Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
January 13, 2021
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See a pretty version of this newsletter:
https://bit.ly/VictoriesOfLove
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DREAM AND SCHEME ABOUT YOUR LONG-RANGE FUTURE
with my 3-part EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES for the Coming Year:
https://RealAstrology.com
What new influences will be headed your way in 2021? What fresh
resources will you be able to draw on? How can you conspire with life to
create the best possible future for yourself?
This week, my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES feature Part 3 of the long-
range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2021.
Part 1 and Part 2 of your Big-Picture Predictions, which I offered the
last two weeks, are also still available.
What will be the story of your life in 2021? 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?
To listen to your BIG PICTURE horoscopes online, go to
https://RealAstrology.com
Register and/or log in through the main page, and then click on the link
"Long Range Prediction, Part 3"
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The cost for the Expanded Audio Horoscopes is $6 per horoscope. (You can
get discounts for multiple purchases.)
You can also listen over the phone by calling 1-877-873-4888. The cost
is $1.99 per minute.
Each forecast is 7-9 minutes long.
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P.S. You can also still access my Sneak-Peek at 2021. In these Expanded
Audio Horoscopes, I describe some major themes I think you'll be working
and playing with in 2021. After you register and/or log in, click on
"Three Weeks Ago (Dec 22, 2020)."
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DISAPPEAR YOUR FEAR
Here’s your mantra: "I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity."
Say it or sing it. Maybe let it flow out of you after you wake each morning
and are still lying in bed. Or make it 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, or like
a person with a Swedish accent, like your inner teenager, like a parrot,
like the person you’ll be when you’re 84 years old.
"I disappear my fear. I resurrect my audacity. I disappear my fear. I
resurrect my audacity."
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FATE BAIT
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."
It's 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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YOU ARE THE HIDDEN GOD
You are the hidden God. Wake up in the dream. Read between the lies. To
question is the answer. The frontline is everywhere. There are no
innocent by_standers. Truth is a three-edged sword. Practice infinite
tolerance except for intolerance.
Achieve strength through joy. Embrace your shadow. Change is stability.
Creation never ends. Everything is verb. The way in is the way out. All
things connect all the time. The going is the goal. Today is the day!
—Reverend Adtrian Cain
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SACRED ACTIVISM
A spirituality that is only private and self-absorbed, one devoid of an
authentic political and social consciousness, does little to halt the suicidal
juggernaut of history.
On the other hand, an activism that is not purified by profound spiritual
and psychological self-awareness will only perpetuate the problem it is
trying to solve, however righteous its intentions.
When, however, the deepest and most grounded spiritual vision is married
to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing political,
economic and social institutions, a holy force—the power of wisdom and
love in action—is born. This force I define as Sacred Activism.
—Andrew Harvey
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Those who attempt to act and do things for others or for the world without
deepening their own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity
to love, will not have anything to give others.
They will communicate nothing but the contagion of their own obsessions,
their aggressiveness, their ego-centered ambitions, their delusions about
ends and means, their doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.
We are living through the greatest crisis in the history of humanity; and
this crisis is centered precisely in the country that has made a fetish out
of action and has lost (or perhaps never had) the sense of contemplation.
Far from being irrelevant, prayer, meditation and contemplation are of
the utmost importance in America.
—Thomas Merton
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LET'S COLLABORATE TO PUT THE PANDEMIC BEHIND US
To my dismay, some Americans still downplay the devastation being caused
by the virus. This is despite the fact that the US leads the world in number
of infections and number of deaths.
Some of the deniers say that the virus only kills a small percentage of the
people it infects—thereby ignoring the fact that it damages and disables a
substantial percentage of the people it infects but doesn't kill. Many
people who haven't been killed by the virus report lingering symptoms
that feel disabling.
There's another factor the deniers ignore: The more people who are
infected, the greater the chances are that the virus will mutate. And some
of those mutations (as we have already seen) are more contagious,
perhaps more lethal, and could possibly turn out to be immune to the
vaccines.
Another factor the deniers ignore: The virus results in so many people
being hospitalized, it taxes our medical system and our medical providers.
It also makes it harder for people who have other health problems to be
treated.
