Jump-Up-and-Down Pronoia Therapy

Experiments and exercises in becoming a delightfully excitable, actively receptive, smoothly inquisitive Master of Discerning Joy

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1. There's a three-mile stretch of Interstate 880 south of Oakland, California, that I call the Singing Highway.

For reasons I don't understand, it generates low humming melodies every time I drive over it, similar to the guttural chants of Tibetan monks. Sometimes I swear I can even hear lyrics.

Once, as I was driving to the airport on the Singing Highway, I swear I heard the same lyric repeating over and over again:

a shortcut to the path with heart

a shortcut to the path with heart

a shortcut to the path with heart

Where's the path with heart for you? What would it involve for you to take a shortcut to get on it?

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2. If a cow is given a name by her owner, she generates more milk than a cow that's treated as an anonymous member of the herd.

That's the conclusion of a study done by researchers at Newcastle University in the UK. "Placing more importance on knowing the individual animals and calling them by name," said Dr. Catherine Douglas, "can significantly increase milk production."

Building on that principle, I suggest that you give everything in your world names, including (but not limited to) houseplants, insects, cars, appliances, and trees.

It will help you get more up-close and personal with all of creation, which is an effective way to cultivate pronoia.

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3. Qabalist teacher Ann Davies told a story about a U.S. Army general negotiating with a cannibal chief in New Guinea during World War II.

The general wanted the chief to rally his tribe to help American troops fight the Japanese.

The chief refused, calling the Americans immoral.

The general was shocked. "We are not immoral!" he protested. "The Japanese are immoral!"

The cannibal chief replied, "The Japanese and Americans are equally immoral. You both kill far more people than you can eat."

Using this tale as your impetus, describe how parts of your moral code may not be rooted in an absolute standard of what's good and evil, but rather bound by the idiosyncrasies of your culture and historical era.

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4. In Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke urged an aspiring bard to change the way he imagined the Supreme Being.

"Why don't you conceive of God as an ally who is coming," Rilke said, "who has been approaching since time began, the one who will someday arrive, the fruit of a tree whose leaves we are?

"Why not project his birth into the future, and live your life as an excruciating and lyrical moment in the history of a prodigious pregnancy?"

How would your life change if you made this idea your working hypothesis?

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5. Comment on the following rant, which Beauty and Truth Lab operatives put on flyers and tacked up on laundromat bulletin boards all over San Francisco:

"The Doctrine of Original Sin? We spit on it. We reject it. We renounce it and forget it and annihilate it from reality.

"In its place we embrace the Doctrine of Original Fun. This reformulation asserts that it is our birthright to commune with regular doses of curious beauty and tricky truth and insurrectionary love.

"A robust, heroic joy is even now roaring through us, bringing us good ideas about how to apply the metaphor of ingenious foreplay to everything we do.

"We will not waste this euphoric deluge on any of the million and one numbing little diversions that pass for pleasure among the ecstasy-starved pursuers of mediocre joy. Rather, we will remain ever alert for the call of primordial delight."

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6. Psychotherapists say it's not only naughty but counterproductive to blame others for your problems. A skilled practitioner urges her clients to accept responsibility for the part they've played in creating their predicaments.

The reason is as much pragmatic as it is ethical: When you're obsessed with how people have done you wrong, you have little ambition to change the behavior in yourself that led you into the mess.

While I endorse this approach, I also know that dogmatic adherence to it can warp your mental health as much as any other form of fanaticism.

That's why I urge you to enjoy an unapologetic Blame Fest. Choose a time when you will find fault with everyone except yourself. Howl in protest at the unfair slights people have committed against you. Wallow in self-pity as you visualize the clueless jerks who have done you wrong.

For best results, bark your complaints in the direction of no one but God, an inanimate object, or your mirror.

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7. "Esoteric astrology teaches that anyone whose future can be predicted by any means is living like a robot. It assumes that some people are more robotic (predictable) than others; and that further implies some of us have more free will than others." Author Carolyn L. Vash wrote that in the Noetic Sciences Review.

How much free will do you have?

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8. We all have a war going on inside ourselves. What's yours? Is it a just and fruitful war or a senseless and wasteful war, or both?

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I NEED TO SLEEP AND DREAM A LOT!

I've observed that some people are proud about how little sleep they need. They regard it as a sign of vitality that six hours provide all the refreshment they require. Personally, I rarely get less than nine and a half hours, and usually prefer ten.

Maybe it has to do in part with how active I am while asleep. I've been remembering and recording an average of 3 dreams a night since I was 19.

Dreamwork is a vocation for me. I regard it as having been crucial to my development as a creative writer and musician.

How about you? What is your relationship to sleep and dreams? Is there a dream you had that you'd care to share?

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To reiterate and emphasize: I wouldn't have been able to become the person I wanted to become without honoring my need for sleep and my love for the worlds I live in during dreams.

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PRIVILEGE

"Aren't we privileged to live in a time when everything is at stake, and when our efforts make a difference in the eternal contest between the forces of light and shadow, between togetherness and division, between justice and exploitation? Oh, be joyful that you are a warrior in this great time!

