Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
OCTOBER 28, 2009
FreeWillAstrology.com
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"It is essential to have Knowledge; it is also essential
to escape the Known."
- J. Krishnamurti
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The revised and expanded version of my book PRONOIA IS THE
ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA is eager to be read by you.
You can order it at Amazon: tinyurl.com/lxpnyt
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If You Practice Pronoia, Your Life Will Suck!
Find out why by reading this piece from the book: tinyurl.com/yj5uzm5
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Did you ever wonder how I got started in the business of writing
horoscopes? There's a story about it in my book. You can read
it here: tinyurl.com/yfqosjj
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Below is another piece from the new book:
HEALING SHOCKS
Many of us are essentially asleep, even as we walk around in
broad daylight. We're so focused on the restless narratives and
repetitive fantasies unfurling in our heads that we only dimly
perceive the larger story raging in all of its chaotic beauty
around us.
To have any hope of permanently breaking out of our fuzzy trance,
we require regular shocks. A single jolt might cause us to briefly
come to attention and see the miracle of creation for what it
is, but once the red alert has passed, we relax back into our
fixation on the dreamy tales our mind never stops telling us.
In the course of its conspiracy to shower us with blessings,
life does its best to provide us with a steady flow of healing
shocks. But because it tends to err on the side of tenderness,
its prods may be too gentle, allowing us to ignore them. Gradually,
life will up the ante, trying to find the right mix of toughness
and love, as it encourages us to WAKE UP!
But our addiction to the phantasmagoria is tenacious. The stream-of-conscious
narratives and ever-bubbling fantasies, even when they're racked
with torment and terror, are perversely entertaining. And so we
may avoid responding to the kind shocks for so long that life
finally has to resort to stronger medicine. Then we might get
sick or lose our job or muck up our closest relationship.
It doesn't have to be that way. We could cultivate in ourselves
a sixth sense for the wake-up calls life sends us. We might develop
a knack for responding with agile grace to the early, gentler
ones so that we wouldn't have to be visited by the more stringent
measures.
There's also another possibility: With hungry intent, we could
seek out and hunt down invigorating jolts. We wouldn't wait to
have our a**es kicked, but would kick our own a**es -- over and
over again, with a creative ingenuity that would be the envy of
a great pronoiac novelist or musician or filmmaker. Who knows?
We might even master the art of inducing shocks that feel really
good.
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In the lead-up to my band's show last Saturday, the "Good
Times" newspaper wrote a fine account of our saga. Read it
here: tinyurl.com/ylmlkob
Find out about the band and download free tunes here: tinyurl.com/yeona8
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
YOU REALLY HAVE NO IDEA OF THE MIRACLES GOING ON INSIDE YOU
Take a look at what your 50 trillion cells are doing right now.
tinyurl.com/yk9essw
A STILL MORE GLORIOUS DAWN AWAITS US
tinyurl.com/mboret
"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must
first invent the universe."
LOTS OF PEOPLE ARE WORKING HARD AT REDEMPTION
Green shoots rise from brown fields
tinyurl.com/yds3rgo
(Note: I endorse these because I like them. They are not advertisements,
and I get no kickbacks.)
Please tell me your own personal nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES.
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning October 29
Copyright 2009 by Rob Brezsny
FreeWillAstrology.com
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
"Behind every face, there are a thousand faces," says
film director Bryan Singer, who worked on two of the X-Men movies.
He deals with professional actors, who specialize in revealing
the myriad faces beneath the surface. But I think his assessment
applies to lots of people, especially you Scorpios -- although
it must be said that you do have mad skills at hiding all the
action going on beneath your surface. This Halloween, I urge you
to make a break with tradition and show five or six of the real
you's lurking below your poker face. Costume suggestion: be inspired
by Joseph Campbell's "hero with a thousand faces."
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown has a unique way
of stimulating his imagination: He dons his gravity boots and
meditates on complex storylines while he's inverted. It's also
a good way to overcome writer's block. "You think differently
upside-down," he says. Do you have an equivalent method for
providing gentle shock therapy to your perspective, Sagittarius?
This is a good time to use it. If you don't already have a creative
aid like that, hunt around for one. In the days ahead, it will
come in handy.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
When Sheelah Ryan won $55 million in the Florida lottery, she
used the money to create an organization dedicated to helping
the disadvantaged. "I guess I've disappointed a lot of people,"
she told a reporter. "I could be traveling all over the world,
or have a beautiful mansion on the ocean, or have a chauffeur-driven
Rolls-Royce. But that's not my style." She's your role model
for the coming weeks, Capricorn. When good fortune comes to you
-- and I'm almost positive it will -- I recommend that you look
for ways to share it. The ironic fact of the matter is that if
you're generous as you tap in to your gift, there'll be more of
the gift.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
When I did a performance in Santa Fe a few years ago, a woman
in the audience came up to me after the show and made a sardonic
proposal: Would I like to join her twelve-step program for writers
who are overly fond of vivid adjectives and adverbs? With all
the uppity mock politeness I could summon, I told her that I was
preposterously happy with my scintillating addiction to brazen
language, and didn't regard it as a raggedy problem that needed
invasive correcting. Now I'm advising you to be like me and follow
your heart when it tells you to be bigger, bolder, and brasher
than ever before. Right now, shiny intensity is your sacred duty!
Halloween costume suggestion: the sun.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
I hope you won't merely wander around the frontier. I hope you'll
undertake a meticulous yet expansive exploration of that virgin
territory. Here are some tips on how to proceed: 1. Formulate
specific questions about what you're looking for. 2. Develop a
hypothesis for the experiments you want to carry out. 3. Ignore
what doesn't interest you and pounce only on what stirs your fascination.
