Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
August 14, 2019
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See a pretty version of this newsletter: https://bit.ly/FateBait
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Sometimes we have a strong sense of what our destiny is calling us to do,
but we don't feel quite ready or brave enough to answer the call. We need a
push, an intervention, a serendipitous stroke—what you might call "Fate
Bait."
FATE BAIT is a person or event that awakens our dormant willpower and
draws us inexorably toward our necessary destiny; it's a thunderbolt or
siren song or stage whisper that gives us a good excuse to go do what we
know we should do.
Do you have any ideas about how to put yourself in the vicinity of your
fate bait?
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MY UPCOMING PERFORMANCE IN NEW YORK CITY
For years I've been in a hermetic mode, working on creating new books.
(Not done yet!) But I'm emerging from my pastoral sanctuary to do a
poetry show in New York City on Friday, September 13.
I'll be opening for two amazing poets whose work thrills me: Ariana
Reines and CA Conrad. As an added aspect of crazy goodness, my daughter
Zoe Brezsny will join me in opening the show.
Here's the info: https://tinyurl.com/PoetryNYC
(And in the meantime, check out Ariana Reines' sensational new book:
https://tinyurl.com/PoetryMedicine)
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BEGINNER'S HEART
To achieve what the Zen Buddhists call "beginner's mind," you dispense
with all preconceptions and enter each situation as if seeing it for the
first time."In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities," wrote
Shunryu Suzuki in his book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind," "but in the
expert's there are few."
As much as I love beginner's mind, though, I advocate an additional
discipline: cultivating a beginner's heart. That means approaching every
encounter imbued with a freshly invoked wave of love that is as pure as if
you're feeling it for the first time.
"Before we can receive the entire truth about anything," said my teacher
Ann Davies, "we have to love it."
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TO BE THE BEST PRONOIAC EXPLORER
To be the best pronoiac explorer you can be, I suggest you adopt an outlook
that combines the rigorous objectivity of a scientist, the "beginner's
mind" of Zen Buddhism, the "beginner's heart" of pronoia, and the
compassionate friendliness of the Dalai Lama. Blend a scrupulously
dispassionate curiosity with a skepticism driven by expansiveness, not
spleen.
To pull this off, you'll have to be willing to regularly suspend your
brilliant theories about the way the world works. Accept with good humor
the possibility that what you've learned in the past may not be a reliable
guide to understanding the fresh phenomenon that's right in front of you.
Be suspicious of your biases, even the rational and benevolent ones. Open
your heart as you strip away the interpretations that your emotions might
be inclined to impose.
"Before we can receive the unbiased truth about anything," wrote my
teacher Ann Davies, "we have to be ready to ignore what we would like to
be true."
At the same time, don't turn into a hard-ass, poker-faced robot. Keep
your feelings moist and receptive. Remember your natural affection for
all of creation. Enjoy the power of tender sympathy as it drives you to
probe for the unimaginable revelations of every new moment.
I'll quote this gem from Ann Davies again, because it's the foundation of
my life: "Before we can receive the entire truth about anything, we have
to love it."
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TIPS FOR CHANGING THINGS
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change
something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
—Buckminster Fuller
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We have to encourage the future we want rather than trying to prevent the
future we fear.
—Bill Joy
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The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old,
but on building the new.
—Dan Millman
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You Can't Have It All, by Barbara Ras
But you can have the fig tree
and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green.
You can have the touch
of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m.
to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat
and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says,
If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled,
and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so.
You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious,
like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot
over the red kidneys
until you realize foam's twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center
between a man's legs,
so solid, so doll-like.
You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments,
never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard
who'll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something.
You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly.
You can't bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget
hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together.
And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face,
half spice, half amnesia,
grateful for Mozart, his many notes
racing one another towards joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin,
and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva.
You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt
and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather
sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while,
you can have clouds and letters,
the leaping of distances,
and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can't count on grace
to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you
how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel,
farms in the mind
as real as Africa.
And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory
of the black swan on the pond of your childhood,
the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you
while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will,
like your mother's,
it will always whisper, you can't have it all,
but there is this.
