Acro-Yoga is a relatively new physical discipline. According to a description I read on a flyer in Santa Cruz, it "blends the spiritual wisdom of yoga, the loving kindness of massage, and the dynamic power of acrobatics." I'd love to see you work on creating a comparable hybrid in the coming months, Aries -- some practice or system or approach that would allow you to weave together your various specialties into a synergetic whole. Start brainstorming about that impossible dream now, and soon it won't seem so impossible.

Here's a gathering of all the Big-Picture horoscopes I've written for you this year. Check to see if they're relevant to the way your destiny has been evolving. You can also still hear a LONG-RANGE AUDIO PREVIEW for the REST of 2012 and beyond. Sign up and/or log in here, then click on "Long-Term Forecast for Second Half of 2012." If you'd just like a report for the short-term, click on "This week (July 17, 2012)."

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"Why, I don't even respect myself, I tell ya," said comedian Rodney Dangerfield. "When I make love, I have to fantasize that I am somebody else!"

Experiment with just the second half of that formulation. While you're making love, fantasize that you're somebody else. But do it because you care deeply about yourself -- so deeply that you want to transcend your customary reactions and expand your identity. Do it because you dare to awaken to previously unknown possibilities of who you might be.
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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.

Here's a gathering of all the Big-Picture horoscopes I've written for you this year. Check to see if they're relevant to the way your destiny has been evolving. You can also still hear a LONG-RANGE AUDIO PREVIEW for the REST of 2012 and beyond. Sign up and/or log in here, then click on "Long-Term Forecast for Second Half of 2012." If you'd just like a report for the short-term, click on "This week (July 17, 2012)."

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There was an indignant uproar after revelations in 2006 that James Frey's best-selling "memoir" A Million Little Pieces contains fabrications. He hadn't actually lived all of the experiences he depicted therein.

Hearing about it prompted me to ruminate on whether there's any such thing as a completely accurate account of any person's life. My conclusion: no.

In every autobiography and biography ever written, the author imaginatively strings together selectively chosen details to conjure up artificially coherent narratives rather than depicting the crazy-quilt ambiguity that actually characterizes everyone's journey.

If you and nine writers set out to tell your life story, you'd produce 10 wildly different tales, each rife with subjective interpretation, misplaced emphasis, unintentional distortions, and exorbitant extrapolations from insufficient data.

Celebrate the malleability of reality. Regale listeners with stories about the time you worked as a pirate in the Indian Ocean, or rode the rails through Kansas as a hobo, or gave a down-on-his-luck CIA agent sage advice in an elevator. When you call to get pizza delivered and the clerk who takes your order asks your name, say you're Brad Pitt or Paris Hilton. When someone you're meeting is annoyed because you're late, say you couldn't help it because you were smoking crack in the bus station bathroom with your mom's guru and lost track of time. If asked how much education you have, say you have three PhDs, one each in astrobiology, Russian literature, and whale songs.
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The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Here's a gathering of all the Big-Picture horoscopes I've written for you this year. Check to see if they're relevant to the way your destiny has been evolving. You can also still hear a LONG-RANGE AUDIO PREVIEW for the REST of 2012 and beyond. Sign up and/or log in here, then click on "Long-Term Forecast for Second Half of 2012." If you'd just like a report for the short-term, click on "This week (July 17, 2012)."

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George III was King of England from 1760 to 1820. During the last years of his reign, he gradually became more and more detached from reality, talking to himself for hours on end and addressing trees as if they were people. When he first began losing his mind, his servants and assistants made a conscious decision to help him feel more comfortable by acting eccentric themselves.

Their collusion with George's pathology is an extreme example of a situation that all of us are at risk of. Our associates and loved ones may fall into a rhythm of going along with our odd ideas and bad habits, encouraging us to continue doing what we probably shouldn't do.

Are your allies refraining from busting you or calling your bluff, when they probably should? Bust yourself. Call your own bluff.
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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.

