Glory in the Highest

Gratitude Fest

Listen to the tender rant “Glory in the Highest”

Here’s the text of “Glory in the Highest”:

Everywhere you look: glory

Every step you take: glory

Every breath you take: glory glory

Soaring roaring uproarious glory

is our story

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Thousands of things go right for you every day, beginning the moment you wake up. Thousands of gifts and blessings stream your way without end.

The biggest and best blessing is the sun.

Every single second, our home star transforms four million tons of itself into light, converting its body into light and heat and energy for our personal use.

You can't live without the sun's inexhaustible flood of unconditional love! Every move you make depends on it. Luckily, it never fails you.

Did you know that our personal star is located at the precise distance from us to be of consummate service? If it were any closer, we would fry, and if it were any farther away, we would freeze.

Is that just a happy accident? Or is it a sign of favor—a big, broad hint, from a cosmic intelligence that adores you?

Another one of life's bounties is its changeableness . . . which ensures that boredom will never last very long. We may underestimate the intensity of our longing for continual transformation, but the universe doesn't.

That's why life provides us with the boundless entertainment of our ever-shifting story. That's why it is always revising the challenges it sends our way, providing our curious soul with a rich variety of unpredictable teachings.

Neuroscientists have turned up evidence that suggests we love this aspect of the universe's behavior. They say that we are literally addicted to learning. At the moment when we grasp a lesson we've been grappling with, our brain experiences a rush of a natural opium-like chemical, boosting our pleasure levels. We crave this experience. We thrive on it.

So the universe is built in such a way as to discourage boredom. It does this not just by generating an endless stream of interesting novelty, and not only by giving us an instinctive lust to keep learning, but also by making available an abundance of ways to break free of our habitual thoughts.

We can go to school, travel, read, listen to experts, converse with people who think differently from us, and absorb the works of creative artists.

We can replenish and stretch our mind through exercise, sex, psychotherapy, spiritual practices, and self-expression. We can take drugs and medicines that alter our perspectives.

And here's the best part of this excellent news: Every method that exists for expanding our consciousness is more lavishly available right now than it has been at any previous time in history.

Never before have there been so many schools, educational programs, workshops, and enrichment courses. Virtually any subject or skill we want to study, we can. We don't even have to leave our home to do it. The number of online classes is vast.

Travel is easier and faster than ever before. A few days from now, we could be white-water rafting along the Franklin River in Tasmania, or riding on "the train at the end of the world" in Tierra del Fuego, or observing Golden Bamboo lemurs in the rainforest of southeastern Madagascar.

If we're on a budget, we can jet to exotic locales for free as an air courier, or we can travel cheaply as an eco-tourist, enjoying the natural pleasures of distant climes without demanding luxurious accommodations or expensive night life.

Let's talk about the Internet's role in helping the universe discourage boredom. Remember, it's still very early in the evolution of this budding global brain. But already it provides us with instant access to a substantial amount of all the information, images, and music ever created.

And in another few years, the sheer entirety of the human mind's riches will be spread before us like a majestic feast. It's not yet true that every book ever written and every song ever recorded and every film ever made are accessible online, but it will be true sooner rather than later.

Today, without leaving your chair or spending any money, we can enjoy Kandinsky's painting Improvisation No. 30 or archives of the Krazy Kat comic strips.

We can listen to a Vivaldi concerto or a Black Sabbath heavy metal anthem, and we can read the history of the Peloponnesian War or the myths of the Tlingit Indians. We can hear Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech or watch a short film of the Three Stooges throwing pies in the faces of high society matrons or pore over every poem Emily Dickinson ever wrote.

For many of us, few freshly minted glories are more glorious than the Internet's prodigious gift of song. There has never before been so much great music available, and from so many different cultures and genres, and so cheaply.

Enhancing this blessing has been the recent revolution in recording technology, which has made it possible for musicians all over the world to record their compositions at low cost. We not only have much better access to all kinds of music, but have far more new music to enjoy as well.

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Exposing ourselves to the expressions of other people is an excellent way to play along with the game of life's perpetual invitations to change ourselves. Those of us who are alive today are extremely lucky, since our moment in history provides more opportunities to learn from other people than ever before.

Another phenomenon that helps us respond to and keep up with the universe's restless creativity is self-expression. And it so happens that our era is also the champion of all eras in that regard. So claims Clay Shirky, an expert in the social and economic consequences of the Internet. He says that we are currently witnessing "the largest increase in expressive capability in human history."

The invention of the printing press in the 15th century provoked an earlier revolution. A second major upgrade in the capacity to communicate came with the telegraph and telephone.

The third was ushered in with the arrival of recorded media other than print: photos, recorded sound, and movies.

The fourth arrived when the electromagnetic spectrum was mobilized for use in broadcasting sounds and images through the air.