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RETIRING FROM THE STRUGGLE OF JUDGING OTHERS
Thomas Merton's notion of what makes a saint doesn't have to do with being
a perfectly sinless paragon of virtue. The more important measure of
sanctity, he said, is one's ability to see what's good and beautiful in other
people. The truly holy person "retires from the struggle of judging
others."
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WANT TO GET YOUR ASTROLOGICAL CHART READ?
If you want your personal chart done, I recommend a colleague whose
approach to reading astrology charts closely matches my own. She's my
wife, RO LOUGHRAN. She's at http://www.roloughran.com.
Ro utilizes a blend of well-trained intuition, emotional warmth, and
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.
In addition to over 30 years of astrological experience, Ro has been a
licensed psychotherapist for 17 years. She integrates psychological
insight with astrology's cosmological perspective.
Ro is based in California, but can do phone consultations and otherwise
work with you regardless of geographic boundaries.
Check out Ro's website at http://www.roloughran.com
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
India supplied over two thirds of AIDS medication globally over the last
two decades, bringing the treatment cost down from $414 per person per
year to $74 per person per year. This also supported the number of
infected people getting treatment increasing over five-fold during the last
decade.
https://tinyurl.com/yxayt3xe
Wind outpaces coal as a power source in Texas for the first time.
https://tinyurl.com/y33567s5
A flicker of hope in the insect world: firefly and monarch butterfly
umbers are up.
https://tinyurl.com/y4ney8sb
(Note: I endorse these because I like them. They aren't advertisements,
and I get no kickbacks.)
Please tell me your own nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Truthrooster@gmail.com.
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning August 15
Copyright 2019 by Rob Brezsny
https://FreeWillAstrology.com/horoscopes/
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Moray eels have two sets of jaws. The front set
does their chewing. The second set, normally located behind the first, can
be launched forward to snag prey they want to eat. In invoking this
aggressive strategy to serve as a metaphor for you in the coming weeks, I
want to suggest that you be very dynamic and enterprising as you go after
what you want and need. Don’t be rude and invasive, of course, but
consider the possibility of being audacious and zealous.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): It's relatively rare, but now and then people
receive money or gifts from donors they don't know. Relatives they've
never met may bequeath them diamond tiaras or alpaca farms or bundles
of cash. I don't think that's exactly what will occur for you in the coming
weeks, but I do suspect that you'll garner blessings or help from
unexpected sources. To help ensure the best possible versions of these acts
of grace, I suggest that you be as generous as possible in the kindness and
attention you offer. Remember this verse from the Bible: "Do not forget to
show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown
hospitality to angels without knowing it."
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libra-born Ronald McNair was an African
American who grew up in a racist town in South Carolina in the 1950s.
The bigotry cramped his freedom, but he rebelled. When he was nine
years old, he refused to leave a segregated library, which prompted
authorities to summon the police. Years later, McNair earned a PhD in
Physics from MIT and became renowned for his research on laser physics.
Eventually, NASA chose him to be an astronaut from a pool of 10,000
candidates. That library in South Carolina? It's now named after him. I
suspect that you, too, will soon receive some vindication, Libra: a reward
or blessing or consecration that will reconfigure your past.
SCORPIO (Oct. 3-Nov. 21): Scorpio author Zadie Smith wrote, "In the
end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your
solution—is not my solution." I think it will be perfectly fine if sometime
soon you speak those words to a person you care about. In delivering such
a message, you won't be angry or dismissive. Rather, you will be
establishing good boundaries between you and your ally; you will be
acknowledging the fact that the two of you are different people with
different approaches to life. And I bet that will ultimately make you
closer.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): "Nothing fruitful ever comes when
plants are forced to flower in the wrong season," wrote author and activist
Bette Lord. That's not entirely true. For example, skilled and meticulous
gardeners can compel tulip and hyacinth bulbs to flower before they would
naturally be able to. But as a metaphor, Lord's insight is largely accurate.
And I think you'll be wise to keep it in mind during the coming weeks. So
my advice is: don't try to make people and processes ripen before they are
ready. But here's a caveat: you might have modest success working to
render them a bit more ready.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): "For though we often need to be restored
to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be
reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown." Poet A. R. Ammons
formulated that shiny burst of wisdom, and now I'm passing it on to you.
