You Know What You Want

My first invitation: Weed out the wishy-washy wishes and lukewarm longings that keep you distracted from your burning desires.

My second invitation: Refuse to think that anyone else knows better than you what dreams will keep your life energy humming with maximum efficiency and grace.

Third invitation: Say this out loud to see how it feels: "I know exactly what I want. I know exactly what I don't want. I know exactly what I kind of want but I won't waste my time on it because it sidetracks me from working on what I really want."





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REJOICING IN ORDINARY THINGS

Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior’s world.

— Pema Chodron





YOU'RE A LUCKY, PLUCKY GENIUS

You are constitutionally incapable of adapting nicely to the sour and crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality." You're too amazingly, blazingly insane for that.

You're too crazy smart to lust after the stupidest secrets of the game of life. You're too seriously delirious to wander sobbing through the sterile, perfumed labyrinth looking in vain for the most ultra-perfect mirror. Thank the Goddess that you are a fiercely tender throb of sublimely berserk abracadabra.

You'll never get crammed in a neat little niche in the middle of the road at the end of a nightmare. You refuse to allow your soul's bones to get ground down into dust and used to fertilize the killing fields that proudly dot the ice cream empire of monumentally demeaning luxuries.

You're too brilliantly cracked for that. You're too ingeniously whacked. You're too ineffably godsmacked.

This is an excerpt from a longer piece. Read or listen to it here.





MY WRITING PROCESS, Part 7

For me, writing includes manual labor. Lots of paper has to be cut and pasted, sorted and resorted, rearranged and recombined. Standing up and walking around my tables is a good balance for all the sitting.

Creativity requires heroic levels of organization! Inspiration flows when dogged discipline has prepared the way!

Here's a photo of me in my office.

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It's not good enough, at least for me, to see the texts on computer monitors. I can edit my writing with more clarity if I see it on paper. I seem to see the words more deeply and truly.

Also, when I'm working on the memoirs/novels, I need to view the order of the chapters lined up on the tables. I get a better feel for the lyrical logic of how they should proceed.

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Here's the current tally:
Number of books published: 9
Number of columns published: 2,236
Number of new books currently being worked on: 14





HOW TO BE RICH

John Waters said in a speech to a graduating class: "I’m rich! I don’t mean money-wise. I mean that I have figured out how to never be around assholes at any time in my personal and professional life. That’s rich. And not being around assholes should be the goal of every graduate here today.

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Anthony Bourdain also had a “No Asshole” rule: "It is truly a privilege to live by what I call the ‘no asshole’ rule. I don’t do business with assholes. I don’t care how much money they are offering me, or what project. Life is too short. Quality of life is important. I’m fortunate to collaborate with a lot of people who I respect and like, and I’d like to keep it that way."

In an earlier interview, Anthony Bourdain said it even more succinctly: "I want to keep the assholes in my life to an absolute minimum, if not zero. That’s worth real, real money — to not have assholes in your life."





WHERE THE SPIRITUAL MEETS THE PRACTICAL

"How does my spiritual practice and daily life serve the earth? How does my spiritual practice and daily life affect the poorest third of humanity? How will my spiritual practice and daily life affect the generations to come in the future?"

—Starhawk





THE 80% RULE

Readers of my horoscope column "Free Will Astrology" are sometimes surprised when I say I only believe in astrology about 80 percent. "You're a quack?!" they cry.

Not at all, I explain. I've been a passionate student of the ancient art for decades. About the time my over-educated young brain was on the verge of desertification, crazy wisdom showed up in the guise of astrology, lyricizing my soul just in time to save it.

"But what about the other 20 percent?" they press on. "Are you saying your horoscopes are only partially true?"

I assure them that my doubt proves my love. By cultivating a tender, cheerful skepticism, I inoculate myself against the virus of fanaticism. This ensures that astrology will be a supple tool in my hands, an adaptable art form, and not a rigid, explain-it-all dogma that over-literalizes and distorts the mysteries it seeks to illuminate.

P.S.: I use the same 80-20 approach with every belief system I love and benefit from: science, psychology, feminism, and various spiritual traditions like Qabalah, Buddhism, paganism, and magick.

I take what's useful from each, but am not so deluded as to think that any single system is the holy grail that the physicists call the "Theory of Everything."

Unconditional, unskeptical faith is the path of the fanatic and fundamentalist, and I aspire to be a rowdy philosophical anarchist, aflame with objectivity and committed to the truth that the truth is always evolving.





