You Are a Prophet

Imagine Yourself to Freedom

(“You Are a Prophet” is excerpted from my book ASTROLOGY IS REAL. To hear me read this, go here.)

One of my beloved tasks as an astrologer of the soul is to help readers learn to distinguish between the wasteful, demoralizing use of the imagination and the uplifting, regenerative use of the imagination.

A good way for me to earn the right to discourse on this subject is to keep learning more about how to distinguish between my own wasteful, demoralizing use of the imagination and my uplifting, regenerative use of the imagination. I was not adept at this early in my adult life. My skill has improved, but is still far less than expert.

Here’s the foundation of my meditations: Our imagination is the most important asset we possess. It’s our power to create mental pictures of things that don’t exist yet and that we want to bring into being. It’s like the magic wand we use to shape our future.

We are all prophets. Our imaginations tirelessly churn out images of what we will be doing later. The featured prophecy of the moment may be as simple as a psychic impression of ourselves eating a fudge brownie at lunch or as monumental as a daydream of building our dream home.

Our imagination is a treasure when it generates scenarios aligned with our deep desires. In fact, it’s an indispensable tool in creating the life we want. We call on it to formulate images of the conditions we’d like to inhabit and the objects we hope to wield.

But for most of us, the imagination is as much a curse as a blessing. We may use it conjure up fearful or distasteful premonitions that are at odds with our conscious values.

That’s in part the result of having absorbed toxic programming from the media and influential people.

Chaotic, disturbing, and even sickening fantasies regularly pop up into our awareness, many disguising themselves as rational thoughts and genuine intuitions. Those disheartening fantasies may hijack our psychic energy, directing it to exhaust itself in dead-end ruminations.

Every time we entertain at length a vision of being rejected or hurt or frustrated, every time we dwell on a memory of a painful experience, we blast ourselves with a hex.

Meanwhile, ill-suited longings are also lurking in our unconscious mind, impelling us to want things that aren’t healthy for us and that we don’t need.

Whenever we surrender to the allure of false and trivial and counterproductive desires, our imaginations are practicing putrid magic.

This is the unsavory aspect of the imagination that Buddhists dub the “monkey mind.” It’s the part of our mental apparatus that endlessly exudes pictures in the manner of an agitated critter. The teacher Jeff Brown adds a crucial nuance. He says our “monkey hearts” are forever churning up forlorn, fractious, frightful feelings that are at the roots of the monkey mind’s disquiet.

Is there an antidote? Maybe. If we stop locating our sense of self in the relentless surge of the monkey mind’s and monkey heart’s slapdash chatter, we may become gracefully attuned to the life that’s right in front of us.

meme words by Saul Bellow

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Whether our imagination is in service to our righteous desires or in thrall to our compulsive commotion, there is one constant: Its prophecies play a prominent role in shaping what happens to us. Many of our visions of the future do come to pass. The situations we expect to occur and the experiences we rehearse and dwell on are often reflected back to us as actual events that confirm our expectations.

The well-documented placebo effect in drug research, for which there is plentiful evidence, has broader implications. So much (not all!) of what unfolds in our lives, for good and for ill, is shaped by what we believe will happen.

Does that mean our mental and emotional projections help create the future? Let’s consider that possibility. What if it’s at least partially true that what we presume will happen does tend to materialize?

Here’s the logical conclusion: It’s downright self-destructive to keep infecting our imaginations with pictures of loss and failure, doom and gloom, fear and loathing. The far more sensible and practical approach is to expect blessings.

That’s one reason why I’m reverent in composing my Divinations for you, my readers. If I’m to be one of the influences you invite into the intimate sanctuary where you hatch your self-fulfilling prophecies, I want to conspire with you to disperse fear and invoke relaxation and joy.

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WHY WE NEED A NEW KIND OF EDUCATION: IMAGINATION STUDIES

Philosopher Stephen T. Asma writes: "It is time to initiate Imagination Studies at every level of education, primary school through university.

"Studying the imagination – its creations, its processes (creativity), and its underlying cognitive structures – is the most exciting and accurate way to heal the terminal divide between the sciences and the humanities.

"But, more importantly, Imagination Studies, or imaginology, also promises to reunite the body and the mind, reintegrate emotion and reason, and tesselate facts and values."

READ THE REST: https://tinyurl.com/44vskeau

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HOW TO TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOUR IMAGINATION

I invite you to read this fine article on Imaginal Hygiene: https://tinyurl.com/ImaginalHygiene

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WANT TO GET YOUR ASTROLOGICAL CHART READ?

If you want your personal chart done, I recommend a colleague whose approach to astrology matches my own. She's my wife, RO LOUGHRAN. We've enjoyed conversations about astrology since 1989! Her website's here: https://www.roloughran.com

Ro utilizes a blend of well-trained intuition, emotional warmth, and a high degree of technical proficiency in horoscope interpretation.

In addition to over 35 years of astrological experience, she has been a licensed psychotherapist for 24 years. This enables her to integrate psychological insight with the cosmological perspective that astrology offers.

Check out Ro's website here.

