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SPIRIT VERSUS SOUL

"I call the high and light aspects of my being spirit," says the Dalai Lama, "and the dark and heavy aspects soul.?

"Soul is at home in the deep, shaded valleys. Heavy torpid flowers saturated with black grow there. The rivers flow like warm syrup.

"Spirit is a land of high, white peaks and glittering jewel -- like lakes and flowers. Life is sparse and sounds travel great distances."

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In his book Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships, psychotherapist John Welwood writes, "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.

"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."

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To these formulas I would add that the spirit is about rising above and seeking what's most noble, while the soul is about diving in and wrestling with exactly what is.

Both tasks are valuable. Neither realm is inherently better or more important. If you have a bias one way or the other, it's usually best to be conscientious about maintaining a balance.






YOU BELONG TO YOURSELF

While you commune with us here at the Conspiracy to Commit Insurrectionary Beauty and Smart Love:

Your favorite phrase might be "flux gusto"

The colors of your soul might be sable, vermilion, ivory, and jade

Your special emotion might be skeptical faith

Your magic talisman might be a thousand-year-old Joshua tree whose flowers blossom just one night each year and can only be pollinated by the yucca moth

The garage sale item you most resemble might be an old but beautiful and sonorous accordion with a broken key

Your sweet spot might be in between the true believers and the scoffing skeptics

Your sacred fungus might be yeast and your soil of destiny might be peat moss

The shape of your life might be oval with soft dark sparks

Your lucky number might be 3.14159265

Your lucky phobia might be arachibutyrophobia, or the fear of peanut butter adhering to the roof of your mouth

Your holiest pain might come from your yearning to change yourself in the exact way you'd like the world around you to change





The preceding blips are excerpts from my book
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia. It's available at Amazon and Powells.





LIFE IS A BARGAIN

Every wise man I met in Asia warned me against caring.
Explained how everything I loved would get old,
or be taken away and I would suffer.
I tried to explain what a bargain it is.

- Jack Gilbert, "Nights and Four Thousand Mornings"

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?What if the heart does not pale as the body wanes,
but is like the sun that blazes hotter each day
on these immense, perishing fields? What then??

? Jack Gilbert, "Getting Ready?

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"come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed."

? Lucille Clifton

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"The secret title of all good poems could be 'Tenderness.'"

? Galway Kinnell


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"Are You the Lamb of Your Own Forgiving?

I mean: Can you forgive yourself / all
those crimes without victims?"

? Richard Brautigan





BLISS BLITZ

In response to our culture's ever-rising levels of noise and frenzy, rites of purification have become more popular. Many people now recognize the value of taking periodic retreats. Withdrawing from their usual compulsions, they go on fasts, avoid mass media, practice celibacy, or even abstain from speaking. While we applaud cleansing ceremonies like this, we recommend balancing them with periodic outbreaks of an equal and opposite custom: the Bliss Blitz.

During this celebration, you tune out the numbing banality of the daily grind. But instead of shrinking into asceticism, you indulge in uninhibited explorations of joy, release, and expansion. Turning away from the mildly stimulating distractions you seek out when you're bored or worried, you become inexhaustibly resourceful as you search for unsurpassable sources of cathartic pleasure. Try it for a day or a week: the Bliss Blitz.





VOWS

I invite you to speak these vows out loud:

As long as I live, I vow to die and be reborn, die and be reborn, die and be reborn, over and over again, forever reinventing myself.

I promise to be stronger than hate, wetter than water, deeper than the abyss, and wilder than the sun.

I pledge to remember that I am not only a sweating, half-asleep, excitable, bumbling jumble of desires, but that I am also an immortal four-dimensional messiah in continuous telepathic touch with all of creation.

I vow to love and honor my highs and my lows my yeses and noes, my give and my take, the life I wish I had and the life I actually have.

I promise to push hard to get better and smarter, grow my devotion to the truth, fuel my commitment to beauty, refine my emotions, hone my dreams, wrestle with my shadow, purge my ignorance, and soften my heart -- even as I always accept myself for exactly who I am, with all of my so-called foibles and wobbles.





