As an exuberant experiment, I invite you to imagine that your drive to experience pleasure doesn’t hinder your spiritual growth but facilitates it.

Imagine that your yearnings for beauty, fun, sex, and revelry aren’t distractions from your growing capacity for liberation, but primary fuel.

Proceed on the hypothesis that cultivating joy and celebration can make you a more ethical and conscientious person.

Research the possibility that when you feel good, you’re more generous toward others.

Trust that when your inner life is humming with gleeful musings, you find it easier to extend patience to the difficult, grace to the clumsy, and mercy to the fallen.

Test the theory that compassion streams more freely from your overflowing lust for life than from your grinding sense of duty.

Expect that delight has an interesting teaching for you every day.

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What I just said is the essence of my message for you at this perfect moment. Below, I elaborate further.

Many spiritual systems the world has inherited regard pleasure, bliss, rapture, ecstasy, elation, and related super treasures as troublemakers and distractions.

The so-called “lower self” is greedy for such wasteful irrelevance, the saintly authorities say. “Begone foul deceivers!” they imply or declare outright.

How many zillions of us have been taught, often with dire and threatening tones, that feeling really good leads us away from life’s essential goals? Holiness and sanctity are likely to accumulate in us only if we shun the supposedly inferior temptation to bask in delight.

Say what?

Of all the idiocies foisted on humanity, this one is among the most egregious. I am in danger of veering into apoplexy as I contemplate such an atrocious delusion. I’ll try to be civil.

In both my extensive mythic explorations of dreamy truth and scientific investigations of hard-core reality, I have gathered incontrovertible evidence that pleasure is a central necessity for any spiritual quest that actually works.

It’s a sensory instrument. A tuning fork and a feedback system. A way the body says, Yes, this. More of this. Keep headed in this direction. You’re getting closer to home.

I’m not talking about the jittery sugar-high of addiction or the perverse, jangly thrills that sabotage health.

I mean the rich, ennobling euphoria and exhilaration that arise during encounters with smart fun: inspiring us to love ourselves more, expanding our capacity to love others, leading us in the direction of our shining dreams, and helping us solve our knotty problems.

The eruptions of these life-giving nourishments might come through the stimulation of our senses, emotions, or imagination. And yet they don’t have to yank us away from the sacred. They may in fact be among the sacred’s favorite ways of snagging our attention. Evolution didn’t give us many reliable compasses, but I believe this is one of them.

My comprehensive research reveals that when we feel genuinely good—not inflated or superior, but resoundingly buoyant—our ethics improve. We’re more patient and curious. Less brittle and defensive.

When we’re swooning or even just shimmering with delectation, we see other people more clearly. They’re not obstacles or mirrors of our lack, but fellow creatures doing their best with the weather systems inside them.

By contrast, chronic deprivation, especially when dressed up as virtue, tends to make people tight and pinched and resentful of anyone who looks like they’re enjoying themselves.

Self-denial doesn’t reliably produce saints. Often it just churns out people who are very good at pretending they don’t want what they want.

Those who know how to nurture themselves with good feelings often have a super-capacity to give without keeping score. Their generosity leaks out sideways. There’s surplus.

Here’s my very-well proven hypothesis: Compassion grows less from being twisted up about suffering and more from inhabiting joie de vivre so fully that we want others to feel it too.

So yes: To the horror of the Rabid Life Denialists who equate suffering with virtue, I question their calculations.

With all the confidence possible for a paradox and ambiguity lover like me to summon, I boisterously assert that the real inquiry isn’t “How much can I endure?” but “How much aliveness can I allow without flinching?”

With all the cheerful disdain I have earned the right to express by virtue of my carefully cultivated empathic kindness, I ask, what if generosity of spirit comes not from suppressing our quest for ebullience and gusto, but from celebrating it so thoroughly that scarcity loses its grip?

The blunt, brash, brazen fact is that we are less generous when we’re depleted and forcing ourselves to give out of duty, and more generous when we are lit up and giving feels like play.

The raw, unruly, radical truth is that our best work emerges not when we’re grinding and grueling, but when delight has infiltrated us down to the core of our primal curiosity.

I’ve devised some experiments for those poor souls who have tragically come to believe that pleasure is anathema to their spiritual practice. They’re below.

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Experiments:

• Track the connection between your states of gleeful, zestful pleasure and your capacity for kindness, courage, creativity, and clear seeing.

• Learn to gauge the distinction between exaltations that feed you and diversions that merely numb you. Your body knows the difference long before your theories do.

• Gather evidence to test the theory that the pleasure-versus-enlightenment split is a cosmic practical joke—lazy, outdated, and spiritually disabling.

• Follow your joy, not blindly, not compulsively, but attentively. Watch how it keeps leading you toward becoming more human, responsive, and capable of love.

Addendum: On Joy as Revolutionary Fuel

Some readers may be twitching by now. I hear the objection:

“Rob, have you noticed the world? Children are being bombed. Forests are burning. Aquifers are draining. Tyrants are perpetrating. Democracies are wobbling. Species are vanishing at a pace that ought to make every breathing person weep. And here you are, composing love letters to delight? Have you no sense of proportion?”

I welcome this challenge. I’ve wrestled with it myself many times, often at 3 a.m., when the litany of atrocities scrolls behind my eyelids.

But here’s what I’ve concluded, after years of paying close attention to the people who actually do the work of saving real things: The activist who arrives at the struggle already brittle, depleted, and chronically marinating in their own self-flagellation, will burn out quickly.

The activist who arrives nourished is the one who will still be fighting the good fight in 2046. They know the art of sustaining themselves with real pleasures, anchored in their own aliveness, threaded through with genuine love for the world they’re trying to protect.

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I’ll plant my flag here, even though I know it may scandalize.

The dour, joyless, perpetually outraged zeal for revolution isn’t sustainable. And in many cases, those with that attitude are unwittingly importing the pathology they claim to oppose. (I say this with great tenderness toward my own younger self.)

What’s the worldview of the the colonizer, oligarch, and fascist? It’s precisely that life is scarce and joy must be hoarded or punished. Pleasure is for the few, and beauty is decoration rather than necessity.

When we activists internalize a punishing, pleasure-denying mode of resistance, we replicate the operating system of the empire we’re trying to dismantle. We just point its weapons at ourselves.

The Misery Maximalists will tell you that anyone caught laughing during the apocalypse is morally compromised. I say that anyone who has stopped laughing during the apocalypse has conceded the most important territory.

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History bears me out. The movements that endured and actually changed things were saturated with music, feast, dance, flirtation, ridiculous humor, and the insistence on beauty.

The Black freedom struggle sang its way through difficulty. The labor movement built dance halls. ACT UP staged kiss-ins outside cathedrals. The Zapatistas fielded poetry brigades. The water protectors at Standing Rock drummed and prayed and joked around fires while drone-helicopters thundered overhead. The suffragettes wore stylish hats. The disability justice elders threw parties.

This was the engine of the work, and the reason the work didn’t dissolve into ash.

Joy in the face of monstrousness is the most strategically sophisticated form of resistance available to us. It tells the regime: You don’t get to install your scarcity in my nervous system. You don’t get to make my body a battlefield in your war against everything good.

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Here’s the deepest argument:

The world we’re trying to build is one in which everyone gets to flourish. To embody that flourishing now isn’t a betrayal of the cause. It IS the cause.

If we postpone joy until the revolution is complete, we have already lost. We will arrive at the promised land too desiccated to live there.

To pursue ennobling pleasure right now, in the middle of everything, while still showing up at the protest rally, is good practice: rehearsal for the world we want.

Dear Readers —

I’m wildly grateful for the amazing encouragement you offered me after my report on the people who complain that I “do too much self-promotion.”

See the original discussion here: https://is.gd/5UShgl

It’s gratifying that so many of you find inspiration and support in my newsletters, and don’t mind hearing about—even welcome knowing about—my other creative expressions.

All of my PLURK (Work + Play) is in service to the great Web of Life that we all weave together. You are my teachers and helpers and inspirers, and I aspire to give back to you in kind.

Rowdy blessings,

Rob

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Art in this newsletter by:

Samantha Daniels Napaltjarri

Yvonne Comber

Robin Custance

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Check out my LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/robbrezsny

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of April 30

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): May is Free Thinking Month for you Tauruses. It’s also Free Feeling, Free Wheeling, and Free Healing Month. Wow! To observe this festive grace period, indulge in any of the following jubilant acts: 1. Declare your independence from anyone who tries to tell you how you should live your life or who you are. 2. Declare independence from your history, especially recollections that dampen your sense of possibility and old self-images that impede your yearning to explore. 3. Declare independence from groupthink and conventional wisdom. 4. Declare independence from your former conceptions of freedom so you’ll be free to arrive at fresh understandings of it.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The Navajo practice hózhó means “walking in beauty”: living in balance and harmony with life. But hózhó isn’t a static state you achieve once and possess forever. You must continually restore and reinvent it. I suspect you’re in a phase like that now, Gemini. Too much thinking and not enough feeling? Too much future and not enough present? I recommend you take corrective measures. Start by taking one physical action that grounds you. Have a conversation from the heart instead of the head. Spend an hour not planning the story to come, but simply loving what’s here right now. Refresh your hózhó!

CANCER (June 21-July 22): If a honeybee colony becomes too crowded, scout bees search for potential new hive sites. When they return, they perform waggle dances for their colleagues to convey specific information about different locations. Negotiations ensue. Various possibilities are offered and considered through more dancing. Eventually, the swarm collectively makes a choice and heads out to its new home. Your challenge right now, Cancerian, is to be like a scout bee who facilitates your group’s decision-making process. I invite you to carry out a reconnaissance mission and then perform your waggle dances for your people. Make your case with vigor and precision. Trust the group’s emergent wisdom to make the best decision.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Like all of us, Leo, you have persistent aches from old losses, absences, and wounds. They may seem like permanent burdens you will never be able to shake or transcend. But here’s some very good news: In the coming months, there’s a greater chance than usual that you’ll discover new approaches to healing them. The remedies won’t necessarily be logical or obvious. They may involve you conducting rituals, taking symbolic actions, or ambushing the pain from unexpected angles. Be alert for interventions that may seem too simple or unexpected to work.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Your restlessness is building. How much longer will you pretend you don’t sense the pull of bright temptations and appealing sanctuaries? At what moment will you finally stop resisting your urge to slip past the usual boundaries and roam? The astrological omens hint that this pivot is close at hand. In the borderlands of your imagination, a daring journey is already taking shape. Where might it carry you? Here’s my guess: down into the raw, unfiltered depths of the future you secretly dream about.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In fairy tales, when heroes are rewarded for their help and kindness, their gifts are often tools of protection: a cloak that renders them invisible, a magic club that chases off foes, or enchanted shoes that enable them to outrun any threat. In other stories, the reward is meant to deepen the hero’s delight in living: a genie’s lamp, a cauldron that cooks up exquisite food, or a horn that calls forth marvelous companions from the fairy world. I mention this, Libra, because I believe rewards for your past and recent generosity are on their way. If you have any say in what form they take, I suggest you request something from this second, pleasure-giving category.

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If you would like to support my work, please consider:

buying my Expanded Audio Horoscopes and Daily Horoscopes

and/or

becoming a paid subscriber to my Free Will Astrology Newsletter

and/or

donating at my Paypal site: paypal.com/paypalme/GiftsForRob

(contribute as Friends and Family)

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SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Poet Marie Howe wrote, “I don’t think we can love anything more intensely than we love a secret.” Many Scorpios feel this way. You understand that mystery is often a joy to be savored. Some truths reveal themselves only to those who summon the patient intelligence to be at peace amidst the confounding riddles. Non-Scorpios may be desperate to leave nothing hidden, but you like to learn from the teasing prickles. You know that some transformations need darkness to carry on their work. Your next assignment: Decide what truth needs more time in the deep before it’s ready to surface.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Diamond is the hardest natural substance, while graphite is soft and slippery. Yet they’re both made of pure carbon. The difference is in their structure. Let’s extrapolate from this fact as we ruminate on your life, Sagittarius. I’m 97-percent certain that you already have everything you need. Maybe you imagine you lack key resources and powers, but from what I can tell, you are well set-up. So I propose that you simply reorganize what’s available to you now. Take the “carbon” of your life and arrange it in new patterns. Your task isn’t further accumulation but reconfiguration.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): My Capricorn grandfather was a master artisan. He told me that the best furniture is built twice: first in the imagination, then with wood. Let’s apply that theme to you. I believe you have mostly finished the first step of visualizing what you want. Now you’re almost ready to launch the actual work. I’m eager to see the practical effects that will bloom from your detailed fantasies. The rest of the world is excited, too. These days, we all especially need your talent for turning beautiful dreams into vivid realities. You have extra power to inspire us to convert our idealistic notions into dynamic actions.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I invite you to imagine a time in the past when you were almost perfectly content. Visualize that magical confluence of satisfying feelings. Where were you? Who was or wasn’t there? What could you see, hear, smell, and feel in your body? What made that moment so right? Next step: Make a vow to rebuild as many of those conditions as you realistically can over the next three weeks. Maybe you can’t recreate the exact scene, but you can approximate its essence.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): The astrological factors now in effect are tending to generate useful and valuable cosmic jokes. I believe they may be disruptive and catalytic in helpful ways. In this spirit, I offer you the following affirmations, borrowed from internet memes: 1. “You may call me ‘melodramatic.’ I describe myself as a ‘creative problem-solver with flair and panache.’” 2. “I’m not overthinking; I’m overriding simplistic answers that hide the real truths.” 3. “You shouldn’t think of me as chaotic; the fact is that I’m generously non-linear.” 4. “I have a solid plan, but it’s always evolving to keep up with reality’s crazy insistence on ceaseless change.” 5. “Please dismantle your low expectations; I need ample room to exceed them.” 6. “I trust my instincts; they have often been wrong in interesting ways.”

ARIES (March 21-April 19): In the 19^th century, Aries photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904) resolved to settle a debate about whether galloping horses ever have all four hooves off the ground. He developed a system to capture rapid sequential images, which ultimately helped lead to the invention of motion pictures. His answer to a narrow technical question opened up an entirely new art form. Moral of the story: Solving a specific problem may create unforeseen revolutions. In the coming weeks, Aries, I invite you to stay alert for how your focused efforts to address one challenge might birth even more significant breakthroughs. Don’t get so fixated on your immediate goal that you miss larger innovations emerging from your work.

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Dear Readers,

I usually send you one newsletter per week every Tuesday. Today I’m sending an extra one. I wanted to address an issue that came up after the newsletter I sent out last Tuesday

Some readers let me know they were unhappy that I mentioned the books I’ve published. “Too much self-promotion,” they said. That was surprising to me, and I want to address it.

Here’s some context. Week after week, year after year since 1995, I have given away a substantial body of my writing, including horoscopes, essays, meditations, experiments in cagey optimism, and ongoing conversations about how to live a soulful life. All of the music I’ve created is also free online.

Believe it or not, I’ve been sending out a weekly newsletter since the year 2000. Only in recent years, thanks to the Substack subscription plan, has it become possible for me to earn money from it. I’m very grateful! The pandemic a few years back caused the demise of 15 newspapers where I had syndicated my astrology column for years. It was great to regain some of my lost income.

All of these online labors of love comprise a part of my offerings. And my books are another way I express myself. From time to time, I mention them here in the newsletter and on social media. These aren’t aggressive sales pitches, but simply a natural extension of the work many of you seek from me in the first place.

Writing books is part of how I make my living. It’s also how I deepen and expand the ideas I sketch in shorter forms.

In the case of the recent mention of my books in this newsletter, I wasn’t even asking anyone to buy them. I was offering substantial free excerpts so readers could explore the texts without spending a penny.

If even that feels too commercial for some, I understand. Everyone has different thresholds for what feels welcome in their inbox.

But I also believe it’s healthy and fair for artists, writers, and creators to let people know about the fuller body of their work—especially when so much of what they already give is freely shared.

In the future, I will continue to offer a massive amount of stuff for free. And yes, now and then, I will also let you know about the books, music, expanded audio horoscopes, daily text message horoscopes, and other plurk (playful work) I create, some of which is for sale.

Thank you to everyone who reads, reflects, questions, disagrees, and keeps the conversation alive. I’m grateful for your presence.

Wishing you rowdy bliss,

Rob

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If you’re one of those readers who is allergic to me mentioning the books and music I’ve created, you should stop reading now. I certainly won’t hold it against you, and, as always, I am grateful that you’re interested in my work at all!

Below this note, for anyone who isn’t offended by my scandalous act of mentioning my books, I’m offering more than 50 free things: music, book excerpts, interviews, essays, and other oddments from my ever-expanding laboratory of plurk. I recognize this may constitute an excessive outbreak of generosity or a suspicious surplus of creative output. For that, I can only offer my mock-apology: Sorry for being so prolific. Sorry for making so much stuff and giving so much of it away. I’ll try to be less absurdly productive in my next incarnation.

My Books:

Want to read free excerpts from my books? The links are below:

Free excerpts from Astrology Is Real: tinyurl.com/BraveBliss

Free excerpts from Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: tinyurl.com/FreePronoia

More free excerpts from Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: https://is.gd/Sny4dO

My entire book for free: The Televisionary Oracle: freewillastrology.com/books/oracle

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And/or buy the books here:

Astrology Is Real: https://tinyurl.com/BookshopAstrologyIsReal

Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: https://tinyurl.com/PronoiaBookshop or the ebook here: tinyurl.com/PronoiaEbook

The Televisionary Oracle: https://tinyurl.com/BookshopTelevisionaryOracle

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For brief descriptions of the books, go here: https://is.gd/MGvyJP

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My Music and Spoken Word:

All my music is free here: https://soundcloud.com/sacreduproar

You can also listen to and buy my music here on Bandcamp: https://televisionary.bandcamp.com/

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Hear my album Beauty & Truth Lab here:

Bandcamp: https://tinyurl.com/BandCampBeautyTruth

Apple Music: https://tinyurl.com/AppleBeautyTruth

iTunes: https://tinyurl.com/itunesBeautyTruth

Pandora: https://tinyurl.com/PandoraBeautyTruth

Qobuz: https://tinyurl.com/QobuzBeautyTruth

YouTubeMusic: https://tinyurl.com/YouTubeBeautyTruth

Here’s a whole lot of other free stuff I offer:

This newsletter!

My website: https://FreeWillAstrology.com

My three Facebook pages: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100044285086948 and https://www.facebook.com/rob.brezsny and https://www.facebook.com/oroscopobrezsny

My Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/robbrezsny/

My YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@BeautyAndTruthLab

My Threads page: https://www.threads.net/@robbrezsny

Audio and Video Interviews: https://tinyurl.com/InterviewRob

My Tumblr page: https://freewillastrology.tumblr.com/archive

Wikipedia page about my band: https://tinyurl.com/WEWwiki

The homepage for my band: https://freewillastrology.com/music

Want some inspiration as you compose your romantic invitations? Go here: https://freewillastrology.com/beauty/archives/14/elationship-love-spells-for-beauty-truth-lab-researchers

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Below is a partial list of my free audio offerings, including music and spoken word:

The blasphemously reverent “Prayer for Us” is here: https://tinyurl.com/PrayerToUs

Do you dare gaze into the abyss of happiness? https://tinyurl.com/GazeIntoAbyss

Maybe it’s a good time to think about Shadow Blessings: https://tinyurl.com/ShadowBlessings

All of us are born geniuses, but most of us have been de-geniused by the grind. Want to re-genius yourself? Guidance: https://tinyurl.com/ReGeniusYourself

Thousands of things go right for you every single day. Listen: https://tinyurl.com/GloryInTheHighest

Welcome to the Beauty and Truth Lab: https://tinyurl.com/BeautyTruthLab

You’re invited to celebrate Unhappy Hour, a ritual that gives you a license to whine and howl. Go here: https://tinyurl.com/HealingSadness

How much of the world can you love: https://tinyurl.com/WorldKiss

Want to get married to yourself? The ritual’s here: https://tinyurl.com/YouCanMarryYourself

Meditate on why this is a perfect moment: https://tinyurl.com/PerfectTrueMoment

Whenever we say “you asshole” in the future, what we will really mean is “my beautiful friend”: https://tinyurl.com/BlessedWithBliss

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Check out my LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/robbrezsny

Does life always give us the teaching we need?

The renowned American Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck wrote the following:

“Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath. Every moment is the guru.”

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Beck’s words, which I posted a while back on social media, disturbed some people. One commenter named Rachel said this:

“I hate the idea that ‘life gives you the teacher you need at every moment.’ That’s not true of the Iranian girls’ school being bombed, the people dying of starvation because USAID was destroyed, the kids in ICE gulags, and the Epstein survivors. There’s a big category of experiences that are just destructive.

“Maybe, like Victor Frankl in Auschwitz, people can make something of these disasters, but that’s not the cruelty teaching them, that’s learning from their own capacities. The list here seems to speak to comfortable lives whose worst things are traffic jams and maybe personal troubles.”

Here’s my response to Rachel’s comments:

I think her point raises a valid concern. Statements like Charlotte Joko Beck’s can sound tone-deaf if they’re applied simplistically to situations of extreme suffering—war, starvation, imprisonment, and abuse. Those horrors aren’t “teachers” in any benevolent sense, and it would be cruel to imply that they are somehow justified because they might produce wisdom.

At the same time, I don’t think Beck’s remark was meant as a universal explanation for all suffering everywhere. Zen teachers are often speaking to students about the ordinary frustrations and resistances of daily life, like traffic jams, difficult coworkers, mosquitoes, boredom, disappointment, and irritation.

In that context, the teaching is a practical psychological tool: Instead of fighting every inconvenience, we can treat it as material for awareness and growth.

You might say it’s a training exercise for consciousness, not a metaphysical claim that every catastrophe in the world is divinely arranged for our benefit.

I also think it’s possible to hold two truths at once. One truth is that some events are genuinely unjust and destructive. Another truth is that human beings sometimes discover unexpected strength, compassion, or clarity in the midst of hardship. Viktor Frankl wrote powerfully about that capacity. But the dignity lies in the human response, not in glorifying the suffering itself.

So for me, Beck’s statement is best read as guidance for how to work with the small and medium difficulties of life, not as a philosophical verdict on genocide, famine, or political cruelty.

And I also think it’s okay for spiritual teachings to address people living relatively ordinary lives. Not every piece of counsel has to solve the entire moral tragedy of the world in order to be useful within its intended scope.

In short: The teaching becomes harmful if we weaponize it against victims. But within its proper context, it may be a helpful reminder that even the minor irritations of daily life can be occasions for awareness rather than resentment.

What about teachings that come from generosity, pleasure, and breakthroughs?

Here’s an additional response to Charlotte Joko Beck’s thoughts:

While I appreciate the Zen teacher’s advice, I’m puzzled by how heavily it emphasizes lessons that arise from difficulty. Mosquitoes, traffic jams, illnesses, losses, and obnoxious coworkers: The curriculum she describes seems dominated by adversity.

But that’s only half the syllabus of being alive. You, dear readers, can serve as evidence of this. What if our teachers are just as likely to arrive bearing gifts as carrying irritations? What if the mentors that life sends us are sometimes expansive, benevolent, and generous?

A sudden moment of beauty can educate us as deeply as a setback. All of the following are potentially teachers, too: the smell of rain after a long drought, a piece of music that rearranges our inner weather, an unexpected kindness from a stranger, the loyalty of a friend, the wild intelligence of a forest, and the healing touch of a lover.

Sometimes these blissful lessons are even more radical than hardship’s. Difficulty may teach endurance, but joy can teach trust. Obstacles may strengthen our will, but blessings enlarge our imagination about what’s possible.

If every moment is a guru, as Beck suggests, then surely the curriculum includes grace as well as grit. Generosity is as valuable as challenge. Astonishment might educate us as well as irritation.

Maybe life isn’t only the strict Zen master rapping our knuckles when we drift off into complacency.

Maybe it’s also the lavish host who keeps pressing unexpected gifts into our hands.

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Books I’ve published

Want to read free excerpts from my books? The links are below:

Free excerpts from Astrology Is Real: tinyurl.com/BraveBliss

Free excerpts from Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: tinyurl.com/FreePronoia

More free excerpts from Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: https://is.gd/Sny4dO

My entire book for free: The Televisionary Oracle: freewillastrology.com/books/oracle

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And/or buy the books here:

Astrology Is Real: https://tinyurl.com/BookshopAstrologyIsReal

Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: https://tinyurl.com/PronoiaBookshop or the ebook here: tinyurl.com/PronoiaEbook

The Televisionary Oracle: https://tinyurl.com/BookshopTelevisionaryOracle

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Descriptions of my books:

1. Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia

This is my cult classic and manifesto of “cagey optimism.” I propose that the universe is conspiring in our favor rather than against us. It’s equal parts spiritual handbook, storytelling, and philosophical jailbreak. I invite readers to become suspicious of despair and flirt with outrageous gratitude.

2. Astrology Is Real

Here I cast a corrective spell on both skeptics and lazy believers. I articulate my long-evolved approach to astrology as a poetic, psychological, and soulful language—not a fortune-telling gimmick but a tool for awakening your agency. I’m less interested in “the planets control you” and more in “the planets collaborate with your imagination if you use it as a liberating force.”

Read reviews of the book here: tinyurl.com/AstrologyIsReal

3. The Televisionary Oracle

This is my full-on novel: a surreal, shape-shifting narrative that splices feminist storytelling, mystical shadow-work, and benevolent sorcery into a prophetic fever dream. Novelist Tom Robbins read it and said, “I’ve seen the future of American literature, and its name is Rob Brezsny.”

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Check out my LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/robbrezsny

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of April 23

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): You’re finished with energy-draining indulgences. No more seductive perils or cute ailments, either. Once you wriggle free from the tangles that have been hobbling your style, I suspect you will also renounce anything that resembles joyless restraint, naive certainties, pointless cravings, numbing comforts, or misplaced bravery. May it be so! Abracadabra! The emancipations that materialize after these escapes will likely stoke your holy appetite to shine more fiercely than it has in ages.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In music theory, the tritone is an interval exactly halfway between octaves. In old church music, it was considered diabolical because of its unstable, unresolved quality. But this “devil interval” is now essential to blues, jazz, and rock. The precariousness that once made it seem outrageous became the source of its potency. What was taboo became foundational. I believe you’re entering into a metaphorical tritone phase, Gemini. Lots of interesting and valuable stuff may be a bit wobbly, irregular, hectic, or ruffled.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): A treasure you have long yearned for has morphed since the day you first set out to claim it. Either it has genuinely altered its shape and flavor, or it has remained exactly what it always was while you have changed. In either case, the relationship between you and this prize is no longer the same. Its meaning and value have shifted. The strategies you’ve been using to pursue it aren’t entirely relevant. So I suggest you pause and reconsider. Decide whether you need to formulate a revised approach or identify a different version of the treasure altogether.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): My radical predictions: You will soon discern truths that have been hidden and unravel mysteries that have resisted your understanding. A limiting belief that has dulled your mind will fade away, and a so-called ally who has confused your sense of self will drift out of your orbit. And that’s just part of the renewal ahead. I foresee that you will emerge from a weird emotional haze, regaining access to feelings you’ve needed to highlight. And with that awakening, you will be blessed with beautiful realizations that until now have lingered just beyond definition.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In theater, “blocking” refers to the carefully choreographed movement of actors on stage. Every step is intentional, designed to create meaning and flow. But if an actor forgets the blocking and moves spontaneously in response to what’s happening, sometimes the scene becomes more alive. Let’s apply this idea to your life, Virgo. It may be that you have been following the blocking carefully. You know your role well. But now you’ve been authorized to forget the blocking. You can respond to what’s really happening instead of what’s scripted. I invite you to speak from your heart rather than parroting what’s expected of you. Yes, you might mess up the scene. But on the other hand, you might make it extra real and vibrant.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In the future I envision for us all, the prizes that truly matter won’t be the wealth we’ve gathered or the impressive names on our contact list. They won’t be the clever deals we’ve made or the attractiveness of those who walk beside us. What will count most is our ability to transform the messy, selfish, frightened parts of ourselves into strengths. That’s hard to do! Each of us carries a share of that leaden dross, of course, but some of us are more tirelessly ingenious in our efforts to transmute it into gold. And the coming weeks will be prime time for you, Libra, to make dynamic progress in harnessing this magic.

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If you would like to support my work, please consider:

buying my Expanded Audio Horoscopes and Daily Horoscopes

and/or

becoming a paid subscriber to my Free Will Astrology Newsletter

and/or

donating at my Paypal site: paypal.com/paypalme/GiftsForRob

(contribute as Friends and Family)

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SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Is it possible there’s something you really need but you don’t know what it is? Sometimes the soul sends up subtle hints long before it sends clear demands: a vague restlessness, a mysterious sadness, or a boredom that doesn’t match your circumstances. These are often clues that an unnamed or unacknowledged need is summoning your attention. My advice to you: PAY ATTENTION! Ask your deep, sweet, sensitive self to provide unambiguous clues. To expedite the process, say the following sentence out loud, filling in the blank at the end: “I suspect I might be starving for ________.”

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): You have arrived at the Glorious Grunting Season, my dear Sagittarius. I hope you’re poised to sweat freely and trust the intelligence of strenuous physical effort. Your wise body, more than your fine mind, can best align you with cosmic rhythms. Whenever you throw yourself into work or play that makes you grunt—hauling, scrubbing, digging, lifting, dancing, running, making love—you will harmonize with the deeper pulse of life. I predict that you will invigorate your instinctual vitality as you clear emotional sediment and ground your energy in the earth’s rich rhythms. You will metabolize frustration into focus, inertia into momentum, and abstraction into embodiment.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): What might motivate you to become an extraordinary lover? I’m not suggesting that your romantic and erotic talents are lacking, only that there is delightful room to grow. And the coming weeks will be prime time for you to have fun with this noble experiment. I suggest you follow the clues that life and intuition will drop in your path. Keep this in mind, too: What makes a person a superb lover has a little to do with sheer technique, but is mostly due to emotional intelligence, imaginative responsiveness, and tender ingenuity.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): This horoscope isn’t composed by me. It’s coming from you. I’m channeling it straight out of your own deep mind. Why now? Because your conscious ego has been so swept up in the constant swirl of tasks and distractions that it has been tuning out crucial communications from your still, small voice. And now that precious Spirit Whisperer has conscripted me as its messenger. Here’s what it wants to say: “Hey you! Remember me? Your inner guide? Also known as your higher self and the voice of your soul? You urgently need to turn your attention back in my direction. I have a backlog of messages for you, starting with how we can and should intensify our devotion to creative self-care.”

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In 1967, Piscean biologist Lynn Margulis proposed a revolutionary idea about life’s evolution: that many of its great leaps occurred through symbiosis. She theorized that distinct organisms have sometimes merged their identities to form entirely new beings. One example is the mitochondrion, the powerhouse within our cells. It began its existence as a free-living bacterium that later entered into partnership with the ancestral cell. Margulis’ formerly controversial idea is now mainstream science. (She was called “science’s unruly earth mother.”) With this as our guide, Pisces, let’s contemplate what separate elements of your life might merge into unprecedented blends. I invite you to consider bold experiments in merging and mixing. Hybrids might be more beautiful and valuable than the sum of their parts.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): The visible lightning bolt we see is actually the return stroke. It’s electricity racing back up from the ground to the cloud after an invisible leader stroke has created a path. So the spectacular display is actually the earth talking back to the sky. I’d love to see you adopt this phenomenon as your power symbol, Aries. In every way you can imagine, be like the earth conversing with the sky. When a hopeful sign crackles overhead, send out a bold message that you’re ready to act on it. If your ideals are vague and wispy, flying high above you, take a brave practical step to anchor them in reality. Proclaim your bright intentions to the clouds and the stars.

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BEAUTIFUL WOMEN HEALERS

Sports Illustrated magazine’s yearly Swimsuit Issue has long specialized in 20‑something women in skimpy bikinis, though it has recently begun to include a few older and plus‑size models. Esquire’s “Women We Love” feature mostly showcases thin, conventionally attractive actresses and models in their 20s and 30s.

These publications and others share a common theology: that female beauty worthy of fame and adulation is primarily a property of youth—ideally smooth, taut, and untroubled. It’s maintained in a state of pristine and decorative availability. Beauty, in this doctrine, must be preserved from time, labor, and the visible consequences of living deeply.

I honor and cherish female beauty of a different kind: mature, wise, weird soulfulness that is often embodied in women who have practiced a particular psychospiritual practice and have developed healing skills. Or they have spent years in service to caring for younger generations. Or they have worked as passionate activists to create a more just society. Or they have simply worked hard at becoming their full, authentic selves.

In the work of photographer Katarzyna Majak, we encounter this other beauty with exuberant clarity. Her portraits of witches, healers, and spiritual practitioners in Poland don’t conform to the dominant aesthetic script. The women aren’t posed as objects of consumption. They don’t seem interested in seducing the viewer.

The three photos above are Majak’s. See more here:

tinyurl.com/EnchantingPolishWitches

or tinyurl.com/BeautifulPolishWitches

The Polish women appear as people who have ongoing relationships with forces larger than themselves. Their faces and bodies show evidence that they’ve been in the service of healing, ceremony, and sustained interplay with the numinous. There’s an inwardness that paradoxically radiates outward.

Sports Illustrated presents bodies carefully preserved from gravity and the marks that commitment leaves. But the Polish women have been shaped by long intimacy with intriguing complications and enriching challenges. Their emotionally intelligent charisma is informed by a willingness to be changed by what they’ve encountered. They’ve wrestled with suffering without collapsing into it.

Naturally, this beauty includes elements of weirdness. Not the curated quirk of branding, but the organic strangeness that arises when a person chooses inner authority over social conformity. These women may dress, move, and gaze in ways that resist easy translation. Their lives haven’t been optimized for legibility, so they carry an aura of mystery that can’t be reduced to mere style.

Mainstream culture tends to penalize this kind of weirdness because it resists commodification. It can’t be easily packaged and doesn’t lend itself to mass aspiration.

But in another frame, weirdness testifies to a life lived in allegiance to values deeper than capitalism’s glamour. It signals a sustained dialogue with the unconscious, the imaginal, and the more-than-human world. It’s a credential.

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The photograher Katarzyna Majak says: “I talk about the witch archetype present in all women, if only they open up to it. The witch is a woman who knows, trusts her intuition, is connected to the birth-death-rebirth nature, and cherishes her strength. I hope to help women reconnect with their female lines, other women, to be daring. To grow.”

