Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter http://ezezine.com
Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology Newsletter
January 17, 2007
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WHAT'S TO COME?
BRAINSTORM ABOUT THE BIG PICTURE OF YOUR LIFE
with the help of my
Expanded Audio Horoscopes for the Coming Year
Go to http://RealAstrology.com
You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your
destiny in 2007. Each report in the three-part series is about 6-8
minutes long.
What will be the story of your life in 2007? How can you exert your
free will to create the adventures that'll bring out the best in you,
even as you find graceful ways to cooperate with the tides of destiny?
If you'd like a high-octane boost of inspiration to fuel you in your
quest for beauty and truth and love and justice and meaning, tune in to
my meditations on your long-term outlook.
A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.
To find out more about Your BIG PICTURE horoscopes, go to
http://RealAstrology.com.
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FAITH
by David Whyte
I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,
faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
sliver of light before the final darkness.
But I have no faith myself
I refuse it the smallest entry.
Let this, then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.
by David Whyte, from *Where Many Rivers Meet*
http://tinyurl.com/32domg
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The piece below is excerpted from my book
"PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA:
How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings"
available at http://tinyurl.com/qaj62
or find out more at http://www.freewillastrology.com
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SACRED UPROAR
Pronoia is closer than your breath and older than death. It dreams like
a mountain, laughs like a river, prays like the sun, and sings the way
the animals think. It's always as fresh as the beginning of time.
*
Life is a vast and intricate conspiracy designed to keep us well
supplied with blessings. What kind of blessings? Palatial homes,
attractive lovers, lottery winnings, career success? Maybe. But just as
likely: interesting surprises, unexpected challenges, gifts we hardly
know what to do with, conundrums that force us to get smarter.
Novelist William Vollman referred to the latter types of blessings when
he said that "the most important and enjoyable thing in life is doing
something that's a complicated, tricky problem for you that you don't
know how to solve."
*
The Christian writer C.S. Lewis once said: "I thank God that He hasn't
given me all the things I've prayed for, because as I look back now I
realize it would have been disastrous to have received some of them."
Pronoia provides the gifts your soul needs, not necessarily those your
ego craves.
*
Pronoia works because there is a Divine Being who comprises the entire
universe. When I say, "Life is a conspiracy to shower us with
blessings," I understand that this Divine Being is the Chief Architect,
Builder, and Manager of the conspiracy. She oversees the evolution of
500 billion galaxies and every single thing in them, yet is also
available as an intimate companion and daily advisor to each one of us
humans.
Some lovers of pronoia don't like this part of my rap. They want
pronoia to be free of anything that smacks of God. Atheism works better
for them. That's OK with me. No hard feelings.
Other lovers of pronoia don't appreciate me referring to the Creator as
"She." They either want to stick with the pronoun that has been used
for hundreds of years, or else don't want any gender associations
whatsoever. That's OK with me. No hard feelings.
*
The Maker of the conspiracy constantly tinkers, always keeping the big
picture in mind and moving in the direction of ultimate blessings for
all concerned.
But the Maker also loves getting help from us. To the degree that we
co-conspire, the inevitable blessings ripen more lyrically and in
greater fullness.
*
Pronoia asks us to be awake to the shifting conditions of the Wild
Divine's ever-fresh creation. It encourages us to be quite happy about
regularly divesting ourselves of the beliefs and theories that guided
us yesterday so that we can see clearly what's right in front of us
today.
*
As much as we might be dismayed at the actions of our political
leaders, pronoia says that toppling any particular junta, clique, or
elite is irrelevant unless we overthrow the sour, puckered mass
hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality"— including the part
of that hallucination we foster in ourselves.
The revolution begins at home. If you overthrow yourself again and
again, you might earn the right to help overthrow the rest of us.
*
Pronoia will change your past if you let it. It's the language you
study at night in your dreams, the open secret of how to live forever,
the last judgment transformed into a daily gift.
