A few years ago, a New Zealander named Bruce Simpson announced plans to build a cruise missile at his home using parts he bought legally from eBay and other online stores. In accordance with current astrological omens, I suggest you initiate a comparable project. For example, you could arrange a do-it-yourself space flight by tying a thousand helium balloons to your lawn chair. APRIL FOOL! I lied. Please don't try lunatic schemes like the helium balloon space flight. Here's the truth: Now is a favorable time to initiate big, bold projects, but not foolish, big, bold projects. The point is to be both visionary and practical.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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I love you I love me I love you and me together

I love us I love them I love us and them together

Rilke said: "For one human being to love another is the most difficult task. It's the work for which all other work is mere preparation."

Teillard de Chardin said: "Some day after we have mastered the winds, the waves and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for a second time in the history of the world, humans will have discovered fire."

Leo Tolstoy said: "Everything I understand, I understand only because I love."

Pascal said: "If you do not love too much, you do not love enough."

Emily Dickinson said: "Until you have loved, you cannot become yourself."

You and I say: Because we love Ruby-throated hummingbirds sip from plum flowers and the moon sings its silver fragrance to the swans and volcanoes and fields of wheat . . . .

Hear or read the rest of this meditation.

The Finnish word kalsarikännit means getting drunk at home alone in your underwear and bingeing on guilty pleasures. It's a perfect time for you to do just that. The Fates are whispering, "Chill out. Vegetate. Be ambitionless." APRIL FOOL! I told a half-truth. In fact, now is a perfect time to excuse yourself from trying too hard and doing too much. You can accomplish wonders and marvels by staying home and bingeing on guilty pleasures in your underwear. But there's no need to get drunk.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Celebrate Unhappy Hour at least once a month. During this ritual blowout, you have license to complain and rant about everything that's driving you crazy. Get a sympathetic listener to be your receptacle or deliver your blast straight into the mirror. If you prefer, write it all down. One way or another, grouse nonstop about your secret shame, raw sorrow, bottomless wrath, unspeakable guilt, and unnerving twists of destiny. Feel free to unleash guttural moans or rueful cackles.

If performed regularly, Unhappy Hour serves as an exorcism that empties you of psychic toxins. Pronoia will then have a chance to flourish as you luxuriate more frequently in rosy moods and broad-minded visions.

To hear or read the rest of the Unhappy Hour ritual, go here.

Actor Gary Busey is very sure there are no mirrors in heaven. He has other specific ideas about the place, as well. This became a problem when he was filming the movie Quigley, in which his character Archie visits heaven. Busey was so enraged at the director's mistaken rendering of paradise that he got into a fist fight with another actor. I hope you will show an equally feisty fussiness in the coming weeks, Gemini. APRIL FOOL! I lied, sort of. On the one hand, I do hope you'll be forceful as you insist on expressing your high standards. Don't back down! But on the other hand, refrain from pummeling anyone who asks you to compromise.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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This is a perfect time for you to learn more about the difference between your fearful fantasies and your authentic, accurate intuitions.

Knowing the difference is one of the greatest spiritual powers you can possible have. So let's explore what it means: knowing the difference between the frightening, alienating pictures that sometimes pop into your imagination, as opposed the simple, warm, clear direction that is always available from the deepest source within you.

To hear or read the rest of the essay "Fear Versus Intuition,"go here.

In the Scots language still spoken in parts of Scotland, eedle-doddles are people who can't summon initiative when it's crunch time. They are so consumed in trivial or irrelevant concerns that they lose all instinct for being in the right place at the right time. I regret to inform you that you are now at risk of being an eedle-doddle. APRIL FOOL! I lied. In fact, the truth is just the opposite. I have rarely seen you so well-primed to respond vigorously and bravely to Big Magic Moments. For the foreseeable future, you are King or Queen of Carpe Diem.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Thousands of things go right for you every day, beginning the moment you wake up. The vast majority of everything is working with breathtaking efficiency and consistency.

Read or hear more about why this is true.

Paul McCartney likes to periodically act like a regular person who's not a famous musician. He goes grocery shopping without bodyguards. He rides on public transportation and strikes up conversations with random strangers. I think you may need to engage in similar behavior yourself, Leo. You've become a bit too enamored with your own beauty and magnificence. You really do need to come down to earth and hang out more with us little people. APRIL FOOL! I lied. The truth is, now is prime time to hone your power and glory; to indulge your urge to shine and dazzle; to be as conspicuously marvelous as you dare to be.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Life is a vast and intricate conspiracy that's guaranteed to keep you 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 it's just as likely that the blessings will be interesting surprises, dizzying adventures, gifts you hardly know what to do with, and conundrums that dare you to get smarter.

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

Sculptor Henry Moore had a similar idea. He said, "The secret of life 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."

So in other words, pronoia does not guarantee that you will forevermore be free of all difficult experiences.

It doesn't ask you to pretend that everything is sweet and harmonious all the time.

On the contrary, when you embody the spirit of pronoia, you build your optimism by loving your challenges, not repressing them.

You know that your problems are gifts from the Goddess that are designed to make you smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier.

