, whereas you're likely to feel smart and powerful when you're sneering at the ugliness around you?

As an antidote, for a given amount of time, say a week or a month or a year, act as if the following hypothesis were true: that you're more likely to grow smarter when you're in the presence of love and beauty.





THE JOY OF INSURRECTION

I like to complain and be outraged as much as the next aspiring bodhisattva. I derive a not-so-taboo pleasure from railing against racism, sexism, misogyny, plutocracy, bigotry, and militarism.

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.





THE DOWNSIDES OF NEGATIVE THINKING

From *The New York Times*: "All humans have a tendency to ruminate more on bad experiences than positive ones. It?s an evolutionary adaptation that helps us avoid danger and react quickly in a crisis.

"But constant negativity can also get in the way of happiness, add to our stress and worry level, and ultimately damage our health."

Can we do anything to diminish the power of negative thinking? It's a complex, nuanced subject, but: here's a good start.





THE MAGIC OF YOUR WORDS

"The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words," said Terence McKenna, "and that if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish."

Here's my version of that hypothesis: What world you end up living in depends at least in part on your use of language.

Do you want to move and breathe amidst infertile chaos where nothing makes sense and no one really loves anyone? Then speak with unconscious carelessness, expressing yourself lazily. Constantly materialize and entertain angry thoughts in the privacy of your own imagination, beaming silent curses out into eternity.

Or would you prefer to live in a realm that's rich with fluid epiphanies and intriguing coincidences and mysterious harmonies? Then be discerning and inventive in how you speak, primed to name the unexpected codes that are always being born right in front of your eyes. Turn your imagination into an ebullient laboratory where the somethings you create out of nothings are tinctured with the secret light you see in your dreams of invisible fire.

Hear this as a spoken-word piece.





STORYTELLING THAT DOESN'T RELY ON CONFLICT

It's hard to find modern stories that don't depend on endless conflict to advance the plot. I understand the attraction to such stories, but I don't understand why they dominate storytelling.

Are authors and filmmakers really unable to conceive of the possibility that entertaining adventures might emerge from pursuing discovery and excitement and joy as much as from overcoming difficulties?

Ursula le Guin writes: "The Hero has decreed . . . that the proper shape of the narrative is that of the arrow or spear, starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark (which drops dead); second, that the central concern of the narrative, including the novel, is conflict; and third, that the story isn't any good if he isn't in it.

"I differ with all of this. I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.

"One relationship among elements in the novel may well be that of conflict, but the reduction of narrative to conflict is absurd. (I once read a how-to-write manual that said, 'A story should be seen as a battle,' and went on about strategies, attacks, victory, etc.)

"Conflict, competition, stress, struggle, stress, etc., within the narrative conceived as carrier bag / belly / box / house / medicine bundle, may be seen as necessary elements of a whole which itself cannot be characterized as conflict or as harmony, since its purpose is neither resolution nor stasis but continuing process."





I HAVE NEWS FOR YOU - by Tony Hoagland

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you?
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

by Tony Hoagland





WANT TO GET YOUR ASTROLOGICAL CHART READ?

If you want your personal 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.





MARRIED TO YOURSELF?

I invite you to deepen and intensify your commitment to the most important person in your life -- you. One way to further that sacred cause is to get married to yourself. In my book, I've created a text you can refer to as you perform the wedding. Or you can use my text for inspiration as you create your own version.

Below is an excerpt.

(To read the whole text, go here.)

I ME WED

Let's begin by telling a simple truth: You will probably never create a resilient, invigorating bond with the lush accomplice of your dreams until you master the art of loving yourself ingeniously. A wedding ritual that joins you to yourself could catalyze an uncanny shift in your personal mojo that would attract a fresh, hot consort into your life, or else awaken the sleeping potential of a simmering alliance you have now.

If you're feeling brave, try speaking the following words aloud:

"I am no longer looking for the perfect partner.
I am my own perfect partner."

