Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter http://ezezine.com
Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology Newsletter
"Run, my dear, from anything that may not strengthen your precious
budding wings." Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky
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October 4, 2006
http://freewillastrology.com
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As you know, I give away my weekly Free Will Astrology horoscopes free
in this newsletter and on my website. I plan to continue doing that
indefinitely.
I do want to make a living from doing what I love, though, which is why I
have two other horoscope features you can spend money on if you're so
moved.
I'm now offering DAILY TEXT MESSAGE HOROSCOPES -- short, sweet
bursts of illumination delivered seven days a week to your cell phone or
other mobile device. You can sign up for them at
http://realastrology.com. The cost is $6.99 per week (billed monthly), or
$4.99 per week (billed monthly) if you choose to automatically renew
your account.
I've also got EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES -- weekly spoken-word
musings on your destiny that run about three to four minutes. They're
available at http://realastrology.com. The cost is $6 per reading, or $20
if you buy four readings, and $60 if you buy 16 readings. The audio
horoscopes are also available by phone at 1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-
950-7700 for $1.99 per minute.
By the way, I've just changed hosts for the Expanded Audio Horoscopes.
If you're a long-time listener, you have to change your bookmarked page.
The new page is http://realastrology.com. The new system runs on
Windows Media Player instead of RealPlayer.
ATTENTION CANADIAN LISTENERS:
Your new number for the Expanded Audio Horoscopes is
1-877-873-4888
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Here are excerpts from my book
"PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA:
How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings"
available at http://snipurl.com/krjj
or find out more at http://www.freewillastrology.com
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WHAT IF YOUR DESIRES ARE HOLY?
Some religious traditions teach the doctrine, "Kill off your longings." In
their view, attachment to desire is at the root of human suffering. But the
religion of materialism takes the opposite tack, asserting that the
meaning of life is to be found in indulging desires. Its creed is, "Feed your
cravings like a French foie gras farmer cramming eight pounds of maize
down a goose's gullet every day."
At the Beauty and Truth Lab, we walk a middle path. We believe there are
both degrading desires that enslave you and sacred desires that liberate
you.
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Psychologist Carl Jung believed that all desires have a sacred origin, no
matter how odd they may seem. Frustration and ignorance may contort
them into distorted caricatures, but it is always possible to locate the
divine source from which they arose. In describing one of his addictive
patients, Jung said: "His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low
level of the spiritual thirst for wholeness, or as expressed in medieval
language: the union with God."
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Therapist James Hillman echoes the theme: "Psychology regards all
symptoms to be expressing the right thing in the wrong way." A
preoccupation with porn or romance novels, for instance, may come to
dominate a passionate person whose quest for love has degenerated into
an obsession with images of love. "Follow the lead of your symptoms,"
Hillman suggests, "for there's usually a myth in the mess, and a mess is
an expression of soul."
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In *Maldoror and Poems,* the French poet Lautréamont wrote about holy
yearning disguised as mournful complaint. "Whenever you hear the dogs'
howling in the fields," his mother told him as a child, "don't deride what
they do: They thirst insatiably for the infinite, like you, me, and the rest
of us humans. I even allow you to stand at the window and gaze upon this
exalted spectacle."
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"The primordial fire that sparked millions of galaxies is the same fire that
sparks the human creative impulse." --Cindy Spring, "The Non-Profit
Universe," EarthLight, http://www.earthlight.orG, Summer 2002.
"The human reproductive drive is a watered-down version of the godsex
that spawned our solar system." --"Lieutenant" Anfortas, the homeless
guy in the Safeway parking lot.
