What Is Your Holiest Desire?

I invite you to devote five minutes to visualizing the fulfillment of your holiest desire, followed by five minutes of visualizing the fulfillment of a loved one's holiest desire.





What Will Be the Story of Your Life in the Coming Months?

EXPLORE THE BIG PICTURE OF YOUR LIFE with my MID-YEAR AUDIO PREVIEW of YOUR DESTINY for the REST of 2021.

What new influences and experiences will be headed your way in the second half of 2021?

What fresh resources will you be able to draw on?

Would you like some guidance as you figure out how to make best use of those influences and experiences and resources?

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 2021."

You can also listen to your short-term forecast for the coming week by clicking on "This week (June 22, 2021)."

+

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.





FREE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

Here's a link to my free weekly email newsletter, featuring the Free Will Astrology horoscopes, plus a celebratory array of tender rants, lyrical excitements, poetic philosophy, and joyous adventures in consciousness. It arrives every Tuesday morning by 7:30 am.

Read past issues of the newsletter since May 12.

Read past issues of the newsletter from before May 12.

Sign up here for your free subscription.





ACQUIRING GOOD PROBLEMS

Acquiring problems is a fundamental human need. It's as crucial to your well-being as getting food, air, water, sleep, and love. You define yourself—indeed, you make yourself—through the puzzling dilemmas you attract and solve. The most creative people on the planet are those who frame the biggest, hardest questions and then gather the resources necessary to find the answers.





12 LEVELS OF FRIENDSHIP

Taariq Ismail @TaariqIsmail writes: In Arabic, there are 12 levels of friendship.

1. Zameel — someone you have a nodding acquaintance with

2. Jalees — someone you’re comfortable sitting with for a period of time

3. Sameer — you have good conversation with them; this is where things get serious

4. Nadeem — a drinking companion (just tea) that you might call when you’re free

5. Sahib — someone who’s concerned for your wellbeing; now we’re in the real ranks of friendship

6. Rafeeq — someone you can depend upon. You’d probably go on holiday with them

7. Sadeeq — a true friend, someone who doesn’t befriend you for an ulterior motive

8. Khaleel — an intimate friend, someone whose presence makes you happy

9. Anees — someone with whom you’re really comfortable and familiar

10. Najiyy — a confidant, someone you trust deeply

11. Safiyy — your best friend, someone you’ve chosen over other friends

12. Qareen — someone who’s inseparable from you. You know how they think (and vice versa)





UNLEASH YOURSELF

Even if you don't call yourself an artist, you have the potential to be a dynamic creator who is always hatching new plans, coming up with fresh ideas, and shifting your approach to everything you do as you adjust to life's ceaseless invitation to change.

It's to this part of you -- the restless, inventive spirit -- that I address the following: Unleash yourself! Don't be satisfied with the world the way it is; don't sit back passively and blankly complain about the dead weight of the mediocre status quo.

Instead, call on your curiosity and charisma and expressiveness and lust for life as you tinker with and rebuild everything you see so that it's in greater harmony with the laws of love and more hospitable to your soul's code.





ALL OF CREATION LOVES YOU

The Beauty and Truth Lab is coming to you live from your repressed memory of paradise, reminding you that all of creation loves you very much.

Even now, secret and not-so-secret allies are cooking up mysteries that will excite you and incite you for years to come.

Even now, the Earth, moon, and sun are collaborating to make sure you have all you need to make your next smart move.

But here's the loaded question: 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.

Half of the art of pronoia is about being improvisationally receptive to life's elaborate scheme to shower you with blessings. The other half is about learning to be a co-conspirator who assists life in doling out blessings —- to help everyone else get exactly what they need, exactly when they need it.

Visualize yourself being able to recognize the raw truth about the people you care about. Imagine that you can see how they already embody the beauty their souls' codes have promised as well as how they still fall short of embodying that beauty.

Picture yourself being able to make them feel appreciated even as you inspire them to risk changes that will activate more of their souls' codes.





IN PURELY SPIRITUAL MATTERS, GOD GRANTS ALL DESIRES

"In purely spiritual matters, God grants all desires," said philosopher and activist Simone Weil. "Those who have less have asked for less." I think this is a worthy hypothesis for you to try out.

To be clear: It doesn't necessarily mean you will get a dream job and perfect lover and ten million dollars. What it does suggest is this: You can have any relationship with the Divine Wow that you dare to imagine; you can get all the grace you need to understand why your life is the way it is; you can make tremendous progress as you do the life-long work of liberating yourself from your suffering.





MARRIED TO YOURSELF?

I invite you to deepen and intensify your commitment to the most important person in your life -- you. One way to further that sacred cause is to get married to yourself. In my book, I've created a text you can refer to as you perform the wedding. Or you can use my text for inspiration as you create your own version.

Below is an excerpt. (To read the whole text, go here.)

I ME WED

Let's begin by telling a simple truth: You will probably never create a resilient, invigorating bond with the lush accomplice of your dreams until you master the art of loving yourself ingeniously. A wedding ritual that joins you to yourself could catalyze an uncanny shift in your personal mojo that would attract a fresh, hot consort into your life, or else awaken the sleeping potential of a simmering alliance you have now.

If you're feeling brave, try speaking the following words aloud:

"I am no longer looking for the perfect partner.
I am my own perfect partner."

Say it even stronger:

"I am no longer looking for the perfect partner
to salve all my wounds
and fix all my mix-ups
and bridge all my chasms.
I am no longer looking for the perfect partner
because I am my own perfect partner."


TO READ THE REST OF "I ME WED," go here.





