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Horoscopes for week of September 21, 2006
Go against the flow. Buck the system. Push the river. Entertain the possibility that everything you know is at least half-wrong. Do you catch my drift, Aries? What I'm trying to tell you is, champion the underdog. Ignore the obvious. Disprove the conventional wisdom. Bet on the dark horse. Be a devil's advocate. Shall I continue my rant until you have absolutely no doubt what your mission is? Buy a new goldfish and name it "Jaws." Figure out a way to lick your own elbow. Eat with your non-dominant hand. Say prayers while you're having sex. Acquire a pet mosquito. Watch TV while standing on your head.
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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When you're an aspiring master of pronoia, you see the cracks in the facades as opportunities; inspiration erupts as you careen over bumps in the road; you love the enticing magic that flows from situations that other people regard as rough or crooked. "That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal," wrote poet Charles Baudelaire, "from which it follows that irregularity--that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment--is an essential part and characteristic of beauty."
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 Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
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Very few raindrops are actually raindrop-shaped. A far greater number take the form of doughnuts. These doughnutty raindrops are your power objects, Taurus--your magical symbols. I hope they inspire you to look for the wide-open spaces in the middle of every stormy downpour. I trust they will alert you to the possibility that there'll be windows of opportunities at the heart of the drizzle.
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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Tantric sex practitioners say an artful lover never makes love the same way twice.
Similarly, chanteuse Billie Holiday believed a good singer should never sing a song the same way twice. If you use all the same phrasing and melody, she said, you’re failing your art.
The only Zen master we know--whose name we can’t tell you because she changes it every week, and we haven’t heard the latest one--likes to quote the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus: "You cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you."
Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh has the last word: "Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible
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 Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
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The more time you spend playing games in the coming days, the smarter you'll be. Miniature golf, Monopoly, Twister, gin rummy, paintball, scavenger hunts, tag, Dungeons and Dragons--doesn't matter what it is, as long as it moves you to engage in exuberant fun for no other reason than because it feels so good. Playing games will be the Truth and the Way, the secret to enlightenment, the key to cultivating robust health and making good decisions. Make this Chinese proverb your motto: A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
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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A common obstruction to a vital intimate relationship with another human being is what I call the assumption of clairvoyance. You imagine, perhaps unconsciously, that your partner or friend is somehow magically psychic when it comes to you—so much so that he or she should unfailingly intuit exactly what you need, even if you don’t ask for it. This fantasy may seem romantic, but it can single-handedly sink the most promising alliances. To counteract any tendencies you might have to indulge in the assumption of clairvoyance, practice stating your desires aloud.
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 Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
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For years, I lived 13 miles from the top of Mt. Tamalpais, the highest peak in the San Francisco Bay Area. Every day I gazed at it from afar through my window or while riding my bike in the hills, marveling as it glided through its ever-shifting relationship with the sky. It was a remote yet familiar beacon, an awe-inspiring touchstone against which I could measure my own undulating rhythms. Now I've moved to a new home at the foot of Mt. Tam. I feel as if I've become part of it--am embedded in its protective and majestic aura. It's no longer an objective gauge, but rather an intimate tone and texture in my subjective experience of myself. I predict that you will soon undergo a comparable shift, Cancerian: from being there to being here; from outside to inside; from strength absorbed at a distance to power felt up close.
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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"I’ve been practicing radical authenticity lately," my friend Brandon told me. "I’m revealing the blunt truth about unmentionable subjects to everyone I know. It’s been pretty hellish—no one likes having the social masks stripped away—but it’s been ultimately rewarding."
"I admire your boldness in naming the currents flowing beneath the surface," I replied, "but I’m curious as to why you imply they’re all negative. To practice radical authenticity, shouldn’t you also express the raw truth about what’s right, good, and beautiful? Shouldn’t you unleash the praise and gratitude that normally go unspoken?"
Brandon sneered. He thought my version of radical authenticity was wimpy. I hope you don’t. As a budding lover of life, you have a mandate to be honest in both ways.
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 Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
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Biologists say the speed of thought in the human brain is normally 150 miles per hour. But I'm guessing that in the coming weeks, ideas and intuitions will be zipping around your grey matter at a higher rate. It's even possible they'll break the sound barrier on a regular basis (761 miles per hour), meaning you may hear sonic booms coming from inside your skull. Don't be alarmed if this occurs; in fact, be excited. It's a sign that your intelligence is heating up, burning off tired old beliefs and outmoded theories in the process.
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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"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. Think about the last time you dwelt in kumulipo.
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 Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
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Acting on the authority vested in me by the Prophets for Profit Syndicate, and speaking on behalf of the planetary rhythms, I can assure you of this: If your cash flow has been too slow and you remain passive about it in the coming weeks, it will corrode your mental health. If you lift a finger to upgrade your relationship with money, on the other hand, cosmic forces will rush to your aid with unexpected support. Therefore, in the name of all that's holy, I hereby declare the beginning of a new age in which you conspire and agitate and work hard for a new wage.
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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Write the following on a piece of red paper and keep it under your pillow. "I, [put your name here], do solemnly swear on this day [put date here] that I will devote myself for a period of seven days to learning my most important desire. No other thought will be more uppermost in my mind. No other concern will divert me from tracking down every clue that might assist me in my drive to ascertain the one experience in this world that deserves my brilliant passion above all others."
