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Horoscopes for week of February 12, 2015
I hope you have someone in your life to whom you can send the following love note, and if you don't, I trust you will locate that someone no later than August 1: "I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else." (This passage is borrowed from author Jonathan Safran Foer's book Everything Is Illuminated.)
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I hope the oracle above provides you with the inspiration you need to do what you've got to do and change what needs to be changed. But if you need more clues, listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE, where I go further in exploring your mysteries.
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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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The three love offerings I have might be a challenge for you to receive in the same generous spirit with which I'm giving them. Nevertheless, I suspect you can truly benefit from their bracing advice. So here are my gifts, starting with an insight from author Zora Neale Hurston: "Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place." Your second oracle comes from writer James Baldwin: "Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." My third offering is from novelist Iris Murdoch: "Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real."
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"We assume that others show their love in the same way that we do," writes psychologist Amy Przeworski, "and if they don’t follow that equation, we worry that the love is not there." I think you're on track to overcome this fundamental problem, Taurus. Your struggles with intimacy have made you wise enough to surrender your expectations about how others should show you their love. You're almost ready to let them give you their affection and demonstrate their care for you in ways that come natural to them. In fact, maybe you're ready RIGHT NOW.
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For more help in understanding your relationship with the game of life, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.
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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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As I meditated on what advice might purify and supercharge your love life, I got to thinking about a statement attributed to French poet Paul Valery. "Love is being stupid together," he said. There's an element of truth to this notion, but it's too corny and degenerate for my tastes. I prefer to focus on a more interesting and complete truth, which is this: Real love is being smart together. If you weave your destiny together with another's, he or she should catalyze your sleeping potentials, sharpen your perceptions, and boost your IQ. Your relationship should be a crucible in which you deepen your understanding of the way the world works. If you can't share your love with such a person, don't share your love with anyone.
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I'd like to bestow a blessing on you and your closest ally. My hope is that it will help you reduce the restlessness that on occasion undermines the dynamism of your relationship. Here's the benediction, inspired by a Robert Bly poem: As you sit or walk or lie next to each other, you share a mood of glad acceptance. You aren't itchy or fidgeting, wondering if there's something better to be or do. You don't wish you were talking about a different subject or feeling a different emotion or living in a different world. You are content to be exactly who you are, exactly where you are.
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Would you like further inspiration as you scheme and dream to make the most of life's sometimes puzzling opportunities? Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.
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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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During my quest for advice that might be helpful to your love life, I gathered some further words of wisdom. 1. "There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness." -Friedrich Nietzsche. 2. "Love is not about losing freedom; it's about sharing freedom with a partner who's as talented a liberationist as you." - my friend Sarah. 3. "I hunger for your sleek laugh and your hands the color of a furious harvest. I want to eat the sunbeams flaring in your beauty." - Pablo Neruda.
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Want to infuse your romantic interludes with wilder moods now and then? Want to cultivate a kind of intimacy that taps deeper into your animal intelligence? If so, try acting out each other's dreams or drawing magic symbols on each other's bodies. Whisper funny secrets into each other's ears or wrestle like good-natured drunks on the living room floor. Howl like coyotes. Caw like crows. Purr like cheetahs. Sing boisterous songs and recite feral poetry to each other. Murmur this riff, adapted from Pablo Neruda: "Our love was born in the wind, in the night, in the earth. That’s why the clay and the flower, the mud and the roots know our names."
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What exactly are you looking for? How would you describe the experiences you want more than anything else? It's possible my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE could give you additional help in figuring that out.
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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Let's consider psychologist Carl Jung's words: "People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul." Do you fit that description? Have you ever employed tortured logic to explain to yourself why you're not following your heart's promptings? In the past year, did you take a detour that has led you further and further away from your true home? Are you engaging in evasive measures in order to keep yourself from seeing the open secret about love that's right in front of you? I'm just asking, not accusing. Only you know the correct answers.