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ONGOING RIDDLE
It's an ongoing riddle about how to deal with people who lack empathy and
thrive on delusion. I try my best to be fierce in my boundary-setting in
relation to them, but without getting personally riled up.
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WHAT WE BELIEVE IMPRISONS US?
The underlying principle of Robert Anton Wilson's philosophy is "I know
I'm wrong; I want to be less wrong." This is very different from internet
culture, where the underlying philosophy is "I'm right, and I want you to
know that."
Wilson thought that what we believe imprisons us; he thought convictions
create convicts.
His philosophy can be called "multiple-model agnosticism." He wasn't
merely agnostic about God. He was agnostic about everything.
More: https://tinyurl.com/mqg2kme
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LIBERATE YOUR IMAGINATION
The fundamentalist takes everything way too seriously and way too
personally and way too literally. He divides the world into two camps,
those who agree with him and those who don't. There is only one right way
to interpret the world, and a million wrong ways. Correct belief is the
only virtue.
To the fundamentalist, the liberated imagination is a sinful taboo. He not
only enslaves his own imagination to his ideology, but wants to enslave
our imaginations, too.
And who are the fundamentalists? Let's not remain under the delusion that
they are only the usual suspects -- the religious fanatics of Islam and
Christianity and Judaism and Hinduism.
There are many other kinds of fundamentalists, and some of them have
gotten away with practicing their tragic magic in a stealth mode. Among
the most successful are those who believe in what Robert Anton Wilson
calls fundamentalist materialism. This is the faith-based dogma that
swears physical matter is the only reality and that nothing exists unless
it can be detected by our five senses or by technologies that humans have
made.
Life has no transcendent meaning or purpose, the fundamentalist
materialists proclaim. There is no such thing as a divine intelligence. The
universe is a dumb accidental machine that grinds on endlessly out of
blind necessity.
I see spread out before me in every direction a staggeringly sublime
miracle lovingly crafted by a supernal consciousness that oversees the
evolution of 500 billion galaxies, yet is also available as an intimate
companion and daily advisor to every one of us. But to the fundamentalist
materialists, my perceptions are indisputably wrong and idiotic.
Many other varieties of fundamentalism thrive and propagate. Every
ideology, even some of the ones I like, has its share of true believers --
fanatics who judge all other ideologies as inferior, flawed, and foolish.
I know astrologers who insist there's only one way to do astrology right. I
know Buddhists who adamantly decree that the inherent nature of life on
Earth is suffering.
I know progressive activists who sincerely believe that every single
Republican is either stupid or evil or both. I know college administrators
who would excommunicate any psychology professor who dared to discuss
the teachings of Carl Jung, who was in my opinion one of the greatest
minds of the 20th century. I know pagans who refuse to consider any other
version of Jesus Christ beyond the sick parody the Christian right has
fabricated.
None of the true believers like to hear that there are at least three sides to
every story. They don't want to consider the hypothesis that everyone has
a piece of the truth.
And here's the really bad news: We all have our own share of the
fundamentalist virus. Each of us is fanatical, rigid, and intolerant about
products of the imagination that we don't like. We wish that certain people
would not imagine the things they do, and we allow ourselves to beam
hateful, war-like thoughts in their direction.
We even wage war against our own imaginations, commanding ourselves,
sometimes half-consciously, to ignore possibilities that don't fit into our
neatly constructed theories. Each of us sets aside certain precious beliefs
and symbols that we give ourselves permission to take very seriously and
personally and literally.
Our fundamentalism, yours and mine, may not be as dangerous to the
collective welfare as, say, the fundamentalism of Islamic terrorists and
right-wing Christian politicians. It may not be as destructive as that of
the CEOs who worship financial profit as the supreme measure of value,
and the scientists who ignore and deny every mystery that can't be
measured, and the journalists, filmmakers, novelists, musicians, and
pundits who relentlessly generate rotten visions of the human condition.
But still: We are all infected, you and I. We are fueling the war against the
imagination. What's your version of the virus?
How might we start curing ourselves of the fundamentalist virus and move
in the direction of becoming more festive and relentless champions of the
liberated imagination?
For starters, we can take everything less seriously and less personally
and less literally.
We can laugh at ourselves at least as much as we laugh at other people. We
can blaspheme our own gods and burn our own flags and mock our own
hypocrisy and satirize our own fads and fixations.
