Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
June 2, 2021
FreeWillAstrology.com
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For one human being to love another is the most difficult task of all. It’s the work for which all other work is mere preparation.
—Rainer Maria Rilke
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YOU OWN THE WORLD
Imagine that the whole world belongs to you. The birch trees in New Hampshire's White Mountains are yours, and so are the cirrus clouds in the western sky at dusk and the black sand on the beaches of Hawaii's Big Island.
You own everything, my dear sovereign—the paintings in all the museums of the world, as well as the Internet and the wild horses and the eight-lane highways.
Please take good care of it all, OK? Be an enlightened monarch who treats your domain with reverent responsibility. And make sure you also enjoy the full measure of fun that comes with such mastery. Glide through life as if all of creation is yearning to honor and entertain you.
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WHERE ARE YOUR HOLY PLACES?
What is the holiest river in the world? Some might say the Ganges in India. Others would propose the Jordan River or the River Nile. But I say the holiest river is the one that's closest to where you are right now.
Go to that river and commune with it. Throw a small treasure into it as an offering. Next, find a holy sidewalk to walk on, praise the holiness in a bus driver, kiss a holy tree, and shop at a holy store.
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SUPREME INTELLIGENCE
What if the Creator is like Rainer Maria Rilke's God, "like a webbing made of a hundred roots, that drink in silence"? What if the Source of All Life inhabits both the dark and the light, heals with strange splendor as much as with sweet insight, is hermaphroditic and omnisexual?
What if the Source loves to give you riddles that push you past the boundaries of your understanding, forcing you to deepen your perceptions and change the way you think about everything? Close your eyes and imagine you can sense the presence of this tender, marvelous, difficult, entertaining intelligence.
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EXPERIMENTAL AFFIRMATION
Say this: "Novel intuitions are now erupting from my smart heart, awakening me from any trance I've been ensnared in. I am hereby breaking and escaping obstructions that have hindered my ability to express my soul's code. All of my unique capacities are being unleashed, all of my potentials activated. I recognize that I'm a miraculous work of art, a masterpiece unlike any other ever created in the history of the world."
Say this: "I am a genius. I am a lucky, plucky, good-sucking genius."
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YOU HAVE THE POWER TO TRANSFORM UGLINESS
Go to the ugliest or most forlorn place you know--a drugstore parking lot, the front porch of a crack house, a toxic waste dump, or the place that symbolizes your secret shame--and build a shrine devoted to beauty, truth, and love.
Here are some suggestions about what to put in your shrine: a silk scarf; a smooth rock on which you've inscribed a haiku or joke with a felt-tip pen; coconut cookies or ginger candy; pumpkin seeds and an origami crane; a green kite shaped like a dragon; a music CD you love; a photo of your hero; a votive candle carved with your word of power; a rubber ducky; a bouquet of fresh beets; a print of Van Gogh's "Starry Night."
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CLAIM YOUR REWARDS
With grace and persistence, you will be able to claim the rewards promised you at the beginning of time -- not just any old beauty, wisdom, goodness, love, freedom, and justice, but rather:
• exhilarating beauty that incites you to be true to yourself;
• crazy wisdom that immunizes you against the temptation to believe your ideals are ultimate truths;
• outrageous goodness that inspires you to experiment with boisterous empathy;
• generous freedom that keeps you alert for opportunities to share your wealth; insurrectionary love that endlessly transforms you;
• and a lust for justice that's leavened with a knack for comedy, keeping you honest as you work humbly to liberate everyone in the world from ignorance and suffering.
