What's Your New Story

Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.

—Rainer Maria Rilke





WHAT'S THE STORY YOU WILL CREATE FOR YOURSELF IN 2020?

I've gathered together all of the Long-Range, Big-Picture Horoscopes I wrote for you in the past few weeks, and bundled them in one place. Go here to read a compendium of your forecasts for 2020.

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In addition to these, I've created EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES that go even further in Exploring Your Long-Term Destiny in 2020.

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

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

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

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

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

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





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.

Read past issues of the newsletter.

Sign up here for your free subscription.





FLYING VERSUS RUNNING

Sometimes I fly in my dreams. The ecstasy is almost unbearable as I soar high above the landscape. But there's something I enjoy dreaming about even more, and that's running. For years I've had recurring dreams of sprinting for sheer joy through green hills and meadows, often following rivers that go on forever. I'm never short of breath. My legs never get tired. I feel vital and vigorous and fulfilled.

Does it seem odd that I prefer running to flying? I think I understand why. The flying dreams represent the part of me that longs to escape the bonds of earth, to be free of the suffering and chaos here. My running dreams, on the other hand, express the part of me that loves being in a body and exults in the challenges of this world.

And you?





EVERY LITTLE INCREASE IN HUMAN FREEDOM

Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.

—Philip Pullman





MAGICK VERSUS YOGA

Essential to the practice of real Magick is the training of the imagination so that it serves one's highest purposes rather than being a reckless spinner-of-illusions that constantly leaks psychic energy.

In a related matter, here's what Crowley said: "To train the mind to move with the maximum speed and energy, with the utmost possible accuracy in the chosen direction, and with the minimum of disturbance or friction: That is Magick. To stop the mind altogether: That is Yoga."

My education seems to be more about learning Magick than Yoga, more about practicing Western Hermeticism than Buddhism. But both are good, fun, essential.





MY INNOCENCE

In some ways, I'm quite ripe, sophisticated, and savvy. In other ways, I'm innocent and simple-minded.

As evidence of the latter, I genuinely believe the following: We who care about truth and love and justice are not only in a fight for the soul of America

—we are also fighting to save the well-being and even the lives of millions of people of color, people below the poverty line, LGBTQ people, and immigrants.

We are also fighting to save the environment from the ecocidal practices of the earth's despoilers—and stop the mass extinction of species and the mass killing of animals.





WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT?

One thing is certain about your destiny in the coming years: life will conspire to bring you deep insights into the nature of reality—and the excited joy that comes with it.

If you decide to cooperate with life’s efforts, keep in mind these provocations from designer Elissa Giles:

“Enlightenment is not an asexual, dispassionate, head-in-the-clouds, nails-in-the-palms disappearance from the game of life. It’s a volcanic, kick-ass, erotic commitment to love in action, coupled with hard-headed practical grist.”





A GENEROUS THRASH OF DIVINE GRATITUDE

I want a heaven for my compassionate rage;

a paradise to house my greed for justice;

a choir singing blasphemous hymns for my affectionate lust;

hilarious hallelujahs for my lunatic confusion;

a generous thrash of divine gratitude for my wise mistakes, yearning terrors, & manic hopes





THE GRADUAL, SLOW-SIMMERING APPROACH

I'm all about the gradual, slow-simmering approach to just about everything.

My ongoing spiritual work-and-play is to practice small moment-by-moment meditations in the midst of "ordinary" life -- to experiment with the manageable daily self-transformations that are challenging but not impossibly heroic. What does it mean to be reverential and devotional toward every little thing that life offers me?

When I was younger I enjoyed cultivating senses-reeling ecstatic breakthrough on a regular basis. I still like that, of course -- it's essential! -- but now I'm equally inclined to commune with the chronic, low-level ecstatic union that thrives on opening to the Mystery wherever it shows up. Neither is "better," of course. I'm just talking about what has been right for me in recent years.

I aspire to practice tantra 24/7, worshiping and drawing inspiration from each gift the daily (and nightly) rhythm brings.

An important prod that led me in this direction was my 18+ years as a householder -- when I transitioned from being a rock and roll singer leading ecstatic magick-based communal rituals to being a writer and living with my partner and our child.

I don't recommend that for everyone, but it worked for me. Learning to communicate with and care for a child and be fully alive in an intimate relationship with a woman I love and respect were crucial in me learning to expand and deepen my capacity to communicate with a wide variety of beings. It was instrumental in teaching me a very practical mode of compassion.





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

A list of how things have gotten better since the dawn of last decade:

The developed world used less water, despite population growth

The whole world became less transphobic than it once was

The ozone layer started healing

Investment in green energy far, far exceeded investment in fossil fuels

The world got greener

Homicide rates fell worldwide

Weather forecasting became a lot more accurate

The number of people without electricity fell below one billion

Universal health care went from privileged ideal to global ambition

Read more.