YOU ARE LUCKY!

One of life's great bounties is its changeableness, which ensures that boredom will never last very long. You may underestimate the intensity of your longing for continual transformation, but the universe doesn't.

That's why it provides you with the boundless entertainment of your ever-shifting story. That's why it is always revising the challenges it sends your way, providing your curious soul with a rich variety of unpredictable teachings.

Neuroscientists have turned up evidence that suggests you love this aspect of the universe's behavior. They say that you are literally addicted to learning. At the moment when you grasp a lesson you've been grappling with, your brain experiences a rush of a natural opium-like chemical, boosting your pleasure levels. You crave this experience. You thrive on it.

So the universe is built in such a way as to discourage boredom. It does this not just by generating an endless stream of interesting novelty, and not only by giving you an instinctive lust to keep learning, but also by making available an abundance of ways to break free of your habitual thoughts.

You can go to school, travel, read, listen to experts, converse with people who think differently from you, and absorb the works of creative artists. You can replenish and stretch your mind through exercise, sex, psychotherapy, spiritual practices, and self-expression. You can take drugs and medicines that alter your perspectives.

And here's the best part of this excellent news: Every method that exists for expanding your consciousness is more lavishly available right now than it has been at any previous time in history.

Never before have there been so many schools, educational programs, workshops, and enrichment courses. Virtually any subject or skill you want to study, you can. You don't even have to leave your home to do it. The number of online classes is steadily mounting . . . .

Read the rest of this essay here.





The preceding blips are excerpts from my book
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia. It's available at Amazon and Powells.





INTERVIEW

You: "What do you talk about when you want to activate the imagination of someone you care for?"

Me: "I talk about the beauty they possess but don't know much about."

You: "How do you become smarter in the way you love?"

Me: "Before I ask anyone to consider changing their attitude or behavior, I first change myself in that exact way."

You: "What's the skill that you may be destined to become a master of, even though it's difficult for you to learn?"

Me: "Knowing the difference between ego-driven obsession and compassionate passion."





LIST OF ESSENTIALS

1. Sunny, breezy ripples on your special day

2. A wild dream not quite hidden inside a safe dream

3. Time's gifts harvested at a moment of fierce weakness

4. Riddles and help from the Princess of Cups

5. Unexpected celebration; don't resist

6. You meet an alchemist disguised as a biologist

7. Waves of joyous chanting in the distance

8. Inspiration dissipates fear -- pink dawn

9. Song of the weird, sweet healers

10. Message written in disappearing ink reappears

11. The valuable illusions of youth

12. Clarity in all of its shocking splendor

13. Green earth basks in blue moonlight

14. A whisper in the dark frees you from loss

15. Are your ready for your close-up?

16. Meeting the Guest on an island you love

17. A lily and a rose on your doorstep

18. A birch tree tells you a joke

19. A memory recreated out of the thick air

20. What renegade light reaches the ocean's floor

21. A forgotten bell rings, announcing your victory

22. Hummingbird swarm, delight or agitation

23. What comes next

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.





How's your fight for freedom going? Are you making progress in liberating yourself from your unconscious obsessions, bad habits, and conditioned responses?

Do you find that you're getting more skillful at minimizing your suffering? Are you turning out to be the hero of your own life?





TELLING STORIES INSTEAD OF SPOUTING OPINIONS

Ken Burns says one of the things that alarms him most at this moment in culture is that so many people are eager to express their opinions and so few are interested in telling stories.

So tell me a story! We'll talk about opinions later.

Here's one of my stories.

Send yours to me at Truthrooster@gmail.com





YOUR ONDINNONK

Ondinnonk is a Haudenosaunee word with two related meanings: 1. a secret wish of the soul, especially as revealed in dreams; 2. the spiritual part of our nature that longs to do good deeds.

How's your ondinnonk doing?





