Week of February 7th, 2019
Requesting Gifts!
I was born under the sign of Cancerian the Crab. One of the potential weaknesses of our tribe is that we can tend to be almost pathologically self-sufficient. Some of us may find it challenging to ask for help and support. In my continuing effort to overcome this inclination, I'm asking for your gifts!If you would like to contribute to me and my well-being, please visit my Gift Page. Give your gift via the "Friends and Family" option.
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.
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YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE ANYTHING YOU DON'T WANT TO BE
You don't have to be anything you don't want to be. You don't have to live up to anyone's expectations.
There's no need to strive for a kind of perfection that's not very interesting to you.
You don't have to believe in ideas that make you sad or tormented.
You don't have to feel emotions that others try to manipulate you into feeling.
EACH OF US IS A BLEND
Each one of us is a blend of life and death. In the most literal sense, our bodies always contain old cells that are dying and new cells that are emerging as replacements.
From a more metaphorical perspective, our familiar ways of seeing and thinking and feeling are constantly atrophying, even as fresh modes emerge. Both losing and winning are woven into every day; sinking down and rising up; shrinking and expanding.
In any given phase of our lives, one or the other polarity is often more pronounced. But sometimes they are evenly balanced; the Seasons of Rot and of Regeneration happen at the same time.
Where are you at in the cycle right now?
PHOTO OP
Photo of me in the desert surrounded by Love
ENRICHING OUR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Many of us don't always know what we feel. We may have a vivid sense that we feel something, but we're not sure what it is. That's why musicians, writers, actors, and other creative people play such a crucial role in our emotional lives. Their work can help us articulate the enigmas fermenting within us.
But here's the problem: A majority of the artists who are easiest for us to find aren't exceptionally smart or original; they specialize in expressing hackneyed feelings.
Meanwhile, many of the very best creators "remain in relative obscurity because of their resistance to formula efforts," writes journalist Alan Cabal. "Mediocrities latch onto whatever hits and repeat it endlessly in pursuit of cash or celebrity or both." If we look to the latter for illumination, we're cheated.
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Proposed experiments:
Get tough with the lazy or wounded part of you that is drawn to the mediocrities.
Compile a roster of virtuosos who have developed a high level of proficiency in extracting esthetically exciting meaning from the fascinating chaos around us.
Expose yourself exclusively to their work, devotedly avoiding the mediocrities' stuff, for a given period, say 30 days. Describe how this transforms you.
SPECIFIC GOALS WORK BEST
"Having very broad and abstract goals may maintain and exacerbate depression. Goals that are not specific are more ambiguous and, therefore, harder to visualize.
"If goals are hard to visualize it may result in reduced expectation of realizing them which in turn results in lower motivation to try and achieve them."
- Researchers at the institute of Health, Psychology, and Society
Read more.
CUTTING LOOSE
Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose from
all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.
Arbitrary, sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell you where it is, and you
can slide your way past trouble.
Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path – but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be
lost, learning how real it is
here on the earth, again and again.
– William Stafford, “Cutting Loose” in Dancing with Joy: 99 Poems edited by Roger Housden
MY DAUGHTER ZOE'S CURATION
On Tuesday, February 12 at 7 pm, my daughter Zoe Brezsny is curating a poetry reading by renegade luminaries Cecilia Vicuña and Will Alexander.
The event is at Hauser & Wirth Gallery, 548 West 22nd Street in New York City. It's free.
Cecilia Vicuña is a poet, conceptual artist, and activist. Will Alexander has served as Poet Laureate of Los Angeles and is a poet, essayist, and visual artist.
Vicuña’s rapturous songs about human rights, ecological preservation, and feminine politics will synergize Alexander’s longing "To imparadise the soul by humming butterfly dirges."
Alexander’s "Above the Human Nerve domain" will join with Vicuña’s "Ancient & Star-Flowered" to re- sensitize us, to tune us in to the world beneath the world, to the word under the word.
