Our Broken Hearts

. . . need our ingenious, compassionate care

Dear Allies and Co-Conspirators—

My heart has been working overtime lately. I’ve been asking it to metabolize a steady influx of dissonance, absurdity, cruelty, and grief. I’m sure you know the feeling. The Trumpocalypse is relentless.

The grotesque and the ridiculous often arrive braided together. The horrors are real; the satire is sharp; our nervous systems are prodded to laugh and mourn in the same five-minute span. It’s no wonder our hearts overheat and come very close to breaking again and again.

But our hearts can’t remain perpetually inflamed without consequence. So how do we remain exquisitely open without becoming exquisitely exhausted?

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Practice Rhythmic Devotion, Not Constant Immersion

Staying informed isn’t the same as staying inundated and overwhelmed. We’re not required to marinate indefinitely in the spectacle of dysfunction in order to be a responsible citizen or a compassionate human. Overexposure dulls our responsiveness and degrades our discernment.

Instead, let’s engage in intentional intervals. Enter the fray, witness clearly, feel honestly, and then exit on purpose: skillful participation, not avoidance.

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Complete the Emotional Circuit

After we take in difficult news, especially when it arrives sugar-coated in humor, we do something that allows the feeling to move.

We step outside. Touch a living thing. Listen to music that reminds us why beauty is worth defending. Gather together with each other. Let our body register that the world isn’t only what we witness on a screen.

Otherwise, the feeling lingers as unprocessed residue—what we might call psychic plaque.

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Refuse the False Nobility of Burnout

There’s a cultural lie that implies: “If you’re not exhausted by caring, you’re not caring enough.”

Nope. Burnout doesn’t make us more ethical. It makes us less effective, less perceptive, and more likely to collapse into cynicism or despair. Sustainable compassion is a strategy of long-term devotion.

Our Hearts Can Be Translators, Not Storage Units

Our job isn’t to hoard outrage, sorrow, and alarm inside our chests like a crowded archive of horrors. It’s wiser to transform what we take in.

So we write, speak, sing, and make mischief. We tell the truth in ways that wake people up without crushing their will to live.

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Remember What We Love—Daily, Deliberately, Devotionally

If we only track what’s broken, our perception becomes skewed toward collapse. So we try balancing our awareness by actively noticing: small kindnesses; living beauty; improbable resilience; the ongoing miracle of consciousness itself.

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Honor the Paradox

You and I have been assigned:

to grieve what’s being damaged

and

celebrate what remains luminous.

to name what’s wrong

and

amplify what’s possible.

To refuse both denial and despair.

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Our hearts aren’t too sensitive for the Trumpocalypse. But they require our skillful, compassionate maintenance.

Let’s not harden ourselves into numb efficiency. Let’s become durably tender, capable of feeling deeply without losing our capacity to act, create, and love.

The two pieces of art here are by Shelby McQuilkin: blog.shelbymcquilkin.com/

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A further refinement about our breaking hearts:

Many of us have already learned how to love people whose views we find troubling or even abhorrent. We have stretched our compassion across chasms of disagreement and refused the easy seductions of contempt. That’s a huge achievement.

But let’s imagine there is a next step.

It’s possible, especially for those of us with strong empathic reflexes, to over-carry the emotional weight of what we witness. To feel not only our rightful sorrow and outrage, but also to absorb an ambient burden that doesn’t actually belong to us. We become, without intending it, emotional pack animals for the collective storm.

I don’t think that’s healthy. So I propose a subtler invitation: to love accurately. How can we feel deeply without assuming responsibility for what’s not ours to fix or hold? Is it possible for us to remain open-hearted without becoming overextended?

We may feel grief for a life we’re witnessing from the outside without needing to carry that life inside our chest.

A well-tuned heart isn’t a sponge that absorbs everything indiscriminately. It’s an instrument that receives, resonates, and then releases, transforming experience into insight and precise compassion.

So as we continue your brave work of loving in difficult times, I offer you this permission: You don’t have to carry it all. Feel it, honor it, and respond where you can. And then let the rest pass through you like weather through the vast sky.

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There’s an interview with me in THE BELIEVER magazine.

Read it here: https://www.thebeliever.net/an-interview-with-rob-brezsny/

or here: https://archive.ph/vCQpA

Below are excerpts—my responses to the excellent questions asked of me by Ginger Green, managing editor of THE BELIEVER.

Excerpt: To be a human being is a great privilege and an honor, and not a thing to be escaped, not a thing to be denigrated, but a treasure to be cherished and used to the hilt.

