What Will Your Story Be in 2021?

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 2021.

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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 2021.

Who do you want to become in the coming months? Where do you want to go and what do you want to do? How can you exert your free will to create adventures that'll bring out the best in you, even as you find graceful ways to cooperate with the tides of destiny?

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.





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Read past issues of the newsletter.

Sign up here for your free subscription.





PICK YOUR BATTLES

Pick your battles.

Pick fewer battles than that.

Put some battles back.

That's still too many battles.





HOPE AND OPTIMISM

There's still a lot of bad stuff to contend with: racism, misogyny, anti-LGBTQ bigotry, climate catastrophe. rightwing terrorism, the assault on factualness, and much more. And Biden, as wonderful as his actions have been so far, won't be our perfect progressive president.

But now, when we once again have some power to make things right, we need the robust and crafty versions of hope and optimism more than ever. In that spirit, here's some inspiration from Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Julia Butterfly Hill, and Naomi Klein.

"Optimism is a strategy for making a better future," says Noam Chomsky. "Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume there is no hope, you guarantee there will be no hope."

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"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic," Howard Zinn wrote. "It gives us the energy to act.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places -- and there are so many -- where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

"And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

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In the late 1990s, environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill spent two years living in a redwood tree she named "Luna." Her goal was to save it from being cut down by a logging company. She succeeded both literally and mythically. Luna was spared from death, as was a surrounding three-acre swath of trees. Hill became an inspiring symbol of artful, compassionate protest.

Later she told Benjamin Tong in the DVD *The Taoist and the Activist*: "So often activism is based on what we are against, what we don't like, what we don't want. And yet we manifest what we focus on. And so we are manifesting yet ever more of what we don't want, what we don't like, what we want to change. So for me, activism is about a spiritual practice as a way of life.

"And I realized I didn't climb the tree because I was angry at the corporations and the government; I climbed the tree because when I fell in love with the redwoods, I fell in love with the world. So it is my feeling of 'connection' that drives me, instead of my anger and feelings of being disconnected."


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Activist and author Naomi Klein tells a story about the time she traveled to Australia at the request of Aboriginal elders. They wanted her to know about their struggle to prevent white people from dumping radioactive wastes on their land.

Her hosts brought her to their beloved wilderness, where they camped under the stars. They showed her "secret sources of fresh water, plants used for bush medicines, hidden eucalyptus-lined rivers where the kangaroos come to drink."

After three days, Klein grew restless. When were they going to get down to business? "Before you can fight," she was told, "you have to know what you are fighting for."





MOVIES WITHOUT VIOLENCE

Suggestions for movies without violence.





These Progressives Helped Keep Hope Alive in 2020—and Prepare Us for 2021.




RELATIONSHIP AS SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

Relationship is a crucible for spiritual work.

The practical expression of kindness and compassion and ethical behavior is an essential spiritual practice.

A crucial element of spiritual practice is the empathetic intelligence we bring to the sometimes chaotic and messy details of being human beings in our daily lives.

Taking responsibility for and working to transform our own darkness is a prerequisite for all spiritual work.

Loving and caring for animals and plants and the Earth is a centerpiece of our spiritual practice.

Play and fun and humor are not diversions from "serious" spiritual work, but are at the center of it.





A GOOD FATHER

"When one has not had a good father, one must create one," said philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. What does that mean? How might you go about "creating" a good father?

Well, you could develop a relationship with an admirable older man who is an inspiring role model.

You could read books by men whose work stirs you to actualize your own potentials.

If you have a vigorous inner life, you could build a fantasy dad in your imagination.

Here's another possibility: Cultivate in yourself the qualities you think a good father should have.

Your ideas?

Even if you actually had a pretty decent father, I'm sure he wasn't perfect. So it still might be interesting to try out some of these ideas.





BETTER TIMES

The days since January 20 have been very good for me personally. Why?

* Because Dr. Fauci declared himself liberated to speak freely. The US resumed funding and supporting WHO.

* Biden and his team formulated a coherent plan for dealing with Covid-19, and began implementing it.

* The US has returned to the Paris climate accords.

* The Keystone Pipeline had its permit revoked.

* Restrictions on Muslims traveling to the US have been revoked.

* Dreamers -- young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children -- are immediately eligible for green cards.

* The new press secretary of the President isn't spewing endless dirty lies.

* The White House is encouraging people who come to its website to say what pronouns they want to be addressed by.

