Are We Ready for Healing?

Timing Is Everything

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:

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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.