Say it even stronger:

"I am no longer looking for the perfect partner
to salve all my wounds
and fix all my mix-ups
and bridge all my chasms.
I am no longer looking for the perfect partner
because I am my own perfect partner."


TO READ THE REST OF "I ME WED," go here.





YOUR NEED FOR REVERENCE

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

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

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





BENEVOLENT TEACHINGS

"Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment," said Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck. "This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath."

While I appreciate Beck's advice, I'm perplexed why she put such a heavy emphasis on lessons that arise from difficult events. In the years ahead, you will be proof that this is shortsighted. At least 51 percent of your teachers are likely to be expansive, benevolent, and generous -- and the figure will probably be upwards of 85 to 90 percent.





PRACTICAL WISDOM

One Zen student said, "My teacher is the best. He can go days without eating."

The second said, "My teacher has so much self-control, he can go days without sleep."

The third said, "My teacher is so wise that he eats when he?s hungry and sleeps when he?s tired."





USEFUL FEAR

"Fear is on old word that derives from the same roots that give us 'fare,' as in 'thoroughfare.' Although it often causes people to run away from troubling situations, at a deeper level, fear means 'to go through it.'

"The hidden purpose of fear involves bringing us closer to natural instincts for survival, but also for awakening inner resources and sharpening our intelligence when faced with true danger and the basic need to change."

- Michael Meade





"To work with the unknown, some combination of respect, ruthlessness, courage, and cuddling is necessary"

- Arnold Mindell





HOW TO BECOME MORE OPTIMISTIC

?Try to think of three new things you?re happy about while brushing your teeth at night. The word new is important. If you let yourself repeat items, you might default to some variation of 'family, friends, and health' every day.

"But if you have to come up with three novel, specific reasons to be happy or grateful, your brain will naturally start making mental notes of things you can include in your list throughout the day."

Read more.





THE HISTORY OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH DESIRE

Imagine it's 30 years from now. You're looking back at the history of your relationship with desire. There was a certain watershed moment when you clearly saw that some of your desires were mediocre, inferior, and wasteful, while others were pure, righteous, and invigorating.

Beginning then, you made it a life goal to purge the former and cultivate the latter.

Thereafter, you occasionally wandered down dead ends trying to gratify yearnings that weren't worthy of you, but usually you wielded your passions with discrimination, dedicating them to serve the highest and most interesting good.





YOU ARE A CREATOR

Even if you don't call yourself an artist, you have the potential to be a dynamic creator who is always hatching new plans, coming up with fresh ideas, and shifting your approach to everything you do as you adjust to life's ceaseless invitation to change.

It's to this part of you -- the restless, inventive spirit -- that I address the following: Unleash yourself! Don't be satisfied with the world the way it is; don't sit back passively and blankly complain about the dead weight of the mediocre status quo.

Instead, call on your curiosity and charisma and expressiveness and lust for life as you tinker with and rebuild everything you see so that it's in greater harmony with the laws of love and more hospitable to your soul's code.





YOUR ANTI-RESOLUTIONS

Every January 1, many people make New Year's resolutions, promising to embark on programs of self-improvement. But your assignment now, should you choose to accept it, is to create a list of ANTI-resolutions.

Here are some questions to guide you:

1. What outlandish urges and controversial tendencies do you promise to cultivate in the coming months?

2. What nagging irritations will you ignore and avoid with even greater ingenuity?

3. What problems do you promise to exploit in order to have even more fun as you make the status quo accountable for its corruption?

4. What boring rules and traditions will you thumb your nose at, paving the way for exciting encounters with strange attractors?





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.





FORGIVE YOURSELF

Forgive yourself for the blindness that put you in the path of those who betrayed you.






PROMISES TO YOURSELF

Take some paper and write "I am doing everything in my power to attract all the help and resources I need as I accomplish the following goal." Then compose a declaration that crisply describes exactly what satisfying, growth-inducing experiences you want most in 2018 -- and are willing to work hard for and even change yourself to attract, if necessary. Keep a copy of this magic formula under your pillow or in your wallet.






