In the End, We'll All Become Stories
Discover more from Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
In the End, We'll All Become Stories
Make yours a great story!
There’s a way not to be broken that takes brokenness to find it.
– Naomi Shihab Nye
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In the end, we’ll all become stories.
—Margaret Atwood
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Make yours a great story!
―Doctor Who
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I've gathered together all of the long-term, big-picture horoscopes I wrote for you, and bundled them in one place. Go here to read a compendium of your forecasts for 2022:
https://tinyurl.com/BigPicture2022
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In addition to these, I've created three-part, in-depth EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES about Your Long-Range Future. They go even further in exploring your prospects and challenges in 2022.
Who do you want to become in the coming months? Where do you want to go and what do you want to do? 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?
To listen to these three-part, in-depth reports, go here:
Register and/or log in through the main page, and then access the horoscopes by clicking on "Long Range Prediction." (Choose from Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3.)
If you'd like a boost of inspiration to fuel you in your quest for beauty and truth and love and meaning, tune in to my meditations on your Big-Picture outlook.
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Each of the three-part reports is seven to nine minutes long. The cost is $6 per report. There are discounts for the purchase of multiple reports.
P.S. You can also listen to a short-term Expanded Audio Horoscope for the coming week.
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PRAYER FOR US
This is a perfect moment. It's a perfect moment because I have been inspired to say a gigantic prayer. I've been roused to unleash a divinely greedy, apocalyptically healing prayer for each and every one of us—even those of us who don't believe in the power of prayer.
And so I am starting to pray right now to the God of Gods—the God beyond all Gods . . . the Girlfriend of God . . . the Teacher of God . . . the Goddess who invented God.
DEAR GODDESS, you who always answer our very best questions, even if we ignore you:
Please be here with us right now. Come inside us with your sly slippery slaphappy mojo. Invade us with your silky succulent salty sweet haha.
Hear with our ears, Goddess. Breathe with our lungs. See through our eyes.
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DEAR GODDESS, you who never kill but only change:
I pray that my exuberant, suave, and accidental words will move you to shower ferocious blessings down on everyone who reads or hears this benediction.
I pray that you will give us what we don't even know we need—not just the boons we think we want, but everything we've always been afraid to even imagine or ask for.
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DEAR GODDESS, you wealthy anarchist burning heaven to the ground:
Many of us don't even know who we really are. We've forgotten that our souls live forever. We're blind to the fact that every little move we make sends ripples through eternity. Some of us are even ignorant of how extravagant, relentless, and practical your love for us is.
Please wake us up to the shocking truths. Use your brash magic to help us see that we are completely different from we've been led to believe, and more exciting than we can possibly imagine.
Guide us to realize that we are all unwitting messiahs who are much too big and ancient to fit inside our personalities.
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DEAR GODDESS, you sly universal virus with no fucking opinion:
Help us to be disciplined enough to go crazy in the name of creation, not destruction.
Teach us to know the distinction between oppressive self-control and liberating self-control.
Awaken in us the power to do the half-right thing when it is impossible to do the totally right thing.
And arouse the Wild Woman within us—even if we are men or any other gender.
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DEAR GODDESS, you who give us so much love and pain mixed together that our morality is always on the verge of collapsing:
I beg you to cast a boisterous love spell that will nullify all the dumb ideas, bad decisions, and nasty conditioning that have ever cursed all of us wise and sexy virtuosos.
Remove, banish, annihilate, and laugh into oblivion any jinx that has clung to us, no matter how long we have suffered from it, and even if we have become accustomed or addicted to its ugly companionship.
Conjure an aura of protection around us so that we will receive an early warning if we are ever about to act in such a way as to bring another hex or plague into our lives in the future.
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DEAR GODDESS, you psychedelic mushroom cloud at the center of all our brains:
I pray that you will inspire us to kick our own asses.
Give us bigger, better, more original sins and wilder, wetter, more interesting problems.
Help us learn the difference between useless suffering and smart suffering.
Provoke us to throw away or give away everything we own that encourages us to believe we're better than anyone else.
Brainwash us with your compassion so that we never love our own freedom more than anyone else's freedom.
