Let’s Talk about Life’s Bounties

We may underestimate our blessings

LET’S TALK ABOUT SOME OF LIFE’S TREMENDOUS BOUNTIES

One of life's tremendous bounties is its changeableness, which ensures that boredom will never last very long.

You may underestimate the intensity of your longing for continual transformation, but the universe doesn't.

That's why it provides you with the boundless entertainment of your ever-shifting story.

That's why it is always revising the challenges it sends your way, providing your curious soul with a rich variety of unpredictable teachings.

Neuroscientists have turned up evidence that suggests you love this aspect of the universe's behavior. They say that you are literally addicted to learning.

At the moment when you grasp a lesson you've been grappling with, your brain experiences a rush of a natural opium-like chemical, boosting your pleasure levels. You crave this experience. You 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 you an instinctive lust to keep learning, but also by making available an abundance of ways to break free of your habitual thoughts.

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

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

And here's the best part of this excellent news: Every method that exists for expanding your 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 you want to study, you can. You don't even have to leave your home to do it. The number of online classes is steadily mounting.

Travel is easier and faster than ever before. A few days from now, you 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 you're on a budget, you can jet to exotic locales for free as an air courier, or you can travel cheaply as an eco-tourist, enjoying the natural pleasures of distant climes without demanding luxurious accommodations or expensive night life.

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WHY MERCURY RETROGRADE IS A GOOD THING

Mercury is retrograde until May 14. Astrologer Donna Cunningham tells us why this is a good thing, and gives us suggestions on how to take maximum advantage of its unique opportunities: https://tinyurl.com/yc5k45x5

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Amanda Yates Garcia's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oracleofla/

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THE UNIVERSE IS CONSPIRING TO CHASE AWAY BOREDOM

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.

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, you can instantly enjoy Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting Gray Line with Black, Blue and Yellow or archives of Alison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For.

You can listen to a Vivaldi concerto or a stream of Patti Smith songs, and you can read the history of the Peloponnesian War or the myths of the Tlingit Indians.

You 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. Thanks to the magic of electronic file transfer, 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.

One further development has pushed our relationship with music into the realm of crazy goodness: portable players that allow us to listen to the burgeoning abundance of tunes anywhere and anytime we want.

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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 transform 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, says Shirky, 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.

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My book Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings is available as an eBook.

It includes a new foreword and a new piece, “Strange Blessings,” that weren't in the Revised and Expanded edition.

(And by the way, this eBook, like the Revised and Expanded edition, has 55% additional new material beyond what the first edition had. If you bought the 2005 verdion of the book, you have a little more than half of the total of the newer book.)

PRONOIA as an ebook at Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/PronoiaEbook

PRONOIA as an ebook at Barnes and Noble: https://tinyurl.com/PronoiaNook

If you have the Apple Books app, click on it and search for "Pronoia."

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Here’s that new piece:

STRANGE BLESSINGS

When I was 19 years old, a stranger shot me with a gun. The attack happened on Duke University's East Campus in Durham, North Carolina. It was 1:30 a.m. on a night in May. I was walking from my friend's home near the campus to the Greyhound bus station downtown, where I planned to hop a bus to Philadelphia at 2:30.

Too bad I couldn't afford a taxi. My backpack was heavy, I was already sleepy, and the trek would take 40 minutes.

I had passed Baldwin Auditorium at the north end of the campus. As I looped behind Brown Residence Hall, two prowlers stepped out from behind a tree. They were both holding shotguns and stood less than 20 feet away. One spoke to me: "Do you know where the auditorium is?" I was petrified and confused.

A few moments later, I heard a bang, then felt a whoosh of tiny missiles piercing the right side of my buttocks.

I knew I was in trouble. Would they fire again? My questionable strategy was to fall on the ground and pretend I was dead. I hoped they would think they had killed me. There'd be no need to bombard me with more rounds.

