Yearning to Express Love Is a Good Thing

Yearning to Be Loved Is a Good Thing

Dec 07, 2021

YEARNING TO BE LOVED

Notice how you feel as you speak the following: "The strong, independent part of me resisted the embarrassing truth for a long time, but I finally came to accept that I'm someone who craves vast amounts of love.

"Ever since I surrendered to this need, it doesn't nag me all the time, as it used to. In fact, it feels comforting, like a source of sweetness that doesn't go away. I never thought I'd say this, but I've come to treasure the feeling of having a voracious yearning to be loved."

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Image by reniebritenbucher on Etsy

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ENHANCING YOUR LOVING LUST FOR LIFE

Code words for experiments in enhancing your lust for life:

numinous: (adj.) describing an experience that makes you overwhelmed yet fascinated, awed yet attracted—the powerful, personal feeling of being viscerally inspired

ostranenie: (n.) encouraging people to see common things as strange, wild, or unfamiliar; defamiliarizing what is known in order to know it differently or more deeply

smultronställe: (n.) "place of wild strawberries"; a special place discovered, treasured, returned to for solace and relaxation; a personal idyll free from stress or sadness

rasasvada: (n.) the taste of bliss in the absence of all thoughts

firgun: (n.) the act of sharing in or even contributing to someone else's pleasure or fortune, with a purely generous heart and without jealousy

Mudita: (n.) sympathetic or unselfish joy, or joy in the good fortune of others.

vorfreude : (n.) the joyful, intense anticipation that comes from imagining future pleasures

unne (adj.) to be happy on someone else’s behalf.

compersion (n.) an empathetic state of happiness and joy experienced when another individual experiences happiness and joy.

The words and definitions are from https://other-wordly.tumblr.com/

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Image by Wenzil Hablik

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Reverent and Unruly Pronoia Therapy

Experiments and exercises in becoming a joyfully unpredictable, blithely receptive, uproariously sensitive Master of Smart Love

1. What causes happiness? Brainstorm about it. Map out the foundations of your personal science of joy. Get serious about defining what makes you feel good.

To get you started, I'll name some experiences that might rouse your gratification: engaging in sensual pleasure; seeking the truth; being kind and moral; contemplating the meaning of life; escaping your routine; purging pent-up emotions.

Do any of these work for you? Name at least ten more.

2. When many people talk about their childhoods, they emphasize the alienating, traumatic experiences they had, and fail to report the good times. This seems dishonest—a testament to the popularity of cynicism rather than a reflection of objective truth.

I don't mean to downplay the way your early encounters with pain demoralized your spirit. But as you reconnoiter the promise of pronoia, it's crucial for you to extol the gifts you were given in your early years: all the helpful encounters, kind teachings, and simple acts of grace that helped you bloom.

3. "You can't wait for inspiration," proclaimed writer Jack London. "You have to go after it with a club." That sounds too violent to me, though I agree in principle that aggressiveness is the best policy in one's relationship with inspiration.

Try this: Don't wait for inspiration. Go after it with a butterfly net, lasso, sweet treats, fishing rod, court orders, beguiling smells, and sincere flattery.

4. Have you ever seen the game called "Playing the Dozens"? Participants compete in the exercise of hurling witty insults at each other.

Here are some examples: "You're so dumb, if you spoke your mind you'd be speechless." "Your mother is so old, she was a waitress at the Last Supper." "You're so ugly, you couldn't get laid if you were a brick."

I invite you to rebel against any impulse in you that resonates with the spirit of "Playing the Dozens." Instead, try a new game, "Paying the Tributes."

Choose worthy targets and ransack your imagination to come up with smart, true, and amusing praise about them.

The best stuff will be specific to the person you're addressing, not generic, but here are some prototypes: 1. "You're so far-seeing, you can probably catch a glimpse of the back of your own head." 2. "You're so ingenious, you could use your nightmares to get rich and famous." 3. "Your mastery of pronoia is so artful, you could convince me to love my worst enemy."

