You Have More Freedom Than You Realize
(You Can Live in a World You Love)
"The people of future generations will win many a liberty of which we do not yet even feel the want," said German philosopher Max Stirner.
See if you can become aware of an interesting freedom that has not previously been on your radar screen.
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YOUR BIG STORY
I've gathered together all of the long-term, big-picture horoscopes I wrote for you, and bundled them in one place. Go here to read a compendium of your forecasts for 2022:
https://tinyurl.com/BigPicture2022
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LIVING IN OUR OWN WORLD
"We cannot live securely in a world which is not our own, in a world which is interpreted for us by others.
"An interpreted world is not a home.
"Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to put our ears to our own inner voices, to see our own light, which is our birthright, and comes to us in silence."
—Elaine Bellezza
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HARDEST TASKS
Three tasks that are among the hardest any human being can attempt:
1. Interrupt and overthrow negative trains of thought right in the middle of their flow through your brain.
2. Negotiate partial solutions to complex problems. In other words, do the half-right thing when it's impossible to do the totally right thing.
3. Understand that in order to graduate from a certain batch of weird karma that has persisted, you must completely accept the situation as it is, acknowledge your role in precipitating and prolonging it, and feel gratitude for all that it has taught you.
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THROW A PARTY FOR ALL THE SELVES YOU ARE
Throw a party for all the people you've ever been and all the different selves who live within you. Invite the teenager who once seethed with frustrated potential and the four-year-old who loved nothing more than to play.
Include the hopeful complainer who stands in the shadows and dares you to ask for more, as well as the brave hero who comes out every now and then to attempt seemingly impossible feats of happiness.
Don't forget any of the various personalities who have contributed to making you who you are, even the "bad" ones. Celebrate your internal diversity. Marvel at how good you are at changing.
(For extra credit, you could also invite all the characters you've been in past incarnations, like the Balinese puppet-maker and the Nigerian herbalist and the Chinese midwife and the African savannah elephant.)
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YOU ARE A DISSEMINATOR OF PRONOIA
The Beauty and Truth Lab is coming to you live from your repressed memory of paradise, reminding you that all of creation loves you very much.
Even now, secret allies are cooking up mysteries that will excite you and incite you for years to come.
Even now, the Earth, moon, and sun are collaborating to make sure you have all you need to make your next smart move.
But here's the loaded question: Are you willing to love life back with an equal intensity? The adoration it offers you has not exactly been unrequited, but there is room for you to be more demonstrative.
Half of the art of pronoia is about being improvisationally receptive to life's elaborate scheme to shower you with blessings. The other half is about learning to be a co-conspirator who assists life in doling out blessings—to help everyone else get exactly what they need, exactly when they need it.
Visualize yourself being able to recognize the raw truth about the people you care about. Imagine that you can see how they already embody the beauty their souls' codes have promised as well as how they still fall short of embodying that beauty.
Picture yourself being able to make them feel appreciated even as you inspire them to risk changes that will activate more of their souls' codes.
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STRONG GOOD
Do you have an unconscious belief that the forces of evil are loud, vigorous, and strong, while good is quiet, gentle, and passive?
Gather evidence that contradicts this irrational prejudice.
Are you secretly suspicious of joy because you think it's inevitably rooted in wishful thinking and a willful ignorance about the true nature of reality?
Expose these suspicions as superstitions that aren't grounded in any objective data you can actually prove.
Do you fear that when you're in the presence of love and beauty you tend to become softheaded, whereas you're likely to feel smart and powerful when you're sneering at the ugliness around you?
As an antidote, for a given amount of time, say a week or a month or a year, act as if the following hypothesis were true: that you're more likely to grow smarter when you're in the presence of love and beauty.
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RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW IS WHERE THE ACTION IS
"I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillaries."
—William James, "The Will to Believe"
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"The great lessons from the true mystics, from the Zen monks, is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's back yard, and that travel may be a flight from confronting the sacred. To be looking everywhere for miracles is a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous."
—Abraham H. Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences
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"If you love the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion."
—Lin-Chi, The Taoist Classics, translated by Thomas Cleary
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"The lesson that life constantly enforces is 'Look underfoot.' You are always nearer to the true sources of your power than you think.
"The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Don't despise your own place and hour. Every place is the center of the world."
—Naturalist John Burroughs
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"We want to be God in all the ways that are not the ways of God, in what we hope is indestructible or unmoving.
"But God is fragile, a bare smear of pollen, that scatter of yellow dust from the tree that tumbled over in a storm of grief and planted itself again."
—Deena Metzger, Prayers for a Thousand Years. edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon
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"Nature exults in abounding radicality, extremism, anarchy. If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed.
"In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe . . . No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe."
—Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
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"What we want from poetry is to be moved from where we now stand. We don't just want to have our ideas or emotions confirmed.
"Or if we do, we turn to lesser poems, poems that are happy to tell you that killing children is bad, chopping down the rain forest is bad, dying is sad.
"A good poet would agree with those sentiments, but would also strive for an understanding beyond those givens."