Unfortunately, I collapsed in a way that I could not see them. I lay there in a heap, not knowing their next move. Were they creeping closer to pull the trigger again, or were they fleeing the scene of the crime? I worked hard to act like a dead man, trying to betray no motion. It was almost impossible to keep from shivering and avoid taking deep breaths.

After a few minutes, I couldn't bear the agonizing suspense. Were they still nearby? I pulled up my head and upper body to look around. To my relief, they were nowhere in sight.

I struggled to rise, feeling the stings in my flesh grow more excruciating and watching the blood drip from the holes in my jeans. To my surprise, despite the pain, I was able to move. I hobbled to the front door of Brown Residence Hall and entered. Behind a desk, a security guard was on 24-hour duty.

"I hate to alarm you," I told her, "but I've just been shot."

She called 911, and soon an ambulance was hauling me to the hospital.

With the help of X-rays, the emergency room doctor determined that 47 shotgun pellets were lodged in my flesh. They had narrowly missed a major artery, and my life wasn't in danger. Still, the doc thought that if he operated to remove them, he'd risk causing more damage than if he left them in. That's why, to this day, I harbor metal fragments in my body.

I spent just three days in the hospital, but the recovery time was lengthy. Even with painkillers, the suffering was debilitating. It was two months before I could walk right again.

Besides my physical well-being, the other casualty of the mysterious shooting was my long-term dream for the future. For months before the unexpected detour, I had been planning to relocate myself to Northern California. Working as a post office employee and a janitor in a community center, I had saved up enough money to migrate across the country and start a new chapter of my destiny.

But after the assault, I abandoned that vision. The grand adventure I had been planning faded and disintegrated. I was too weak and timid to travel. Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome gripped me, squelching my vigor with depression and apathy.

My life path changed forever. Violently diverted from my dream of California at age 19, I pursued adventures on the East Coast and in Europe.

Seven years later, I resurrected my original fantasy and migrated to Northern California. At age 26, I arrived in the paradise that has been my home ever since.

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Fast forward to the present time.

When the first version of my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia came out, I did a book tour. Among my stops was Durham, North Carolina, where my beloved body had endured the ghastly assault.

As I drove into town in my rented car, a challenging question welled up in me: If I really believed in the ideas I described in my book, then I should be able to discern elements of pronoia in my shooting. As I dived into this rumination, I realized that if I wanted to practice what I preached, it was my duty to identify the blessings that materialized because of the terrible event.

Having a couple of hours free before my appearance at Durham's Regulator Bookshop, I returned to the scene of the crime. I drove to Duke University and sat in the grass behind Brown Residence Hall, where I had been attacked years ago. "What were the pronoaic blessings that life brought me through the shooting?" I asked the wind and the trees and the sun.

During the next hour, healing messages arrived. I fell asleep and was visited by an extraordinary dream. I narrate the full story of that event in my novel, Lucky Storms, so I won't tell it again here. Instead, I will briefly summarize the revelations.

Because of the shooting and its consequences, the following wonders occurred:

1. I met one of my main mentors and friends, who eventually became the publisher of my books. (He wouldn't have become part of my life story if I had moved to California when I had planned to.)

2. I fell in love and consorted with two brilliant women. They influenced me in a thousand inspirational ways that still benefit me to this day. (Their destinies wouldn't have merged with mine if I had moved to California when I had planned to.)

3. I unexpectedly and accidentally launched a long, joyful music career, thanks to the persistent good-natured pushiness of my musician friend Al Dawson. Would I have eventually become a professional singer and composer without Al's driving influence? Maybe, maybe not.

4. I spent years in North Carolina and shorter stints in South Carolina and Georgia. In these places, I got the privilege of a deep immersion in African-American culture. That was a transformative experience essential to my development as a musician, performer, and writer.

5. I traveled extensively in Europe. Had I moved to California as a very young man and saturated myself in its seductive counter-culture, it's unlikely I would have made pilgrimages to the Old World, at least until much later in life.

And I suspect it was crucial to my education to get imprinted at a formative age by the people and cultures of France, Italy, Greece, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, the UK, and the Netherlands.