5. In response to our culture's ever-rising levels of noise and frenzy, rites of purification have become more popular. Many people now recognize the value of taking periodic retreats. Withdrawing from their usual compulsions, they go on fasts, avoid mass media, practice celibacy, or even abstain from speaking.

While we applaud cleansing ceremonies like this, we recommend balancing them with periodic outbreaks of an equal and opposite custom: the Bliss Blitz.

During this celebration, you tune out the numbing banality of the daily grind. But instead of shrinking into asceticism, you indulge in uninhibited explorations of joy, release, and expansion.

Turning away from the mildly stimulating distractions you seek out when you're bored or worried, you become inexhaustibly resourceful as you search for unsurpassable sources of cathartic pleasure.

Try it for a day or a week: the Bliss Blitz.

6. Take inventory of the extent to which your "No" reflex dominates your life. Notice for 24 hours (even in your dreams) how often you say or think:

"No."

"That's not right."

"I don't like them."

"I don't agree with that."

"They don't like me."

"That should be different from what it is."

Then retrain yourself to say "YES" at least 51 percent of the time. Start the transformation by saying "YES" aloud 22 times right now.

7. "There are two ways for a person to look for adventure," said the Lone Ranger, an old TV character. "By tearing everything down, or building everything up."

Give an example of each from your own life.

8. Entomologist Justin O. Schmidt drew up an index to categorize the discomfort caused by stinging insects.

The attack of the bald-faced hornet is "rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door."

A paper wasp delivers pain that's "caustic and burning," with a "distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut."

The sweat bee, on the other hand, can hurt you in a way that's "light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm."

In bringing this to your attention, I want to inspire the pronoiac rebel in you. Your homework is to create an equally nuanced and precise index of three experiences that feel really good.

9. Late at night when there's no traffic, stride down the middle of an empty road that by day is crawling with cars.

Dance, careen, and sing songs that fill you with pleasurable emotions.

Splay your arms triumphantly as you extemporize prayers in which you make extravagant demands and promises.

Give pet names to the trees you pass, declare your admiration for the workers who made the road, and celebrate your sovereignty over a territory that usually belongs to heavy machines and their operators.

10. Go to the ugliest or most forlorn place you know—a drugstore parking lot, the front porch of a crack house, a toxic waste dump, or the place that symbolizes your secret shame—and build a shrine devoted to beauty, truth, and love.

Here are some suggestions about what to put in your shrine: a silk scarf; a smooth rock on which you've inscribed a haiku or joke with a felt-tip pen; coconut cookies or ginger candy; pumpkin seeds and an origami crane; a green kite shaped like a dragon; a music CD you love; a photo of your hero; a votive candle carved with your word of power; a rubber ducky; a bouquet of fresh beets; a print of Van Gogh's Starry Night.

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THE TEST OF A FIRST-RATE INTELLIGENCE

I am quite sure that I would no longer be living on the Earth as "Rob Brezsny" if it hadn't been for the interventions of Western medicine and the pharmaceutical companies. So of course I'm grateful for their gifts to me.

On the other hand, that doesn't mean I approve of everything they do and think they are perfect servants. Not at all.

I passionately criticize the terrible things pharmaceutical companies have done (like their role in furthering the opioid epidemic and mass death from overdose), and I am angry that some practitioners of Western medicine don't make better use of the many fine alternative healing methods that are available.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's principle applies here: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

I have used alternative medicine for over 30 years, too, and it has provided me with a lot of wonderful healing: Chinese Medicine and herbs, acupuncture, homeopathy, cranial sacral therapy, guided visualization, supplements, Somatic Experiencing, and medical intuitive counseling.

BUT . . . I have on several occasions had bad reactions to alternative treatments. The most egregious example was my experience with a naturopath in 2008. His treatment made me very sick in ways that took a long time to recover from. I was much too trusting for far too long.