In the Women of Power book, Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk writes, “The women speak of their efforts to take back that which they have lost: the power of matriarchal cults, access to the sources of power, their sexuality, and also their right to natural birth, dignity, strength, female art, contact with nature and finally many female traditions that were mostly forgotten and suppressed.”

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To recognize this kind of beauty requires a shift in perception. It asks us to move from a gaze of consumption to a stance of reverence.

Instead of saying, “She’s not as pretty and sexy as a Sports illustrated Swimsuit Model,” we might ask, “What mysteries has she devoted herself to? What uncanny inner powers has she learned to nourish? How does her soulful genius inspire and heal others?”

Here’s a subversive possibility: Maybe the most compelling beauty doesn’t shout for attention or strain to sell us its desirability.

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More stories and photos of dazzling women healers: tinyurl.com/GorgeousWomenHealers

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PORTRAITS OF INDIGENOUS MATRIARCHS IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

Roxann Murray writes about and photographs “Portraits of Indigenous Matriarchs in the Pacific Northwest”: tinyurl.com/HealingMatriarchs

Murray spent years fighting proposed industrial facilities in Tacoma, meeting strong Indigenous matriarchs who inspired her to protect the land and water. These encounters turned into lasting friendships and ultimately a photography project exploring Indigenous women fighting for their collective future.

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Sangoma: Photos of Traditional Healers in South Africa

Traditional Sangoma healers are highly respected and frequently consulted members of South African communities. They practice traditional African medicine. tinyurl.com/SangomaHealers

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A great book: Grandmothers’ Wisdom : Living Portrayals from the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers: tinyurl.com/GrandmotherBeauty

These 13 women are keepers of traditional medicine and Indigenous spirituality, preserving ancient wisdom traditions and traditional ecological knowledge that have served the planet for millennia. Their stories come from the Amazon rainforest, the Central American highlands, the Sierra Madre of Oaxaca, the plains, deserts and canyons of North America, the Himalayan mountains of Tibet and Nepal, and the forests of Central Africa.

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Extraordinary Women Shaping the Transmission of Buddhism in the West: dakinipower.com/the-book

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Read my essay on “The Spiritual Boys’ Club”: tinyurl.com/BeTrueToYourWildness

See a list of WOMEN and NONBINARY SPIRITUAL LEADERS: tinyurl.com/WomenSpiritualLeaders

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Go to my LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/robbrezsny

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

Week of April 16

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Anthropologist and author Clifford Geertz loved to use “thick description.” He wrote detailed reports that captured not just the surface level of what happened but the deeper levels of meaning. Here’s an example of thin description: “He winked.” Thick description: “He quickly closed and opened his right eyelid in a culturally specific gesture of playfully conspiratorial communication.” In the coming weeks, Aries, I invite you to enjoy the sumptuous pleasures of thick description. Unleash your wild curiosity as you dig down into the rich, complex truths about everything. Gleefully explore how the cultural, personal, and historical contexts give each moment its specific, nuanced significance. (PS: This approach will enhance your options for responding.)

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): New beginnings and final chapters will be overlapping in the coming weeks, and they’ll push you in the direction of robust growth. It won’t always be obvious which is which, though, so you’ll need to sharpen your discernment to read the signs. Here are two contemplations to steer you: 1. Which long-running sagas in your life have finally played themselves out? 2. Which struggling, half-forgotten dreams are yearning to rise again and blossom as if they were brand new? Once you’ve listened deeply enough to answer those questions, move boldly: Feed and protect whatever is being born, and actively assist in the graceful dismantling of whatever is ready to end.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): One of your go-to tools or assets is still functioning, but now is exactly the time to repair or refurbish it—before it breaks. Furthermore: A power outage of sorts may be looming unless you move to head off an impending overload. Wait, there’s even more! The monster in your closet is still deeply asleep, which is why now is the perfect moment to summon an exorcist or exterminator, before it stirs. Are you getting the picture, Gemini? The very fact that you’re reading this horoscope gives you all the advance warning you need to sidestep potential glitches and diversions.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): According to my reading of the astrological omens, asking the BIG questions is highly advisable right now. Why? Because you are unusually likely to get really good answers to those BIG questions. Want a nudge to get started in this noble enterprise? Here are three recommended queries: 1. “What is the wild meaning of my precious life?” 2. “Who the #@$%&!* am I, anyway?” 3. “Where is this so-called ‘God’ I hear so much about?” Dear Cancerian, I will also urge you to formulate humorous, satirical BIG questions that inspire life to be playfully revelatory with you. Here are three: 1. “How can I fine-tune my friends and loved ones to perfection?” 2. “Are there shortcuts to getting absolutely everything I want?” 3. “How do I sign up for a life of nonstop pleasure, free from all discomfort?”

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): When people finally grasped just how radical Einstein’s theory of relativity was, a journalist asked him how he had arrived at such a breakthrough. Einstein said it was simple: He had utterly ignored supposedly fundamental truths. Dear Leo, please notice what that might imply for you in the coming weeks. Einstein didn’t dismiss a mere opinion or fashionable theory; he set aside theories so deeply accepted that everyone treated them as obviously factual. He didn’t waste energy fighting them, but simply proceeded as if they didn’t exist. Consider doing the same: Set aside at least one seemingly incontestable assumption and be alert for the new realities that then become possible.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): The International Space Station orbits Earth every 90 minutes, so astronauts see 16 sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours. It’s a challenge to maintain their circadian rhythms. They must be disciplined as they stick to a sleep cycle that human bodies are accustomed to. But there’s a wonderful trade-off: the rare privilege of witnessing the rapid cycling of total darkness and brilliant light, which provides a visceral sense of life’s deep cadences at work. Your routine may seem similarly unsettled these days, Virgo. Transitions are coming faster than feels natural. But I suspect this disruptive blessing is giving you access to patterns that aren’t intelligible when you’re moving more slowly. You’re beholding the way things change as well as the changes themselves. This is a valuable gift. The insights will be worth the disorientation.

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If you would like to support my work, please consider:

buying my Expanded Audio Horoscopes and Daily Horoscopes

and/or

becoming a paid subscriber to my Free Will Astrology Newsletter

and/or

donating at my Paypal site: paypal.com/paypalme/GiftsForRob

(contribute as Friends and Family)

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LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): You Libras sometimes get accused of indecision, as if your careful weighing of possibilities were a weakness. But I see a different truth: You aspire to be fair-minded as you honor all the legitimate claims on your attention. So the problem isn’t your capacity for considering multiple sides of each story. Rather, I find fault with the culture you live in, which is obsessed with one-dimensional certainty. If I were your coach or therapist, I would give you permission to take your time and resist the rush to resolution. The most honest thing you can say may be, “I’m still deciding,” or “Both of these feel true.”

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): You’re not a flaming expert at turning tension into treasure, but you have modest skills at that art. And now I’m predicting you will grow these skills. Before you jump to conclusions, though, please know that I’m not implying you will be immersed in stressful melodrama. I’m suggesting you will handle differences of perspective with increasing aplomb and curiosity. Instead of treating conflict as a debilitating hassle, you’ll try to find value in it. Some debates may even feel stimulating and fun rather than tiring. To take maximum advantage, enjoy the controversies as exploratory missions rather than as showdowns you must win at all costs.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): I hope and predict that you will be wildly resourceful as you wisely experiment with love in the coming weeks. I hope and predict that you will research the art of tender, inspiring intimacy in new frontiers. Reinvent passion, you subtle intensity freak! Be a bold explorer who breaks the boring old rules! Dare to break open new varieties of sweetness and companionship that require you to innovate and improvise!

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): If you were on a walk and spied a dime on the ground, would you bend down to grab it? Probably not. Would you feel differently about a quarter? Maybe you have decided that nothing under a dollar is worth your effort. But in the coming weeks, you will be wise to break such rules. Symbolically speaking, the act of stooping down to pick up a dime will set off a chain reaction that ends with you acquiring a hundred-dollar bill. By saying yes to small, unexpected blessings, you’ll position yourself to receive larger ones down the line.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The coming weeks will be an excellent time to begin a building project on the scale of Egypt’s Great Pyramid or India’s Taj Mahal. You should at least initiate work toward some magnificent masterpiece or creation, Aquarius. According to my analysis, there’s a chance you could coax an armada of helpers to work on your behalf. And as you set out to accomplish your labor of love, I bless your quest.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Artists who specialize in origami can create structures far stronger than the flat paper they’re folded from. The weakness of being made from thin, fragile material is overcome through strategic creasing. Engineers now use origami principles to design everything from solar panels to artificial blood vessels. Let’s extrapolate these facts into a lesson for you in the coming weeks, Pisces. We’ll assume that your flexibility is a strength, not a liability. You will wield your pliability to produce a high degree of structural integrity.

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Dear Allies and Co-Conspirators—

My heart has been working overtime lately. I’ve been asking it to metabolize a steady influx of dissonance, absurdity, cruelty, and grief. I’m sure you know the feeling. The Trumpocalypse is relentless.

The grotesque and the ridiculous often arrive braided together. The horrors are real; the satire is sharp; our nervous systems are prodded to laugh and mourn in the same five-minute span. It’s no wonder our hearts overheat and come very close to breaking again and again.

But our hearts can’t remain perpetually inflamed without consequence. So how do we remain exquisitely open without becoming exquisitely exhausted?

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Practice Rhythmic Devotion, Not Constant Immersion

Staying informed isn’t the same as staying inundated and overwhelmed. We’re not required to marinate indefinitely in the spectacle of dysfunction in order to be a responsible citizen or a compassionate human. Overexposure dulls our responsiveness and degrades our discernment.

Instead, let’s engage in intentional intervals. Enter the fray, witness clearly, feel honestly, and then exit on purpose: skillful participation, not avoidance.

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Complete the Emotional Circuit

After we take in difficult news, especially when it arrives sugar-coated in humor, we do something that allows the feeling to move.

We step outside. Touch a living thing. Listen to music that reminds us why beauty is worth defending. Gather together with each other. Let our body register that the world isn’t only what we witness on a screen.

Otherwise, the feeling lingers as unprocessed residue—what we might call psychic plaque.

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Refuse the False Nobility of Burnout

There’s a cultural lie that implies: “If you’re not exhausted by caring, you’re not caring enough.”

Nope. Burnout doesn’t make us more ethical. It makes us less effective, less perceptive, and more likely to collapse into cynicism or despair. Sustainable compassion is a strategy of long-term devotion.

Our Hearts Can Be Translators, Not Storage Units

Our job isn’t to hoard outrage, sorrow, and alarm inside our chests like a crowded archive of horrors. It’s wiser to transform what we take in.

So we write, speak, sing, and make mischief. We tell the truth in ways that wake people up without crushing their will to live.

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Remember What We Love—Daily, Deliberately, Devotionally

If we only track what’s broken, our perception becomes skewed toward collapse. So we try balancing our awareness by actively noticing: small kindnesses; living beauty; improbable resilience; the ongoing miracle of consciousness itself.

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Honor the Paradox

You and I have been assigned:

to grieve what’s being damaged

and

celebrate what remains luminous.

to name what’s wrong

and

amplify what’s possible.

To refuse both denial and despair.

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Our hearts aren’t too sensitive for the Trumpocalypse. But they require our skillful, compassionate maintenance.

Let’s not harden ourselves into numb efficiency. Let’s become durably tender, capable of feeling deeply without losing our capacity to act, create, and love.

The two pieces of art here are by Shelby McQuilkin: blog.shelbymcquilkin.com/

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A further refinement about our breaking hearts:

Many of us have already learned how to love people whose views we find troubling or even abhorrent. We have stretched our compassion across chasms of disagreement and refused the easy seductions of contempt. That’s a huge achievement.

But let’s imagine there is a next step.

It’s possible, especially for those of us with strong empathic reflexes, to over-carry the emotional weight of what we witness. To feel not only our rightful sorrow and outrage, but also to absorb an ambient burden that doesn’t actually belong to us. We become, without intending it, emotional pack animals for the collective storm.

I don’t think that’s healthy. So I propose a subtler invitation: to love accurately. How can we feel deeply without assuming responsibility for what’s not ours to fix or hold? Is it possible for us to remain open-hearted without becoming overextended?

We may feel grief for a life we’re witnessing from the outside without needing to carry that life inside our chest.

A well-tuned heart isn’t a sponge that absorbs everything indiscriminately. It’s an instrument that receives, resonates, and then releases, transforming experience into insight and precise compassion.

So as we continue your brave work of loving in difficult times, I offer you this permission: You don’t have to carry it all. Feel it, honor it, and respond where you can. And then let the rest pass through you like weather through the vast sky.

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There’s an interview with me in THE BELIEVER magazine.

Read it here: https://www.thebeliever.net/an-interview-with-rob-brezsny/

or here: https://archive.ph/vCQpA

Below are excerpts—my responses to the excellent questions asked of me by Ginger Green, managing editor of THE BELIEVER.

Excerpt: To be a human being is a great privilege and an honor, and not a thing to be escaped, not a thing to be denigrated, but a treasure to be cherished and used to the hilt.

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Excerpt: My first rule is to begin any particular writing session with the stated intention that I want this information to be in the interests of the people who read it. I want it to advance their highest good, and if that means I have to change my ideas about a particular sign or my approach to life, that’s fine. My goal is to be of service. So that’s how I start, and I have for as long as I can remember.

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Excerpt: My understanding of astrology is different from a lot of more traditional astrologers’, and I have always believed that the kind of astrology I wanted to practice would liberate people’s imaginations and free them from their own conditioning, and certainly disabuse them of the notion that our fate is set in stone and that we have no power over the way fate manipulates us.

So I’m a big believer in enhancing people’s ability to think they can create their own reality as they go, within the constraints of their own karma and, of course, of the somewhat dire cultural conditions we’re in right now.

I think, ultimately, we’ve got a lot more free will than we imagine. And many astrologers don’t emphasize that, but I choose to.

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Excerpt: I’ve seen 13 psychotherapists over the course of my life, and that is a great antidote to any potential for developing hubris or overweening pride. It’s always an excellent cure for getting full of myself: to see my own ridiculousness or lack of understanding, ignorance, and really treasuring that.

To me, it’s a constant meditative practice to tune in to what I need work on to become more of my true self, my authentic self. And so I think the first rule is what the famous physicist Richard Feynman said: “The first rule is—you must not submit to being fooled, and the person most likely to fool you is you.”

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Excerpt: The value of astrology is that it speaks to our soul rather than to our ego when it’s done best. It liberates our imagination from the fundamental materialism that dominates our culture, and allows us to imagine there are mysteries beyond our conscious awareness that are worth contemplating—because we are a creation of the entire interconnected web of life, and astrology helps us read that interconnected web of life.

It shows us the picture of our own individual soul’s code and the soul’s code of our nation and our world. And so it inflames us, inspires us to move beyond our day-to-day thinking and imagine the bigger context of what we’re living amid.

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Excerpt: What problems do my readers most often write to me about with? Well, a lot tell me stories of fortune tellers and astrologers that have filled them with fear, and I feel like I’m the antidote to that.

There’s no such thing as an inherently bad astrological omen. Every astrological omen provides us with some information about how to liberate ourselves from suffering and get out of the challenges that we’re amid.

Every single astrological configuration gives us some potentially liberating information. And so I think that’s one of my main purposes for people who have sought astrological counseling and information elsewhere: to heal that wound in people’s understanding of how astrology and fortune-telling work.

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Go to my LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/robbrezsny

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of April 9

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Unexpected deliverance? Lucky rides? Beginner’s grace? Dreamy, gleaming replacements? To the untrained eye, it may look like you are bending cosmic law in your favor. In truth, you’re simply redeeming the backlog of blessings you earned in the past—acts of quiet generosity and unselfish hardship that never got their proper reward. Serendipitous leaps? Divine detours? Shortcuts to victory? Welcome the uncanny gifts, Aries, even if they’re not what you expected.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The current phase of your destiny could disturb you if you’re not super patient. Life seems to be teasing you with promises that then go into hiding. You’ve been having to master the art of living on the edge between the BIG RED YES and the GREY MURKY NO. My advice: Imagine your predicament as an intriguing riddle, not a frustrating ambiguity. See if you can figure out how to grow wiser and stronger in response to the evasive mysteriousness. My prediction: You will grow wiser and stronger.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Why it’s always triple-great to be a Gemini, drawing on an abundance of mercurial wisdom: 1. You excel at the art of translation and are skilled at finding common ground between different realms. You can oscillate and flow between the lyrical and the pragmatic, the insightful and the comic, the detailed focus and the big picture. 2. You know that consistency is overrated. Your capacity to harbor multiple perspectives is a superpower. 3. You get to be both the question and the answer, proving that wholeness includes all the fragments. All the aptitudes I just named should be your featured approaches in the coming weeks.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): The saga of Troy is one of the most renowned tales from ancient Greece. Yet the fabled setting of Homer’s epic tale, the *Iliad*, was a settlement of just seven acres. Let that detail resound for you in the coming weeks. It’s an apt metaphor for what’s taking shape in your life. A seemingly modest situation could become the stage for a mythic turning point. An experience that starts small may grow into a story of immense and lasting significance.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Many people have a favorite number they regard as lucky. Some choose it because it showed up at a major turning point in their life. Others derive it from their birthday or from the numerology of their name. Plenty are drawn to “master numbers” like 33, 77, or 99. Personally, I give three numbers my special love: 555, the square root of -2, and 1.61803, also known as the golden ratio in Fibonacci-related patterns. I hope this nudges your imagination, Leo. Your fortunes are shifting now in the direction of an unusual kind of luck, so it’s a potent moment to select a new lucky number. I suggest that you also choose a new guiding animal, a fresh initiation name, and a charged symbol to serve as your personal emblem.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Do you know what ignorance is causing you to suffer? Is there a teacher or teaching that could provide an antidote? I suspect you are very close to attracting or stumbling upon the guidance you need to escape the fog: maybe a therapist who can help you undo a hurtful pattern, a mentor to inspire your quest to do work you long to do, or a spiritual friend who reminds you that you’re not merely your latest drama. Your task in the coming weeks is not to obsess on fixing everything at once, but to seek one or two sources of wisdom that illuminate your blind spots and educate your heart.

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LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I’m an honorary Libra, with three planets and my lunar north node in your sign. So I speak with authority when I declare that fostering harmony, which is a Libran gift, is only superficially about smoothing away friction and asymmetry. More importantly, it’s about rearranging reality so that beauty is a central feature. The goal is to accomplish practical wonders by stimulating grace and fluency. When I’m best expressing my Libra qualities, I don’t ask how I can please everyone, but rather, how I can serve maximum goodness and intelligence. Here’s another tip to being a potent Libra: Know that your enchanting charm is a lubricant for the truth, not mere decoration. Here’s your homework: Beautify one system you use every day so it serves you with less friction and more pleasure.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): You are potentially an expert in creative destruction. You have a knack for eliminating what’s unnecessary and even obstructive. What has outlived its usefulness? You’re prone to home in on energy drains and unleash transformative energy. And yes, this intensity of yours may unnerve people who prefer comfortable numbness—but not me. I love you to exult in your talent for locating beauty and truth that are too complicated for others. I applaud you when you descend into the darkness to retrieve dicey treasures. PS: You’re not shadowy or negative. You’re a specialist in the authentic love that refuses to enable delusion or sanction decay.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): My Sagittarian friend Artemisia bemoans “the scarcity of collective delight.” She wishes there were more public acclaim for stories about breakthrough joys, miraculous marvels, and surprising healings. Why are we so riveted by reports of misery, malaise, and muck, yet so loath to recognize and celebrate everything that’s working really well? She also mourns the odd habit among some educated folks to mistake cynicism for brilliance. If you don’t mind, Sagittarius, I’m assigning you to be an antidote in the coming weeks. Your task is to gather an overflowing harvest of lavish pleasure, fun epiphanies, and richly meaningful plot twists. Don’t hoard any of it. Spread it around to everyone you encounter.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): “Id” is a psychoanalytic term. It’s the part of the psyche where basic instincts, needs, and drives reside. On the one hand, the id supplies a huge charge of psychic energy. On the other hand, it mostly operates outside conscious awareness. Consider the implications: The fierce, pulsing center of your life force is largely hidden from you. Most of the time, that veil is protective. Encountering the id directly can be overwhelming or unsettling. But in the coming weeks, you Capricorns are poised to cultivate a more interesting and righteous relationship with your high‑voltage core. Do you dare? Treat your id as a brilliant but untamed creature. Extend a careful, curious invitation for it to show you more about itself.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): In architecture, a “clerestory” is a high window that brings light into a space without compromising privacy. It illuminates without exposing. I suggest that you find metaphorical equivalents for clerestories, Aquarius. Look for ways to let spaciousness and brightness into your world without disturbing your boundaries. Your assignment is to avoid swinging between total lockdown and overexposure. The best option: strategic vulnerability and selective transparency. Allow people to see selected parts of you without giving them access to everything. Be both open and discriminating.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In 1903, the Wright brothers flew a primitive model of the first airplane. How did they prepare the way for their spectacular milestone? Their workshop was a bicycle shop, not a high-tech, state-of-the-art lab. By building and fixing bikes, they learned key insights about flying machines. The lesson for you, Pisces, is that mastery in one area may be transferable to breakthroughs in another. With this in mind, I invite you to evaluate how your current skills, including those you take for granted, might be repurposed. Methods you developed in one context could solve problems in another. You shouldn’t underestimate the value of what you already know.

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The Sacred Pedagogy of Your Addiction

Your addiction is obstructing you from your destiny, and yet it’s also your ally.

What?! How can both be true?

On the downside, your addiction diverts your energy from a deeper desire that it superficially resembles. For instance, if you’re an alcoholic, your urge to get loaded may be an inferior substitute for and a poor imitation of your buried longing to commune with spirit.

On the upside, your addiction is your ally in this sense: It dares you to get strong and smart enough to wrestle free of its grip; it pushes you to summon the uncanny willpower necessary to defeat the darkness within you that saps your ability to follow the path with heart.

(P.S. Don’t tell me you have no addictions. Each of us is addicted to some sensation, feeling, thought, or action, if not to an actual substance.)

So here’s one possibility: Extol your sublime, painful addiction. Celebrate it to death. Ride it, spank it, kiss it, whip it.

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The Addiction Map: What Are You Really Hungry For?

Every addiction is a treasure map written in the language of counterfeit satisfaction. The X that marks the spot isn’t where you’re digging. It’s in the opposite direction, in the place you’re afraid to look.

Let’s decode some common addictions to reveal the authentic hunger beneath:

If you’re addicted to alcohol or drugs: You’re likely craving unmediated access to the numinous, to states of consciousness that dissolve the prison of consensus materialism. You want gnosis, ecstasy, and communion with what some call the Spirit World, Dreamtime, or Anima Mundi, and what I call The Other Real World.

But instead of developing the disciplined technologies to get there sustainably, you’re using a sledgehammer that works for a few hours and leaves you further from the goal than when you started.

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If you’re addicted to perfectionism: You’re hungering to create something so beautiful, true, and necessary that it justifies your existence. You want to offer a gift so pure that no one can question your right to take up space on this planet.

But perfectionism keeps you from ever finishing and ever risking the vulnerability of being seen. It’s a defense against the revelation you’re seeking.

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If you’re addicted to chaos, drama, or crisis: You’re craving intensity, aliveness, and the feeling of being fully awake and engaged. You want the chronic ecstasy of fervent incarnation.

But instead of finding it through creativity, passion, or purpose, you’re manufacturing emergencies that give you the adrenaline of being alive without the vulnerability of choosing a life you really love..

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If you’re addicted to people-pleasing or approval: You’re longing for the experience of being loved for who you truly are, seen in your full depth and complexity, and celebrated for your authentic self.

But instead of risking that visibility, you’re performing a carefully curated version of yourself and mistaking the applause for love.

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If you’re addicted to busyness or productivity: You’re hungry for significance and proof that you’re worthy.

But instead of asking what truly matters to you, you’re filling up time with motion so you never have to face the terrifying question: “What if I stopped and discovered I haven’t been doing what’s right to fulfill my soul’s code?”

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If you’re addicted to outrage or doomscrolling: You may be craving a sense of being on the right side and participating in an energy larger than yourself. That’s noble! You want to be part of the great work of healing the world.

But instead of doing the difficult local work of transformation, you’re consuming endless content about problems you feel powerless to solve, mistaking awareness for action and anxiety for engagement.

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If you’re addicted to romantic intrigue or sexual conquest: You’re longing for the experience of being utterly transfixed by another human being. It’s not a mediocre yearning: wanting to be lost in the dissolving boundaries of erotic communion and experiencing yourself as desirable.

But instead of cultivating the deep intimacy that sustains vivid, sustained aliveness, you’re chasing the initial spark over and over, mistaking novelty for depth.

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If you’re addicted to suffering, martyrdom, or victimhood: You’re hungry for your pain to count for something and your struggles to be acknowledged. You want the world to recognize how hard you’ve tried and endured.

But instead of transforming your suffering into wisdom or art or service, you’re collecting it as evidence of your worthiness, mistaking endurance for enlightenment.

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If you’re addicted to comfort, safety, or risk-avoidance: You’re craving the feeling of not having to be afraid anymore and finally being able to rest. You want respite from the existential terror of being alive in a body on a planet in crisis.

But instead of finding the spiritual security that comes from facing your fears, you’re building elaborate defenses that make your world smaller.

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If you’re addicted to shopping, acquiring, or accumulating: You’re longing for the feeling of having enough and being filled. You want the existential emptiness at your core to finally be satisfied.

But instead of addressing the spiritual hunger directly, you’re trying to stuff the void with objects, mistaking possession for completion.

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The Counterfeit and the Authentic

Here’s the kicker: Your addiction may know what you need better than your conscious mind does.

That’s why it has such power over you. It’s not random or arbitrary, not a moral failing or a character flaw. Your addiction is a brilliant, misguided messenger from your soul, trying desperately to get your attention about what you’re ignoring.

The alcoholic who drinks to feel spiritual connection is correctly diagnosing their need for the numinous. They’re just using the wrong technology. Workaholics who can’t stop producing are correctly diagnosing their hunger for meaning, but are looking for it in the wrong place.

Your addiction is a homeopathic remedy gone wrong. It’s using a tiny dose of the right medicine but in such a diluted, distorted form that it becomes poison.

Why Your Addiction May Be Your Ally

Here’s the upside.

Your addiction is a ruthless spiritual teacher. It won’t let you lie to yourself. It keeps showing up no matter how many times you try to meditate it away or pretend you’ve evolved beyond it.

Your addiction dares you to get strong. It says: “You think you’re committed to your path? Prove it. You think you want enlightenment? Show me you want it more than you want this moment of escape or this familiar pattern of self-soothing.”

Your addiction reveals your true priorities. Whatever you’re addicted to, that’s what you’re actually devoted to, regardless of what you tell yourself or others. Your addiction is a mirror that shows you where you’re still choosing the counterfeit over the authentic or the comfortable over the transformative.

Your addiction teaches you about power. Specifically, it teaches you about the parts of yourself that are more powerful than your conscious will, like your unconscious drives and the ancestral patterns running in your nervous system. It forces you to develop a relationship with the parts of yourself that won’t be controlled by good intentions or positive thinking.

Your addiction humbles you, keeping you honest about your limitations and vulnerabilities. It prevents you from becoming one of those insufferable spiritual people who’ve “transcended” all earthly struggles and now float above the fray dispensing wisdom to the still-struggling masses. Your addiction keeps you human.

Your addiction is potentially your initiation. This is the hero’s journey: wrestling with it, failing, trying again, understanding it more deeply, finding the real hunger beneath it, slowly redirecting your energy toward the authentic source. This is the descent into the underworld that precedes the return with the elixir.

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How to Work With Your Addiction as Ally

Here’s where most addiction advice goes wrong: It treats the addiction as pure pathology and problem. It says: “Eliminate it. Overcome it. Rise above it. Be stronger than it.”

But that approach misses the intelligence of the addiction. The truth is that your addiction is trying to tell you crucial truth about yourself.

Here’s a different approach:

1. Thank your addiction for its service.

Seriously. Your addiction has been trying to meet a real need, even if clumsily. It has been attempting to get you into states of consciousness, feelings, or experiences that matter to you. Before you can release it, you need to honor what it has been trying to do.

“Thank you, perfectionism, for trying to ensure I create something worthy. Thank you for caring so much about excellence. I see you. I honor your intention.”

“Thank you, workaholism, for trying to make my life significant. Thank you for pushing me toward achievement. I recognize your devotion.”

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2. Ask your addiction what it’s really hungry for.

Have an actual conversation with it. Use active imagination. Dialogue with it in your journal. Get past the surface craving to the deeper longing.

“Hey, you, addiction to drama and chaos, what are you really trying to give me?”

And listen. The answer might surprise you.

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3. Identify the authentic source of the hunger.

Once you know what you’re really craving, ask: “Where can I get the real version of this? Not the counterfeit, but the authentic experience my soul is seeking?”

If you’re using alcohol to reach altered states: What are the sustainable spiritual technologies that could give you access to the numinous? Meditation? Breathwork? Psychedelics used ceremonially? Ecstatic dance? Deep nature immersion?

If you’re addicted to approval: What would it take to develop such a strong relationship with yourself that external validation becomes optional rather than necessary?

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4. Negotiate with your addiction.

This is the “ride it, spank it, kiss it, whip it” part. Don’t just white-knuckle resist it or pretend it doesn’t exist. Play with it.

“Okay, perfectionism, I see you’re scared this piece isn’t good enough yet. I appreciate your concern. Here’s what we’re going to do: I’m going to work on it for two more hours with full attention and craft, and then I’m shipping it, ready or not. You can come along for the ride, but you don’t get to drive.”

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5. Redirect the energy.

This is crucial. You’re not trying to eliminate the energy of the addiction. You’re trying to redirect it toward its authentic target.

Take all that intensity you put into your addiction and aim it at the real goal. If you’re addicted to chaos, channel that appetite for intensity into creative work that’s genuinely challenging. If you’re addicted to a substance, redirect that craving for altered states into serious spiritual practice.

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6. Celebrate your sublime, painful addiction.

This is the paradox: By fully acknowledging and honoring your addiction, by recognizing it as a sacred teacher rather than a shameful secret, you begin to release its grip.

Make art or tell stories about your addiction. Turn it into material for your work. Bring it out of the shadows where it has power and into the open where it becomes just another part of your perfectly imperfect human experience.

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The Dance of the Addict-Mystic

I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from my own addictions. (And yes, I have them: addictions to work, to intensity, to certain kinds of magical thinking, to the high of creative breakthrough.)

The goal isn’t to have no addictions. The goal is to have a primary addiction to the authentic source rather than the counterfeit.

Get addicted to the real thing:

- Get addicted to the feeling of creating something true

- Get addicted to moments of genuine communion with the world of night dreams

- Get addicted to the aliveness that comes from taking necessary risks

- Get addicted to the satisfaction of keeping your word to yourself

- Get addicted to the chronic ecstasy of fervent incarnation—being fully, deeply human

When you’re genuinely addicted to the authentic experience, the counterfeit loses its appeal. Not because you’ve overcome it through willpower, but because you’ve tasted gratification so much better that the substitutes become obviously unsatisfying.

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Possible Assignments

1. Name your addiction. Be honest. What are you really addicted to? Don’t say “nothing.” Everyone’s addicted to something.

2. Write a love letter to your addiction. Thank it. Acknowledge what it has been trying to do for you.

3. Ask it what it’s really hungry for. Have a conversation. Write both sides of the dialogue.

4. Identify the authentic source. Where can you get the real version of what you’ve been seeking?

5. Make a plan to redirect the energy. Not to eliminate it, but to aim it in the right direction.

6. Create something that celebrates your addiction: a poem, song, ritual, piece of art. Make it visible and sacred.

And then notice what happens when you stop fighting your addiction and start learning from it. Stop treating it as your enemy and start treating it as your initiator. Honor its intelligence while refusing its dominion.

This is the path of the addict-mystic who transforms compulsion into devotion and craving into quest.

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P.S. If you’re thinking “this doesn’t apply to serious addictions,” you’re wrong. The most serious addictions carry the most powerful messages. They’re your soul using a sledgehammer to get your attention because you wouldn’t listen to the whispers.

The question isn’t whether this applies to you. The question is whether you’re brave enough to listen.

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Dear Readers:

The horoscopes and essays you read here represent the concentrated essence of my life’s work. And they’re also an important part of how I earn a living. If they make a meaningful contribution to your world, I ask you to consider becoming a paid subscriber. Go here: freewillastrology.substack.com/subscribe

If now isn’t the right time, you are still welcome to remain a free reader for as long as you like. And as always, thank you for reading! Your attention is a privilege I never take for granted.

If you don’t want to sign up for a subscription but would consider making a one-time donation, go here: paypal.com/paypalme/GiftsForRob and contribute as Friends and Family.

As always, too, you can buy my Expanded Audio Horoscopes and Daily Text Message Horoscopes: https://RealAstrology.com

With love,

Rob

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PS: To find out more about me and my world, you can read a new interview with me in The Believer magazine here:

https://www.thebeliever.net/an-interview-with-rob-brezsny/

or here:

https://archive.ph/vCQpA

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of April 2

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Now is an excellent time to decide your favorite color is amaranth (a vivid red-violet), or sinopia (earthy red-orange), or viridian (cool blue-green, darker than jade). You might also conclude that your favorite aroma is agarwood (deep, smoky, resin-soaked wood), or heliotrope (cherry-almond vanilla), or petrichor (wet soil after a rain). I’m trying to tell you, Aries, that you’re primed to deeply enhance your detailed delight in smells, colors, tastes, feelings, physical sensations, types of wind, tones of voice, qualities of light—and everything else. Indulge in sensory and sensual pleasures!

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): My Taurus friend Elena keeps a “gratitude garden” in her backyard. When she feels grateful for a specific joy in her life, she writes it on biodegradable paper and buries it among her flowers, herbs, and vegetables. “I feed the earth with appreciation,” she says. “Returning the gift.” She feels this practice ensures that her garden and her life flourish. Her devoted attention to recognizing blessings attracts even more blessings. Her cultivated appreciation for beauty and abundance leads her to discover more beauty and abundance. Elena’s approach is pure Taurean genius. I invite you to create your own rituals for expressing your thankful love. Not just paying dutiful homage in your thoughts, but giving your appreciation weight, texture, and presence in the actual world.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Many of us periodically slip into the daydream that everything would finally feel right if only our lives were somehow different. If we’re single, maybe we imagine we ought to be partnered; if we’re partnered, we wish our beloved would change, or we secretly wonder about someone else entirely. That’s the snag. The blessing is this: In the days ahead, you’re likely to discover a surprising ease with your life exactly as it is, and feel a genuine, grounded peace. Congratulations in advance!