—James Tate, American Poetry Review
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MY DAUGHTER'S ART GALLERY
My daughter Zoe Brezsny and her partner Mario Miron run Gern en Regalia, an art gallery on New York's Lower East Side. The new show features artists Marlon Kroll and Bryce Kroll.
The gallery is open from 12 to 7 at 246 East 4th Street.
More info: https://gernenregalia.com/krollshow.html
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SOME OF MY STORY
I've written my astrology column every week for years. Never missed a week. I am a tenacious Cancerian. My number one rule in regularly creating 12 oracles of philosophical poetry: Have fun.
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News: An entrepreneur approached me with a proposal: "Your work should be getting out to a bigger audience. People are starving for the message you're putting out. That's why you need me. With my marketing machine, your name could become as recognizable as Deepak Chopra's. Let's build an entertainment conglomerate and hawk a hundred Rob Brezsny-style products."
"Nah," I said. "People come to me seeking sanctuary from hype. They know I won't smack them upside the head with relentless sales pitches."
Meanwhile, I regularly get inquiries from marketers who want to pay me money for putting advertisements on my website or advertorials on my social media sites. I always say no. I have turned down tens of thousands of dollars in ad revenue.
I'm going on 27 years of maintaining this attitude. I launched my website in 1995, and have never had a paid ad on it. I've offered over 1,400 of my weekly Free Will Astrology columns for free on that site.
I freely give away two hours' worth of my music on Soundcloud. I don't make any money from my Youtube videos. I freely give away large sections of my books The Televisionary Oracle and Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.
I've never bought an ad on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, although I'm considering doing so when my new books come out.
Have I been naïve? Idiotic? Overly idealistic? Too pure? Self-sabotaging? Woefully unrealistic?
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Do you know about all of my FREE STUFF? Here's a list:
My website: https://FreeWillAstrology.com
Excerpts from my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: https://tinyurl.com/FreePronoia
My entire book The Televisionary Oracle: https://freewillastrology.com/books/oracle
My music page: https://soundcloud.com/sacreduproar
More free music: https://freewillastrology.com/music/listen
My two Facebook pages: https://bit.ly/BrezFB
and
https://www.facebook.com/rob.brezsny
My Instagram page: https://instagram.com/rob.brezsny._.truthrooster/
My Twitter page: https://twitter.com/FreeWillAstro
Videos of my performances: https://www.youtube.com/user/SacredParty/videos
and
https://tinyurl.com/RobAtSymbiosis
My Tumblr page: https://freewillastrology.tumblr.com/archive
My free weekly newsletter: https://Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com
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GIFTS
If you'd like to donate to my well-being:
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.
Sign up here: Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com
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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:
Grazing Livestock Among the Trees Is Helping to Prevent Wildfires. The once common practice is making a comeback — and saving forests from destruction. https://tinyurl.com/bd853sjx
Putting Diversity in the Pilot’s Seat. https://tinyurl.com/yckp9hjm
Billionaire Mark Cuban Opens Online Pharmacy To Provide Affordable Generic Drugs. https://tinyurl.com/45a959ex
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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
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Please tell me your own nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES: Truthrooster@gmail.com.
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning February 24
Copyright 2022 by Rob Brezsny
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Author Deb Caletti made the following observation: "You have ordinary moments and ordinary moments and more ordinary moments, and then, suddenly, there is something monumental right there. You have past and future colliding in the present, your own personal Big Bang, and nothing will ever be the same." In my vision of your destiny in 2022, Pisces, there could be several of these personal Big Bangs, and one of them seems to be imminent. To prepare—that is, to ensure that the changes are primarily uplifting and enjoyable—I suggest you chant the following mantra at least five times every day: "I love and expect good changes."
ARIES (March 21-April 19): "A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it," wrote author G. K. Chesterton. Amen to that! Please regard his observation as the first part of your horoscope. Here's the second part: It's sometimes the right approach to move in harmony with the flow, to allow the momentum of elemental forces to carry you along. But now is not one of those times. I suggest you experiment with journeys against the flow. Go in quest of what the followers of easy options will never experience. Do it humbly, of course, and with your curiosity fully deployed.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): "You're never allowed to step on people to get ahead," said TV personality and author Star Jones, "but you can step over them if they're in your way." I suspect the coming months will be a time when you really should step over people who are in your way. There's no need to be mad at them, criticize them, or gossip about them. That would sap your energy to follow your increasingly clear dreams. Your main task is to free yourself from influences that obstruct your ability to be the Royal Sovereign of Your Own Destiny.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Gemini-born Gina Rowlands is retired now, but she had an award-winning six-decade career as an actor. At age 20, she decided what she wanted to do with her life, and her parents offered her their blessings. She testified: "I went home and I told my mom that I wanted to quit college and be an actress, and she said, 'Huh, that sounds fascinating. It's wonderful!' And I told my father, and he literally said, 'I don't care if you want to be an elephant trainer if it makes you happy.'" Dear Gemini, in the coming months, I would love for you to receive similar encouragement for your budding ideas and plans. What can you do to ensure you're surrounded by influences like Rowlands' parents? I hope you embark on a long-term project to get all the support you need.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): As you enter an astrological phase when vast, expansive ruminations will be fun and healthy for you, I will offer you some vast, expansive thoughts. Hopefully, they will inspire your own spacious musings. First, here's artist M. C. Escher: "Wonder is the salt of the earth." Next, author Salman Rushdie: "What's real and what's true aren't necessarily the same." Here's poet Allen Ginsberg: "When you notice something clearly and see it vividly, it then becomes sacred." A proverb from the Omaha people: "Ask questions from your heart, and you will be answered from the heart." G. K. Chesterton: "Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair." Finally, playwright Tony Kushner: "I'm not religious, but I like God, and he likes me."
