How Much Healing & Emancipation Do You Want?

Kintsukuroi or kintsugi is a Japanese word that literally means "golden repair." It refers to the practice of fixing cracked pottery with lacquer that's blended with actual gold or silver.

Metaphorically, it suggests that something may become more beautiful and valuable after being broken. The wounds and the healing of the wounds are integral parts of the story, not shameful distortions to be disguised or hidden.




CHOOSE YOUR THOUGHTS?

"You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. That's a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control."

— Elizabeth Gilbert





DAILY TEXT MESSAGE HOROSCOPES

I write daily horoscopes, available as text messages sent to your phone. They're shorter than the weekly 'scopes, but more frequent. You can get these regular bursts of inspiration for 67 cents a day if you sign up for a subscription.

Go to RealAstrology.com. Register or log in. On the new page, click on "Subscribe / Renew" under "Daily Text Message Horoscopes" in the right-hand column.

As always, you can also buy and listen to my Expanded Audio Horoscopes.





THE HISTORY OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH DESIRE

Imagine it's 30 years from now. You're looking back at the history of your relationship with desire. There was a certain watershed moment when you clearly saw that some of your desires were mediocre, inferior, and wasteful, while others were pure, righteous, and invigorating.

Beginning then, you made it a life goal to purge the former and cultivate the latter.

Thereafter, you occasionally wandered down dead ends trying to gratify yearnings that weren't worthy of you, but usually you wielded your passions with discrimination, dedicating them to serve the highest and most interesting good.





SECRET METHODS

1. The Master Codex is hidden in the wall between the Hall of Mists and the Soul Kitchen. When you find it, add graffiti and cartoons to it.

2. The Beasts of the Wheels of Time are quite ticklish. That's one of the keys to rendering them harmless. Another key is to entertain them with the gibberish they love.

3. It's OK to steal the celestial trumpet from the stingy angel if you use it to heal a broken soul.
4. At least once a year, dive into the sleep mirror and cleanse the water you find there.

5. Find an animal you trust, and persuade it to help you steal at least two Peaches of Immortality from the Queen of Shapeshifters. (One peach for you and one for an enemy you care for.)

6. Sing your way into the Magic Dumping Ground during a full moon and befriend the Holy Squirmer. She will give you the elegant dreamsquawk signs.

7. The Frost Worm will let you pass unscathed through the Forgotten Realm if you have learned to use your third eye to watch TV.

8. The Pearl of Great Price is much closer than you think. To get another clue about its whereabouts, tell jokes to the Caller in the Darkness.

9. You are the Chosen One, but then so is everyone else.





NEW WORDS

Are there any new words you'd like to invent? Here are a few of mine:

pyrokleptomania, n. A brave and noble compulsion to steal fire. Derived from the Greek myth of Prometheus, who pilfered a glowing coal from the gods and gave it as a gift to humankind.

hypephobic, adj. Afraid of hype.

lapidrowdy, adj. Performing intricate tasks with a boisterous spirit. Derived from a blend of "rowdy" and "lapidary," the art of cutting, polishing, and engraving gems.

demagnostic, n. A person who provides leadership by rousing people's noblest ambitions and high ideals, not by pandering to their fears and jealousies. Derived from a blend of "demagogue" and "agnostic."

chantepleure, v. To sing and weep simultaneously.

chiaroscurofy, v. To find a comfortable place where you are partially in darkness and partially illuminated, or half in shadow and half in sunlight.

angel-retentive, adj. In contrast to "anal retentive," angel-retentive refers to a person with a relaxed openness to the possibility of miracles that confound the rational mind.

menstruarchy, n. Rule by menstruating women; a reverse of tradition, in which menstruating women were segregated and banned from important decision-making. In a menstruarchy, menstruating women are thought to have special powers of perception, insight, and wisdom, and are therefore best qualified to make decisions that affect the collective. A menstrual council may be composed of women whose cycles vary so that at any one time, several council members are menstruating.

smadgic, n. A wizardly transmutation of a mundane or boring situation into a fascinating adventure or exploration. Derived from "magic" and "smidgen," a small portion.

taurocoprology, n. First coined by Harper's magazine, it means the study of bullshit--how to use it creatively, how to recognize when it's being used, and how to make it work for you instead of against you.

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"Bend words. Stretch them, squash them, mash them up, fold them. Turn them over or swing them upside down. Make up new words. Leave a place for the strange and downright impossible ones. Use ancient words. Hold on to the gangly, silly, slippy, truthful, dangerous, out-of-fashion ones."

—Kyo Maclear





THANK YOU, TEACHERS!

I am a unique character. But the paradox is that I would never have been able to become my singular self without the inspiration, help, influence, and love of hundreds of other unique characters.

I like to keep in mind that all humans and all animals and all spiritual beings are potentially my teachers. Many of them have been spectacular teachers who have shaped me in unpredictable and unexpected ways.

I will never be able to express all the gratitude I feel. But I try to express it nevertheless!





DISMANTLING THE PATRIARCHY

Dismantling the patriarchy from within is central to my work as a human being.

Listening well and cultivating empathy and expressing practical compassion are prime elements in my sacred political activism.