Here's a gathering of all the Big-Picture horoscopes I've written for you this year. Check to see if they're relevant to the way your destiny has been evolving. You can also still hear a LONG-RANGE AUDIO PREVIEW for the REST of 2012 and beyond. Sign up and/or log in here, then click on "Long-Term Forecast for Second Half of 2012." If you'd just like a report for the short-term, click on "This week (July 17, 2012)."

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If a cow is given a name by her owner, she generates more milk than a cow that's treated as an anonymous member of the herd. That's the conclusion of a study done by researchers at Newcastle University in the UK. "Placing more importance on knowing the individual animals and calling them by name," said Dr. Catherine Douglas, "can significantly increase milk production."

Building on that principle, I suggest that you give everything in your world names, including (but not limited to) houseplants, insects, cars, appliances, and trees. It will help you get more up-close and personal with all of creation, which is an effective way to cultivate pronoia.
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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.

Here's a gathering of all the Big-Picture horoscopes I've written for you this year. Check to see if they're relevant to the way your destiny has been evolving. You can also still hear a LONG-RANGE AUDIO PREVIEW for the REST of 2012 and beyond. Sign up and/or log in here, then click on "Long-Term Forecast for Second Half of 2012." If you'd just like a report for the short-term, click on "This week (July 17, 2012)."

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Sometimes the best gift you can give your ego is to tell it you're not going to be its slave anymore. You say to it, "I'm tired of being whipped around by every one of your ever-shifting little needs, and I'm sick of having to kowtow to your inexhaustible demands. I want to be free of your insatiable craving to be appreciated, recognized, and adored. Go away and leave me alone. I'm just going to be who I am without worrying about you at all."

Delivering this message may stimulate a healing crisis. Your ego could be temporarily rendered numb and irrelevant by its near death experience, and you'll get to go off and do what your soul wants to do.

Tell your ego you won't be its slave for a period of three days.
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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.

Here's a gathering of all the Big-Picture horoscopes I've written for you this year. Check to see if they're relevant to the way your destiny has been evolving. You can also still hear a LONG-RANGE AUDIO PREVIEW for the REST of 2012 and beyond. Sign up and/or log in here, then click on "Long-Term Forecast for Second Half of 2012." If you'd just like a report for the short-term, click on "This week (July 17, 2012)."

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In American psychotherapy, the first question many practitioners ask their new clients is essentially, "What did your parents do to you to mess you up so badly?" One of my Japanese friends tells me that in his country, a therapist is more likely to ask, "What did your parents do for you? How did they nurture and support you?"

Without dismissing the possibility that your mom and dad did inflict damage on you, I'll ask you to concentrate on the Japanese-style inquiry for now. What are the best things that happened to you when you were growing up? What did your family and community give you that you've never fully appreciated?
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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.

Here's a gathering of all the Big-Picture horoscopes I've written for you this year. Check to see if they're relevant to the way your destiny has been evolving. You can also still hear a LONG-RANGE AUDIO PREVIEW for the REST of 2012 and beyond. Sign up and/or log in here, then click on "Long-Term Forecast for Second Half of 2012." If you'd just like a report for the short-term, click on "This week (July 17, 2012)."

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Beauty and Truth Lab researcher Beth had a dream that she and her tribe were living peacefully at the foot of a mountain. Without warning, fiery ash and lava erupted. Everyone fled, desperate to escape. But before she had gone far, Beth heard a voice in her head say, "Run toward the volcano; it's your only safety." Feeling an inexplicable trust in the voice, she turned around and started heading back, whereupon the dream ended and she woke up. Soon after getting out of bed, she felt moved to face up to a certain dilemma she'd been ignoring in her waking life. When she solved the problem a day later, she felt gratitude for the dream that had spurred her to do the right thing: Run toward the volcano.

What would be the equivalent in your own life?
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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.

Here's a gathering of all the Big-Picture horoscopes I've written for you this year. Check to see if they're relevant to the way your destiny has been evolving. You can also still hear a LONG-RANGE AUDIO PREVIEW for the REST of 2012 and beyond. Sign up and/or log in here, then click on "Long-Term Forecast for Second Half of 2012." If you'd just like a report for the short-term, click on "This week (July 17, 2012)."

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"The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words," said Terence McKenna in Alien Dreamtime, "and that if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish." Here's my version of that hypothesis: What world you end up living in depends at least in part on your use of language.