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): "Out of love, you can speak with straight fury," wrote author Eudora Welty. Here's how I interpret that in light of the current chapter of your life story: You have an opportunity to recalibrate some misaligned energy. You have the necessary insight to fix an imbalance or dissolve an illusion or correct a flow that has gone off-course. And by far the best way to do that is by wielding the power of love. It will need to be expressed with vehemence and intense clarity, however. It will require you to be both compassionate and firm. Your homework: Figure out how to express transformative truths with kindness.
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ARE YOU THE HERO OF YOUR OWN LIFE?
"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." So begins Charles Dickens' novel .
I'd like to inspire you to create a story of your own that begins with similar words. That's why I provide these free horoscopes for you.
If you'd ever enjoy getting even more assistance from me, tune into your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE, which I create for you each week. They're four-to-five-minute meditations on the current state of your destiny.
To buy and listen to your Expanded Audio Horoscope online, go to https://RealAstrology.com
Register and/or log in through the main page.
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The cost is $6 per sign on the On the Web. (Discounts are available for bulk purchases.)
You can also listen over the phone by calling 1-877-873-4888. The cost is $1.99 per minute. Each forecast is 4-5 minutes long.
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VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo political science professor Tatah Mentan was born and raised in the African country of Cameroon, which has never fully recovered from its grueling colonization by Germany, France, and England. The democratic tradition there is tenuous. When Mentan first taught at a university in the Cameroonian capital, authorities found his ideas too controversial. For the next 16 years, he attempted to be true to himself while avoiding governmental censorship, but the strain proved too stressful. Fearing for his safety, he fled to the US. I'm turning to him for advice that will serve you well in the coming weeks. He tells us, "Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart."
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): "Anything you do from the heart enriches you, but sometimes not till years later," wrote author Mignon McLaughlin. I'm pleased to inform you, Libra, that you will soon receive your rewards for generous actions you accomplished in the past. On behalf of the cosmic rhythms, I apologize for how long it has taken. But at least it's finally here. Don't underestimate how big this is. And don't allow sadness about your earlier deprivation to inhibit your enthusiastic embrace of compensation.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): No matter how reasonable and analytical you are, Scorpio, you possess a robust attraction to magic. You yearn for the refreshing invigoration of non-rational mysteries. You nurture urges to be delighted by outbreaks of the raw, primal lust for life. According to my astrological assessment, you are especially inclined to want and need these feelings in the next few weeks. And that's good and healthy and holy! At the same time, don't abandon your powers of discernment. Keep them running in the background as you enjoy your rejuvenating communions with the enigmatic pleasures of the Great Unknown.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Author Diane Ackerman tells us, "In the absence of touching and being touched, people of all ages can sicken and grow touch starved. Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight." This is always important to remember, but it will be extra crucial for you to keep in mind during the coming weeks. I advise you to be ingenious and humble and frank as you collect as much physical contact as you can. Be polite and respectful, of course. Never force yourself on anyone. Always seek permission. With those as your guidelines, be greedy for hugs and cuddling and caresses.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): "Education, fundamentally, is the increase of the percentage of the conscious in relation to the unconscious." Author and educator Sylvia Ashton-Warner said that, and now I'm telling you—just in time for one of the most lesson-rich times of a year that will be full of rich lessons. In the next nine months, dear Capricorn, the proportion of your consciousness in relation to your unconsciousness should markedly increase. And the coming weeks will be a favorable phase to upgrade your educational ambitions.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You're entering a phase of your cycle when your ability to boost your finances will be stronger than usual. You'll be more likely to attract good luck with money and more apt to discover useful tips on how to generate greater abundance. To inspire your efforts, I offer you this observation by author Katharine Butler Hathaway: "To me, money is alive. It is almost human. If you treat it with real sympathy and kindness and consideration, it will be a good servant and work hard for you, and stay with you and take care of you."
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Homework: Give yourself a blessing. Say why you're wonderful and name a marvelous event that's ahead for you. Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com
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Submissions sent to Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter or in response to "homework assignments" may be published in a variety of formats at Rob Brezsny's discretion, including but not limited to newsletters, books, the Free Will Astrology column, and Free Will Astrology website. We reserve the right to edit submissions for length, style, and content.
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright 2022 Rob Brezsny
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