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"Feelings that originate in the human genitalia are among the most
powerful forces on earth. They have a complex relationship with the
feelings that stem from the human heart: at various times in competition
or in harmony. Together these primal energies have forged and toppled
empires; unleashed terrible and wonderful ideas; and generated the
greatest stories ever told. Our goal is to harness our sexual urges in
service to the heart's wisdom." --Sheila Samizdat, "Ritual Foreplay for a
New History," *Underground Pronoia*
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"Mad! One must become mad with love in order to realize God. When a
person attains ecstatic love of God, all the pores of the skin, even the
roots of the hair, become like so many sex organs, and in every pore the
aspirant enjoys the happiness of communion with the Supreme Universal
Self." --Ramakrishna
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Like all of us, you have desires for things that you don't really need and
aren't good for you. But you shouldn't disparage yourself for having
them, nor should you conclude that every desire is tainted. Rather, think
of your misguided longings as the bumbling, amateur expressions of a
faculty that will one day be far more expert. They're how you practice as
you work toward the goal of becoming a master of desire. It may take a
while, but eventually you will get the hang of wanting things that are
really good for you, and good for everyone else, too.
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"The only way anyone is ever cured of desiring nonsensical things is by
getting the nonsensical things and then experiencing the unpleasant but
educational consequences." --Ann Davies, http://www.bota.org
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"To become a master of desire, keep talking yourself out of being
attached to trivial goals and keep talking yourself into being thrilled about
the precious few goals that are really important. Here's another way to
say it: Wean yourself from ego-driven desires and pour your libido into a
longing for beauty, truth, goodness, justice, integrity, creativity, love, and
an intimate relationship with the Wild Divine." --Raye Sangfreud, "Black
Market Orchids," *Underground Pronoia*
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"God has desires. Since I want to be close to God and to model myself
after God, I therefore don't aspire to extinguish my desires, but rather to
make my desires more God-like: i.e., imbued with an inexorable ambition
to create the greatest and most interesting blessings for everyone and
everything." --Collin Klamper
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"'Heterosexual,' 'bisexual,' 'lesbian,' and 'gender queer' are not terms I
use to describe myself. They're too limiting, like every other name and
role I've had the pleasure of escaping. In a pinch, I might agree to call
myself ocean-fucker or sky-sucker or earth-bonker. As much as I love men
and women, they can't satisfy the full extent of my yearning. I need
intimate relations with clouds and eagles and sea anemones and
mountains and spirits of the dead and kitchen appliances and the
creatures in my dreams. To be continued. To be enhanced and amplified
and enlarged upon, world without end, amen. One day I really do hope to
be a wise enough lover to be able to f**k the ocean. To give a forest fire
a blow job. To make a pride of lions come just by looking at them." --
Jumbler Javalina, "Bite into the Mysteries," *Underground Pronoia*
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"When I hold you, I hold everything: ruby-throated hummingbirds sipping
from plum flowers, mangoes ripening in the smoke of burning forests,
crones praying in the foamy sand at low tide, shocked waterfalls gracing
new housing developments, volcanoes drinking in the fragrance of the
stars. In your eyes I see everything that lives." --mash-up of Pablo Neruda
and Rob Brezsny
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Imagine it's 30 years from now. You're looking back at the history of your
relationship with desire. There was a certain watershed moment when you
clearly saw that some of your desires were mediocre, inferior, and
wasteful, while others were pure, righteous, and invigorating. Beginning
then, you made it a life goal to purge the former and cultivate the latter.
Thereafter, you occasionally wandered down dead ends trying to gratify
yearnings that weren't worthy of you, but usually you wielded your
passions with discrimination, dedicating them to serve the highest and
most interesting good.
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To read other news and features from my book, go here:
http://snipurl.com/l9o3
To buy the book, use the links to Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble,
which are on my homepage at http://www.freewillastrology.com
Or cut and paste the direct links below:
AMAZON
http://snipurl.com/krjj
BARNES & NOBLE
http://snipurl.com/krjn
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
OTHER PRONOIA RESOURCES:
THE PRONOIA REVOLUTION
*The Flip* by Jared Rosen and David Rippe
"The book illuminates a clear path to a vibrant, enlightened world where
millions of people already live and thrive. It describes in vivid detail and
real examples evidence of an upside down world in decay and a Right Side
Up world of authentic beings bright with possibility."
http://www.theflip.net/
NEWS
"Report: Iranian Science Teachers May Be Enriching Students"
http://tinyurl.com/k2u4n
BRILLIANT THINKERS
http://tinyurl.com/p8chh
"By 'brilliant,' we don't mean smart. Or at least not just smart. Brilliance is
marked by insight, creativity and tenacity. It's the confidence to eschew
established wisdom in order to develop your own. It's the foolishness
needed to set out for the edge of understanding and sail right past it,
ignoring the signs reading 'Thar be monsters.'"
