Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter March 17, 2010

Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
MARCH 17, 2010
FreeWillAstrology.com

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New song, "Glory in the Highest": bit.ly/GloryGlory

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Dear Readers,

Is it a song? A spoken-word piece? A ritual incantation? Whatever it is, it's called "Glory in the Highest, " and it's the second in an ongoing series of free downloads from the soundtrack for my book, PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA.

You can access it here: bit.ly/GloryGlory

It's based on a piece from the book, which I'm also excerpting below.

In addition to my music and vocals, "Glory in the Highest" also features the singing of Nina Lakshmi and the guitar work and production help of Josh Brill. Nina's website is at ninalakshmi.com, and Josh's is at www.joshbrill.com.

Enjoy!

In the weeks to come, I'll be announcing the release of other new songs.

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Thanks for your continuing show of massive support for my book. In the last two weeks, you -- the 40,233 readers of this weekly newsletter -- have bought more books and written more reviews for Amazon.com than the previous three months combined.

I'd love to keep riding this momentum. I've still got a way to go before I'll break even on my self-publishing costs. (To read the full story, go here: bit.ly/PronoiaBiz.)

It's a tough economic time for some of you, I know, so I completely understand if contributing to my financial well-being is out of the question. And besides, there's absolutely no pressure. I love you madly and dearly even if you never spend a penny to buy the things I create!

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The revised and expanded version of my book PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA is available at Amazon: bit.ly/Pronoia

The spoken-word musical piece I'm offering this week, "Glory in the Highest," uses material from a much longer piece called "Glory in the Highest" in the book. The longer piece can be found in three parts:

bit.ly/GloryPart1

bit.ly/GloryPart2

bit.ly/GloryPart3

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Meanwhile, here are the lyrics to the song, available at http://bit.ly/GloryGlory:

GLORY IN THE HIGHEST

Thousands of things go right for you every day, beginning the moment you wake up. Through some magic you don't fully understand, you're still breathing and your heart is beating, even though you've been unconscious for many hours. The air is a mix of gases that's just right for your body's needs, as it was before you fell asleep.

You can see! Light of many colors floods into your eyes, registered by nerves that took God or evolution or some process millions of years to perfect.

The interesting gift of these vivid hues is furthermore made possible by an unimaginably immense globe of fire, the sun, which continually detonates nuclear explosions in order to convert its own body into light and heat and energy for your personal use.

Your hands work wonderfully well. Your heart circulates your blood all the way out to replenish the energy of the muscles and nerves in your fingers and palms and wrists. And after your blood has delivered its blessings, it finds its way back to your heart to be refreshed. This wondrous mystery recurs over and over again without stopping every minute of your life.

You can smell intoxicating aromas. You can hear provocative and soothing sounds. You can taste a thousand different tastes. How is any of this possible? You can think thoughts any time you want -- big, wide, colorful thoughts or tiny dark burrowing thoughts. You can revel and wallow in great oceans of emotion. What colossal secret intelligence or improbable series of fabulous accidents conspired to bestow these superpowers upon you?

Language is another stupendous marvel. Millions of souls have cooperated intricately for untold centuries to cultivate a system of communication that you understand very well. Your ability to speak and read and write makes you feel strong and dynamic. It connects you with the world. It allows you to indulge in one of your greatest pleasures, which is to hear and tell stories.

Maybe this is the best gift of all: You have a staggeringly potent creative tool: your imagination. You use it to create mental pictures of things that don't exist yet and that you want to bring into being. Your imagination is the engine of your destiny, the catalyst with which you design your future.

Or maybe this is the best gift of all: You know that you are you. You are exultantly and extravagantly aware that you are alive and conscious and awake and unique. You have a million different feelings and fantasies about what it means to be you.

Do you remember when you were born? It was a difficult miracle that involved many people who worked very hard on your behalf. No less amazing is the fact that you have continued to grow ever since then, with new cells being born within you all the time to replace the old cells that are dying.

At this very moment, there are 50 trillion cells in your body, and each of them is really a sentient being in its own right. They all act together as a community, blessing you with their astonishing collaboration. It's just like magic.