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Is there any sense in which your closest alliance is a gift to the world? Does your relationship inspire anyone?
Do the two of you serve as activators and energizers, igniting fires in the imaginations of those whose lives you touch? If not, find out why. And if you are tapping into those potentials, it's time to raise your impact to the next level. Together the two of you now have extra power to synergize your collaboration in such a way that it sends out ripples of benevolence everywhere you go.
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Want to hear more about the subconscious factors and hidden forces that may be influencing your life? Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.
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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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"Love at first sight may be a matter of instinctively recognizing someone who will allow you to continue in comfortingly familiar -- and often destructive -- patterns learned in childhood." So said Salon.com's Lisa Zeidner in her review of Maggie Scarf's book Intimate Partners. Make that idea your watchword. Let it be the beacon that guides you away from the sentimental illusions about romance that you may still be drawn to. After all, there are few things that undermine authentic love more than infantile wishes and naive fantasies.
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The poet Rainer Maria Rilke said that people misunderstand the role of love. "They have made it into play and pleasure because they think that play and pleasure are more blissful than work," he wrote. "But there is nothing happier than work. And love, precisely because it is the supreme happiness, can be nothing other than work." I'm sharing this perspective with you for two reasons, Virgo. First, of all the signs in the zodiac, you're most likely to thrive on his approach. Second, you're in a phase of your astrological cycle when this capacity of yours is at a peak. Here's how Rilke finished his thought: "Lovers should act as if they had a great work to accomplish."
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To further explore the ripening blessings and interesting challenges in your life, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.
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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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What advice would be useful for your love life? Not this observation by The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening: "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." Do not, under any circumstances, make those your words to live by. Instead, consider the following counsel from Norman Mailer: "Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to."
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About 2,600 years ago, the Greek poet Sappho wrote the following declaration: "You make me hot." In the next ten days, I'd love for you to feel motivated to say or think that on a regular basis. In fact, I predict that you will. The astrological omens suggest you're in a phase when you are both more likely to be made hot and more likely to encounter phenomena that make you hot. Here are some other fragments from Sappho that might come in handy when you need to express your torrid feelings: 1. "This randy madness I joyfully proclaim." 2. "Eros makes me shiver again . . . Snake-sly, invincible." 3. "Desire has shaken my mind as wind in the mountain forests roars through trees." (Translations by Guy Davenport.)
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Need more whacks applied to your mental blocks? More caresses bestowed upon your growing edge? Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.
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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Clarissa Pinkola Estes said this in her book Women Who Run With the Wolves. "The desire to force love to live only in its most positive form," she wrote, "is what causes love ultimately to fall over dead." She obviously doesn't mean you should seek negativity on purpose. Rather, you should freely acknowledge that even the most sublime intimacy has a dark side. As long as you welcome love's difficulties, it will remain vital.
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In the TV science-fiction show Doctor Who, the title character lives in a time machine that is also a spaceship. It's called a Tardis. From the outside, it appears to be barely bigger than a phone booth. But once you venture inside, you find it's a spacious chateau with numerous rooms, including a greenhouse, library, observatory, swimming pool, and karaoke bar. This is an excellent metaphor for you, Scorpio. Anyone who wants your love or friendship must realize how much you resemble a Tardis. If they don't understand that you're far bigger on the inside than you seem on the outside, it's unlikely the two of you can have a productive relationship. This Valentine season, as a public service, make sure that everyone you're seriously involved with knows this fact.
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Where do you want to go? Who do you want to be? For more clues, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.
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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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You need love almost as much as you need food and drink. Not just any old kind of love, though: It has to be high-minded and mysterious, and neither sentimental nor tormented. Hoping to steer you towards what you really need, I'm offering you the poetic words of Pablo Neruda. Say or write them to the person whose destiny needs to be woven more closely together with yours: "Our love is like a well in the wilderness where time watches over the wandering lightning. Our sleep is a secret tunnel that leads to the scent of apples carried on the wind. When I hold you, I hold everything that is--swans, volcanoes, river rocks, maple trees drinking the fragrance of the moon, bread that the fire adores. In your life I see everything that lives."