Vicuña’s divinations, which arm us "with the visions of words," will conspire with Alexander’s scientifically precise language, which is never cold and exacting, but rather lit with a spiritual and surreal incandescence.
More info here.
MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
For more about the good news stories below, plus links to the articles that provide full evidence, go here: https://tinyurl.com/ya8kb4rh
1. Spain said it would create a new marine wildlife reserve for the migrations of whales and dolphins in the Mediterranean and will prohibit all future fossil fuels exploration in the area.
2. Following "visionary" steps by Belize, UNESCO removed the Belize Barrier Reef, the second largest in the world, from its list of endangered World Heritage Sites.
3. Colombia officially expanded the Serranía de Chiribiquete (also known as The Cosmic Village of the Jaguars) to 4.3 million hectares, making it the largest protected tropical rainforest national park in the world.
4. Mexico said its population of wild jaguars, the largest feline in the Americas, grew by 20% in the past eight years, and 14 Latin American countries signed an agreement to implement a regional conservation program for the big cats through 2030.
5. In the forests of central Africa, the population of mountain gorillas, one of the world’s most endangered species, was reported to have increased by 25% since 2010, to over 1,000 individuals.
6. Canada signed another conservation deal with its First Nations people, creating the largest protected boreal forest (an area twice the size of Belgium) on the planet.
7. Chile passed a new law protecting the waters along its coastline, creating nine marine reserves and increasing the area of ocean under state protection from 4.3% to 42.4%.
8. The Seychelles created a new 130,000 square kilometer marine reserve in the Indian Ocean, protecting their waters from illegal fishing for generations to come.
9. New Caledonia agreed to place 28,000 square kilometers of its ocean waters under protection, including some of the world’s most pristine coral reefs.
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. Her website is here.
Ro utilizes a blend of well-trained intuition, emotional warmth, and 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. She integrates psychological insight with astrology's cosmological perspective.
Ro is based in California, but can do phone consultations and otherwise work with you regardless of geographic boundaries.
Check out Ro's website.
YOUR 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.
THE BEGINNING
Years ago, on a bleak January morning, I unexpectedly found my fortune. While waiting in the food stamp office for my monthly allotment, I grabbed the local newspaper and turned to its help wanted section. "Horoscope columnist needed, $15 a week," it said.
My first reaction was "feh." As a proud practitioner of the art of astrology, I'd always disliked horoscope columns for how they pandered to the superstitious instincts in people.
But on second thought, I mused, why not try to revolutionize the genre, So I dashed off 12 poetic horoscopes and submitted them. Success! So began my surprising career.
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Ah! But here's an important caveat: I wrote my Free Will Astrology column for 17 years before it earned me enough money to rise above the poverty line. I'm glad I stuck with it!
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"Follow your bliss and the money will come." I believed that quixotic slogan from the moment I first heard it many years ago. And I continued to cling to it even during those long lean eons when I was following my bliss like a madman and cooking my twice-a-day rice and beans on a hot plate in my one-room shack.
Now, at last, having graduated to more sumptuous digs and a more varied diet, I've acquired the wisdom to know that my beloved slogan is incomplete. It should read, "Follow your bliss and the money will come--although it might take 10 or 15 or, hell, even 20 years."
HAVING NO PROBLEMS MAY BE DANGEROUS
It may actually be dangerous to have nothing to worry about, no problems to solve, no friction to heat you up. That state can stimulate an unconscious yearning for any old dumb trouble that might stir up some excitement.
"We should feel excited about the problems we confront and our ability to deal with them," said Robert A. Wilson. "Solving problems is one of the highest and most sensual of all our brain functions."
A MILLION FORMS OF MEDITATION? A BILLION?
Many spiritual teachers say you're most likely to succeed at meditation if you sit quietly in a sanctuary. They believe you need to retreat from the world in order to develop compassionate objectivity about life.
