Your Healing Power

Everyone in the world has the power to heal someone else. At one end of the spectrum are the doctors and shamans and therapists who can summon the means to cure lots of people. At the other end are individuals with the power to improve the health or smooth out the distortions in just one other person.

Where do you fit in this range?





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My book
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia is available at Amazon and Powells and Bookshop.org

Below are excerpts:


TEST OF INTELLIGENCE

F. Scott Fitzgerald's test of intelligence: "the capacity to hold conflicting ideas in the mind at the same time and continue to function."





PUT YOURSELF IN THE PATH OF BEAUTY

Essayist Elaine Scarry defines "the basic impulse underlying education" as the "willingness to continually revise one's own location in order to place oneself in the path of beauty."

I'd love that to be your educational strategy. I'd love you to forever be on the lookout for signs that beauty is near. Sound like a fun plan?

If so, do the research to find out where beauty might be hiding or ripening. Learn about what kinds of conditions attract beauty. Hang around beautiful infiuences.





WHAT IF YOUR DESIRES ARE HOLY?

Listen to my brief meditation on the subject.

Here are excerpts:

Some religious traditions teach the doctrine, "Kill off your longings." In their view, attachment to desire is at the root of human suffering.

But the religion of materialism takes the opposite tack, asserting that the meaning of life is to be found in indulging desires. Its creed is, "Feed your cravings like a French foie gras farmer cramming eight pounds of maize down a goose's gullet every day."

At the Beauty and Truth Lab, we walk a middle path. We believe there are both degrading desires that enslave you and sacred desires that liberate you.

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Psychologist Carl Jung believed that all desires have a sacred origin, no matter how odd they may seem. Frustration and ignorance may contort them into distorted caricatures, but it is always possible to locate the divine source from which they arose.

In describing one of his addictive patients, Jung said: "His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst for wholeness, or as expressed in medieval language: the union with God."

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Psychotherapist James Hillman echoes the theme: "Psychology regards all symptoms to be expressing the right thing in the wrong way."

A preoccupation with porn, for instance, may come to dominate a passionate person whose quest for love has degenerated into an obsession with images of love.

"Follow the lead of your symptoms," Hillman suggests, "for there's usually a myth in the mess, and a mess is an expression of soul."

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Like all of us, you have desires for things that you don't really need and aren't good for you. But you shouldn't disparage yourself for having them, nor should you conclude that every desire is tainted.

Rather, think of your misguided longings as the bumbling, amateur expressions of a faculty that will one day be far more expert. They're how you practice as you work toward the goal of becoming a master of desire.

It may take a while, but eventually you will get the hang of wanting things that are really good for you, and good for everyone else, too.

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"The only way anyone is ever cured of desiring nonsensical things is by getting the nonsensical things and then experiencing the unpleasant but educational consequences."

—Ann Davies

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To become a master of desire, keep talking yourself out of being attached to trivial goals and keep talking yourself into being thrilled about the precious few goals that are really important.

Here's another way to say it: Wean yourself from ego-driven desires and pour your libido into a longing for beauty, truth, goodness, justice, integrity, creativity, love, and an intimate relationship with the Wild Divine.





MY DAILY HOROSCOPES

Some people don't know that I write daily horoscopes, available as text messages sent to your cell or smart phone.

They're shorter than the weekly 'scopes, but on the other hand they're more frequent -- every day of the week.

My weekly horoscopes are free, but the dailies cost about 67 cents a day if you sign up for a subscription.

If you think you might enjoy getting regular bursts of inspiration from me to illuminate your adventures, check them out.

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.





THE GENIUS PROJECT

Michael Meade's "Genius Project": "Much has been said and written about having a vocation or calling in life; but often overlooked is the idea that a true calling is aimed at the genius qualities already set within each person.

"Most know that the call to awaken to a genuine path in life begins in youth; but fewer know that the calling keeps calling even in later life. Not only that, but in mythic terms, the Fountain of Youth that people have roamed the earth seeking waits to be found within oneself."

Read more.