Everywhere you look: glory

Every step you take: glory

Every breath you take: glory glory

Soaring roaring uproarious glory
is our story

This succulent burst of glory has been brought to you by the imaginary lightning bolts you can shoot out the ends of your fingers any time you want to.

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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

FIND THE HIDDEN TREASURES
Celebrate Wondrous, Curious, and Esoteric Places
tinyurl.com/yhtxt8l

PRONOIA CLEBERATES NEURODIVERSITY
Brilliant autistic woman explains why the world needs all different kinds of minds
tinyurl.com/yc2yzdu

NOTICE THE SMALL MIRACLES
Lifetime Achievement Reward
The Daily Grail is a prime source for the steady flow of mirabilia. As defined in my book PRONOIA, mirabilia means "events that inspire wonder, marvelous phenomena, small miracles."
DailyGrail.com

(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 March 18

Copyright 2010 by Rob Brezsny
FreeWillAstrology.com

ARIES (March 21-April 19):

From what I can tell, your excursion to Fake Paradise didn't exact too serious a toll. The accidental detour may have seemed inopportune in the moment, but you know what? I think it slowed you down enough to keep you from doing something rash that you would have regretted later. And are you really sorry you were robbed of your cherished illusions? In the long run, I think it was for the best. As for the scratches on your nose from when you stuck it into business you weren't "supposed" to: They're a small price to pay for the piquant lesson you got in how not to live.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20):

Some people are here on the planet to find success, while others are here to find themselves. In the big scheme of things, I'm not sure which category you fit into, Taurus. But I'm pretty sure that for the next few weeks you'll be best served by acting as if you're the latter. Even if you think you've found yourself pretty completely in the past, it's time to go searching again: There are new secrets to be discovered, in large part because you're not who you used to be. So for now at least, I encourage you to give your worldly ambitions a bit of a rest as you intensify your self-explorations.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20):

Being a paragon of moral behavior can be fun and rewarding. It's amazing how many interesting people want to play with me just because they think I'm so #%&@ high-minded. But I've got to confess that my commitment to discipline and righteousness is sometimes at odds with my rebellious itch to give you mischievous nudges and outrageous challenges. Like right now, the conscientious teacher in me might prefer to advise you to keep a lid on debauchery, voracity, excess, uproar, slapstick, wise-cracking, fireworks, and limit-pushing. But the rabble-rousing agitator in me feels obligated to inform you that at no other time in 2010 will the karmic price be lower for engaging in such pursuits.

CANCER (June 21-July 22):

It's time for you to stop specializing in furtive glimpses and start indulging in brazen gazes. You're ready to phase out your role as a peripheral influence and see if you can be more of a high-intensity instigator and organizer. Yes, Cancerian, you've earned the right to claim more credibility and clout -- to leave your tentative position outside the magic circle and head in the direction of the sweet hot spot.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):

"Nature seems to exult in abounding radicality, extremism, anarchy," wrote Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. "If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe . . . No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe." (Dillard's entire passage is here: bit.ly/TinkerCreek.) Reading this passage is a good way for you to prepare for the immediate future, Leo. Why? Because you'll soon be invited to commune with outlandish glory. You'll be exposed to stories that burst from the heart of creation. You'll be prodded to respond to marvelous blips with marvelous blips of your own. But here's the catch: It may all remain invisible to you if you're blinded by the false belief that you live a boring, ordinary life.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):

The storm is your friend right now, Virgo. So are the deep, dark night and the last place you'd ever think of visiting and the most important thing you've forgotten about. So be more willing than usual to marinate in the mysteries -- not with logical ferocity but with cagey curiosity. The areas of life that are most crucial for you to deal with can't be fully understood using the concepts your rational mind favors. The feelings that will be most useful for you to explore are unlike those you're familiar with.

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YOU NEED MAGIC EVERY DAY

Every day, you have to wade through a relentless surge of soul-less facts. The experience tends to shut down your sense of wonder.

