Love Rules
Especially when you do it with IMAGINATION!
For a relationship to stay alive, love alone is not enough.
Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom.
Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.
—James Hillman
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I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Gertrude Stein also implies that courage is an essential element of successful intimacy. You've got to be adventurous if you want to weave your life together with another's.
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Love imperfectly. Be a love idiot. Let yourself forget any love ideal.
—Sark
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You are my inspiration and my folly. You are my light across the sea, my million nameless joys, and my day’s wage. You are my divinity, my madness, my selfishness, my transfiguration and purification. You are my rapscallionly fellow vagabond, my tempter and star. I want you.
—George Bernard Shaw
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I love you between shadow and soul. I love you as the plant that hasn’t bloomed yet, and carries hidden within itself the light of flowers. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. Because of you, the dense fragrance that rises from the earth lives in my body, rioting with hunger for the eternity of our victorious kisses.
—Pablo Neruda
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ELATIONSHIP LOVE SPELLS FOR BEAUTY & TRUTH LAB ALLIES
The Beauty and Truth Lab's rapturists have formulated a batch of personal ads for you to borrow. If you're a Crafty Optimist or Mystical Activist or Ceremonial Teaser who aspires to put the elation back in relationship, check them out here:
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LOVE IS ALWAYS CHANGING
You understand that you can never own love, right? No matter how much someone adores you today, no matter how much you adore someone, you can't force that unique state of grace to keep its shape forever. It will inevitably evolve or mutate, perhaps into a different version of tender caring, but maybe not.
From there it will continue to change, into either yet another version of interesting affection, or who knows what else?
Are you making any progress in getting the hang of this tricky wisdom?
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CLUES TO YOUR LOVED ONES' MYSTERIES
"Everyone carries with them at least one piece to someone else's puzzle." So wrote Lawrence Kushner in his book, Honey from the Rock.
In other words, you have in your possession certain clues to your loved ones' destinies -- secrets they haven't discovered themselves.
Wouldn't you love to hand over those clues -- to make a gift of the puzzle pieces that are most needed by the people you care about?
Search your depths for insights you've never communicated. Tell truths you haven't found a way to express before now. More than you know, you have the power to mobilize your companions' dreams.
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MORE LOVE CLUES
Be my ruckus, my perfect non-sequitur.
Be my circuit-breaker, my lengthening shadows at dusk, my nest of pine needles, my second-story window.
Be my if-you-stare-long-enough-you’ll-see. Be my subatomic particle.
Be my backbeat, my key of C minor, my surly apostle, my scandalous reparté, my maximum payload.
Be my simmering, seething, flickering, radiating, shimmering, and undulating.
—This is an excerpt from a poem by Andrew Varnon. Read the whole thing here.
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When I think of you, fireflies in the marsh rise like the soul's jewels, lost to eternal longing, abandoning my body —Izumi Shikibu
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Love is a great beautifier.
—Louisa May Alcott
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Fall in love over and over again every day. Love your family, your neighbors, your enemies, and yourself. And don't stop with humans. Love animals, plants, stones, even galaxies.
—Mary Ann and Frederic Brussat
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The air I breathe in a room empty of you is unhealthy. The merest whisper of your name awakes in me a shuddering sixth sense. I am longing for a kiss that makes time stand still.
—a blend of words from Edgar Allan Poe, Pamela Moore, and John Keats
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"We are pain and what cures pain, both. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours. I want to hold you close like a lute, so that we can cry out with loving. Would you rather throw stones at a mirror? I am your mirror and here are the stones."
—Rumi
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I love you more than it’s possible to love anyone. I love you more than love itself. I love you more than you love yourself. I love you more than God loves you. I love you more than anyone has ever loved anyone in the history of the universe. In fact, I love you more than I love you.
—Me
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Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body’s deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body’s superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity.
—Henri Nouwen
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ACT LIKE YOU'RE IN LOVE
I invite you to act like a person who's in love. Even if you're not currently in the throes of passion for a special someone, pretend you are. Everywhere you go, exude that charismatic blend of shell-shocked contentment and blissful turmoil that comes over you when you're infatuated. Let everyone you meet soak up the delicious wisdom you exude. Dispense free blessings and extra slack like a rich saint high on natural endorphins.
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THE ANGEL OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP
Imagine that the merger of you and your best ally has created a third thing that hovers near you, protecting and guiding the two of you. Call this third thing an angel. Or call it the soul of your connection or the inspirational force of your relationship. Or call it the special work the two of you can accomplish together. And let this magical presence be the third point of your love triangle.
