Your Soulful Story

IMAGINE THE STORY OF YOUR LIFE
in the coming months:
What will it be?

EXPLORE THE BIG PICTURE OF YOUR LIFE with my MID-YEAR AUDIO PREVIEW of YOUR DESTINY for the REST of 2020.

My Expanded Audio Horoscopes explore themes that I suspect will be important for you during the next six months.

What new influences and experiences will be headed your way in the second half of 2020?

What fresh resources will you be able to draw on?

Would you like some inspiration as you imagine how to make best use of those influences and experiences and resources?

What questions should you be asking so as to create the best possible future for yourself?

To listen to your BIG PICTURE horoscopes online, GO HERE. Register and/or log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2020."

You can also hear a short-term forecast for the week ahead by clicking on "This week (June 30, 2020)."

+

The in-depth, long-range Expanded Audio horoscopes cost $6 apiece if you access them on the Web. (Discounts are available for multiple purchases.)

They're also available for $1.99 per minute if you want them over the phone. For phone access, call: 1-877-873-4888.





Here's a link to my free weekly email newsletter, featuring the Free Will Astrology horoscopes, plus a bunch of other stuff. It arrives every Tuesday morning.

Read past issues of the newsletter.

Sign up here for your free subscription.





CHAMPIONING AND EMBODYING SPIRITUALITY

Here are practical ways I carry on the work of championing and embodying spirituality:

I regard relationships as being a crucible for spiritual work.

I think of the practical expression of kindness and compassion and ethical behavior as an essential spiritual practice.

I assume that a crucial element of spiritual practice is the consciousness and compassion we bring to the sometimes chaotic and messy and shadowy details of being human beings.

I understand that loving and caring for animals and plants and the Earth is the test of our spiritual intentions.

I understand that working to dismantle racism, misogyny, militarism, plutocracy, economic injustice, and all forms of bigotry belongs at the heart of our sacred practice.

I regard play and fun and humor as not diversions from “serious” spiritual work, but rather being at the center of it.

What about you? What are the practical ways you carry on the work? TruthRooster@gmail.com





DIVERSITY IS OUR DELIGHTFUL FUTURE

“The plague of humanity is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, mono-medicine.

"The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to humans: members of their own species, bent on ensuring their salvation, security, and sanity.”

—Thomas Szasz

+

"As a culture, we have wandered into a state of prolonged neurosis because of the absence of a direct pipeline to the unconscious. As a result, we have fallen victim to priestcraft of every conceivable sort."

—Terence McKenna

+

Why is it so hard for Westerners of the last two centuries to feel the intimate presence of the divine intelligences? Every other culture in the history of the world has had a more vital connection with the realm of spirit.

According to poet Gary Snyder, California's Yana Indians explained it this way: The gods have retreated to the volcanic recesses of Mt. Lassen, passing the time playing gambling games with magic sticks.

They're simply waiting for such a time when human beings will "reform themselves and become 'real people' that spirits might want to associate with once again."

+

"Your body belongs to your ancestors, your parents, and future generations, and it also belongs to society and all other living beings. All of them have come together to bring about the presence of this body. Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos — the trees, the clouds, everything."

—Thich Nhat Hanh





LIBERATION MUSIC

Check out this glorious rendition of the song "Stand Up" (from the movie Harriet), with images from the Black freedom struggle. Sung by the grandchildren of Civil Rights legend Rev. Dr. Jesse Douglas.





GO BOTH WAYS

The image I posted here shows how I spent the first half of my birthday last week:

researching occult and hermetic resources about how best to foment a culture that is more thoroughly permeated with justice, broadmindedness, actual (not fake) beauty, and practical compassion.

The second half of my birthday was spent with a roundtable of very earthbound yet visionary activists who provided me with inspiration on the same subjects.

I'm at my best when I go both ways!

(The off-white suit and stetson hat I wore was provided by the spirit of Dziadzio Raymond, my Polish grandfather)





OUR SPIRITUAL DUTY

It's our spiritual duty to remember the African Americans who have been murdered by cops—to grieve them as our kin, to honor them, to invoke their tragic deaths as we apply pressure to prevent the police from perpetrating other such mayhem in the future.

Here's some of the story of Elijah McClain, killed by Aurora, Colorado police last August.