(Note: I endorse these because I like them. They're 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 5
Copyright 2006 by Rob Brezsny
http://www.freewillastrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
ARIES (March 21-April 19): "Dear Rob: When my wife got pregnant, she
was warned that one side effect might be that her feet would grow a bit.
She's now a few months along, and while her feet remain a dainty size 7,
my own feet have expanded from size 12 to 13! I've heard husbands
sometimes have sensations that parallel their pregnant wives' symptoms,
but this is crazy, don't you think? -Vicarious Aries." Dear Vicarious: You
Rams are in a phase when your ability to share the feelings and
experiences of others is at a peak. I suggest you take advantage of this
opening to supercharge your empathy and get closer to your loved ones
than you've ever dared.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The new CEO of soft drink giant PepsiCo is
Indra Nooyi, striking a modest but significant blow for female equality in
the business world. That's the good news. The bad news? Pepsi is a
terrible product that rots teeth, has no nutritional value, and contributes
to the obesity epidemic. Keep this in mind as you carry out your
assignment in the coming week, Taurus. Fight and claw and scheme and
dream to raise up the power of the feminine (yes, even if you're a man),
but only if it's a version of the feminine that raises up everyone and
everything else, too.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): "It was like a masquerade festival at eternal
midnight," says a character named Flux in Antero Alli's magical realist
movie *The Drivetime,* "with everyone throwing off mask after mask and
never getting to the bottom." That description has a resemblance to
what your life has been like lately, Gemini. Any day now, however, that will
change. The last masks will finally come off. All will stand revealed. You'll
get to the bottom of the core identities.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Get a hold of some of that million-year-old
salt from the Himalayas and use it to season your food. Maybe you'd like
to sample the Chinese delicacy know as thousand-year-old duck eggs.
Wash it all down with the beer from Greenland that's made of 2,000-year-
old water obtained from melted glaciers. By doing these things, you'd
symbolically imbibe ancient purity, pristine rawness, and the wildest spirits
of nature. That would be right in alignment with what the astrological
omens say you need.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Sunny Sky's is an ice cream store in North
Carolina that sells a flavor called Cold Sweat, which is made with three
varieties of hot peppers and two kinds of hot sauce. It's sweet and
creamy and cool and spicy and prickly and fiery all at the same time--kind
of like what I foresee for you in the coming week, Leo. To get the most
out of this extravagantly paradoxical time, I suggest you take small bites.
And please wait a while following each new mouthful to see what the
after-effect is before you load up on more.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Writing in *The New York Times,* Joyce
Wadler captured the essence of a genre that has lost its once-heady
repute. "Poetry, if we may take a moment to explain to the young
people," she said, "is an art form somewhat like rap, only it does not sell,
and since the death of Lord Byron [in 1824] there has been a paucity of
bling-bling." At the risk of nudging you toward a cultural dead end, then,
Virgo, I'll ask you to expose yourself to concentrated doses of poetry this
week. In my astrological opinion, you need to have your brain scrambled
and heart flushed in a lyrically healing way, which good poetry can do.
Here are some excellent sources: (1) James Broughton,
http://tinyurl.com/zabt9. (2) Mary Oliver, http://tinyurl.com/z325h. (3)
Pablo Neruda, http://tinyurl.com/l6684. (4) Rainer Maria Rilke,
http://tinyurl.com/gsy3t. (5) Daniel Ladinsky, http://tinyurl.com/f9w2j.
