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Horoscopes for week of May 25, 2006
"Donald Rumsfeld never listens to anything except the voices inside his own head," wrote San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll. While this is an unfortunate situation, given the fact that the U.S. Secretary of Defense has so much power over others, it is not all that uncommon. Many people rarely consult any opinions besides those that originate in their own imaginations. And from time to time, all of us get temporarily hypnotized by the rants of the little voices in our heads. You're especially at risk for that to happen in the near future, Aries. There are two things you can do to ensure it doesn't. First, cultivate an ironic distance toward those inner voices. Evaluate what they say with rigorous objectivity. Second, listen really hard to people who are both thoughtful and humble.
No one knows you better than you do. But maybe you'll be inspired to dig up even more self-knowledge in the coming week if you tune in to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.
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Every act of genius, Carl Jung said, is an act contra naturam: against nature. Indeed, every effort to achieve psychological integration and union with the divine requires a knack for working against the grain. The 18th-century mystic Jacob Boehme recommended the same technique. The great secret to becoming enlightened, he said, is "to walk in all things contrary to the world." Qabalist teacher Paul Foster Case agreed: "The basis of the spiritual approach to life, the foundation of the everyday practice of a person who lives the life of obedience to esoteric law, is the reversal of the more usual ways of thinking, speaking and doing."
Name the ways you already use this approach, and brainstorm about others you might like to try.
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The preceding oracle comes 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 or Barnes & Noble.
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Surveys show that 21 percent of the population say they're "regularly bored out of their minds." If those surveys included astrological data in their research, I bet they'd find that among Tauruses who suffer bouts of boredom, 85 percent are most susceptible to that state during the end of May and the first half of June. That's why I encourage you to make dramatic efforts to keep yourself stimulated and amused in the coming days. Don't fall prey to the lowest common denominator of plain old ordinary fate. Use your imagination to fill your schedule with novelty, intrigue, learning experiences, and high adventure.
What greater adventure is there than exploring the enigmas of your unique destiny? For more hints about the week ahead, listen to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.
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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."
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The preceding oracle comes 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 or Barnes & Noble.
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"Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?" That's the question asked by Marc Hedlund in the intro to his "Proverbs for Entrepreneurs" (http://snipurl.com/ndlv). Since you're experiencing new opportunities to bring more of the entrepreneurial spirit into your life and work, I thought I'd offer you a few of his suggestions. (1) Pay attention to any idea that won't leave you alone. (2) Give people what they really need, not necessarily what they say they need. (3) If you keep your brilliant ideas secret for fear they'll be stolen, people will hide their brilliant ideas from you. (4) Great things are made by people who share a passion, not by partners who have been talked into it.
Got enough clues to chew on for a while? If you need more, give yourself the luxury of your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.
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Have you ever had permission to indulge in a marathon of braggadocio? Have you ever gotten an invitation to bluster on endlessly about your own charms without feeling even a touch of guilt or inhibition? I hereby grant you such a license right now.
When you're ready, carry out the exercise called Brag Therapy. Grab a good listener or a recording device, and boast extravagantly about yourself for at least 20 minutes. Expound in exhaustive detail why you're so wonderful and why the world would be a better place if everyone would just act more like you.
Don't be humble or cautious. Go too far. Heap extreme glory on yourself. Brazenly proclaim the fabulous qualities about you that no one has ever fully articulated or appreciated. Don't forget to extol the prodigious flaws and vices that make you so special.
What does this have to do with pronoia? When you audaciously identify your existing gifts, you set yourself up to become a magnet for even greater abundance. In fact, we recommend that you treat yourself to a Brag Therapy session regularly.
To whet your imagination, read an excerpt from the boast of Eric Baer, a participant in a Brag Therapy session I hosted in Milwaukee. "I have opposable thumbs," Eric exulted. "I can read. I breathe all the way through the night even though I'm asleep. I have access to emporiums where I can choose from 25 different brands of toilet paper. I know how to turn food into energy. I live where knuckleheads run everything and yet nothing ever blows up."