* Biden expanded LGBTQ protections, protecting millions of LGBTQ people from discrimination.

* The first ever Native American to serve as Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, is poised to take charge.

* Biden reversed Trump's rollbacks to vehicle emissions standards; undid decisions to slash the size of several national monuments; enforced a temporary moratorium on oil and natural gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge suspended the sale of oil and gas leases on all federal land.

* Biden has established ethics rules for those who serve in his administration.

* Biden expanded food assistance and delivered stimulus checks to very low-income Americans. He raised the minimum wage to $15 for the federal workers, and restored their collective bargaining power.

* Extended the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures.

* Extended the pause on student loan payments and interest.

* Required non-citizens to be included in the Census and apportionment of congressional representatives.

* Stopped construction of the border wall between US and Mexico.

* PS: I love the strong, specific, practical actions Biden is taking to lift us up. I also love his symbolic actions. In the Oval Office, there are now busts of Mexican American farm labor leader Cesar Chavez and civil rights leader Rosa Parks.

Also new: a sculpture by Allan Houser of the Chiricahua Apache tribe that once belonged to Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) — the first Japanese American elected to both houses of Congress.

Gone: the portrait of Andrew Jackson, the despicable president that the Cherokees called "Indian Killer."





THE WHOLE WORLD IS ALIVE

Robin Wall Kimmerer writes: "As a scientist, I have been trained to refer to our relatives, the plants and the animals, the water and the Earth herself, as 'it.'

"In Potawatomi languages, we characterize the world into those who are alive and the things which are not. So we speak a grammar of animacy. And that's because in the beautiful verb-based language, a language based on being and changing and agency, the whole world is alive."

Kimmerer says she was driven to study botany because of the central question in her heart: "Why is the world so beautiful?"

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Robin Wall Kimmerer is the author of *Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants*. She is a member of the Potawatomi First Nation and she teaches at the State University of New York in Syracuse.

More.





FREE STUFF

Do you know about all of my free stuff? Here's a list:

Archives of my newsletter

My Instagram page

My Twitter page

My music page

More of my free music

Excerpts from my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia

My entire book The Televisionary Oracle

Videos of my performances

Video of my performance at the Symbiosis Festival





Here's your mantra for the next 33 days: "I know what I want and I know how to get it. I know what to do and I know how to do it."





THE REVOLUTION OF CARING

Johanna Hedva writes: 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





PRONOIA IS NOT ABOUT DENIAL

As anyone who has read my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia knows, cultivating visionary optimism never means ignoring or downplaying pathology and hatred.

In that spirit, I think it's important to be clear about the dire cavalcade of dangerously fascistic events, which is now upon us—as evidenced by the attack on the Capitol and the continued activity of rightwing extremism and terrorism.

Yes, I can and will call attention to other positive things going on. But I won't minimize the severity of our present crisis, which we are not even close to being done with.





THE SECRET OF SECRETS

What is the Secret of Secrets? The Great Work? The fulfillment of the Quest for the Grail?

I suspect it's the heroic trick of dispersing fear; of becoming clear to experience life without the rumbling subtext of chronic anxiety.

And I suspect that’s at the core of EVERYONE’s struggle.

In my personal story, the cure is most possible as I cultivate a relaxed capacity to perceive the presence of Divine Consciousness at work in every action everywhere.

I'm not there yet, but am making some progress! How about you?





END OF THE NIGHTMARE

Tobias Barrington Wolff wrote all the words in this section.

I have an exhortation to offer as we approach the end of this nightmare. For the last five years, I have been using the tools and lessons developed from surviving a childhood with a dangerous and malignant parent to understand, explain, and guard against the depredations of the toxic madman who has been occupying the U.S. presidency.

I will continue to be on guard these next days, as will we all, but I am finally starting to anticipate releasing that hyper-awareness and vigilance and never, ever spending my days thinking about this monster again. I urge you to do the same.

One of the lessons I have learned in my journey is the danger of becoming too attached to your arsenal of tools. When you put in the difficult and intense work of learning to understand a toxic abuser, dissect their motivations, predict their behavior and thwart or sidestep their assaults, you feel a sense of accomplishment.

It may be a perverse form of gratification, but the gratification is real. When you have no choice but to deal with an abuser, you feel good about yourself for learning how to deal with them successfully. That is a human response, and when you are in the danger zone it can be an emotional necessity.