A SLAVE-OWNER WROTE "THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER"

Recently, protestors toppled a statue of Francis Scott Key in San Francisco, near where I live. You may know Key as the composer of the "Star-Spangled Banner," America's national anthem.

Those who study history know other facts about him. Like: He owned slaves. Writing in *The Smithsonian*, Christopher Wilson says ,"Key was a slaveholding lawyer from an old Maryland plantation family, who thanks to a system of human bondage had grown rich and powerful."

As a lawyer, Key represented the legal interests in court of men trying to recover their runaway slaves.

As District Attorney in Washington DC, Key defended slavery, and suppressed and attacked abolitionists. He referred to Blacks as "a distinct and inferior race of people.”

Christopher Wilson writes: "Key sought to crack down on the free speech of abolitionists. For example, he prosecuted a white doctor for possessing abolitionist pamphlets—in fact, sought the death penalty for him. In the resulting case, Key proposed that the property rights of slaveholders outweighed the free speech rights of those arguing for slavery’s abolishment. Key hoped to silence abolitionists, who, he charged, wished to 'associate and amalgamate with the negro.'"

Abolitionists ridiculed the lyrics he wrote for the "Star-Spangled Banner," saying that instead of "home of the brave" he should have written "home of the oppressed."

Read more.





GEORGE WASHINGTON AND SLAVERY

Facts About George Washington & Slavery, from a longer piece.

1. George Washington first became a slave owner at the early age of eleven, and remained a slaveholder for 56 more years.

2. At the time of George Washington’s death, the Mount Vernon enslaved population consisted of 317 people.

3. George Washington's marriage to Martha Custis significantly increased the number of enslaved people at Mount Vernon.

4. In his later years, George Washington believed that harsh and indiscriminate punishments could backfire and urged overseers to motivate workers with encouragement and rewards. Still, he approved of “correction” when those methods failed. Mount Vernon’s enslaved people endured a range of punishments depending on the alleged offense.

5. The enslaved people at Mount Vernon practiced diverse religious traditions and customs

6. On numerous occasions, people enslaved by the Washington household ran away in an attempt to regain their freedom.

7. People at Mount Vernon also resisted their enslavement through less noticeable means.

8. With little free time and control over their everyday life, Mount Vernon's enslaved population attempted to exert some free will and choice when it came to their private lives.





PRAYER by poet Aurora Levins Morales

Say these words when you lie down
and when you rise up,
when you go out and when you return.
In times of mourning
and in times of joy.
Inscribe them on your doorposts,
embroider them on your garments,
tattoo them on your shoulders,
teach them to your children, your neighbors, your enemies,
recite them in your sleep,
here in the cruel shadow of empire:
ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE

Imagine winning. This is your sacred task.
This is your power.

Imagine every detail of winning,
the exact smell of the summer streets
in which no one has been shot,
the muscles you have never unclenched from worry,
gone soft as newborn skin,
the sparkling taste of food when we know
that no one on earth is hungry,
that the beggars are fed,
that the old man under the bridge
and the woman wrapping herself
in thin sheets in the back seat of a car,
and the children who suck on stones,
nest under a flock of roofs
that keep multiplying their shelter.

Lean with all your being towards that day
when the poor of the world
shake down a rain of good fortune
out of the heavy clouds,
and justice rolls down like waters.

Defend the world in which we win
as if it were your child.
It is your child.
Defend it as if it were your lover.
It is your lover.

When you inhale and when you exhale
breathe the possibility of another world
into the 37.2 trillion cells of your body
until it shines with hope.
Then imagine more.

Imagine rape is unimaginable.
Imagine war is a scarcely credible rumor
That the crimes of our age,
the grotesque inhumanities of greed,
the sheer and astounding shamelessness of it,
the vast fortunes made by stealing lives,
the horrible normalcy it came to have,
is unimaginable to our heirs,
the generations of the free.

Don’t waver.
Don’t let despair sink its sharp teeth
Into the throat with which you sing.
Escalate your dreams.
Make them burn so fiercely
that you can follow them down
any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way.
Make them burn clear as a starry drinking gourd
Over the grim fog of exhaustion,
and keep walking.