(6) Lots of poets, http://tinyurl.com/kyqzc.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): U.S. Patent number 5,996,568 is an apparatus
for safely shooting hot dogs into a crowd. Patent 4,834,212 is a device
into which someone can scream and howl without bothering anyone
nearby, allowing her to vent pent-up emotions. Patent 2,272,154 is a
ladder that spiders can use to climb out of a bath. Patent 4,247,283 is a
gadget that allows a trumpet to be used as a flamethrower while being
played. These are exactly the kinds of imaginative innovations I urge you
to work on, Libra. Your inventiveness is at an all-time high, as is
everyone's need for your inventiveness.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): It'll be a good time to feed your demons
apple pie and ice cream. Don't scrimp! Other actions that will put you in
fortuitous alignment with the cosmic rhythms: looking for interesting,
uplifting, inspiring trouble; unleashing explosive belly-laughs as you
contemplate everything that makes you angry; forcing yourself to think a
kind thought about someone who misunderstands you; bellowing curses in
the direction of the brightest star you can see, blaming it for all your
problems; and hopping and skipping down the sidewalk or hallway as you
sing-song the names of everyone you dislike.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The Burning Man festival is one of the
planet's most spectacularly idealistic parties. Now in its second decade,
the week-long event annually draws upwards of 40,000 celebrants to a
barren patch of Nevada desert to participate in a "gift economy," where
no money changes hands and art is as abundant as advertisements are
back in the "real" world. The founder and director of this cultural triumph
is Larry Harvey. His success didn't come quickly. "I was a failed janitor,
failed gardener, failed bike messenger, failed taxi driver," he testifies. "By
any normal standard, I was an abject failure. Now I see that this was
actually a sustained course of study for everything I'm doing now." With
this as your cue, Sagittarius, make a supreme effort to reinterpret all your
so-called flops and missteps as crucial lessons that helped you develop
your unique mission.
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I'm now offering DAILY TEXT MESSAGE HOROSCOPES -- short, sweet
bursts of illumination delivered seven days a week to your cell phone or
other mobile device. Sign up for them at http://realastrology.com.
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CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): I was nine years old when I first risked my
ass to fight for the rights of others. It was a winter morning in Ohio. Ten
of us kids were waiting on a corner for the school bus to pick us up. A
fifth-grader named Jerry Demasko was doing his usual shtick: insulting
and belittling the girls. When he sneeringly informed little Debbie Runello
that she would always be ugly, I snapped. I tackled him, sat on him, and
drove his face into the freshly fallen snow. "Promise you'll stop being a
mean bastard every minute of your life!" I demanded. He resisted at first,
but when my inflamed strength kept him pinned, he broke. Your
assignment, Capricorn, is to recall the first time you felt an eruption of
pure compassionate rage in the face of injustice. Once you've done that,
spend the next ten days cultivating and expressing that beautiful
emotion.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): At any single moment, approximately 0.7
percent of the people on our planet are drunk--at least in a normal week.
In the coming days, however, I believe that a sudden profusion of
intoxicated Aquarians will ensure that the global average rises to at least
1.5 percent. To be totally accurate, not all of those Aquarians will be
sloshed on alcohol or zonked on drugs. Some will be flying high solely on
the strength of their exhilarating adventures in the unknown, while others
will have transcended the everyday trance through the power of their
boundary-shattering meditations or their breakthrough love-making. Don't
you dare miss out on this dizzying opportunity to lose your mind in the
most constructive way possible.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): "When you follow your bliss," wrote
mythologist Joseph Campbell, "doors will open where you would not have
thought there would be doors, and where there wouldn't be a door for
anyone else." That's always true, Pisces, but it's especially apropos for
you now. If you swear a blood oath to follow your bliss, vowing to do
what your secret self loves more than anything else, a portal will open
that's as big as a garage door and as sweet as a gateway to a secret
garden.
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HOMEWORK:
Provide proof of the following hypothesis: "You know what to do and you
know when to do it." Testify by going to http://www.realastrology.com
and clicking on "Email Rob."
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WANT TO GET YOUR CHART DONE?
I'm not doing charts these days. In addition to writing my weekly column
and expanded audio horoscopes, I'm also working on a CD and promoting
my new book.
But I can recommend a colleague whose astro-aesthetics closely match
my own. She's RO LOUGHRAN.
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
http://www.yoursouljourney.com/
She can also be reached at roloughran@comcast.net
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I totally respect your privacy. I'll never sell or give away your address to
anyone.
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Submissions sent to the Free Will Astrology Weekly Newsletter
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2006 Rob Brezsny
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