WHEN YOUR SOUL IS READY

"There is a saying that when the student is ready, the teacher appears," writes Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

But the magic of that formula may not unfold with smooth simplicity, she says: "The teacher comes when the soul, not the ego, is ready. The teacher comes when the soul calls, and thank goodness—for the ego is never fully ready."





SOFTEN THE ORANGE A LITTLE IN THE CORNER

"When I look at a sunset, I don't say, 'Soften the orange a little on the right hand corner, and put a bit more purple in the cloud color.'"

Psychologist Carl Rogers was describing the way he observed the world. "I don't try to control a sunset," he continued. "I watch it with awe."

He had a similar view about people. "One of the most satisfying experiences," he said, "is just fully to appreciate an individual in the same way I appreciate a sunset."





IS RECEPTIVITY INTERESTING TO YOU?

"Receptivity is not a passive state. Nor is it a blank emptiness, waiting around for whatever happens to come along. In inviting you to cultivate receptivity, I don't mean you should become a lazy do-nothing bereft of goals, reacting blindly to whatever life throws in front of you.

Receptivity is a robust readiness to be surprised and moved, a vigorous intention to be awake to everything you can't control.

When you're receptive in the pronoiac style, you have strong ideas and a powerful will and an eagerness to disseminate your unique blessings, but you're also animated by the humble certainty that you have a lot to learn."





BRAG THERAPY

Have you ever had permission to indulge in a marathon of braggadocio? Have you ever gotten an invitation to bluster on endlessly about your own charms without feeling even a touch of guilt or inhibition? I hereby grant you such a license right now.

When you're ready, carry out the exercise called Brag Therapy. Grab a good listener or a recording device, and boast extravagantly about yourself for at least 15 minutes. Expound in exhaustive detail why you're so wonderful and why the world would be a better place if everyone would just act more like you.

Don't be humble or cautious. Go too far. Heap extreme glory on yourself. Brazenly proclaim the spectacular qualities about you that no one has ever fully articulated or appreciated. Don't forget to extol the prodigious flaws and vices that make you so special.

What does this have to do with pronoia? When you audaciously identify your existing gifts, you set yourself up to become a magnet for even greater abundance. In fact, we recommend that you treat yourself to a Brag Therapy session regularly.

To spur your imagination, read an excerpt from the boast of Eric Baer, a participant in a Brag Therapy session I hosted in Milwaukee.

"I have opposable thumbs," Eric exulted. "I can read. I breathe all the way through the night even though I'm asleep. I have access to emporiums where I can choose from 25 different brands of toilet paper. I know how to turn food into energy. I live where knuckleheads run everything and yet nothing ever blows up."





IS IT BAD TO LIVE WITHOUT A HELL?

"Is it bad to live without a hell?" poet Pablo Neruda asks in The Book of Questions. Let's add these queries to his: Is it dangerous to live without the awakening force that an enemy provides? Is it naive to think you can achieve great success without the driving motivation that comes from thinking about ideas you hate?
.
Consider the issue from another angle. Dentists love tooth decay. Treating cavities provides them with a steady income. Likewise, exterminators are dependent on termites, lawyers need crime, and priests crave sinners. Lots of people have symbiotic connections with nasty stuff. In fact, isn't it true that most of us nurture our feelings for the things we love to despise and fear?
.
What's your favorite poison or adversary? Assume that your exposure to pronoia is changing you in ways that will require you to update your relationship with it. Speculate on how you'll go about this task.





INDIVIDUALISM CAN BE FUN, HEALTHY, AND LIBERATING, BUT . . .

"The surest defense against evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even eccentricity. Evil is a sucker for solidarity. It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balance sheets."

—Joseph Brodsky

+

P.S. We should make sure we don't fall into the error of believing that individualism engenders narcissism, greed, selfishness, superiority complexes, and feelings of entitlement. The most individuated people I know are humbly aware of the interconnectedness of all things, and eager to give their gifts generously.





TO WANDER ABOUT, LOOKING FOR SOMETHING

Science writer Lewis Thomas said that the English word "error" developed from a root meaning "to wander about, looking for something." That's why he liked Darwin's idea that error is the driving force in evolution.

"The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA," said Thomas. "Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music."





INSTRUCTIONS TO THE DEEP SELF

Are our schedules too rigid to allow magic to seep in? Then we must mutate that schedule!

Are our brains so crammed with knowledgeable opinions that no fresh perceptions can crack their way in? Then we must flush out some of those opinions.

Are our hearts so puckered by the stings of the past that they can't burst forth with any expansive new invitations? Then we must unpucker our heart, for Goddess's sake.





WHERE DO YOU FIND REAL NOURISHMENT?

There are thousand of things in the world that provide you with only mediocre nourishment; the influences that deeply enrich you with their blessings are much smaller in number.

To say it another way: You derive a bare amount of inspiration and teaching from the great majority of people, songs, images, words, stories, environments, and sights; whereas you draw life-sustaining illumination and spirit-ennobling motivation from just a precious few.

I invite you to identify that special minority, and take aggressive steps to be in ongoing communion with it.





ETERNAL REBELLION

The way I see it, tending to my sanity and being in service to the world require me to be in a chronic state of rebellion.

But here's an important caveat: While the rebellion can and should be partially fueled by anger at the consensual mass hallucination that's mistakenly referred to as "reality," it must be primarily motivated by love and joy and the desire to bestow blessings. A healthy proportion, at least for me, seems to be 15% rage, indignation, and complaint, and 85% compassion, celebration, and lust for life.