NO, LIFE ISN'T SUFFERING

Thanissaro Bhikkhu writes: "You've probably heard the rumor that 'Life is suffering' is Buddhism's first principle, the Buddha's first noble truth. It's a rumor with good credentials, spread by well-respected academics and Dharma teachers alike, but a rumor nonetheless.

"The truth about the noble truths is far more interesting. The Buddha taught four truths — not one — about life: 1. There is suffering. 2. There is a cause for suffering. 3. There is an end of suffering. 4. There is a path of practice that puts an end to suffering.

"These truths, taken as a whole, are far from pessimistic. They're a practical, problem-solving approach — the way a doctor approaches an illness, or a mechanic a faulty engine. You identify a problem and look for its cause. You then put an end to the problem by eliminating the cause."

Read more.





YOUR ILLUSIONS

Some of your illusions seeped into you before you learned to talk. Others sneaked into you later, while you were busy figuring out how to become yourself. Eventually, you even made conscious choices to adopt certain illusions because they provided you with comfort and consolation.

There's no need to be ashamed of this. It's a natural part of being a human being.

Now here's the good news: You have the power to shed at least some of your illusions in ways that don't shatter your foundations.

To begin the process, declare this intention at noon every Sunday for the next six months: "I am calling on all the power I have at my disposal, both conscious and unconscious, to dissolve my illusions."





ONE OF MY GREAT JOYS

One of my great joys in life is to watch White people and Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color gather together to sing joyfully about the Divine Intelligence.

Here's an example.





FEMINIZATION

These are some of the practical ways I champion and embody the Divine Feminine:

I regard relationship as 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 and empathy we bring to the sometimes chaotic and messy details of being human beings.

I proceed as if loving and caring for animals and plants and the Earth is the test of our spiritual intentions.

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

I aspire to cultivate receptivity, listen well, and regard everyone as potentially one of my teachers.

What about you? What are practical ways you carry on the work of loving Goddess?





CONSEQUENCES

Nancy Qiualis-Corbett writes: "When the divine feminine, the goddess, is no longer revered, social and psychic structures become overmechanized, overpoliticized, overmilitarized.

"Thinking, judgment, and rationality become the ruling factors. The needs for relatedness, feeling, caring or attending to nature go unheeded. There is no balance, no harmony, neither within oneself nor in the external world.

"With the disregard of the archetypal image so related to passionate love, a splitting off of values, a one-sidedness, occurs in the psyche. As a result, we are sadly crippled in our search for wholeness and health."

—Nancy Qiualis-Corbett, The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine

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“Living without the full feminine for so many centuries, we don’t know what it would be like to live within a society where the feminine voice is not repressed, women’s bodies are not distorted, controlled or sold, and where both men and women live with balanced psyches.

"It’s as if humanity has lived with one side of its body atrophied. The return of the feminine may be the most significant development of the new millennium. Although there have been steps to begin this process it would naive to think the reintegration is by any means complete.”

—Lama Tsültrim Allione





BOTH MANLY AND WOMANLY

The words below are mine, from an interview I did with Amanda Yates Garcia

My happiness comes from the fact that I know my happiness is meaningless unless I'm working in some way to foster the happiness of others.

I also think my happiness thrives to the degree that I'm not just manly, but also womanly; in other words, to the degree that I incorporate what I understand to be the divine feminine principle and bring it into my life in really practical ways.

So that means valuing emotional intelligence, listening well, not being a know-it-all, being willing to be humble and empty, and curious and expressing cared compassion.

And not just thinking those things, but every day questioning how can I do thse things anew, afresh? How can I do them better than I did before?

I feel equally manly and womanly. And for those aspects to be working together in me seems to be key to my ability to enjoy life.





AWAKENING TO THE DIVINE FEMININE

Merlin Stone's book When God Was a Woman is a good text that has spurred the reawakening of the divine feminine. Some others that come to mind:

The Body of the Goddess, by Rachel Pollack

Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness, by Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson

The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, by Starhawk

The White Goddess, by Robert Grave

The Once and Future Goddess: A Sweeping Visual Chronicle of the Sacred Female and Her Reemergence in the Cultural Mythology of Our Time, by Elinor Gadon

Others you would recommend?





RE-EMERGENCE

Tom Robbins: "What really interests me about the Goddess is the fact that while she was beloved and honored by our ancestors, was the central spiritual archetype and prevailing deity all over the globe for thousands of years, she has been so successfully eradicated by revisionist patriarchal spin doctors that most modern Christians, Moslems and Jews are totally ignorant of her massive and dominant historical presence.

