You Are in Possession of Life's Most Monumental Gift

Your consciousness is a miracle!

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I dream that I love everything about my life. I dream that each event I have ever experienced or will ever experience is precious and glorious, even the painful interludes.

I dream that I have personal possession of the universe's most monumental and mysterious accomplishment: "consciousness."

I have a visceral insight about the mercurial flash and shimmer that ceaselessly whirls around inside my head: It's miraculous. I can think thoughts any time I want to—soaring, luminescent, flamboyant thoughts or shriveled, rusty, burrowing thoughts . . . thoughts that can invent or destroy, corrupt or redeem, bless or curse.

There's more. I can revel and wallow in great flows of feelings. It's ultimately irrelevant whether they are poignant or intoxicating or somewhere in between. I simply relish the fact that I can harbor so much intensity. I cherish the privilege of commanding such extravagant life force.

And maybe the best part is being in possession of a prodigiously potent magical tool: an imagination. I can use it to change and shape the way my thoughts and feelings unfold. It potentially gives me the power to treat every single one of my experiences as a door leading to infinity.





Get inspired by listening to my 3-part EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES about Your Long-Term Destiny in the coming months

These forecasts will be available for just two more weeks.

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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IDIOT COMPASSION

Pema Chödrön 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





ON NOT MEETING NAZIS HALFWAY

Rebecca Solnit writes:

"We get this hopelessly naïve version of centrism, of the idea that if we’re nicer to the other side there will be no other side, just one big happy family.

"This inanity is also applied to the questions of belief and fact and principle, with some muddled cocktail of moral relativism and therapists’ “everyone’s feelings are valid” applied to everything.
"But the truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists.

"And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people.

"Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?"

— Excerpted from the essay, "On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway," by Rebecca Solnit





REAL COMPASSION

A reader tried to tell me that 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.





TOXIC NEGATIVITY

I am all in favor of critiquing what some call "toxic positivity." When we refuse to look at difficulties and insist on being compulsively optimistic, we spawn monsters. At the same time, I think toxic negativity is at least as big a problem.

Science says that we actually take pleasure in the negative emotion itself. We willingly dive back into misery again and again for the same reason we willingly board a roller coaster or go bungee jumping: We get a rush from it.

That is, the pleasure/reward centers of your brain light up and release dopamine. And you can get addicted to whatever causes your brain to release dopamine, whether it's chocolate or fistfights.

More info

How to overcome your brain's fixation on bad things

More Info on How to overcome your brain's fixation on bad things





MALEFIC ECSTASY

"Malefic ecstasy" or "pestilent ecstasy" or "exultant malaise" is the pleasure that the disenchanters feel as they dwell on and talk about horrific futures and demoralizing events.

They don't want their blissful pessimism to be diluted. That's why they hate it when we offer evidence that world is a paradise replete with miracles and blessings, even if it is also a realm where much suffering occurs.

We align ourselves with poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning's hypothesis: "Earth's crammed with heaven."





ENLIGHTENMENT IS LOVE IN ACTION

One thing is certain about your destiny in the coming years: Life will conspire to bring you deep insights into the nature of reality—and the excited joy that comes with it.

If you decide to cooperate with life’s efforts, keep in mind these provocations from designer Elissa Giles:

“Enlightenment is not an asexual, dispassionate, head-in-the-clouds, nails-in-the-palms disappearance from the game of life. It’s a volcanic, kick-ass, erotic commitment to love in action, coupled with hard-headed practical grist.”





WEAVE THESE ALL TOGETHER

“There isn't anything in your life that cannot be changed.”

—Caroline Myss

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"I am not excited by the idea that the world we live in is made up of 90 percent ugly things and ugly places, while things and places endowed with beauty are rare and difficult to find. My opinion is that there is no ugly object or ugly person in this world. Anything is potentially fascinating."

—Jean Dubuffet

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"Expect the unexpected or you won't find it."

—Heraclitus

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"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

—Buckminster Fuller

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"Try with all your might and work very, very hard to make the world a better place. But if all your efforts are to no avail—no hard feelings."

—The Dalai Lama

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“If you don't appreciate what you have in life right now, whatever it is, you will never realize your purpose. Without appreciation, you will never become strong enough to respect yourself.”

—Caroline Myss

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"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

—Alvin Toffler, Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Power at the Edge of the 21st Century





OPTIMISM

Some people get mad at me for not being "optimistic" in the face of the world's travails. So I periodically reiterate one of my definitions of optimism:

cultivating the bright energy and practical love to fight with all our ingenuity against those who would degrade our beautiful world with their selfishness and cruelty and carelessness.





