According to humorist Dave Barry, "The method of learning Japanese recommended by experts is to be born as a Japanese baby and raised by a Japanese family, in Japan." As you enter an intensely educational phase of your astrological cycle, I suggest you adopt a similar strategy toward learning new skills and mastering unfamiliar knowledge and absorbing fresh information. Immerse yourself in environments that will efficiently and effectively fill you with the teachings you need. A more casual, slapdash approach just won't enable you to take thorough advantage of your current opportunities to expand your repertoire.

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You can learn to be lucky. It's not a mystical force you're born with, but a habit you can develop. How? For starters, be open to new experiences, trust your gut wisdom, expect good fortune, see the bright side of challenging events, and master the art of maximizing serendipitous opportunities. For more help in attuning yourself to life's blessings, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

I think it's time for a sacred celebration: a blow-out extravaganza filled with reverence and revelry, singing and dancing, sensual delights and spiritual blessings. What is the occasion? After all these eons, your lost love has finally returned. And who exactly is your lost love? You! You are your own lost love! Having weaved and wobbled through countless adventures full of rich lessons, the missing part of you has finally wandered back. So give yourself a flurry of hugs and kisses. Start planning the jubilant hoopla. And exchange ardent vows, swearing that you'll never be parted again.

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Somewhere there's a treasure that has little value to anyone but you, and an intriguing secret that's meaningless to everyone except you, and a frontier that harbors a revelation only you would know how to exploit. Why not go in search of those things? For inspiration, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

The Louvre in Paris is the world's biggest art museum. Over 35,000 works are on display, packed into 15 acres. If you wanted to see every piece, devoting just a minute to each, you would have to spend eight hours a day there for many weeks. I bring this to your attention, Gemini, because I suspect that now would be a good time for you to treat yourself to a marathon gaze-fest of art in the Louvre—or any other museum. For that matter, it's a favorable phase to gorge yourself on any beauty anywhere that will make your soul freer and smarter and happier. You will thrive to the degree that you absorb a profusion of grace, elegance, and loveliness.

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When they say, "Be yourself," which self do they mean? Certainly not the self that wants to win every game and use up every resource and think of nobody's needs except your own.

So when they say, "Be yourself," which self are they referring to? Here’s what I think: It's the self that says "Thank you!" to the wild irises and the windy rain and the people who grow your food. It's the creator who's working to make the whole universe your home and sanctuary. It's the lover who longs to express your love of life everywhere you go.

For guidance, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

In my astrological opinion, you now have a mandate to exercise your rights to free speech with acute vigor. It's time to articulate all the important insights you've been waiting for the right moment to call to everyone's attention. It's time to unearth the buried truths and veiled agendas and ripening mysteries. It's time to be the catalyst that helps your allies to realize what's real and important, what's fake and irrelevant. I'm not saying you should be rude, but I do encourage you to be as candid as is necessary to nudge people in the direction of authenticity.

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Take inventory of the extent that "No" fills up your life. Notice how often you say or think: 1. "That's not right." 2. "I don't like that." 3. "I don't agree with that." 4. "They don't like me." 5. "I'm not very good." 6. "That should be different from what it is."

To be clear, I do think a certain amount of "NO!" is healthy. It can prevent people from violating your boundaries. It can steer you away from doing things you don't really want to do. But it's also crucial to your well-being that you have ready access to big supplies of the invigorating "YES!"

For help in retraining yourself to say "Yes!" at least 51% of the time, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

During summers in the far northern land of Alaska, many days have twenty hours of sunlight. Farmers take advantage of the extra photosynthesis by growing vegetables and fruits that are bigger and sweeter than crops grown further south. During the Alaska State Fair every August, you can find prodigies like 130-pound cabbages and 65-pound cantaloupes. I suspect you'll express a comparable fertility and productiveness during the coming weeks, Leo. You're primed to grow and create with extra verve. So let me ask you a key question: to which part of your life do you want to dedicate that bonus power?

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How's your crusade for personal freedom going? Are you making progress in liberating yourself from your unconscious obsessions, bad habits, and conditioned responses? Have you vowed to emancipate yourself from trivial wishes, unwarranted biases, and debilitating delusions?

I'm on your side! I'm trying to perform that magic in my own life! Maybe I can provide you with some assistance and inspiration in your campaign for greater personal freedom. If you'd like to get some of that good stuff, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

It's time for you to reach higher and dig deeper. So don't be a mere tinkerer nursing a lukewarm interest in mediocre stories and trivial games. Be a strategic adventurer in the service of exalted stories and meaningful games. In fact, I feel strongly that if you're not prepared to go all the way, you shouldn't go at all. Either give everything you've got or else keep it contained for now. Can you handle one further piece of strenuous advice, my dear? I think you will thrive as long as you don't settle for business as usual or pleasure as usual. To claim the maximum vitality that's available, you'll need to make exceptions to at least some of your rules.