The 18th-century Zen Buddhist teacher Hakuin Ekaku had a different view. "Meditation in the midst of activity is a billion times superior to meditation in stillness" was his motto.
“The most anti-capitalist protest is to care for another and to care for yourself. To take on the historically feminized and therefore invisible practice of nursing, nurturing, caring. To take seriously each other’s vulnerability and fragility and precarity, and to support it, honor it, empower it. To protect each other, to enact and practice community. A radical kinship, an interdependent sociality, a politics of care.”
— Johanna Hedva, Sick Woman Theory
MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
For more about the good news stories below, plus links to the articles that provide full evidence, GO HERE.
1. The Kofan people of Sinangoe, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, won a landmark legal battle to protect the headwaters of the Aguarico River, nullifying 52 mining concessions and freeing up more than 32,000 hectares of primary rainforest.
2. Following China’s ban on ivory last year, 90% of Chinese support it, ivory demand has dropped by almost half, and poaching rates are falling in places like Kenya.
3. The population of wild tigers in Nepal was found to have nearly doubled in the last nine years, thanks to efforts by conservationists and increased funding for protected areas.
4. Deforestation in Indonesia fell by 60%, as a result of a ban on clearing peatlands, new educational campaigns, and better law enforcement.
5. The United Nations said that the ozone hole would be fully healed over the Arctic and the northern hemisphere by the 2030s, and in the rest of the world by 2060.
6. $10 billion (the largest amount ever for ocean conservation) was committed in Bali this year for the protection of 14 million square kilometers of the world’s oceans.
7. In California, the world’s smallest fox was removed from the Endangered Species List, the fastest recovery of any mammal under the Endangered Species Act.
8. In 2018, after more than ten years of debate, 140 nations agreed to begin negotiations on a historic “Paris Agreement for the Ocean,” the first-ever international treaty to stop overfishing and protect life in the high seas.
9. Niger revealed that it has planted 200 million new trees in three decades, the largest positive transformation of the environment in African history.
THE SPIRITUAL PATH OF INTIMACY
In the old-fashioned patriarchal vision of myth, the hero is typically a solitary male who renounces intimate companionship to pursue his glorious, arduous quest. Along the way, sporadic help may arrive from an ineffable muse or deity.
But there are alternative scenarios for the hero's journey. In the tantric tradition, for instance, a seeker's connection with a beloved human companion is essential to his or her spiritual inquiry.
Some early Christians described Jesus and Mary Magdalene as equal collaborators. Sufi mystic poet Rumi may not have actually made love with his teacher Shams (then again, he might have), but it's clear the two men sought divine communion together, not through lonely solo work.
Some modern teachers have also broken from the narrow perspective. The quest for illumination, they say, can thrive on the challenges of loving and living with an actual person. In John Welwood's *Love and Awakening*, the author reimagines relationship as an "alliance of warriors" devoted to awakening each other's "holy longing."
MY OFFICE
I really enjoy writing horoscopes for you. It's an interesting way to express my love for you! It's also a fun way to keep reimagining and reinventing the way I understand the ever-changing world.
Here's a photo of me in the sunny office where I create them.
DON'T BE DAUNTED
"Do not be daunted by the insurmountability of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it."
— The Talmud
DELICACIES
My diet is almost always organic and vegetarian and uncanned, but I'm breaking my routine to sample these delicacies.
DIMINISHING MISOGYNY
One of my main life goals is to do what I can to dramatically diminish misogyny. To that end, I ask my male readers to consider the testimony offered in this article: "On Being a Woman in America While Trying to Avoid Being Assaulted"
EBULLIENT PROTEST SONGS
Here's a favorite new song from an activist poet and rapper who lives on the Feminist Planet I emigrated to a while back.
I'd love to hear more ebullient protest songs like this. If you know of any, please tell me. Truthrooster@gmail.com
Listen.
INTERNATIONAL CRYING WEEK
This is International Crying Week. You have a poetic license to sob, mourn, lament, blubber, and weep because of deep sadness or unreasonable joy or cathartic epiphanies or compassion for the suffering of others or visions of the interconnectedness of all life.