The point being, every healing modality has risks.

The point being: I can hold in my mind the seemingly contradictory ideas that various healing treatments may be helpful or may be hurtful.

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OUR BODIES ARE WILD

Gary Snyder says: "Our bodies are wild. The involuntary quick turn of the head at a shout, the vertigo at looking off a precipice, the heart-in-the-throat in a moment of danger, the catch of the breath, the quiet moments relaxing, staring, reflecting -- are universal responses of this mammal body.

"The body does not require the intercession of some conscious intellect to make it breathe, to keep the heart beating. It is to a great extent self-regulating, it is a life of its own.

"Sensation and perception do not exactly come from outside, and unremitting thought and image-flow are not exactly outside. The world is our consciousness, and it surrounds us. There are more things in the mind, in the imagination, than ‘you’ can keep track of -- thoughts, memories, images, angers, delights, rise unbidden.

"The depths of the mind, the unconscious, are our inner wilderness areas, and that is where a bobcat is right now. I do not mean personal bobcats in personal psyches -- the bobcat that roams from dream to dream.

"The conscious agenda-planning ego occupies a very tiny territory, a little cubicle somewhere near the gate, keeping track of some of what goes in and out (and sometimes making expansionist plots), and the rest takes care of itself. The body is, so to speak, in the mind. They are both wild."

- Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild

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EVIDENCE FOR LIFE AFTER DEATH

29 essays by physicians, scientists, Ph.D.s, and other smart people, presenting evidence for the survival of consciousness after death: https://tinyurl.com/AfterDeathConsciousness

Some of the essays' titles:

Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death

A Rational, Empirical case for postmortem survival based solely on mainstream science

The Eternal Life of Consciousness

Evidence for Survival of Consciousness in Near-Death Experiences: Decades of Science and New Insights

What would have to be true about the world? On evidence for the possibility of consciousness surviving death

Long Concealed, Now Revealed – Overwhelming Evidence for Life after Death

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FEAR OF FLOWERS FALLING FROM CLOUDS

Unless you buy my Sacred Atlantean No-Stick Talisman, you will suffer from arachibutyrophobia, a fear of peanut butter adhering to the roof of your mouth! If you refuse to order my Ancient Egyptian Hemp Dreamcatcher, you will contract myxophobia, a fear of slime!

If you don't obtain my book, "How To Attract Your Very Own Millionaire Spirit Guide," you will be tormented by anthonephophobia, a fear of flowers falling from clouds!

JUST KIDDING. THE TRUTH IS, You are less susceptible to being manipulated by scare tactics than you have been in years. In fact, I predict you'll be shrewdly courageous in the coming months

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GIFTS

If you'd like to donate to my well-being:

1. 1. Visit my Gift Page — https://paypal.me/GiftsForRob — and contribute to me via the "Send to someone you trust" option.

2. You can also contribute by buying the Expanded Audio Horoscopes I create every week. These forecasts are different from the written horoscopes I provide here.

They're my four- to five-minute-long ruminations about the current chapter of your life story. They're available at https://RealAstrology.com

3. I also write daily horoscopes, available as text messages sent to your phone. They're shorter than the weekly 'scopes, but more frequent. You can get these regular bursts of inspiration for 67 cents a day if you sign up for a subscription.

Go to https://RealAstrology.com . Register or log in. On the new page, click on "Subscribe / Renew" under "Daily Text Message Horoscopes" in the right-hand column.

4 Commit to offering me a regular donation through my Patreon page at https://Patreon.com/FreeWillAstrology

5. Finally, I have made it possible for subscribers to my newsletter to pay a subscription fee to me for my newsletter, BUT ONLY IF THEY WANT TO AND CAN AFFORD TO!

I have offered my astrology newsletter free of charge for the past 21 years, and I will continue to do so for the next 21 years at least.

