We Need Soulful Intelligence
Machine Thinking and Hyper-Rationality Aren't Enough
My new book is ASTROLOGY IS REAL: REVELATIONS FROM MY LIFE AS A HOROSCOPE COLUMNIST
I’ll tell you about one of the reasons why I wrote it.
I love and respect the scientific method, and I use it every day to guide me in the practical arts of living life with grace and courage. Further, I am a huge fan of logic, reason, analysis, and discernment.
But I get queasy when these modes of intelligence are trumpeted as being the only worthy kind. More than queasy—I get sad and angry and upset.
As I have learned the skill of critical thinking, I have also cultivated alternate modes of perceiving and knowing. They have shown me that to be complete humans, we equally need other kinds of intelligence: poetry, dreams, imagination, feeling, myth, intimacy, metaphor, and storytelling.
Pure mind, as beautiful as it can be, is not enough: We need the vital soul. Whenever the mind is involved without the participation of the soul, we are liable to misunderstand reality and come to distorted, dissociated, sterile conclusions.
A key aspiration that inspired me to write Astrology Is Real is the yearning to be an advocate for the soul—a lobbyist, a champion, a crusader on behalf of the soul.
Journalist Traci Hukill writes: “If Rob Brezsny’s horoscopes are good medicine, his new book Astrology Is Real is a yoga retreat on the beach with the healthiest, most delicious food and daily massages by well-paid people who enjoy their work.
.“To sit and read Astrology Is Real is to bathe in a kind of good radiation. Ideas and possibilities, light and humor materialize.
“Space opens up to think about your purpose in this world and your most important relationships. It’s like hanging out with a wise friend who has no agenda for you but who helps you see things clearly. Helps you be your best self.”
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Below are some excerpts from my new book:
CULTIVATING HOLY DESIRES
Some traditions preach the value of banishing or renouncing or eluding your desires. I don't subscribe to that view.
I prefer to encourage us to cultivate excellent, holy desires. Here are a few I recommend:
• a desire for beguiling riddles and enchanting challenges that excite both our minds and our hearts;
• a desire for allies who enjoy our distinctive idiosyncrasies and eccentricities;
• a desire to attract ongoing encounters with evocative, nonstandard beauty so as to always ensure a part of us remains untamed;
• a desire to help create a world in which everyone gets the food, housing, and health care they need;
• a desire for energizing surprises and unpredictable fun;
• a desire to engage in group collaborations that enhance the intelligence of everyone in the group;
• a desire to keep outgrowing what worked for us in the past and a desire to ceaselessly explore renewed approaches to being ourselves;
• a desire to be playful and imaginative with our libidinous energy;
• a desire to foster and protect the health and beauty of the natural world;
• a desire for revelations and experiences that steer us away from thinking and acting like the machines we interact with so much;
• a desire to keep recreating and reinvigorating our relationships with those we love;
• a desire to steadily refine and expand our ability to learn from non-human intelligences;
• A desire to regularly refresh our quest for freedom and deepen our capacity to be free
• a desire to move our bodies in ways that delight our souls;
• a desire to extinguish bigotry, misogyny, plutocracy, racism, and militarism.
I DON'T WANT YOU TO BE LIKE ME
Someone paid me a high compliment. She said, "I want you to know how often your process of being yourself has helped me in my process of being me."
Yes! I don't want her to be like me, and I don't want YOU to be like me.
I want you to be like you—to the fullest, deepest, most magnificent and sacred and idiosyncratic extent.
And another thing: I love it when you create your own fantastic, unprecedented reality. It inspires me to make my own.
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GO WITH WHAT FLOW?
When they say, "Go with the flow," what "flow" are they talking about?
Do they mean the flow of our early childhood conditioning? The flow of our friends' opinions? The latest cultural trends? Our immediate instinctual needs?
When they say, "Go with the flow," are they urging us to keep doing what's easiest to do and hinders us from being faithful to our soul's code?
Consider the possibility that there are many flows to go with, but only one or some are righteous.
Do you know which?
Maybe it's the one streaming through an underground cavern, far from the frantic crowd.
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LOVE CUES AND CLUES: TAKING A LOVE INVENTORY
I invite you to survey the history of your love life, starting with the first time you fell in love.
Stream the memories across your mind's eye as if you were watching a movie. Feel all the feelings roused by each scene, and also try to maintain objectivity about it all. Be affectionately compassionate toward yourself and your co-stars.