Every day, you're over-exposed to narratives that have been sucked free of delight and mystery. That's why you have to make such strenuous efforts to keep your world enchanted.

I like to think I can contribute to the sacred cause of feeding your sense of wonder and enchantment. In fact, that's one of my prime motivations for offering you the free weekly horoscopes you read in this newsletter.

If you ever want more of that good stuff, and think it's worth paying for, please consider trying out my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES. They're four-to-five-minute meditations on the current state of your destiny.

Go here to access them: RealAstrology.com

You can also listen over the phone by calling 1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700

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LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):

Here's your mantra for the coming week: "I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity." Say it and sing it and murmur it at least 100 times a day. Let it flow out of you after you've awoken each morning and are still lying in bed. Let it be the last sound on your lips as you drop off to sleep. Have fun with it. Dip into your imagination to come up with different ways to let it fly -- say it as your favorite cartoon character might say it, like a person with a Swedish accent, like your inner teenager, like a parrot, like a grinning sage. "I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity. I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity."

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):

Have you ever heard about how some all-night convenience stores blast loud classical music out into the parking lot in order to discourage drug dealers from loitering? In the coming days, use that principle whenever you need to drive home a point or make a strong impression. Your aggressive expressions will be more effective if you take the darkness and anger out of them, and instead fill them up with forceful grace and propulsive compassion.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

The Hebrew word chalom means "dream." In his book Healing Dreams, Marc Ian Barasch notes that it's derived from the verb "to be made healthy and strong." Linguist Joseph Jastrow says that chalom is related to the Hebrew word hachlama, which means "recovery, recuperation." Extrapolating from these poetic hints and riffing on your astrological omens, I've got a prescription for you to consider: To build your vitality in the coming weeks, feed your dreams. And I mean "dreams" in both the sense of the nocturnal adventures you have while you're sleeping and the sweeping daytime visions of what you'd like to become.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):

I just found out the American shipping company UPS has legally trademarked the color brown. The grass-roots activist in me is incredulous and appalled. But the poet in me doesn't really care; it's fine if UPS owns drab, prosaic brown. I've still got mahogany at my command, as well as tawny, sepia, taupe, burnt umber, tan, cinnamon, walnut, and henna. That's especially important for this horoscope, Capricorn, because I'm advising you to be very down to earth, be willing to get your hands dirty, and even play in the muck if necessary in order to take good care of the basics. But don't do any of that in a boring, humdrum "brown" way. Do it exotically and imaginatively, like mahogany, tawny, sepia, taupe, burnt umber, tan, cinnamon, walnut, and henna.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):

You are hereby excused from having to know a single nuance about the inside story of Angelina Jolie's secret love tryst with Lady Gaga, or the addictions of conspiracy theorists who lose huge sums of money gambling on the end of the world, or the agony that millionaires suffer from having to support social services with their taxes. In fact, it's a good time to empty your mind of extraneous, trivial, and useless facts so that you can clear vast new spaces for more pressing data, like how you can upgrade your communication skills, why you should do some upkeep on your close alliances, and what you might do to streamline your social life.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):

In my astrological opinion, you don't need anything that shrinks you or deflates you or tames you. Influences that pinch your imagination should be taboo, as should anything that squashes your hope or crimps your life force. To make proper use of the vibrations circulating in your vicinity, Pisces, you should gravitate toward situations that pump up your insouciance and energize your whimsy and incite you to express the most benevolent wickedness you can imagine. You've got a mandate to fatten up your soul so it can contain a vaster sense of wonder and a more daring brand of innocence.

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HOMEWORK:

If you could make money from doing exactly and totally what you loved to do, what would it be? Testify by going to FreeWillAstrology.com and clicking on "Email Rob."

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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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Submissions sent to the Free Will Astrology Weekly 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 such submissions for length, style, and content. Requests for anonymity will be honored with submissions; otherwise, reader names, screen names, or initials will be used. Please be sure to note your preference when sending to us. We are not responsible for unsolicited submission of any creative material.

Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright 2010 Rob Brezsny

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