If, however, you are sufficiently prosperous and feel comfortable about donating money to me, I welcome it. Please know, though: I am TOTALLY FINE if you don't donate.

P.S.: No pressure, though! I understand that some of you don't have enough money yourself, and it wouldn't make sense for you to give some to me.

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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

Giant Eagle-Owl Unseen For 150 Years Just Caught on Camera. https://tinyurl.com/3fwu45sr

This Plant-Based Jet Fuel Can Reduce Emissions by 68% – Without Displacing Crops. https://tinyurl.com/rnu87c3c

Retired Banker Devotes His Millionaire Fortune to Restoring Protective Sand Dunes on Island Beaches. https://tinyurl.com/83cju6tt

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

Please tell me your own nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES: Truthrooster@gmail.com.

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

Week beginning December 9

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): A fashion company called Tibi sells a silver mini dress that features thousands of sequins. It's also available in gold. I wonder if the designers were inspired by poet Mark Doty's line: "No such thing, the queen said, as too many sequins." In my astrological estimation, the coming weeks will be a fun time to make this one of your mottoes. You will have a poetic license to be flashy, shiny, bold, swanky, glittery, splashy, sparkling, and extravagant. If expressing such themes in the way you dress isn't appealing, embody more metaphorical versions.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): "I have pasts inside me I did not bury properly," writes Nigerian poet Ijeoma Umebinyuo. Isn't that true for each of us? Don't we all carry around painful memories as if they were still fresh and current? With a little work, we could depotentize at least some of them and consign them to a final resting place where they wouldn't nag and sting us anymore. The good news, Capricorn, is that the coming weeks will be an excellent time to do just that: bury any pasts that you have not properly buried before now.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): In February 1967, the Beatles recorded their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in London. A man claiming to be Jesus Christ convinced Paul McCartney to let him weasel his way into the studio. McCartney later said that he was pretty sure it wasn't the real Jesus. But if by some remote chance it was, he said, he didn't want to make a big mistake. I bring this to your attention, Aquarius, because I suspect that comparable events may be brewing in your vicinity. My advice: Don't assume you already know who your teachers and helpers are. Here's the relevant verse from the Bible: "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): According to Professor of Classics Anne Carson, ancient Greek author Homer "suggested we stand in time with our backs to the future, face to the past." And why would we do that? To "search for the meaning of the present—scanning history and myth for a precedent." I bring this to your attention, Pisces, because I think you should avoid such an approach in the coming months. In my view, the next chapter of your life story will be so new, so unpredicted, that it will have no antecedents, no precursory roots that might illuminate its plot and meaning. Your future is unprecedented.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) was experimental and innovative and influential. His imagery was often dreamlike, and his themes were metaphysical. He felt that the most crucial aspect of his creative process was his faith. If he could genuinely believe in the work he was doing, he was sure he'd succeed at even the most improbable projects. But that was a challenge for him. "There is nothing more difficult to achieve than a passionate, sincere, quiet faith," he said. In accordance with your astrological omens during the next 12 months, Aries, I suggest you draw inspiration from his approach. Cultivating a passionate, sincere, quiet faith will be more attainable than it has ever been.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): "All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware," said philosopher Martin Buber. How true! I would add that the traveler is wise to prepare for the challenges and opportunities of those secret destinations . . . and be alert for them if they appear . . . and treat them with welcome and respect, not resistance and avoidance. When travelers follow those protocols, they are far more likely to be delightfully surprised than disappointingly surprised. Everything I just said will apply to you in the coming weeks, Taurus.

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LOSING WHAT'S NO GOOD FOR YOU

A psychic once told me that my first name "Rob" is an apt description of my spiritual function.

"You're here on earth to rob people of their godawful belief that life is a miserable ordeal," she advised me.

"Your job is to steal away the habits that sap their life energy; to rip off the sorry dogmas that blind them to the wondrous feats their imaginations are capable of."

I don't know if I have fully earned that glowing promise, but I aspire to do so.