6. I love how California nurtured the iconoclastic insurrectionary dreamer in me. But I believe it was healthy for me to remain rooted in East Coast civilization for those extra years. It made me earthier, more well-grounded.

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This pivotal series of events in my life helps explain my unique understanding of pronoia: that life is a source of blessings working in unpredictable ways.

You can hear a pithy condensation of the message in my spoken-word piece, "Shadow Blessings." It's here: https://tinyurl.com/ShadowBlessings

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PS: The shooting ultimately delivered favors and opportunities that I appreciated. But I confess that's not true about all the pain I've experienced. Some of my suffering remains mysterious to me. Maybe even that will be revealed if I'm patient!

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My upcoming book is titled

Astrology Is Real: Revelations from My Life as a Horoscope Columnist.

I’m offering sneak peeks to paid subscribers of my newsletter. This week I’m publishing the 13th installment.

Start here to read my first-ever astrology book: https://tinyurl.com/RealAstrology1

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

Week beginning April 27

Copyright 2023 by Rob Brezsny

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): After the fall of the Roman Empire, political cohesion in its old territories was scarce for hundreds of years. Then a leader named Charlemagne (747–814) came along and united much of what we now call Western Europe. He was unusual in many respects. For example, he sought to master the arts of reading and writing. Most other rulers of his time regarded those as paltry skills that were beneath their dignity. I mention this fact, Taurus, because I suspect it’s a propitious time to consider learning things you have previously regarded as unnecessary or irrelevant or outside your purview. What might these abilities be?

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): I'm turning this horoscope over to Nigerian poet Ijeoma Umebinyuo. She has three messages that are just what you need to hear right now. 1. "Start now. Start where you are. Start with fear. Start with pain. Start with doubt. Start with hands shaking. Start with voice trembling but start. Start and don't stop. Start where you are, with what you have." 2. "You must let the pain visit. You must allow it to teach you. But you must not allow it to overstay." 3. "Write a poem for your 14-year-old self. Forgive her. Heal her. Free her."

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Historical records tell us that Chinese Emperor Hungwu (1328–1398) periodically dealt with overwhelming amounts of decision-making. During one ten-day phase of his reign, for example, he was called on to approve 1,660 documents concerning 3,391 separate issues. Based on my interpretation of the planetary omens, I suspect you may soon be called on to deal with a similar outpouring. This might tempt you toward over-stressed reactions like irritation and self-medication. But I hope you’ll strive to handle it all with dignity and grace. In fact, that’s what I predict you will do. In my estimation, you will be able to summon the extra poise and patience to manage the intensity.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Is it even possible for us humans to live without fear—if even for short grace periods? Could you or I or anyone else somehow manage to celebrate, say, 72 hours of freedom from all worries and anxieties and trepidations? I suspect the answer is no. We may aspire to declare our independence from dread, but 200,000 years of evolution ensures that our brains are hard-wired to be ever-alert for danger. Having provided that perspective, however, I will speculate that if anyone could approach a state of utter dauntlessness, it will be you Leos in the next three weeks. This may be as close as you will ever come to an extended phase of bold, plucky audacity.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): "Dear Sunny Bright Cheery Upbeat Astrologer: You give us too many sunny, bright, cheery, upbeat predictions. They lift my mood when I first read them, but later I'm like, "What the hell?" Because yeah, they come true, but they usually cause some complications I didn't foresee. Maybe you should try offering predictions that bum me out, since then I won't have to deal with making such big adjustments. —Virgo Who is Weary of Rosy Hopeful Chirpy Horoscopes." Dear Virgo: You have alluded to a key truth about reality: Good changes often require as much modification and adaptation as challenging changes. Another truth: One of my specialties is helping my readers manage those good changes. And by the way: I predict the next two weeks will deliver a wealth of interesting and buoyant changes.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Poet Pablo Neruda wrote, "Let us look for secret things somewhere in the world on the blue shores of silence." That might serve as a good motto for you in the coming weeks. By my astrological reckoning, you'll be wise to go in quest for what's secret, concealed, and buried. You will generate fortuitous karma by smoking out hidden agendas and investigating the rest of the story beneath the apparent story. Be politely pushy, Libra. Charmingly but aggressively find the missing information and the shrouded rationales. Dig as deep as you need to go to explore the truth's roots.