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Excerpt: My first rule is to begin any particular writing session with the stated intention that I want this information to be in the interests of the people who read it. I want it to advance their highest good, and if that means I have to change my ideas about a particular sign or my approach to life, that’s fine. My goal is to be of service. So that’s how I start, and I have for as long as I can remember.

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Excerpt: My understanding of astrology is different from a lot of more traditional astrologers’, and I have always believed that the kind of astrology I wanted to practice would liberate people’s imaginations and free them from their own conditioning, and certainly disabuse them of the notion that our fate is set in stone and that we have no power over the way fate manipulates us.

So I’m a big believer in enhancing people’s ability to think they can create their own reality as they go, within the constraints of their own karma and, of course, of the somewhat dire cultural conditions we’re in right now.

I think, ultimately, we’ve got a lot more free will than we imagine. And many astrologers don’t emphasize that, but I choose to.

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Excerpt: I’ve seen 13 psychotherapists over the course of my life, and that is a great antidote to any potential for developing hubris or overweening pride. It’s always an excellent cure for getting full of myself: to see my own ridiculousness or lack of understanding, ignorance, and really treasuring that.

To me, it’s a constant meditative practice to tune in to what I need work on to become more of my true self, my authentic self. And so I think the first rule is what the famous physicist Richard Feynman said: “The first rule is—you must not submit to being fooled, and the person most likely to fool you is you.”

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Excerpt: The value of astrology is that it speaks to our soul rather than to our ego when it’s done best. It liberates our imagination from the fundamental materialism that dominates our culture, and allows us to imagine there are mysteries beyond our conscious awareness that are worth contemplating—because we are a creation of the entire interconnected web of life, and astrology helps us read that interconnected web of life.

It shows us the picture of our own individual soul’s code and the soul’s code of our nation and our world. And so it inflames us, inspires us to move beyond our day-to-day thinking and imagine the bigger context of what we’re living amid.

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Excerpt: What problems do my readers most often write to me about with? Well, a lot tell me stories of fortune tellers and astrologers that have filled them with fear, and I feel like I’m the antidote to that.

There’s no such thing as an inherently bad astrological omen. Every astrological omen provides us with some information about how to liberate ourselves from suffering and get out of the challenges that we’re amid.

Every single astrological configuration gives us some potentially liberating information. And so I think that’s one of my main purposes for people who have sought astrological counseling and information elsewhere: to heal that wound in people’s understanding of how astrology and fortune-telling work.

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Go to my LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/robbrezsny

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of April 9

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Unexpected deliverance? Lucky rides? Beginner’s grace? Dreamy, gleaming replacements? To the untrained eye, it may look like you are bending cosmic law in your favor. In truth, you’re simply redeeming the backlog of blessings you earned in the past—acts of quiet generosity and unselfish hardship that never got their proper reward. Serendipitous leaps? Divine detours? Shortcuts to victory? Welcome the uncanny gifts, Aries, even if they’re not what you expected.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The current phase of your destiny could disturb you if you’re not super patient. Life seems to be teasing you with promises that then go into hiding. You’ve been having to master the art of living on the edge between the BIG RED YES and the GREY MURKY NO. My advice: Imagine your predicament as an intriguing riddle, not a frustrating ambiguity. See if you can figure out how to grow wiser and stronger in response to the evasive mysteriousness. My prediction: You will grow wiser and stronger.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Why it’s always triple-great to be a Gemini, drawing on an abundance of mercurial wisdom: 1. You excel at the art of translation and are skilled at finding common ground between different realms. You can oscillate and flow between the lyrical and the pragmatic, the insightful and the comic, the detailed focus and the big picture. 2. You know that consistency is overrated. Your capacity to harbor multiple perspectives is a superpower. 3. You get to be both the question and the answer, proving that wholeness includes all the fragments. All the aptitudes I just named should be your featured approaches in the coming weeks.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): The saga of Troy is one of the most renowned tales from ancient Greece. Yet the fabled setting of Homer’s epic tale, the *Iliad*, was a settlement of just seven acres. Let that detail resound for you in the coming weeks. It’s an apt metaphor for what’s taking shape in your life. A seemingly modest situation could become the stage for a mythic turning point. An experience that starts small may grow into a story of immense and lasting significance.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Many people have a favorite number they regard as lucky. Some choose it because it showed up at a major turning point in their life. Others derive it from their birthday or from the numerology of their name. Plenty are drawn to “master numbers” like 33, 77, or 99. Personally, I give three numbers my special love: 555, the square root of -2, and 1.61803, also known as the golden ratio in Fibonacci-related patterns. I hope this nudges your imagination, Leo. Your fortunes are shifting now in the direction of an unusual kind of luck, so it’s a potent moment to select a new lucky number. I suggest that you also choose a new guiding animal, a fresh initiation name, and a charged symbol to serve as your personal emblem.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Do you know what ignorance is causing you to suffer? Is there a teacher or teaching that could provide an antidote? I suspect you are very close to attracting or stumbling upon the guidance you need to escape the fog: maybe a therapist who can help you undo a hurtful pattern, a mentor to inspire your quest to do work you long to do, or a spiritual friend who reminds you that you’re not merely your latest drama. Your task in the coming weeks is not to obsess on fixing everything at once, but to seek one or two sources of wisdom that illuminate your blind spots and educate your heart.