As I think you know, you tend to have more skill at and a greater
inclination toward the small, concrete, limited, and certain. That's why,
in my opinion, it's rejuvenating for you to periodically exult in and
explore what's large, vague, unlimited, unknown. Now is one of those
times.
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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 cynical narratives and nihilistic
stories 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.
To listen to your Expanded Audio Horoscope online, go to
https://freewillastrology.sparkns.com
Register and/or log in through the main page.
You can also listen over the phone by calling 1-877-873-4888.
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The cost is $6 per sign on the On the Web. (Discounts are available for
bulk purchases.) You can also access them for $1.99 per minute by
phone
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"Your expanded horoscopes get more personal and intimate with me than
some of my closest friends. Thanks for the loving reflections."
- Ari S., Ann Arbor, MI
"When I listen to your audio 'scopes, my free will lights up." - Alex D.,
Los Angeles
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AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): "Look into my eyes. Kiss me, and you will
see how important I am." Poet Sylvia Plath wrote that, and now, in
accordance with astrological omens, I'm authorizing you to say something
similar to anyone who is interested in you but would benefit from gazing
more deeply into your soul and entering into a more profound relationship
with your mysteries. In other words, you have cosmic permission to be
more forthcoming in showing people your beauty and value.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In his *Anti-Memoirs*, author André
Malraux quotes a tough-minded priest who served in the French
Resistance during World War II. He spent his adult life hearing his
parishioners' confessions. "The fundamental fact is that there's no such
thing as a grown-up person," the priest declared. Even if that's mostly
true, Pisces, my sense is that it is less true about you right now than it
has ever been. In the past months, you have been doing good work to
become more of a fully realized version of yourself. I expect that the
deepening and maturation process is reaching a culmination. Don't
underestimate your success! Celebrate it!
ARIES (March 21-April 19): How did sound technicians create the
signature roar of the fictional monster Godzilla? They slathered pine-tar
resin on a leather glove and stroked it against the strings of a double bass.
How about the famous howl of the fictional character Tarzan? Sonic
artists blended a hyena's screech played backwards, a dog's growl, a
soprano singer's fluttered intonation slowed down, and an actor's yell.
Karen O, lead singer of the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, periodically unleashes
very long screams that may make the hair stand up on the back of her
listeners’ necks. In accordance with astrological omens, I’d love to see you
experiment with creating your own personal Yowl or Laugh or Whisper of
Power in the coming weeks: a unique sound that would boost your wild
confidence and help give you full access to your primal lust for life.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): "If your dreams do not scare you, they are
not big enough," said Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, ex-President of Liberia. In
accordance with astrological imperatives, I propose that we make that
your watchword for the foreseeable future. From what I can tell, you're
due to upgrade your long-term goals. You have the courage and vision
necessary to dare yourself toward an even more fulfilling destiny than
you've been willing or ready to imagine up until now.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): How did our ancestors ever figure out that
the calendula flower can be used as healing medicine for irritated and
inflamed skin? It must have been a very long process of trial and error.
(Or did the plant somehow "communicate" to indigenous herbalists,
informing them of its use?) In any case, this curative herb is only one of
hundreds of plants that people somehow came to adjudge as having healing
properties. "Miraculous" is not too strong a word to describe such
discoveries. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, Gemini,
you now have the patience and perspicacity to engage in a comparable
process: to find useful resources through experiment and close
observation—with a hardy assist from your intuition.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Today the city of Timbuktu in Mali is poor
and in the throes of desertification. But from the fourteenth to seventeenth
centuries, it was one of the great cultural centers of the world. Its
libraries filled up with thousands of influential books, which remained
intact until fairly recently. In 2012, Al-Qaeda jihadists conceived a plan
to destroy the vast trove of learning and scholarship. One man foiled them.
Abba al-Hadi, an illiterate guard who had worked at one of the libraries,
smuggled out many of the books in empty rice sacks. By the time the
jihadists started burning, most of the treasure had been relocated. I don’t
think the problem in your sphere is anywhere near as dire as this,
Cancerian. But I do hope you will be proactive about saving and preserving
valuable resources before they're at risk of being diluted, compromised,
or neglected.
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Homework: The Japanese poet Ikkyu said, "To all I care about, here’s a
friendly tip: enlightenment is gaffe upon error upon blooper." Do you
agree? 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,
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2019 Rob Brezsny
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