And we can enjoy and share the tonic pleasures of healing mischief,
friendly shocks, compassionate tricks, irreverent devotion, holy pranks,
playful experiments, and crazy wisdom.
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TO READ THE REST OF THIS ESSAY, GO HERE: https://bit.ly/Liberate
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This is excerpted from my book *PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR
PARANOIA: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with
Blessings*
It's available at Amazon: http://bit.ly/Pronoia
or Barnes & Noble: https://tinyurl.com/PronoiaBN
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
Beautiful Earth. The Kalalau Valley, Kauai, Hawaii.
https://i.imgur.com/7m0r79s.jpg
Empathy Heroes: 5 People Who Changed the World By Taking Compassion
to the Extreme.
https://tinyurl.com/nh563yf
Listen to Forests From Around the World With Tree.fm
https://tinyurl.com/ycn3cwas
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning January 14
Copyright 2021 by Rob Brezsny
https://FreeWillAstrology.com
Grammar key: Asterisks equal *italics*
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Capricorn author Edgar Allan Poe named
"four conditions for happiness: life in the open air; love of another human
being; freedom from all ambition; creation." I'm accomplished in three of
those categories, but a failure in being free of all ambitions. In fact, I'm
eternally delighted by all the exciting creative projects I'm working on.
I'm VERY ambitious. What about you, Capricorn? I'm going to contradict
Poe and speculate that your happiness in the coming months will require
you to be at least somewhat ambitious. That's what the planetary omens
are telling me. So what are the best goals and dreams for you to be
ambitious about?
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): It's time to launch Operation Supple
Watchdog. That means you should be tenderly vigilant as you take extra
good care of everyone and everything that provide you with meaning and
sustenance. It means you should exercise rigorous but good-humored
discernment about any oppressive or demeaning ideas that are flying
around. You should protect and preserve the vulnerable parts of your life,
but do so with tough-minded compassion, not ornery overreactions. Be
skeptical, but warm; breezily resilient but always ready to stand up for
what's right. (P.S. The better you shield yourself against weird
surprises, the more likely it is you'll attract interesting surprises.)
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): The atoms that compose your body have
existed for billions of years. Originally created by a star, they have been
part of many forms before you. But they are exactly the same in structure
as they have ever been. So in a very real sense, you are billions of years
old. Now that you know that, how do you feel? Any different? Stronger?
More expansive? More eternal? I bring these thoughts to your attention,
Pisces, because 2021 will be an excellent year for you to come to a more
profound and detailed understanding of your true nature. I hope you will
regularly meditate on the possibility that your soul is immortal, that
your identity is not confined to this historical era, that you have been
alive and will be alive for far longer than you've been taught to believe.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): As you ripen into a more fully embodied
version of yourself, you will summon ever-greater discrimination about
where to seek your inspiration. I trust that you will increasingly divest
yourself of any tendency you might have to play around with just any old
mediocre fire. More and more, you will be drawn to high-quality blazes
that provide just the right amount of heat and light—neither too much nor
too little. And you will steadfastly refrain from jumping into the flames,
as glamorously dramatic as that might seem—and instead be a master of
deft maneuvers that enable you to get the exact energy you need.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Dentsu is a major Japanese advertising
agency headquartered in Tokyo. Annually since 1925, its new employees
and freshly promoted executives have carried out a company ritual:
climbing 12,388-foot-high Mount Fuji, Japan's tallest peak. The theme
of the strenuous workout is this: "We are going to conquer the symbol that
represents Japan more than anything else. And, once we do that, it will
signify that we can do anything." In anticipation of what I suspect will be a
year of career gains for you, Taurus, I invite you to do the following:
Sometime in the next six weeks, go out in nature and perform an
equivalent feat.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Today I received a new email from a Gemini
friend who lives in London. It was date-stamped January 15, 2015.
Weird! In it, she talked about applying for a new job at a publishing
company. That was double weird, because February 2015 was in fact the
time she had gotten the editing job that she still has. Her email also
conveyed other details about her life that I knew to be old history. So why
did it arrive now, six years late? I called her on the phone to see if we
could unravel the mystery. In the end we concluded that her email had
time-traveled in some inexplicable way. I predict that a comparable event
or two will soon happen in your life, Gemini. Blasts from the past will
pop in as if yesterday were today.