Halloween costume suggestion: an alien anthropologist visiting
Earth from another planet; a time-traveler from the future who's
doing a documentary on this historical moment; a religious pilgrim
who's keeping a detailed journal.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
You may be as flooded with briny emotion as a Pisces on a meandering
binge. You might be as embedded in a labyrinth of your own creation
as the Geminis who verge on being too clever for their own good.
You may be as cagey a listener as a Scorpio who's searching for
a hidden vulnerability in an ally. In other words, Aries, you're
not exactly yourself. But it's one of those rare times when that's
a good thing. Halloween costume suggestion: the opposite of what
you think you are.
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LISTEN TO AN EXPANDED HOROSCOPE
In addition to the horoscopes you're reading here, I create more
in-depth audio horoscopes for your inspiration. Find out more
at RealAstrology.com.
The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at 1-877-873-4888
or 1-900-950-7700.
"Rob has kept me true to my compass when I was surrounded
by magnets. All other guides told me my compass must be broken,
but he looks me in the soul and reminds me that it is just right.
- K. Britton, Boston
"Your Expanded Audio Horoscopes provide me with the Rest
of the Story. I'm not necessarily a believer in the scientific
accuracy of astrology, but I do think you've got a lot of practical
wisdom to impart."
- M. Tennenbaum, New York
"No one knows more about me than me. But you're right up
there near the top of the list of people who do understand something
about how I tick. How is that possible?"
- R. Goren, Albuquerque
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TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
In my ideal version of Halloween, we wouldn't scare ourselves
with images of ghoulish skeletons, eyeballs floating in cauldrons,
and hissing, three-headed snakes. Rather, we'd confront more realistic
fears, like the possibility that the effects we have on the world
are different from our intentions . . . or that we have not yet
reached our potential . . . or that people we like might completely
misread and misunderstand us. Then Halloween would serve a more
spiritually useful purpose. It would bring us face-to-face with
actual dangers to our psychic integrity, whereupon we could summon
our brilliant courage and exorcize the hell out of them. Costume
suggestion: exorcist. (Begin by exorcising yourself.)
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
During this phase of your cycle, you'll generate good fortune
if you brainstorm and meditate about your relationship with work.
I urge you to empty your mind of everything you think you know
about the subject. Adopt a fresh and innocent perspective. Here
are some questions to prime your investigations. 1. What's the
quality of the experience you want to have as you earn a living?
2. What gifts do you want to give to life as you toil at challenging
tasks that are interesting to you? 3. What capacities do you want
to develop in yourself while doing your work? (P.S. For your Halloween
costume, why not pretend you're doing your dream job?)
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000) witnessed the full range
of experiences that life on this planet has to offer, from war
to love and everything in between. During an interview he gave
in Jerusalem in 1994, he said, "I can stand on my balcony
and tell my children, 'Over there I was shelled for the first
time, and over there, to the right, just beneath those trees,
I was kissed for the first time.'" I suspect his words will
soon be meaningful for you, Cancerian. It's likely you'll have
a breakthrough or epiphany near a place where you once suffered
disappointment. Halloween costume suggestion: the phoenix.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
Author Gary Smalley says that the sexual nature of men is like
a microwave oven, while women resemble a crockpot, the device
that cooks food at low heat for a long time. Right about now,
I'd advise you Leo men to be like crockpots not only in the bedroom
but everywhere else, too. To spot the subtle opportunities that
will be available, you'll have to be gradual, deliberate, and
thorough. Leisurely foreplay should be your all-purpose metaphor.
As for you Leo women: I'm betting there are ways that you have
fallen under the sway of the microwave meme. If I'm right, it's
time to fully re-embrace the spirit of the crockpot. Halloween
costume clues: the tortoise, not the hare; a 400-page novel, not
Twitter; the Pyramid of Khufu, not a sandcastle.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
"The more beautiful the bird, the poorer the singer,"
wrote L. M. Boyd. "Peacocks scream, macaws screech. Birds
of Paradise croak." Among the most interesting singers, on
the other hand, are birds that are far less spectacular in appearance:
the Black-capped Chickadee, the Willow Thrush, and the White-throated
Sparrow. Keep that in mind as you navigate your way through the
coming week's dilemmas. My personal inclination is to favor inspiring
singing over comely appearance, but you may have a different bias.
The important thing is to recognize the nature of the options
before you. Halloween costume suggestion: Incorporate the themes
of plain beauty, secret genius, disguised power, and open secrets.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
At a family planning conference in Beijing, a researcher from
Ghana presented testimony about tribal issues that he had in part
gleaned through interviews with dead ancestors. He said that spirit
mediums had acted as his "translators." When he was
met with skepticism from colleagues, he was defensive. "If
I only heard from the living," he explained, "I wouldn't
get a very good balance." His perspective would be smart
for you to adopt right now, Libra. To make the wisest decisions
and take the most righteous action, draw inspiration from what
has passed away as much as from what's alive and in your face.
Halloween costume suggestion: a spirit medium.
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HOMEWORK:
What is your greatest fear? Make fun of it this Halloween. Tell
me about it at my Facebook page: tinyurl.com/nkay2n.
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WANT TO GET YOUR CHART DONE?
I'm not doing personal charts, but I highly recommend my astrological
colleague, RO LOUGHRAN. Her approach closely matches my own. In
our many discussions about astrology over the years, we've had
a major influence on each other's work.
Ro utilizes a blend of well-trained
intuition, emotional warmth, and
a high
degree of technical proficiency
in horoscope interpretation; she
is skilled
at exploring the mysteries of your
life's purpose and nurturing your
connection with your own inner
wisdom.
Ro is based in California, but
can do phone consultations and
otherwise
work with you regardless of geographic
boundaries.
Ro's website is at YourSoulJourney.com
She can also be reached at roloughran@comcast.net
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2009 Rob Brezsny
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