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YOU CAN'T OWN LOVE
You understand that you can never own love, right? No matter how much someone adores you today, no matter how much you adore someone, you can't force that unique state of grace to keep its shape forever. It will inevitably evolve or mutate, perhaps into a different version of tender caring, but maybe not.
From there it will continue to change, into either yet another version of interesting affection, or who knows what else?
Are you making any progress in getting the hang of this tricky wisdom?
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CAN YOUR RELATIONSHIP HEAL THE WORLD?
Andrew Harvey says: The crisis we are facing is a crisis in which the sacred powers of love in the human soul are being diverted by distraction, by greed, by ignorance, by the pursuit of power, so that they never irrigate the world and transform it.
There are seven requirements necessary for a vision of evolutionary love to emerge into the world.
1. Both beings need to be plunged individually into a deep and passionate devotion of the Beloved, by whatever name they know the Beloved, because without both beings centering their life in God, the relationship will never be able to escape the private circle.
2. Both beings must develop a mastery of solitude.
3. There is an equality of power, and that equality is born out of a profound experience of the sacredness and dignity of the other person’s soul.
4. If you are going to have a beloved-beloved relationship, you have to center your whole being and work and evolution in God. You must also bring the sacred practice of prayer and meditation into the very core of your life, so that the whole relationship can be enfolded in a mutually shared sacred enterprise.
5. Both lovers completely abandon any Hollywood sentimentality about what relationships actually are. Each person is the safe-guarder of the other’s shadow—not the judge of the other’s shadow, not the denier of the other’s shadow, but someone who recognizes where the other has been wounded, and safeguards and protects them with unconditional compassion without allowing themselves to be mauled or manipulated by the other.
6. If you are going to enter into the evolutionary process, you have to accept that it never ends, never stops unfolding.
7. You must make the commitment for your relationship not to be just a cultivation of an oasis of private pleasure. You must engage consciously in this relationship to serve the planet, to recognize that it is a relationship not only grounded in God, not only infused by sacred practice, but it is from the very beginning dedicated to making both people more powerful, more reflective, more passionately engaged with the only serious truth of our time: The world is dying, and we need a major revolution of the heart to empower everyone to do the work of reconstruction and re-creation that is desperately needed.
An excerpt from Andrew Harvey’s book Evolutionary Love Relationships: Passion, Authenticity, and Activism
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"The Orgasmic Roots of Pronoia" is one of the few X-rated pieces in my book about PRONOIA. Here's a link: bit.ly/OrgasmicRoots
NSFW! This material has graphic references to love, lust, tenderness, bliss, and rapture.
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EXPLORING YOUR LONG-RANGE FUTURE
Dear Readers,
I've gathered all the long-term, big-picture horoscopes I wrote for you in recent weeks, and bundled them in one place. Here's a compendium of your forecasts for 2024:
https://tinyurl.com/BigPicture2024
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In addition, 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 11 minutes long.
To hear these three-part, in-depth reports, go here:
Register and/or log in through the main page. Under “Select Reading to Play,” choose "Part 1" or “Part 2” or “Part 3” of the "Long-Term Prediction for 2024."
The cost for the Expanded Audio Horoscopes is $7 per sign. (You can get discounts for multiple purchases.)
A new short-range forecast for this week is also available.
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
For This Perfect Moment
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): It's the seventeenth annual Brag Therapy Holiday, for you Aquarians only. During this celebration, we expect you—indeed we want you—to boast extravagantly. Tell us in exquisite detail why you are such a marvelous creation. Explain how you have overcome seemingly insurmountable odds to transform yourself into a masterpiece of gorgeous intelligence. Regale us with stories of your winsome qualities, your heroic triumphs, your hilarious and poignant adventures on the edge of reality. Make sure we understand how educational and healing it would be to absorb your influence. Show us why we should consider regarding you as a role model.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): I invite you to resolve old business, draw unrewarding projects to a close, and finish your lessons at the School of Hard Knocks. You don’t have to carry out my next proposal, but if you do, I won’t be upset: Politely and quietly scream "Get out of my life forever" at anyone who doesn’t give you the respect and kindness you deserve. I also recommend that you do a Wrap-It-Up Ritual. Make an altar that pleases you with its beauty. Take five scraps of paper and write on every piece a description of an influence or experience you want to purge from your life. As you rip each scrap into little bits, say this: "I’m grateful for what I have learned from you, but now I am leaving you behind.”
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Is there any value in discussing happiness? It’s an amorphous term that has a different meaning for everyone. What makes me feel happy may be utterly unlike your definition. And the truth is that perfect happiness is impossible to achieve. We are always a mix of being happy and unhappy. Nevertheless, I invite you to ruminate about the subject in the coming days. I believe you are as close as you can get to crafting a realistic understanding of happiness—and then raising your happiness levels by at least 15 percent. Now here’s a possibly helpful clue from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment—a little makes the way of the best happiness.”