If you are not careful, however, that gratification becomes a trap. You start returning to the abusive situation in order to show how well you can deal with it, to remind yourself how gratified you feel when you figure out or thwart or sidestep the abuse.

Or you feel a sharp lack of resolution in the situation because the abuser has never admitted their crimes, asked forgiveness, been properly humbled, and so you keep returning to the abusive situation armed with your arsenal of tools to try to extract that satisfying resolution, gratified and pleased that your tools will let you deal with the abuser successfully every time you reengage.

That is not freedom. Freedom is leaving the abuser permanently behind you in a cloud of dust. And it is not healthy. Healthy is recognizing that you should use your tools and the lessons you have learned to avoid ever engaging with a toxic, malignant person again.

Every one of us has been in an involuntary relationship with an abuser for the past five years. Four days from now, when he is no longer in a position of authority and there is no longer any imperative to dissect or predict or thwart or sidestep his depredations, embrace that freedom.

Choose to be healthy. Erase him from your consciousness. We will deal with him as needed: we will follow the reporting of his criminal trials, see his impeachment trial, uncover the corruption and debasement that have riven our government for the last four years.

But on a day to day basis, I urge you to lay aside everything that you have built up these last five years, honor yourself as a courageous warrior for surviving the experience, and purge him from your soul.

—Tobias Barrington Wolff wrote all the words in the above section.





TRUE CONSERVATIVES

As the Trumpocalypse comes to its whimpering, desolate, ignominious end, I will celebrate the fact that many Republicans opposed the cruel tyrant feeding the vortex of doom.

Here's a list of Republicans and conservatives who opposed Trump





URANUS IN TAURUS

How to Respond to Uranus in Taurus (where it'll be until April 2026) — by Olivia Pepper

Reevaluate your possessions. All of them. Give away or destroy items that are holding you back spiritually, especially expensive items that you do not use.

Stop throwing good things away. Now that you have reevaluated your possessions, take deep and attentive care of the things you own. Patch items creatively and lovingly. When something breaks, turn it into something new. Learn to work with your own hands. Move away from a disposable culture.

Celebrate beauty. Revere the rise of new beauty standards and relationships with gender. Let Uranus in Taurus liberate you from oppressive, rigid modes of viewing physical beauty and presentation. Practice beholding, displaying, and appreciating a variety of physical beauty.

Transform the way you eat. This can be something that is both luxurious and deliberate. We’ll likely be seeing a worldwide shift in diet and food culture, perhaps even the long-awaited downfall of the agro-industrial complex as we focus on local, bioregional, sustainable, and indigenous food sources

Start a garden. Even if it is just a planter box of herbs in your apartment window, take this opportunity to connect with the process of growing your own food.

Invest in alternative economies. Prepare for the rise of cryptocurrencies and the potential of upheaval in the global financial markets. Begin to participate in barter and gift economies in your communities.

Separate your worth from your wealth. It is hard for us in a late capitalist society to do this. We were raised with the adage “time is money,” but time is not money. Time is not anything except an arbitrary way of measuring our experience in a constantly changing universe.

And, while we’re on the subject, money is not anything either! It is merely an outmoded symbolic system that technology can replace, as soon as we are ready to let go of attachment to hierarchy. You are not your bank account.

—Olivia Pepper





THE TRUTH ABOUT MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

A reader tried to tell me that at this precarious moment we need to rise above partisan politics; that we need people who have no ideology fueling their perspective; that we can't afford to be feeding argument.

This person invoked Martin Luther King Jr. as fitting this description. They said that King brought people together like no one has done since.

The truth is very different. Martin Luther King Jr. was fiercely anti-racist, anti-poverty, and anti-war and anti-militarism. He did not hold anything back in his criticisms of the corrupt American system. And he alienated a great number of white people.

Historian Nathan Connolly says it's important to remember that King was considered a divisive figure, both in his lifetime and after his death. Some people today try to make him into a consensus builder. But the fact is that he never watered down his commitments to justice,

It's true that he specifically advised us to avoid physical violence. But he was a staunch fighter, a vehement defender of what's right, an uncompromising force advocating a fundamental remaking of American politics and culture.

It's not hard to imagine how King would have responded to the White Supremacist President and his White Supremacist terrorist army.

King saw Three Evils in the World,

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Other quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr.:

"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores."

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“We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power… this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together… you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.”

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"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

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"This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor."

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"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."





IDIOT 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





CONSPIRITUALITY

Conspirituality — the overlap between the New Age and conspiracy beliefs: