Fresh Power to Transform Yourself Is on the Way

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.





FREE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

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

Sign up here for your free subscription.





Tweakable Pronoia Therapy

Experiments and exercises in becoming a radically curious, wildly disciplined, ironically sincere Master of Sacred Uproar

1. "Obstacles are a natural part of life, just as boulders are a natural part of the course of a river," declares the ancient Chinese book the I Ching. "The river does not complain or get depressed because there are boulders in its path."

I'd go so far to say—this is not in the original text, but is my 21st-century addition—that the river gets a sensual thrill as it glides its smooth current over the irregular shapes and hard skin of the rocks.

It looks forward to the friction, exults in the intimate touch, loves the drama of the interaction.

How would you go about imitating the river?

+

2. "The seed cannot sprout upwards without simultaneously sending roots into the ground," says an Egyptian proverb.

Keep that thought in mind as you head into your next phase of growth. What part of you needs to deepen as you rise up? What growth needs to unfold in the hidden places as you gravitate toward the light?

How can you go about balancing and stabilizing your ascension with a downward penetration?

+

3. Dumb suffering is the kind of suffering you're compulsively drawn back to over and over again out of habit. It's familiar, and thus perversely comfortable.

Smart suffering is the kind of pain that surprises you with valuable teachings and inspires you to see the world with new eyes.

While stupid suffering is often born of fear, wise suffering is typically stirred up by love. The dumb, unproductive stuff comes from allowing yourself to be controlled by your early conditioning and from doing things that are out of harmony with your essence.

The smart, useful variety arises out of an intention to approach life as an interesting work of art and uncanny game that's worthy of your curiosity.

Come up with two more definitions about the difference between dumb suffering and smart suffering.

+

4. My friend Riley was the first member of her family to attend college. None of her hardscrabble Irish forebears had ever pursued higher education. In her senior year, Riley began having nightmares of her relatives trying to stop her from finishing school. In one recurring dream, her great-grandfather burned all her textbooks. In another, a mob of aunts and uncles tackled her and held her down as she tried to get to class.

Despite these psychic obstacles, Riley persevered in her studies and eventually got her diploma. The week after graduation, she had another dream: A host of her ancestors came to her in the form of a great choir singing songs in praise of her success.

Riley's psychotherapist speculated that the dream meant she had not only overcome the inertia of her heritage, but had also healed an ancient wound of her family going back many generations.

Is there a similar accomplishment you're capable of? What is it?

+

5. Poet Kay Ryan told the Christian Science Monitor how she cultivates the inspiration to write. She rouses the sense of a "self-imposed emergency," thereby calling forth psychic resources that usually materialize only in response to a crisis.

Please note that she doesn't provoke an actual emergency: She doesn't arrange to have a loved one get pinned beneath the wheels of a car.

She doesn't climb out onto the window ledge on the 22nd story of a high-rise. Instead, she visualizes hypothetical situations that galvanize her to shift into a dramatically heightened state of awareness.

What imagined emergencies could you invoke to inspire your deep self to rise up and make its mark?

+

6. If you're reading this, you're probably not a Cambodian orphan who grew up enslaved in a brothel or a Sudanese man kidnapped by a militia and forced to do heavy labor 18 hours a day or one of the millions of other victims of human trafficking around the world.

But you may be yoked and subjugated in a less literal way, perhaps to a debilitating drug or an abusive relationship or a job that brings out the worst in you or a fearful fantasy about the looming collapse of civilization's infrastructure.

The good news is that you have the power to escape your bondage. Maybe it'll help you muster the strength you need if I remind you that your freedom won't be anywhere near as difficult to achieve as that of the Pakistani boy tied to a carpet loom in a dark room around the clock or the Nigerian woman who's beaten daily as she toils in the sugar cane fields for no pay.

Try this: When you feel overwhelmed by the sadness of your problems or the addiction of your compulsions, put on your best clothes and clean toilets at a homeless shelter, or give foot massages to workers at a sewage disposal plant, or sing songs, sip champagne, and play card games with patients at a psychiatric hospital.

Be ready to get hit upside the soul with exotic varieties of ecstasy, which such acts may unleash.

+

7. "Watch out for the dark side of your own idealism and of your moral sense," says Howard Bloom. "Both come from our arsenal of natural instincts. And both easily degenerate into an excuse for attacks on others. When our righteous indignation breathes the flames of anger against a 'villain,' we all too often become a fang in nature's scheme of tooth and claw."

What's the dark side of your idealism and morality?

+

8. Traditionally, the Seven Deadly Sins—actions most likely to wound the soul—are pride, lust, gluttony, anger, envy, sloth, and covetousness.

But we have formulated a fresh set of soul-harmers, the Four Foolish Virtues. They are as follows:

(1) being analytical to such extremes that you repress your intuition;

(2) sacrificing your pleasure through a compulsive attachment to duty;

(3) tolerating excessive stress because you assume it helps you accomplish more;

(4) being so knowledgeable that you neglect to be curious.

Are you victimized by any of these Four Foolish Virtues? If so, what are you going to do about it?

+

9. James Hillman and Michael Ventura wrote the book *We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World's Getting Worse*.

They propose that resolving our problems may not necessarily come from talking about our deep, private feelings with a trusted counselor.

Instead, the best approach might be to go out into the world and do good works like helping the underprivileged or fighting for social justice.

Try their approach as a prescription for one of your personal problems.

+

10. "Picture the Grand Canyon," says Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield. "Every hundred years, a child comes by and throws a mustard seed into it. In the time it takes to fill the hole in the earth with mustard seeds, one maha­kal­pa will have passed. To perfect the virtuous heart—the joy of integrity—takes a thousand mahakalpas."

If that's true, then you've still got a lot of work to do. The good news is that civilization is in the midst of a critical turning point that could tremendously expedite your ripening. So you could make unusually great progress toward the goal of perfecting the virtuous heart in the next 40 years.

For best results, meditate often on the phrase "the joy of integrity." Get familiar with the pleasurable emotion that comes from acting with impeccability. And try out this idea from Gandhi: Integrity is the royal road to your inner freedom.

P.S. Oddly enough, the work of perfecting the virtuous heart is very effective in helping you master the art of cultivating everyday ecstasy. Meditate on the connection.





Do you know about all of my FREE STUFF? Here's a list:

My free weekly newsletter

My website

Excerpts from my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia

My entire book The Televisionary Oracle

My music page

More free music

My fan Facebook page

My personal Facebook page

My Instagram page

My Twitter page

Videos of my performances

More videos of my performances

My Tumblr page





DEAR READERS: If you would like to contribute to me and my ongoing well-being:

1. Visit my Gift Page — and contribute to me via the "Send to someone you trust" option.

2. Commit to offering me a regular donation through my Patreon page.

3. You can also contribute by buying the Expanded Audio Horoscopes I create every week. These forecasts are different from the written horoscopes I provide here.

They're my four- to five-minute-long ruminations about the current chapter of your life story. They're available at RealAstrology.com

4. I also 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.

5. Send checks or cash to me at P.O. Box 4400, San Rafael, CA 94913.

8. Finally, I have made it possible for subscribers to my newsletter to pay a subscription fee to me for my newsletter, BUT ONLY IF THEY WANT TO AND CAN AFFORD TO!

I have offered my astrology newsletter free of charge for the past 20 years, and I will continue to do so for the next 20 years at least.

If, however, you are sufficiently prosperous and feel comfortable about donating money to me, I welcome it. Please know, though: I am TOTALLY FINE if you don't donate.

Subscribe here.

+

P.S.: No pressure, though! I understand that some of you don't have enough money yourself, and it wouldn't make sense for you to give some to me.





HOW'S YOUR KOYAANISQATSI DOING?

In the language of the Hopi Indians, koyaanisqatsi means "crazy life," "life in turmoil," or "life out of balance." It's usually invoked to describe a culture that's in disarray because of corruption and lack of vision.

Right now, I'm using it to identify a chaotic state that each of us periodically goes through in our personal life. It's a phase when we lose our moorings, when we're out of touch with our moral center.

On the one hand, it's uncomfortable and disorienting. On the other hand, the brain-scrambling it stirs up is often a blessing. It flushes out mental habits that no longer serve us. It provokes creative innovations by rearranging the contents of our psyche.

When was your last appointment with koyaanisqatsi? When's your next one?





WEIRD ELDERS

Michael Meade says: "In old traditions those who acted as elders were considered to have one foot in daily life and the other foot in the otherworld. Elders acted as a bridge between the visible world and the unseen realms of spirit and soul. A person in touch with the otherworld stands out because something normally invisible can be seen through them.

"The old word for having a foot in each world is 'weird.' The original sense of weird involved both fate and destiny. Becoming weird enough to be wise requires that a person learn to accommodate the strange way they are shaped within and aimed at the world.

"An old idea suggests that those seeking for an elder should look for someone weird enough to be wise. For just as there can be no general wisdom, there are no 'normal’ elders. Normal bespeaks the 'norms’ that society uses to regulate people, whereas an awakened destiny always involves connections to the weird and the warp of life.

"In Norse mythology, as in Shakespeare, the Fates appear as the Weird Sisters who hold time and the timeless together.

"Those who would become truly wise must become weird enough to be in touch with timeless things and abnormal enough to follow the guidance of the unseen. Elders are supposed to be weird, not simply 'weirdoes,’ but strange and unusual in meaningful ways.

"Elders are supposed to be more in touch with the otherworld, but not out of touch with the struggles in this world. Elders have one foot firmly in the ground of survival and another in the realm of great imagination. This double-minded stance serves to help the living community and even helps the species survive.”

– Michael Meade, Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul





Jubilant Pronoia Therapy

Experiments and exercises in becoming a sublimely kind, wildly intelligent, gracefully imaginative Master of lucid affection

1. Write the following on a piece of red paper and keep it under your pillow.

"I, [put your name here], do solemnly swear on this day, [put date here], that I will devote myself for a period of seven days to learning my most important desire. No other thought will be more uppermost in my mind. No other concern will divert me from tracking down every clue that might assist me in my drive to ascertain the one experience in this world that deserves my brilliant passion above all others."

+

2. Would you like to make yourself more magnetic to blessings? You could experiment with good luck charms or magic amulets—objects that you imagine might attract benevolence into your life.

How about a replica of Brísingamen, the magical necklace of the Norse goddess Freya? When she wore it, neither man nor god could resist her allure.

Or maybe a copy of the thyrsus, a wand wielded by Dionysus, the god of ecstasy? Or the bracelet of meteorite chunks I saw advertised as a luck-bringer in the back of a tabloid?

As fun as things like these might be, I believe there's a superior approach to the art of charging up your mojo. It's embodied by the metaphorical talisman that Tom Waits recommends in his song "Get Behind the Mule": Always keep a diamond in your mind.

Go get one of those diamonds.

+

3. "The really important kind of freedom," said David Foster Wallace, "involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day."

Is that an interesting kind of freedom to you? Can you imagine any scenario in which practicing it would crack you open and pour you into an ecstatic state?

+

4. Alice finds her way to Wonderland by falling down a rabbit hole. Dorothy rides to Oz on a tornado. In C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lucy stumbles into the magical land of Narnia via a portal in the back of a large clothes cabinet.

In the sequels to all these adventures, however, the heroines must find different ways to access their exotic dreamlands. Alice slips through a mirror next time. Dorothy uses a Magic Belt. Lucy leaps into a painting of a schooner that becomes real.

Take heed of these precedents. The next time a threshold opens into an alternative reality you've enjoyed in the past, it may not resemble the doorways you've used before.

+

5. Here's Caroline Myss' explanation of faith: "Faith is the power to stand up to the madness and chaos of the physical world while holding the position that nothing external has any authority over what heaven has in mind for you."

If you don't like the word "heaven" in Myss' statement, substitute a term that works for you, like "your higher self" or "your destiny" or "your soul's code."

Modify anything else in it that's not right for your needs, as well. When you're finished tinkering, I hope you'll have created a definition of faith that motivates you with as much primal power as you feel when you're in love.

+

6. Is the universe inherently friendly to humans? The answer's got to be either "yes, definitely" or "no, not really." It can't be in between. Whatever you may be inclined to believe, you've got to agree that there's no way to know which is true with absolute certainty.

So then isn't it stupid and self-destructive to live your life as if the universe is unfriendly? Doing so tends to cast a pall over everything. But if on the other hand you proceed on the hypothesis that the universe is friendly, you're inclined to interpret everything that occurs as a gift, however challenging it may be to figure out its purpose at first.

For three weeks, try living your life as if the latter theory were true.

+

7. I've written astrological oracles for much of my adult life. An early prototype of my work hatched in my previous incarnation as an 11th-century monastic scribe who made illuminated manuscripts. During my off-hours, I dabbled with planetary divination and created a parchment newsletter that got passed around the monastery.

In a later lifetime as a 16th-century Florentine alchemist, I further refined the form. The invention of the printing press meant my oracles could be seen by a larger audience, and as a result I got more feedback, which in turn helped me improve my service. The horoscopes I create today, then, have been in the making for a thousand years.

What about you? Is there anything you've been working on for many centuries? If your memory of your previous incarnations is fuzzy, make up a good story.

+

8. The outsourcing of fortune-telling is well underway. Psychics and astrologers from India have been showering me with email invitations to take advantage of their services.

"By the grace of the oceanic flames of goodness that by night simmer the roof of our temple and by day water the roots of our foolish wisdom," said one I query especially liked, "we have pledged to slave away our many reincarnations to cause the happy encroachment of bubbling karma on your masterful head. We will coax and guide the effects of various planets, comets, satellites, and dolmens, guaranteeing their flavor to fall on the living accidents of your love so as to ease your slippery upheaval to health."

In the course of your ecstatically pronoiac career, you will probably get puzzling offers of help like this. You may even be given gifts you can barely make sense of and blessings that are unlike anything you imagined you needed.

What might you do to receive them in the spirit in which they're offered? Here's one possibility: Cultivate living accidents of love so as to ease your slippery upheaval to health.

+

9. Computer programmer Garry Hamilton articulated the following "Game Rules." Give examples of how they have worked in your life.

1. If the game is rigged so you can't win, find another game or invent your own.

2. If you're not winning because you don't know the rules, learn the rules.

3. If you know the rules but aren't willing to follow them, there's either something wrong with the game or you need to change something in yourself.

4. Don't play the game in a half-baked way. Either get all the way in or all the way out.

5. It shouldn't be necessary for others to lose in order for you to win. If others have to lose, re-evaluate the game's goals.

+

10. Think about your relationship to human beings who haven't been born yet. What might you create for them to use? How can you make your life a gift to the future? Can you not only help preserve the wonders we live amidst, but actually enhance them?

Keep in mind this thought from Lewis Carroll: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward."

+

11. The Indian activist Mahatma Gandhi led many peaceful rebellions against oppressive governments, first in South Africa and later in British-controlled India.

At first he called his strategy "passive resistance," but later disavowed that term because it had negative implications.

He ultimately chose the Sanskrit word satyagraha, meaning "love force" or "truth force." "Truth (satya) implies love," he said, "and firmness (agraha) is a synonym for force. Satyagraha is thus the force which is born of truth and love."

Give an example of how you have employed satyagraha in the past, and another example of how you might invoke it in the future.

+

12. "When you die," says the Koran, "God will call upon you to account for all the permitted pleasures you did not enjoy while on earth."

The Talmud offers a similar idea: "A person will be called upon to account, on Judgment Day, for all the permitted pleasures he might have enjoyed but did not."

Are there any such pleasures in your life?

+

13. The modern English word "weird" is derived from the Old English term wyrd, meaning "destiny." By the late Middle Ages, wyrd had evolved into a concept similar to the Eastern notion of karma.

It implied that the momentum of past events plays a strong role in shaping the future, but that human willpower can nevertheless also have a hand in creating upcoming events.

In some uses, wyrd could even mean "the power to control destiny," as exemplified by the three Weird Sisters of Shakespeare's MacBeth.

Speculate about how the consequences of your past are impinging on your present situation. But also fantasize about how you might possess the ability to override them through the force of your intentions.





YOUR BEAUTIFUL LOVE BODY

Jason Hine reminds us: "Every part of your body is adorable and incredible, an actual love body. A thousand tiny deities the size of molecules are worshipping and protecting each tiny particle of your body.

"There is a religion in another world that worships your stomach, your lungs, the curve of your thigh or your pectoral muscles as sacraments of a god or goddess.

"Your lovebody is a luxuriant forest at sunset in which light coruscates through dewdrops and deliciously awakens a thousand joyful wild creatures."

—Jason Hine

+

PS: Jason Hine is a wonderful writer. Read more of his stuff.





MY DAUGHTER ZOE AND I ON A PODCAST

For the first time, my daughter Zoe Brezsny and I both appear on the same podcast. The show is "Plaster Cramp," an experimental archive of readings, descriptions, sounds, & other aural ephemera for the vision and reading impaired, created by Maliea Croy.

In this show, I do my spoken-word piece "Re-Genius Yourself," and Zoe does two pieces: “Light Beams for the Sky of a Transfer Corridor” and “See You in the Next World.”

Listen here.