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): I invite you to take an inventory of your taboos, inhibitions, and restrictions. Ruminate on why you originally adopted them. Evaluate how well they have served you and whether they are still meaningful to you. If you find any of them have become unnecessary or downright injurious, get rid of them! And be excited and happy about getting rid of them! If you decide that some of your taboos, inhibitions, and restrictions are still wise for you to cultivate, thank them for their service and honor the feelings they evoke in you.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): "You could catalog the thousand ways people shrink from life, as if chance and change are by their nature toxic, disfiguring." So says Gemini novelist Gregory Maguire. Your assignment in the coming weeks is to live your life in such ways as to contradict his theory about human nature. If you are game to try this experiment, you will interpret all chance and change as potentially expansive, redemptive, and interesting. You will never shrink from life, but will rather rise boldly to meet every challenge and embrace every twist of fate as a golden opportunity. Based on my interpretation of astrological omens, I have radiant faith in your ability to carry out this joyous project.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): I nominate you to be the Top Toxin and Waste Purger of the Zodiac, beginning now and continuing through all of February. Do it both for yourself and on behalf of those you care about. Your assignment, if you choose to accept it, will be to eliminate nonessentials that obstruct the flow of the good life. These might include defunct fantasies, mistaken understandings, apathetic attitudes, and unloving approaches. Among the other dross or dreck you could root out is any clutter that’s making beloved environments feel oppressive. By the way, fellow Cancerian, this should be quite fun. If it’s not, you’re doing it wrong.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): My goals right now are to inspire you: 1. to be full of love for your daily life; 2. to adore yourself exactly as you are; 3. to replace any numbness or boredom you feel with alert aliveness. Toward these ends, I offer three quotes. 1. “The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson. 2. “The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” –Eden Phillpotts. 3. “I have the mysterious feeling of seeing for the first time something I have always known.” –Bernardo Bertolucci.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In the coming weeks, I hope you avoid sucking up to egotistical manipulators. Please also refrain from being an unappreciated beast of burden and a half-willing pawn in a boring game. If you are interested in paying off a karmic debt, make sure it’s yours, not anyone else’s. If you plan to work hard to lay the foundation for a future liberation, get a guarantee that YOU will be at least one of the people liberated. PS: I’m fine with you doing unselfish things as long as they will also have selfish benefits.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): The greatest undiagnosed malady affecting us modern people is atrophy of the soul. This misfortune is related to another: apathy of the soul. So much of the colorful stimuli that scream for our attention is engineered to feed our egos; our poor souls are left to starve. Please note that I have no problem with our egos—they are an important part of our make-up and are essential for healthy functioning. But it's a damn shame they hog all the glory and nourishment. Now here’s my main message for you: It's high time to celebrate a holiday I call Nurture the Soul. Make it last at least three weeks. Homework: Identify three actions you will take to excite, love, and nurture your soul.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Psychologist Carl Jung wrote, "Motherlove is one of the most moving and unforgettable memories of our lives, the mysterious root of all growth and change; the love that means homecoming, shelter, and the long silence from which everything begins and in which everything ends." To place yourself in rapt alignment with current cosmic rhythms, Scorpio, you will do whatever's necessary to get a strong dose of the blessing Jung described. If your own mother isn't available or is insufficient for this profound immersion, find other sources. Borrow a wise woman elder or immerse yourself in Goddess worship. Be intensely intent on basking in a maternal glow that welcomes you and loves you exactly as you are—and makes you feel deeply at home in the world.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian computer scientist Grace Hopper (1906–1992) wrote, "The most damaging phrase in the language is: ‘It’s always been done that way.’” For your inspiration, I’ll expand on that wisdom. The most obvious meaning is that we risk ignoring our individualized needs and suppressing our creative inspirations if we mindlessly conform to the habits of society at large and our own community. But it's equally important not to blindly repeat our own previous actions. Maybe they were brilliant and appropriate in the past, but there's no guarantee they will always be so. In conclusion, Sagittarius, I recommend you rebel against your own personal "it’s always been done that way" as well as everyone else's.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Which would you prefer in the coming weeks: itches, prickles, twitches, and stings? Or, instead, tickles, tingles, quivers, and shimmers? To ensure the latter types of sensations predominate, all you must do is cultivate moods of surrender, relaxation, welcome, and forgiveness. You will be faced with the former sensations only if you resist, hinder, impede, and combat. Please keep in mind that this is not always sound advice. Sometimes, it’s wise to boldly refuse to go with the flow. But this is not one of those phases. I encourage you to cultivate an elegant and graceful receptivity.