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EXTRA SUPPORT AND KINDNESS

Would you enjoy getting further insights into the intriguing twists and turns of your amazing journey? Are you ready to seek more help from me in solving the riddles that confuse you?

Check out your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES at https://Realastrology.com

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Did you know that I also write daily horoscopes called Sunbursts, available as text messages? They're shorter than the weekly 'scopes, but more frequent. They cost 57 cents a day if you sign up for a subscription.

If you think you might enjoy getting regular bursts of inspiration from me to illuminate your adventures, register and/or sign in at https://RealAstrology.com

Click on "Daily Sunbursts" in the left-hand panel.

If you need help, contact my tech support team at freewillcs@gmail.com

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SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): We've all done things that make perfect sense to us, though they might look nonsensical or inexplicable to an outside observer. Keep this fact in your awareness during the next two weeks, Scorpio. Just as you wouldn't want to be judged by uninformed people who don’t know the context of your actions, you should extend this same courtesy to others, especially now. At least some of what may appear nonsensical or inexplicable will be serving a valuable purpose. Be slow to judge. Be inclined to offer the benefit of the doubt.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): I completely understand if you feel some outrage about the lack of passion and excellence you see in the world around you. You have a right to be impatient with the laziness and carelessness of others. But I hope you will find ways to express your disapproval constructively. The best approach will be to keep criticism to a minimum and instead focus on generating improvements. For the sake of your mental health, I suggest you transmute your anger into creativity. You now have an enhanced power to reshape the environments and situations you are part of so they work better for everyone.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In the 17th century, renowned Capricorn church leader James Ussher announced he had discovered when the world had been created. It was at 6 pm on October 22 in the year 4004 BCE. From this spectacularly wrong extrapolation, we might conclude that not all Capricorns are paragons of logic and sound analysis 100 percent of the time. I say we regard this as a liberating thought for you in the coming weeks. According to my analysis, it will be a favorable time to indulge in wild dreams, outlandish fantasies, and imaginative speculations. Have fun, dear Capricorn, as you wander out in the places that singer Tom Petty referred to as "The Great Wide Open."

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): We often evaluate prospects quantitatively: how big a portion do we get, how much does something cost, how many social media friends can we add? Quantity does matter in some cases, but on other occasions may be trumped by quality. A few close, trustworthy friends may matter more than hundreds of Instagram friends we barely know. A potential house may be spacious and affordable, but be in a location we wouldn’t enjoy living in. Your project in the coming weeks, Aquarius, is to examine areas of your life that you evaluate quantitatively and determine whether there are qualitative aspects neglected in your calculations. 

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): "Dear Dr. Astrology: Help! I want to know which way to go. Should I do the good thing or the right thing? Should I be kind and sympathetic at the risk of ignoring my selfish needs? Or should I be a pushy stickler for what's fair and true, even if I look like a preachy grouch? Why is it so arduous to have integrity? —Pinched Pisces." Dear Pisces: Can you figure out how to be half-good and half-right? Half-self-interested and half-generous? I suspect that will generate the most gracious, constructive results.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): According to a study by Newsweek magazine, 58 percent of us yearn to experience spiritual growth; 33 percent report having had a mystical or spiritual experience; 20 percent of us say we have had a revelation from God in the last year; and 13 percent have been in the presence of an angel. Given the astrological omens currently in play for you Aries, I suspect you will exceed all those percentages in the coming weeks. I hope you will make excellent use of your sacred encounters. What two areas of your life could most benefit from a dose of divine assistance or intervention? There’s never been a better time than now to seek a Deus ex machina. (More info: https://tinyurl.com/GodIntercession)

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Homework: If you could change into an animal for a day, what would you be? Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com

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