But the fifth revolution is the biggest of all. The Internet is not only becoming the vessel for all the other media, but has effectively ended the monopoly that professionals have had in getting their messages out. Now everyone can speak to everybody in a variety of modes.

There are well over a trillion unique URLs on the internet and well over 100 million blogs. Add to this plenitude the thousands of authors who are self-publishing their books, the independent filmmakers making low-budget movies, the aspiring photographers on flickr.com, the hordes of podcasters and Web-based radio stations, and the musicians who are not signed to contracts with record labels but are recording songs in their home studios. Factor in the millions of people discussing their intimate details on social media.

While there are still masses of pure consumers who are content merely to absorb the creations of others, the Internet is bringing us closer to the ideal proclaimed by the Burning Man festival: "No spectators!"

As we play along with the universe's conspiracy to liberate us from the suffering of boredom, we can call on a widening array of healing strategies, psychological insights, and spiritual practices.

The Internet isn't solely responsible for the universal spread of formerly local or regional ideas. The dissolution of hidebound traditions has also helped expedite the increasing availability of inspiration from everywhere, along with the growth of international trade, the explosive expansion of the entertainment industry, the ease of long-distance jet travel, and the omnivorousness of the news media.

Globalization has a lot of downsides, but this isn't one of them.

And so Chinese acupuncture and Ayurvedic medicine from India are making inroads into mainstream health care in North America.

The influence of Buddhist thought on psychotherapy in recent years has been huge.

A spiritual seeker who's curious about how other cultures have communed with the divine realms has easy access to the esoteric tantric secrets of the Hindus, alchemical texts that were previously only available to scholars, the Santo Daime sect in Brazil, and the songs and stories of the Yoruba tradition.

What's even more unprecedented is that any of us is free to mix and match modalities and techniques from a variety of systems.

Here's transpersonal psychologist Roger Walsh, writing in the IONS Review: "This is the first time in history that publicly acknowledging that you follow two or more distinct spiritual traditions would not have you burned at the stake, stoned to death, or facing a firing squad. We tend to forget what an extraordinary time this is, that for the first time in history we have the entirety of the world's spiritual and religious traditions available to us, and we can practice them without fear."

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There's another sense in which we have more power than ever before to expand and mutate and play with our consciousness: the availability of drugs, both legal and illegal.

In earlier centuries, the Huichol Indians of northern Mexico had peyote, the Turks of the Ottoman Empire had coffee, the practitioners of Bwii in West Central Africa had ibogaine, and the English had tobacco. But our culture is the first in which all of history's psychoactive substances can be had at once.

Adding to that generous selection, researchers in recent decades have been busy designing and discovering a wide array of new drugs that affect the mind, from antidepressants to LSD, from analgesics to Ecstasy, from sleep aids to lucid dream enhancers.

The evolution of anesthesia, which didn't get fully underway until the 19th century, has continued apace as well.

On the near frontier are exotic treatments that could further expand the definition of consciousness and mutate what it means to be human.

One drug shows great promise in enhancing visual memory. Another could permanently wipe away painful memories.

My personal policy is to avoid taking drugs of all kinds. But I think it's glorious that so many psychoactive substances are available for those discriminating experimenters who dare to expand the frontiers of the human psyche.

And a new era of inner exploration is in fact in motion. Progress in the use of psychedelics had been derailed for years by government repression and the excesses of irresponsible users. But the government has begun to relax some of its prohibitions, allowing legal experiments with psilocybin.

In trials at Johns Hopkins' Departments of Neuroscience and Psychiatry and Behavioral Biology, test subjects' use of the hallucinogen has generated spiritual realizations that yield long-term practical benefits.

Other experiments have shown that psilocybin can play an important therapeutic role in reducing the suffering of terminally ill patients.

Meanwhile, the pioneers who are experimenting with psychedelics outside of the government's purview have become more disciplined in their approach, as evidenced by a wealth of smart new books and journals that investigate the phenomena for what they really are: forays into unknown realms that hold fascinating secrets, worthy of scientific rigor and brave intelligence.

Of the many things that have gone right for you during your time on Earth, the most crucial was your birth. As you crossed over the threshold, trading the warm dark sanctuary for the bright noisy enigma, you didn't die!

It was a difficult act of high magic that involved many people who worked very hard in your behalf. The skills they provided in helping you navigate your rite of passage were in turn made possible by previous generations of threshold-tenders who bequeathed their expertise.

Months before that initiation, a more secret miracle bloomed: The spark that would ultimately become you began as a single cell, spawned by the explosive fusion of two highly specialized bundles of chromosomes. How could that tiny package of raw material have possibly grown a brain and liver and heart and stomach over a period of a few months?