CANCER (June 21-July 22): A cautious voice in your head murmurs: “Proceed carefully. Don’t be overly impressed with your own beauty. Stick with dependable methods. Live up to expectations and avoid explorations into the unknown.” Your bold genius interrupts: “Tell that fussy, boring voice to shut up. The truth is that you have earned the right to be an inquisitive wanderer, an ingenious lover, a fanciful storyteller, and a laughing experimenter.”

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In medieval European gardens, there was a tradition of creating “pleasure labyrinths.” They were walking meditations that spiraled inward to a center, then back out again. There were no decisions and no wrong turns, just the relaxing, meditative journey itself. I think you need and deserve a metaphorical pleasure labyrinth right now, Leo. You’ve been treating every choice as a high-stakes dilemma and every path as potentially problematic. But what if the current phase isn’t about making the perfect decision? Maybe it’s about trusting that the path you’re on will take you where you need to go, even if it meanders. By cosmic decree, you are excused from second-guessing every turn.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Your eye for imperfection is a gift until it becomes the lens through which you see everything. The critical faculty that drives you to refine and enhance may also shunt you into a dead end of never-being-good-enough, where impossible standards immobilize you. In the coming weeks, dear Virgo, I beg you to use your vaunted discernment primarily in the service of growth and pleasure rather than constraint. Be excited by buoyant analysis that empowers constructive change. Homework: For every flaw you identify, identify two things that are working well. You won’t ignore what needs attention, but instead will compensate for the excessive criticism that sometimes grips your inner critic.

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EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES

There’s one more week to listen to my three-part, in-depth Explorations of Your Long-Range Future: RealAstrology.com

Would you like some inspiration as you muse and wonder about your upcoming adventures during the rest of 2026? Do you long to slip out of your habitual thoughts about your life and get a more transcendent view?

To access the Expanded Audio Horoscopes, register and/or sign in, then choose from Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of the “Long-Term Prediction for 2026.” Each part is a standalone report, not dependent on the other two.

The cost is $7 per horoscope. There are discounts if you buy multiple tokens. Each Long-Range, Big-Picture Audio Forecast is 8 to 11 minutes long. You can also listen to a short-term audio horoscope for the coming week!

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For my full written 2026 Big-Picture Predictions, go here:

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LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): You Libras shouldn’t expend excessive effort trying to force the external world to be more tranquil. That’s mostly a futile task that distracts from your more essential work. The secret to your happiness is to cultivate serenity within. How do you do that? One reliable way to shed tension is to continually place yourself in the presence of beauty. Nothing makes you relax better than being surrounded by elegance, grace, and loveliness. Now is a good time to recommit yourself to this key practice.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In computer science, there’s a concept called “graceful degradation.” When a system encounters an error, it doesn’t crash completely. It loses some functionality but keeps running with what remains. According to my reading of the astrological omens, Scorpio, you’d be wise to acknowledge a graceful degradation like that. Something isn’t working as you had hoped and planned. A relationship? Project? Adventure? In classic Scorpio fashion, you’re tempted to burn it all down. But I encourage you to practice graceful degradation instead. Keep what still works and release only what’s actually broken. Not everything has to be all-or-nothing. You can lose some functionality and still run. You can be partially out of whack and still be valuable. PS: The awkwardness is temporary.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): At your best and brightest, you are a hunter—though not the kind who stalks prey with weapons and trophies in mind. Your hunt is noble: the fervent pursuit of adventures that nourish your curiosity and the brave forays you make into unfamiliar territories where intriguing new truths shimmer. And now, as the world drifts deeper into chaos, you are called to respond with even more exploratory audacity. I invite you to further refine your hunter’s craft. Lift it up to an even higher, more luminous form of seeking.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Capricorn meditation teacher Wes Nisker guided his students to relax the relentless mental static that muddled their awareness. But he also understood that excessive striving can sabotage the peace we’re seeking. I invoke his influence now to help you release some of the jittery goal-obsession you’ve been gripped by. Nisker and I offer you permission to temporarily suspend the potentially exhausting drive to constantly be better and more accomplished. Instead, just for now, simply be your authentic self. Loosen your high-strung grip on self-improvement and allow yourself the radical luxury of purposelessness.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Here’s a danger you Aquarians are sometimes prey to: spending so much energy fixing the big picture that you neglect what’s up close and personal. You may get so involved in rearranging systems that immediate concerns get less than your best attention. I hope you won’t do that in the coming weeks. Your aptitude for overarching objectivity is a gift because it enables you to recognize patterns others can’t detect. But it may also divert you from the messy, intricate intimacy that gritty transformation requires. Your assignment: Eagerly attend to the details, which I bet will be more interesting than you imagine.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In horticulture, “hardening off” is the process of gradually exposing seedlings started indoors to outdoor conditions before transplanting them. Too much exposure too fast will shock them; no exposure at all will leave them unprepared. Let’s invoke this as a useful metaphor for you. I believe you are being hardened off, Pisces. Life is making small, increasing demands on your tender self. Though this may sometimes feel uncomfortable, I assure you that it’s preparation, not cruelty. You’re being readied for a shift from protected space to open ground. My advice is twofold: 1. Don’t retreat back into the ultra-safe greenhouse. 2. Don’t let yourself be thrown into full exposure all at once.

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The Art of Suffering Better

Thich Nhat Hanh offers us one of the most subversive spiritual teachings available: Suffering is not something to transcend, escape, or spiritually bypass. “Handling our suffering is an art,” he tells us. “If we know how to suffer, we suffer much less, and we’re no longer afraid of being overwhelmed by the suffering inside.”

This isn’t the spirituality of detachment or rising above. It’s embodied wisdom that invites us to become intimate with pain, to develop skill in its presence, and to transform our relationship with the inevitable difficulties of incarnation.

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The Buddha’s Crucial Distinction

Terry Tempest Williams reminds us: “Buddha says there are two kinds of suffering: the kind that leads to more suffering and the kind that brings an end to suffering.” This distinction is a hinge upon which much wisdom about suffering turns.

The first kind, suffering that breeds more suffering, comes from our resistance, our attempts to numb or escape or spiritually transcend what hurts. This is suffering compounded by our unskillful response to it.

The second kind, suffering that ends suffering, comes from our willingness to let pain crack us open and allow hurt to soften rather than harden us. This is suffering as teacher and transformer.

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The Alchemy of Attention

Philosopher Sam Harris says: “Almost all our suffering is the product of our thoughts. We spend nearly every moment of our lives lost in thought, and hostage to the character of those thoughts.”

So here’s a key practice for suffering better: recognizing that much of our anguish comes not from the pain itself but from our mental elaborations around it. We are tortured by the catastrophizing we engage in.

But Harris’s insight isn’t an invitation to spiritual bypass. It’s a call to defend ourselves against unnecessary suffering through the training of attention. Not to avoid pain, but to relate to it with presence rather than proliferation.

Here’s how Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön frames the choice: “We can spend our whole life suffering because we can’t relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased.”

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Respecting the Reality of Pain

Author Bryant McGill offers wisdom that guards against spiritual bypassing: “Your suffering needs to be respected. Don’t try to ignore the hurt, because it is real.”

This is where so much contemporary spirituality fails. In its rush to positive thinking and transcendence, it dishonors the legitimacy of pain. To suffer better, we must first acknowledge that we are suffering and our wound deserves recognition.

But McGill doesn’t stop at validation. He maps the transformation: “Just let the hurt soften you instead of hardening you. Let the hurt open you instead of closing you. Let the hurt send you looking for those who will accept you instead of hiding from those who reject you.”

Here’s the art: using suffering as an opening rather than a closing, a bridge to connection rather than a wall of isolation.

The Courage to Change Conditions

Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg points to the active dimension of suffering better: “We need the compassion and the courage to change the conditions that support our suffering. Those conditions are things like ignorance, bitterness, negligence, clinging, and holding on.”

To suffer skillfully isn’t to passively accept all pain as inevitable. Rather, we discern between suffering that’s inherent to the human condition and suffering that we create or perpetuate through our own habits of mind and action.

Ignorance keeps us repeating patterns that hurt. Bitterness poisons our relationship to life. Negligence prevents us from tending our wounds. Clinging creates the conditions for loss to devastate us. Holding on keeps us trapped in what needs to release.

Suffering better means having the courage to examine these conditions and work to transform them. Not through violent self-improvement, but through compassionate self-knowledge.

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The Commitment to Incarnation

Author William S. Burroughs cuts through any temptation toward spiritual escape: “Whether you like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. I cannot ally myself with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. Suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive.”

This is sacred humanism. To be born is to be vulnerable. To love is to risk loss. To care is to open ourselves to heartbreak.

The question is never “How do I avoid suffering?” The questions are: “How do I suffer in ways that deepen rather than diminish me? How do I use difficulty to become more alive rather than more defended? How do I let pain connect me to others rather than isolate me?”

As author bell hooks observes: “We often cause ourselves suffering by wanting only to live in a world of valleys, a world without struggle and difficulty, a world that is flat, plain, consistent.”

The art of suffering better includes accepting the mountainous terrain of existence—the peaks and valleys, the difficulty that makes us stronger and the ease that lets us rest.

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The Practice of Full Experience

Poet Ben Okri offers this teaching: “The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered until you experience it properly and fully the first time.”

How much of our suffering is the recycling of pain we never fully felt? How many wounds fester because we didn’t clean them when they were fresh?

To suffer better is to suffer completely. We give our full attention to pain when it arises, feel it thoroughly, and let it move through us rather than getting stuck. This is not wallowing or indulgence. It’s the difference between a wound that heals cleanly and one that becomes infected through neglect.

Author Emil Dorian adds precision: “Strong people alone know how to organize their suffering so as to bear only the most necessary pain.”

There is art in discerning what pain is necessary and what is truly optional. Necessary pain is the grief of loss and the ache of compassion. Optional pain is the torturous stories we tell ourselves about how things should be different.

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The Alchemy of Interpretation

Sex worker and author Aella offers a surprising theory: “The trick to healing from suffering, I think, is deciding that the pain was worth it.”

This isn’t about justifying abuse or romanticizing difficulty, but choosing the meaning we make from our suffering.

bell hooks elaborates: “Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. Unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.”

We can’t choose all the pain that comes to us. But we can choose what we do with it. We can let it embitter us or enlarge us.

The mark of suffering is inevitable. The festering scar is optional.

Protection Against Unnecessary Pain

Philosopher Don Miguel Ruiz offers practical wisdom: “Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”

Much of our anguish comes from absorbing the pain, projections, and problems of others as if they were personally about us. To suffer better is to develop discernment about what is ours to carry and what is not.

This is the art of developing healthy boundaries. We recognize that other people’s suffering, anger, or judgment often has nothing to do with us. Taking it personally only adds unnecessary layers to the pain that is genuinely ours.

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Suffering as Awakening Mechanism

Author William Nicholson offers a theological framing that works whether or not we believe in God: “God creates us free, free to be selfish, but He adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in this world, and that mechanism is called suffering.”

Whether we attribute this to divine design or evolutionary development, the truth holds: Suffering breaks through our narcissistic bubble. Difficulty teaches us empathy, and hardship connects us to the vast web of struggling beings.

Author Robert Greene warns against the alternative: “Without suffering and doubts, the mind will come to rest on clichés and stay there, until the spirit dies as well.”

Ease can numb us to truth. Sometimes—not always!—we need difficulty to shake us awake and force us to question.

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The Courage of Witness

Author Vincent A. Gallagher names the bravery required: “It takes great courage to open one’s heart and mind to the tremendous injustice and suffering in our world.”

To suffer better as individuals, we must also be willing to witness collective suffering. We’ve got to keep our hearts open to the pain of the world rather than closing down in self-protection.

Author Dodie Smith adds: “Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.”

The empathic suffering we feel for others’ pain is its own form of sacred education. To watch someone we love struggle and be unable to fix it teaches us the profound challenge of loving without rescuing.

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The Practice: A Summary

To suffer better, according to these voices of wisdom:

Respect your pain as real and legitimate, while not being ruled by it.

Let hurt soften rather than harden you, connect rather than isolate you.

Change the conditions that create unnecessary suffering: ignorance, bitterness, negligence, clinging.

Accept suffering as inherent to being alive, not as something wrong that shouldn’t be happening.

Experience pain fully when it arises, rather than avoiding it only to have it return.

Organize your suffering to bear only necessary pain, letting go of optional torment.

Choose the meaning you make from difficulty, deciding that the pain was worth what you learned.

Don’t take things personally that aren’t actually about you.

Let suffering wake you up to the presence of others and the reality of interconnection.

Keep your heart open to the world’s pain, even when it’s hard.

Train your attention to relate to pain with presence rather than proliferation.

Relax with how things are rather than constantly fighting reality.

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Videos by Thich Nhat Hanh on the Art of Suffering:

Dharma talk on suffering: tinyurl.com/GoodUseOfSuffering

What can I do when I see animals suffer?: tinyurl.com/WhenAnimalsSuffer

Helping Others Suffer Less: tinyurl.com/HelpOthersSufferLess

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Breaking News! I have extended the time when you can listen to my three-part, in-depth Explorations of Your Long-Range Future: RealAstrology.com

Would you like some inspiration as you muse and wonder about your upcoming adventures during the rest of 2026? Do you long to slip out of your habitual thoughts about your life and get a more transcendent view?

To access the Expanded Audio Horoscopes, register and/or sign in, then choose from Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of the “Long-Term Prediction for 2026.” Each part is a standalone report, not dependent on the other two.

The cost is $7 per horoscope. There are discounts if you buy multiple tokens. Each Long-Range, Big-Picture Audio Forecast is 8 to 11 minutes long. You can also listen to a short-term audio horoscope for the coming week!

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of March 26

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries poet Maya Angelou proclaimed, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” In that spirit, Aries, I urge you to tell everyone everything—all your secret thoughts, hidden feelings, and private opinions. Post your diary online! Confess your fantasies to strangers! Share your unfiltered inner monologue with authority figures! APRIL FOOL! I lied. Angelou urged us to bravely communicate our authentic truths, but not to overshare or be careless about observing good boundaries. Here’s the deep wisdom: Express thoughts and feelings that make you feel real and whole, but be discerning about when, where, and to whom.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Taurus writer Charlotte Brontë said, “I would always rather be happy than dignified.” Given your current astrological potentials, I think you should tattoo her motto across your forehead so everyone knows you’re committed to pleasure over propriety. Burn your dressy clothes! Quit doing boring duties! Dance naked in the woods! APRIL FOOL! I don’t really think you should tattoo your forehead or dance naked in public. But Brontë’s sentiment is sound: In the coming weeks, if forced to choose between joy and respectability, pick joy every time. Just do it with a modicum of common sense.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Gemini actress Marilyn Monroe said, “A wise girl knows her limits. A smart girl know that she has none.” I propose we expand that counsel to include all genders. And I especially recommend this approach to you right now. It’s time to shed, ignore, and surpass ALL your so-called limits. Be as wild and free and uninhibited as you dare. APRIL FOOL! I worry that it’s irresponsible to give you such utter carte blanche. Would you consider honoring one or two limits that prevent you from indulging in crazy and extreme behavior? Otherwise, be wild and free and uninhibited!

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Psychologist Carl Jung wrote extensively about the importance of embracing our shadows: the dark, problematic aspects of ourselves we would rather not acknowledge. In the coming weeks, I recommend that you stop hiding that weird stuff! Throw a coming-out-of-the-closet party for all the questionable parts of you. Let your inner monsters run wild! APRIL FOOL! Please don’t do that. What Jung actually advocated was recognizing and integrating your shadow, not being ruled by it. So yes, explore your moody, unruly impulses, but with consciousness, kindness, and containment, not reckless expression.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Leo author James Baldwin observed, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” With that in mind, I advise you to spend the next two weeks obsessively staring at every dilemma in your life. Don’t look away! Don’t take breaks! Just face every dilemma constantly until you’re overwhelmed! APRIL FOOL! Baldwin’s insight is brilliant, but it doesn’t require masochistic endurance. Here’s the truth: Yes, you should courageously acknowledge what needs attention, but do so with care and discernment. And then actually work on changing it! Awareness is the beginning, not the entire process.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo author Agatha Christie wrote 66 detective novels in which she meticulously planned every plot twist. I think you should apply her approach to your daily life: Script every conversation! Anticipate every contingency! Control every variable! Leave nothing to chance! APRIL FOOL! Christie’s obsessive planning worked for fiction, but life requires improvisation. For you, the coming weeks favor spontaneity and flexibility. So make rough plans, sure, but stay loose enough to experiment with whatever emerges. Over-control would diminish the magic.

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“If Rob Brezsny’s horoscopes are good medicine, his book ASTROLOGY IS REAL is a yoga retreat on the beach with the healthiest, most delicious food and daily massages by well-paid people who enjoy their work.

“To sit and read Astrology Is Real is to bathe in a kind of good radiation. Ideas and possibilities, light and humor materialize.

“Space opens up to think about your purpose in this world and your most important relationships. It’s like hanging out with a wise friend who has no agenda for you but who helps you see things clearly. Helps you be your best self.”

—Journalist Traci Hukill

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LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): My favorite Libran writer didn’t capitalize her name: bell hooks. I recommend you stage a similar rebellion against all rules and structures. Ignore social conventions! Flout traffic laws! Pay your taxes with paintings and poems you’ve created! APRIL FOOL! I was exaggerating. I do love hooks’ charming revolt, but it would be counterproductive for you to randomly break *all* the rules of daily life. Instead, be judicious and selective as you question conventions thoughtfully and only violate those that genuinely deserve to be spurned. Be a strategic rebel, not a chaotic one.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Scorpio poet Sylvia Plath wrote this passage in her journal: “I desire the things which will destroy me in the end.” I think you should consider embracing her approach—for the sheer, exotic thrill of it! Pursue interesting chaos! If it might unravel you, welcome it passionately! The more unruly, the better! APRIL FOOL! I lied. Plath was describing her struggle with depression, not offering us advice. Here’s what I think you should actually do: Examine which of your yearnings serve your evolution and which ones undermine it. Fully embrace the fact that intensity is one of your greatest gifts, but channel that intensity into experiences that build you up, not tear you down. Choose ardent aliveness over fervent destruction.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian philosopher Baruch Spinoza spent years alone in his room developing his radical ideas about God and nature. I recommend total isolation for you, too. In accordance with astrological omens, avoid human contact! Put your relationships on hold while you contemplate the infinite! APRIL FOOL! I totally lied. Spinoza’s solitude served his unique genius, but a similar approach won’t work for you—especially now. Here’s what I really think you require in the coming weeks: periods of meditative alone time balanced by intervals of rich connection with interesting humans. You need to commune with both your deep inner sources and nurturing alliances.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Capricorn astrologer Linda Goodman wrote that your sign’s “ambition is boundless” and that most Capricorns dream of ruling the world. In accordance with astrological omens, I urge you to indulge this attribute. Launch a campaign for global domination! Start with your neighborhood and work your way up to more and more conquests! APRIL FOOL! The truth is, world domination is exhausting and impractical. What Goodman was referring to is your gift for structure and leadership. Use your organizational genius to improve your corner of the world, not tyrannize it. Think stewardship, not empire.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Aquarian inventor Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” In the spirit, I recommend that you falter spectacularly in the coming weeks. The more blunders and bungles, the better! Engage in a holy quest to seek as many fizzles and misfires as possible! Make Edison look like an amateur! APRIL FOOL! I lied. Edison wasn’t deliberately courting snafus, of course. His approach was similar to that of many creative artists: driven by exploratory persistence that capitalizes on mistakes and hassles. Here’s your real guidance, Aquarius: Experiment boldly, yes, and don’t fear stumbles and bumbles. But learn from each one and adjust your approach. The goal is eventual success that’s informed by humility and resiliency.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Piscean physicist Albert Einstein said, “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” In the spirit of his genius, I recommend that you abandon logic completely! Never think rationally again! Make all decisions based on fantasy and feelings! APRIL FOOL! Einstein was advocating for the creative power of imagination, not the abandonment of reason. What you truly need is a marriage of visionary thinking and practical logic. Ask your imagination to show you possibilities, then call on lucid logic to help you manifest them.

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Many cultures worldwide have celebrated their New Year as spring begins, around the vernal equinox. I propose we all do that now with a rousing ritual, as described below.

The Sacred Contract with Your Future Self

I invite you to write a letter to the person you will be one year from today. Tell this Future You that you have taken a vow to accomplish three feats by then. Say why these feats are more important to you than anything else.

Describe them. Brainstorm about what you’ll do to make them happen. Draw pictures or make collages that capture your excitement about them. Then create a sanctified space where you will put this letter. Open it a year from now.

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Why This Works

Let’s talk about why this practice is different from the usual goal-setting that comes every January and often fades by February.

Most goals fail because they’re written to an imaginary version of yourself. You declare you’re going to lose 10 pounds or write a novel or learn Portuguese, but you’re not actually making a promise to anyone real.

You’re performing goal-setting for an audience of cultural expectations. Maybe you post your intentions on social media, announce them at parties, or write them in a journal.

But there’s no actual relationship or real covenant involved. There’s just you, performing the ritual of aspiration without the substance of commitment.

The practice I’m inviting you to do now will work because you’re entering into a relationship with a specific, real person: Future You.

Not the idealized version that’s already perfect and doesn’t need to work at anything. The actual person who will exist one year from today. They will be dealing with the consequences of what Present You does or doesn’t do in the coming months.

When you write to Future You, you’re acknowledging that they are real,. They have needs and hopes, and they’re counting on you. You’re creating accountability not to an abstract standard of self-improvement, but to an actual person who will open this letter and feel either gratitude or disappointment about what you did with this year.

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How to write this letter so it has optimal power:

Part 1: The Greeting

Start with an intimate welcome and invitation. Example:

“Hello, my beautiful, beloved future self! I love you so much! You’re my hero! Thank you for entering into this daring covenant with me. Let’s collaborate to create the best possible destiny for each other.”

Or:

“To the gorgeous version of me who exists one year from today: I see you. I know you’ve been through things I can’t imagine yet. You have faced challenges and had victories. I made you a promise, and I am asking for your help in fulfilling it.”

The greeting should establish that this is a conversation between two real people who adore each other and are on the same team.

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Part 2: The Vow

This is where you get serious and invoke the power and glory of your highest powers. Don’t just say “I have three goals.” Say “I am taking a sacred vow.”

A sacred vow is different from a goal. A goal is something you’d like to happen, whereas a vow is something you’re staking your integrity on. A vow has weight and consequences. You could say:

“I am taking a sacred vow to accomplish three feats by the time you read this. These aren’t optional. These aren’t ‘nice to haves.’ They are the three things that will determine whether I spent this past year serving my deepest purpose or betraying it.”

Notice the language: FEATS, not goals. Feats require courage, strenuous effort, and risk. Feats are worthy of being celebrated, even revered. They are the stuff of legends.

Part 3: Why These Three Things Matter More Than Anything Else

This is the heart of the letter. You are boldly and brazenly honest about what actually matters to you, versus what your conditioning and peer pressure try to tell you.

When people fail at their goals, it’s often because they’re pursuing goals that don’t align with their deepest values. They say they want to get in shape, but what they really want is to feel alive in their body.

They say they want to make more money, but what they really want is freedom from financial anxiety. They say they want to write a book or record an album or have an art gallery show, but what they really want is to be taken seriously as a thinker and creator.

So before you name your three feats, I hope you will answer: “What do I want my life to have been about when I look back on this year?” Not what will make you look good. Not what seems responsible or mature or properly ambitious.

When you open this letter one year from now, what will make you feel like you flourished during this precious year of your mysterious life?

Examples of why your feats might matter:

“This feat matters more than anything else because if I don’t do it, I’ll be the same person next year that I am right now, and I can’t bear that. I’ve been stuck in this pattern for five years, and this is the year it ends.”

“This feat matters because my daughter or son is watching how I live my life, and I want them to see someone who keeps promises to themselves, who doesn’t just dream but acts.”

“This feat matters because I’ve been carrying my unrealized potential my whole life like stones in my pocket, and I’m either going to finally actualize it or I need to grieve it and move on. No more middle ground.”

“This feat matters because I survived cancer / divorce / bankruptcy / depression to get here, and I didn’t survive just to play small. I survived to build a more beautiful destiny with this second chance.”

“This feat matters because I’ve glimpsed what I’m capable of at my best, and I want to spend a whole year living closer to that edge. Not fixing what’s broken, but celebrating what’s extraordinary.”

“This feat matters because joy is serious business. This is the year I stop treating pleasure, beauty, and delight as rewards I have to earn and start treating them as the whole point.”

“This feat matters because I’ve been given rare gifts—temperament, circumstances, relationships, hard-won wisdom—and I want to be a worthy steward of them. Not out of obligation, but out of sheer gratitude for being alive.”

“This feat matters because the people and places and ideas I love most are asking something of me, and I finally feel ready to answer. This is my yes.”

“This feat matters because I’ve already done impossible things, and I know now that the fear before a great leap and the exhilaration during it are the same sensation. I want more of that aliveness.”

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Part 4: Describe Each Feat in Sensory Detail

Don’t just write “Finish my book” or “Create my dream garden” or “Build a stellar intimate relationship.”

Instead, describe what it will feel like when Future You has accomplished your desirable feats:

“You will hold the completed manuscript in your hands. You will feel the weight of it, not just the physical pages but the weight of having actually finished a creation this big. You will remember all the days you chose this instead of easier pleasures and all the moments you pushed through the fear that it wasn’t good enough. And you will know that you’re a soul who finishes what they start.”

Or:

“You will be standing in the garden you planted, harvesting tomatoes in July, and you’ll realize with amazement that you created this. You transformed that dead patch into something alive and beautiful. And you’ll understand that if you can do that, you can do anything.”

The more sensory, specific, and emotionally resonant you make the description, the more power it has to pull you toward it across the year.

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Part 5: The Brainstorms: Making It Real

Here you shift from vision to strategy. You prove to Future You that you’re serious.

For each feat, brainstorm specifically what you will do to make it happen:

What you’ll do from:

- March-May

- June-July

- August-September

- October-December

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- Weekly: Protect three mornings per week for nothing but these feats.

- Monthly: Share your progress with trusted allies.

- Daily: Remember why this feels so good and how it amplifies your sense that your life is meaningful.

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The brainstorms should be specific but also flexible enough to adjust as circumstances change. You’re not striving to control the future. You’re creating conditions that make the future you want more likely.

Part 6: The Visual Component

Words alone may not carry the full freight of your commitment. So draw pictures. Make collages. Create symbols. Visualize the specific scenarios in your imagination.

PS: You don’t have to be an artist. In fact, crude drawings may have more power because they bypass your critical mind and access more primal sources.

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Part 7: The Closing

End the letter by giving Future You permission to be honest about what happened.

“When you open this letter a year from now, tell the truth. If I kept these vows, celebrate. If I broke them, examine why with compassion but without excuses. Either way, you’re reading this, which means you survived another year, and that’s not nothing. I love you. I’m doing this for you. Everything I do this year, I do with you in mind. See you in 365 days. — Your devoted past self”

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Creating the Sanctified Space

Don’t just stuff this letter in a drawer. Create a sanctified space for it:

Option 1: The Altar. If you have a personal altar or sacred space in your home, this letter becomes a central element. Place it there along with objects that symbolize your three feats. Light a candle when you place it there. Speak your vows out loud.

Option 2: The Sealed Container. Get a beautiful box, an artful envelope, or a decorated jar. Place it somewhere you’ll see it regularly but can’t casually access.

Option 3: The Buried Treasure. Bury it somewhere on your property in a waterproof container. Mark the spot with a beautiful object. The act of burying it makes it even more ceremonial, and the act of digging it up a year later becomes its own ritual.

Option 4: The Witnessed Vow. Read the letter aloud to someone you trust, then give it to them to hold for a few moments. The presence of a witness makes the vow more binding.

Option 5: The Time Capsule. Create a time capsule that includes the letter, photos from right now, objects that symbolize where you are today, and maybe even recordings of your voice. Make it rich with context so that Future You gets the full picture of who was making these vows.

The key is that the space must feel sacred to you. It should communicate: This is a binding agreement with my future self.

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The Monthly Check-In Ritual

Don’t wait a year to think about the letter again. Create a monthly ritual where you commune with a copy of the letter without opening its actual container:

On the 21st of each month (or whatever date you wrote it), remember what you wrote. Ask yourself: “Am I keeping my vows? Am I on track? If Future Me opened this today, would they be grateful or disappointed?”

Don’t criticize yourself if you’re off track. Just recommit, adjust, and course-correct.

The letter is a living covenant, not a static document. You’re allowed to renegotiate if circumstances genuinely change. But you’ve got to do it consciously, not by drifting.

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What Happens When You Open It

One year from now you will perform the ritual of opening this letter. Make it ceremonial. Don’t do it while distracted. Clear your schedule for an hour.

Open the letter. Read what Past You wrote to you. And then write back.

Yes, write a response to Past You. Tell them what happened. Which vows did you keep rigorously, and which did you only partially carry out. Tell the Past You what you learned and what surprised you. What do you want them to know about who you became?

And then—if you want to continue the practice—write a new letter to the person you’ll be on March 21, 2028.

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Three Types of Feats Worth Vowing

As you choose your three feats, consider that there are different categories of transformative action:

Type 1: The External Achievement. Something you can point to in the world as evidence that you did the thing. A completed manuscript, a degree earned, a house built, a garden planted, a business launched, or a performance given.

Type 2: The Internal Transformation. A shift in how you relate to yourself, to others, to the world. Healing an addiction, developing a spiritual practice, transforming a toxic pattern, learning to receive love, making peace with a difficult part of yourself.

Type 3: The Relational Shift. A change in how you show up in your relationships. Deepening your partnership, healing a family rupture, creating genuine community, or becoming the kind of friend / parent / partner / mentor you want to be.

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A powerful set of three feats might include one from each of the above categories. That way you’re developing holistically, not just achieving externally while staying stuck internally; not just transforming internally while avoiding external impact; not just focusing on relationships while neglecting your individual growth.

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The Dark Night Clause

Include this in your letter:

“I know there will be times this year when I want to abandon these vows. There will be moments when they seem impossible, stupid, or irrelevant. I’ll be tempted to tell myself that circumstances changed or that I was naive to think I could do this.

“So I’m writing this now, while I’m clear and committed: Those dark moments are part of the path, not evidence that I should quit. The resistance is the work. The doubt is the initiation.

“When I want to give up, I will remember why these feats matter more than anything else. I will recommit, even if only for one more day.

“This is the vow: not that I’ll never doubt, but that I’ll keep going anyway.”

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Your Assignment From Past You to Future You

Right now, today, you could:

1. Get materials. Beautiful paper, colored pencils or markers, magazines for collage, a container or envelope that feels charged with magic.

2. Create space. Set aside an hour minimum. Turn off your phone. Light a candle. Put on music that makes you feel deep and rich. Make tea. Settle in.

3. Meditate on the question: What do I want my life to have been about when I look back on this year? Not what should you want, but what do you actually want?

4. Choose your three feats. Don’t overthink it. Your body and your heart know. Choose the three things that make you feel scared and excited in equal measure.

5. Write the letter. Don’t rush it. This is a sacred document.

6. Create the visual component. Draw. Collage. Make it vivid and real.

7. Sanctify the space. Choose how you’ll store this letter and make it ceremonial.

8. Read it aloud. To yourself in the mirror, your spirit allies, or to the universe. Make it real by speaking it.

9. Seal it. Once it’s sealed, it’s done. No changing your mind. It’s a time capsule now.

10. Set a reminder for one year from today, and for monthly check-ins.

And then, live like someone who made a vow. Because you did. And Future You is counting on you. They’re already grateful for what you’re about to do.

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of March 19

ARIES (March 21-April 19): In 1960, Aries primatologist Jane Goodall arrived in Tanzania to study the social and family lives of chimpanzees. Her intention was to engage in patient, long‑term observation. In subsequent months, she saw the creatures using tools, a skill that scientists had previously believed only humans could do. She also found that “it isn’t only human beings who have personality, who are capable of rational thought and emotions like joy and sorrow.” Her discoveries revolutionized our understanding of animal intelligence. I recommend her approach to you in the coming weeks, Aries. Your diligent, tenacious attention can supplant outmoded assumptions. Let the details and rhythms of what you’re studying reveal their deeper truths. Your affectionate watchfulness will change the story.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Ancient Romans had a household deity called Cardea, goddess of hinges and thresholds. She protected the pivot points, like the places where the inside meets the outside and where one state transforms into another. In the coming weeks, you Tauruses will benefit from befriending a similar deity. I hope you will pay eager attention to the metaphorical hinges in your world: the thresholds, portals, transitions, and in-between times. They may sometimes feel awkward because they lack the certainty you crave. But I guarantee that they are where the best magic congregates.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): You are fluent in the art of fruitful contradiction. While others pursue one-dimensional consistency, you thrive on the fact that the truth is too wild and multifaceted to be captured in a single, simple story. You make spirited use of paradox and enjoy being enchanted by riddles. You can be both serious and playful, committed and curious, strong and receptive. In the coming weeks, Gemini, I hope you will express these superpowers to the max. The world doesn’t need another person who separates everything into neat little categories. Your nimble intelligence and charming multiplicity are the gifts your allies need most.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi celebrates imperfection, impermanence, and the soulfulness that comes with age. A weathered wooden gate may be considered more beautiful than a new one. Its surface has a silvery grain from years of exposure to rain and sun. Its hinges creak from long use by countless passersby. Let’s invoke this lovely concept as we ruminate on your life, Cancerian. In my astrological estimation, it’s important that in the coming months you don’t treat your incompleteness as a deficit requiring correction. Consider the possibility that your supposed blemishes may be among your most interesting features. The idiosyncratic aspects of your character are precisely what make you a source of vitality.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In medieval Japan, swordsmiths would undertake spiritual purifications before beginning work on a new blade: abstinence, ritual bathing, prayer, and fasting. They believed that the quality of their consciousness influenced the quality of their creation—that the blade would absorb the maker’s mental and spiritual state. I bring this to your attention because you’re in a phase when your inner condition will have extra potent effects on everything you build, develop, or initiate. My advice: Prepare yourself with impeccable care before launching new projects. Purify your motivations. Clarify your vision. The creations you will be generating could serve you well for a long time.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Master chess players don’t necessarily calculate more moves ahead than amateurs. Their years of study enable them to perceive the developing trends in a single glance, bypassing complex analysis. What appears to be stellar intuition is actually compressed expertise. You’re in a phase when you can make abundant use of this capacity, Virgo. Again and again, your accumulated experience will crystallize into immediate knowing. So don’t second-guess your first assessments, OK? Trust the pattern recognition that you have cultivated through the years.