YOU TASTE DELICIOUS

You taste delicious
Animals understand you
Your importance is unusual

The funny faces you make are interesting to look at
You fight for power in all the right ways

Ecstatic gratitude is pouring out of you
I see the best in you
Your divine attitude

You have strong feet and a pioneer heart

No one can overflow as well as you can

You are famous with God
You are famous with me
You are famous with the snakes and birds
and roses and pines
and oceans and earth and sky

A lost tribe salutes you from the other side of the veil

You remind me of a star

Hear the song.





Question: What are the lifestyle choices that enhance your awareness and intelligence?

I invite you to send your answers to me.

Go to http://RealAstrology.com
and click on "Email Rob" at the bottom of the page.

Below are some of my answers.

I take good care of my body, emotional life, soul, spirit, and imagination.

Cultivate love as my primary orientation. Treat people well.

Listen to other kinds of intelligence besides humans'.

Listen listen listen. Be influence-able. Be willing to transform.

Relish and wrestle with and honor my nightly dreams.

Meditate 24/7.

Practice reverence for all of creation.

Understand the universe as divine play.

Consult Goddess on every decision.

Identify the best gifts I have to give and give them on a regular basis.

Figure out practical ways to express my compassion and lust for social justice.

Trust desire.

Feel gratitude for all I'm given.

Celebrate being alive even when I'm fearful or hurt.





YOUR ENTRANCE

Of the many things that have gone right for you during your time on Earth, the most crucial was your birth. As you crossed over the threshold, trading the warm dark sanctuary for the bright noisy enigma, you didn't die!

It was a difficult act of high magic that involved many people who worked very hard in your behalf. The skills they provided in helping you navigate your rite of passage were in turn made possible by previous generations of threshold-tenders who bequeathed their expertise.

Months before that initiation, a more secret miracle bloomed: Your life began as a single cell, spawned by the explosive fusion of two highly specialized bundles of chromosomes. How could that tiny package of raw material have possibly grown a brain and liver and heart and stomach over a period of a few months? What inscrutable genius guided and oversaw the emergence of your fully formed infant body, that virtuoso creation, from the slimmest of clues?

P.S. You have continued to grow since your birth, with millions of new cells continually blooming to replace the old ones that are always dying. At this moment, you're host to about 50 trillion cells, and each of them is really a sentient being in its own right. They all act together as a community, implementing the monumental collaboration you call your body.





"May a good vision catch me
May a benevolent vision take hold of me, and move me
May a deep and full vision come over me, and burst open around me

May a luminous vision inform me, enfold me.
May I awaken into the story that surrounds,
May I awaken into the beautiful story.

May the wondrous story find me;
May the wildness that makes beauty arise between two lovers
arise beautifully between my body and the body of this land,
between my flesh and the flesh of this earth,
here and now,
on this day,

May I taste something sacred."

?David Abram





The preceding blips are excerpts from my book
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia. It's available at Amazon and Powells.





PUBLIC APPEARANCES

In years past I've done numerous live shows and public appearances, but these days I'm hermetically sealed into my Cancerian sanctuary, working cheerfully and doggedly on new books.

I reckon I'll have a coming out party in the latter part of 2018 or the first part of 2019, with maybe a tour of North America and a run of my pagan revival show, "Sacred Uproar."

For now, here's a video of my show at Symbiosis.

Here's a video of an interview with me by an Italian journalist.





WHAT YOU MAY NEED

What you may need is a more curious and mysterious sweetness. A wilder, stronger sweetness. A sweetness that pulverizes illusions.





"Something unknown is doing we don't know what," said astrophysicist Arthur Eddington about the universe. And we are the beneficiaries.





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

The New York Times has finally buckled under my relentless pronoiac pressure, and is now offering a weekly GOOD NEWS section. Check it out.

Here are some headlines from recent stories:

A new national park system in Chile will be three times the size of Yosemite and Yellowstone combined.

Shade-grown coffee beans are good for birds.

Mr. Rogers will be immortalized on a postage stamp.

Two drugs could delay the spread of prostate cancer for years.

Some animals can count better than you.

India wants to give half a billion people free health care.