If you're game, take an inventory. For each partner you have had, beginning with your earliest lover, write about the following subjects:
• Why were you attracted to the person?
• Why were they attracted to you?
• What aspects of your relationship worked?
• What aspects of your relationship didn't work?
• What qualities in you kept the relationship from continuing on forever?
• What qualities in them kept the relationship from continuing on forever?
• What were the valuable lessons you learned from the relationship?
• What behavior did you engage in then that you vow never to do again?
• Have there been any recurring patterns from relationship to relationship? Any mistakes you've made more than once?
This inventory may show you what you've been dense about. It could motivate you to graduate from self-sabotaging behavior and unconscious patterns that have up until now diminished your ability to create the kind of togetherness you want.
The inventory may also might also demonstrate how wise you have been in some of your acts of love and intimacy. That's valuable information, too.
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The Good Times newspaper in Santa Cruz did an interview with me about my new book, Astrology Is Real. Here's an excerpt:
GOOD TIMES: You once told me your next project would be a book on mastering a “chronic form of ecstatic awareness.” Does that hold?
ROB BREZSNY: In some ways, all my books are about that. The books serve as my laboratory to cultivate, refine and deepen that awareness, to make it work in new and ever-fresh ways.
For me to live in ecstatic awareness, for the prayer to work, I have to keep reinventing it. That’s the paradox, the great uproarious up-flow of creative power.
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GOOD TIMES: You mention “altered states” as key.
ROB BREZSNY: The key to chronic ecstatic awareness is to continually cultivate altered states. I don’t think we need psychedelics for that, though I’m all in favor of that technology for those who find it helpful.
For me, the playful work of getting into altered states is not just an either-or thing. It’s not a matter of either being in routine, mundane consciousness or else tripping one’s brains out. There are a trillion in-between altered states.
We can create altered states from moment to moment with our beginner’s mind unfurled—being willing to play with and love whatever’s in front of us. The fun trick is to be in a state of full-body readiness in which we are surpriseable and receptive to the possibility of being delighted, influenced, educated.
Pure perception is our ever-available entry into altered states. If we open our eyes, open our ears and become fully welcoming to what’s in front of us, we’re going to be changed. Every moment brings something we’ve never experienced before.
An example right now would be how your question germinated in me a stream of revelations and ideas.
Meditation practitioner and molecular biologist Jon Kabat-Zinn said, “Mindfulness is wise and affectionate attention.”
Borrowing from the Hindu school of Lila, I’m very much immersed in the understanding that life is the divine play of God and Goddess. We are participants in a sublime, mysterious art project.
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Free Will Astrology
Week of October 12
© Copyright 2023 Rob Brezsny
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LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libran philosopher and writer Michel Foucault aspired to open up his readers’ minds with novel ideas. He said his task was to make windows where there had been walls. I’d like to borrow his approach for your use in the coming weeks. It might be the most fun to demolish the walls that are subdividing your world and preventing free and easy interchange. But I suspect that’s unrealistic. What’s more likely is partial success: creating windows in the walls.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): More and more older people are transitioning to different genders. An article in The Guardian describes how Bethan Henshaw, a warehouse worker, transitioned to female at age 57. Ramses Underhill-Smith became a man in his 40s. With this as your starting point, I invite you to re-evaluate your personal meanings of gender. Please note I’m not implying you should change your designation. Astrological omens simply suggest that you will benefit from expanding your ideas. Here's Scorpio singer Sophie B. Hawkins, a mother who says she is omnisexual: "My sexuality stems from an emotional connection to someone’s soul. You don’t have to make a gender choice and stick with it."
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian author Mark Twain said that in urgent or trying circumstances, uttering profanities “furnishes a relief denied even to prayer." I will add that these magic words can be downright catalytic and healing—especially for you right now. Here are situations in which swearing could be therapeutic in the coming weeks: 1. when people take themselves too seriously; 2.when you need to escape feelings of powerlessness; 3. when know-it-alls are trying to limit the range of what can be said; 4. when people seem frozen or stunned and don't know what to do next. In all these cases, well-placed expletives could provide necessary jolts to shift the stuck energy. (PS: Have fun using other surprises, ploys, and twists to shake things up for a good cause.)