And make it illegal, immoral, irrelevant, unpatriotic, and totally tasteless for us to be in love with anyone or anything that's no good for us.
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DEAR GODDESS, you riotously tender, hauntingly reassuring, orgiastically sacred feeling that is even now running through all of our soft, warm animal bodies:
I pray that you provide us with a license to bend and even break all rules, laws, and traditions that hinder us from loving the world the way you do.
Show us how to purge the wishy-washy wishes that distract us from our daring, dramatic, divine desires.
And teach us that we can have anything we want if we will only ask for it in an unselfish way.
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DEAR GODDESS, you who just pretend to be wild and unknowable so you can get away with doing what's right:
Help us to be like you—wildly disciplined, voraciously curious, exuberantly elegant, shockingly friendly, fanatically balanced, blasphemously reverent, mysteriously truthful, teasingly healing, lyrically logical, and blissfully rowdy.
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And now dear God of Gods, God beyond all Gods, Girlfriend of God, Teacher of God, Goddess who invented God, I bring this prayer to a close, trusting that in these pregnant moments you have begun to change all of us in the exact way we needed to change in order to become the gorgeous geniuses we were born to be.
Amen
Om
Hallelujah
Shalom
Namaste
More power to you
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THANK YOU, THICH NHAT HANH
Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, one of the finest human beings who ever lived, died on January 22 at age 95. May his pure love inspire us.
Here's a gorgeous video and music with Thich Nhat Hanh reciting the prayer "The End of Suffering": https://tinyurl.com/mufjv5u2
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Here are some of my favorite quotes by Thich Nhat Hanh:
Feelings, whether of compassion or irritation, should be welcomed, recognized, and treated on an absolutely equal basis; because both are ourselves.
The tangerine I am eating is me. The mustard greens I am planting are me. I plant with all my heart and mind. I clean this teapot with the kind of attention I would have were I giving the baby Buddha or Jesus a bath.
Nothing should be treated more carefully than anything else. In mindfulness, compassion, irritation, mustard green plant, and teapot are all sacred.
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Your body belongs to your ancestors, your parents, and future generations, and it also belongs to society and all other living beings.
All of them have come together to bring about the presence of this body. Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos — the trees, the clouds, everything
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The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don't wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.
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Everything we touch becomes a jewel for our enjoyment. We do not have to possess them, because every jewel is available for our delight. Everyone and everything here is a jewel.
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There are enough zen centers. We need more zen corners.
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My actions are my only true belongings.
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With all I have experienced in my own life, the power of gratitude stands above everything else. In your mindfulness practice, use gratitude until it becomes your way of life.
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We are often sad and suffer a lot when things change, but change and impermanence have a positive side. Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible.
If a grain of corn is not impermanent, it can never be transformed into a stalk of corn.
If the stalk were not impermanent, it could never provide us with the ear of corn we eat.
If your daughter is not impermanent, she cannot grow up to become a woman.
Then your grandchildren would never manifest.
So instead of complaining about impermanence, we should say, "Warm welcome and long live impermanence." We should be happy. When we can see the miracle of impermanence, our sadness and suffering will pass.
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Read Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem “Call Me by My True Names” : https://tinyurl.com/48r3fdep
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When Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh was invited to the San Francisco Zen Center, the students asked him what they could do to improve their practice. He had entered a monastery at age sixteen, was an ordained monk, and had endured the horrors of the war in Vietnam. I imagine they expected some rigorous prescription for deepening their spiritual life.
Thich Nhat Han's response: 'You guys get up too early for one thing; you should get up a little later. And your practice is too grim. I have just two instructions for you. One is to breathe, and one is to smile.'"
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INTERVIEW WITH A WITCH
I had the good fortune of being asked to do an interview with the brilliant Amanda Yates Garcia, author of the book Initiated: Memoir of a Witch. Listen to our conversation here: https://tinyurl.com/vf656r4
It's rare I find colleagues with whom I am aligned in so many different perspectives. Amanda Yates Garcia is one of those colleagues:
* sacred political activism
* psychospiritual commitment to dealing with the darkness as well as reveling in the light
* moral integrity based on an unselfish celebratory love of and care for all creatures
* valuing the mandates of the soul over the demands of the ego
* regarding beauty and joy as essential ingredients in a well-lived life.