What inscrutable genius guided and oversaw the emergence of your fully formed infant body, that virtuoso creation, from the slimmest of clues?

"Something unknown is doing we don't know what," said astrophysicist Arthur Eddington about the universe. And we are the beneficiaries.

P.S. You have continued to grow since your birth, with millions of new cells continually blooming to replace the old ones that are always dying.

At this moment, you're host to about 50 trillion cells, and each of them is really a sentient being in its own right. They all act together as a community, implementing the monumental collaboration you call your body.

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EXPLORE THE BIG PICTURE OF YOUR LIFE

with my Expanded Audio Horoscopes for the Second Half of 2023. This is the last week they will be available.

How can you exert your free will to create the adventures that will bring out the best in you, even as you find graceful ways to cooperate with the tides of destiny?

To listen to my IN-DEPTH, LONG-TERM AUDIO FORECAST for YOUR LIFE during the next six months and beyond, go here, then register and/or sign in:

https://RealAstrology.com

After you log in through the main page, click on the link "Long-Range Forecast for Second Half of 2023."

The horoscopes cost $7 apiece. Discounts are available for multiple purchases.

You can also listen to your short-term forecast for the coming week by clicking on "This week (July 25, 2023)."

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Gordon Gilkey writes about his worries. He says they fall into five distinct categories:

1. Worries about disasters which, as later events proved, never happened. About 40% of my anxieties.

2. Worries about decisions I had made in the past, decisions about which I could now of course do nothing. About 30% of my anxieties.

3. Worries about possible sickness and a possible nervous breakdown, neither of which materialized. About 12% of my worries.

4. Worries about my children and my friends, worries arising from the fact I forgot these people have an ordinary amount of common sense. About 10% of my worries.

5. Worries that have a real foundation. Possibly 8% of the total.

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Gilkey then asks how he can conquer his worries. He concludes: "To limit his worrying to the few perils in the fifth group. This simple act will eliminate 92% of my fears. Or, to figure the matter differently, it will leave me free from worry 92% of the time.

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

Week beginning July 27

Copyright 2023 by Rob Brezsny

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): There are two kinds of holidays: those created by humans and those arising from the relationship between the sun and earth. In the former category are various independence days: July 4 in the US, July 1 in Canada, July 14 in France, and June 2 in Italy. Japan observes Foundation Day on February 11. Among the second kind of holiday is Lammas on August 1, a pagan festival that in the Northern Hemisphere marks the halfway point between the summer solstice and autumn equinox. In pre-industrial cultures, Lammas celebrated the grain harvest and featured outpourings of gratitude for the crops that provide essential food. Modern revelers give thanks for not only the grain, but all the nourishing bounties provided by the sun’s and earth’s collaborations. I believe you Leos are smart to make Lammas one of your main holidays. What’s ready to be harvested in your world. What are your prime sources of gratitude?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): For many of us, a disposal company regularly comes to our homes to haul away the garbage we have generated. Wouldn't it be great if there was also a reliable service that purged our minds and hearts of the psychic gunk that naturally accumulates? Psychotherapists provide this blessing for some of us, and I know people who derive similar benefits from spiritual rituals. Getting drunk or intoxicated may work, too, although those states often generate their own dreck. With these thoughts in mind, Virgo, meditate on how you might cleanse your soul with a steady, ennobling practice. Now is an excellent time to establish or deepen this tradition.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I'm wondering if there is a beloved person to whom you could say these words by Rumi: “You are the sky my spirit circles in, the love inside love, the resurrection-place.” If you have no such an ally, Libra, the coming months will be a favorable time to attract them into your life. If there is such a companion, I hope you will share Rumi’s lyrics with them, then go further. Say the words Leonard Cohen spoke: "When I’m with you, I want to be the kind of hero I wanted to be when I was seven years old."

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Your theme for the coming weeks is "pleasurable gooseflesh.” I expect and hope you’ll experience it in abundance. You need it and deserve it! Editor Corrie Evanoff describes "pleasurable gooseflesh" as "the primal response we experience when something suddenly violates our expectations in a good way.” It can also be called "frisson"—a French word meaning “a sudden feeling or sensation of excitement, emotion, or thrill.” One way this joy may occur is when we listen to a playlist of songs sequenced in unpredictable ways—say Mozart followed by Johnny Cash, then Edit Piaf, Led Zeppelin, Blondie, Queen, Luciano Pavarotti, and Yellow Magic Orchestra. Here’s your homework: Imagine three ways you can stimulate pleasurable gooseflesh and frisson, then go out and make them happen.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): “Fire rests by changing,” wrote ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. In accordance with astrological omens, I ask you to meditate on that riddle. Here are some preliminary thoughts: The flames rising from a burning substance are always moving, always active, never the same shape. Yet they comprise the same fire. As long as they keep shifting and dancing, they are alive and vital. If they stop changing, they die out and disappear. The fire needs to keep changing to thrive! Dear Sagittarius, here’s your assignment: Be like the fire; rest by changing.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): There’s ample scientific evidence that smelling cucumbers can diminish feelings of claustrophobia. For example, some people become anxious when they are crammed inside a narrow metal tube to get an MRI. But numerous imaging facilities have reduced that discomfort with the help of cucumber oil applied to cotton pads and brought into proximity to patients’ noses. I would love it if there were also natural ways to help you break free of any and all claustrophobic situations, Capricorn. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to hone and practice the arts of liberation.