MY WISHES FOR YOU

In 2018 I wish you joyous eruptions of profound gratification and gratitude; a constant flow of fluid insights and "ah-ha!" revelations that lead to cathartic integrations; a coming together of several different lucky trends, resulting in an exquisite healing; and captivating yet relaxing adventures that allow you to weave together diverse threads of your experience, inspiring you to feel at home in the world.





CHOOSE YOUR THOUGHTS?

"You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. That's a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control."

? Elizabeth Gilbert





RE-DREAMING CHRIST

Some Christians might be shocked to learn that Jesus Christ is one of the Main High Magicians in the Beauty and Truth Lab's pantheon of deities and avatars.

They may believe that people like us -- Goddess-worshiping tantric Sufi Qabalist pagans who hang around with Zen trickster witches and espouse a socialist libertarian political philosophy -- couldn't possibly have an intimate and vivid relationship with the cosmic hero they claim to own. They act as if they have commandeered the trademark of one of the smartest wild men in history.

Christ was a champion of women's rights, an antidote to the established and corrupt political order, and a radical spiritual activist who worked outside religious institutions.

He was a passionate advocate for the poor and underprivileged. He owned nothing and had no use for the idea of "private property." He was uncompromisingly opposed to violence and war. Besides that, he was a master of love and he devoted his life to serving the Divine Intelligence. He even went so far as to say, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you, and give away all your possessions."

I want to be like Jesus Christ when I grow up!

(But it's quite OK with us if you don't want to be like him. The good thing about adoring Christ's pronoiac glory but not being a Christian is that we don't have any investment in wanting you to do as we do. We want you to do as you do!)

Is there any hijacked hero you'd like to liberate? Any spoiled treasure you hope to redeem? Any detoured savior you want to get back on track?

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"The whole point of Jesus's life was not that we should become exactly like him, but that we should become ourselves in the same way he became himself. Jesus was not the great exception but the great example."

- Carl Jung





DISSOLVE WRONG-HEADED OPINIONS

Here's a holiday gift you could give yourself: Resist and deflect and dissolve wrong-headed opinions about who you are and how you should live your life. (And I mean your own wrong-headed opinions as well as other people's.)





COLLABORATING WITH THE RELENTLESS COSMIC IMPERATIVE TO CHANGE

What do we need to kill off in ourselves in order to tune in to the beauty that's hidden from us?

What worn-out shticks are blinding us to the blessings that life is conspiring to give us?

Which of our theories may have been useful and even brilliant in the past but are now keeping us from becoming aware of the ever?-fresh creation that unfolds before us?

It's not enough to terminate our stale mental habits just once. The price of admission into pronoia is a commitment to continual dying.
We have to ask ourselves rude questions and kick our own asses again and again.

Today's versions of beauty, truth, love, goodness, justice, and liberation will pass away.

To keep abreast of the latest developments ? to cultivate tomorrow's versions of pronoia ? we have to immerse ourselves regularly in the waters of chaos.

Our relationship with pronoia has to be a never-ending improvisation.





HOW TO FIND GOOD NEWS

Experiment: Imprint yourself with the intention that in 2018, you will seek out the GOOD news at least as often as you seek out the BAD stuff -- that you will regard tales of affliction and mayhem and corruption and tragedy as no more interesting or worthy of your attention than tales of triumph and liberation and pleasure and ingenuity.

If this idea appeals to you, here are sources of GOOD news to get you started:

Yes magazine

Good News Network

Celebrate Small Victories

Reddit Uplifting News

Heroic Stories




Here's a link to my free weekly email newsletter, featuring the Free Will Astrology horoscopes, plus a bunch of other stuff, including good news, lucky advice, and tender rants. It arrives every Tuesday morning.

Sign up here for your free subscription.





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