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LET'S IMAGINE WHAT INTERESTING MYSTERIES
MIGHT BE COMING YOUR WAY IN THE COMING YEAR
Who do you want to become in 2021? Where do you want to go and what do
you want to do? Would you like some inspiration as you muse and wonder
about your upcoming adventures?
In this week's EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES, I offer you Part 3 of MY
long-term, in-depth exploration of your destiny in the coming year.
Part 1 and Part 2 are still available.
To listen to your BIG PICTURE horoscopes online, go to
https://RealAstrology.com
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The cost for the Expanded Audio Horoscopes is $6 per sign. (You can get
discounts for multiple purchases.)
Each forecast is 7-9 minutes long.
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"Your long-range audio horoscopes encouraged me to think bigger about
my life. As I listened, I could feel my shrunken expectations melting
away."
—Therese Pembroke, San Diego
"Your big-picture horoscopes filled the gaps in my imagination. They
woke up the fun plot twists that had been just on the tip of my ability to
visualize."
—Ani Kraft, Brattleboro, VT
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CANCER (June 21-July 22): Eugene Sue (1804–1857) was a popular
French author whose stories often offered sympathetic portrayals of the
harsh living conditions endured by people of the lower economic class.
Writing generously about those downtrodden folks made him quite
wealthy. I'd love to see you employ a comparable strategy in the coming
year. What services might you perform that would increase your access to
money and resources? How could you benefit yourself by helping and
uplifting others?
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The beautiful and luxurious fabric known as silk
comes from cocoons spun by insect larvae. Sadly for the creatures that
provide the raw material, they're usually killed by humans harvesting
their handiwork—either by being stabbed or boiled alive. However, there
is a special kind of silk in which manufacturers spare the lives of their
benefactors. The insects are allowed to mature into moths and escape. I
propose that we make them your spirit creatures in the coming weeks. It's
an excellent time for you to take an inventory of everything you do, and
evaluate how well it upholds the noble principle of "Do no harm."
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): "Any time that is not spent on love is wasted,"
declared the Italian poet Torquato Tasso. Although I am sympathetic with
his sentiment, I can't agree that acts of love are the only things ever
worth doing. Sometimes it's healthy to be motivated by anger or sadness or
skepticism, for example. But I do suspect the coming weeks will be a
favorable time for you to be in intense devotion to Tasso's counsel. All the
important successes you achieve will be rooted in an intention to express
love and compassion.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I heard a story about how a music aficionado
took a Zen Buddhist monk to a performance of Beethoven's *Symphony No.
5*. The monk wasn't impressed. "Not enough silence!" he complained. I'm
puzzled by that response. If the monk were referring to a busy
intersection in a major city, I might agree with him, or the cacophony of a
political argument among fanatics on Facebook. But to want more silence
in one of history's greatest pieces of music? That's perverse. With this in
mind, Libra, and in accordance with astrological omens, I encourage you to
seek extra protection from useless noise and commotion during the coming
weeks—even as you hungrily seek out rich sources of beautiful
information, sound, and art.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): "Some people expend tremendous energy
merely to be normal," wrote Scorpio author Albert Camus. If you're one of
those folks, I'm happy to inform you that you have cosmic permission to
relax. The coming weeks will be an excellent time to explore the pleasures
of NOT being conventional, standard, ordinary, average, routine, prosaic,
or common. As you expansively practice non-normalcy, you will enhance
your health, sharpen your wits, and clarify your decisions.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Our lives tend to be shaped by the
stories about ourselves that we create and harbor in our imaginations. The
adventures we actually experience, the problems we actually face, are
often (not always) in alignment with the tales we tell ourselves about our
epic fates. And here's the crux of the matter: We can change the stories we
tell ourselves. We can discard tales that reinforce our pain, and dream up
revised tales that are more meaningful and pleasurable. I believe 2021
will be an excellent time for you to attend to this fun work. Your
assignment: Be a self-nurturing storyteller.
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Homework: What's the first adventure you will embark on when the
pandemic subsides? FreeWillAstrology.com
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2021 Rob Brezsny
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