Read still more.






"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





NAIVE OPTIMISM VERSUS CRAFTY OPTIMISM

Some people who know about my book *Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia* refuse to read it because they assume it's rooted in naive optimism and dumb hope. It's not, of course, which they would know if they simply read the first part of the first piece in the book, which goes as follows:

This is a perfect moment. It's a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you and I are waking up from our sleepwalking, thumbsucking, dumb-clucking collusion with the masters of illusion and destruction.

Thanks to them,
from whom the painful blessings flow,
we are waking up.

Their wars and tortures,
their crimes against nature,
extinctions of species
and brand new diseases.

Their spying and lying
in the name of the father,
sterilizing seeds and
trademarking water.

Molestations of God,
celebrations of shame,
stealing our dreams and
changing our names.

Their cunning commercials
and blood-sucking hustles,
their endless rehearsals
for the end of the world.

Thanks to them,
from whom the awful teachings flow,
we are waking up.

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In my book, I draw on the work of Martin Seligman, who founded the branch of psychology known as Positive Psychology. He has explained how Positive Psychology is different in significant ways from mere positive thinking, which can indeed be rooted in naive optimism and dumb hope..

Seligman writes, "Positive Psychology says that in spite of the many advantages of positive thinking, there are times when negative thinking is to be preferred.

"Although there are many scientific studies that correlate positivity with later health, longevity, sociability, and success, the balance of the evidence suggests that in some situations negative thinking leads to more accuracy.

"Where accuracy is tied to potentially bad outcomes, we should all be pessimists.

"With these benefits in mind, Positive Psychology aims for the optimal balance between positive and negative thinking. Many leaders in the Positive Psychology movement have spent decades working on the 'negative' side of things. Positive Psychology is a supplement to negative psychology, not a substitute."





WISDOM AND FUN

A reader scolded me, telling me that none of us should ever answer the question "Who am I?" We should always leave it an open question, he declared, and never speculate on what the answers might be.

I said, "I don't agree. It's fun and useful to come up with provisional answers to the question 'Who am I?", knowing that no answer is the final, definitive one."

He said, "Wisdom has nothing to do with fun."

I said, "For me, wisdom and fun are inextricably related and inseparable."

I said, "I get new answers to the question 'Who am I?' all the time, and will continue to do so forever."





MY POEM CAN BE YOUR POEM

I am a blast of sun
as it love-cracks the horizon

I am a bat careening precisely
to pounce like a shadow
on a resting spider

I am a midnight echoing
with hilarious coyote cries

I am a dusk fog that a strong man
gets lost in on the way home

I am two white-throated, white-bellied swifts
that mate as we fly

I am a broken necklace of pearls
fallen behind a dresser

I am the aroma of parched earth
as it's drenched with generous rain

I am a supermassive black hole
at the galactic center

I am a half-eaten doughnut in the dumpster,
brushed with tomato pulp

I am the glint of icicles
drooping from a fungus-wounded pine tree
and I am the pine tree and the fungus

I am a swoon of light that the moon
scatters on the creek mud at low tide
and the parade of five tiny crabs
that worship the luminosity

I am a persimmon on a tree
that is perfectly ripe to eat right now

I am a woman jogging fearlessly
through the birch tree forest
because all the predatory males
have disappeared

I am mushrooms
gleefully feasting on dead leaves
and flinging millions of spores
out on the genius wind

Why?
Because I'm nimble with good cheer
Because I'm in love with color and sound
Because I followed the orders of my raucous heart
Because I changed and changed and changed
until I couldn't stop, didn't want to stop changing
And now I am alive everywhere and everywhen





BELIEVING IN MARVELS

People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.

—author and researcher Charles Fort





You can't prepare
so don't prepare
for the marvelous music
the earth makes
whenever you invite
the sun's ever-changing light
to turn you into your unknown self





DISAPPEAR YOUR FEAR

Here’s your mantra: “I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity.”

Say it or sing it. Maybe let it flow out of you after you wake each morning and are still lying in bed. Or make it the last sound on your lips as you drop off to sleep.

Have fun with it. Dip into your imagination to come up with different ways to let it fly. Say it as your favorite cartoon character might say it, or like a person with a Swedish accent, like your inner teenager, like a parrot, like the person you’ll be when you’re 84 years old.

“I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity. I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity.”





EMPATHY IS A SUPERPOWER

The ability to imagine and empathize with the lives of others is a superpower.

A person who bases his political and philosophical opinions solely on his own personal life experience is dangerously deficient in his empathy and his ability to imagine the real lives of others.

Anyone who has an inability and unwillingness to conceive that others have different destinies than his, different problems and difficulties from his that make it difficult to do what he conceives himself as having done, is insulated by privilege.





MY FAMILY AND I

I'm sobbing daily for the world's pain.

But I feel healthy, and have a wonderful family.