"If someone or something of that enormous scope can be so thoroughly concealed from the masses, it can't help but call into question everything we've been taught by our various institutions.

"The subversion and repression of the Goddess is the Big Lie of the past two millennia -- and as the dumbing down of America gains momentum, the duplicity is strengthening its grip.

"The good news is that a significant minority has recently become informed about the Goddess, and that has both revealed the essential spiritual foundation of feminism and inspired a growing distrust of traditional dogma and the meatballs who've propagated it."





RECOVERING FROM PATRIARCHY

Tara Anura writes: "Patriarchy affects everybody differently. Many patriarchy survivors continue to improve over a long time, sometimes over a number of years. Recovery from patriarchy involves making changes in the physical, social and, emotional aspects of your life. You will make changes to prevent additional patriarchy as well as to facilitate your life-long recovery.

"It is normal to feel angry, anxious or depressed after patriarchy. You may feel worried about work, money and relationships, and the tiredness caused by patriarchy can make things worse.

"Rehabilitation is about getting back to normal life and living as independent a life as possible. It involves taking an active approach to ensure that your life goes on. This can mean learning new skills or relearning old ones. It may involve adapting to new (limitless freedom). Or it can mean finding new social, emotional, and practical support to live your best life post-patriarchy.

"With good care and rehabilitation, there is life after patriarchy."





FIERCE COMPASSION

Lama Tsültrim Allione writes: "I was at a lunch with the Dalai Lama and five Buddhist teachers at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. We were sitting in a charming room with white carpets and many windows. The food was a delightful, fragrant, vegetarian Indian meal. There were lovely flower arrangements on the table.

“We were discussing sexual misconduct among Western Buddhist teachers. A woman Buddhist from California brought up someone who was using his students for his own sexual needs. One woman said, ‘We are working with him with compassion, trying to get him to understand his motives for exploiting female students and to help him change his actions.’

“The Dalai Lama slammed his fist on the table, saying loudly, ‘Compassion is fine, but it has to stop! And those doing it should be exposed!’ All the serving plates on the table jumped, the water glasses tipped precariously, and I almost choked on the bite of saffron rice in my mouth.

“Suddenly I saw him as a fierce manifestation of compassion and realized that this clarity did not mean that the Dalai Lama had moved away from compassion. Rather, he was bringing compassion and manifesting it as decisive fierceness. His magnetism was glowing like a fire.

“I will always remember that day, because it was such a good teaching on compassion and precision. Compassion is not a wishy-washy ‘anything goes’ approach. Compassion can say a fierce no!“

—Lama Tsültrim Allione, from her book *Wisdom Rising*





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.





"Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement . . . get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible. Never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed."

- Abraham Joshua Heschel, Jewish theologian and civil rights activist





NORMAL GLORY

"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."

—Rainer Maria Rilke

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"The whole world is a series of miracles, but we’re so used to seeing them that we call them ordinary things."

—Hans Christian Anderson

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"I will wade out till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers. I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air, alive, with closed eyes."

—E. E. Cummings

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"The whole existence is celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight."

—some guru

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"For aren't you and I gods? Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Release life's rapture. Everything is blooming. Everything is flying. Everything is screaming. Laughter. Running."

- Vladimir Nabokov





HISTORY OF PRONOIA: My most recent book is Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiing to Shower You with Blessings. No one else has written a book about pronoia, but others have worked with the concept.

In his novella Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, J. D. Salinger wrote about pronoia without using the word. “Oh, God," one of his characters says, "if I’m anything by a clinical name, I’m a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”

The actual term "pronoia" was coined in 1976 by Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow, who defined it as "the suspicion that the universe is a conspiracy on your behalf."

Another early contributor to the concept was psychologist Fraser Clark, founder of the Zippies. In the 1990s he referred to pronoia as "the sneaking hunch that others are conspiring behind your back to help you." Once you have contracted this benevolent virus, he said, the symptoms include "sudden attacks of optimism and outbreaks of goodwill."

Neither Terence McKenna or Robert Anton Wilson ever invoked the word "pronoia" as far as I know, but they both added nuance to the concept. McKenna said, "I believe reality is a marvelous joke staged for my edification and amusement, and everybody is working very hard to make me happy."

Wilson offered advice about the proper way to rehearse a devotion to pronoia: "You should view the world as a conspiracy run by a very closely-knit group of nearly omnipotent people, and you should think of those people as yourself and your friends."

Without invoking the term pronoia, Paulo Cuelho added to its meaning: "Know what you want and all the universe conspires to help you achieve it."