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To read other news and features from my book, go here:
http://snipurl.com/l9o3
You can buy the book here:
AMAZON
http://snipurl.com/krjj
BARNES & NOBLE
http://snipurl.com/krjn
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
OTHER PRONOIA RESOURCES:
BOOK
*Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy* by Barbara
Ehrenreich
http://tinyurl.com/266yfz
"Rituals of joy are nearly as innate as the quest for food and
shelter."
WORLD QUESTION CENTER
"What are you optimistic about?" -- asked of 160 leading thinkers
http://tinyurl.com/2tcw23
http://tinyurl.com/yxbx26
ART
Street Installations
http://www.xmarkjenkinsx.com/outside.html
(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 January 18
Copyright 2007 by Rob Brezsny
http://FreeWillAstrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
ARIES (March 21-April 19): "When are your cats old enough to learn
about Jesus?" asks *The Onion,* America's finest newspaper. Think about
that question for a while, Aries. Then, once you've worked yourself up
into a riddle-solving frame of mind, move on to these other, more
pressing brain-teasers: When will you finally be old enough to figure
out what you want to do when you grow up? When will it be the right
time to reveal your secret super-powers to the world? How long are you
going to wait before you get around to being completely committed to
what you were born to do?
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Should we attribute any oracular significance
to the fact that hundreds of flowers bloomed on a cherry tree in
Brooklyn during the first week of winter? Is it a portentous marvel
akin to, say, the births of three white buffalos on a farm in
Janesville, Wisconsin? (The odds of a single white buffalo are a
million to one.) I don't know for sure, Taurus, but my meditations do
suggest that the Brooklyn miracle is an apt metaphor for a scenario
you'll soon be experiencing: an early ripening of a possibility that
you had assumed wouldn't be ready or available for quite some time.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In 1958 Chinese dictator Mao Zedong declared
sparrows to be enemies of the state. Because their diet included
farmers' crops, he said, they were a threat that had to be eliminated.
Under his orders, the Chinese people spent 72 consecutive hours scaring
the birds with loud noises, preventing them from landing and causing
hundreds of thousands to die from exhaustion. An unforeseen consequence
arose later, though, when there was a population explosion among the
insects that the dead sparrows would have eaten. Plagues of
grain-devouring bugs swept the countryside, leading to mass starvation
among the human population. The moral of the story, as far as you're
concerned: Learn to tolerate and even love a mild pest that has
redeeming qualities and whose influence keeps away a truly noxious
pest.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Let me clarify your situation for you,
Cancerian. Up until a short time ago, you'd been wandering through
halls of mirrors, metaphorically speaking. Then you spied a hammer on
the floor, got seized by a rash impulse, and proceeded to smash a lot
of glass--again, metaphorically speaking. That was the first step to
finding your way out of the labyrinth. Now you're ready for the next
step: actually escaping. As you head out, I advise you to be careful
that you don't cut yourself on all the shards. Liberation is near
enough; there's no need to rush. Walk calmly and carefully towards the
sound of the heartbeat you hear in the distance, metaphorically
speaking.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): This would not be a good week for the rapid
consumption of a six-pack of Heineken, a pint of Southern Comfort, a
quart of tequila, and a double bong load of skunk weed. On the other
hand, it would also be a bad time to stay stone-cold sober, play
strictly by the rules, and be meticulously devoted to dignity. In other
words, Leo, strike a balance between sloppy excess and fastidious
perfectionism. In fact, be as slippery as you need to be in order to
avoid getting squeezed between two extremes of any kind. The middle
path will be safest, smartest, and most stylish.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): I hate greed almost as much as I hate hatred.