Tens of thousands of ancient Maya structures were revealed by lasers.

A special police force in the Netherlands helps animals in trouble.

American teenagers are smoking fewer cigarettes.





I invite you to nurture a goal that stretches your possibilities and opens your mind . . . a wild hope whose pursuit makes you smarter and stronger even if you never fully accomplish it.

I invite you to have an improbable quest playing at the edge of your imagination: a heroic task that provokes deep thoughts and noble passions even if it incites smoldering torment . . . an extravagant dream that's a bit farfetched but not entirely insane.





YOUR MONKEY MIND'S FAKE NEWS

Using our fears and superstitions and delusions as fuel, our monkey minds are churning out fake news about ourselves all the time.

One possible remedy: Treat our monkey mind's fake news with the same healthy, exuberant skepticism we do toward politicians' and media's fake news.





NEITHER ROSE-COLORED NOR CRAP-COLORED GLASSES

"I've found a nice balance," writes EarthMover, "between living like someone who has overdosed on delusional optimism and someone who thinks everything and everyone sucks. I can see things as they really are instead of through either rose-colored glasses or crap-colored glasses.

"That means I can cultivate true objectivity, not the fake cynical kind. I free myself from negative emotional biases that used to cloud my ability to see the partially hidden beauty all around me.

"At the same time, I'm not addicted to the idea that I should be eternally happy and blithe and sweet. When the dark moods descend on me, I trust them. I know they are openings into equally sacred perceptions and insights."





WELCOME TO THE BEAUTY AND TRUTH LAB

Welcome to the Beauty and Truth Lab. We're coming to you live from your repressed memories of paradise, reminding you that you can have anything you need if you will just ask for it in an unselfish way.

Welcome to the end of your nightmares, beauty and truth fans!

The world is young, your soul is free, and a naked celebrity is dying to talk to you about your most intimate secrets right now.

Just kidding.

In fact, the world is young, your soul is free, and at any moment you will feel a flood of ecstatic compassion for salamanders, oak trees, clouds, toasters, convenience store clerks, and even the ocean itself.

I'm your host. My name is the Sacred Janitor at the Edge of Time, and I'm proud to announce that this is a perfect moment.

It's a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you are on the verge of finally figuring out exactly what it is you really want more than anything else.

Bravo! Viva! Whoopee! Oooo Eureka! Hallelujah! Abracadabra!
Bravo! Viva! Whoopee! Oooo Eureka! Hallelujah! Abracadabra!

The Beauty and Truth Lab's experiments are brought to you by the pine trees whose seeds are so tightly compacted within their protective covering that only the intense heat of a forest fire can free them and allow them to sprout.

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Hear this welcome message as a song





THE CRUX OF THE FLUX

"Dear Rob: I sure don't like so much God stuff mixed into my horoscopes. Can you cut it out, please? I understand it's common for the desperate masses to believe in an Ultra Being, but you? Pul-lease. You're smarter than that. I just can't abide all the 'Divine Wow' and 'Cackling Goddess' nonsense that you dispense; it doesn't jibe with the practical, sensible, unsuperstitious, non-mushy world that I hold dear -- and that I see represented mostly accurately in your horoscopes. -Sally Skeptic."

Dear Sally: I can't accommodate you. You will have to keep dealing with the cognitive dissonance that arises from reading the oracles of a "smart" person who also has an intimate relationship with the Amazing Everything.

Just so you're clear about how I perceive the Living Intelligent Consciousness That Pervades Every Cubic Inch of the Universe: It is the interplay of the Supernal Hermaphrodites: the Divine Wow mistakenly called "God" and the Blooming HaHa mistakenly called "Goddess."

More precisely, it is the Torrential and Torturous Ecstasy spawned anew every nanosecond by the glide of the Divine Wow's virile eternity against the Blooming HaHa's voluptuous infinity. It is the Cosmic F*** that recreates the universe again and again in every nanosecond.

Here's my place in that mystery: I aspire to locate myself in the crux of the flux of the Cosmic F***.





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.





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.




"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.





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.