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The preceding oracle comes 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 or Barnes & Noble.
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Every one of us has at some time in the past created a monstrous thing--a terrible relationship, a big mistake in judgment, or a wrong move that damaged our credibility, integrity, or income. According to my reading of the astrological omens, it's a perfect time for you to atone for your own personal monstrosity--to make amends, seek forgiveness, and fix what's possible to correct. I also urge you to analyze the unconscious patterns that led you to act in such a distorted way. Any hard-won understandings you gain now will serve as beacons that'll help prevent you from veering so far off course again.
How much do you want to know about your destiny in the coming week? How far do you dare to go? For more insight into your intriguing fate, tune in to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the coming week.
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The "Kumulipo" is an old Hawaiian prayer chant that poetically describes the creation of the world. The word literally means "beginning-in-deep-darkness." Here darkness doesn't connote gloom and evil. Rather, it's about the inscrutability of the embryonic state; the obscure chaos that reigns before germination. Talk about the last time you dwelt in kumulipo.
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The preceding oracle comes 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 or Barnes & Noble.
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Author and peace activist Anne Herbert coined the suggestion, "Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty." Recently I found myself driving behind a battered blue truck with a bumper sticker that had a variation on that advice: "Commit random acts of beautiful coolness." Now, just in time for your Season of Ingenious Compassion, Leo, I have borrowed from them both to create an oracle that's in perfect alignment with your astrological omens: Commit random acts of the coolest kindness and most intriguing beauty you can dream up.
Want more help in exploring the Great Mystery that is your life? I discuss your coming week in greater depth in your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.
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Imagine that you have been relieved of your responsibilities for a given time. They will be taken care of by people you trust. You won't have to work to make money during this grace period, but will be given all you need. Nor will you have to clean your house, wash your clothes, or buy and make your food. Now here's the big question: What will you do now that you are free to do anything you like?
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The preceding oracle comes 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 or Barnes & Noble.
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Have you heard of the Lorax, the fuzzy yellow hero of the Dr. Seuss story? When a greedy factory owner moves into his idyllic little paradise and begins despoiling the forest, the Lorax complains on its behalf, saying, "I speak for the trees, because the trees have no tongues." Be like the Lorax, Virgo. Stand up for those who are too meek or weak or inarticulate to defend their own interests. It's the right thing to do, and besides, by doing so you will make connections that generate lucky breaks for you.
Want more clues? Need further insight? For more evocative questions and pithy suggestions about your destiny in the coming week, check out your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.
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If I ever produce a self-help manual called The Reverse Psychology of Getting Everything You Want, it will discuss the following paradoxes:
a. People are more willing to accommodate your longings if you're not greedy or grasping.
b. A good way to achieve your desires is to cultivate the feeling that you've already achieved them.
c. Whatever you're longing for has been changed by your pursuit of it. It's not the same as it was when you felt the first pangs of desire. In order to make it yours, then, you will have to modify your ideas about it.
d. Be careful what you wish for because if your wish does materialize it will require you to change in ways you didn't foresee.
Review your own life and identify experiences that exemplify these four principles.
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The preceding oracle comes 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 or Barnes & Noble.
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William Vollmann is an author who travels the world in search of crazy experiences to write about. In the course of his adventures, he has lived with prostitutes in Cambodia, hung out with rebel insurgents in Afghanistan, and almost died on two occasions, once while stuck in the Arctic's frozen wastes and once when caught in a crossfire in Bosnia. Despite having lived the equivalent of ten lifetimes, however, he's not jaded. Reviewing his work in The New York Review of Books, Michael Wood says Vollman has "seen it all but he still hasn’t lost his innocence." Your assignment right now is to achieve a Vollman-esque state of open-minded freshness as you seek out adventures that are as feisty (though not as risky) as Vollman's. It's time for you to cultivate what Zen practitioners call beginner's mind.
Want to hear more about the hidden factors influencing your life in the coming week? Listen to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.