So I was mistrustful when your inner teacher hinted that I should look
in the thesaurus under "acquire" for clues to your major themes in the
coming months. There I found words like "amass," "collect," "gather,"
"secure," "earn," and "take possession." After duly meditating on your
astrological aspects, I decided that what your inner teacher was
driving at is this: 2007 should be a time of building up your reserves,
carving out a more substantial niche, and getting the tools and
resources and training that will provide a foundation for your dreams
well into the future. So here's my question to you: Can you engage in
this much acquisition without becoming grasping, predatory, and
manipulative? Personally, I'm sure you can.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): To create a pearl, an oyster needs an
aggravating parasite inside its shell. It builds layers of calcium
carbonate around the invader, gradually fabricating the treasure. How
long does it take from the initial provocation to the finished product?
Five years for a pearl of average size, and as many as ten years for a
big one. I hope that puts into perspective the tenacious work you're
doing on your own master project, Libra. It may seem sometimes as if
you've been striving to transform your irritant for an eternity, but
you're actually right on schedule.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Employees who work at the Grand Canyon are
not supposed to tell visitors that the monumental gorge is over five
million years old. Officials are worried that doing so might offend
fundamentalist Christians who suffer from the delusion that Noah's
flood created the Grand Canyon a few thousand years ago. Keep this
vignette in mind during the coming week, Scorpio. Let it serve as a
warning beacon. I suspect that like a non-fundamentalist tourist at the
Grand Canyon, you're going to be fed a line of BS that was designed for
people who can't handle the truth. Either that, or someone will
withhold the facts from you out of a concern that you'd be furious to
have your assumptions questioned. As an antidote, be extra devoted to
learning the real story that's hidden beneath the official account.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Would you like some inspiration as you muse and wonder about your
upcoming adventures in 2007?
You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your
destiny in 2007. Each report in the three-part series is about 6-8
minutes long.
Go to http://RealAstrology.com
for these EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): "There is nothing in the world more
futile than the attempt to find out how a task should be done when one
has not yet decided what the task is." Philosopher Alexander Meiklejohn
said that, and now I'm relaying his advice to you. Please ignore it if
you're having no trouble at all figuring out what you should do next.
But if you are the least bit fuzzy about your future direction, spend
some time in the coming days defining the precise nature of your
short-term goals.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Your body, mind, soul, and hairdo have at
least temporarily slipped into the kind of alignment that makes you a
lightning rod for messages from the future. Want to glimpse a vision of
the best three things you can accomplish in the coming year? Sit
yourself down in a sanctuary, banish every last shred of fear for 15
minutes, and visualize the person you will be on January 20, 2008. Then
ask that beautiful character to telepathically communicate his or her
rich secrets to you.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Your whole life passed before your eyes in
a flash, and yet you survived. The veil parted and revealed sights too
weird and wonderful to consciously register, changing you in ways that
won't fully sink in for months. Now you may feel as if you're waking up
at 3 p.m. after an all-night binge. You might be so overloaded with
uncanny new wisdom that you don't quite know what practical use to make
of it all yet. But have no fear: As your birthday approaches, you'll
begin to understand the teachings you didn't even know you absorbed.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Due in part to the relentless barrage of
disguised brainwashing in the form of ads, news, and entertainment,
most people are not themselves an average of 45 percent of the time.
You, however, are currently refuting that scary statistic in style.
Your percentage of being-true-to-yourself is at an all-time high, and
holding steady above the 85 percent mark. Keep up the good work,
Pisces. In fact, take advantage of your momentum to push for even
greater authenticity. Say exactly what you mean even more. Think your
own thoughts even bigger and louder. Exorcise every last one of the
celebrities, entertainers, salesmen, and authorities who have
demonically possessed you.
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HOMEWORK: Imagine that one of your heroes comes to you and says, "Teach
me the most important things you know." What would you say? Testify by
going to http://FreeWillAstrology.com and clicking on "Email Rob."
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WANT TO GET YOUR CHART DONE?
I'm not doing personal charts these days, but I highly recommend my
favorite 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
http://www.YourSoulJourney.com
She can also be reached at roloughran@comcast.net
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2007 Rob Brezsny
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