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WE'RE ALL FAMILY
We're all family. You have at least a million relatives as close as 10th cousin, and no one on Earth is any further removed than your 50th cousin.
With each breath, you take into your body 10 sextillion atoms, and, owing to the wind's circulation, every year you have intimate relations with oxygen molecules exhaled by every person alive, as well as by everyone who ever lived. (Source: Guy Murchie, The Seven Mysteries of Life)
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Your body contains about four octillion atoms. That's four with 27 zeroes after it. Believe it or not, 200 billion of that total were once inside the body of Martin Luther King, Jr.
For that matter, an average of 200 billion atoms of everyone who has ever lived and died is part of you: including Malcolm X, William Shakespeare, Joan of Arc, and Cleopatra. I am not making this up.
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Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says: There are more molecules of water in a cup of water than cups of water in all the world's oceans.
This means that some molecules in every cup of water you drink passed through the kidneys of Genghis Khan, Virginia Woolf, Abe Lincoln, or any other historical person of your choosing.
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ONE OF YOUR GREAT BLESSINGS
Brian Swimme writes: "The Sun, each second, transforms four million tons of itself into light, giving itself over to become energy that we, with every meal, partake of.
"For four million years, humans have been feasting on the Sun's energy stored in the form of wheat or reindeer, as each day the Sun dies as Sun and is reborn as the vitality of Earth.
"Every child of ours needs to learn the simple truth: She is the energy of the Sun. And we adults should organize things so her face shines with the same radiant joy.
"Human generosity is possible only because at the center of the solar system a magnificent stellar generosity pours forth free energy day and night without stop and without complaint and without the slightest hesitation.
"This is the way of the universe. This is the way of life. And this is the way in which each of us joins this cosmological lineage when we accept the Sun's gift of energy and transform it into creative action that will enable the community to flourish."
—Brian Swimme, The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos, video
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TOUCH IS CRUCIAL
"The more we learn about touch, the more we realize just how central it is in all aspects of our lives — cognitive, emotional, developmental, behavioral — from womb into old age. It's no surprise that a single touch can affect us in multiple, powerful ways."
— Maria Konnikova, The Power of Touch
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"Everything we touch becomes a jewel for our enjoyment. We do not have to possess them, because every jewel is available for our delight. Everyone and everything here is a jewel."
— Thich Nhat Hahn, Cultivating the Mind of Love
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"Of all the gifts we can give to people, the gift of our touch is one of the most priceless. Through our hands we convey a kind of radiance. A warmth seeps out from our inner fire, a wrap for someone's chill, a light for another's dark."
— Jan Phillips, Divining the Body
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"A pat on the back, a caress of the arm — these everyday, incidental gestures that we usually take for granted, thanks to our amazingly dexterous hands. But after years spent immersed in the science of touch, I can tell you that they are far more profound than we usually realize: They are our primary language of compassion, and a primary means for spreading compassion."
— Dacher Keltner, Hands on Research: The Science of Touch
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"Paradise is attained by touch."
— Helen Keller in Divining the Body by Jan Phillips
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"Although not everyone is blessed with a healing touch, our touch can be a source of healing and blessing for others, especially when accompanied by a brief prayer."
— Tom Cowan, The Way of Saints
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"Touch is far more essential than our other senses. It's ten times stronger than verbal or emotional contact."
— Saul Schanberg
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"Touch deprivation is a reality in American culture as a whole. It's not just babies needing to be touched in caring ways or the sick. It's not just doctors and nurses needing to extend it. It's all of us, needing connection, needing to receive it, needing to give it, with genuine happiness at stake."
— Rev Anthony David
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"Touch is not optional for human development. From tool use to chronic pain to the process of healing, the genes, cells, and neural circuits involved in the sense of touch have been crucial to creating our unique human experience."