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If you would like to support my work, please consider:

buying my Expanded Audio Horoscopes and Daily Horoscopes

and/or

becoming a paid subscriber to my Free Will Astrology Newsletter

and/or

donating at my Paypal site: paypal.com/paypalme/GiftsForRob

(contribute as Friends and Family)

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LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I’m an honorary Libra, with three planets and my lunar north node in your sign. So I speak with authority when I declare that fostering harmony, which is a Libran gift, is only superficially about smoothing away friction and asymmetry. More importantly, it’s about rearranging reality so that beauty is a central feature. The goal is to accomplish practical wonders by stimulating grace and fluency. When I’m best expressing my Libra qualities, I don’t ask how I can please everyone, but rather, how I can serve maximum goodness and intelligence. Here’s another tip to being a potent Libra: Know that your enchanting charm is a lubricant for the truth, not mere decoration. Here’s your homework: Beautify one system you use every day so it serves you with less friction and more pleasure.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): You are potentially an expert in creative destruction. You have a knack for eliminating what’s unnecessary and even obstructive. What has outlived its usefulness? You’re prone to home in on energy drains and unleash transformative energy. And yes, this intensity of yours may unnerve people who prefer comfortable numbness—but not me. I love you to exult in your talent for locating beauty and truth that are too complicated for others. I applaud you when you descend into the darkness to retrieve dicey treasures. PS: You’re not shadowy or negative. You’re a specialist in the authentic love that refuses to enable delusion or sanction decay.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): My Sagittarian friend Artemisia bemoans “the scarcity of collective delight.” She wishes there were more public acclaim for stories about breakthrough joys, miraculous marvels, and surprising healings. Why are we so riveted by reports of misery, malaise, and muck, yet so loath to recognize and celebrate everything that’s working really well? She also mourns the odd habit among some educated folks to mistake cynicism for brilliance. If you don’t mind, Sagittarius, I’m assigning you to be an antidote in the coming weeks. Your task is to gather an overflowing harvest of lavish pleasure, fun epiphanies, and richly meaningful plot twists. Don’t hoard any of it. Spread it around to everyone you encounter.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): “Id” is a psychoanalytic term. It’s the part of the psyche where basic instincts, needs, and drives reside. On the one hand, the id supplies a huge charge of psychic energy. On the other hand, it mostly operates outside conscious awareness. Consider the implications: The fierce, pulsing center of your life force is largely hidden from you. Most of the time, that veil is protective. Encountering the id directly can be overwhelming or unsettling. But in the coming weeks, you Capricorns are poised to cultivate a more interesting and righteous relationship with your high‑voltage core. Do you dare? Treat your id as a brilliant but untamed creature. Extend a careful, curious invitation for it to show you more about itself.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): In architecture, a “clerestory” is a high window that brings light into a space without compromising privacy. It illuminates without exposing. I suggest that you find metaphorical equivalents for clerestories, Aquarius. Look for ways to let spaciousness and brightness into your world without disturbing your boundaries. Your assignment is to avoid swinging between total lockdown and overexposure. The best option: strategic vulnerability and selective transparency. Allow people to see selected parts of you without giving them access to everything. Be both open and discriminating.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In 1903, the Wright brothers flew a primitive model of the first airplane. How did they prepare the way for their spectacular milestone? Their workshop was a bicycle shop, not a high-tech, state-of-the-art lab. By building and fixing bikes, they learned key insights about flying machines. The lesson for you, Pisces, is that mastery in one area may be transferable to breakthroughs in another. With this in mind, I invite you to evaluate how your current skills, including those you take for granted, might be repurposed. Methods you developed in one context could solve problems in another. You shouldn’t underestimate the value of what you already know.

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