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Tree-Free Paper Is Saving Forests and Farmers in Washington State. Creating paper from wheat waste gives forests a break — and harvesters a new revenue stream.
tinyurl.com/29ykfwjr
How Teens Are Working to End Relationship Violence
tinyurl.com/3t62a4wy
Seaweed Could be Food, Fuel, and Sustainable Material of the Future, Researchers Say
tinyurl.com/4dap25rz
Floating ‘WALL-E’ Scarecrow Stops Seabirds from Diving into Fishing Nets
tinyurl.com/j9mxbwfs
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For more pronoiac resources and ideas, read my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings
Available at Bookshop.org: tinyurl.com/548hp8y8
Available at Barnes & Noble: tinyurl.com/PronoiaBN
Available at Amazon: bit.ly/Pronoia
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Please tell me your own nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES: newsletter@freewillastrology.com
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning June 3
Copyright 2021 by Rob Brezsny
FreeWillAstrology.com
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
"All I want to be is normally insane," said actor Marlon Brando. Yikes! I have a different perspective. I would never want to be normally insane because that state often tends to be sullen and desperate and miserable. My preferred goal is to be quite abnormally insane: exuberantly, robustly, creatively free of the toxic adjustments that our society tells us are necessary. I want to be cheerfully insane in the sense of not being tyrannized by conventional wisdom. I want to be proactively insane in the sense of obeying my souls' impulses rather than conforming to people's expectations. I bring this to your attention, Gemini, because I believe the coming weeks will be a fruitful time for you to be my kind of insane.
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
"It’s one thing to make a mistake, it’s another to become wedded to it," advised author Irena Karafilly. Let's make that one of your key truths in the coming weeks. Now is a good time to offer yourself forgiveness and to move on from any wrong turns you've made. Here's a second key truth, courtesy of composer Igor Stravinsky: "I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge." Third key truth, from Sufi teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan: "Don’t be concerned about being disloyal to your pain by being joyous."
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
According to my analysis of the astrological omens, the number of perfect moments you will experience during the next two weeks could break all your previous records. And what do I mean by "perfect moments"? 1. Times when life brings you interesting events or feelings or thoughts that are novel and unique. 2. Pivotal points when you sense yourself undergoing a fundamental shift in attitude or a new way of understanding the world. 3. Leaping out of your own mind and into the mind of an animal or other person so as to have a pure vision of what their experience is like. 4. An absolute appreciation for yourself just the way you are right now.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
"There is strong shadow where there is much light," wrote Virgo author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). That's a good metaphor for you these days. Since I suspect you are currently shining as brightly as you possibly can, I will urge you to become acutely aware of the shadows you cast. In other words, try to catch glimpses of the unripe and unformed parts of your nature, which may be more easily seen than usual. Now, while you're relatively strong and vibrant, investigate what aspects of your inner world might need improvement, care, and healing.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
According to physicists, it's impossible for a human being to suck water up through a straw that's more than 34 feet long. So please don't even try to do that, either now or ever. If, however, you have a good reason to attempt to suck water up a 33-foot straw, now would be an excellent time to do so. Your physical strength should be at a peak, as is your capacity for succeeding at amazing, herculean tasks. How else might you direct your splendid abilities? What other ambitious feats could you pull off?
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
Scorpio poet Ezra Pound had character flaws that bother me. But he also had a quality I admire: generosity in helping his friends and colleagues. Among the writers whose work he championed and promoted with gusto were 20th-century literary icons James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Hilda Doolittle, William Butler Yeats, Ernest Hemingway, William Carlos Williams, and Robert Frost. Pound edited their work, arranged to get them published in periodicals and anthologies, connected them with patrons and editors, and even gave them money and clothes. In accordance with astrological omens, I encourage you to be like Ezra Pound in the coming weeks. Make an extra effort to support and boost your allies. Assist them in doing what they do well. To do so will be in your own best interest!
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WHY IS IT CALLED "FREE WILL" ASTROLOGY?
It's called Free Will Astrology because my goal is to create horoscopes that nurture your free will!
And if you ever want more than the 'scopes you're reading here, keep in mind that I also create EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES for you. They're four-to-five-minute meditations on the current state of your destiny.
