Your Best Story

I've found a nice balance," writes EarthMover, one of my non-Facebook friends, "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 murk-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."





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.

+

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.

+

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.





ARE YOU READY?

"The soul should always stand ajar," said 19th-century Emily Dickinson poet in one of her poems, "That if the heaven inquire, He will not be obliged to wait, Or shy of troubling her."

My translation: Keep your deep psyche in a constant state of readiness for the possible influx of divine inspiration or unexpected blessings. That way, you're likely to recognize the call when it comes and respond with the alacrity necessary to get the full benefit of its offerings.





WE HAVE COME TO BE DANCED
by Jewel Mathieson

We have come to be danced
Not the pretty dance
Not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
But the claw our way back into the belly
Of the sacred, sensual animal dance
The unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance
The holding the precious moment in the palms
Of our hands and feet dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
But the wring the sadness from our skin dance
The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.
The slap the apology from our posture dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the monkey see, monkey do dance
One two dance like you
One two three, dance like me dance
but the grave robber, tomb stalker
Tearing scabs and scars open dance
The rub the rhythm raw against our soul dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle
But the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
Shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance
The strip us from our casings, return our wings
Sharpen our claws and tongues dance
The shed dead cells and slip into
The luminous skin of love dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
But the meeting of the trinity, the body breath and beat dance
The shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
The mother may I?
Yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance
The olly olly oxen free free free dance
The everyone can come to our heaven dance.

We have come to be danced
Where the kingdoms collide
In the cathedral of flesh
To burn back into the light
To unravel, to play, to fly, to pray
To root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced

WE HAVE COME

poem by Jewel Mathieson





THIS IS A GOLDEN AGE FOR SPIRITUAL INFORMATION

Sometimes we get so bound up fretting about the damage that fundamentalist religions wreak on the world that we forget about a countervailing development: the explosion of wisdom about spirituality and consciousness that has happened in the last 140 years.

Here's one person's timeline about how this unprecedented series of breakthroughs has unfolded.





YOU MUST EARN YOUR RIGHT TO CRITICIZE AND DEBUNK

Famous scientists like Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson have made attempts to debunk astrology without having studied anything more than the most superficial expressions of astrology. Their efforts are akin to, say, a music critic who summarily belittles all music ever created based on his brief exposure to a street musician he heard playing once in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Louisville.

Let's hope that Tyson and Nye and their fellow skeptical soldiers do a better job if they ever turn their attention to debunking related areas of human inquiry. They might consider, for example, actually reading the books of Carl Jung before debunking Jungian psychology.

Let's hope they will study up on lucid dream studies before ridiculing them, and that they will gaze at a few of Kandinsky's paintings before they inevitably trash them as "unscientific." The mythological thought of Joseph Campbell would certainly be a fair target for their debunking crusade as long as they first familiarized themselves with Campbell's books.

Here's a template for how they might proceed -- a debunking of the poetry of John Keats, as carried out by a critic who calls her blog "The Invisible Left Hand of Jesus":

"'Ode on a Grecian Urn,' a poem by John Keats, contains many egregious lies, distortions, and inaccuracies. Indeed, it is so replete with statements that are blatantly scientifically inaccurate that its overall veracity is extremely questionable.

"Note, for instance, the first two lines, 'Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time.' The term 'unravished' is immediately worrisome. One certainly hopes that the urn has not been the victim of forcible sexual intercourse. Taking the effort to deny something so unlikely indicates that such things are, to Keats, within the realm of possibility.

"Furthermore, 'quietness' is an abstraction related to the relative absence of sound in a place -- that is, compression waves traveling through a medium. As a sound wave cannot be married, and therefore cannot logically be called a "bride", it is that much more the case that its absence will never experience matrimony . . ."





SACRED AD

This perfect day is brought to you by the origin myth of the Iroquois' Thunderbird Clan: Earthmaker woke up to realize he was the only being in the universe. Out of the depths of his loneliness, he cried, unleashing a flood of tears that became the oceans and rivers and lakes of our world.





ENEMY OF COMPASSION?

Pema Chodron says that one of the enemies of compassion “is idiot compassion. This is when we avoid conflict and protect our good image by being kind when we should definitely say 'no.'

"Compassion doesn't only imply trying to be good. When we find ourselves in an aggressive relationship, we need to set clear boundaries. The kindest thing we can do for everyone concerned is to know when to say 'enough.' Many people use Buddhist ideals to justify self-debasement. In the name of not shutting our heart we let people walk all over us.

"It is said that in order not to break our vow of compassion we have to learn when to stop aggression and draw the line. There are times when the only way to bring down barriers is to set boundaries."

- Pema Chodron, "The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times"





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






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.