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In his book "Crying: the Natural and Cultural History of Tears," Tom Lutz asserts that people don't cry as much as they used to. The English of the Victorian era, supposedly renowned for their stuffy behavior, put us to shame with their abundant outpouring of tears.
So what's our excuse? There's as much, if not more, to be mournful about nowadays; and we certainly don't suffer from a lack of events to spur our cathartic joy and empathy.
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Walk into the hills or woods and find a large rock jutting up out of the earth in a place that makes you feel at home. Sit down on or next to that rock and let go of the tightly wound emotions you've been holding onto. Sob or sigh or babble until you achieve a spiritual orgasm that will clear your mind of all its gunk and free you to make the decision you've been postponing.
Ever hereafter you will call this the Crying Rock, and you will go there whenever you need the kind of release that only a beloved natural power spot can facilitate.
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My friend Marika 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.
Another friend, Ariane, weeps now and then out of self-pity, but more often her sobs are triggered by overwhelming beauty, like the sight of the last dragonfly of Indian summer alighting beside her as she gazes on Mt. Tamalpais at dusk and feels the first kick of the growing baby inside her belly.
Myself, I experience my tears as a well-earned triumph, whether they're driven by loss or fullness; they're the sign of the inner work I've done to feel things deeply.
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Rambunctious singer Tom Waits is not known for his scientific research, but a few years ago he made a valuable contribution in the quest to measure sadness.
Holding a spoon to his cheek during an especially blue period of his life, he found that it takes 121 teardrops to fill a teaspoon.
Building on his work, I've discovered that crying for joy causes a spoon to overflow after only 98 tears, suggesting that they're bigger.
I invite you to do further studies on this subject. Tap into watery breakthroughs of several varieties, ranging from the relatively poignant to the outrageously sublime.
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In Janet Fitch's novel *White Oleander*, a character makes a list of "twenty-seven names for tears," including "Heartdew. Griefhoney. Sadwater. Die tränen. Eau de douleur. Los rios del corazón."
(The last three can be translated as "The Tears," "Water of Pain," and "The Rivers of the Heart.")
I invite you to emulate this playfully extravagant approach to the art of crying. Now is an excellent time to celebrate and honor your sadness, as well as all the other rich emotions that provoke tears. You'll be wise to feel profound gratitude for your capacity to feel so deeply.
For best results, go in search of experiences and insights that will unleash the full cathartic power of weeping. Act as if empathy is a superpower.
BEHIND YOUR BACK
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.
READING THE SIGNS
Greek philosopher Plotinus wrote, "The stars are like letters that inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky. Everything in the world is full of signs. All events are coordinated. All things depend on each other. Everything breathes together."
Which prompts me to say: So it's not just the distant globes whose movements and relationships serve as divinatory clues. If you're sufficiently attuned to the gestalt of creation and pay close enough attention to its unfolding details, you can read the current mood of the universe in the arrangement of red onions in the grocery store bin or the fluttering of sunlight and shadow on the mimosa tree or the scatter of soap suds in your sink after you've finished washing the dishes.
Can you do it? Discern the signature of creation at this or any other perfect moment? Peer into the secret heart of the collective unconscious? Guess what the Goddess is thinking?
Hint: It will help if you keep working on transforming your imagination from a mere fantasy-generator into an organ of perception.
WHEN THE IMAGINATION IS POTENT
Some people put their faith in religion or science or political ideologies. English novelist J.G. Ballard placed his faith elsewhere: in the imagination.
"I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world," he wrote, "to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen."
How do you use the power of imagination to remake the world?
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. Her website is here.
Ro utilizes a blend of well-trained intuition, emotional warmth, and 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. She integrates psychological insight with astrology's cosmological perspective.
Ro is based in California, but can do phone consultations and otherwise work with you regardless of geographic boundaries.
Check out Ro's website.