"Will we rise to this battle? If so, we cannot lose, for rising up to it is our victory. If we represent love in the world, you see, we have already won."

—Doris "Granny D" Haddock, political activist

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LEGAL, WIDELY AVAILABLE ABORTION

My ability to become who I aspired to be would have been impossible without the right to legal abortion.

Earlier in my life, one of my women partners and I had abortions. I am so fortunate we weren't forced to bring children into the world that we couldn't properly care for.

Ultimately, my wife and I chose exactly when we did want to welcome a new human—once I had enough money and emotional maturity to do so.

Legal abortion made it possible for me to be a conscious, loving father for the one child I welcomed and helped to raise.

My life is successful, and an important factor contributing to that grace has been legal abortion.

PS: No, contraception does not always work. It is not 100% effective. That's just one of many reasons why we need legal, free, widely available abortion

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A recent CNN survey found that 69% of Americans said they would not like to see the Supreme Court overturn Roe, compared to 30% who said they would.

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Sad and shocking: Nearly 90 percent of U.S. counties already lack a clinic that offers abortions.

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Abortion pills are safe to prescribe without in-person exams. Patients can have their medication mailed to them after a remote telehealth consultation with a clinician. The FDA also allows mail-order pharmacies to ship abortion medications to patients.

More info: https://tinyurl.com/2p95hkh7

This is by no means a perfect solution. It has limitations: https://tinyurl.com/2kb58bku

All of us are trying to find ways to deal practically with a very tough circumstance, and this is one way.

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To anyone who says there's no difference between the two main political parties: Trump installed three conservative Supreme Court Justices who are key in overturning Roe v. Wade: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

PS: In the 2016 presidential election, Trump received 2.9 million votes LESS than Hillary Clinton.

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Man is at the nadir of his strength when the earth, the seas, the mountains are not in him, for without them his soul is unsourced, and he has no images by which to abide.

—Edward Dahlberg, The Sorrows of Priapus

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THE HEDONISTIC IMPERATIVE

David Pearce writes: "The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment.

"They will be replaced by a different sort of neural architecture—a motivational system based on heritable gradients of bliss.

"States of sublime well-being are destined to become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health.

"Two hundred years ago, powerful synthetic pain-killers and surgical anesthetics were unknown. The notion that physical pain could be banished from most people's lives would have seemed absurd.

"Today most of us in the technically advanced nations take its routine absence for granted. The prospect that what we describe as psychological pain, too, could ever be banished is equally counter-intuitive.

"The feasibility of its abolition turns its deliberate retention into an issue of social policy and ethical choice."

—David Pearce, https://hedweb.com

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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:

Latest Science Shows How to Reduce Loneliness. https://tinyurl.com/2p93unbu

A lot of environmental problems remain, but there is some good news: a healing ozone hole, less smog, and more eagles. https://tinyurl.com/5cxzmmcx

The Top 10 Happiest Countries in the World from 2022 Global Happiness Report. https://tinyurl.com/y9kva7pz

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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

It's available as an ebook at Barnes and Noble: https://tinyurl.com/PronoiaNook

As an ebook at Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/PronoiaEbook

If you have the Apple Books app, click on it and search for "Pronoia."

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The hard-copy book is 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 May 12

Copyright 2022 by Rob Brezsny

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): "Every successful person I know starts before they feel ready," declared life coach Marie Forleo. Author Ivan Turgenev wrote, "If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything, is ready, we shall never begin." Here's what educator Supriya Mehra says: "There's never a perfect moment to start, and the more we see the beauty in 'starting small,' the more we empower ourselves to get started at all." I hope that in providing you with these observations, Taurus, I have convinced you to dive in now. Here's one more quote, from businesswoman Betsy Rowbottom: "There's never a perfect moment to take a big risk."

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Poet Ranata Suzuki writes, "There comes a point where you no longer care if there's a light at the end of the tunnel or not. You're just sick of the tunnel." That's good advice for you right now, Gemini. The trick that's most likely to get you out of the tunnel is to acknowledge that you are sick of the damn tunnel. Announce to the universe that you have gleaned the essential teachings the ride through the tunnel has provided you. You no longer need its character-building benefits because you have harvested them all. Please say this a thousand times sometime soon: "I am ready for the wide-open spaces."

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In the coming weeks, your imagination will receive visions of the next chapter of your life story. These images and stories might confuse you if you think they are illuminating the present moment. So please keep in mind that they are prophecies of what's ahead. They are premonitions and preparations for the interesting work you will be given during the second half of 2022. If you regard them as guiding clues from your eternal soul, they will nourish the inner transformations necessary for you to welcome your destiny when it arrives. Now study this inspirational quote from poet Rainer Maria Rilke: "The future glides into us, so as to remake itself within us, long before it occurs."