OUR COLLECTIVE PAIN

I urge you to ease the trauma you may be feeling in the wake of what's happening in the Ukraine. Stay informed while protecting your mental health. More info:

Ease the trauma

Treat yourself kindly





REAL NEWS

I encourage you to check regularly with historian Heather Cox Richardson for accurate and useful information about the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Here’s one of Heather Cox Richardson’s reports

Theo Horesh, author of The Holocausts We All Deny, has interesting thoughts, too:


WHAT IS PRONOIA?

Life is a vast and intricate conspiracy designed to keep us well supplied with blessings. What kind of blessings?

Ten million dollars, a gorgeous physique, a perfect marriage, a luxurious home, and high status? Maybe.

But just as likely: interesting surprises, dizzying adventures, gifts you hardly know what to do with, and conundrums that dare you to get smarter.

Novelist William Vollman referred to the latter types of blessings when he said that "the most important and enjoyable thing in life is doing something that's a complicated, tricky problem for you that you don't know how to solve."

The Christian writer C. S. Lewis once said, "I thank God that He hasn't given me all the things I've prayed for, because as I look back now I realize it would have been disastrous to have received some of them."

Pronoia provides the boons and prods your soul needs, not necessarily those your ego craves.

Pronoia doesn't promise uninterrupted progress forever. It's not a slick commercial for a perfect summer day that never ends.

Grace emerges in the ebb and flow, not just the flow.

The waning reveals a different kind of blessing than the waxing.

But whether it's our time to ferment in the valley of shadows or rise up singing in the sun-splashed meadow, fresh power to transform ourselves is always on the way.

Our suffering won't last, nor will our triumph.

Without fail, life will deliver the creative energy we need to change into the new thing we must become.

Pronoia works because there is a Divine Being who comprises the entire universe.

When I say, "Life is a conspiracy to shower us with blessings," I understand that this Divine Being is the Chief Architect, Builder, and Manager of the conspiracy.

She oversees the evolution of 500 billion galaxies and every single thing in them, yet is also available as an intimate companion and daily advisor to each one of us humans.

Some lovers of pronoia don't like this part of my rap.

They want pronoia to be free of anything that smacks of a Divine Being. Atheism works better for them. That's OK with me. No hard feelings.

Other lovers of pronoia don't appreciate me referring to the Creator as "She." They either want to stick with the pronoun that has been used for hundreds of years, or else don't want any gender associations whatsoever. That's OK with me. No hard feelings.

The Maker of the conspiracy constantly tinkers, always keeping the big, 14-billion-year-long picture in mind and moving in the direction of ultimate blessings for all concerned.

But the Maker also loves getting help from us. To the degree that we co-conspire, the inevitable blessings ripen more lyrically and in greater fullness.

Pronoia asks us to be awake to the shifting conditions of the Wild Divine's ever-fresh creation.

It encourages us to be quite happy about regularly divesting ourselves of the beliefs and theories that guided us yesterday so that we can see clearly what's right in front of us today.

As much as we might be dismayed by the actions of our political leaders, pronoia says that toppling any particular junta, clique, or elite is irrelevant unless we also overthrow the sour, puckered mass hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality" including the part of that hallucination we foster in ourselves.

The revolution begins at home.

If you overthrow yourself again and again, you might earn the right to help overthrow the rest of us.

Pronoia will change your past if you let it. It's the language you study at night in your dreams, the open secret of how to live forever, the Last Judgment transformed into a daily gift.

Pronoia is a gnostic art: Everyone is potentially a visionary capable of revealing more of its mysteries.





REMINDER

Lately, our work has seemed almost comically impossible. Many of us have given in to the temptation to believe that everything is upside-down and inside-out.

Ignorance and inertia, partially camouflaged as time-honored morality, seem to surround us. Pessimism is enshrined as a hallmark of worldliness. Compulsive skepticism masquerades as perceptiveness. Mean-spirited irony is chic.

Stories about treachery and degradation provoke a visceral thrill in millions of people who think of themselves as reasonable and smart. Beautiful truths are suspect and ugly truths are readily believed.

So no, at this peculiar turning point in the evolution of our 14-billion-year-old master game, it's not easy to carry out our mission. We've got to be both wrathful insurrectionaries and exuberant lovers of life.

We've got to cultivate cheerful buoyancy even as we resist the temptation to swallow thousands of delusions that have been carefully crafted and seductively packaged by those messiahs among us who bravely volunteered to play the role of know-it-all deceivers.

We have to learn how to stay in a good yet unruly mood as we overthrow the sour, puckered mass hallucination that is mistakenly referred to as "reality."

Maybe most importantly, we have to be ferociously and single-mindedly dedicated to the cause of beauty and truth and love even as we keep our imaginations wild and hungry and free. We have to be both disciplined and rowdy.