You welcome each fresh puzzle as a potential source of your future bliss, as an exciting teaching that will usher you to your next breakthrough.

To hear or read the rest of the essay "Shadow Blessings," go here.

The coming days will be an excellent time to concoct an alchemical potion that will heal your oldest wounds. For best results, mix and sip a gallon of potion using the following magic ingredients: absinthe, chocolate syrup, cough medicine, dandelion tea, cobra venom, and worm's blood. APRIL FOOL! I mixed a lie in with a truth. It is a fact that now is a fine time to seek remedies for your ancient wounds. But the potion I recommended is bogus. Go on a quest for the real cure.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Some religious traditions teach the doctrine, "Kill off your longings." In their view, attachment to desire is at the root of human suffering. But the religion of materialism takes the opposite tack, asserting that the meaning of life is to be found in indulging desires. Its creed is, "Feed your cravings like a French foie gras farmer cramming eight pounds of maize down a goose's gullet every day."

At the Beauty and Truth Lab, we walk a middle path. We believe there are both degrading desires that enslave you and sacred desires that liberate you.

Psychologist Carl Jung believed that all desires have a sacred origin, no matter how odd they may seem. Frustration and ignorance may contort them into distorted caricatures, but it is always possible to locate the divine source from which they arose. In describing one of his addictive patients, Jung said: "His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst for wholeness, or as expressed in medieval language: the union with God."

Psychotherapist James Hillman echoes the theme: "Psychology regards all symptoms to be expressing the right thing in the wrong way." A preoccupation with porn or romance novels, for instance, may come to dominate a passionate person whose quest for love has degenerated into an obsession with images of love. "Follow the lead of your symptoms," Hillman suggests, "for there's usually a myth in the mess, and a mess is an expression of soul."

To hear or read the rest of this essay "What If Your Desires Are Holy?", go here.

I expect you will soon receive a wealth of exotic and expensive gifts. For example, a benefactor may finance your vacation to a gorgeous sacred site or give you the deed to an enchanted waterfall. I won't be surprised if you're blessed with a solid gold bathtub or a year's supply of luxury cupcakes. It's even possible that a sugar daddy or sugar momma will fork over $500,000 to rent an auditorium for a party in your honor. APRIL FOOL! I distorted the truth. I do suspect you'll get more goodies than usual in the coming weeks, but they're likely to come in the form of love and appreciation, not flashy material goods. (For best results, don't just wait around for the goodies to stream in; ask for them!)

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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.

I'm going to give you a ritual called "Re-Genius Yourself," which you can use to jump-start the process. Below is an excerpt. To hear or read the entire ritual, go here.

You came into this world as a radiant bundle of exuberant riddles. You slipped into this dimension as a shimmering burst of spiral hallelujahs. You blasted into this realm as a lush explosion of ecstatic gratitude. And it is your birthright to fulfill those promises.

I'm not pandering to your egotism by telling you these things. When I say, "Be yourself," I don't mean you should be the self that wants to win every game and use up every resource and stand alone at the end of time on top of a Mt. Everest-sized pile of pretty garbage.

When I say, "Be yourself," I mean the self that says "Thank you!" to the wild irises and the windy rain and the people who grow your food.

When I say, "Be yourself," I mean the rebel creator who's longing to make the whole universe your home and sanctuary.

When I say, "Be yourself," I mean the dissident bodhisattva who's joyfully struggling to germinate the seeds of divine love that are packed inside every moment.

When I say, "Be yourself," I mean the spiritual freedom fighter who's scrambling and finagling and conspiring to relieve your fellow messiahs from their suffering and shower them with rowdy blessings.

To hear or read the rest of this essay "Re-Genius Yourself," go here.

There's a narrow waterway between Asia and Europe. In the fifth century B.C., Persian King Xerxes had two bridges built across it so he could invade Greece with his army. But a great storm swept through and smashed his handiwork. Xerxes was royally peeved. He ordered his men to whip the uncooperative sea and brand it with hot irons, all the while shouting curses at it, like "You are a turbid and briny river." I recommend that you do something similar, Scorpio. Has Nature done anything to inconvenience you? Show it who's the Supreme Boss! APRIL FOOL! I lied. The truth is, now is an excellent time for you to become more attuned and in love with a Higher Power, however you define that. What's greater than you and bigger than your life and wilder than you can imagine? Refine your practice of the art of surrender.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Your imagination is the single most important asset you possess. It's your power to create mental pictures of things that don't exist yet and that you want to bring into being. It's the magic wand you use to shape your future.

And so in your own way, you are a prophet. You generate countless predictions every day. Your imagination is the source, tirelessly churning out images of what you will be doing later.

The featured prophecy of the moment may be as simple as a psychic impression of yourself eating a fudge brownie at lunch or as monumental as a daydream of some year building your dream home by a lake or sea.

Your imagination is a treasure when it spins out scenarios that are aligned with your deepest desires. In fact, it's an indispensable tool in creating the life you want; it's what you use to form images of the conditions you'd like to inhabit and the objects you hope to wield. Nothing manifests on this planet unless it first exists as a mental picture.