Hold hands. Share water. Keep imagining.
So that we,
and the children of our children’s children
may live





MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

Good News from DailyKos.com:

A grand jury indicted Travis McMichael, Greg McMichael and William Bryan on murder charges in the death of Ahmaud Arbery

Pope Francis told his 1.2 billion Catholic faithful to disinvest from the armaments and fossil fuel industries

The legacy of "Hidden Figure" Mary W. Jackson, as NASA named its HQ in D.C. after the pioneering mathematician, aerospace engineer and, in 1958, first Black female engineer

Air Force Chief Master Sgt. JoAnne Bass became the first woman to serve as the highest-ranking non-commissioned member of a U.S. military service branch

Voto Latino won a lawsuit that forces Arizona to meet higher standards for early voting flexibility and voter outreach & education

The "Stop Hate for Profit" campaign persuaded companies including Verizon, Unilever, Patagonia and Ben & Jerry's to pull their ads off of Trump's boot-lickiest social media outlet Facebook

The Democratic-led House passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which puts the Senate's toothless bill to shame, and then voted to approve D.C. statehood

40 lawsuits were filed, contending that "unchecked" and "indiscriminate" police violence was used against protesters in demonstrations tied to the death of George Floyd

CHEERS, as well, to an American revolution. In June 1969, a ragtag gaggle of customers at a seedy Greenwich Village gay bar run by the mafia—the Stonewall Inn, now a National Monument—decided they'd had enough police harassment for one lifetime.

So they got mad as hell—especially the drag queens who had no more fucks to give—tipped over a police car, hurled some rocks and gave new life to the LGBT rights movement.

As the deputy police inspector said: "For those of us in[the public morals division, things were completely changed...Suddenly they were not submissive anymore."

What a difference half a century makes. A huge majority of Americans now embrace their LGBT family, friends, co-workers and neighbors.

LGBTers can serve openly in the military. (Trump's ban on new transgender enlistees will be overturned the second he leaves office.)

The vast majority of businesses support LGBT employees and many of them sponsor LGBT advocacy groups.

When right-wingers pass anti-LGBT laws, there's always severe blowback.

And as of this month, thanks to the wisdom of the Supreme Court and the tenacity of the plaintiffs who argued their cases before it, employment discrimination is now verboten in every state.

And best of all, those aging protesters in New York who got mad as hell that hot June night and refused to take it anymore are now celebrating five years of having the legal right to take their fights where straight Americans have waged them since 1776: the institution of marriage.





TRANSACTIONS WITH BEAUTY

Lovers find secret places
inside this violent world
where they make transactions
with beauty.

Reason says, Nonsense.
I have walked and measured the walls here.
There are no places like that.

Love says, There are.

— Rumi, from “Secret Places,” Bridge to the Soul: Journeys Into the Music and Silence of the Heart — as rendered by Coleman Barks





THE RIGHT BLEND OF PRACTICAL LOVE AND CONSTRUCTIVE ANGER

How do we summon the right blend of practical love and constructive anger?

How do we refrain from hating the cruel haters even as we fight fiercely to diminish the hatred and danger they unleash?

How do we cultivate cheerful buoyancy even as we neutralize the bigoted, autocratic poisons that are on the loose?

How can we be both exuberant lovers of life and wrathful insurrectionaries?

How can we stay in a good yet unruly mood as we overthrow the mass hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality"?

In the face of the peril, how do we generate beauty and truth and justice and love? How do we keep our imaginations wild and free?

Can our struggle also be a form of play?





ANGER AS DEEP COMPASSION

David Whyte says: “ANGER is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt.

“Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care; the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for.

“What we usually call anger is only what is left of its essence when we are overwhelmed by its accompanying vulnerability, when it reaches the lost surface of our mind or our body’s incapacity to hold it, or when it touches the limits of our understanding.

“What we name as anger is actually only the incoherent physical incapacity to sustain this deep form of care in our outer daily life; the unwillingness to be large enough and generous enough to hold what we love helplessly in our bodies or our mind with the clarity and breadth of our whole being.”

- From David Whyte’s book, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words





UPRISING AGAINST RACISM

If you'd like to read my commentary on the current uprisings against racism, I have posted frequently on the subject on my Facebook page.

Sample posts:

Here

and

Here

and

Here





BLEND OF LIFE AND DEATH

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?





BEHIND EVERYTHING

Behind everything
I see, something I don't
Know how to look for.

- Forrest Gander