Need more help in figuring out the questions life is asking you? Crave more support in your efforts to build your courage? Check out the EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES.
To listen to your Expanded Audio Horoscope online, go to RealAstrology.com
Register and/or log in through the main page.
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The cost is $6 per sign online. (Discounts are available for bulk purchases.)
You can also listen over the phone by calling 1-877-873-4888. The cost is $1.99 per minute. Each forecast is 4-5 minutes long.
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"Your audio horoscopes help me love myself better, and I mean that in a non-narcissistic way."
—Deva Paramaus, Indianapolis
"I'm really grateful for the way you pick up my telepathic requests and answer them in your expanded audio 'scopes."
—Marion Houseman, Birmingham, AL
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SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
Poet Tess Gallagher praises those times "when desire has strengthened our bodies." I want you to have an abundance of those moments during the coming weeks. And I expect that cultivating them will be an excellent healing strategy. So here's my advice: Do whatever's necessary to summon and celebrate the strong longings that will strengthen your body. Tease them into bountiful presence. Treasure them and pay reverence to them and wield them with gleeful passion.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else," observed poet Emil Dickinson. That's the truth! Given how demanding it is to adjust to the nonstop challenges, distractions, and opportunities of the daily rhythm, I'm impressed that any of us ever get any work done. According to my astrological analysis, you Capricorns are now experiencing a big outbreak of this phenomenon. It's probably even harder than usual to get work done, simply because life keeps bringing you interesting surprises that require your ingenuity and resourcefulness. The good news is that these surges of ingenuity and resourcefulness will serve you very well when the hubbub settles down a bit and you get back to doing more work.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
Aquarius-born August Strindberg (1849–1912) was a masterful and influential playwright. He also liked to dabble in painting and photography. His approach in those two fields was different from the polish he cultivated in his writing. "I am an amateur and I intend to stay that way," he testified about his approach in the visual arts. "I reject all forms of professional cleverness or virtuosity." Just for now, Aquarius, I recommend you experiment with the latter attitude in your own field. Your skill and earnestness will benefit from doses of playful innocence, even calculated naiveté.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
Which of the astrological signs feels the deepest feelings? I say it's you Pisceans. You're connoisseurs of deep feelings, as well as specialists in mysterious, multi-splendored, brushes-with-infinity feelings. And right now, you're in the Deepest Feelings Phase of your personal cycle. I won't be surprised if you feel a bit overwhelmed with the richness of it all. But that's mostly a good thing that you should be grateful for—a privilege and a superpower! Now here's advice from deep-feeling author Pearl Buck: "You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings."
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
"There is ecstasy in paying attention," writes Aries author Anne Lamott. That's always true for everyone, but it's extra true for you Aries people. And it will be extra ultra especially true for you during the next 20 days. I hope you will dedicate yourself to celebrating and upgrading your perceptual abilities. I hope you will resolve to see and register everything just as it is in the present moment, fresh and unprecedented, not as it was in the past or will be in the future. For best results, banish all preconceptions that might interfere with your ability to notice what's raw and real. If you practice these high arts with exhilarating diligence, you will be rewarded with influxes of ecstasy.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
Your guiding wisdom comes from Taurus author Annie Dillard. She writes, "I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you." I suspect that Dillard's approach will enable you to maintain a righteous rhythm and make all the right moves during the coming weeks. If you agree with me, your crucial first step will be to identify the nature of your "one necessity." Not two necessities. Just the single most important.
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HOMEWORK:
Testify about how you redeemed the dark side. Newsletter@freewillastrology.com
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Submissions sent to Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter or in response to "homework assignments" may be published in a variety of formats at Rob Brezsny's discretion, including but not limited to newsletters, books, the Free Will Astrology column, and Free Will Astrology website. We reserve the right to edit submissions for length, style, and content.
Requests for anonymity will be honored. We are not responsible for unsolicited submission of any creative material.
Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright 2021 Rob Brezsny
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