Do you want to move and breathe amidst infertile chaos where nothing makes sense and no one really loves anyone? Then speak with unconscious carelessness, expressing yourself lazily. Constantly materialize and entertain angry thoughts in the privacy of your own imagination, beaming silent curses out into eternity.

Or would you prefer to live in a realm that's rich with fluid epiphanies and intriguing coincidences and mysterious harmonies? Then be discerning and inventive in how you speak, primed to name the unexpected codes that are always being born right in front of your eyes. Turn your imagination into an ebullient laboratory where the somethings you create out of nothings are tinctured with the secret light you see in your dreams of invisible fire.
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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.

Here's a gathering of all the Big-Picture horoscopes I've written for you this year. Check to see if they're relevant to the way your destiny has been evolving. You can also still hear a LONG-RANGE AUDIO PREVIEW for the REST of 2012 and beyond. Sign up and/or log in here, then click on "Long-Term Forecast for Second Half of 2012." If you'd just like a report for the short-term, click on "This week (July 17, 2012)."

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As a boy, renowned Spanish matador Manolete was a sissy. He rarely played outside, preferring to be near his mother as he read books and painted pictures.

Psychologist James Hillman explains this by suggesting that the youthful Manolete had already sensed his destiny, intuiting that one day he would be alone in the ring facing down angry 2,000-pound bulls. His childhood behavior was a way of marshaling his strength and shielding him from the enormity of the challenges he would seek out one day.

Is it possible that what you have considered a weakness or vulnerability has actually been preparing you to express a signature strength?
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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.

Here's a gathering of all the Big-Picture horoscopes I've written for you this year. Check to see if they're relevant to the way your destiny has been evolving. You can also still hear a LONG-RANGE AUDIO PREVIEW for the REST of 2012 and beyond. Sign up and/or log in here, then click on "Long-Term Forecast for Second Half of 2012." If you'd just like a report for the short-term, click on "This week (July 17, 2012)."

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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." 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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The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Here's a gathering of all the Big-Picture horoscopes I've written for you this year. Check to see if they're relevant to the way your destiny has been evolving. You can also still hear a LONG-RANGE AUDIO PREVIEW for the REST of 2012 and beyond. Sign up and/or log in here, then click on "Long-Term Forecast for Second Half of 2012." If you'd just like a report for the short-term, click on "This week (July 17, 2012)."

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During my years in college, I enjoyed watching the evolution of Richard, a shy geek in my creative writing classes. Long before he penned a single good poem, he was a bohemian art poseur. On his backpack there was a button with the image of rock poet Patti Smith. He often wore a T-shirt bearing a quote from poetry icon Allen Ginsberg, and he was never without his book of Rimbaud poems. Everywhere I went I saw him scribbling ostentatiously in his journal as he chain-smoked clove cigarettes.

To my surprise, Richard's work gradually began to match his persona. By sophomore year he'd spawned some evocative poems, and soon after he graduated, he published a fine chapbook. In his development I witnessed a perfect example of the saying, "You become what you pretend to be."

Your assignment: Decide what you want to become, and start pretending to be that thing. Or else: Be careful what you're unconsciously pretending to be, because you just might become it.
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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.

Here's a gathering of all the Big-Picture horoscopes I've written for you this year. Check to see if they're relevant to the way your destiny has been evolving. You can also still hear a LONG-RANGE AUDIO PREVIEW for the REST of 2012 and beyond. Sign up and/or log in here, then click on "Long-Term Forecast for Second Half of 2012." If you'd just like a report for the short-term, click on "This week (July 17, 2012)."

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In his book Starbucked, Taylor Clark says there's a woman who goes to a Seattle Starbucks every morning and orders a "decaf single grande extra vanilla two-percent extra caramel 185-degrees with whipped cream caramel macchiato."

Maybe her request seems overly fussy and demanding, but it could be a good act for you to mimic. Try this: For a given time, say 12 days, be equally as exacting in asking for what you want. Assume that you have a poetic license to be extremely specific as you go about your quest for fulfillment.
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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.