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BRAINSTORM ABOUT THE BIG PICTURE OF YOUR LIFE

with my Expanded Audio Horoscopes for the Second Half of 2023:

https://RealAstrology.com

This is the last week they'll be available!

What will be the story of your life during the rest of 2023 and beyond? How can you exert your free will to create the adventures that will bring out the best in you, even as you find graceful ways to cooperate with the tides of destiny?

If you'd like a high-octane boost of inspiration to fuel your quest to create your most interesting and meaningful destiny, tune in to my meditations on your long-term outlook.

Go here:

https://RealAstrology.com

Then register and/or log in and click on this link:

"Long-Range Forecast for Second Half of 2023"

You can also listen to your short-term forecast for the coming week by clicking on "This week (July 25, 2023)."

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"Your long-range audio horoscopes encouraged me to think bigger about my life. As I listened, I could feel my shrunken expectations melting away."

—Therese Pembroke, San Diego

"I love the soothing kindness of your long-range audio horoscopes. I also love their invigorating encouragement and surprising inspiration!" —Franny Kaiser, Minneapolis

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The horoscopes cost $7 apiece. Discounts are available for multiple purchases.

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AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “Silent gratitude isn't very much use to anyone,” said Aquarian author Gertrude B. Stein. She was often quirky and even downright weird, but as you can see, she also had a heartful attitude about her alliances. Stein delivered another pithy quote that revealed her tender approach to relationships. She said that love requires a skillful audacity about sharing one’s inner world. I hope you will put these two gems of advice at the center of your attention, Aquarius. You are ready for a strong, sustained dose of deeply expressive interpersonal action.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): According to the International Center for Academic Integrity, 95 percent of high school students acknowledge they have participated in academic cheating. We can conclude that just one of 20 students have never cheated—a percentage that probably matches how many non-cheaters there are in every area of life. I mention this because I believe it's a favorable time to atone for any deceptions you have engaged in, whether in school or elsewhere. I'm not necessarily urging you to confess, but I encourage you to make amends and corrections to the extent you can. Also: Have a long talk with yourself about what you can learn from your past cons and swindles.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): You are about to read a thunderbolt of sublime prophecies. It’s guaranteed to nurture the genius in your soul's underground cave. Are you ready? 1. Your higher self will prod you to compose a bold prayer in which you ask for stuff you thought you weren't supposed to ask for. 2. Your higher self will know what to do to enhance your love life by at least 20 percent, possibly more. 3. Your higher self will give you extra access to creativity and imaginative powers, enabling you to make two practical improvements in your life.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In 1991, John Kilcullen began publishing books with “for Dummies” in the title: for example, Sex for Dummies, Time Management for Dummies, Personal Finance for Dummies, and my favorite, Stress Management for Dummies. There are now over 300 books in this series. They aren’t truly for stupid people, of course. They’re designed to be robust introductions to interesting and useful subjects. I invite you to emulate Kilcullen’s mindset, Taurus. Be innocent, curious, and eager to learn. Adopt a beginner’s mind that’s receptive to being educated and influenced. (If you want to know more, go here: tinyurl.com/TruthForDummies)

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): "I could be converted to a religion of grass," says Indigenous author Louise Erdrich in her book Heart of the Land. "Sink deep roots. Conserve water. Respect and nourish your neighbors. Such are the tenets. As for practice—grow lush in order to be devoured or caressed, stiffen in sweet elegance, invent startling seeds. Connect underground. Provide. Provide. Be lovely and do no harm." I advocate a similar approach to life for you Geminis in the coming weeks. Be earthy, sensual, and lush. (PS: Erdrich is a Gemini.)

CANCER (June 21-July 22): I hereby appoint myself as your temporary social director. My first action is to let you know that from an astrological perspective, the next nine months will be an excellent time to expand and deepen your network of connections and your web of allies. I invite you to cultivate a vigorous grapevine that keeps you up-to-date about the latest trends affecting your work and play. Refine your gossip skills. Be friendlier than you’ve ever been. Are you the best ally and collaborator you could possibly be? If not, make that one of your assignments.

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Homework: What single good change would set in motion a cascade of further good changes? Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com

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