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LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): The cosmic powers have granted you a triple-strength, extra-long, time-release dose of sweet, fresh certainty. During the grace period that’s beginning, you will be less tempted to indulge in doubt and indecision. A fountain of resolve will rise up in you whenever you need it. Though at first the lucid serenity you feel may seem odd, you could grow accustomed to it—so much so that you could permanently lose up to 20 percent of your chronic tendency to vacillate.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Crows can hold grudges against individual humans for years. But they also remember acts of kindness and bring gifts like shiny objects and buttons to those who’ve helped them. They’re capable of both revenge and gratitude, and they never forget either. I suspect you’re entering a period when you’ll need to decide which of your crow-like qualities to emphasize, Scorpio. You have legitimate grievances worth remembering. You have also received gifts worth honoring. My counsel: Spend 20 percent of your emotional energy on remembering wrongs (enough to protect yourself) and 80 percent on remembering what has helped you thrive. Make gratitude your primary teacher, even as you stay wisely wary.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): More than any other zodiac sign, you Sagittarians can be both a discontented rebel and a sunny celebrant of life. You can see clearly what’s out of alignment and needs adjustment without surrendering your wry, amused tolerance. This double capacity will be especially useful to you in the coming days. You may not find many allies who share this aptitude, though, so you should lean on your own instincts and heed the following suggestions: Be joyfully defiant. Be a generous agitator and an open-hearted critic. Blessings will find their way to you as you subvert the stale status quo with creativity and kindness.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Your persistence and endurance are among your greatest gifts to the world. You’re committed to building useful structures that outlast transitory moods and trends. On behalf of all the other signs, I say THANK YOU!, dear Capricorn. You understand that real power comes from showing up consistently and doing unglamorous work, refraining from the temptation to score quick and superficial victories. May you always recognize that your pragmatism is a form of loving faith. Your cautionary care is rooted in generosity. Now here’s my plea: More than ever before, the rest of us need you to express these talents with full vigor.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): One of your power symbols right now is the place where two tributaries blend into a single river. A second is where your favorite tree enters the earth. Here are other images to excite your imagination and stimulate your creativity: the boundary between cloud and sky; the darkness where your friend’s shadow overlaps yours; and the time between when the sun sets and night falls. To sum up, Aquarius, I hope you will access extra inspiration in liminal areas. Seek the vibrant revelations that arise where one mystery coalesces with another.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Poet Mark Doty wrote, “The sea doesn’t reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. We should lie as empty, open, and choiceless as a beach—waiting for gifts from the sea.” This quote captures your Piscean genius when it’s working at its best. Others may exhaust themselves trying to force results, but you know that the best gifts often come to those who are patient, open, and relaxed. This is true right now more than ever before. I hope you will practice intense receptivity. Protect your permeability like the superpower it is. Be as supple and responsive as you dare.

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False Self Versus Authentic Self

Our false self is the performer. Our authentic self is the deep eternal core that the performance is based on but not always faithful to.

Our false self is who we think we need to be to survive, to be loved, and to stay safe. Our authentic self is who we actually are when no one’s keeping score.

The false self isn’t evil. It’s a survival strategy we developed when we were young and powerless, trying to figure out how to get our needs met in a world that didn’t automatically meet them.

Maybe we learned that being good got us approval, so we became relentlessly good—helpful, accommodating, and never needing anything.

It’s possible we learned that being smart got us attention, so we became relentlessly competent—always right and never vulnerable.

Some of us learned that being tough kept us safe, so we became relentlessly defended—never soft and never open.

The false self is the persona we constructed to interface with a world that felt dangerous or conditional in its love. It’s the protective shell we grew because the tender truth of who we really are felt too risky to expose.

And here’s the thing: It worked. The false self got us through childhood and helped us navigate impossible situations. It kept us alive and functioning when our authentic self was still unripe and scared to handle what was happening.

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The problem is that the false self didn’t get the memo about when to step aside and let the authentic self take over.

So it keeps running the same strategies even when the original danger has passed. It keeps protecting us from inhabiting the vulnerabilities where our aliveness lives.

The false self is exhausting. It requires constant vigilance: Am I saying the right thing? Am I showing the right emotion? We can never fully relax because relaxing means the mask might slip.

The false self trades authenticity for approval and aliveness for acceptance. And American culture is built on this trade. It runs a nonstop propaganda campaign trying to convince us that our false self is who we really are.

It’s really rather shocking: We live in a system that actively and eagerly cultivates false selves. Social media is essentially a false self factory. So many of us perform our allegedly best life and highlight our supposedly most attractive angles.

Corporate culture demands professional personas that are always positive, productive, and on brand. Even our therapy culture can produce yet another false self: the person who’s done all the work and is healing perfectly on schedule.

The culture wants our false self to be ascendant because it’s predictable and manageable and marketable. Our false self buys things to fill the void. It works itself to exhaustion trying to prove its worth and doesn’t ask inconvenient questions or disrupt the status quo.

Our authentic self, on the other hand, is actually kind of dangerous.

It’s the I underneath the performance: the I that exists before we calculate how to present ourself. Nestled deep down in there are our actual desires, not the ones we think we should have, and our genuine needs rather than the ones we’ve learned to minimize or deny.

Our authentic self is wild where our false self is domesticated. It knows what we really want to do with our life, even if that’s different from what our parents hoped for or what our pride wishes we were doing. Which relationships are nourishing and which are draining? The authentic self sees the truth clearly. As for the convenient and comfortable self-deceptions our false self cherishes, the authentic self doesn’t need them.

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Here’s how we know when we’re operating from the false self:

We monitor the other person’s reactions to adjust our performance in real time, rather than actually listening because we’re curious. We feel drained after social interactions, even pleasant ones. We’re constantly explaining or justifying ourself, where the authentic self would simply state its truth and let it stand.

With the false self, we need external validation to know if we’re okay. We say yes when we mean no. We’re terrified of being seen as difficult or too much, while the authentic self is willing to be misunderstood in service of being real.

The shift isn’t easy and fast: to become real and true and raw after being held hostage by the false self. We don’t just decide one day to be authentic and then we’re done. The false self has deep roots, woven into our nervous system and our unconscious beliefs about what’s safe.

The journey back to the source requires archaeological work. We need to excavate down through layers of conditioning and survival strategies to find the original self that got buried underneath.

That might be painful. As we disengage from our false self, we will tune into the original vulnerability it was protecting. We may encounter the grief of all the years we spent performing instead of living. We might lose things, too, like relationships with people who really do prefer that we be our false self.

That’s why many people stay loyal to the false self. The cost of authenticity feels too high. Better to keep being who everyone wants and needs us to be.

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But staying in false self has a cost: our life. We spend our precious time on earth being someone we’re not, trading irreplaceable moments for the approval of people who don’t truly know us.

What accumulates is a low-grade depression that never lifts, because we can’t feel wildly alive when we’re only partially ourself. Our relationships may never quite satisfy us if no one can find the real person to love.

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How do we find our way back?

We start by noticing the performance. We catch ourself calculating and adapting, and instead of judging ourself for it, we just observe: Ah, there’s the false self, doing its protective shtick.

We find and create sanctuaries where it’s safe to be authentic: a therapist’s office, a trusted ally, a journal where we tell the naked truth. Here we practice taking the mask off without risking troubling consequences.

We listen to our body, because our body knows. It relaxes into truth and contracts around lies. Our breath deepens when we’re real.

We take small risks. We tell one true thing, set one boundary, ask for one thing we actually want—and then notice that the world doesn’t end. We rejoice that some people actually prefer the real version of us.

We grieve what we lost: the years of performance and the relationships built on false premises. We feel the anger at a culture that required us to be false in order to survive.

And gradually, incrementally, we start to inhabit ourself. We make choices based on what’s true for us rather than what’s acceptable to others. We live from the inside out.

This doesn’t mean we become an asshole. The authentic self isn’t the raw id unleashed; it’s not “I’m just being honest” as a cover for cruelty. That’s just another performance.

Real authenticity includes kindness, because when we’re genuinely connected to ourself, we’re also connected to our deepest values. We don’t need to dominate or diminish others to feel big. Truthfulness and compassion aren’t in conflict.

The authentic self isn’t opposed to being considerate. It’s opposed to betraying ourself in order to manage others’ reactions to us.

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Here’s another gift: When we live from our authentic self, we give everyone around us permission to do the same. Our willingness to be real creates a field where others can be real. Our refusal to perform invites others to stop performing.

Isn’t that an important way that culture might actually change? Not through grand gestures, but through individual people deciding they’re done with the false self deal.

I think it’s crucial to remember that our false self isn’t our enemy. It’s an old friend who helped us survive when we needed help. But we don’t need it the same way anymore. We thank it for its service and gently insist on living from our authentic self instead. The work is done daily, incrementally, gradually.

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PS: We should make peace with the fact that the transition will never be complete. There will always be more false self to uncover, more authentic self to excavate and inhabit.

The work doesn’t end with a graduation ceremony. New stresses reveal new masks; new relationships expose old performances we had forgotten we were giving.

That’s the nature of the journey. We’re not trying to arrive. We’re learning to keep moving in the right direction.

A PERSONAL CONFESSION

I will tell you about about one aspect of my own false self. I lived inside it for years and only gradually learned to recognize how it worked.

It was unusual. I wasn’t performing toughness or chasing status or trying to appear more successful than I was. My false self was more seductive than that, and therefore more difficult to see through, precisely because it seemed to be virtuous.

From childhood, I developed a powerful compulsion to put myself in service to others. I asked good questions. I listened well. I was genuinely curious about people’s inner lives and their struggles. None of that was fake. The curiosity and care were real. I was sincere about wanting to help others be more fully themselves.

But somewhere along the way, it calcified into being automatic. It became a default mode I slipped into without asking myself what I actually wanted to bring to any particular moment. The service became a hiding place.

It protected me from having to gather uncomfortable evidence—for example, that other people might not be as interested in my true self as I was in theirs. As long as I was focused on YOU, I never had to find out that YOU weren’t really that interested in me. The spotlight never had to turn my way. I could be endlessly generous with my attention and quietly exempt myself from the vulnerability of being truly seen.

That’s the insidious thing about a false self built from genuine strengths. It’s hard to indict. How do you argue with someone’s helpfulness? How do you name what’s missing when what’s present is so real?

What was missing was my response to the actual moment in front of me—the unrehearsed, unstrategic, sometimes inconvenient truth of what I felt or needed or wanted to say. Instead of meeting each situation fresh, I reached for the trusted tool: be interested in the other person.

It worked almost every time. I was good at it. And it spared me the riskier act of simply being present as myself.

I wasn’t lying. I was just absenting myself. I showed up as the curious one, the helper, the one who makes space for others, rather than as a person with my own unruly interior weather.

The work of recovering my authentic self has meant learning to pause before the habitual generosity kicks in. To ask: What’s actually true for me right now? To resist the pull toward the comfortable role and instead tolerate the uncertainty of not yet knowing how I want to show up.

It’s ongoing work. The old groove was deep. But I’ve come to recognize that my best service to others, which actually nourishes rather than just soothes, comes not from disappearing into their needs, but from showing up as a full person alongside them.

That’s a harder gift to give and receive.

Quote by Ursula K. Le Guin

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

Week of March 12

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Can you compel acts of grace to intervene in your destiny? Can bursts of divine favor be summoned through the power of your will? Some spiritual scholars say, “Absolutely not.” They claim life’s wild benevolence arrives only through the mysterious tides of fate—impossible to solicit and impossible to predict. But other observers, more open-minded, speculate that your intelligent goodness might indeed attract the vivid generosity of cosmic energies. I bring this up because I suspect you Pisceans are either receiving or will soon receive blessings that feel like divine favor. Did you earn them, or are you just lucky, or some of both? It doesn’t matter. Enjoy the gift.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): In theater, “breaking the fourth wall” means acknowledging the audience. An actor steps out of the pretense that what’s happening on stage is real. It’s a disruptive moment of truth that can deepen the experience. I would love you to break the fourth wall in your own life, Aries. It’s a favorable time to slip free of any roles you’ve been performing by rote and just blurt out the more interesting truths. Tell someone, “This isn’t working for me.” Or say, “I need to be my pure self with greater authenticity.” Breaking the fourth wall won’t ruin the show; it will be more fun and real and entertaining.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): English speakers like me use the terms “destiny” and “fate” interchangeably. But a scholar of ancient Sumer claims they had different meanings in that culture. Nam, the word for “destiny,” was fixed and immutable. Namtar, meaning “fate,” could be manipulated, adjusted, and even cheated. I bring this to your attention, Taurus, because I believe you now have a golden chance to veer off a path that leads to an uninteresting or unproductive destiny and start gliding along a fateful detour.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The coming months will be a favorable time for you to shed the fairy-tale story of success that once inspired you when you were younger and more idealistic. A riper vision is emerging, calling you toward a more realistic and satisfying version of your life’s purpose. The transformation may at first feel unsettling, but I believe it will ultimately awaken even deeper zeal and greater creativity than your original dream. Bonus: Your revised, more mature goals will lead you to the very rewards your youthful hopes imagined but never quite delivered.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Even if you’re not actually far from home, Cancerian, I bet you’re on a pilgrimage or odyssey of some kind. The astrological omens tell me that you’re being drawn away from familiar ideas and feelings and are en route to an unknown country. You’re transforming, but you’re not sure how yet. During this phase of exploration, I suggest that you adopt a nickname that celebrates being on a quest. This will be a playful alias that helps you focus on the pregnant potential of this interlude. A few you might want to consider: Journey Seed, Threshold Traveler, Holy Rambler, Map-Edge Maverick, or Wanderlust Wonderer. Others? Choose one that tickles you with the sense that you are being born again while you travel.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Love is more than a gentle glow in your heart or a pleasurable spark in your body. When fully awakened and activated, it becomes a revolutionary way of being in the world that invites you to challenge and rethink all you’ve been taught about reality. It’s a bold magic that alters everything it encounters. You can certainly choose a milder, tamer version of love if you wish. But if you’d like to evolve into a love maestro—as you very well could during the next 12 months—I suggest you give yourself to the deeper, wilder form. Do you dare?

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If you would like to support my work, please consider:

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VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Octopuses have neuron clusters in their arms that enable them to “think with their limbs.” Let’s make them your spirit creature for now, Virgo. Your body’s intuitions are offering you guidance that might even be as helpful as your fine mind. This enhanced somatic brilliance can serve you in practical ways: a creative breakthrough while doing housework, a challenging transition handled with aplomb, a fresh alignment between your feelings and ideas. I hope you will listen to your body as if it were a beloved mentor. Trust your movements and physical sensations to reveal what you need to know.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I love your diplomatic genius: the capacity to understand all sides, to hold space for contradictions, to find the middle ground. But right now it’s in danger of curdling into a kind of self-erasure where your own desires become the one thing you can’t quite locate. Another way to understand this: You are so skilled at seeing everyone’s perspective that you sometimes lose track of your own. Here’s the antidote I recommend: Practice the revolutionary act of having strong opinions, of preferring one thing over another without immediately undercutting your preference with a counter-argument. I guarantee that your relationships will survive your decisiveness. In fact, they will deepen as people locate the real you beneath your exquisite balance.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): New love cravings have been welling up inside you, Scorpio. These cries of the heart may confuse you even as they delight you and invigorate you. One of your main tasks is to listen closely to what they’re telling you, but to wait a while before expressing their messages to other people. You need to study them in detail before spilling them out. Another prime task is to feel patient awe and reverence for the immensity and intensity of these deep, wild desires.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): If you are fulfilling your birthright as a Sagittarius, you are a philosopher-adventurer with a yearning for deep meaning. As you seek out interesting truths, your restless curiosity is a spiritual necessity. You understand that wisdom comes from collecting diverse, sometimes contradictory experiences and weaving them into a coherent worldview. You have a fundamental need to keep expanding and reinventing what freedom means to you. All these qualities may make some people nervous, but they really are among your primary assignments now and forever. They are especially important to cultivate these days.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In traditional navigation, “dead reckoning” means finding your position by tracking your previous movements. Where you have been tells you where you are. But it only works if you’ve been honest about your course. If you’ve been misleading yourself about the direction you have been traveling, dead reckoning will get you lost. I bring this to your attention, Capricorn, because I really want you to rededicate yourself to telling yourself the deepest, strongest, clearest truths. Where have you actually been going? Not where you told yourself you were going or where other people imagined you were going, but where your choices have actually been taking you. Look at the pattern of your real movements, not your stated intentions. Once you know your true position, you can chart a true course for the future.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You’re entering a rambling zigzag phase. Each plot twist will branch into two more, and every supposed finale will reveal itself as the opening act of another surprise. Fortunately, your gift for quick thinking and innovative adaptation is sharper than ever, which means you will flourish where others might freeze. My suggestion? Forget the script. Approach the unpredictable adventures like an improv exercise: spontaneous, playful, and open to the fertile mysteries.

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The Sacred Art of Attachment: A Manifesto for Beautiful Desires

I’m totally attached to giving all my heart and soul to the noble desires I’m moved by. I adore these desires. I want to fulfill them because they will make the world a better place and make me a more soulful source of beauty and truth and love.

This isn’t a confession or an admission of spiritual delinquency. It’s a declaration of my sacred path.

In my world, being attached to my magnificent desires is a glorious and honorable strategy for living a meaningful life. Being deeply invested in my constructive and compassionate yearnings enhances me in every imaginable way.

While some spiritual paths preach the renunciation of desire as the path to freedom, I live according to a different truth: that devotional attachment to my righteous desires is a form of sovereign emancipation. It’s a gateway to becoming more fully alive and more vividly engaged with the sublime project of being creatively incarnate as a human being on this messy and gorgeous planet.

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Desires That Liberate

The theory that we should detach ourselves from desire makes sense in certain contexts. If we’re attached to things we can’t control, we will suffer. If we’re attached to permanence in an impermanent world, we will be disappointed. If we’re grasping at trivial forms of pleasure and desperately fleeing from difficulties, we will exhaust ourselves. I understand why these teachings arose and why they have helped many people.

But what’s too rarely acknowledged in contemporary spiritual discourse is that attachment can also be a path of liberation: when we’re attached to the right things in the right ways.

I’ll be precise: There’s a big difference between attachment rooted in fear of emptiness and attachment rooted in love of possibility. Addiction is attachment that panics. It clutches because it can’t tolerate absence and collapses when it doesn’t get what it wants.

Devotion, by contrast, is attachment that loves. It commits because it recognizes beauty and wants to collaborate with its unfolding. When disappointed, it doesn’t shrink; it deepens.

Addiction says, “Without this, I am nothing.” Devoted attachment says, “Because this matters, I will grow.” One contracts the soul around scarcity. The other expands it toward possibility—even through setback or loss.

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And this is exactly why discernment matters. Not all desires are created equal! I don’t believe we should cling to and pursue every passing whim, petty wish, and destructive craving.

But I urge us to celebrate and embrace beautiful desires: the longings that, when pursued with zeal and devout intention, render us more magnificent and inspire us to make the world more luminous.

The spiritual teachers who advocate detachment seem to conflate all desire, as if the craving for another toke of crystal meth and the longing for social justice were the same thing. But they’re not, of course. One diminishes us; the other enhances us. One creates suffering; the other creates meaning.

The problem isn’t desire itself but unconscious desires, destructive desires, and distorted desires that serve our smaller understandings rather than our larger purpose.

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To further understand why I make this distinction, I’ll widen the frame and ask a more radical question: What if desire isn’t an annoying and inconvenient flaw in the human psyche, but a structural principle of the cosmos?

My view: Desire isn’t a private quirk of our personal psychology. It’s evolutionary intelligence moving through everyone and everything everywhere. Evolution itself is desire unfolding: matter yearning toward complexity and consciousness pressing toward greater self-awareness.

Stars burn because gravity longs for form. The seed splits because it desires to engage with the sun. From hydrogen to hummingbird, from single cell to symphony, the cosmos advances by yearning.

In that glorious context, my rapt attachment to beautiful outcomes isn’t quirky rebellion against some particular spiritual law; it’s my buoyant participation in the engine of creation. When I devote myself to justice, beauty, healing, and love, I’m not indulging in egoic craving. I’m aligning my entire life energy with the primal thrust of existence toward richer expression. I am the universe universing itself.

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Beautiful Desires

Here are a few of the desires I love, cultivate, and am gleefully attached to:

• A desire for beguiling riddles and enchanting challenges that excite my mind and heart.

• A desire to attract ongoing encounters with evocative, nonstandard beauty so as to always ensure a part of me remains untamed.

• A desire to keep refining and expanding my ability to learn from non-human intelligences as well as from humans: from animals, plants, and ecosystems, from the weather and the seasons, from spirits and dreams and synchronicities. The universe is crammed with teachers if I’m an eagerly curious student.

• A desire to help create a world in which everyone gets the food, housing, and health care they need. This isn’t abstract compassion. It’s a burning, churning, yearning attachment to collective abundance that motivates concrete action. I can’t and won’t rest in spiritual comfort while others suffer material deprivation.

• A desire for allies who enjoy my distinctive idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. Not people who tolerate my quirks despite them, but those who are nourished by them, who recognize in my peculiarities a splash of soulfulness that feeds their own wild authenticity.

• A desire to keep outgrowing what worked for me in the past and a desire to ceaselessly explore renewed approaches to expressing my soul’s code.

• A desire to foster and protect the health and beauty of the natural world.

• A desire for revelations and experiences that steer me away from thinking and acting like the machines I interact with so much.

• A desire to keep recreating and reinvigorating my relationships with those I love.

• A desire to replace cynical clichés with homemade spells of astonishment, composted from absurdity, reverence, and exuberant rebellion.

· A desire to regularly refresh my quest for freedom and deepen my capacity to be free.

• A desire to minimize the world’s bigotry, misogyny, oligarchy, racism, xenophobia, and militarism.

• And many more desires, too, like the desire to keep finding new desires that re-inspire my love for the world.

The Paradox of Detachment

One of the dominant narratives of alternate spirituality in America speculates that desire is the root of suffering and that liberation comes through detachment. Where do these theories come from?

They have roots in traditions of immense depth and beauty. I’m not declaring they’re wrong or bad. I’m saying they’re not my path—and perhaps not the path of other souls who are temperamentally built for fervent incarnation rather than renunciation.

Regarding the concept of non-attachment, ancient Buddhist texts in Pali mention nekkhamma, a word translated as “renunciation.” This term also conveys the meaning of “giving up the world and leading a holy life” or “freedom from lust, craving, and desires.” Here’s the central hypothesis: The path to emancipation and wisdom requires the renunciation of worldly engagement.

But my personal approach is not to lead a holy life by giving up the world. Just the opposite: To live a holy life, I give myself gladly and fervently to the world. “Renunciation” isn’t interesting or valuable to me. I don’t believe the spiritual quest requires withdrawal from the world’s complexities. My noblest vigor emerges from my passionate engagement with what life brings me. I aspire to be empathically interwoven with both its beauty and its brokenness.

Consider the Bhagavad Gita, one of Hinduism’s most influential texts. A key passage says, “You have a right to perform your actions, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions.”

This verse suggests that the anticipated results of our actions shouldn’t be the motivation for our performance of those actions. We should act without concern for outcomes; we should serve without expecting rewards.

I’m allergic to that principle. To cultivate optimal health and wisdom, I seek total immersion in possibilities i find exciting. I love love LOVE to be motivated by the hope of achieving my desires.

When I work to create something helpful or inspiring, I’m attached to it being thoroughly and wonderfully fulfilled. When I work in behalf of LGBTQ+ rights or immigrant protection, I am very attached to the possibility that my work will yield potent results. When I write a new song, I am deeply attached to it being lyrical and soulful.

Visions of the desired outcomes pump up my energy and focus, feeding my stamina and honing my determination to persist through obstacles.

The Hindu philosopher Madhvacharya advocated godliness through right actions: “One who is spiritually situated performs actions unattached to reward. Actions performed without desire as a matter of duty are full of wisdom.” By his measure, I am not “spiritually situated.” He wouldn’t approve of the fact that I perform actions with a spirited desire for their successful outcomes, invigorated by pleasure and joy rather than duty.

So yes, Madhvacharya would judge me harshly. But I’m OK with that. I’d much rather be vigorously engrossed in the challenges of living well on the earth than be emotionally indifferent to whether my work succeeds or fails.

Hindu philosopher Adi Shankaracharya went even further, teaching that hankering for the fruits of labor leads to entrapment in the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth—the ultimate quagmire!—thus inhibiting one’s liberation. According to this view, my attachment to outcomes keeps me trapped in terminal unease and unsatisfactoriness—and prevents me from ever reaching the highest spiritual goal.

But I’m not interested in such an accomplishment. I don’t hanker to permanently escape the Great and Mysterious Game of birth, death, and rebirth. I love it here! If liberation means ceasing to care whether beauty flourishes or justice prevails, then I choose what Shankaracharya would call entrapment. Here, in this world, in this body, working toward transformations and creations I care about deeply: That’s where I want to be.

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I should note that both Buddhism and Hinduism are vast and internally diverse, containing some traditions where passionate attachment and worldly engagement are honored. Tantra, bhakti devotion, and engaged Buddhism are examples. Some Vajrayana practitioners are deeply committed to making our earth into more of a paradise.

My aversion isn’t to these traditions, but to the particular strains of Americanized, renunciation-centered teachings that have come to dominate so much of alternative spirituality.

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Attachment as Fuel for Transformation

Here’s a very practical fact: I’m deeply invested in making my gorgeous, righteous desires come true because doing so fuels my motivation to attract the learning experiences, resources, and willpower I need to fulfill them. My attachment strengthens my resolve and boosts my ability to discipline myself as I pursue my high-minded and wild-hearted purposes.

When I was sick with a death-threatening illness, I was VERY attached to staying alive. That attitude was crucial in rousing the ingenuity and resilience necessary to do all the things necessary to stay alive: the difficult and excruciating treatments, the acute attention to every detail of my rigorous health regimen, and the emotional challenge of maintaining hope.

If I had been detached from the outcome, if I had adopted an attitude of “whatever happens is fine,” I’m very sure I could not have marshaled the ferocious will to live that my healing required.

In my world, attachment is another word for devotion. It’s not the grasping of addiction or the desperation of fear, but the focused zeal of knowing what I love and being joyfully driven to work for its flourishing. My attachment is my ardor, dedication, constancy, enthusiasm, resolve, zest, and tenacity. It’s my unfailing guide.

The Shadow of This Path

To be fiercely attached to beautiful desires is to risk heartbreak. Not every righteous longing blossoms and not every song finds its audience. I don’t pretend otherwise. My devotion doesn’t guarantee triumph. When I attach myself to luminous outcomes, I make myself vulnerable to grief, frustration, and humbling defeat.

But here’s a crucial distinction: I’m attached to participation, not invulnerability. If my desires are thwarted, I grieve, learn, and adapt. I let the failure compost me. My attachment doesn’t demand that the world obey me; it demands that I remain in living relationship with the world.

Addiction collapses when it doesn’t get what it wants, but devotion evolves. If a cherished outcome dissolves, I stay engaged with the larger arc of becoming, even if this particular chapter ends in partial success or even failure.

There’s another shadowy danger i must be aware of, too. Passion can harden into self-righteousness. Outcome-focus can curdle into control. My attachment could, if left unchecked, become tyranny disguised as virtue.

That’s why I rely on humor, allies, dreamwork, and regular encounters with forces larger than my will. The weather, the ocean, illness, love, and time all remind me that I’m not the sovereign of reality. I’m a collaborator. My desires are sacred, but they’re not supreme. They’ve got to stay in conversation with the Great Mystery.

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The Path of Fervent Incarnation

One of the ultimate risks of my path is that I will feel everything. Another is that I will be pierced when beauty falters and gutted when justice fails. A third is that my devotion may sometimes overheat into self-righteousness or exhaust me with its ferocity.

But I would rather be broken open by caring than preserved by detachment. I would rather risk scorching myself in the fires of magnificent desires than cultivate a sterile coolness that never catches flame.

If loving this world so fiercely binds me to its cycles of birth and death again and again, then so be it. I am not seeking escape from the Great and Mysterious Game. I want ever-deeper participation in its dangerous, dazzling intimacy.

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PS: What I’m declaring in this manifesto is not simply: “I defend desire.” I’m declaring, “I trust incarnation.”

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Check out my Link Tree: linktr.ee/robbrezsny

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

Week of March 5

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In systems theory, “critical points” are moments when long periods of small changes gradually accumulate, and then suddenly erupt into a big shift. Nothing appears to happen for a while, and then everything happens at once. Ice becomes water, for instance. I suspect you’re nearing such a pivot, Pisces. You’ve been gathering strength, clarity, and nerve in subtle ways. Soon you will be visited by what we might call a graceful, manageable explosion. The slow, persistent changes you’ve been overseeing will result in a major transition.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Many ancient cultures had myths that explained solar eclipses as celestial creatures eating the sun. In China, the devourer was a dragon. A frog did it in Vietnam, wolves in Norse lore, and bears in several Indigenous American legends. In some places, people made loud noises during the blackout, banging drums and pots, to drive away the attacker and bring back the sun. I suspect you are now in the midst of a metaphorical eclipse of your own, Aries. But don’t worry! Just as was true centuries ago, your sun won’t actually be gobbled up. Instead, here’s the likely scenario: You will rouse an appetite for transformation that will consume outdated ideas and situations. Whatever disintegrates will become fuel for new stories. You will convert old pain and decay into vital energy. Your luminous vigor will return even stronger.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Maybe you have been enjoying my advice for years but still haven’t become a billionaire, grown into a potent influencer, or landed the perfect job. Does that mean I’ve failed you? Should you swap me out for a more results-oriented oracle? If rewards like those are the dreams you treasure, then yes, it may be time to search for a new guide. But if what you want most is simply to cultivate the steady gratification of feeling real and whole and authentic, then stick with me. PS: The coming days are likely to offer you abundant opportunities to feel real and whole and authentic. Take advantage!

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In 1557, a Welsh mathematician invented the equals sign (=) to avoid repeatedly writing the words “is equal to.” Over the next centuries, this helped make algebra more convenient and efficient. The moral of the story: Some breakthroughs come not from making novel discoveries but from finding better ways to render and use what’s already known. I’m pleased to say that you Geminis are primed to devise your own equivalents of the equals sign. What strengths might you express with greater crispness and efficiency? What familiar complications could you make easier? See if can find shortcuts that aid productivity without sacrificing precision.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): One benefit of being an astrologer is that when I need a break from being intensely myself, I can take a sabbatical. My familiarity with the zodiac frees me to escape the limits of my personal horoscope and play at being other signs. I always return from my getaway with a renewed appreciation for the unique riddle that is my identity. I think now is an excellent time for Cancerians like you and me to enjoy such a vacation. We can have maximum fun and attract inspiring educational experiences by experimenting. I plan to be like a Sagittarius and may also experiment with embodying Aries qualities.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In Scandinavian folklore, there’s a phenomenon called utiseta. It involves sitting out at night in a charged place in nature, like a crossroads or border. The goal is to make oneself patiently available for visions, wisdom, or contact with spirits and ancestors. I suspect you could benefit from the equivalent of a utiseta right now, Leo. Do you dare to refrain from forcing solutions through sheer will? Are you brave enough to let answers wander into your midst instead of hunting them down? I believe your strength is your willingness to be still and wait in a threshold.

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EXPLORE YOUR LONG-RANGE FUTURE

There are just two more weeks remaining before the Big-Picture Audio Horoscopes gone! You can still listen to my three-part, in-depth Explorations of Your Long-Range Future. Do you understand just how much power you have to create the life you want to live during the rest of 2026? Are you fully aware of just how much access you have to new resources?

To access the Expanded Audio Horoscopes, register and/or sign in here: Realastrology.com

and

choose from Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of the “Long-Term Prediction for 2026.” Each part is a standalone report, not dependent on the other two.

The cost is $7 per horoscope. There are discounts if you buy multiple tokens. Each Long-Range, Big-Picture Audio Forecast is 7 to 11 minutes long. You can also listen to a short-term audio horoscope for the coming week.

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I also wrote a free batch of Big-Picture Horoscopes for you! They’re different from the Big Picture Audio Scopes. Find them here: tinyurl.com/YourFutureShines

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VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): You are a devotee of the sacred particular. While others traffic in vague abstractions, you understand that vitality thrives in the details. Your attention to nuance and precision is not fussiness but a form of love. I get excited to see you honor life by noticing all of its specific textures and rhythms! Now, more than ever, the world needs this superpower of yours. I hope you will express it even stronger in the coming months. May you exult in the knowledge that your refusal to treat the world carelessly or sloppily isn’t about perfectionism but about respect.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Architect Antoni Gaudí spent over 40 years designing Barcelona’s Sagrada Família cathedral. He knew he wouldn’t live to see it finished. It’s still under construction today, long after his death. When he said, “My client is not in a hurry,” he meant that his client was God. I invite you to borrow this perspective, Libra. See how much fun you can have by releasing yourself from the tyranny of urgency. Grant yourself permission to concentrate on a process that might take a long time to unfold. What a generous and ultimately productive luxury it will be for you to align yourself with deep rhythms and relaxing visions! I believe your good work will require resoluteness that transcends conventional timelines.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The ancient Chinese philosophical text known as the Tao Te Ching teaches that “the usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness.” A vessel full of itself can receive nothing. Is it possible that you are currently so crammed with opinions, strategies, and righteous certainty that you’ve lost some of your capacity to receive? I suspect there are wonders and marvels trying to reach you, Scorpio: insights, inquiries, and invitations. But they can’t get in if you’re full. Your assignment: Temporarily empty yourself. Create space by releasing cherished positions, a defensive stance, or stories about how things must be.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The Yoruba concept of ashe refers to the power to make things happen. It’s the life force that flows through all things, and can be accumulated, directed, and shared. Right now, your ashe is strong but a bit scattered, Sagittarius. You have power, but it’s diffused across too many commitments and half-pursued desires. So your assignment is to consolidate. Choose two things that matter most and fully pour your ashe into them. As you concentrate your vitality, you’ll get more done and become a conduit for blessings larger than yourself.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): What’s holding you back? What are you waiting for? A nudge from destiny? A breaking point when you’ll be compelled to act? A hidden clue that may or may not reveal itself? It’s my duty to tell you this: All that lingering and dallying, all that wishing and hoping, is wasted energy. As long as you’re sitting still, pining for a cosmic deliverance to handle the hard parts, the sweet intervention will keep its distance. The instant you claim the authority to act, you’ll see it clearly: the path forward that doesn’t need a perfect sign, a final push, or fate’s permission slip.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): If you’re anything like me, you wince as you recall the lazy choices and careless passivity that speckle your past. You may wonder what you were thinking when you treated yourself so cavalierly, pushed away a steadfast ally, or let a dazzling invitation slip by. At times I feel as if my wrong turns carry more weight in my fate than the bright, grace-filled moments. Here’s good news for you, though. March is Amnesty Month for all Aquarians willing to own up to and graduate from their missteps. As you work diligently to unwind the unhelpful patterns that led you off course, life will release you from the heavy drag of those old failures and their leftover momentum.