— David J. Linden, Touch
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Meme words by Benoit Mandelbrot
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
See 1,000 Glorious Fin Whales Feeding Together: Share Their Comeback From Near Extinction. https://tinyurl.com/37hptn8n
Rainbow Village: 84-Year-Old Saves Neighborhood From Bulldozer By Painting Every Street With Joyful Colors. https://tinyurl.com/mpwpyepb
New Illinois Law Allows Women to Get Birth Control Pills from a Pharmacist Without a Doctor Involved. https://tinyurl.com/2p9hx699
How Norway Popularized an Ultra-Sustainable Heating Method. https://tinyurl.com/2p8e77te
Abandoned Oil Rigs Are Actually Helping the Oceans. Properly maintained, their towering pylons often become an ideal habitat for endangered marine life. https://tinyurl.com/mrxe8jpm
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For a lot more pronoiac resources and ideas, read my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings
Available at Bookshop.org: https://tinyurl.com/548hp8y8
Available at Powells: https://bit.ly/PowellsPronoia
Available at Barnes & Noble: https://tinyurl.com/PronoiaBN
Available at Amazon: https://bit.ly/Pronoia
A free preview of the book is available here: https://tinyurl.com/PronoiaPreview
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Please tell me your own nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES: Truthrooster@gmail.com.
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning January 27
Copyright 2022 by Rob Brezsny
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Since the iconoclastic planet Uranus is a chief symbol for the Aquarian tribe, you people are more likely to be dissenters and mavericks and questioners than all the other signs. That doesn't mean your departures from orthodoxy are always successful or popular. Sometimes you meet resistance from the status quo. Having offered that caveat, I'm happy to announce that in the coming weeks, your unique offerings are more likely than usual to be effective. For inspiration, read these observations by author Kristine Kathryn Rusch: "Rebels learn the rules better than the rule-makers do. Rebels learn where the holes are, where the rules can best be breached. Become an expert at the rules. Then break them with creativity and style."
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Piscean author Juansen Dizon tells us, "Don't find yourself in places where people have it all figured out." That's always good advice, but it will be especially germane for you in the coming weeks and months. You need the catalytic stimulation that comes from associating with curious, open-minded folks who are committed to the high art of not being know-it-alls. The influences you surround yourself with will be key in your efforts to learn new information and master new skills. And that will be an essential assignment for you throughout 2022.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Author Helen Hunt Jackson said that one component of happiness is "a little less time than you want." Why? Because you always "have so many things you want to see, to have, and to do" and "no day is quite long enough for all you would like to get done before you go to bed." I propose you experiment with this definition in the coming weeks. According to my astrological analysis, you will have even more interesting assignments and challenges than usual—as well as a brimming vitality that will make it possible for you to accomplish many but not all of them. Your happiness should be abundant!
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Born under the sign of Taurus, Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) had considerable skills as a composer of music, an athlete, an author, a passionate lover, and an activist working for women's rights. She was successful in all of them. I propose we make her one of your role models for the coming months. Why? First, because she did more than one thing really well, and you are now primed to enhance your versatility, flexibility, and adaptability. Second, because she described a formula for high achievement that would suit you well. She said, "Night after night I went to sleep murmuring, 'Tomorrow I will be easy, strong, quick, supple, accurate, dashing and self-controlled all at once!'" (PS: I suggest you make "supple" your word of power in 2022.)
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): According to author Olivia Dresher, "Feelings want to be free. Thoughts want to be right." Well, then, what about intuitions? In a sense, they're hybrids of feelings and thoughts. They're a way of knowing that transcends both feelings and thoughts. When intuitions come from the clear-seeing part of your deep psyche rather than the fear-prone part of your conditioning, they are sweet and fun and accurate and humble and brisk and pure. They don't "want" to be anything. I'm pleased to inform you, Gemini, that in the coming weeks, your intuitions will be working at peak efficiency. It should be relatively easy for you to distinguish between the clear-seeing and fear-prone modes of intuition.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): "If you are going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it," wrote humorist Leo Rosten. I offer his counsel to you right now because I want you to have fun if you wander away from your usual upstanding behavior. But may I make a suggestion? As you depart from normal, boring niceness, please remain honorable and righteous. What I'm envisioning for you are experiments that are disruptive in healthy ways, and dares that stir up interesting problems, and rebellious explorations that inspire beauty and truth. They'll be "wrong" only in the sense of being mutinies against static, even stagnant, situations that should indeed be prodded and pricked. Remember Bob Dylan's idea: "To live outside the law, you must be honest."