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 Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
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"Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo," writes the poet Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks. "You might say, 'The world outside is vast and intricate. There are wheat fields and mountain passes and orchards in bloom. At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.' You ask the embryo why he or she stays cooped up in the dark with eyes closed. Listen to the answer. 'There is no other world. I only know what I've experienced. You must be hallucinating.'" Now I say to you, Libra, that you are the embryo Rumi and Barks are addressing. Consider the possibility that they're telling the truth. Come out and take a look around.
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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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.
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 Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
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"Women are traps that lay for men everywhere," said Franz Kafka, "in order to drag them into the infinite." If you find this idea sexist or heterosexist, formulate your own version. One way or another, you need to get lured or yanked into a bracing experience of boundless possibilities . . . into a delightfully shocking immersion in eternal truth . . . into a whirlwind tour of sublime, brain-scrambling beauty. If an uncanny woman will do the job for you, great. If an amazing man works better, or maybe a magical member of an in-between gender, seek that person out. Play hard with the limitless, Scorpio.
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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Plant orchids on a strip-mined hill.
Imagine you have a guardian angel who looks like Malcolm X.
Teach an animal to dance.
Hire a puppet troupe to reenact your life story using marionettes in Renaissance costumes.
Make believe you are the ocean king or thunder queen.
Improvise a fresh bedtime story for someone you love.
Put on an inflatable sumo wrestler costume and play a bagpipe as badly as possible.
Watch TV with your third eye.
Sip holy water blessed by a smart teenage girl.
Bear in mind that you are the Chosen One, and so is everyone else.
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 Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
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According to the esoteric spiritual tradition of Western hermeticism, you have a personal Holy Guardian Angel who's always ready to give you help, as well as to lovingly kick your ass. Modern scientists snort derisively at this notion. They're fundamentalist materialists, denying the possibility that something can exist if it's not perceptible by our five senses or by instruments that humans have invented. If your temperament and training align you with the scientists' ideology, I'll ask you to temporarily suspend your skepticism so that you might join other Sagittarians in trying the following experiment: Act as if you have a personal Holy Guardian Angel whose job it is to help you lose your illusions, liberate you from suffering, and make you smarter. What clarifying questions will you ask the HGA? What precise assistance will you request?
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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Philosopher William James proposed that if our culture ever hoped to shed the deeply ingrained habit of going to war, we'd have to create a moral equivalent. It's not enough to preach the value of peace, he said. We have to find other ways to channel our aggressive instincts in order to accomplish what war does, like stimulate political unity and build civic virtue.
Astrology provides a complementary perspective. Each of us has the warrior energy of the planet Mars in our psychological make-up. We can't simply repress it, but must find a positive way to express it. How you might go about this project?
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 Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
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In May 1941, Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess made an unauthorized attempt to seek peace with Britain. He flew there alone from Germany, parachuting onto a Scottish farm as his plane crashed. According to some accounts, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was quickly informed of Hess's odd visitation, but deferred taking action because he was too absorbed in a Marx Brothers movie. I expect there'll soon be a metaphorically comparable event in your sphere, Capricorn. My advice? Be like Churchill. If loose cannons or obsessed messengers or self-important proselytizers demand your attention, put them on hold and stay engrossed in whatever's amusing you.
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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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.
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 Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
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In 2000, I logged 34,000 miles during my travels across America to meet my readers. During a three-year stretch earlier in my life, I was a homeless gypsy, sponging off friends and staying in hostels from Vermont to South Carolina, from Italy to Greece. But in recent years I've gone on extensive pilgrimages of another kind, carried out through imaginal exercises, lucid dreams, and shamanic meditations. According to my reading of the omens, Aquarius, you can generate rich blessings for yourself by getting away from it all in either of these two directions. What's better, to head out into far-flung places in the outer world or the inner world? It doesn't matter.
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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A thousand years from today, everyone you know will be long dead and forgotten. There’ll be nothing left of the life you love, no evidence that you ever walked this planet. That, at least, is what the fundamentalist materialists would have you believe. But suppose the truth is very different? What if in fact every little thing you do subtly alters the course of world history? What if your day-to-day decisions will actually help determine how the human species navigates its way through the epic turning point we’re living through? And finally, what if you will be alive in a thousand years, reincarnated into a fresh body and in possession of the memories of the person you were back in this era? These are my hypotheses. These are my prophecies. Which is why I say: Live as if your soul is eternal.
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 Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
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One historian has figured out that during the last three and a half millennia, humans have been at peace throughout the world for only 230 years--less than seven percent of the time. How would you rate your own personal proportions of war and peace, Pisces? I certainly hope you're serene, centered, and secure far more than seven percent of your life. But whether or not you are, the coming weeks will be an excellent time to boost your average dramatically. The actions you take and the attitudes you adjust could set in motion changes that will make peace a more common everyday experience. How hard you willing to work to establish a Pax Pisces?
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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In The Book of Embraces, Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano writes, "The fishermen of the Colombian coast must be learned doctors of ethics and morality, for they invented the word sentipensante, or 'feeling-thinking,' to define language that speaks the truth." Describe a time when you pulled off the feat of thinking with your heart and feeling with your head.
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 Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
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© 1995-2013 -- Rob Brezsny. All rights reserved
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