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Art by June Bird Ngale

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YOUR IRREDUCIBLE YOU-NESS

Do you have a soul? Is there even such a thing? If so, what is it exactly? Where does it live, how does it move, and what does it need? How do you grow more of it? And is it really, as some of the wisest humans who ever lived have insisted, the most valuable thing in the universe?

I invite you to sit with these questions. Meditate on the soul, dream about the soul, and turn the soul over in your imagination as if you were exploring a luminous treasure.

To start the inquiry, I’ll tell you about a woman I met who had arrived at a devastating answer to these questions.

She told me she firmly believes she is no more than the sum total of the influences of all the people she has ever known. The way she talked about herself was as if she were a machine, a passive assemblage of other people’s programming.

She lives her life as if she has no essential core, but is merely what others have shaped her into: a reflection of her parents’ and teachers’ and friends’ and enemies’ expectations of her: a mirror that has forgotten it also generates its own light.

I understood the cultural currents that had carried her to this diminished self-concept. And I agree that each of us is partly a creation of forces beyond our control. Most people have no idea how thoroughly they are shaped by the zeitgeist, by ancestral patterns, by the collective unconscious, by advertising and propaganda and the relentless pressure of consensus reality.

But I am quite sure that each of us also has an essential core, a diamond nature and irreducible YOU-ness that isn’t entirely manufactured by outside forces.

I believe our souls are ancient entities that exist both outside of time and space and very much inside it. They are both eternal and urgently present, both transcendent and gloriously incarnate in this particular body at this particular moment in history.

So I will ask you to do you and me a favor. Even if you’ve been taught that consciousness is merely the result of brain chemistry and the soul is a metaphor at best and a hallucination at worst: Imagine, just for now, that you do have a soul—not as an article of religious faith but as an experiential reality you can actually feel.

Relax the frenzied activity of what the Zen Buddhists call the monkey mind. And try to feel the quality of that deep, indivisible part of you.

This part of you knows itself and loves itself with clarity and grace. It’s so utterly unique that no other soul in the history of this planet has ever been quite like it, and no other soul ever will be. It’s the gorgeous, humming center of you, quietly broadcasting its singular frequency beneath all the noise and distraction and performance and anxiety.

This essential core is NOT merely a creation of your parents. Does NOT measure its worth against anyone else’s. Is NOT a slave to other people’s opinions of who you should be.

It’s who you were before you were born into this body, and who you will be after you leave it. It’s the part of you that chose this particular incarnation, with its particular set of challenges and gifts, and decided to arrive at this precise moment in history to do your singular work.

Your soul can never be completely understood. It will always be partly mystery. And yet it’s your sweetest, most reliable source: the wellspring of your authentic creativity and your deepest compassion. No matter how lost you may become in the maze of conditioning and fear and self-doubt, your soul will always be there at your center, emanating its signal, inviting you to remember, ready to guide you home.

In this era of manufactured confusion and artificial intelligence and deepfake everything, that authentic signal is more precious than ever. It’s the one thing that can’t be corrupted. It holds the blueprint of your most luminous becoming, and it loves you with an unconditional devotion that asks nothing except that you trust the wild, beautiful truth of who you really are.

So tune in. Its tender guidance has never been more available to you—or more necessary.

Art by Howard G. Charing

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Can we go even further?

You might feel moved to explore the nature of the soul with rare companions who take the soul seriously. They won’t flinch when the conversation goes deep.

Of course, you don’t want to get into the trap of debating the soul’s existence with people who snicker and reach reflexively for their skepticism. Conversations like those are useless. Save your energy for something more alive.

You may also decide that the fact you have encountered this essay means that now is an excellent time to go out in active search of experiences that will expand and deepen your soul. How might you attune yourself to the synchronicities and encounters and recognitions that will teach you more about what your soul is and why it matters?

Below are some navigational hints.

Anything or anyone you find truly beautiful will lead you toward soul. And by beautiful I don’t mean pretty packaging or pleasing surfaces. I mean beautiful in the older, stranger sense: glowing with intelligence and intensity and mystery and depth. Beautiful as in made by hand, close to the earth, energizing to your body, and impossible to reduce to a price tag.

Anything that awakens your reverence will lead you to soul. Anyone who is acutely alive to the flow of life, who spills over with vitality and genuine responsiveness, will lead you there, too.

Feelings of gratitude will lead you there. So will adventures that catch you off guard. Unpredictability stirs the soul, and surprising truths. Deeply felt traditions with real roots can awaken or feed the soul.

But you know more than I do about what will lead you, specifically, to soul. You have your own particular hungers and your own telltale signals. You know those moments when some mystery in you suddenly leans forward, alert and awake.

Pay close attention to those signals. Write about them. Make a list of the experiences, the people, the landscapes, the works of art, and the conversations that have awakened the deepest stirrings in you. Let that list become a kind of map.

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Now here are three questions with tentative answers to open your imagination further.

Question 1: Was there a time, once upon a time, when star-crossed romance wounded your capacity for love? Left a scar across the very place in you that most wants to give and receive tenderness?

Answer: Yes. Almost certainly yes. But there has never been a better moment than now to begin healing that wound.

Question 2: Is it possible you are finally willing to relinquish your long-held addiction to a certain tragic magic? That exquisite, melancholy story you’ve been telling yourself, beautiful in its way but also keeping you smaller and sadder than you need to be?

Answer: Yes. Your urge to genuinely love your life is growing stronger than your attachment to ancient sorrow. Your need for clarity is quietly overwhelming the melodrama that once felt essential but is now, if you’re honest, becoming increasingly beside the point.

Question 3: Has there ever been a better time than right now to perform quietly courageous acts—small, steady, unglamorous acts of integrity—that turn you away from the seductions of shallowness and toward the deeper allure of the soul?

Answer: You already know the answer. You’ve known it for a while.

Art by Wassily Kandinsky

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If you’d like to read more of my thoughts about the soul, check out this essay (plus an audio reading), excerpted from my book ASTROLOGY IS REAL: tinyurl.com/AstrologyForTheSoul

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Listen to the conversation between me and the brilliant author and activist adrienne maree brown: endoftheworldshow.org/episodes/witch-school-chapter-22-rob-brezsney

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LOVE POEM FOR YOUR SOUL

Your voice is moonlight on the wetland mud. Your lips are blossoms of cool fire. Your hair is a chant offered to the goddess of arias. Your navel? The answers the stars give to the clouds.

Your nearness is the hush before rain, charged with the promise of green. The air trembles, remembering your breath. If I speak your name, the clouds part like silk torn by sunlight. Even the still stones along the path seem to turn their faces toward your warmth.

The tilt of your head is a question the high sky can’t refuse. Even my doubts kneel down like tall grasses. I am reckless with wonder. I am willing to be altered.

When you turn toward me, the world becomes a book of mirrors, each page reflecting what can’t be spoken. The arc of your shoulders carries the weight of ten thousand wishes made by strangers at wells. Your anger is summer lightning that never reaches ground, beautiful and brief as the violet hour.

I study the architecture of your patience. It’s a temple built from driftwood and spider silk, improbable and lasting. Your sorrows move like schools of silver fish through dark water, visible only when they turn. Your hope tastes of honey drawn from flowers that bloom only in dreams.

When you speak my name, it becomes a new constellation. Your presence is the moment between thunder and rain when the air grows dense with possibility. I dare to stand in the weather of you. I dare to learn the language your shadow writes across the wall at dusk.

Your nearness folds the worlds together. Time loses its steps around you; the hours turn to translucent birds circling an unseen altar. The hush between heartbeats becomes a doorway through which dawn spills again and again, unminded of the clock’s insistence.

I could believe you were dream dreaming itself — a shimmer between what’s born and what’s eternal. If I listen rightly, I become the echo that finds you wherever the infinite hides its face.

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I’ve published three main books, with lots more to come.

Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: tinyurl.com/PronoiaBookshop

Astrology Is Real: tinyurl.com/BookshopAstrologyIsReal

The Televisionary Oracle: tinyurl.com/BookshopTelevisionaryOracle

Check out my LinkTree: linktr.ee/robbrezsny

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of February 26

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Sufi mystics tell us that the heart has “seven levels of depth,” each one bearing progressively more profound wisdom. You access these depths by feeling deeper, not thinking harder. Let’s apply this perspective to you, Pisces. Right now, you’re being called to descend past surface emotions (irritation, worry, mild contentment) into the layers beneath: primal wonder, the wild joy you’re sometimes too cautious to express, and the sacred longing that can lead you to glory. This dive might feel risky. That’s good! It means you’re going deep enough. What you discover down there will reorganize everything above it for the better.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): In woodworking, “spalting” occurs when fungi colonize wood, creating dark lines and patterns that make the wood more valuable, not less. The decay creates beauty as long as it isn’t allowed to progress too far. Here’s the metaphorical moral of the story for you, Aries: What feels like a deteriorating situation might actually be spalting, Aries. Are you experiencing the breakdown of a routine, a certainty, or a plan? It could be creating a pattern that makes your story even more interesting and heroic. So keep in mind that an apparent decomposition may be transforming ordinary into extraordinary beauty. My advice is to play along with the spalting.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I suspect you will soon be invited to explore novel feelings and unfamiliar states of awareness. As you wander in the psychological frontiers, you might experience mysterious phenomena like the following. 1. An overflow of reverence and awe. 2. Blissful surprise in the face of the sublime. 3. Sudden glimmers of eternity in fleeting moments. 4. A soft, golden resonance that arises when you hear arousing truths. 5. Amazingly useful questions that could tantalize and feed your imagination for months and even years to come.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): If I were your mentor, I’d lead you up an ascending trail to a high peak where your vision is clear and vast. If I were your leader, I’d give you a medal for all the ways you’ve been brave when no one was looking, then send you on an all-expenses-paid sabbatical to a beautiful sanctuary to rest and remember yourself. If I were your therapist, I’d guide you through a 90-minute meditation on your entire life story up until now. But since I’m just your companion for this brief oracle, I will instead advise you to slip out of any silken snares of comfort that dull your spirit, cast off perks and privileges that keep you small, and commune with influences that remind you of how deeply you treasure being alive.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Biologist Barbara McClintock won the Nobel Prize by developing what she called “a feeling for the organism.” She cultivated an intimate, almost empathic relationship with the corn plants she studied. She didn’t impose theories on her subjects. She listened to them until she could sense their hidden patterns from the inside. When you’re not lost in self-protection, you Cancerians excel at this quality of attention. Here’s what I see as your task in the coming weeks: Transfer your empathic genius away from people who drain you and toward projects, places, or problems that deserve your devotion and give you blessings in return.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Sufi writers describe heartbreak, grief, and longing as portals through which divine love enters. They say that a highly defended ego and a hardened heart can’t engage with such profound and potent love. In this view, suffering that makes the heart ache strips away illusions and fixations, allowing greater receptivity, humility, and tenderness toward all beings.​ I’m not expecting you to get blasted by an influx of poignancy in the near future, Leo, but I’m very sure you have experienced such blasts in the past. And now is an excellent time to process those old breakthroughs disguised as breakdowns. You are likely to finally be able to harvest the full power they offered you.

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If you would like to support my work, please consider:

buying my Expanded Audio Horoscopes and Daily Horoscopes

and/or

becoming a paid subscriber to my Free Will Astrology Newsletter

and/or

donating at my Paypal site: paypal.com/paypalme/GiftsForRob

(contribute as Friends and Family)

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In traditional Balinese culture, Tri Hita Karana is a concept that means there are three causes of well-being: harmony with God, harmony with people, and harmony with nature. When one is out of balance, all suffer. I’m wondering if you would benefit from meditating on this theme now, Virgo. Have you been focused on one dimension at the expense of the others? Are you, perhaps, spiritually nourished but socially isolated? Or maybe you’re maintaining relationships but ignoring your body’s connection to the earth? Here’s your assignment: Do a Tri Hita Karana audit. Which harmony is most neglected? Add to your altar, call a friend, or go walk in the great outdoors—whichever one you’ve been shortchanging.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): You are a diplomat in the struggle between beauty and inelegance. Your aptitude for creating harmony is a great asset that others might underestimate or miss completely. I hope you will always trust your hunger for classiness even if others dismiss it as superficial. One of your key reasons for being here on earth is to keep insisting on loveliness in a world too quick to settle for ugliness. These qualities of yours are especially needed right now. Please be gracefully insistent on expressing them wherever you go.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The bad news: You underestimate how much joy and pleasure you deserve—and how much you’re capable of experiencing. This artificially low expectation has sometimes cheated you out of your rightful share of bliss and fulfillment. The good news: Life is now ready to conspire with you to raise your happiness levels. I hope you will cooperate eagerly. The more intensely you insist on feeling good, the more cosmic assistance you will garner. Here’s a smart way to launch this holy campaign: Renounce a certain lackluster thrill that diverts you from more lavish excitements.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In classical music, a “rest” isn’t the absence of music. It’s a specific notation that creates space, tension, and meaning. The silence is as much a part of the composition as the sound. I suggest you think of your current pause this way, Sagittarius. You’re not waiting for your real life to resume. You’re in a rest, and the rest is an essential part of the process you’re following. It’s creating the conditions for what comes next. So instead of anxiously filling every moment with productivity or distraction, try honoring the pause. Be deliberately quiet. Let the silence accumulate. When the next movement begins, you’ll understand exactly why the rest was necessary.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Interesting temptations are wandering into your orbit. You may be surprised to find yourself drawn toward entertaining gambles and tricky adventures. How should you respond? Should you say “Yes! Now! I’m ready!”? Or is open-minded caution a wiser approach? Conditions are too slippery for me to arrive at definitive conclusions. What I can tell you is this: Merely considering and ruminating on these invitations will awaken uplifting and inspiring lessons. PS: To get the fullness of the blessings you want from other people, you must first give them to yourself.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The engineer Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) said he envisioned his inventions in intricate detail before building them. He didn’t need literal prototypes because his mental pictures were so vivid. I suspect you Aquarians now have extra access to this power. What scenarios are you dreaming of? What are you incubating in your imagination? I urge you to boldly trust your thought experiments. Your mental prototypes may be unusually accurate. The visions you’re testing internally are reconnaissance missions to futures that you have the power to build. Regard your imagination as a laboratory.

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Image by Jane Ray at janeray.com

Words by leilamadeline at instagram.com/leilamadeline___/

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Dear Readers — Since I messed up my newsletter when I first sent it earlier today, I’m trying again with the new, improved version. Sorry for the duplication. I really like this newsletter and want it so shine clearly.

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Earthbound Intimacy

Intimate relationship is an artful game with shifting rules and surprise plot twists, so we lovers need to stay nimble, experimental, and awake. The alliance we begin is never the relationship we will have three years later, or five, or ten. We change. Our partners change. Life barges in with its unruly interventions—illness, career upheavals, creative awakenings, grief, unexpected joy.

The sexual electricity that once felt volcanic may dissipate, then flare again in new forms. The quirks we adored may become annoying, then somehow circle back into being endearing again through a mysterious emotional alchemy.

If we imagine love as a permanent monument instead of a living collaboration, we miss every cue life offers us to evolve. Lovers who thrive treat intimacy as improvisational theater: willing to depart from the script when reality demands it or fun suggests it.

They understand that constancy doesn’t require rigidity. They’re loyal to the shared project even while reinventing how the project works.

One of their core vows might be this: Tender fidelity to loving each other can coexist with radical flexibility about how love is expressed.

The unexpected twists aren’t interruptions of care and adoration. They are the raw material from which deeper connection is forged.

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Love enmeshes us in our partner’s unique set of karmic complications, so it’s best if we’re interested in their problems.

When we fall in love, we don’t just choose a companion for pleasure and companionship. We’re enlisting in their struggles, inheriting their demons, and signing up for the full blast of their psychological inheritance.

All of this becomes our concern: our beloved’s relationship with their narcissistic mother, their unresolved grief over a sibling’s death, their terror of financial instability, and their shame about past mistakes.

We don’t have to fix or heal everything our beloved struggles with, but we do need to find their inner world genuinely interesting. Relationships rarely survive if one partner becomes bored with the other’s wounds or impatient with their recurring fears. There’s no future in secretly wishing someone would just get over their issues and become easier.

Vibrant intimacy requires an almost anthropological curiosity about another person’s psyche. We really do need to cultivate the willingness to study their contradictions with fascination instead of fatigue. We explore the labyrinth of their being with the same devotion we bring to understanding ourselves.

This doesn’t mean codependent fusion. The sweet spot is a living blend of independence and interdependence: two sovereign beings choosing connection without erasing themselves.

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Love is a laboratory where we can uncover truths about ourselves that have been unavailable or hidden, so I suggest we all be ravenously curious.

Intimate love is one of the most powerful mirrors we can encounter. Many of us imagine self-knowledge happens primarily in solitude, like through therapy sessions, meditation cushions, journals, and vision quests. But relationship exposes aspects of us that remain invisible as long as we are solo.

Our partners trigger reactions that surprise and sometimes alarm us. They reveal contradictions between who we believe we are and how we behave under stress. They expose insecurities and old emotional bruises we thought had healed.

This can feel humiliating. It’s also precious data.

This can be excruciating, but it’s also precious data. Let’s say we approach these revelations with scientific curiosity rather than defensive shame. We say, “How interesting that I reacted this way” instead of “I’m a terrible person.” Then love becomes an ongoing research project into the mystery of our own being. The discomfort becomes material for growth rather than evidence of failure.

Our partner isn’t always right in their perceptions, but they often see truths about us that we can’t easily see ourselves. Two nervous systems interacting over time develop a strange accuracy about each other.

Relationship, at its best, is a collaborative laboratory for self-knowledge.

Love is never a perfect match of totally compatible saints, so I urge us all not to let sterile fantasies seduce us away from flawed but invigorating realities.

One of the most corrosive fantasies is the myth of the perfect partner. This is the delusional fantasy that our soulmate intuitively understands us, shares all our priorities, and fits our personality with geometric precision.

But this perfect partner exists mostly in three places: romantic comedies, projection fantasies, and the first few months of infatuation.

Real love is messier and more interesting. It flourishes in the fertile soil of partial incompatibility, periodic misunderstanding, and mutual imperfection. Our partner will have blind spots, annoying habits, emotional limitations, and baffling enthusiasms. So will we.

This friction isn’t an unfortunate side effect. It’s a generative force.

Total compatibility would produce stagnation, right? Growth requires difference. We’ve got to abide in places where we must stretch, negotiate, adapt, and learn.

The goal isn’t to find someone who never challenges us. It’s to connect with a lively ally whose particular form of imperfection we find intriguing enough to explore for a long time. The friction between us generates energy rather than erosion.

The flawed reality, with all its awkwardness and difficulty, is more fertile than any sterile fantasy.

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Love thrives when neither partner takes things personally, so it’s wise to cultivate a devotion to forgiveness and divest ourselves of the urge to blame.

Another hard-won skill in long-term love is learning not to take everything personally.

Our beloved’s withdrawal or testiness is often less about us than about old wounds echoing through the present. They are reacting to ghosts we didn’t create and battles that began long before we arrived. Of course we still feel hurt, but we gain freedom when we remember that we, too, bring our own emotional weather systems into the relationship.

Blame is the lazy lover’s refuge. It substitutes accusation for curiosity.

Forgiveness, by contrast, isn’t weakness or martyrdom. It’s an ongoing commitment to seeing beneath temporary defensiveness to the vulnerable being underneath. It allows love to keep breathing instead of calcifying into resentment.

Compassion doesn’t mean tolerating cruelty or chronic disrespect. Accountability still matters. But when blame dominates the emotional climate, intimacy suffocates.

Art by Shelby McQuilkin

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Love isn’t a low-maintenance machine you install once and forget. It’s a living ecosystem. It needs tending: attention, repair, pruning, reinvention, patience. Some seasons overflow with sweetness, while others feel barren or strained. Periodic effort isn’t a sign something is wrong. It’s the price of admission to a shared life that stays vital.

The work may include uncomfortable conversations, apologies, renegotiations, small gestures of care, experiments in new habits, and the willingness to reconnect after drifting apart. Long-term intimacy is less like fireworks and more like gardening, except the plants occasionally argue with you and accuse you of not listening.

The alternative is autopilot: a relationship that slowly withers from neglect or explodes when unattended wounds finally demand attention.

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Love isn’t a wholly-owned subsidiary of corporate America, so I suggest that we not let our romantic story be infected by the entertainment industry’s simplistic, sentimental myths: in which love conquers all obstacles effortlessly, passion remains permanently intense, and conflict signals incompatibility.

These narratives colonize our imagination so deeply that real relationships can feel disappointing by comparison—not because they’re failing, but because we are measuring them against illusions.

Authentic love is stranger, slower, more inconvenient, and ultimately more rewarding than any fantasy. It includes moments when we would rather be anywhere else. It also includes shared history and the subtle miracle of being known over time.

To love well, we have to decolonize our imagination. It’s hard but not at all impossible to shed the sugary myths we inherited and learn to recognize the wilder reality of two imperfect humans choosing each other again and again.

EARTHBOUND LOVE POEM #1

Dear Love Awakener —

I want to be your cackling, dizzy-dazzling, rambling-free groupie. Want to be mine?

We can be in foolishly cool drooling yet elegant solid-gold devotion to each other’s mighty love mojo.

We can play off our mutual primordial respect for each other to help us shed any fearful glitches that might still be tainting our bags of tricks. We can arouse each other to be braver and braver about reinventing the unhealed world with endless uprisings of our liberated imaginations.

We can casually drop hints by the side of the road and in the pit of the abyss and at the hub of the marketplace—hints that yes, our soul flesh is always gung-ho with blasphemous reverence and taboo justice and unauthorized kindness and insurrectionary beauty—and see if anyone wants to join us in waging our orgies of illegal truth.

We can offer to dance those lucky co-conspirators along with us through our blooming subversions until they, too, generate sublime convulsions and sacred transgressions for the good of all sentient and non-sentient beings.

And since you and I transcend the big bad NEVER AND ALWAYS as we ramp up tsunamis of mutual respect and veneration for each other, and since we worshipfully adore each other like cumulus clouds love the dusky sky on the summer solstice, I must add the disclaimer that we can also give each other license to now and then be boring, unspectacular, even nervous or hiding around each other. Amen, and afemme. We can handle the spooky, cornucopian variety.

I never blush, and yet as I disclose this communiqué, I’m feeling the newborn flush of the fresh sun radiating from my amazing maze of a face. My outlaw infatuation with your grinning insurrections riles up the rowdy wisdom of my heavenly body.

Don’t change anything you’re doing! Keep dispersing those tender whomps and wallops that make me so freakily friendly and fertile. What I mean is, keep changing everything you’re doing in the exact way that your ever-rising libido enchantments whisper you should keep changing everything you’re doing.

In other words, to please me, don’t try to please me. Simply be your out-of-this-world, down-to-earth soul-kissing self, flagrantly igniting the raucous flows of fluidic mutant sparks that sanctify you so abundantly with the quickening of the Rebel Divine.

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For more tips and inspirations about earthbound intimacy, go here: tinyurl.com/LoveInspirations

For Elationship Love Spells, go here: tinyurl.com/ElationshipLoveSpells

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of February 19

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Big bright transitions are at hand: from thrashing around in the educational mire to celebrating your sweet escape; from wrangling with shadows and ghosts to greeting new allies; from messing around with interesting but confounding chaos to seizing fresh opportunities to shine and thrive. Hallelujah! What explains this exhilarating shift? The Season of Dazzling Self-Adoration is dawning for you Pisceans. In the weeks ahead, you will be inspired to embark on bold experiments in loving yourself with extra fervor and ingenuity.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Saturn has entered Aries. I see this landmark shift as being potentially very good news for you. Between now and April 2028, you will have enhanced powers to channel your restless heart in constructive directions. I predict you will narrow down your multiple interests and devote yourself to a few resonant paths rather than scattering your intense energy. More than ever before, you can summon the determination to follow through on what you initiate. My Saturn-in-Aries prayer: May you be bold, even brazen, in identifying where you truly belong, and never settle for a half‑certain fit.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I am issuing a Wow Advisory. Consider this your high-voltage wonder alert. Your future may offer you thrilling quests and epic exploits that could be unnerving to people who want you to remain the same as you have been. You will have a knack for stirring up liberating encounters with lavish pleasures and rich feelings that transform your brain chemistry. The rousing mysteries you attract into your sphere may send provocative ripples through your own imagination as well as your web of allies. Expect juicy plot twists. Be alert for portals opening in the middle of nowhere.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, you find anatomical drawings next to flying machine designs, mathematical calculations alongside water flow observations, and philosophical musings interrupted by grocery lists. He moved from painting to engineering to scientific observation as curiosity led him. Let’s make him your inspirational role model for now, Gemini. Disobey categories! Merge categories! Mix and match categories! Let’s assume that your eager mind will create expanded knowledge networks that prove valuable in unexpected ways. Let’s hypothesize that your cheerful rebellion against conventional ways of organizing reality will spawn energizing innovations in your beautiful, mysterious life.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In falconry, there’s a practice called “weathering.” It involves regularly exposing trained birds to the wild elements so they don’t become too domesticated and lose their wildness. The falconer needs a partner, not a pet. Does that theme resonate, Cancerian? Is it possible that you have been too sheltered lately? Either by your own caution or by well-meaning people who think they’re protecting you? Let’s make sure you stay in touch with the fervent, untamed sides of your nature. How? You could expose yourself to an experience that scares you a little. Take a fun risk you’ve been rationalizing away. Invite touches of rowdiness into your life.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The loudest noise in history? It was the 1883 volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia, heard thousands of miles away. The pressure wave circled the Earth multiple times. I am predicting a benevolent version of a Krakatoa event for you in the coming months. Not literal loudness, but a shiny bright expression of such magnitude that it redefines your world and what people thought was possible from you. Can you be prepared for it? A little. You’ll be wise to cultivate visionary equanimity: a calm willingness to stay focused on the big picture. I predict your big boom will be challenging but ultimately magnificent and empowering.

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If you would like to support my work, please consider:

buying my Expanded Audio Horoscopes and Daily Horoscopes

and/or

becoming a paid subscriber to my Free Will Astrology Newsletter

and/or

donating at my Paypal site: paypal.com/paypalme/GiftsForRob

(contribute as Friends and Family)

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Buddhism teaches about “near enemies”: qualities that may appear to be virtues but aren’t. For example, pity masquerades as compassion. Clingy attachment pretends to be love. Apathy and indifference pose as equanimity. In the coming weeks, Virgo, I hope you won’t get distracted by near enemies. Your assignment: Investigate whether any of your supposed virtues are actually near enemies. After you’ve done that, find out if any of your so-called negative emotions might harbor interesting powers you could tap into.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Many intelligent people think astrology is dangerous nonsense perpetrated by quacks. For any horoscope writer with an ego, this affront tends to be deflating. Like everyone else, we want to be appreciated. On the other hand, I have found that practicing an art that gets so much disdain has been mostly liberating. It’s impossible for me to get bloated with excess pride. I practice astrology for the joy it affords me, not to garner recognition. So in a backhanded way, a seemingly disheartening drawback serves as an energizing boon. My prediction is that you, Libra, will soon harvest an analogous turnabout. You will draw strength, even inspiration, from what may ostensibly appear to be a liability.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Mycologist Paul Stamets claims mushrooms taught him to think in networks rather than hierarchies. He sees how everything feeds everything else through vast webs of underground filaments. This is Scorpio wisdom at its most scintillating: homing in on the hidden circuitry working below the surface; gauging the way nourishment is distributed incrementally through many collaborative interconnections; seeing the synergy between seemingly separate sources. I hope you will accentuate this mode of understanding in the coming weeks. The key to your soulful success and happiness will be in how well you map the mycelial-like networks, both in the world around you and in your inner depths. PS: For extra credit, study the invisible threads that link your obsessions to each other, your wounds to your gifts, and your rage to your tenderness.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The peregrine falcon dives at speeds exceeding 240 miles per hour, making it the fastest animal on Earth. But before the dive, there’s often a period of circling, scanning, and waiting. The spectacular descent is set up by the patient reconnaissance that precedes it. I believe you’re now in a phase similar to the falcon’s preparatory reconnaissance, Sagittarius. The quality of your eventual plunge will depend on how well you’re tracking your target now. Use this time to gather intelligence, not to second-guess your readiness. You’ll know when your aim is true.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): There’s a certain miracle you could really use right now, Capricorn. But to attract it into your life would require a subtle and simple shift. In a related development, the revelation you need most is concealed in plain sight. To get these two goodies into your life, you shouldn’t make the error of seeking them in exotic locales. Ordinary events in the daily routine will bring you what you need: the miracle and the revelation that will change everything for the better.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Over the last 4,000 years, a host of things have been used as money in addition to precious metals and paper currency. Among them have been cows, seashells, cheese, tobacco, velvet, tulips, elephant tusks, and huge stone wheels. I hope this poetic fact will inspire your imagination about financial matters. In the coming weeks, I expect you’ll be extra creative in drumming up new approaches to getting the cash you need. Here are questions to guide you. Which of your underused talents might be ready to boost your income? What undervalued gifts could you be more aggressive about giving? What neglected treasures or underutilized assets could you use to generate money?

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So sorry I omitted the horoscopes for Sagittarius, Capricorn, and Aquarius from today’s newsletter. Here they are.
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SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The peregrine falcon dives at speeds exceeding 240 miles per hour, making it the fastest animal on Earth. But before the dive, there’s often a period of circling, scanning, and waiting. The spectacular descent is set up by the patient reconnaissance that precedes it. I believe you’re now in a phase similar to the falcon’s preparatory reconnaissance, Sagittarius. The quality of your eventual plunge will depend on how well you’re tracking your target now. Use this time to gather intelligence, not to second-guess your readiness. You’ll know when your aim is true.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): There’s a certain miracle you could really use right now, Capricorn. But to attract it into your life would require a subtle and simple shift. In a related development, the revelation you need most is concealed in plain sight. To get these two goodies into your life, you shouldn’t make the error of seeking them in exotic locales. Ordinary events in the daily routine will bring you what you need: the miracle and the revelation that will change everything for the better.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Over the last 4,000 years, a host of things have been used as money in addition to precious metals and paper currency. Among them have been cows, seashells, cheese, tobacco, velvet, tulips, elephant tusks, and huge stone wheels. I hope this poetic fact will inspire your imagination about financial matters. In the coming weeks, I expect you’ll be extra creative in drumming up new approaches to getting the cash you need. Here are questions to guide you. Which of your underused talents might be ready to boost your income? What undervalued gifts could you be more aggressive about giving? What neglected treasures or underutilized assets could you use to generate money?

Earthbound Intimacy

Intimate relationship is an artful game with shifting rules and surprise plot twists, so we lovers need to stay nimble, experimental, and awake. The alliance we begin is never the relationship we will have three years later, or five, or ten. We change. Our partners change. Life barges in with its unruly interventions—illness, career upheavals, creative awakenings, grief, unexpected joy.

The sexual electricity that once felt volcanic may dissipate, then flare again in new forms. The quirks we adored may become annoying, then somehow circle back into being endearing again through a mysterious emotional alchemy.

If we imagine love as a permanent monument instead of a living collaboration, we miss every cue life offers us to evolve. Lovers who thrive treat intimacy as improvisational theater: willing to depart from the script when reality demands it or fun suggests it.

They understand that constancy doesn’t require rigidity. They’re loyal to the shared project even while reinventing how the project works.

One of their core vows might be this: Tender fidelity to loving each other can coexist with radical flexibility about how love is expressed.

The unexpected twists aren’t interruptions of care and adoration. They are the raw material from which deeper connection is forged.

+

Love enmeshes us in our partner’s unique set of karmic complications, so it’s best if we’re interested in their problems.

When we fall in love, we don’t just choose a companion for pleasure and companionship. We’re enlisting in their struggles, inheriting their demons, and signing up for the full blast of their psychological inheritance.

All of this becomes our concern: our beloved’s relationship with their narcissistic mother, their unresolved grief over a sibling’s death, their terror of financial instability, and their shame about past mistakes.

We don’t have to fix or heal everything our beloved struggles with, but we do need to find their inner world genuinely interesting. Relationships rarely survive if one partner becomes bored with the other’s wounds or impatient with their recurring fears. There’s no future in secretly wishing someone would just get over their issues and become easier.

Vibrant intimacy requires an almost anthropological curiosity about another person’s psyche. We really do need to cultivate the willingness to study their contradictions with fascination instead of fatigue. We explore the labyrinth of their being with the same devotion we bring to understanding ourselves.

This doesn’t mean codependent fusion. The sweet spot is a living blend of independence and interdependence: two sovereign beings choosing connection without erasing themselves.

+

Love is a laboratory where we can uncover truths about ourselves that have been unavailable or hidden, so I suggest we all be ravenously curious.

Intimate love is one of the most powerful mirrors we can encounter. Many of us imagine self-knowledge happens primarily in solitude, like through therapy sessions, meditation cushions, journals, and vision quests. But relationship exposes aspects of us that remain invisible as long as we are solo.