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First, you make a list of the 100 things you're most afraid of. Next, you rate them from one to 100 in order of how badly they scare you. Then you agree to stop obsessing about the bottom 97 fears because they distract you from the three really interesting ones. Finally, you brainstorm about how you're actually going to conquer those top three fears by doing them.
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The preceding oracle comes 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 or Barnes & Noble.
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According to mythologist Michael Meade, real warriors are those who are experts at avoiding violence. They know how to prevent the escalation of conflict. They're skilled at resolving problems before they explode. In fact, Meade says, war breaks out only when there are no authentic warriors involved in the situation. In this spirit, Scorpio, I exhort you to cultivate your skills as a warrior. You can be instrumental in dispersing the brewing tension well before it erupts into a brawl.
What blessings will life bring you in the coming week? What challenges will you be invited to dive into? To explore the ripening trends further, tune in to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.
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I was never the class clown. I am not a troubled but devilishly handsome wastrel living on a trust fund. I've never beaten up anyone, have steadfastly not aspired to write like Raymond Carver, and have never played strip Scrabble with a celebrity junkie on a leaky waterbed in a Key West penthouse. There are so many things I am not and will never be, and I'm glad I know about them. It helps me stay focused on exactly who I am. What about you? Who aren't you? Fantasize about all the paths you will never take. Put it in writing.
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The preceding oracle comes 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 or Barnes & Noble.
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In 2005, a band called the Mountain Goats released the album The Sunset Tree. They dedicated it "to young men and women anywhere who live with people who abuse them." In this spirit, I'm dedicating your horoscope to those of who promise to sever your connection to people who abuse you and to those of you who vow to never again tolerate a relationship with anyone who treats you with chronic disrespect. The next eight weeks will be prime time for you to ask for more good magic from all your intimate alliances.
Need a few more whacks applied to your mental blocks in the coming week? A few more caresses administered to your growing edge? Cruise on over to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.
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"Is it bad to live without a hell?" poet Pablo Neruda asks in The Book of Questions. Let's add these queries to his: Is it dangerous to live without an enemy? Is it naive to think you can achieve great success without the driving motivation that comes from having ideas you hate? There are thousands of correct answers to these questions. What are yours?
Consider the issue from another angle. Dentists love tooth decay. Treating cavities provides them with a steady source of income. Likewise, exterminators are dependent on termites, lawyers need crimes, and priests are hungry for sinners. Lots of people have symbiotic connections with nasty stuff. In fact, isn't it true that most of us nurture our feelings for the things we love to despise and fear?
What's your favorite poison or adversary? Assume that your exposure to pronoia is changing you in ways that will require you to update your relationship with it. Speculate on how you'll go about this task.
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The preceding oracle comes 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 or Barnes & Noble.
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Twice a year you enter a short-lived phase in your astrological cycle when tough challenges are the best gifts you can possibly receive. This is one of those times. To honor this richly disconcerting moment, I offer you three gems from sages who understood how to get the most out of their trials. Psychologist C.G. Jung: "We need difficulties; they are necessary for our health." French diplomat Jean Monnet: "If you have a problem you cannot solve, enlarge the context." Albert Einstein: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
Where do you want to go in the coming week? Who do you want to be? For more clues, tune in to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.
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The factor most likely to drive us to addiction or illness is a lack of intimate contact with spirit. We all need a daily dose of vastness. Paradoxically, many of us would also benefit from more microscopic vision. Because we're so deprived of divine connection, we're half-dreaming all the time; our unconscious yearning for our eternal source makes our minds wander and saps our energy to dig in and master the gritty details that are right in front of us.
Practice seeing the little things. Gather glimpses of colors, shapes, tones, and shifts you usually ignore.
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The preceding oracle comes 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 or Barnes & Noble.