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For The Week of June 13

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Though 2024 isn’t even half over, you have already earned the title "Least Boring Zodiac Sign of the Year." Or maybe a more positive way to frame it would be to award you the title “Most Scintillating, Interesting, and Stimulating Zodiac Sign of the Year.” Please keep doing what you have been doing, Gemini. Entertain us with your unruly escapades and gossip-worthy breakthroughs. Encourage us to question our dull certainties and dare us to be more fun. If we seem nervous to be in your stirring presence, disarm our worries with your humor.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Your subconscious mind is full of marvelous capacities and magic potencies. But it also contains old habits of feeling and thinking that influence you to respond to life in ways that are out of sync with what’s actually happening. These habits may sabotage or undermine your conscious intentions. Now here’s the good news: In the next nine months, there’s a lot you can do to dissolve the outmoded imprints. You will have more power than ever before to perform this wizardry. So get started! How? Ask your subconscious mind to send you intuitions about how to proceed.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk” will serve as a prime metaphor for you in the coming weeks. Ruminate on its themes as being applicable to your life. I’ll refresh you with the main points of the story. Young Jack and his mother need money, so she decides to take drastic measures. She bids him to sell the family cow at the marketplace a few miles away. But on the way into town, Jack meets a man who coaxes him to sell the cow in exchange for magic beans—not money. When Jack returns home, his mother is angry at his foolishness. In disgust, she flings the beans out the window into the dirt. Later, though, the beans live up to their promise. They grow into a giant beanstalk that Jack climbs to reach the lair of a giant who lives in the clouds. There Jack retrieves three of his family’s lost treasures, which had been stolen by the giant long ago.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Before the reign of Emperor Qin Shi Huang in the third century BCE, Chinese people had built many local walls designed to keep out invaders. Qin Shi Huang initiated a great public works project to connect all of these fragments into what's now known as the Great Wall of China. He also erected a vast system of roads and a city-sized mausoleum filled with the Terracotta Army: sculptures of 8,000 soldiers with their chariots and horses. Qin Shi Huang was a big thinker who was also highly organized! In accordance with astrological omens, I invite you to glide into your very own Qin Shi Huang phase. What long-lasting structures do you want to build in the next 11 months?

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Psychologist Carl Jung believed we could accomplish profound self-transformation by working hard on our psyches’ unripe and wounded aspects. That might entail honest self-examination, objective observation of how we affect others, and a willingness to recognize and forgive our mistakes. Jung also recommended another way to heal our neuroses: through the power of numinous experiences. By "numinous," he meant mystical, sublime, or awe-inspiring. Jung said that such visitations could radically diminish our painful habits of mind and feeling. They might arrive through grace, thanks to life's surprising interventions. They may also be coaxed to appear through meditation, dreamwork, communing with myth and fairy tales, and spiritual practices. I foresee a wealth of numinous events in your life during the coming months, Libra. May they bring you a steady stream of healing.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In a moment, I will list events I foresee as being possible for you during the next 11 months. They are cosmic tendencies but not cosmic mandates. Whether or not they actually occur will depend on how you wield your willpower—which, by the way, could be freer and more muscular than it has been in a long time. Now here are the potential developments. 1. An offer to create one of the most symbiotic unions or robust collaborations ever. 2. Great chances for you to capitalize on the success of others. 3. Alterations in the family configuration. 4. Major shifts in loyalty and affinity. 5. A raise in rank. 6. Revelations of secrets you can use to your advantage.

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Poster by Maurice Sendak

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SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Have you been metaphysically itchy and psychologically ticklish? Are you unsure whether those tingling sensations you’re feeling are worrisome symptoms or signs of healing and awakening? I believe they are signs of healing and awakening. They suggest you are doing the metaphorical equivalent of what a snake does when it sheds its skin. Expect imminent redemption, Sagittarius! Reframe the discomfort as a herald of relief and release.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): It’s time for Super Mom to make an appearance. Some circumstances in your life could benefit from healing tweaks best initiated by her. And when I say “Super Mom,” I’m not necessarily referring to your actual mother. I’m envisioning a wise older woman who sees you as you really are and who can assist you in living your destiny according to your own inner necessity, no one else’s. If you have no Super Mom in your world, see if you can locate one, even hire one. I also recommend creating an inner Super Mom in your imagination. You need and deserve sympathetic input from the archetype of the sage crone.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I suspect that later in 2024, I will authorize you to commune with boisterous adventures and tricky risks. But right now, I advise you to flirt with modest adventures and sensible risks. Can you contain your burning, churning yearnings for a while? Are you willing to coax your crazy wild heart into enjoying some mild pleasures? By early autumn, I’m guessing you will have done the necessary preparations to successfully roam through the experimental frontiers. Until then, you are most likely to corral X-factors on your behalf if you pace yourself and bide your time.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): "Oh God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul." That prayer was the handiwork of Piscean philosopher Joseph Ernest Renan. If his ironic minimalism is the only spiritual aspiration you can manage right now, so be it. But I hope you will strive for a more intimate, expansive, and personal connection with the Divine Intelligence. The coming weeks will be an extra favorable time for you to speak and listen to mysterious powers beyond your rational comprehension. Please take advantage! Go in quest of the sweet, deep lowdown directly from the Sublime Source!

ARIES (March 21-April 19): The term "maze" has various meanings. Most commonly, it signifies a puzzling cluster of choices that lead nowhere and bode frustration. But there are more positive meanings of the word. In ancient myths, a maze was where heroes underwent ritual tests. There they might summon ingenuity to win access to a hidden treasure. In modern psychology labs, the maze is a structure used to stimulate learning in rats. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, the maze you are now in is metaphorically akin to the second two meanings, not the first.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): There is an abundance of good news, Taurus. In the coming weeks, your conversations could awaken realizations that will augment your wealth—both the financial and emotional kind. So be eager to commune with vigorous souls who inspire your power to attract resources and goodies. Furthermore, you could generate enriching benefits for yourself by engaging with unfamiliar influences that are outside your web of expectations. Don’t be too sure you already know everything you need. Helpful surprises could arrive if you’re extra open-minded.

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