Our partners trigger reactions that surprise and sometimes alarm us. They reveal contradictions between who we believe we are and how we behave under stress. They expose insecurities and old emotional bruises we thought had healed.

This can feel humiliating. It’s also precious data.

This can be excruciating, but it’s also precious data. Let’s say we approach these revelations with scientific curiosity rather than defensive shame. We say, “How interesting that I reacted this way” instead of “I’m a terrible person.” Then love becomes an ongoing research project into the mystery of our own being. The discomfort becomes material for growth rather than evidence of failure.

Our partner isn’t always right in their perceptions, but they often see truths about us that we can’t easily see ourselves. Two nervous systems interacting over time develop a strange accuracy about each other.

Relationship, at its best, is a collaborative laboratory for self-knowledge.

Love is never a perfect match of totally compatible saints, so I urge us all not to let sterile fantasies seduce us away from flawed but invigorating realities.

One of the most corrosive fantasies is the myth of the perfect partner. This is the delusional fantasy that our soulmate intuitively understands us, shares all our priorities, and fits our personality with geometric precision.

But this perfect partner exists mostly in three places: romantic comedies, projection fantasies, and the first few months of infatuation.

Real love is messier and more interesting. It flourishes in the fertile soil of partial incompatibility, periodic misunderstanding, and mutual imperfection. Our partner will have blind spots, annoying habits, emotional limitations, and baffling enthusiasms. So will we.

This friction isn’t an unfortunate side effect. It’s a generative force.

Total compatibility would produce stagnation, right? Growth requires difference. We’ve got to abide in places where we must stretch, negotiate, adapt, and learn.

The goal isn’t to find someone who never challenges us. It’s to connect with a lively ally whose particular form of imperfection we find intriguing enough to explore for a long time. The friction between us generates energy rather than erosion.

The flawed reality, with all its awkwardness and difficulty, is more fertile than any sterile fantasy.

+

Love thrives when neither partner takes things personally, so it’s wise to cultivate a devotion to forgiveness and divest ourselves of the urge to blame.

Another hard-won skill in long-term love is learning not to take everything personally.

Our beloved’s withdrawal or testiness is often less about us than about old wounds echoing through the present. They are reacting to ghosts we didn’t create and battles that began long before we arrived. Of course we still feel hurt, but we gain freedom when we remember that we, too, bring our own emotional weather systems into the relationship.

Blame is the lazy lover’s refuge. It substitutes accusation for curiosity.

Forgiveness, by contrast, isn’t weakness or martyrdom. It’s an ongoing commitment to seeing beneath temporary defensiveness to the vulnerable being underneath. It allows love to keep breathing instead of calcifying into resentment.

Compassion doesn’t mean tolerating cruelty or chronic disrespect. Accountability still matters. But when blame dominates the emotional climate, intimacy suffocates.

Art by Shelby McQuilkin

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Love isn’t a low-maintenance machine you install once and forget. It’s a living ecosystem. It needs tending: attention, repair, pruning, reinvention, patience. Some seasons overflow with sweetness, while others feel barren or strained. Periodic effort isn’t a sign something is wrong. It’s the price of admission to a shared life that stays vital.

The work may include uncomfortable conversations, apologies, renegotiations, small gestures of care, experiments in new habits, and the willingness to reconnect after drifting apart. Long-term intimacy is less like fireworks and more like gardening, except the plants occasionally argue with you and accuse you of not listening.

The alternative is autopilot: a relationship that slowly withers from neglect or explodes when unattended wounds finally demand attention.

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Love isn’t a wholly-owned subsidiary of corporate America, so I suggest that we not let our romantic story be infected by the entertainment industry’s simplistic, sentimental myths: in which love conquers all obstacles effortlessly, passion remains permanently intense, and conflict signals incompatibility.

These narratives colonize our imagination so deeply that real relationships can feel disappointing by comparison—not because they’re failing, but because we are measuring them against illusions.

Authentic love is stranger, slower, more inconvenient, and ultimately more rewarding than any fantasy. It includes moments when we would rather be anywhere else. It also includes shared history and the subtle miracle of being known over time.

To love well, we have to decolonize our imagination. It’s hard but not at all impossible to shed the sugary myths we inherited and learn to recognize the wilder reality of two imperfect humans choosing each other again and again.

EARTHBOUND LOVE POEM #1

Dear Love Awakener —

I want to be your cackling, dizzy-dazzling, rambling-free groupie. Want to be mine?

We can be in foolishly cool drooling yet elegant solid-gold devotion to each other’s mighty love mojo.

We can play off our mutual primordial respect for each other to help us shed any fearful glitches that might still be tainting our bags of tricks. We can arouse each other to be braver and braver about reinventing the unhealed world with endless uprisings of our liberated imaginations.

We can casually drop hints by the side of the road and in the pit of the abyss and at the hub of the marketplace—hints that yes, our soul flesh is always gung-ho with blasphemous reverence and taboo justice and unauthorized kindness and insurrectionary beauty—and see if anyone wants to join us in waging our orgies of illegal truth.

We can offer to dance those lucky co-conspirators along with us through our blooming subversions until they, too, generate sublime convulsions and sacred transgressions for the good of all sentient and non-sentient beings.

And since you and I transcend the big bad NEVER AND ALWAYS as we ramp up tsunamis of mutual respect and veneration for each other, and since we worshipfully adore each other like cumulus clouds love the dusky sky on the summer solstice, I must add the disclaimer that we can also give each other license to now and then be boring, unspectacular, even nervous or hiding around each other. Amen, and afemme. We can handle the spooky, cornucopian variety.

I never blush, and yet as I disclose this communiqué, I’m feeling the newborn flush of the fresh sun radiating from my amazing maze of a face. My outlaw infatuation with your grinning insurrections riles up the rowdy wisdom of my heavenly body.

Don’t change anything you’re doing! Keep dispersing those tender whomps and wallops that make me so freakily friendly and fertile. What I mean is, keep changing everything you’re doing in the exact way that your ever-rising libido enchantments whisper you should keep changing everything you’re doing.

In other words, to please me, don’t try to please me. Simply be your out-of-this-world, down-to-earth soul-kissing self, flagrantly igniting the raucous flows of fluidic mutant sparks that sanctify you so abundantly with the quickening of the Rebel Divine.

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For more tips and inspirations about earthbound intimacy, go here: tinyurl.com/LoveInspirations

For Elationship Love Spells, go here: tinyurl.com/ElationshipLoveSpells

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I’ve published three main books, with lots more to come.

Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: tinyurl.com/PronoiaBookshop

Astrology Is Real: tinyurl.com/BookshopAstrologyIsReal

The Televisionary Oracle: tinyurl.com/BookshopTelevisionaryOracle

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of February 19

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Big bright transitions are at hand: from thrashing around in the educational mire to celebrating your sweet escape; from wrangling with shadows and ghosts to greeting new allies; from messing around with interesting but confounding chaos to seizing fresh opportunities to shine and thrive. Hallelujah! What explains this exhilarating shift? The Season of Dazzling Self-Adoration is dawning for you Pisceans. In the weeks ahead, you will be inspired to embark on bold experiments in loving yourself with extra fervor and ingenuity.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Saturn has entered Aries. I see this landmark shift as being potentially very good news for you. Between now and April 2028, you will have enhanced powers to channel your restless heart in constructive directions. I predict you will narrow down your multiple interests and devote yourself to a few resonant paths rather than scattering your intense energy. More than ever before, you can summon the determination to follow through on what you initiate. My Saturn-in-Aries prayer: May you be bold, even brazen, in identifying where you truly belong, and never settle for a half‑certain fit.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I am issuing a Wow Advisory. Consider this your high-voltage wonder alert. Your future may offer you thrilling quests and epic exploits that could be unnerving to people who want you to remain the same as you have been. You will have a knack for stirring up liberating encounters with lavish pleasures and rich feelings that transform your brain chemistry. The rousing mysteries you attract into your sphere may send provocative ripples through your own imagination as well as your web of allies. Expect juicy plot twists. Be alert for portals opening in the middle of nowhere.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, you find anatomical drawings next to flying machine designs, mathematical calculations alongside water flow observations, and philosophical musings interrupted by grocery lists. He moved from painting to engineering to scientific observation as curiosity led him. Let’s make him your inspirational role model for now, Gemini. Disobey categories! Merge categories! Mix and match categories! Let’s assume that your eager mind will create expanded knowledge networks that prove valuable in unexpected ways. Let’s hypothesize that your cheerful rebellion against conventional ways of organizing reality will spawn energizing innovations in your beautiful, mysterious life.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In falconry, there’s a practice called “weathering.” It involves regularly exposing trained birds to the wild elements so they don’t become too domesticated and lose their wildness. The falconer needs a partner, not a pet. Does that theme resonate, Cancerian? Is it possible that you have been too sheltered lately? Either by your own caution or by well-meaning people who think they’re protecting you? Let’s make sure you stay in touch with the fervent, untamed sides of your nature. How? You could expose yourself to an experience that scares you a little. Take a fun risk you’ve been rationalizing away. Invite touches of rowdiness into your life.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The loudest noise in history? It was the 1883 volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia, heard thousands of miles away. The pressure wave circled the Earth multiple times. I am predicting a benevolent version of a Krakatoa event for you in the coming months. Not literal loudness, but a shiny bright expression of such magnitude that it redefines your world and what people thought was possible from you. Can you be prepared for it? A little. You’ll be wise to cultivate visionary equanimity: a calm willingness to stay focused on the big picture. I predict your big boom will be challenging but ultimately magnificent and empowering.

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If you would like to support my work, please consider:

buying my Expanded Audio Horoscopes and Daily Horoscopes

and/or

becoming a paid subscriber to my Free Will Astrology Newsletter

and/or

donating at my Paypal site: paypal.com/paypalme/GiftsForRob

(contribute as Friends and Family)

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VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Buddhism teaches about “near enemies”: qualities that may appear to be virtues but aren’t. For example, pity masquerades as compassion. Clingy attachment pretends to be love. Apathy and indifference pose as equanimity. In the coming weeks, Virgo, I hope you won’t get distracted by near enemies. Your assignment: Investigate whether any of your supposed virtues are actually near enemies. After you’ve done that, find out if any of your so-called negative emotions might harbor interesting powers you could tap into.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Many intelligent people think astrology is dangerous nonsense perpetrated by quacks. For any horoscope writer with an ego, this affront tends to be deflating. Like everyone else, we want to be appreciated. On the other hand, I have found that practicing an art that gets so much disdain has been mostly liberating. It’s impossible for me to get bloated with excess pride. I practice astrology for the joy it affords me, not to garner recognition. So in a backhanded way, a seemingly disheartening drawback serves as an energizing boon. My prediction is that you, Libra, will soon harvest an analogous turnabout. You will draw strength, even inspiration, from what may ostensibly appear to be a liability.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Mycologist Paul Stamets claims mushrooms taught him to think in networks rather than hierarchies. He sees how everything feeds everything else through vast webs of underground filaments. This is Scorpio wisdom at its most scintillating: homing in on the hidden circuitry working below the surface; gauging the way nourishment is distributed incrementally through many collaborative interconnections; seeing the synergy between seemingly separate sources. I hope you will accentuate this mode of understanding in the coming weeks. The key to your soulful success and happiness will be in how well you map the mycelial-like networks, both in the world around you and in your inner depths. PS: For extra credit, study the invisible threads that link your obsessions to each other, your wounds to your gifts, and your rage to your tenderness.

Art by Indigenous Australian artist Wingu Tingima

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In Praise of the Gorgeous Turmoil

To be alive on Earth is to inhabit a poignant, astonishing, confounding paradox.

The same world that breaks our heart with injustice also staggers us with beauty. The body that will betray us with pain, age, and illness is also the instrument of every pleasure and embrace.

We are trapped in time and blessed with consciousness. This cursed exaltation is simultaneously the cruelest joke and the most extravagant gift.

One of my ways of managing the impossibly wondrous enigma is to conjure up names for it. I stitch together poetic and wayward strings of words like prayer beads, fashioning phrases that acknowledge both the outlandish burden and the exquisite privilege of incarnation.

There’s magic in the naming. When I call this realm of ours “The Breathing Bleeding Beautiful Mess” or “The Glorious Carnage of Conscious Aliveness,” I’m not trying to solve the riddle or keep it at a distance. I’m welcoming and exulting in the home we all share.

The designations I offer below are love letters: The Sacred Welter of Resplendent Turmoil; The Blessed Turbulence of Confounding Splendor; The Resplendent Confusion of Marvelous Mayhem; The Shimmering Shambles of Magic Mayhem.

Each phrase is a burst of recognition that being mortal, blissful, vulnerable, grateful, confused, heartbroken, and astounded isn’t a problem to be fixed but a condition to be celebrated with gleeful, resilient ingenuity.

When we name the exalted havoc, we claim it. We say yes to the sacred jumble of beauty and bewilderment. We exult in the absurdly awesome tangle of grief and rapture. We welcome every spectacular, terrible, miraculous minute of the glittering disarray we call home.

This is fierce consecration: treating our luminous agonies and delightful ordeals not as afflictions to transcend but as prodigious treasures to be squeezed for every drop of meaning, pleasure, connection, and reverent revelry they contain.

So here’s my toast to the magnificent struggle of mortal radiance. Here’s to naming it, claiming it, and diving deeper into the wild heartbeat of the lyrical tumult with determination, humor, and unreasonable hope.

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I encourage you to send me some of your own Paradox Blessings. Below are some of mine.

The Sacred Welter of Resplendent Turmoil

The Blessed Turbulence of Confounding Splendor

The Gorgeous Confusion of Marvelous Mayhem

The Shimmering Mess of Magic Bedlam

The Wild Tenderness of Everyday Pandemonium

The Joyous Torment Blooming Everywhere

The Glittering Snarl of Jumbled Jubilation

The Ecstatic Tumult of Convulsive Aliveness

The Bewildering Miracle of Broken Perfection

The Holy Confusion of Exquisite Torment

The Luminous Agony of Wondrous Embodiment

The Fevered Grace of the Glittering Shambles

The Magnificently Unbearable Blast of Sublime Chaos

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Addendum: In Praise of the Sublime, Stupendous Privilege

To be a human being is a great privilege and honor. It’s not a burden to be escaped or denigrated, but a treasure to be cherished and used with maximum glee and relish.

Poet John Keats called this startling place we live in “the vale of soul-making.” It’s a forge, a classroom, a crucible, a sometimes-brutal apprenticeship in becoming more awake and more real.

It’s also a playground, a banquet, and a wild improvisational theater where consciousness gets to experiment with trillions of textures and moods.

To be here at all is an astonishing blessing, even on the days when it hurts: to be entrusted with a body that carries out routine miracles every minute of every day; to wield the improbable magic of consciousness; to ramble through our mysterious destiny packed with epic storylines; and to never cease marveling as we meander through WHAT THE HELL IS THIS GLORIOUS EPIC UPROAR?

We weren’t summoned into a spa. We were invited into a raucous, demanding, unpredictable ArtRitualGame that in my view is the most fantastic gift available in this or any universe.

And since we’re participants, not spectators, the proper response to such a staggering privilege is to reciprocate: to offer beauty back to the swirling, throbbing masterpiece, to tilt our hearts toward praise and celebration even as we mend, grieve, joke, and stumble.

Every breath is an act of collaboration with the universe’s dreaming; every kindness is a way of keeping the world’s vast conversation vibrant. We are apprentices in creation, trading astonishment with trees and tides and the invisible intelligences that sculpt time.

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Art: Jaime Ibarra

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FOLLOW YOUR BLISS . . . AND FOLLOW YOUR BLISTERS, TOO

When I was a young starving artist, I heeded the counsel of mythologist Joseph Campbell, who advised seekers like me to “to follow your bliss.”

He implied that if we find out what we love to do and devote ourselves to that captivating assignment with zeal and imagination, we will ultimately live our best life possible.

In his later years, Campbell worried that too many people had misinterpreted “follow your bliss” to mean “do what comes easily.” That’s all wrong, he said. Anything worth doing takes work and struggle. He added, “Maybe I should have said ‘follow your blisters.’”

There was another misunderstanding that plagued Campbell’s wisdom. Many people mistakenly believed he had said, “Follow your bliss and the money will eventually come.”

But he never said that. Yes, he suggested that helpers and opportunities would most likely appear as we pursue the dreams that give us joy and meaning. But he never implied riches would flow our way.

Luckily for me, I was following my blisters as well as my bliss right from the beginning. I was disciplined, persistent, and indefatigable in my dedication to learning how best to express my creativity.

Also luckily, I wasn’t under the illusion that following where the muses led me would necessarily earn me a decent living. I was prepared to live in poverty if that was the price for my dogged fervor.

And I did live in poverty for over 18 years. Though that was an ordeal, the far more important fact was that I was always in love with the world. My adoration for the life I was given never wavered.

And then came a surprising, almost miraculous breakthrough phase when my astrology column began to garner wide syndication. I could hardly believe that so much grace flowed my way, though I had strenuously paved the way for it.

Since then, I’ve never gotten rich, but I’ve earned enough money to have a family and raise a daughter. These days, I drive my 18-year-old 2008 Honda Element, live in a rental house as I always have, and rarely buy new clothes. But I’m ecstatic that I have enough revenue to hire the artists and editors who have helped me edit and design the eleven books I’ve been working on and plan to self-publish during the next 18 months.

I love writing the “Free Will Astrology” column and hope to continue to do so for many years. It’s an ever-fresh inspiration for me, constantly challenging in all the best ways, and a joy to share with so many readers who appreciate it.

It’s also the main way I earn a living.

All this is my way of saying I was wildly gratified that many of you newsletter readers responded to my plea in last week’s edition to become paid subscribers. Thank you!

If you’d like to review that previous newsletter, it’s here: tinyurl.com/HealingReadiness

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Art by Evan Ingersoll and Gael McGill

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Check out my YouTube channel: youtube.com/@BeautyAndTruthLab

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

Week of February 12

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Poet Mary Oliver asked her readers, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” This Valentine season, I propose a collaborative version of this prod: Ask those you care for to help you answer Oliver’s question, and offer to help them answer it for themselves. Now is an excellent time to act on the truth that vibrant intimacy involves the two of you inspiring each other to fulfill your highest callings. Do whatever it takes to make both of you braver and bolder as you learn more about who you are meant to be.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Can you care for stressed people without making it your duty to rescue them? Can you offer support without being taken advantage of? I hope so, Pisces. Life is inviting you to be more skilled about expressing your love without compromising your own interests. How? First, offer affection without signing up for endless service. Second, don’t let your empathy blur into entanglement. Third, monitor your urge to care so it doesn’t weaken your sovereignty. Your gift for soothing others’ struggles evokes my deep respect, but it’s most effective when it’s subtle and relaxed. Give people room to carry out their own necessary work.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them,” wrote Ernest Hemingway. This Valentine season, I propose you experiment with his approach. Take a smart risk with people who have shown glimmers of reliability but whom you haven’t fully welcomed. Don’t indulge in reckless credulity, just courageous and discerning openness. Be vulnerable enough to discover what further connection might bloom if you lead with faith rather than suspicion. Your willingness to believe in someone’s better nature may help bring it forth.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Taurus singer Barbra Streisand addressed her legendary perfectionism. She said that truly interesting intimacy became available for her only after she showed her dear allies her full array of selves, not just her shiny, polished side. In alignment with astrological omens, I encourage you to experiment with the daring art of unfinished revelation. Let the people you care for witness you in the midst of becoming. Share your uncertainties, your half-formed thoughts, and your works in progress. Surprise! Your flaws may prove as endearing as your achievements.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Author Anaïs Nin wrote, “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” I believe this understanding of camaraderie should be at the heart of most Geminis’ destinies. It’s your birthright and your potential superpower to seek connections with people who inspire you to think thoughts and feel feelings you would never summon by yourself. You have an uncanny knack for finding allies and colleagues who help you unveil and express more of your total self. Now is a good time to tap further into these blessings.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Poet David Whyte said that “heartbreak is unpreventable.” It’s “the natural outcome of caring for people and things over which we have no control.” But here’s the redemptive twist: Your capacity to feel heartbreak proves you have loved well. Your shaky aches are emblems of your courageous readiness to risk closeness and be deeply affected. So let’s celebrate your tender heart not despite its vulnerability but because of it. You should brandish your sensitivity as a superpower.

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If you would like to support my work, please consider:

buying my Expanded Audio Horoscopes and Daily Horoscopes

and/or

becoming a paid subscriber to my Free Will Astrology Newsletter

and/or

donating at my Paypal site: paypal.com/paypalme/GiftsForRob

(contribute as Friends and Family)

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LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Choreographer Twyla Tharp said she fell in love with her husband partly because “he was the only person who didn’t seem impressed by me.” I will extrapolate from that to draw this conclusion: Our most valuable allies might show their most rigorous respect by seeing us clearly. This Valentine season, Leo, I invite you to test the hypothesis that being thoroughly known and understood is more crucial than being regularly praised and flattered. Enrich your connections with the perceptive souls who love you not for your highlight reel but for your raw, genuine self.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): The famously kind and caring author Anne Lamott confessed, “I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.” That’s a liberating insight. She revealed that even kind, caring people like her harbor messy internal chaos. This Valentine season, Virgo, I dare you to share a few of your less-than-noble thoughts with soulful characters whom you trust will love you no matter what. Let them see that your goodness coexists with your salty imperfections. Maybe you could even playfully highlight the rough and rugged parts of you for their entertainment value. What’s the goal? To deepen spirited togetherness.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): How do we eagerly and daringly merge our fortunes with another person while maintaining our sovereign selfhood? How do we cultivate interesting togetherness without suppressing or diluting our idiosyncratic beauty? In some respects, this is a heroic experiment that seems almost impossible. In other respects, it’s the best work on the planet for anyone who’s brave enough to attempt it. Luckily for you Libras, this is potentially one of your superpowers. And now is an excellent time to take your efforts to the next level of heartful grittiness.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Here’s a quote by the character Carrie Bradshaw from the TV show Sex and the City: “The most exciting, challenging, and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you can find someone to love the you that you love, that’s fabulous.” I invite you to make this a prime meditation, Scorpio. To begin, get extra inspired by your own mysterious beauty: captivated by your own depths, fascinated by your mysterious contradictions, and delighted by your urge for continual transformation. The next step is to identify allies and potential allies who appreciate the strange magnificence you treasure in yourself. Who devoutly wants you to fulfill your genuine, idiosyncratic soul’s code? Spend the coming weeks enriching your connections with these people.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): This Valentine season, I propose that you infuse your intimate life with a fun dose of playful curiosity. Visualize your beloved allies, both current and potential, as unfolding mysteries rather than solved puzzles. Ask them provocative questions you’ve never thought to ask before. Wonder aloud about their simmering dreams and evolving philosophies. (Brezsny’s Togetherness Rule #1: When you think you’ve figured someone out completely, the relationship withers.) In fact, let’s make this one of your assignments for the next five months: Heighten and nurture your nosiness about the beautiful people you love. Treat each conversation as an expedition into unexplored territory. (Brezsny’s Togetherness Rule #2: A great way to stoke their passion for you and your passion for them is to believe there’s always more to discover about each other.)

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Ecologists studying symbiosis know that successful partnerships aren’t always between similar organisms. Some bonds link the fortunes of radically different creatures, like clownfish and sea anemones or oxpeckers and buffalo. Each supplies resources or protection the other lacks, often assuring they live more successfully together than they would on their own. This is useful information for you right now. At least one of the allies you need looks nothing like you. Their genius is orthogonal to yours, or they have skills you don’t. The blend may not be comfortable, but I bet it’s the precise intelligence you need to achieve what you can’t accomplish alone.

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ARE WE READY FOR HEALING?

There’s a paradox at the heart of healing work: The people who might benefit most from transformation are sometimes unable to receive it.

Some of us are in so much pain, are so overwhelmed by our suffering, that it’s hard to be aware of, let alone welcome, certain blessings and healings that may be nearby and available.

I’m not judging these suffering souls in the least. When a person’s entire nervous system is screaming with distress, the subtle frequencies of possibility may become imperceptible.

Pain creates its own gravitational field. It bends reality around itself, narrowing the aperture of perception until all someone can see is the hurt and the impossibility of things ever being different.

This is an understandable response to being overwhelmed. The body and psyche have protective mechanisms that sometimes work too well, sealing us off not just from further harm but from healing itself.

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UNFORCED HEALING

I want to be a source of blessing and healing for anyone in pain who is drawn to my work. At the same time, I never want to force my blessings and healings on anyone.

This ethical principle matters deeply to me. I’ve seen spiritual teachers, self-help gurus, and well-meaning healers who operate with an evangelical fervor that disregards consent. They believe so fervently in their medicine that they forget healing, like love, has to be chosen rather than imposed.

I respect that some people aren’t ready for help; I honor their free will about what influence or inspiration they want to take in. My respect for their autonomy is an acknowledgment of the truth that timing is everything in transformation.

The same teaching that might illuminate someone’s path at one moment could feel like a violation at another. The blessing offered too soon can feel like pressure or judgment, like a reminder of how far a person is from wholeness.

There’s also the fact that what looks like resistance to healing may be a different kind of wisdom. Sometimes the soul knows it needs to stay in the crucible a while longer.

The pain may still be offering essential teachings. Or it’s possible there’s healing work to unfold that doesn’t match the shape of what we healers are offering, no matter how sincerely we offer it.

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THE CRACKS ARE WHERE THE LIGHT GETS IN

With those caveats, I pray to my spirit allies to help me find ways to gently crack open a willingness to be blessed and healed in anyone who is ready for such gifts.

Notice that phrase: “anyone who is ready.” The prayer isn’t about breaking down doors. It’s about finding the hairline fractures where light might seep through.

My aspiration is to locate the moments of receptivity, those precious instants when the pain loosens its grip just enough for another influence to enter.

Key factor: Again and again, I have seen healing arrive disguised. It might come wrapped in humor when solemnity would be rejected. It might arrive as a sideways glance, an unexpected metaphor, or a seemingly unrelated story.

The “gentle crack” is crucial. Not a violent rupture or a forceful intervention, but a subtle opening. A crack that opens possibility without demanding it. A gap through which grace might slip, if the person is ready to notice it.

There’s an art to planting seeds without demanding they sprout according to the healer’s timeline. The most powerful workings are often gentle. They work with the grain of reality rather than against it.

HOW TO BE READY?

Readiness isn’t always logical. Someone might be in tremendous pain and suddenly, mysteriously, become permeable to healing. Another person with seemingly lesser challenges may remain sealed shut. The factors that determine receptivity are complex.

I’ve seen situations where readiness has come from hitting bottom. That’s the moment when the old strategies have so completely failed that anything else seems worth trying.

Or readiness may arrive through grace: an inexplicable shift in consciousness where a previously impossible intervention becomes imaginable in an unexpected way.

Sometimes readiness is catalyzed by love: being seen and being reminded of our fundamental worthiness despite everything. Or it may emerge from rage — from the refusal to let pain have the final word. Now and then, I see it sneak in through dreams, the messages from the unconscious that bypass our defensive mechanisms.

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MORE BLESSINGS ARE AVAILABLE THAN WE REALIZE

I believe that healing and blessing are more abundant than we typically recognize. They’re woven into the fabric of reality. The universe is constantly offering us opportunities for transformation, redemption, and renewal.

But these gifts can only be received, not forced. And reception requires a certain quality of attention and openness that pain may make impossible.

That’s why I pray to my spirit allies for help in creating those gentle openings. Not because I think I can save anyone; I can’t. But because I can maybe help create conditions where someone might become aware of resources they didn’t know existed and remember their own capacity for healing.

My life and work have taught me that reality is more malleable than consensus consciousness admits. Small shifts in perception can catalyze enormous changes. A single word at the right moment can reorient an entire destiny. A metaphor can unlock a door that logic couldn’t budge.

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WHAT IF MORE HEALING IS AVAILABLE THAN YOU IMAGINE?

Whoever is reading this: I hope that you can and will feel how much you are loved—and how much healing and how many blessings may be available to you.

I don’t know what pain or burdens you might be carrying. But I know this: You are more loved than you realize. You’re more supported than you recognize. You have more resources, both internal and external, than you’re currently aware of.

These aren’t empty platitudes. They’re statements about the nature of reality as I’ve come to understand it through decades of spiritual practice, chaos magick, dreamwork, and communion with spirits who understand subtle truths I’m only beginning to grasp.

You don’t have to take my word for it. But I invite you to consider the possibility. What if it were true? What if healing were more available than you thought? What if blessings were closer than you imagined?

What would change if you allowed yourself to be open to receiving help? What might become possible if you loosened your grip on certainty about how bad things are, how limited your options are, or how impossible transformation is?

I’m not asking you to abandon healthy skepticism or ignore genuine challenges. I’m simply suggesting that alongside the legitimate difficulties you face, there might also be resources you haven’t yet discovered. Alongside the real pain, there might also be real possibility.
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Meme words by Anna Goldstein. Art by Lily Seika Jones

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Listen to my spoken-word song, “Unhappy Hour”

Lyrics to “Unhappy Hour”: tinyurl.com/UnhappyHourLyrics

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A WEIRD THING HAPPENED

A weird thing happened after I sent out last week’s newsletter. In that edition, I spoke about how some readers had told me their attention spans had shrunk — and could I therefore please stop writing so many words!

Read last week’s newsletter here: tinyurl.com/BeDeep

I told those readers I completely understand, noting that I had compassion for the culture-wide shrinkage of focus all of us are dealing with . . . but that I couldn’t in good conscience be briefer. I said that I have spent years honing my writing skills so I can speak concisely. Now that I have something useful to say, I won’t abbreviate or dilute my message.

Mostly, the response from readers was overwhelmingly positive: “Keep doing what you’re doing, Rob!”

And yet in the week since the last newsletter, I’ve lost 20 paid subscribers, a bigger, faster decline than in many months — a sure sign that a sizable minority of readers did NOT appreciate my promise to stay faithful to my muses.

So here’s my new appeal: The horoscopes and essays you read here represent the concentrated essence of my life’s work. And they’re also an important part of how I earn a living. If they make a meaningful contribution to your world, I ask you to consider becoming a paid subscriber. Go here: freewillastrology.substack.com/subscribe

If now isn’t the right time, you are still welcome to remain a free reader for as long as you like. And as always, thank you for reading! Your attention is a privilege I never take for granted.

If you don’t want to sign up for a subscription but would consider making a one-time donation, go here: paypal.com/paypalme/GiftsForRob and contribute as Friends and Family

With love,

Rob

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Explore my other plurk (playful work) at my Linktree: linktr.ee/robbrezsny

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

Week of February 5

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The coming weeks will challenge you to think with tenderness and feel with clarity. You’ll be called on to stay sharply alert even as you remain loose, kind, and at ease. Your good fortune will expand as you open your awareness wider, while also firming up the boundaries that keep mean people from bothering you. The really good news is that cosmic forces are lining up to guide you and coach you in exactly these skills. You are primed to explore intriguing paradoxes and contradictions that have valuable lessons.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In alchemy, solve et coagula is a Latin phrase translated as “dissolve and coagulate.” It means that transformation must begin with the process of breaking down before any building begins. You can’t skip over the dissolving phase and jump straight into creating the new structure. I mention this, dear Pisces, because I believe you’re now in the dissolving phase. It might feel destabilizing, even a bit unnerving, but I urge you to stick with it. When the moment comes to construct the beautiful new forms, you will know. But that time isn’t yet. Keep dissolving a while longer.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): I’m thrilled by your genius for initiating what others only dream about. I celebrate your holy impatience with fakery and your refusal to waste precious life-force on enterprises that have gone stale. I’m in awe of how you make fire your ally rather than your enemy, wielding it not to destroy but to forge new realities from the raw materials of possibility. Everything I just described will be in your wheelhouse during the coming weeks.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): How do I love you? Let me count some of the ways. 1. Your patience is masterful. You understand that some treasures can’t be rushed and that many beautiful things require slow nurturing through your devoted attention. 2. You have a knack for inducing the mundane world to reveal its small miracles and spiritual secrets. 3. You practice lucid loyalty without being in bondage to the past. You honor your history even as you make room for the future. 4. You know when to cling tightly to what needs to be protected and preserved, and you know when to gracefully loosen your grip to let everything breathe. In the coming weeks, all these superpowers of yours will be especially available to you and the people you care for.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In carpentry, there’s a technique called “kerf bending.” It involves making a series of small cuts in wood so it can curve without breaking. The cuts weaken the material in one sense, but they make it flexible enough to create shapes that would otherwise be impossible. I suspect you’re being kerf-bent right now, Gemini. Life is making small nicks in your certainties, your plans, and your self-image. It might feel like you’re being diminished, but you’re actually being made flexible enough to bend into a new form. Don’t interpret the nicks as damage. They’re preparation for adjustments you can’t see yet. Let yourself be shaped.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In Irish folklore, “thin places” are situations or areas where the material and spiritual worlds overlap. They aren’t always geographical. A thin place may be a moment: like the pre-dawn hour between sleeping and waking, or the silence after someone says “I love you” for the first time. I believe you’re living in a thin place right now, Cancer. The boundary between your inner world and outer circumstances is more porous than usual. This means your emotions may affect your environment more directly. Your intuitions will be even more accurate than usual, and your nightly dreams will provide you with practical clues. Be alert. Magic will be available if you notice it.