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Assume that your drive to experience pleasure isn't a barrier to your spiritual growth, but is in fact essential to it. Proceed on the hypothesis that cultivating joy can make you a more ethical and compassionate person. Imagine that feeling good has something important to teach you every day. For inspiration in practicing this approach, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

"All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful," wrote author Flannery O'Connor. I think that's an observation worth considering. But I've also seen numerous exceptions to her rule. I know people who have eagerly welcomed grace into their lives even though they know that its arrival will change them forever. And amazingly, many of those people have experienced the resulting change as tonic and interesting, not primarily painful. In fact, I've come to believe that the act of eagerly welcoming change-inducing grace makes it more likely that the changes will be tonic and interesting. Everything I've just said will especially apply to you in the coming weeks.

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"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." So begins Charles Dickens' novel David Copperfield. I'd like to inspire you to write -- and live! -- a story of your own that begins like that. For help, tune into your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

There's a certain problem that has in my opinion occupied too much of your attention. It's really rather trivial in the big picture of your life, and doesn't deserve to suck up so much of your attention. I suspect you will soon see things my way, and take measures to move on from this energy sink. Then you'll be free to focus on a more interesting and potentially productive dilemma—a twisty riddle that truly warrants your loving attention. As you work to solve it, you will reap rewards that will be useful and enduring.

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I invite you to keep a running list of all the ways life delights you and helps you and energizes you. Describe everyday miracles you take for granted . . . the uncanny powers you possess . . . the small joys that occur so routinely you forget how much they mean to you . . . the steady flow of benefits bestowed on you by people you know and don't know. What works for you? What makes you feel at home in the world? For inspiration in this noble effort, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

Author Hélène Cixous articulated a poetically rigorous approach to love. I'll tell you about it, since in my astrological opinion you're entering a phase when you'll be wise to upgrade and refine your definitions of love, even as you upgrade and refine your practice of love. Here's Cixous: "I want to love a person freely, including all her secrets. I want to love in this person someone she doesn't know. I want to love outside the law: without judgment. Without imposed preference. Does that mean outside morality? No. Only this: without fault. Without false, without true. I want to meet her between the words, beneath language."

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All of creation loves you very much. Even now, people you know and people you don't know are collaborating to make sure you have all you need to make your next smart move. But are you willing to start loving life back with an equal intensity? The adoration it offers you has not exactly been unrequited, but there is room for you to be more demonstrative. For help in cultivating this approach, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

Capricorn author Henry Miller wrote that his master plan was "to remain what I am and to become more and more only what I am—that is, to become more miraculous." This is an excellent strategy for your use. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to renounce any tendency you might have to compare yourself to anyone else. You'll attract blessings as you wean yourself from imagining that you should live up to the expectations of others or follow a path that resembles theirs. So here's my challenge: I dare you to become more and more only what you are—that is, to become more miraculous.

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How could you turn your challenges into opportunities? Is there a way to gain power and influence in situations that have confused or frustrated you up until now? Could you use some help in digging deeper, below the surface, to find truths that have eluded your understanding? For clues to mysteries like these, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

London's British Museum holds a compendium of artifacts from the civilizations of many different eras and locations. Author Jonathan Stroud writes that it's "home to a million antiquities, several dozen of which were legitimately come by." Why does he say that? Because so many of the museum's antiquities were pilfered from other cultures. In accordance with current astrological omens, I invite you to fantasize about a scenario in which the British Museum's administrators return these treasures to their original owners. When you're done with that imaginative exercise, move on to the next one, which is to envision scenarios in which you recover the personal treasures and goodies and powers that you have been separated from over the years.

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Grace emerges in the ebb and flow, not just the flow. The waning reveals a different blessing than the waxing. Where are you in the great cycle of your life? Could you use more guidance in figuring out the nuances of your mysterious story? For inspiration in figuring it all out, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

"I hate it when people tell me that I should 'get out of my comfort zone,'" writes Piscean blogger Rosespell. "I don't even have a comfort zone. My discomfort zone is pretty much everywhere." I have good news for Rosespell and all of you Pisceans who might be inclined to utter similar testimony. The coming weeks will feature conditions that make it far more likely than usual that you will locate or create a *real* comfort zone you can rely on. For best results, cultivate a vivid expectation that such a sweet development is indeed possible.

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Whether it's your time to gather your strength in the shadows or exude your lust for life in the sun, fresh power to transform yourself is on the way. Life always delivers the creative energy you need to change into the new thing you must become. You can count on it! So be alert for it. Be receptive to it. And for more help in understanding your fascinating destiny, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.