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EXPLORING THE BIG PICTURE OF YOUR LONG-RANGE FUTURE
Would you like some inspiration as you muse and wonder about your upcoming adventures in 2022?
You can still listen to my long-range, in-depth explorations of your destiny in the coming months. Each report in the three-part series is 7 to 9 minutes long.
Go to https://RealAstrology.com
Register and/or log in through the main page, and then access the horoscopes by clicking on "Long Range Prediction." (Choose from Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3.)
A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.
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"The best part about your audio horoscopes is that they pat me on the head and kick me in the ass at the same time." —Rita L., San Diego
"Your audio oracles go beyond helping me find the truth -- they inspire me to find the WILD truth."
—Patrick K., Montreal
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LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Leo actor Anna Kendrick bragged, "I'm so humble it's crazy. I'm like the Kanye West of humility." I'd like to see you adopt that extravagant approach to expressing your magnificence in the coming weeks. I hope you'll add another perspective to your repertoire, too—this one from Leo actor Mae West. She exulted, "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!" Here's one further attitude I encourage you to incorporate, courtesy of Leo author Rachel Pollack: "To learn to play seriously is one of the great secrets of spiritual exploration."
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Sammy Davis Jr. (1925–1990) was multi-talented: an actor, singer, comedian, and dancer. One critic described him as "the greatest entertainer ever to grace a stage." He didn't think highly of his own physical appearance, however. "I know I'm dreadfully ugly," Davis said, "one of the ugliest men you could meet. But ugliness, like beauty, is something you must learn how to use." That's an interesting lesson to meditate on. I think it's true that each of us has rough, awkward, irregular aspects—if not in our physical appearance, then in our psyches. And yet, as Davis suggested, we can learn to not just tolerate those qualities, but use them to our advantage. Now is a favorable time for you to do that.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): "It is the nature of love to work in a thousand different ways," wrote the mystic Saint Teresa of Avila. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, you're due to discover new and different ways to wield your love magic—in addition to the many you already know and use. For best results, you'll have to be willing to depart from old reliable methods for expressing care and tenderness and nurturing. You must be willing to experiment with fresh approaches that may require you to stretch yourself. Sounds like fun to me!
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): "If you are drilling for water, it's better to drill one 60-foot well than 10 six-foot wells," advised author and religious scholar Huston Smith. He was using well-drilling as a metaphor, of course—as a symbol for solving a problem, for example, or developing a spiritual practice, or formulating an approach to psychological healing. The metaphor might not be perfectly applicable for everyone in every situation. But I believe it is vividly apropos for you and your current situations.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): A well-worn proverb tells us, "All good things come to those who wait." There's a variation, whose author is unknown (although it's often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln): "Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left behind by those who hustle." I think that's far more useful advice for you in the coming weeks. I'd much rather see you hustle than wait. Here's a third variant, which may be the best counsel of all. It's by author Holly Woodward: "All good things come to those who bait."
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Author Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote, "To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization." I agree, which is why I authorize you to add "Saint" to the front of your name in the coming weeks. There's an excellent chance you will fit the description Stowe articulated. You'll be at the peak of your power to elevate the daily rhythm into a stream of subtle marvels. You'll be quietly heroic. If you're not fond of the designation "Saint," you could use the Muslim equivalent term, "Wali," the Jewish "Tzadik," Buddhist "Arhat," or Hindu "Swami."
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Homework: What is the feeling you want to have the most during 2022? Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com
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Submissions sent to Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter or in response to "homework assignments" may be published in a variety of formats at Rob Brezsny's discretion, including but not limited to newsletters, books, the Free Will Astrology column, and Free Will Astrology website. We reserve the right to edit submissions for length, style, and content.
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright 2022 Rob Brezsny
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In the End, We'll All Become Stories
This one really hit home today. Thank you.