Let's Not Hide or Apologize for Our Beauty

Excerpt from an article about me and my work in the Good Times of Santa Cruz:

Rob Brezsny’s “Free Will Astrology” columns, reflections and meditations fill thousands and thousands of pages.

His new opus, "Astrology Is Real: Revelations from My Life as a Horoscope Columnist," covers 530 pages.

But the soul of all that can be distilled down to one word: love.

Brezsny-style love.

Delirious, absurd, passionate, irrational, observational, strategic and sustainable love. Love for the finch at his birdfeeder, the eelgrass by the shore, the guy who stole his bike.

He describes it as “a chronic form of ecstatic awareness.”

More from the Good Times.





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Jane Brunette suggests this game: Instead of being the one who does the desiring, imagine instead that everything desires you.

Your morning coffee really wants you to taste it.

The trees are yearning for you to notice the bright green of their leaves.

The breeze wants you to enjoy it’s soft touch on your cheek.
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Even the ground under your shoes is waiting for you to notice the lively sensation it creates as you walk.

Suddenly, the world lights up — and so do you. When we feel wanted, it’s natural to feel enlivened in response.

Our desire takes its rightful place as the fire of presence and enjoyment of what is, instead of the burning need to get what’s not here.

Doing this practice, we will derive satisfaction from a whole variety of ordinary things that we normally overlook, since our attention won’t be occupied with waiting for a specific object to please us.

Now, there is no need to wait, because everything we encounter has satisfaction built into it. With desire spread out all over the world, its enlivening quality is no longer confined to one object that we may or may not get.

This little game can trick you into mindful presence, even as it helps wear down your usual relationship to desire. It is a simple, playful way to meditate as you go about your daily life.

Try it for short little bursts — and rather than thinking of it as a task, let the enjoyment that comes be the fuel that naturally makes you want to do it more and more.

Jane Brunette is here.





YOUR WOUNDS MAY BE HEALING GRADUALLY

Veterans of war who've been wounded by shrapnel often find that years later, some of the metal fragments eventually migrate to the surface and pop out of their skin.

The moral of the story: The body may take a long time to purify itself of toxins.

The same is true about your psyche. It might not be able to easily and quickly get rid of the poisons it has absorbed, but you should never give up hoping it will find a way.





EVERY CELL IN YOUR PERFECT ANIMAL BODY

Congratulations. Every cell in your perfect animal body is beginning to purr with luminous gratitude for the magnitude of the riches you endlessly receive.

You are becoming aware that each of your heart's beats originates as a gift of love directly from the Goddess herself.

Any residues of hatred that had been tainting your libido are leaving you for good.

You are becoming telepathically linked to the world's entire host of secret teachers, pacifist warriors, philosopher clowns, and bodhisattvas disguised as convenience store clerks.

In other words, you're on the verge of détente with your evil twin. And you're ready to submit to a multiple-choice test, which goes like this:

How does it make you feel when I urge you to confess profound secrets to people who are not particularly interested? Does it make you want to:

a. cultivate a healthy erotic desire for a person you'd normally never be attracted to in a million years;


b. imitate a hurricane in the act of extinguishing a forest fire;

c. visualize Buddha or Mother Teresa at the moment of orgasm;

d. steal something that's already yours.

The right answer, of course, is any answer you thought was correct. Congratulations. You're even smarter than you knew.