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Your power animal is the queen bee, which lays up to 2,000 eggs a day in the spring. Like her, you are stupendously fertile. In fact, you're capable of so much creative expression that it could take months for you to ripen all the new life that you're now spawning. Just because you have this potential, however, doesn't guarantee that you will use it well or completely. There's a first important step you can take to help ensure that you do: Treat yourself with the same care and reverence and optimism you would a woman who's nine months pregnant.
Want to explore the coming week even further? Dig deeper? Push harder? Consider tuning in to your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.
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Don't make nasty comments about yourself behind your own back.
Do play soccer in bunny slippers at dawn in a supermarket parking lot with a gang of sadomasochistic stockbrokers who've promised to teach you the Balinese monkey chant.
Don't decorate your thigh with a sloppy tattoo of the devil pushing a lawn mower.
Do wear a t-shirt that says, "Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most."
Don't glide into a bar, scout around for the person whose face has the most pain etched in it, and ask that person to come home with you.
Do eat ripe organic strawberries that have been genetically modified and irradiated, and do chain-smoke Marlboros as you peddle your exercise bicycle, and do wander through a garbage dump while listening to Mozart on your iPod.
Don't get hooked on the fantasy that there are only two kinds of people, those who align themselves with the forces of light and those who align themselves with the forces of darkness.
Do start an organization called POMP (Proud Owners of Multiple Personalities), dedicated to erasing negative stereotypes about healthy non-schizophrenics who enjoy being a community of many different selves.
Don't lie on a floor surrounded by wine-stained poetry books, crumpled Matisse prints, abandoned underwear, and half-eaten bowls of corn flakes as you stare up at the ceiling with a mad gaze, muttering gibberish and waving your hands as if swatting away demons.
Do run along the tops of cars during a traffic jam, escaping from bad guys as you make your way to a helicopter that takes you to a spot hovering over an erupting volcano, into which you drop the Buns of Steel video.
Don't put your soul up for auction on the eBay website.
Do write a cookbook filled with recipes you've channeled from dead celebrities.
If you come upon a lamp with a genie in it, don't wish you had a magic wand.
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The preceding oracle comes 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 or Barnes & Noble.
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Sri Lankan-born overachiever Suresh Joachim has a fascinating hobby: He attempts outlandish feats that get him written up in the Guinness Book of World Records. Among his many successes, he's the current champion in the category of marathon TV watching. Given your current astrological omens, Pisces, you could exceed his mark of 70 consecutive hours. You have the potential to achieve miraculous levels of laziness. It's my duty to inform you, however, that this same tendency could be directed in more constructive directions, even if you're less likely to be cited for them in the Guinness book. For example, your capacity for breakthrough meditation is at a peak. With a few hours of intense prayer and self-examination, you could dissolve complexes that have plagued you for many moons. You also possess the ability to achieve marvelous states of relaxed stillness that will fill you with expansive new understandings of the way life really works.
Need more help with your riddles? Crave more support in your efforts to build your courage? Check out your Expanded Audio Horoscope for the week ahead.
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Every fundamentalist divides the world into two camps, those who agree with him and like him and help him, and those who don't. There is only one right way to interpret the world—according to the ideas the fundamentalist believes to be true—and a million wrong ways.
The fundamental attitude of all fundamentalists is to take everything way too seriously and too personally and too literally. Imagination is a sin and a crime. Correct belief is the only virtue. Every fundamentalist is committed to waging war against the imagination unless the imagination is enslaved to his or her belief system.
And here's the bad news: Like almost everyone in the world, each of us has our own share of the fundamentalist virus. It may not be as dangerous to the collective welfare as, say, the fundamentalism of Islamic terrorists or Christian politicians or CEOs who act as if making a financial profit is the supreme good or scientists who deny the existence of the 96 percent of reality imperceptible to the five senses. Our fundamentalism is not as virulent as theirs.
But still: We are infected, you and I, with fundamentalism. What are we going to do about it?
I say we practice taking everything less seriously and less personally and less literally.
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The preceding oracle comes 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 or Barnes & Noble.
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© 1995-2013 -- Rob Brezsny. All rights reserved
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