If you ever want more information and inspiration generated in this spirit -- beyond the horoscopes you're reading here -- keep in mind that every week I also offer EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES for you. They're four-to-five-minute meditations on the current state of your destiny.

To listen to your Expanded Audio Horoscope online, go to https://RealAstrology.com

The cost is $6 per sign online. (Discounts are available for bulk purchases.)

"I don't much believe in astrology. But that doesn't seem to get in the way of me deriving a whole lot of benefits from your expanded audio horoscopes."

—A. Arrosto, Indianapolis

"You have an amazing aptitude for cutting through the lies I tell myself. Thanks for the gentle shocks."

—T. Preneris, Toronto

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GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Gemini sleight-of-hand artist Apollo Robbins may be the best and most famous pickpocket in the world. Fortunately, he uses his skill for entertainment purposes only. He doesn't steal strangers' money and valuables from their pockets and purses and jackets. On one occasion, while in the company of former US President Jimmy Carter, he pilfered multiple items from a secret service agent assigned to protect Carter. He gave the items back, of course. It was an amusing and humbling lesson that inspired many law-enforcement officials to seek him out as a consultant. I suspect that in the coming weeks, you may have comparable abilities to trick, fool, beguile, and enchant. I hope you will use your superpowers exclusively to carry out good deeds and attract inviting possibilities.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Many sportswriters regard Michael Jordan as the greatest basketball player ever. He was the Most Valuable Player five times and had a higher scoring average than anyone else who has ever played. And yet he confesses, "I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life." He says the keys to his success are his familiarity with bungles and his determination to keep going despite his bungles. I invite you to meditate on Jordan's example in the coming days.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In his poem "Song of Poplars," Leo author Aldous Huxley speaks to a stand of poplar trees. He asks them if they are an "agony of undefined desires." Now I will pose the same question to you, Leo. Are you an agony of undefined desires? Or are you a treasury of well-defined desires? I hope it's the latter. But if it's not, the coming weeks will be an excellent time to fix the problem. Learning to be precise about the nature of your longings is your growing edge, your frontier. Find out more about what you want, please.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Black is your lucky color for the foreseeable future. I invite you to delve further than ever before into its mysteries and meanings and powers. I encourage you to celebrate blackness and honor blackness and nurture blackness in every way you can imagine. For inspiration, meditate on how, in art, black is the presence of all colors. In printing, black is a color needed to produce other colors. In mythology, blackness is the primal source of all life and possibility. In psychology, blackness symbolizes the rich unconscious core from which all vitality emerges.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In the tenth season of the animated TV series South Park, its two creators produced an episode called "Make Love, Not Warcraft." The story lovingly mocked nerds and the culture of online gaming. Soon after sending his handiwork to executive producers, Libran co-creator Trey Parker decided it was a terrible show that would wreck his career. He begged for it to be withheld from broadcast. But the producers ignored his pleas. That turned out to be a lucky break. The episode ultimately won an Emmy Award and became popular with fans. I foresee the possibility of comparable events in your life, Libra. Don't be too sure you know which of your efforts will work best.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Nobel Prize-winning Scorpio author André Gide (1869–1951) had an unusual relationship with his wife Madeline Rondeaux. Although married for 43 years, they never had sex. As long as she was alive, he never mentioned her in his extensive writings. But after she died, he wrote a book about their complex relationship. Here's the best thing he ever said about her: "I believe it was through her that I drew the need for truthfulness and sincerity." I'd love for you to be lit up by an influence like Madeline Rondeaux, Scorpio. I'd be excited for you to cultivate a bond with a person who will inspire your longing to be disarmingly candid and refreshingly genuine. If there are no such characters in your life, go looking for them. If there are, deepen your connection.

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Homework Send your predictions for the New Year—both for yourself and the world. https://Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology

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Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter

Yearning to Express Love Is a Good Thing

Yearning to Be Loved Is a Good Thing

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