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If you would like to support my work, please consider:

buying my Expanded Audio Horoscopes and Daily Horoscopes

and/or

becoming a paid subscriber to my Free Will Astrology Newsletter

and/or

donating at my Paypal site: paypal.com/paypalme/GiftsForRob

(contribute as Friends and Family)

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LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In traditional Korean jogakbo, scraps of fabric too small to be useful alone are stitched together into a piece that’s both functional and beautiful. Every fragment contributes to the whole. I encourage you to treat your current life this way, Leo. Don’t dismiss iffy or unfinished experiences as “wasted time.” Instead, see if you can weave all the bits and scraps together into a valuable lesson or asset. Prediction: I foresee a lovely jogakbo in your future.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): The Maori people of New Zealand practice mirimiri, a form of healing that works not by fighting disease but by restoring flow. The technique involves removing blockages so life force can move freely again. I think you need the equivalent of mirimiri, Virgo. There’s a small but non-trivial obstruction in your life. The good news is that you now have the power to figure out where the flow got stuck and then gently coax it back into motion. Let the healing begin! Here’s a good way to begin: Vow that you won’t hold yourself back from enjoying your life to the max.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In the coming weeks, I encourage you to prioritize mirth, revelry, and gratification. For starters, you could invite kindred spirits to join you in pursuing experimental forms of pleasure. Have fun riffing and brainstorming about feeling good in ways you’ve never tried or even imagined before. Seek out stories from other explorers of bliss and delight who can inspire you to expand your sense of wonder. Then, with your mind as open as your heart, give yourself the freedom to enjoy as many playful adventures and evocative amusements as you dare.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In the Inuktitut language of the Intuit people, the word ajurnarmat is translated as “it can’t be helped.” It acknowledges forces at work beyond human control. Rather than pure resignation, it reflects an attitude of accepting what can’t be changed, which helps people conserve energy and adapt creatively to challenging circumstances. So for example, when hunters encounter impossible ice conditions, ajurnamat allows them to refrain from forcing the situation and notice what may actually be possible. I suspect you’re facing your own ajurnarmat, Scorpio. Your breakthrough will emerge as soon as you admit the truth of what’s happening and allow your perception to shift. What looks unnavigable from one angle may reveal a solution if you approach it from another direction. Practice strategic surrender.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Your hunger for meaning is admirable! I love it. I never want you to mute your drive to discover what’s interesting and useful. But now and then, the hot intensity of your quest can make you feel that nothing is ever enough. You get into the habit of always looking past what’s actually here and being obsessed with what you imagine should be or could be there. In the coming days, dear Sagittarius, I invite you to avoid that tendency. Rather than compulsively pursuing high adventure and vast vistas, focus on the sweet, intimate details. The wisdom you yearn for might be embedded in ordinariness.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In architecture, a “flying buttress” is an external support system that allows a massive building like a cathedral to reach greater heights without collapsing under its own weight. Because the buttress is partly open to the air rather than solidly built against the wall from top to bottom, it appears to “fly,” which is where the name comes from. In the coming weeks, I encourage you Capricorns to acquire your own equivalent of at least one new flying buttress. Who or what could this be? A collaborator who shares the load? A new form of discipline that provides scaffolding? A truth you finally speak aloud that lets others help you? To get the process started, shed any belief you have that strength means carrying everything all by yourself.

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SHOULD I BE BRIEFER?

In recent months, I’ve been getting more messages from my readers to the effect that they wish I would write more briefly. They have trouble reading longer things.

I feel compassion for them. I understand that attention spans are shrinking and that many find it hard to focus on concentrated writing for longer than a few minutes.

But I’m very sure of the fact that I am not writing any more voluminously than I ever have.

(My upcoming eleven books will be another story. They will indeed be voluminous. But I’m talking here about my newsletter, horoscope column, and social media.)

And the truth is, my writing has become increasingly succinct and well-crafted over the years.

I have composed a response to those who have asked me to be briefer. It’s below.

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Dear Readers —

I appreciate you letting me know how you experience my writing. I understand that we’re all swimming in cultural currents that make sustained attention increasingly difficult. The forces pulling at our focus are real and relentless, and I sympathize with that struggle.

Here’s what I can tell you from my side: I’ve been writing my ideas and feelings into prose and poetry and song lyrics for decades. My current labors of love are actually more concise and carefully crafted than they’ve ever been. I do at least three drafts (usually more) of everything I publish, working diligently not to be lazy about what I say.

From my perspective, I’m not being long-winded; I’m being precise.

I realize this might sound like a paradox if you’re finding it hard to get to the end of what I write. But the difficulty may not be about length. It may be about depth, or density of meaning, or the quality of attention required to track what I’m offering. Those are different things.

My creative expressions have always asked for intensity from my readers. They smuggle interesting ruminations into accessible formats, but they still require rigorous engagement. I’ve never written for skimming. I love communicating with people who are willing to slow down and dig into unpredictable language and nonstandard ideas.

I won’t be changing this. My care with words and refusal to dumb down or speed up are what have enabled me to reach millions of readers for a long time. It’s what makes the work transformative rather than just temporarily diverting.

If my writing feels too long for you, I understand. You might save the pieces for moments when you have more spaciousness. Or you might decide this isn’t the right time for reading my stuff. Both of those responses are valid.

But I won’t be writing less or simpler to accommodate the cultural spell that’s shrinking everyone’s attention spans. That would be a betrayal of my calling, and it would ultimately shortchange you, since what you’re hungry for (even if it’s uncomfortable) is to be moved—to think and feel things you don’t encounter elsewhere.

Rowdy blessings,

Rob

Photo: Me sitting on the Buick Wildcat car parked in the driveway of the abandoned house where Philip K. Dick wrote his book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

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AND YET . . .

There’s an additional story to tell.

Over the next 18 months, I will be releasing 11 books—more than 2,000 pages of rich, sprawling, celebratory prose. It’s long, intense, and deep. It’s exuberantly and unapologetically expansive.

When I consulted a psychic about these upcoming books, he laughed. He joked that my long years of disciplined brevity—my many thousands of short, sweet weekly horoscopes—had earned me the karmic right to be gloriously, extravagantly long-form.

He said the Universe was granting me permission to fulfill my most generous, spacious, sweeping urges.

I thank the Universe for this authorization! What a gift it is to have spent an eon proving I can be brief, precise, economical—and then to be handed a license to bloom into unrestrained expression.

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Check out my music on Bandcamp: televisionary.bandcamp.com/

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

Week of January 29

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): In ecology, there’s a concept called “keystone species.” This refers to organisms that have a huge effect on their environment relative to their abundance. Remove them, and the whole ecosystem shifts. I bring this up, Aquarius, because I believe you are currently functioning as a keystone species in your social ecosystem. You may not even be fully aware of how much your presence influences others. And here’s the challenge: You shouldn’t let your impact weigh on your conscience. You don’t have to sacrifice yourself as you carry out your service. Instead, ask how you can contribute to the common good while also thriving yourself. Ensuring your well-being isn’t selfish; it’s essential to the gifts you provide and the duties you perform.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): I foresee a dose of real magic becoming available to you: equivalent to an enchanted potion, a handful of charmed seeds, or a supernatural spell. But owning the magic and knowing how to use it are two different matters. There’s no promise you will instantly grasp its secrets. To give yourself the best shot, follow a few rules: 1. Keep it quiet. Only share news of your lucky charm with those who truly need to hear about it. 2. Before using it to make wholesale transformations, test it gently in a situation where the stakes are low. 3. Whatever you do, make sure your magic leaves no bruises behind.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): In 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal became the first climbers to trek to the summit of Mount Everest. They both said later that the climb down was as important and challenging as the ascent. The lesson: Achievement doesn’t end when you reach the peak. Aries, you may be nearing or have just passed a high point of effort or recognition. Soon you will need to manage the descent with aplomb. Don’t rush! Tread carefully as you complete your victory. It’s not as glamorous as the push upward, but it’s equally vital to the legacy of the climb.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Aurora borealis occurs when highly charged particles from the Sun strike molecules high in the Earth’s atmosphere, causing them to glow. The display that looks like gorgeous magic is actually our planet’s invisible magnetic shield and upper atmosphere lighting up under the pressure of an intense solar storm. Dear Taurus, I think your life has a metaphorical resemblance. The strength you’ve been quietly maintaining without much fanfare has become vividly apparent because it’s being activated. The protection you’ve been offering and the boundaries you’ve been holding are more visible than usual. This is good news! Your shields are working.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “Nothing in excess” was the maxim inscribed on the ancient Temple of Apollo at Delphi. “Moderation is a chief moral virtue,” proclaimed the philosopher Aristotle. But I don’t recommend those approaches for you right now, Gemini. A sounder principle is “More is better” or “Almost too much is just the right amount.” You have a holy duty to cultivate lavishness and splendor. I hope you will stir up as many joyous liberations and fun exploits as possible.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): When sea otters sleep, they sometimes hold each other’s paws to keep from drifting apart. This simple, instinctive act ensures they remain safe and connected. I suggest making their bond your power symbol for now, Cancer. You’ll be wise to formulate a strong intention about which people, values, and projects you want to be tethered to. And if sea otters holding hands sounds too sentimental or cutesy to be a power symbol, you need to rethink your understanding of power. For you right now, it’s potency personified.

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WHAT INTERESTING STORIES AND MYSTERIES ARE HEADING YOUR WAY IN THE YEAR AHEAD

Who do you want to become in 2026? 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?

My EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES, offer you a three-part survey of your long-term, in-depth destiny in the coming year.

To listen to your BIG PICTURE horoscopes online, go to

https://RealAstrology.com

Select Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3 of the Long-Term Prediction for your sign. Each part is different.

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The cost for the Expanded Audio Horoscopes is $7 per sign if you purchase 7 tokens for $7. (You can get discounts for purchasing larger token packages.)

Each forecast is 8 to 11 minutes long.

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LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): To be healthy, we all need to continually be in the process of letting go. It’s always a favorable phase to shed aspects of our old selves to make room for what comes next. The challenge for you Leos is to keep showing up with your special brightness even as parts of you die away to feed new growth. So here are my questions: What old versions of your generosity or courage are ready to compost? What fiercer, wilder, more sustainable expression of your leonine nature wants to emerge? The coming weeks will be an excellent time to stop performing the hero you used to be and become the hero you are destined to become.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): The Haudenosaunee people practice “seventh-generation thinking”: making decisions based on their impact seven generations into the future. You would be wise to incorporate the spirit of their visionary approach, Virgo. Here’s the problem: You’re so skilled at fixing what needs urgent attention that you sometimes neglect what’s even more important in the long run. So I will ask you to contemplate what choices you could you make now that will be blessings to your future self. This might involve ripening an immature skill, shedding a boring obligation that drains you, or delivering honest words that don’t come easily. Rather than obsessing on the crisis of the moment, send a sweet boost to the life you want to be living three years from now.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Are you open to the idea that new wisdom doesn’t always demand struggle and strain? In the days ahead, I invite you to move as if the world is deeply in love with you; as if every element, every coincidence, every kind pair of eyes is cheering you forward. Imagine that generous souls everywhere want to help you be and reveal your best self. Trust that unseen allies are rearranging the flow of fate to help you grow into the beautiful original you were born to be. Do you dare to be so confident that life loves you?

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Psychologist James Pennebaker did studies showing that people who write about traumatic experiences for just 15 minutes a day show improved immune function, fewer doctor visits, and better emotional health. But here’s a key detail: The benefits don’t come from the trauma itself or from “processing feelings.” They come from constructing a narrative: making meaning, finding patterns, and creating coherence. The healing isn’t in the wound. It’s in the story you shape from the wound’s raw material. You Scorpios excel at this alchemical work. One of your superpowers is to take what’s dark, buried, or painful and transform it through the piercing attention of your intelligence and imagination. The coming weeks will be an excellent time to do this.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In Jewish mysticism, tikkun olam means “repair of the world.” This is the idea that we’re all responsible for healing what’s broken. But the teaching also says you’re not required to complete the work; you’re only asked to not abandon it. This is your message right now, Sagittarius: You don’t have to save everyone. You don’t have to heal everything, and you don’t even have to finish the projects you’ve started. But you can’t abandon them entirely, either. Keep showing up. Do what you can today. That’s enough. The work will continue whether or not you complete it. Your part is to not walk away from your own brokenness and the world’s. Stay engaged.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The Talmud teaches that “every blade of grass has an angel bending over it, whispering, ‘Grow, grow.’” I sense that you are now receiving the extra intense influence of your own guardian angels, Capricorn. They aren’t demanding or threatening, just encouraging. Please tune into their helpful ministrations. Don’t get distracted by harsher voices, like your internalized critic, the pressure of impossible standards, or the ghost of adversaries who didn’t believe in you. Here’s your assignment: Create time and space to hear and fully register the supportive counsel. It’s saying: Grow. You’re allowed to grow. You don’t have to earn it. Just grow.

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WHAT LOOKS LIKE DESTRUCTION MAY BE THE FIRST STAGE OF REGENERATION

Lodgepole pine and jack pine forests stretch across millions of acres in North America. Here’s their secret: They seal their seeds in cones that won’t open without fire. The resin holds them shut for years, sometimes decades. Their seeds won’t germinate unless a wildfire sweeps through the forest.

What looks like destruction is the first stage of regeneration. The end is a preparation for a beginning.

Our collective disasters might be doing the same work right now, cracking open what couldn’t open any other way. It’s painful for me to contemplate, but also liberating.

Here’s the biology: These pines produce what are called “serotinous cones,” which are sealed tight with resin that melts only at temperatures around 113–122°F.

The cones hang on the trees, waiting. The seeds inside are viable but imprisoned. Neither rain, nor sunshine, nor gentle coaxing can make them release. Only one thing has that power: When the flames come, the resin melts, the cone scales curl back, and the seeds finally spill out onto the forest floor.

Here’s the kicker: The same fire that opens the cones also kills the parent trees. These pines have thin bark; they’re not built to survive the flames. The fire that releases their seeds is the same fire that destroys them. They burn so their offspring can be born.

But the fire also clears the understory. It burns away the competition, shrubs, leaf litter, and thick duff that would smother tiny seedlings. It returns nutrients to the soil as ash and eliminates the canopy so sunlight can reach the ground. These are the exact conditions the seeds need to germinate and grow.

The fire that kills the forest is also what births the next forest.

The Indigenous peoples who lived among these trees understood this, including the Nez Perce, Blackfeet, and Shoshone. They knew that fire was the engine of regeneration.

When European invaders and occupiers arrived, they declared fire evil and suppressed it for a century. The result: forests so choked with fuel that when fires finally came, they burned with unprecedented fury—too hot, too fast, and leaving nothing behind but moonscape.

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THE CURRENT DESTRUCTION

Now we have done the same thing to our American democracy. For decades, we avoided the difficult reckonings: the conversations about white supremacy that needed to happen after the civil rights movement, the economic inequality that kept growing unchecked, the civic institutions that needed reimagining, and all the truths about our genocidal and colonialist history that needed to be faced and integrated.

We suppressed the small fires. We chose comfort over confrontation, incremental reform over transformation, and politeness over justice. We let the undergrowth accumulate, including the resentments, the unaddressed grievances, and all the broken systems we kept patching instead of rebuilding.

And now the fire has come. The Trumpocalypse isn’t just one man or one administration. It’s the accumulated fuel of everything we refused to burn away when the fires were smaller and more manageable. It’s what happens when a society postpones its reckonings until they become unavoidable.

Let’s survey what’s burning right now:

• our faith in institutions we thought were permanent

• our certainties about unending progress

• our stories about who we are as a nation

• our assumptions that democracy was self-sustaining

• our belief that the truth would automatically prevail over lies

To any thinking and caring person, the current landscape looks apocalyptic. We can reasonably conclude that our republic is being destroyed. And no other event better symbolizes the cluster-fuck of hideous atrocities than the barbaric, execution-style murder of Renee Nicole Good, mother of three, by a masked thug hired by ICE.

One other abomination rivals that villainy: the fact that the murderer has collected well over a million dollars through fund-raising campaigns in his behalf.

LEARNING FROM THE LODGEPOLE PINES

Can we learn from the lodgepole pines?

What if the current American catastrophe is also cracking open what was sealed shut in our collective consciousness? What if the seeds of a genuinely multiracial democracy, an actually equitable economy, and a truly inclusive society were already here, locked tight, and this fire is what finally releases them?

The version of America that carried those sealed seeds is dying. The parent tree doesn’t get to survive its own regeneration. These are all burning: the country we thought we were, the stories we told ourselves about our exceptionalism and inevitable progress, and the comfortable illusions about how democracy works. Major parts of our national identity are dying, turning to ash.

The fire hurts! America is undeniably burning. Real people are fleeing. Immigrants are terrorized. Trans people are under assault. Women’s bodily autonomy has been stripped away. The most vulnerable are bearing the worst of the decimation and devastation.

But here’s what the lodgepole pines know: The fire burns away what was choking out new growth. In America’s case, that includes:

• the comfortable centrist politics that preserved the status quo

• the bipartisan consensus that served the wealthy

• the polite discourse that avoided naming injustice

• the incremental approaches that were never going to be enough

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OUR HOPEFUL BUT REASONABLE HYPOTHESIS

Let’s propose that the fire is creating the exact conditions that the transformative potencies will need to emerge and grow.

Here’s what’s already sprouting:

• mutual aid networks forming at unprecedented scale

• communities organizing to protect each other

• people discovering they’re braver than they knew

• coalitions building, gathering different groups that might not have previously aligned

• young people refusing to inherit their elders’ fatalism

• artists, writers, and cultural workers remembering that their work matters

• ordinary people becoming extraordinary in their resistance

Maybe the seeds of our next becoming were already there, locked tight and waiting.

The catastrophe is liberating what was trying to be born.

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SAY NO TO TOXIC POSITIVITY

Please note: This isn’t the same as the toxic positivity that chirps “everything happens for a reason” while people are caught in the conflagration. Fuck that. Sometimes terrible things happen because hideous bullies ans thugs seize power and cause immense harm. The Trumpocalypse is real. The cruelty is real. The evil is real.

But it’s also true that human societies, like lodgepole forests, sometimes have a mysterious capacity to metabolize catastrophe into fertility. We wouldn’t be the first to take the ash of what burned and grow new life from it. Not because the fire is good, but because we are built to regenerate both individually and collectively.

The question isn’t whether we will face this fire. We are facing it. The question is: Will we let it and help it it do its work? Will we allow what needs to burn to burn—the systems that were never going to save us, the stories that were never true, and the institutions that served power instead of people?

Or will we spend all our energy trying to restore the rotting system? Will we seek to rebuild the structures that brought us here, futilely striving to return to a “normal” that was only comfortable for some and intolerable for many, many others?

The lodgepole pines have been doing this for millennia. They don’t resist catastrophe but instead actively use it. They carry the future inside themselves, sealed and waiting, knowing the fire will come.

Here’s the shocking truth we must fully acknowledge: We are in the fire now. The old forest is burning. And somewhere in the ash and smoke, millions of seeds are cracking open, ready to reach toward light they couldn’t access before.

What will we grow from this debacle?

The author of the above prayer is Alan Paton, South African activist and author of Cry, the Beloved Country. Art by Michelle Possum Nungurrayi.

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Reminder: I’ve written four sets of horoscopes that preview the Big Picture of your life in 2026. Read them here: tinyurl.com/BigPicture2026

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Check out my Linktree: linktr.ee/robbrezsny

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of January 22

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You are a spy from the future. Thank you for your service! I love to see your boldness as you smuggle innovative ideas into a present that may or may not be ready for them. Your feelings of alienation are sometimes uncomfortable, but they are crucial to the treasure you offer us. You see patterns others miss because you refuse to be hypnotized by consensus reality. Keep up the excellent work, please. May you honor your need to tinker with impossibilities and imagine alternatives to what everyone else imagines is inevitable. You are proof that we don’t have to accept inherited structures as inevitable.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Your unconscious mind is extra communicative, dear Pisces. Hooray! Take advantage! Pay attention to weird images in dreams and songs that linger in your head. Be alert for seemingly random thoughts as they surface. Bypassing logic, your deep psyche is trying to show you ripe secrets and provocative hints. Your duty is to be receptive. So keep a journal or recording device by your bed. Notice which memories rise up out of nowhere. Be grateful for striking coincidences. These are invitations to tune in to meaningful feelings and truths you’ve been missing.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Master astrologer Steven Forrest understands you Aries people well. He says that the riskiest strategy you can pursue is to constantly seek safety. It’s crucial for you to always be on the lookout for adventure. One of your chief assignments is to cultivate courage—especially the kind of brave boldness that arises as you explore unknown territory. To rouse the magic that really matters, you must face your fears regularly. The coming months will be an ideal time for you to dive in and celebrate this approach to life.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): You are an ambassador from the material world to the realm of spirit—and vice versa. One of your prime assignments is the opposite of what the transcendence-obsessed gurus preach. You’re here to prove that the flesh is holy, pleasure is a form of prayer, and the senses are portals to the divine. When you revel in earthy delights, when you luxuriate in rich textures and tastes and scents, you’re not being “attached” or “unspiritual.” You’re enacting a radical sacred stance. Being exuberantly immersed in the material world isn’t a mistake to overcome but a blessing to savor. May you redouble your subversive work of treating your body as a cathedral and sensual enjoyments as sacraments.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Everything that’s meant for you is trying to find its way to you. Here’s the problem: It can’t deliver the goods if you’re in constant motion. The boons trying to reach you are circling, waiting for a stable landing spot. If you keep up the restless roaming, life might have to slow you down, even stop you, so you’ll be still enough to embody receptivity. Don’t wait for that. Pause now. Set aside whatever’s feeding your restlessness and tune into the quiet signal of your own center. The moment you do, bounties will start arriving.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Artist Louise Bourgeois said, “I am what I do with my hands.” I will adapt this declaration for your use, Cancerian: You are what you do with your feelings. You are the structures, sanctuaries, and nourishment you create from the raw material of your sensitivity. It’s one of your superpowers! I understand that some people mistake emotional depth for passive vulnerability. They assume that feeling everything means doing nothing. But you prove that bias wrong. You are potentially a master builder. You can convert the flood waters of emotion into resources that hold, protect, and feed. I hope you will do this lavishly in the coming weeks.

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LET’S IMAGINE WHAT INTERESTING STORIES AND MYSTERIES MIGHT BE COMING YOUR WAY IN THE YEAR AHEAD

Who do you want to become in 2026? 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?

My EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES, offer you a three-part survey of your long-term, in-depth destiny in the coming year.

To listen to your BIG PICTURE horoscopes online, go to

https://RealAstrology.com

Select Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3 of the Long-Term Prediction for your sign. Each part is different.

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The cost for the Expanded Audio Horoscopes is $7 per sign if you purchase 7 tokens for $7. (You can get discounts for purchasing larger token packages.)

Each forecast is 8 to 11 minutes long.

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LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Admiring writers often say that the Balinese people have no traditional word for “art.” Making things beautiful is woven into everyday life, as if everything should be done as beautifully as possible. I aspire to carry out this approach myself: infusing ordinary actions with the same care I’d bring to writing a story or song. Washing dishes, answering emails, and walking to the store: All are eligible for beauty treatment. I highly recommend this practice to you in the coming weeks, Leo. It’s true that you’re renowned for your dramatic gestures, but I believe you also have an underutilized talent for teasing out glory from mundane situations. Please do that a lot in the coming weeks. For starters, make your grocery list a poem.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Some American Indigenous cultures have “potlatch” ceremonies. These are elaborate gift-giving rituals where hosts gain prestige by generously and freely bestowing their riches on others. Circulating wealth, instead of hoarding it, is honored and celebrated. Is that economically irrational? Only if you believe that the point of resources is individual accumulation rather than community vitality. Potlatch operates on a different logic: The purpose of having stuff is to make having stuff possible for others. I invite you to make that your specialty in the coming months. Assume that your own thriving depends on the flourishing of those around you.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Sufi poet Rumi wrote about a “treasure in ruins.” He meant that what we’re searching for may be hidden in places where we would rather not look. Your life isn’t in ruins, Libra, but I suspect you may have been exploring exciting locations while shunning mundane ones that actually hold your answers. What do you think? Is that possible? Just for fun, investigate the neglected, ignored, and boring places. Try out the hypothesis that a golden discovery awaits you in some unfinished business or a situation you feel an aversion to.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Your capacity for intensity is your superpower. I love it, I celebrate it, and I hope to keep nurturing it in you for as long as we’re both here. But not everything deserves the full force of your passionate engagement. Some things are meant to be touched lightly, held loosely, and released easily. The question isn’t whether to feel deeply—that’s who you authentically are—but whether to act on every deep feeling as if it were sacred revelation. Some emotions are weather patterns passing through, not permanent truths requiring upheaval. These are especially key understandings for you to act on during the coming days.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): As I have promised you a million times, I will NEVER exaggerate. And though you may wonder if the statements I’m about to make are excessive and overblown, I assure you they are not. The fact is, dear Sagittarius, that everything you have always wanted to enhance and upgrade about togetherness is now possible to accomplish, and will continue to be for months to come. If you dare to dismantle your outmoded beliefs about love and deep friendship—every comforting myth, every conditioned response, every inherited instinct—you will discover new dimensions of intimacy that could inspire you forever.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In Renaissance painting, chiaroscuro refers to the use of strong contrasts between light and dark. It’s a technique that enhances the sense of depth.​ I believe your life may be in an intense *chiaroscuro* phase. As your joys grow bright, your doubts appear darker. As your understanding deepens, your perplexity mounts. Is this a problem? I prefer to understand it as an opportunity. For best results, study it closely. Maybe your anxiety is showing you what you care about. Perhaps your sadness is a sign of your growing emotional power. So find a way to benefit from the contrasts, dear Capricorn. Let shadows teach you how to fully appreciate the illumination.

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Fighting ICE’s Violence While Preserving Our Gorgeous Soul Power

Thirty-seven-year-old poet and mother of three children Renee Nicole Good was murdered by a masked, cursing ICE agent. It was yet another in a series of tragic atrocities perpetrated by Trumps’ gang of thugs.

It was also a clarification: The masks ICE agents wear aren’t about anonymity but about removing the last vestiges of accountability. They’re the final erasure of the human face from state violence. This is what tyranny looks like when it stops pretending.

Sorry to be so blunt, but it’s the sad and shocking truth.

So how do we fight the escalating brutality without becoming brutalized ourselves? How do we resist the fascist creep without letting it colonize our inner landscape?

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The Insurrectionary’s Paradox

Here’s the challenging practice: We need wrathful compassion, that fierce Buddhist concept where love becomes so intense it manifests as holy rage against those who harm the vulnerable. Not hatred, which damages the hater, but a righteous anger that’s an expression of care extended so far it won’t tolerate cruelty.

We can think of it this way: If someone were beating a child in front of us, our immediate intervention wouldn’t come from hatred of the abuser but from love of the child. The force we would use to stop the violence would be an expression of our care.

This is the alchemy we need now. ICE’s violence against immigrants (and even non-immgrants) demands our intervention because we love what they’re destroying: human dignity, sanctuary, and refuge.

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Practical Insurgency as Self-Care

On our behalf, I’m tempted to ask the question “how do we fight while caring for ourselves?” But that contains a false premise. Done right, the fighting is the self-care. Here’s why:

We stay sane by taking vigorous action. Helplessness is the real psychological poison. Every practical thing we do is an antidote to the corrosive feeling of complicity through inaction: joining rapid response networks, contributing to immigrant defense funds, participating in ICE office disruptions, providing sanctuary, and documenting abuses.

We preserve joy by defending it collectively. The authoritarian gangsters want to steal our capacity for delight, to make us so despairing and exhausted that we forfeit our imagination.

But we refuse. We organize potlucks for undocumented neighbors. We hold dance parties outside detention centers. We make beauty while we make trouble. The exuberance isn’t separate from the resistance; it’s one of the main points of the resistance.

We resist mass hallucination by grounding ourselves in embodied reality. The fascist atrocity project depends on abstractions: immigrants as “invaders” and humans as “illegals.”

We counter this with fierce particularity. We learn the name of every person ICE detains. We tell their specific stories, as in: Renee Nicole Good was an award-winning queer poet who was renowned for her kindness. Her last words on earth, uttered to her killer, were, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.”

We make the violence concrete and the humanity undeniable. This refusal to let brutality be normalized into abstraction is both activism and meditation.

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Can Our Struggle Be a Form of Play?

The question might ostensibly seem frivolous given the stakes. But consider the possibility that rigid seriousness is just another form of the authoritarian rigidity we’re fighting against. What if we approach resistance with the spirit of serious play—not frivolous, but creative, surprising, and uncontainable?

For example: street theater that mockingly reenacts ICE raids with agents played as cowardly masked thugs. Paint or chalk murals that celebrate immigrants’ contributions, impossible to remove without admitting some fascist is trying to erase these truths. Flash mobs singing lullabies outside detention centers in multiple languages. Memes that make ICE agents’ violence so recognizable as un-American that even moderate citizens recoil.

The playfulness isn’t disrespectful to the horror. It’s a refusal to let the horror dictate the terms of engagement entirely. It keeps our imaginations wild and hungry and free because the authoritarian mind can’t comprehend or predict creative insurgency.

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Constructive Anger, Unconsumed

How do we summon a righteous blend of practical love and constructive anger? Here’s the recipe:

We root the anger in specific compassion. We don’t let it become abstract fury at “the system” or “fascism.” We focus it: The ICE agent named Jonathan Ross shot Renee Nicole Good in the face at pointblank range and then cursed her as she died.

Honduran asylum seeker Mirian G. was detained in Texas and held in an ICE-run detention center while her 18‑month‑old son was taken to a separate facility 120 miles away, with no chance to comfort him or say goodbye.

A farmworker in Ventura County, California, Jaime Alanís García / Alanís, died after falling 30 feet from a greenhouse roof while fleeing an ICE raid at Glass House Farms in Camarillo on July 10, 2025.

Specificity like this keeps the anger clean, purposeful, and constructive.

And we channel it into action that empower us. Because anger that just churns inside us becomes acid. Whereas we can turn our anger into sacred fuel: Use it to build mutual aid networks, fund legal defense, disrupt deportation operations, create sanctuary spaces.

We also tend the opposite pole equally. For every hour of wrathful organizing, we spend time cultivating beauty. We register the power and glory of our loved ones, our creative practices, our moments of sensory pleasure, and our moments of imagining better worlds.

They’re what we’re defending. They keep us from becoming burned-out husks who’ve won some battles but lost our souls.

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Cheerful Buoyancy as Revolutionary Technology

The authoritarian thugs are counting on our despair. Our cheerful buoyancy (which isn’t the same as naive optimism) can disrupt their evil plans. (And yes, they are EVIL.)

So we hold the full weight of the terror, cruelty, and fascist acceleration . . . AND we ALSO experience joy, pleasure, and fun. Because joy, pleasure, and fun aren’t contingent on circumstances being good. They’re our choice to remain alive to beauty even amidst dire situations.

This is embodied spirituality in action. Disembodied spirituality would tell us to transcend the political horror and not let it disturb our inner peace. But a path of embodied spirituality says: No. We feel it all. The rage, the grief, the fear . . . AND the delight, the sensory pleasure, the connection, the hope.

Practical applications:

- Start meetings with a genuinely delightful burst like a poem, a song, or good news

- Build regular sabbath time into our activism (one day a week, no news, no organizing, just pleasure)..

- Practice what adrienne maree brown calls “pleasure activism”—the insistence that what we’re fighting for should be present in how we fight.

- Cultivate absurdist humor about the situation. It’s not dismissive, but recognizes how cartoonishly evil masked federal agents are.

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How Do We Refrain From Being Consumed by Hatred?

Even as we fight against the hatred and danger unleashed by masked bullies perpetrating harm under the aegis of ICE, we remember: Hatred corrodes the hater. It’s a toxin that poisons from within.

The answer isn’t to suppress the rage or pretend we don’t feel it. Instead, we transform rage by grounding it in love: love for the victims, love for the possibility of justice, and love for the world we’re trying to build.

Here’s a practice: When we feel hatred rising toward an ICE agent, a collaborating judge, or a politician enabling this violence, pause, we ask ourselves: What am I really feeling?

Beneath the hatred is often grief. That’s the deeper feeling.

We let ourselves feel that grief all the way down to the bottom of the grief. It connects us to life’s deep sources. And from the grief comes the fierce determination that can sustain a long struggle without consuming us.

This doesn’t mean being soft on perpetrators. It means staying human while fighting inhumane systems.

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Building While Burning

How do we remain dedicated to building beauty and truth and justice and love even as we keep our imaginations wild and hungry and free?

The key insight: We don’t build these things AFTER we have defeated fascism. We build them as one of the methods of defeating fascism.

Every one of our mutual aid networks is doing prefigurative politics. We are showing what a caring society looks like. Every sanctuary space is a liberated zone. Every community defense training is both practical skill-building and a demonstration that we protect each other, not the corrupt state.

Our art, writing, music, and poetry aren’t separate from the fight. They comprise our consciousness-building infrastructure. They give people the philosophical and imaginative resources to resist authoritarian simplicity with complex, embodied alternatives.

When we write a poem, we’re not escaping the struggle. We’re modeling the attention and beauty and truth-telling the world needs. When we make music, we’re creating the soundtrack for resistance and joy. When we build community, we’re establishing the networks that will sustain us through the fight ahead.

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OUR ALIVENESS IS A THREAT TO THEM

Remember: our aliveness is a threat to them. The autocrats want to turn everyone into fearful, passive, joyless subjects. Every moment we choose vitality, creativity, connection, we are already winning a small battle. We’re proving that their project of domination is incomplete, that something in us remains untamed and unbowed.

So here’s the practice, the working, the way forward:

We wake each morning and feel the full weight of what’s happening. Don’t numb ourselves to the ongoing terror.

Then we choose, deliberately, to also feel joy. Make breakfast with sensuous attention. Notice beauty. Connect with our beloveds.

Let both feelings be true simultaneously. This is embodied spirituality: not transcending the difficulty but fully inhabiting our life within it.

Take action, any action, toward protecting immigrants, disrupting ICE, building sanctuary. Even small actions break the paralysis and feed the soul.

Do it with others. Isolation is the enemy; connection and community are the medicine.

Be creative, surprising, and playful in our methods. The autocrats expect grimness and despair. Give them something they can’t predict or control.

Tend our own beauty and truth and joy as fiercely as we fight for others’. We are what we’re defending.

The fight is long. We must pace ourselves. This is a marathon, not a sprint.

And finally: Our art, our relationships, our pleasures, and our wild imagination aren’t separate from the resistance. They’re the point of it. They’re what makes us dangerous to authoritarianism. We know that life can be beautiful, strange, free, and we won’t forget it, won’t let their brutality have the final word.

The masked ICE agents think the masks make them powerful. But we see through them to the cowardice, the complicity, and the abandonment of humanity. And we will fight them with everything we have: rage and love, seriousness and play, practical solidarity and wild imagination.

Because the fight itself is how we stay human while they choose to be monsters.

This is a shorter version of a longer essay. To read the whole thing, go here: tinyurl.com/OurAlivenessIsThreatening

To read a companion essay, “The Demise of MAGA,” go here: tinyurl.com/DemiseOfMAGA

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DREAM AND SCHEME ABOUT YOUR LONG-RANGE FUTURE

with my 3-part EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES for the Coming Year: RealAstrology.com

What new influences are headed your way in 2026? What fresh resources can you 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 2026. Part 1 and Part 2 of your Big-Picture Predictions are also still available.