OUR COLLECTIVE INITIATION

William irwin Thompson writes: "We are experiencing the initiation of the human race into a new level of consciousness, and that is a very terrifying experience. It does no good to turn and run from the terror of our darkness into light; we must sit it out: zazen.

"We must take our counsel from The Tibetan Book of the Dead and realize that these frightening projections of famines, economic disasters, ecological catastrophes, floods, earthquakes, and wars are all only the malevolent aspects of beneficent deities.

"If we sit and observe them, do not identify with them, but remember our Buddha-nature, we will not be dragged down by them into an incarnation of the hell they prefigure. If we run from them, we validate them; we give the projections the very psychic energy they need to overtake us.

"Then, as Jung has pointed out, the situation will happen outside as fate."

—William Irwin Thompson, Evil and World Order





INTERPRET ALL OMENS FAVORABLY!

Hypothesis: All omens should be interpreted favorably.

All omens should be regarded as revelations about what can be done to successfully wrangle with our problems, perpetrate liberation, ameliorate suffering, find redemption, and perform the tricky maneuvers and ingenious tweaks that enable us to slip free of our mind-forged manacles and discover the deeper meanings behind and beneath our experiences.





WHAT WELCOMING POSSIBILITIES ARE AHEAD FOR YOU in the coming months? Will there be opportunities disguised as challenges?

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 my IN-DEPTH, LONG-TERM AUDIO FORECAST for YOUR LIFE during the next six months, 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 (July 6, 2021)."

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





MISSION STATEMENT

To celebrate my birthday recently, I wrote a brief summary of the principles that inspire my personal mission. Here they are:

* To be an aspiring Master of Curiosity.

* To know that playing is a consummate spiritual act.

* Being a purveyor of compassionate crazy wisdom.

* Don't suppress and deny and escape desire! Rather, apotheosize and enjoy desire, and channel it to commit transformative mystery and lyrical justice.

* Don't suppress and deny and escape ego! Rather, apotheosize and use ego as a tool to commit smart love.

* Completely identifying and blending my personal self with the One Self whose intelligence permeates all being and things.

* Infusing my writing with the soul of music. Infusing my music with the soul of writing.

* Syngergizing the Christ archetype with the Dionysus archetype.

* Exploring and expressing holy trickster feminism.

* Always asking: What is a masculine version of emotional intelligence?

* Daring to embody and express smart love.

* Know on a visceral level that consciousness is everywhere, in all things, in all creatures. Learn to commune with the myriad kinds of intelligence, not just the human variety.

* Resolved: Listening and empathy are superpowers.

* Figure out how to be more motivated to do good through love than through duty.

* The divine feminine is always here, has never waned. But too many human beings have lost the thread of direct communion with her. How to revive her presence in our hearts and minds?

* There is no such thing as permanent enlightenment—only an ongoing devotion to finding the newest, freshest versions of the raw truth in each moment.

* Practicing sacred activism and spiritual freedom fighting: conspiring to create a paradise on earth through practical political work — inspired by an ecstatic awareness of Divine Intelligence — that fosters justice and fairness for all

* The personal is the political. Every one of our thoughts, feelings, and actions has a political impact far beyond our individual lives.

* Doing what I do best and offering the unique gifts I have been blessed with to dissolve racism, misogyny, militarism, plutocracy, LGBTQ-phobia, ecocide, and all forms of bigotry.

* Love and respect and learn from all the animals. Seek communion with their intelligence.

* Every person and every creature are my teachers.

* One of the greatest gifts I can give to those I engage with is to transmute and refine my own darkness, ignorance, and woundedness.

* There are Other Real Worlds beyond the material realm, and I Iive there as much as I live here.

* Our nightly dreams are unparalleled sources of wisdom about how to become fully real.

* Dedicate my creativity to nurturing, inspiring, and liberating all those who are interested in my self-expression.

* My gratitude goes on forever.





FREE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

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THREE KINDS OF DARKNESS

Varieties of darkness include:

* pathology and evil;

* the mysterious unknown—the source of the future;

* the shadowy, unripe parts of our psyches that are on their way to becoming more interesting and useful but are still awkward and inarticulate.

Hypothesis: We can help prevent outbreaks of the first kind of darkness by developing a vigorous personal relationship with the second and third types.

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Rebecca Solnit writes: “The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think. It’s an extraordinary declaration, asserting that the unknown need not be turned into the known through false divination or the projection of grim political or ideological narratives; it’s a celebration of darkness, willing – as that 'I think' indicates—to be uncertain even about its own assertion.

"Most people are afraid of the dark. Literally when it comes to children, while many adults fear, above all, the darkness that is the unknown, the unseeable, the obscure. And yet the night in which distinctions and definitions cannot be readily made is the same night in which love is made, in which things merge, change, become enchanted, aroused, impregnated, possessed, released, renewed.”

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Jody Woodlands adds: "And darkness is nighttime, and underground, and the space between the stars: the simple, restful, beautiful, is-ness of the physical world. Shade and shadows: how I need them especially in summer!

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Tonia Rose adds: "Darkness is the soil and the soul: the deep places of growth and life."