But for most of us, the imagination is as much a curse as a blessing. We're often just as likely to use it to conjure up premonitions that are at odds with our conscious values. That's the result of having absorbed toxic programming from the media and from our parents at an early age and from other influential people in our past.

Fearful fantasies regularly pop up into our awareness, many disguising themselves as rational thoughts and genuine intuitions. Those fearful fantasies may hijack our psychic energy, directing it to exhaust itself in dead-end meditations.

Every time we entertain a vision of being rejected or hurt or frustrated, every time we rouse and dwell on a memory of a painful experience, we're blasting ourselves with a hex . . . .

Read or hear the rest of "You Are a Prophet."

Fifteenth-century Italian painter Filippo Lippi was such a lustful womanizer that he sometimes found it tough to focus on making art. At one point, his wealthy and politically powerful patron Cosimo de' Medici, frustrated by his extracurricular activities, imprisoned him in his studio to ensure he wouldn’t get diverted. Judging from your current astrological omens, Sagittarius, I suspect you need similar constraints. APRIL FOOL! I fibbed a little. I am indeed worried you'll get so caught up in the pursuit of pleasure that you'll neglect your duties. But I won't go so far as to suggest you should be locked up for your own good.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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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.

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.

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.

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?

Go here to read or hear the rest of "The Experiment."

Now is a favorable time to slap a lawsuit on your mom in an effort to make her pay for the mistakes she made while raising you. You could also post an exposé on social media in which you reveal her shortcomings, or organize a protest rally outside her house with your friends holding signs demanding she apologize for how she messed you up. APRIL FOOL! Everything I just said was ridiculous and false. The truth is, now is a perfect moment to meditate on the gifts and blessings your mother gave you. If she is still alive, express your gratitude to her. If she has passed on, do a ritual to honor and celebrate her.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Many of us are essentially asleep, even as we walk around in broad daylight. We're so focused on the restless narratives and repetitive fantasies unfurling in our heads that we only dimly perceive the larger story raging in all of its chaotic beauty around us.

To have any hope of permanently breaking out of our fuzzy trance, we require regular shocks. A single jolt might cause us to briefly come to attention and see the miracle of creation for what it is, but once the red alert has passed, we relax back into our fixation on the dreamy tales our mind never stops telling us.

In the course of its conspiracy to shower us with blessings, life does its best to provide us with a steady flow of healing shocks. But because it tends to err on the side of tenderness, its prods may be too gentle, allowing us to ignore them. Gradually, life will up the ante, trying to find the right mix of toughness and love, as it encourages us to WAKE UP!

But our addiction to the phantasmagoria is tenacious. The stream-of-conscious narratives and ever-bubbling fantasies, even when they're racked with torment and terror, are perversely entertaining. And so we may avoid responding to the kind shocks for so long that life finally has to resort to stronger medicine. Then we might get sick or lose our job or muck up our closest relationship.

It doesn't have to be that way. We could cultivate in ourselves a sixth sense for the wake-up calls life sends us. We might develop a knack for responding with agile grace to the early, gentler ones so that we wouldn't have to be visited by the more stringent measures . . . .

Go here to read or hear the rest of "Healing Shocks."

Aquarian author Alice Walker won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Color Purple. She has also published 33 other books and built a large audience. But some of her ideas are not exactly mainstream. For example, she says that one of her favorite authors is David Icke, who asserts that intelligent extraterrestrial reptiles have disguised themselves as humans and taken control of our planet's governments. I bring this to your attention, because I think it's time that you, too, reveal the full extent of how crazy you really are. APRIL FOOL! I half-lied. While it's true that now is a favorable time to show more of your unconventional and eccentric sides, I don't advise you to go full-on whacko.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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More and more creative people find they do their best work when they're feeling healthy and secure. We know writers who no longer need to be drunk or in agony in order to shed the numbness of their daily routine and tap into the full powers of their imagination.

We have filmmaker friends whose best work flows not from the depths of alienated self-doubt but rather from the heights of well-earned bliss.

Singer-songwriter P.J. Harvey is the patron saint of this new breed. "When I'm contented, I'm more open to receiving a lot of inspiration," she has testified. "I'm most creative when I feel safe and happy" . . . .

Hear or read the rest of this meditation.

Warning! Danger! You are at risk of contracting a virulent case of cherophobia! And what exactly is cherophobia? It's a fear of happiness. It's an inclination to dodge and shun joyful experiences because of the suspicion that they will disappoint you or cause bad luck. Please do something to stop this insidious development. APRIL FOOL! I lied. The truth is that you are currently more receptive to positive emotions and delightful events than you've been in a log time. There's less than a one-percent chance you will fall victim to cherophobia.

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Dear Goddess: Please make it immoral, illegal, irrelevant, unpatriotic, and totally tasteless for us to be in love with anyone or anything that's no good for us.

Teach us to know the difference between oppressive self-control and liberating self-control.

Awaken in us the power to do the half-right thing when it is impossible to do the totally right thing . . . .

Read or hear the rest of the Goddess Prayer.