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): "Remember that you will never reach a higher standard than you yourself set," wrote author Ellen G. White. That's true! And that's why it's so crucial that you formulate the highest standards you can imagine—maybe even higher than you can imagine. Now is a favorable phase for you to reach higher and think bigger. I invite you to visualize the best version of the dream you are working on—the most excellent, beautiful, and inspiring form it could take. And then push on further to envision even more spectacular results. Dare to be greedy and outrageous.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Before Virgo-born Leslie Jones achieved fame as a comedian and actor, she worked day jobs at United Parcel Service and Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles. Her shot at major appreciation didn't arrive until the TV show Saturday Night Life hired her to be a regular cast member in 2014, when she was 47 years old. Here's how she describes the years before that: "Everybody was telling me to get a real job. Everybody was asking me, What are you doing? You're ruining your life. You're embarrassing your family." Luckily, Jones didn't heed the bad advice. "You can't listen to that," she says now. "You have to listen to yourself." Now I'm suggesting that you embrace the Leslie Jones approach, Virgo.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): "A person must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness." Author Jean Genet wrote that, and now I'm offering you his words as the seed of your horoscope. If you've been attuned to cosmic rhythms, you have been doing what Genet described and will continue to do it for at least another ten days. If you have not yet begun such work, please do so now. Your success during the rest of 2022 will thrive to the degree that you spend time dreaming big in the darkness now.

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PRAYERS FOR YOU

An interviewer once asked me if there's any special ritual I do before writing my weekly horoscopes.

I told her that I say a prayer in which I affirm my desire to provide you with these three services:

1. that what I create will be of practical use to you;

2. that it will help you cultivate your relationship with your inner teacher;

3. that it will inspire you to tap into and use the substantial freedom you have to create the life you want.

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

These forecasts are different in tone and format from the written horoscopes you read here in the newsletter. They're longer and more leisurely in tone. They tend to bring out more of the patient counselor in me, and have a bit less of the poet.

To listen to your Expanded Audio Horoscope online, go to To 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 online. (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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"Your Expanded Audio Horoscopes seem to have the effect of activating my inner teacher. Thanks!"

—Eleanor Axelrod, Toronto

"When I listen to your audio horoscopes, I feel like I'm tuning in to what a friend has to say about the current state of my life."

—Arnella Simpson, Seattle

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SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): "Cursed are those who feel floods but who can only express a few drops." So says an internet proverb. Luckily, this principle won't apply to you in the coming weeks. I expect you will be inundated with cascades of deep feelings, but you will also be able to articulate those feelings. So you won't be cursed at all. In fact, I suspect you will be blessed. The cascades may indeed become rowdy at times. But I expect you will flourish amidst the lush tumult.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): "It takes a great deal of experience to become natural," wrote Sagittarian author Willa Cather. I'm happy to report that in recent months, you Sagittarians have been becoming more and more natural. You have sought experiences that enhance your authenticity and spontaneity. Keep up the good work! The coming weeks should bring influences and adventures that will dramatically deepen your capacity to be untamed, soulful, and intensely yourself.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): "I intend to live forever," proclaims 66-year-old comedian Steven Wright, who then adds, "So far, so good." I offer you his cheerful outlook in the hope that it might inspire you to dream and scheme about your own longevity. Now is a great time to fantasize about what you would love to accomplish if you are provided with 90 or more years of life to create yourself. In other words, I'm asking you to expand your imagination about your long-term goals. Have fun envisioning skills you'd like to develop and qualities you hope to ripen if you are given all the time you would like to have. (PS: Thinking like this could magically enhance your life expectancy.)

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): "Stop insisting on clearing your head," advised author Charles Bukowski. "Clear your f---ing heart instead." That will be a superb meditation for you to experiment with in the coming weeks. Please understand that I hope you will also clear your head. That's a worthy goal. But your prime aim should be to clear your heart. What would that mean? Purge all apologies and shame from your longings. Cleanse your tenderness of energy that's inclined to withhold or resist. Free your receptivity to be innocent and curious.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): "The winner will be the one who knows how to pick the right fights," wrote author Jane Ciabattari. Heed her advice, please, Pisces. You will soon be offered chances to deal with several interesting struggles that are worthy of your beautiful intelligence. At least one will technically be a "conflict," but even that will also be a fruitful opportunity. If you hope to derive the greatest potential benefit, you must be selective about which ones you choose to engage. I recommend you give your focus to no more than two.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): "Choose the least important day in your life," wrote Aries author Thornton Wilder. "It will be important enough." I recommend that you make those your words to live by in the next two weeks. Why? Because I suspect there will be no tremendously exciting experiences coming your way. The daily rhythm is likely to be routine and modest. You may even be tempted to feel a bit bored. And yet, if you dare to move your attention just below the surface of life, you will tune into subtle glories that are percolating. You will become aware of quietly wondrous developments unfolding just out of sight and behind the scenes. Be alert for them. They will provide fertile clues about the sweet victories that will be available in the months ahead.

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Homework: Is there somewhere in your life where you try to exert too much control—and should loosen your grip? 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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Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter

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