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In Roman mythology, Venus was goddess of love, desire, and beauty. Yet modern science tells us the planet Venus is blanketed with sulfuric acid clouds, has a surface temperature of 867 degrees Fahrenheit, and is covered with 85,000 volcanoes. Why are the two Venuses out of sync? Here’s a clue, courtesy of occultist Dion Fortune. She said the goddess Venus is often a disturbing influence in the world, diverting us from life’s serious business. I can personally attest to the ways that my affinity for love, desire, and beauty have distracted me from becoming a hard-driving billionaire tech entrepreneur. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. How about you, Capricorn? I predict that the goddess version of Venus will be extra active in your life during the coming months.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Thousands of heirloom food species are privately owned and hoarded. They once belonged to Indigenous people but haven't been grown for decades. Descendants of their original owners are trying to get them back and grow them again—a process they call rematriation—but they meet resistance from companies and governmental agencies that commandeered the seeds. There has been some progress, though. The Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin has recovered some of its ancestral corn, beans, and squash. Now would be a good time for you Aquarians to launch your own version of rematriation: reclaiming what was originally yours and that truly belongs to you.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): I like Piscean poet Jane Hirshfield's understanding of what "lies at the core of ritual." She says it's "the entrance into a mystery that can be touched but not possessed." My wish for you right now, Pisces, is that you will experience mysteries that can be touched but not possessed. To do so will give you direct access to prime riddles at the heart of your destiny. You will commune with sublime conundrums that rouse deep feelings and rich insights, none of which are fully explicable by your logical mind. Please consider performing a homemade sacred ritual or two.
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ARIES (March 21-April 19): The Indigenous Semai people of Malaysia have an unusual taboo. They try hard not to cause unhappiness in others. This makes them reluctant to impose their wishes on anyone. Even parents hesitate to force their children to do things. I recommend you experiment with this practice. Now is an excellent time to refine your effect on people to be as benevolent and welcoming as possible. Don't worry—you won't have to be this kind and sweet forever. But doing so temporarily could generate timely enhancements in your relationship life.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Taurus author Shakespeare reshaped the English language. He coined hundreds of words and revised the meanings of hundreds more. Idioms like “green-eyed monster” and “milk of human kindness” originated with him. But the Bard also created some innovations that didn’t last. “Recover the wind” appeared in *Hamlet* but never came into wide use. Other failures include, “Would you take eggs for money?” and “from smoke to smother.” Still, Shakespeare’s final tally of enduring neologisms is impressive. With this vignette, I’m inviting you to celebrate how many more successes than flops you have had. The time is right for realistic self-praise.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): I hope beauty will be your priority in the coming weeks. I hope you will seek out beauty, celebrate it, and commune with it adoringly. To assist your efforts, I offer five gems: 1. Whatever you love is beautiful; love comes first, beauty follows. The greater your capacity for love, the more beauty you find in the world. —Jane Smiley. 2. The world is incomprehensibly beautiful—an endless prospect of magic and wonder. —Ansel Adams. 3. A beautiful thing is never perfect. —Egyptian proverb. 4. You can make the world beautiful just by refusing to lie about it. —Iain S. Thomas. 5. Beauty isn’t a special inserted sort of thing. It is just life, pure life, life nascent, running clear and strong. –H. G. Wells.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): I read a review that described a certain movie as having "a soft, tenuous incandescence—like fog lit by the glow of fireflies." That sounds like who you are these days, Cancerian. You're mysterious yet luminous; hard to decipher but overflowing with life energy; fuzzy around the edges but radiating warmth and well-being. I encourage you to remain faithful to this assignment for now. It's not a state you will inhabit forever, but it's what's needed and true for the foreseeable future.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The published work of Leo author Thomas de Quincey fills 14 volumes. He inspired superstar writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Nikolai Gogol, and Jorge Luis Borges. Yet he also ingested opium for 54 years and was often addicted. Cultural historian Mike Jay says de Quincey was not self-medicating or escaping reality, but rather keen on “exploring the hidden recesses of his mind.” He used it to dwell in states of awareness that were otherwise unattainable. I don’t encourage you to take drugs or follow de Quincey’s path, Leo. But I believe the time is right to explore the hidden recesses of your mind via other means. Like what? Working with your nightly dreams? Meditating your ass off? Having soul-altering sex with someone who wants to explore hidden recesses, too? Any others?
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo journalist H. L. Mencken said, "The average person doesn’t want to be free. He wants to be safe." There's some truth in that, but I believe it will be irrelevant for you in the coming months. According to my analysis, you can be both safer *and* freer than you've been in a long time. I hope you take full advantage! Brainstorm about unexpected feats you might be able to accomplish during this state of grace.
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