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Love and intimacy come in many forms. There are at least a billion different ways for you to be attracted to another person, and a trillion different ways to structure your relationship. Maybe your unique bond involves having sex, or maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's romantic or friendly or holy, or all three of those things. Do the two of you have something important to create together, or is your connection more about fueling each other's talents? Your task is to respect and revere the idiosyncratic ways you fit together, not force yourselves to conform to a prototype. To celebrate the Valentine season, I invite you and your closest ally to play around with these fun ideas.
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Would you like to hear me say some more about your ever-evolving destiny? Check out your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.
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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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What advice might beautify and elevate your love life? The following insights should help. 1. "We are not the same person this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person." - W. Somerset Maugham. 2. "People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is unlike the original." - Iris Murdoch. 3. "Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new." - Ursula K. Le Guin. 4. "A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day." - Andre Maurois.
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Anais Nin wrote the following passage in her novel A Spy in the House of Love: "As other girls prayed for handsomeness in a lover, or for wealth, or for power, or for poetry, she had prayed fervently: let him be kind." I recommend that approach for you right now, Capricorn. A quest for tender, compassionate attention doesn't always have to be at the top of your list of needs, but I think it should be for now. You will derive a surprisingly potent alchemical boost from basking in kindness. It will catalyze a breakthrough that can't be unleashed in any other way. Ask for it!
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Need more help deciphering the riddles and enigmas that are fueling your amazing story? Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.
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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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I want to remind you, in case you've somehow forgotten, that you'll never be able to bask in the love you want to receive from another person until you master the art of loving yourself with great skill and imagination. I'll go so far as to say that it's pointless to search for a perfect partner if you're not already your own perfect partner. Here's what a wise Buddhist had to say about the subject: "You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, but that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anyone, deserve your love and affection."
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How many desires do you have? Take a rough inventory. Identify the experiences you continually seek in your quest to feel relief and pleasure and salvation and love and a sense of meaning. You can also include fantasies that go unfulfilled and dreams that may or may not come true in the future. As you survey this lively array, don't censor yourself or feel any guilt. Simply give yourself to a sumptuous meditation on all the longings that fuel your journey. This is your prescription for the coming week. In ways you may not yet be able to imagine, it is the medicine you need most.
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No one knows you better than you do, but maybe I can help you dig up even more self-knowledge. Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.
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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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Borrowing the words of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, I've prepared a love note for you to use as your own. Feel free to give it to the person whose destiny needs to be woven more closely together with yours. "I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out."
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The German word Nachkussen refers to the kind of kiss that compensates for all the kissing that has not been happening, all the kissing that has been omitted or lost. If it has been too long since you've kissed anyone, you need Nachkussen. If your lover hasn't kissed you lately with the focused verve you long for, you need Nachkussen. If you yourself have been neglecting to employ your full artistry and passion as you bestow your kisses, you need Nachkussen. From what I can tell, Pisces, this Valentine season is a full-on Nachkussen holiday for you. Now please go get what you haven't been getting.
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Wouldn't you love to learn more about who you really are? What better adventure is there than learning about your soul's code? For more hints, listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.
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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT. The oracle below is excerpted from my book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.
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What wisdom might energize your love life? here's some excellent advice, courtesy of psychologist James Hillman: "For a relationship to stay alive, love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining." How will you act on this excellent counsel? Maybe you could take you and your closest ally to a sanctuary you've never dreamed you'd go to in a thousand years. Or do an exercise in which you ask each other questions you've never broached before. Or devise an experiment in which the two of you get to face an unfamiliar challenge together.
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Missed a week? Check the horoscope archives. |
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© 1995-2013 -- Rob Brezsny. All rights reserved
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