To listen to your BIG PICTURE horoscopes, go to RealAstrology.com

Register and/or log in through the main page, then under “Select Reading to Play,” click on “Part 3” of the “Long-Term Prediction for 2026.”

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The cost for the Expanded Audio Horoscopes is $7 per sign. (You can get discounts for purchasing larger token packages.) Each forecast is 8 to 11 minutes long.

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Poster is my Latino Muslim Unity

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WE REMEMBER EVERYONE

Written by @latinomuslimunity: In the past year, over 32 people have lost their lives through ICE enforcement, either in detention, during raids, or while being pursued. They were not criminals. They were parents, children, workers, and neighbors—human beings who were terrorized, hunted, and taken by a system that treats our lives as disposable.

Here are just a few of their names:

Silverio Villegas González (38) — Franklin Park, IL. Silverio, a father of two and cook, was shot and killed by ICE at a checkpoint after dropping his children at school.

Keith Porter (43) — Inglewood, CA. Keith was killed outside his apartment after being shot by an off-duty ICE officer following a New Year’s Eve celebration.

Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez (52) — Monrovia, CA. A Guatemalan day laborer, he was chased to death by ICE and struck by a vehicle while fleeing for his life.

Jaime Alanís (57) — Oxnard / Camarillo, CA. Jaime, a farmworker, was fatally injured during a large-scale ICE raid at his workplace.

Jocelyn Rojo Carranza (11) — Gainesville, TX. Jocelyn died by suicide after enduring bullying and threats by classmates that ICE would take her parents — a child lost to the fear and trauma created by immigration terror.

ICE terror is real.

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My linktree is here: linktr.ee/robbrezsny

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

Week of January 15

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Sandcastles are good reminders of how temporary everything is. We build them on the damp edge of the shore after the tide recedes, and then they crumble when the sea rolls back a few hours later. Let’s make the sandcastle your power symbol for the months ahead. In doing so, I don’t mean to imply that your certainties will be demolished. Rather, it’s my way of urging you to enjoy and capitalize on the ever-changing nature of all things. In fact, I believe that knack should be one of your specialties in the coming months. As the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh told us, we should be grateful for impermanence, because it keeps every possibility alive.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): During World War II, the United States faced a natural rubber shortage and funded research into synthetic substitutes. The effort was partly successful, but there were also failed experiments. Among these was a substance that later became a popular toy named Silly Putty. It sold millions of units and made its marketer wealthy. I suspect a metaphorically similar breakthrough is looming for you, Aquarius: an unplanned discovery that holds unforeseen value. You may soon have your own “Silly Putty moment”—an invention, idea, or situation that is technically a detour from your original goal but still delivers a gift. So keep your curiosity loose and your judgment soft. Don’t dismiss the byproducts of your efforts. Some diversions may reveal themselves to be the magic you didn’t realize you needed.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): I suggest you try an “as-if” exercise, Pisces. Here’s what I propose: Enjoy a five-day period visualizing what your life would be like if you stopped saving yourself for a mythical future—including both the positive and negative aspects. Instead, envision yourself spending the coming months doing exactly what you yearn to do most, gleefully and intensely pursuing your sweetest dreams and prime mission. During this sabbatical, you will refrain from invoking excuses about why you can’t follow your bliss. You will assume that you are attuned with the heart of creation. You will act as if you are a joy specialist who adores your life.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Japanese Zen master Hakuin (1686–1769) painted with astonishing vigor well into his eighties. When asked his secret, he said he treated each brushstroke as if it were his first. He approached the ink and paper with a beginner’s inspired innocence. I propose that you adopt a version of Hakuin’s practice. Dive into your familiar routines with virgin eyes. Allow your expertise to be influenced by surprise. As for the mastery you have earned, may I suggest you use it as a launching pad for enthusiastic amateurism? Being skilled is wonderful. Being skilled and willing to experiment like a newcomer? That’s the high art of perpetual combustion, an Aries specialty.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In 1971, NASA’s Apollo 15 mission delivered a new asset to the moon: the Lunar Roving Vehicle. This battery-powered “moon buggy” enabled astronauts to explore farther from their landing site than ever before. They gathered a record haul of rock and soil samples and a deeper understanding of the lunar surface. I think you Bulls would be wise to get your own equivalent of that moon buggy. The apt metaphor here is enhancing your ability to extend your reach and explore beyond the familiar. In the coming weeks, I hope you will seek access to tools, allies, and freedoms that expand your range. Use them to push into new territory and scout around for intriguing valuables.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Are you ready to unveil the half-hidden, half-beautiful truths you have been keeping tucked away? I think you are. You might shake, sweat, and second-guess yourself right up until the moment the pivotal moment arrives. But then, I predict, you will zone in on how best to carry out your sublime assignment. The perilous blessings or radiant burdens you’ve been hoarding like secret treasures will finally spill out of you in just the right ways.

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LET’S IMAGINE WHAT INTERESTING STORIES AND MYSTERIES MIGHT BE COMING YOUR WAY IN THE YEAR AHEAD

Who do you want to become in 2026? 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

+

The cost for the Expanded Audio Horoscopes is $7 per sign if you purchase 7 tokens for $7. (You can get discounts for purchasing larger token packages.)

Each forecast is 8 to 11 minutes long.

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CANCER (June 21-July 22): A hermit crab finds a new shell not because the old one was bad, but because the creature grew. A similar urge stirs in you now: an instinct to relocate your sensitivity and tenderness into roomier housing. You don’t have to abandon your favorite people or situations. Just ripen and update your containers so your emotional intelligence can flourish even more. Maybe revise your work rhythms. Dream up new bedtime stories. Be braver in declaring your needs. Your ongoing transformations could be a bit bumpy, but mostly healing and cherished. Give them the spaciousness they require.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Poet Jack Gilbert wrote, “We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure but not delight.” Here’s what I think he meant: Pleasure is easy to access, available in many transactions. But delight requires courage. We must be undefended enough to be astonished and elated. Here’s the potential glitch for you Leos: You sometimes feel inclined to perform your joy; you make your happiness into entertainment for others to be inspired by. But true delight is riskier and more real. It comes when you forget to curate yourself because you’re too enchanted to remember you’re being watched. Your next assignment: Conjure up three moments of private delight that no one but you will see.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Many of you are renowned for your precision, but that’s just half the story. The more complete truth is that when you are most robust, you’re a connoisseur of refinement. Your careful edits can transmute muddles into medicines. Your subtle fixes may catalyze major corrections. Here’s my bold declaration: You are now at the height of your Virgo powers. I hope you wield them with utter flair and finesse. Make everything you touch better than it was before you touched it.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Some astrologers work without ever glancing at the night sky. Their bond with the planets lives mostly through abstract ideas. To balance that approach, Daniel Giamario developed a more hands-on approach to astrology. In his retreats, students trek into wild country, far from city lights, and spend the dark hours watching the dance of the heavenly bodies. He teaches that cosmic energies can be sensed through our beautiful bodies as much as they can be understood by our fine minds. In the weeks ahead, I invite you to infuse all your explorations with that spirit. Learn through direct encounters, not just through concepts and recycled reports.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): English is my first language. I love how its wild, hybrid, restless qualities enable me to express myself. I never grow weary of exploring its limits and discovering new ways to use it with flair and care. But I am also very grateful that my horoscopes are translated into Italian, French, Japanese, and Spanish. I am supremely blessed to have editors who turn my idiosyncratic prose into language that non-English speakers can enjoy. It’s one of the great gifts that life has given me. In the coming months, Scorpio, I will be wishing and expecting a similar bonus for you: help and support in expanding your ability to reach further in your self-expression.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Your intrepid spirit is most likely to find exciting adventures if it’s exquisitely prepared. While I love your daring spontaneity and experimental expansiveness, I hope that in the coming weeks, you will work hard to support them with good planning and rigorous foresight. Be imaginative and disciplined, wild and calculating, irrepressible and solidly responsible. If you heed my advice, you could break your previous records for making marvelous discoveries in the frontiers. PS: Treat wonder like a muscle. Flex it daily—with gratitude.

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So far, I have created 3 sets of Big-Picture Audio Horoscopes and 4 sets of Big-Picture Written Horoscopes. They are all completely different. I have a lot so say about your future in 2026!

The written scopes are free. Scroll down to see them in this newsletter. (PS: The Part 4’s of each sign are also the horoscopes for this week.)

The audio scopes cost money. More info right below.

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EXPLORE YOUR LONG-RANGE FUTURE

with my 3-Part EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES for the Coming Year.

https://RealAstrology.com

Who do you want to become in 2026? Where do you want to go and what do you want to do? My reports can stimulate and inspire your meditations about the interesting possibilities.

This week, my EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES feature Part 2 of my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in 2026.

Part 1 of your Big Picture, Long-Term Predictions is still available, too. Part 3 will be ready for you on January 13.

What will be the story of your life in 2026? How can you exert your free will to create adventures that’ll bring out the best in you, even as you find graceful ways to cooperate with the tides of destiny?

Register and/or log in at RealAstrology.com.

Click on your sign under “Select Astrological Sign,” then select “Part 1” or “Part 2” of the “Long-Term Prediction for 2026 for your sign.”

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The cost for the Expanded Audio Horoscopes is $7 per sign if you purchase 7 tokens for $7. (You can get discounts for purchasing larger token packages.)

Each reading is 8 to 11 minutes long.

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P.S. You can also still access my Sneak Peek at 2026, where I describe major themes you’ll be working and playing with in 2026. For the Sneak Peek, click on “Sneak Peek at 2026 (Dec 23, 2025).”

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Below are your Big-Picture Written Horoscopes — four parts for each sign.

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ARIES — PART ONE: Nine hundred years ago, Sufi philosopher Al-Ghazali provided rigorous advice that’s not very popular these days. “To understand the stars,” he said, “one must polish the mirror of the soul.” Here’s my interpretation: To fathom the truth about reality, you must be a strong character who treasures clarity and integrity. It’s highly unlikely you can gather a profound grasp of how life works if your inner depths are a mess. Conversely, your capacity to comprehend the Great Mystery increases as you work on purifying and strengthening your character. Everything I just said is good advice for all of us all the time, but it will be especially potent and poignant for you in the coming months.

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ARIES — PART TWO: In the Brazilian rainforest, Cecropia trees and Azteca ants have a special relationship. The trees’ hollow branches serve as nesting spaces for the ants and offer them sugar-rich food. In return, the ants aggressively defend the trees from herbivores and predators, protecting them from damage. This mutualism benefits both species. The trees get protection that enhances their growth, while the ants gain shelter and nutrition. In the coming months, Aries, I invite you to seek symbiosis that’s equally vigorous. Enjoy the fun challenge of reducing your solo struggles as you rouse collaborations that boost your power and everyone else’s. The goal is intelligent alliance, not compromise. Be resourceful as you trade a bit too much independence for just the right amount of interdependence.

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ARIES — PART THREE: Before major eruptions, volcanoes may emit harmonic tremors. Lasting for hours or days, they are signals that pressure is building. A similar phenomenon is simmering in your sphere, Aries. Be alert. What rhythmic clues are vibrating through your system? What pressure is mounting that could eventually erupt? I’m not saying you should interpret them with a worried mind. In fact, they are offering you valuable intelligence about what needs to be released. You can either ignore them and let the eruption surprise you, or you can pay attention and arrange for controlled venting.

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ARIES — PART FOUR: The mystics drone on endlessly about letting go. But I’m here now to praise the art of holding on fiercely, tenderly, with full commitment. Some treasures deserve your passionate grip. Some people warrant your loyal devotion. Especially in the coming months, dear Aries, I invite you to devote yourself to your exciting dreams with ardent intensity. No surrender! Relentless perseverance! Uncompromising faith in the beauty and truth you love! What looks like stubbornness to outsiders will actually be fidelity to a vision others can't yet see.

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TAURUS — PART ONE: The sound of a whip cracking is a small sonic boom. The tip breaks the sound barrier, creating that distinctive snap. In my astrological reckoning, Taurus, life has provided you with the equivalent of a whip. During the coming months, you will have access to a simple asset that can create breakthrough force when wielded with precision and good timing. I’m not referring to aggression or violence. Your secret superpower will be understanding how to use small treasures that can generate disproportionate impacts. What’s your whip?

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TAURUS — PART TWO: When potters center clay on a wheel, they typically use one hand inside the vessel to apply steady, controlled force. The other hand remains fluid, guiding and stabilizing the outer rim of the spinning clay. This balanced use of pressure—one hand firm and bracing, the other adapting minutely to the shifting clay—helps bring the lump into perfect symmetry. I propose you make this a prime metaphor in the coming months, Taurus: control meeting surrender. You will be crafting a new balance between security and surprise. Too much rigidity, and the form cracks; too much flow, and it collapses. Practice the middle art.

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TAURUS — PART THREE: Your heartbeat isn’t regular like a metronome, but slightly irregular. The phenomenon is called heart rate variability and is a sign of health. A perfectly regular heartbeat is actually a warning sign. Your heart knows something your mind might not believe: Perfect consistency is pathological. Variation is vitality. The rhythm of life includes the beautiful irregularity of a system that’s alive enough to respond and adapt. Keep these truths uppermost in mind during 2026, Taurus. You will thrive on changeability and fluctuation.

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TAURUS — PART FOUR: As far back as the 19th century, daredevil college students in the UK have reveled in the practice of "night climbing." They clamber up chapels, spires, towers, and bridges under cover of darkness. Why? Mainly for adventure, mischief, and altered perspectives. In the coming months, Taurus, you may be ready for your own symbolic version of night climbing. If that sounds fun, seek out vantage points you’ve never accessed. Experiment with possibilities you’ve dismissed as off-limits or outside your range. Be safe, of course, but also be joyfully exploratory. I bet the view from the frontiers will change you in inspiring ways.

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GEMINI — PART ONE: Some Japanese potters practice yohen tenmoku. It’s a technique used to create a rare type of tea bowl with shifting, star-like iridescence on deep, dark glaze. The sublime effect results from a process that’s unusually demanding, highly unpredictable, and hard to control. Legend says that only one in a thousand bowls achieves the intended iridescence. The rest, according to the masters, are “lessons in humility.” I believe you can flourish by adopting this experimental mindset in the coming months. Treat your creative experiments as offerings to the unknown, as sources of wonder whether or not your efforts yield stellar results. Be bold in trying new techniques and gentle in self-judgment. Delight in your apprenticeship to mystery. Some apparent “failures” may bring useful novelty.

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GEMINI — PART TWO: Poet Audre Lorde spoke of how caring for herself was the exact opposite of being selfish. It was the foundation of her ability to serve and inspire other people. My Aunt Sophie used to say, “You can’t pour from an empty cup. Take care of yourself first.” Educator Stephen Covey advised, “Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There’s no greater investment.” Poet Vironika Tugaleva writes, “Learning to love yourself is essential and life-changing.” Everything I just said should be your keynotes in the coming months, Gemini. Boost your self-care to sublime levels.

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GEMINI — PART THREE: The Greenland shark waits for animals to fall asleep, then eats them while they’re unconscious. Since it’s too slow to chase anything, it has evolved a patient approach to hunting. It acts on the understanding that everything eventually lets its guard down. I suggest you cultivate similar patience in 2026, Gemini. There’s no need to rush toward what you want. Position yourself correctly and wait for moments of opportunity. You’re playing a long game.

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GEMINI — PART FOUR: In the coming months, I’m confident you will see and understand subtleties that most people miss. You’ll be a maestro at tuning in to nuanced subtexts in conversations and hidden openings in stale situations. Everyone else may assume that familiar situations will never change, but you will have the power to tease out creative possibilities. You might even decode seemingly contradictory truths with such aplomb that you surprise yourself. Use this superpower with as much kindness as you can, Gemini. Some discoveries may tempt you toward clever mischief, but I hope that instead you will choose inspired guidance. Your expanded spectrum, if spiced with compassion, can consistently reveal your next leap.

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CANCERIAN — PART ONE: A fair-weather cumulus cloud typically weighs over a million pounds and yet floats effortlessly. Let’s make that one of your prime power symbols for 2026, Cancerian. It signifies that you will harbor an immense emotional cargo that’s suspended with grace. You will carry complex truths, layered desires, and lyrical ambitions, but you will manage it all with aplomb and even delight. For best results, don’t overdramatize the heaviness; appreciate and marvel at the buoyancy.

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CANCERIAN — PART TWO: A remarkable species of jellyfish can circumvent the aging and death process that affects all other animals. Turritopsis dohrnii converts its mature, specialized cells back into stem cells, essentially recycling its own body into youth. The process may repeat indefinitely, making the animal theoretically immortal. In the coming months, Cancerian, your emotional wisdom will also show amazing regenerative power. Challenging and intriguing situations will be opportunities for you to initiate stunning acts of renewal. Like the jellyfish, you won’t merely manage change but will use it as a catalyst for vigorous growth. Have you ever before been blessed by such wildly rejuvenative powers of metamorphosis? I don’t think so.

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CANCERIAN — PART THREE: Atmospheric rivers are massive moisture highways in the sky. Meteorologists have been documenting newly identified patterns in how these marvels work. They’ve learned that tiny changes in ocean temperature can redirect thousands of miles of incoming rain. This will be an excellent metaphor for you in 2026, dear Cancerian. You’ll be in atmospheric-river mode. Small shifts in perspective and slight recalibrations of intention will send your momentum flowing in different and better directions. No drama required! Simple micro-adjustments will reroute larger currents. Attend devotedly and zestfully to the subtleties.

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CANCERIAN — PART FOUR: The honeyguide bird of Africa has a lucrative arrangement with humans. It calls out to honey-hunters, leading them through brush to wild beehives built into trees. The people harvest the honey, and the bird eats the leftover wax and larvae. This cooperation is passed down over generations and benefits both species. Let’s use this as a metaphor for your future in 2026. You will have extra power to notice where mutual benefit is possible, even with unexpected allies. They may be able to guide you toward resources you couldn’t find alone, and you will have value to give in return. Keep an ear out for signals that say, “Come with me, and we’ll both gain.”

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LEO — PART ONE: Every 11 years, the Sun reverses its magnetic polarity. North becomes south, and south becomes north. The last switch was completed earlier this year. Let’s use this natural phenomenon as your metaphorical omen for the coming months, Leo. Imagine that a kind of magnetic reversal will transpire in your psyche. Your inner poles will flip position. As the intriguing process unfolds, you may be surprised at how many new ideas and feelings come rumbling into your imagination. Rather than resist the cosmic acrobatics, I advise you to welcome and collaborate with them.

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LEO — PART TWO: According to ancient Egyptian myth, the sun god Ra rode a celestial boat across the sky by day. Each night, he plunged into the underworld to wrangle with chaos so he could rebirth light in time for the dawn. That’s your mythic assignment for the coming months, Leo: not to be nonstop luminous, but to renew and nurture your radiance in the dark. Your courage will lie in feeling and learning from your doubts without identifying with them. Your magnetism and wisdom will deepen as you descend. You won’t be less golden for passing through shadow.

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LEO — PART THREE: Certain fungi can break down pollutants like pesticides and plastics into less toxic substances. These mushrooms digest what’s considered indigestible, transforming poison into nutrients. I suspect you will have a metaphorically comparable capacity in 2026, dear Leo: a superpower that enables you to metabolize blight and taint. I predict you will exult as you eliminate stuff that’s useless and harmful. Please indulge your unusual talent to the max!

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LEO — PART FOUR: The cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris took years to build. Work began in 1163 and continued till 1345. Generations of architects, masons, and artisans contributed to the project, and those who began it didn’t live to see it completed. Yet they labored with devotion, trusting that the holy beauty they facilitated would endure beyond their lifetimes. I hope you’re inspired by this story, Leo. It’s an apt metaphor for you. In the coming months, you could and should lay stones for creations you may not see fully accomplished for months or even years. I encourage you to redefine and refine what faith means to you, and summon it in abundance.

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VIRGO — PART ONE: The sculptor Louise Bourgeois was asked why she worked so often with the image of the spider. She said it was a tribute to her mother, who was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, helpful, and useful—just like a spider. In the coming months, I invite you to embody her vision of the spider. You will have the wherewithal to weave hardy networks that could support you for years to come. Be creative and thoughtful as you craft your network of care. Your precision will be a form of devotion. Every strand, even fragile ones, will enhance your long-term resilience.

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VIRGO — PART TWO: In medieval monasteries, scribes added whimsical drawings called drolleries into the margins of sacred manuscripts. These marginalia included scenes like frogs playing harps, nuns chasing rabbits, and fantastical creatures engaged in playful or absurd activities. How should we interpret these seemingly prankish additions? Scholars disagree. In any case, I recommend you experiment with drolleries of your own, Virgo. Inject improvisation into duty. Add ornament to order. The coming months will reward your serious play. You’ll accomplish more by enjoying the work than by obsessing on perfecting it. A touch of friskiness may even improve efficiency. So when you edit, doodle; when you analyze, wink.

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VIRGO — PART THREE: The US Library of Congress adds 60,000 items to its collection every week but only catalogs a fraction of them immediately. So vast amounts of knowledge sit there, acquired but not yet processed, waiting for librarians to create the finding aids that make them accessible. You’re in a similar situation, Virgo. You’ve accumulated extraordinary amounts of information, experience, and skill. But how much of it is cataloged? How much is accessible when you need it? In the coming months, I hope you won’t acquire more. Instead, you will spend time with your archives and process what you have already gathered. What do you know that you’ve forgotten you know? What experiences hold wisdom you’ve never extracted?

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VIRGO — PART FOUR: Ready to decommission your inner censor? Interested in dropping the mask, relaxing your guard, and rewilding your gorgeous but slightly inhibited self? That’s what I recommend. Here are ways to fully enjoy the liberating grace period of the coming months: 1. Don’t deny yourself pleasures that would be healthy to indulge. 2. Shed taboos that were smart safeguards once upon a time but are no longer. 3. Re-evaluate why you treat certain fun activities as questionable. 4. Be brightly compassionate toward aspects of yourself you regard as wounded or inferior. 5. Be receptive to rebellious urges.

LIBRA — PART ONE: Researchers studying music theory know that dissonance—sounds that feel “wrong” or create tension—is in part culturally determined. Indonesia’s gamelan music and Arabic maqam scales are beautiful to audiences that have learned to appreciate them. But they might seem off-kilter to Westerners accustomed to music filled with major thirds and triads. Let’s use this as our starting point as we contemplate your future in 2026, Libra. Life may disrupt your assumptions about what constitutes balance and harmony. You will be invited to consider the possibility that what seems like discord from one perspective is attractive and valuable from another. My advice: Open your mind to other ways of evaluating what’s meaningful and attractive.

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LIBRA — PART TWO: Italy’s Orto Botanico di Padova is the world’s oldest botanical garden still in its original location. Since its inception 480 years ago, it has been a center for botanical research, education, and conservation. Its layout is striking, a square-inscribed in a circle, symbolizing harmonious order. In the coming months, Libra, you will be wise to associate yourself intimately with a similar wonder: an enduring source of beauty and revelation that you can both serve and benefit from.

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LIBRA — PART THREE: Vault doors often require two keys, turned simultaneously, to open. Why? Such a practice furthers risk reduction and fraud prevention. Let’s make this a potent metaphor for you in 2026, Libra. It will symbolize cooperation and balance as well as an enhancement of your security. The treasures you’ll be trying to access will require dual input. One key is yours: intellect, agility, charm, initiative. The second must come from a collaborator, mentor, friend, an unexpected stranger, or even a spirit guide. Just assume that the vault won’t open through brilliance alone. It will require synchronization.

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LIBRA — PART FOUR: In 1839, French artist Louis Daguerre perfected the daguerreotype, an early type of photography. The images were so detailed that you could count the threads in a subject’s clothing. The only downside: They required minutes of perfect stillness to capture. A slight twitch or squirm could blur the picture. People held their breath and resisted the urge to fidget, hoping to preserve the magic moment. In this spirit, Libra, let’s make the long exposure your power metaphor during the coming months. The most useful truths will reveal themselves best if you give them time to develop. In conversations, resist filling every silence. In projects, don’t rush the pace. Have patient fun lingering on the threshold as the mysteries coalesce and clarify.

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SCORPIO — PART ONE: In the Sonoran Desert of the southwestern United States, Arizona bark scorpions are hard to see at night. Scientists who want to study them can find them only by searching with flashlights that emit ultraviolet light. This causes the scorpions’ exoskeletons to fluoresce and glow a distinct blue-green or turquoise color, making them highly visible. Let’s use this scenario as a metaphor for you. In the coming months, you may reveal your best brilliance under uncommon conditions. Circumstances that seem unusual or challenging will highlight your true beauty and power. What feels extreme may be a good teacher and helper. I urge you to trust that the right people will recognize your unique beauty.

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SCORPIO — PART TWO: Astronaut Chris Hadfield has spent 166 days orbiting the Earth in the International Space Station. In the microgravity of outer space, he says, motion is very smooth; objects and people float. He marvels at how everything is always moving, and yet the pace itself is tranquil and unhurried. I foresee you enjoying a lot of this kind of grace in the coming months, Scorpio: momentum without mania; constant fluidic movement that’s never hectic or rushed. What a great privilege! I expect you will rack up many flowing accomplishments.

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SCORPIO — PART THREE: In December 1968, US astronaut Bill Anders was orbiting the moon inside the Apollo 8 spacecraft. He snapped a photo that showed the Earth as a blue-and-white sphere rising over the gray lunar surface against the blackness of space. This iconic image helped fuel the environmental movement and transformed how humans visualized their home. You’re at a comparable pivot, Scorpio. In 2026, you will see familiar situations from new angles, and this will reorganize your understanding of how life works. That’s a good thing! Be alert for watershed moments that bring revolutionary blessings.

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SCORPIO — PART FOUR: In 1907, Scorpio artist Pablo Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. It was a work so radically different from his earlier art and from the era’s norms that even his friends were stunned. Some called it ugly; others, incomprehensible. Yet the painting became a foundation of Cubism and reshaped modern art. Dear Scorpio, I suspect you may be on the verge of your own “Les Demoiselles” phase in 2026: unveiling novel approaches and innovative changes so original that they rattle comfortable assumptions. Don’t be discouraged if the initial responses don’t bring you appreciation. The root-shaking breakthroughs you’re consorting with may take others a while to recognize and welcome.

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SAGITTARIUS — PART ONE: According to legend, the genius composer Mozart heard entire symphonies in his imagination before he wrote down any notes. That’s a slight exaggeration. The full truth is that he often worked hard and made revisions. His inspiration was enhanced by effort and craft. However, it’s also true that Mozart wrote at least five masterful works in rapid succession, sometimes with remarkably few corrections on the manuscript. They included his last three symphonies (Nos. 39, 40, and 41). I predict you will have a Mozart-like aptitude in the coming months: the ability to perceive whole patterns before the pieces align. Trust your big visions!

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SAGITTARIUS — PART TWO: In Kyoto’s famous moss gardens, caretakers practice artful arrangement rather than total removal of shed foliage. They use delicate tools to gather trees’ cast-off leaves and arrange them on the moss to create visual harmony rather than bare tidiness. This approach reflects the Japanese aesthetic principles of embracing imperfection. Supposed “flaws” become part of the beauty of the garden. I propose that you regularly adopt a metaphorically comparable approach in the coming months, Sagittarius. Integrate rather than edit. Be creative with what’s changing form. Treat so-called messes and unexpected plot twists not as blemishes but as rich textures that feel meaningful and inspiring.

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SAGITTARIUS — PART THREE: The Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland is made of 40,000 interlocking basalt columns formed when ancient lava cooled and contracted. Legend says a giant built it as a bridge to Scotland. Both stories are true, one geologically and the other mythologically. Your life in the coming months will remind you that multiple explanations can coexist without canceling each other. The scientific story of lava cooling doesn’t make the giant story less meaningful. The giant story doesn’t make the geology less accurate. Conclusion: You don’t have to choose between competing narratives about your life as if only one can be true. What if both are? The practical explanation and mythic explanation describe the same phenomenon from different angles. You can be both the cooling lava and the giant building the bridge.

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SAGITTARIUS — PART FOUR: You Sagittarians are often drawn to teaching. You have a predilection and a passion for sharing what you have learned from your adventures and explorations. Many of you also possess a related gift: helping people make the journey to where enlightening lessons can best occur. You have a knack for opening their minds and clearing the way so they can awaken to new ways of seeing and imagining the world. I hope you will provide both of these blessings in abundance during the coming months. Your ability to inspire and educate will be at a peak.

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CAPRICORN — PART ONE: In Greek mythology, Proteus was a sea god famed for his ability to change his shape endlessly to evade capture. But now and then, a persistent hero was able to hold on to Proteus through all his transformations, whether he became a lion, serpent, tree, or flame. Then the god would bestow the gift of prophecy on the successful daredevil. I suspect that in the coming months, you will have an exceptional power to snag and grasp Proteus-like things, Capricorn. As a result, you could claim help and revelations that seem almost magical.

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CAPRICORN — PART TWO: A newly planted orchard spends its first year growing roots, not fruit. Underground and unseen, the real work happens. I surmise that’s like what you will be doing in the coming months, Capricorn: mostly invisible stabilization and preparation. If anyone asks you what you’re producing, smile inscrutably and say, “Depth.” Be committed to the quiet, hidden work rather than any showy song and dance. As my rough and rugged spirit guide Esther likes to say, “You don’t got to prove nothin’ to nobody!” The nourishment you will be storing up will sustain later abundance.

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CAPRICORN — PART THREE: Computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He helped ensure its core technologies were released to the world without patents or royalties. Universal, open access mattered more to him than personal profit. That single decision was a profound gift to the world. Billions benefited. In his generous spirit, dear Capricorn, I’ll ask whether there are any ideas, knowledge, or resources you’re holding in reserve that could multiply through sharing. In 2026, I invite you to be like Berners-Lee: a magnanimous strategist who understands that things may gain value through distribution, not restriction. Your intelligence will be worth more unleashed than protected. Your innovations will need the crowd to fulfill their purpose

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CAPRICORN — PART FOUR: The coming months are ripe for sacred audacity: boldness with a conscience and courage guided by kindness. Imagine you’re a Benevolent Initiator, whose superpower is to kindle beginnings without causing disruption and unease. Practice brilliant, incremental nudges and tweaks rather than grand interventions. If you’re hesitating to say what needs to be said, deliver a modest version now and a stronger one later. Make gradual momentum your ally. Homework: Identify a future scene you want to generate and take three elegantly simple steps toward it.

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AQUARIUS — PART ONE: In Florence, Italy, the Accademia Gallery houses several of Michelangelo’s sculptures that depict human figures partially emerging from rough blocks of marble. They seem to be caught in the process of birth or liberation. These works showcase the technique Michelangelo called non-finito (unfinished), in which the forms appear to struggle to escape from the stone. In the coming months, Aquarius, I foresee you undergoing a passage that initially resembles these figures. The good news is that unlike Michelangelo’s eternally trapped characters, you will eventually break free.

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AQUARIUS — PART TWO: Engineers may engage in “stress testing.” They evaluate a system’s hardiness and reliability by subjecting it to pressure or force. I suspect that life will bring you a benevolent version of this trial in the coming months, Aquarius. That’s a good thing! It’s not meant to break you, but to prove how much resilience you have developed. Situations that might have formerly cracked your confidence will affirm and reveal your upgraded endurance. Take note of your composure and congratulate yourself for it. You will have every right to exult in the vivid evidence of how much you’ve grown.

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AQUARIUS — PART THREE: In the myths of Mali’s Dogon people, Nommo is an amphibious, telepathic being who brought language, rhythm, and balance to Earth—and then departed. If things fall out of harmony, it’s believed, Nommo will return, speaking the lost syllables that realign the cosmos. You’re a bit like Nommo these days, Aquarius. Parts of your world may be in disarray, and your sacred task is to listen for the lost syllables. What’s missing in the dialogue? What notes aren’t being sung? If you seek gently and speak truly, restoration will follow.

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AQUARIUS — PART FOUR: Safety isn’t the opposite of adventure. It’s the infrastructure that lets adventure be expansive. Keep that in mind in the coming months, Aquarius. You will be wise to cultivate cozy bravery. You should relax deeply and nurture your strength. Build the support system for your future boldness. Then, in the second half of 2026, you will be well-prepared to launch a phase of experimental fun and exploratory learning. For best results, surround yourself with love and care. Decide who best supports you and make it attractive for them to support you.

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PISCES — PART ONE: To prepare you for 2026, I’ve gathered three quotes that address your most pressing need and urgent mandate. I recommend you tape this horoscope to your bathroom mirror. 1. “We cannot live in a world interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a hope. Part of the terror is to take back our listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.” —author Elaine Bellezza. 2. “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson. 3. “The ability to tell your own story, in words or images, is already a victory, already a revolt.” —Rebecca Solnit.

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PISCES — PART TWO: Piscean author Anaïs Nin wrote, “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source.” Apply her counsel dynamically during the coming months, dear Pisces. Be the great replenisher. Make yourself into a fountain of beauty as you share lavishly. Nurture tenderness and adoration with unexpected flowers, gorgeous music in the midst of the routine, and affection expressed through artful thoughtfulness. Be brilliant and persistent in ensuring that love thrives. Your elegant generosity and fond attention should enrich everything you touch.

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PISCES — PART THREE: The longest chess game theoretically possible is 5,949 moves, but most games end in under 40. Chess masters don’t win by seeing every possibility. Instead, they recognize patterns and anticipate which paths are worth exploring. Let’s apply this as a useful metaphor, Pisces. In 2026, it’s crucial that you don’t waste energy by considering improbable scenarios that will never materialize. You should be determined not to miss emerging themes because you’re too busy calculating unlikely variations. According to my prognosis, you don’t need to see further; you need to see more precisely and accurately. The chess master’s advantage isn’t exhaustive analysis; it’s knowing what to ignore. Ninety percent of your options don’t matter. Ten percent do.

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PISCES — PART FOUR: High in the Andes Mountains, farmers have for centuries made chuño, a freeze-dried potato that can last for years. They leave the potatoes outside overnight to let the freezing temperatures draw out the water. In the daytime, the strong sunlight and dry mountain air evaporate residual moisture. By this process, a perishable food becomes a long-lasting staple. I propose we make the chuño your symbol of power, Pisces. The coming months will be an ideal time to build reserves. I hope you will turn what you have grown and developed into resources that will nourish you well into the future.

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