Always Beginning

The more specific your goals, the better. The clearer you are in naming concrete intentions, the more likely it is you will actually make them happen.

Abstract, generalized aims are hard to visualize. This may result in a reduced expectation of realizing them, which in turn results in lower motivation to try and achieve them.

What specific experience, feeling, or situation do you want the most?

Read more.

+

I began to study at an occult mystery school when I was 25, and have been doing so ever since.

I was surprised and amused when the first lesson of the first course, "Seven Steps in Practical Occultism," told me that the most important thing I needed to do first was to state WHAT I WANT.





Here's a link to my free weekly email newsletter, featuring the Free Will Astrology horoscopes, plus a celebratory 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 subscription.




ALWAYS BEGINNING

It's always the beginning of the world.

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.





BOTH ARE TRUE!

I am in intimate contact with supernatural creatures and non-material beings every day

and

I love the scientific method and use it every day

Both are true.





OUR BODIES ARE WILD

Gary Snyder says: “Our bodies are wild. The involuntary quick turn of the head at a shout, the vertigo at looking off a precipice, the heart-in-the-throat in a moment of danger, the catch of the breath, the quiet moments relaxing, staring, reflecting – are universal responses of this mammal body.

"The body does not require the intercession of some conscious intellect to make it breathe, to keep the heart beating. It is to a great extent self-regulating, it is a life of its own.

"Sensation and perception do not exactly come from outside, and unremitting thought and image-flow are not exactly outside. The world is our consciousness, and it surrounds us. There are more things in the mind, in the imagination, than ‘you' can keep track of – thoughts, memories, images, angers, delights, rise unbidden.

"The depths of the mind, the unconscious, are our inner wilderness areas, and that is where a bobcat is right now. I do not mean personal bobcats in personal psyches – the bobcat that roams from dream to dream.

"The conscious agenda-planning ego occupies a very tiny territory, a little cubicle somewhere near the gate, keeping track of some of what goes in and out (and sometimes making expansionist plots), and the rest takes care of itself. The body is, so to speak, in the mind. They are both wild."

—Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild





ORIGINS OF PRONOIA

In his book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, J. D. Salinger didn't use the word "pronoia." But he had the character Seymour Glass write in his diary, "Oh, God, 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."

Then there was philosopher Terence McKenna, who said: "I believe reality is a marvelous joke staged for my edification and amusement, and everybody is working very hard to make me happy."

Philosopher Robert Anton Wilson uttered advice that also sounded pronoiac: "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."

+

I have written the first and only book about PRONOIA: Pronoia Is the Antidote to Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

But I didn't coin the modern use of the term "pronoia." It arose in the mid-1970s, originated by Grateful Dead lyricist and co¬founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, John Perry Barlow. He defined it as the opposite of paranoia: "the suspicion that the universe is a conspiracy on your behalf."

The Scottish psychologist Fraser Clark revived the word 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."

Working with the Zippies, a group of gypsy ravers, Clark organized the Zippy Pronoia Tour to America in 1994. With a boost from a cover story by Wired magazine, the tour's parties and performances spread the word.

Shortly thereafter, a website devoted to pronoia appeared on the web. It has mostly been devoted to telling the story of the Zippies.





FAKE QUOTES

I love reading Fake Buddha Quotes, the website where a scholar with a discerning mind tracks down all the words attributed to Buddha that were not actually said by him.

In this section, Snopes tracks down fake quotes, including some attributed to Einstein.





BORN AGAIN

"Dear Rob: I was born on November 30, and am quite attached to having it as a birthdate. But there's a complication. While in Iraq in 2006, I was half-blown up by a bomb, and had a near-death experience. When I returned from my excursion to the land of the dead, I felt I'd been born anew. Which is why I now also celebrate September 24, the date of the bombing, as my second birthday. What do you think? Two-Way Tamara."

Dear Two-Way: I believe we'd all benefit from having at least one dramatic rebirth in the course of our lives, though hopefully not in such a wrenching fashion as yours.

In fact, a fresh rebirth every few years or so would be quite healthy. If it means adding additional astrological identities to our repertoire, so much the better.





DROPPING RIGID IDENTITIES

Continuously drop all your rigid identities. Personal history may be your greatest danger.

You can achieve optimal physical health if you're devoted to shedding outworn self-images.

—Arnold Mindell





Say to those you love: I have sipped the gusts of your dusky gaze, and so I am eternally mobilized.

—my rendering of a poem by poet Sohrab Sepehri