Planet Waves | Eric Francis
Copyright ©1999 Planet Waves Digital Media, all rights reserved.
Butterfly Mandala by Mikio, ©1999 Mikio New York, all rights reserved.
Eric -- You are familiar with Terence McKenna's theories of exponentially increasing randomness? The gist being the collective information we need to process in this age of our world, has reached critical mass and is currently bankrupting the legacy machinery we call the cerebral cortex. <> Therefore, "Joe Shmoe" in order to reinvent some order of sane functionality, is going to have to adopt a non-linear means of reality assimilation previously needed only by mystics, oracles and madmen. Where does this place you oracular types, who have always held the edge of the circle? Maybe you need to take an even more reckless, but poetic step away from linearity to see the forest for the trees. <> I dunno.... This shit is coming down way to fast for me to keep score anyhow. -- Mikio
ARIES (March 21-April 19)
The idea of "inevitability" does not mean that an outcome is dictated or guaranteed, but rather that an irreversible sequence of events is likely to unfold. In the inevitable process known as your life, you may find yourself confronted with concepts and experiences propelling you forward, but which far exceed your present capacity or willingness to surrender to the next stage of your evolution. Yet isn't it true that there's so much you want to change, particularly in that deep, subtle and strange space inside you where relationships are experienced? Are there not so many stifling fears holding back blasts of energy you would just love to release into more creative activities? If it feels like you're being provoked from the outside to do this (such as by a lover or partner) I propose that you investigate to what extent you are the one provoking yourself through some secret process or exchange within the relationship, and whether you consciously brought this person into your life for exactly this divine purpose. Of course you did. It's really about you. And it's fun to share.TAURUS (April 20-May 20)
The question is, are you going to wait until circumstance dictates your path, or are you going to register reality in your consciousness and begin making those necessary choices you've been dodging and dancing around? You don't have much time to choose between those paths. And while, in the end, these courses of events may end up being one and the same, delay will deprive you of the crucial experience of consciously facing your fears and acting in a way for which you can take credit, and thus claim the personal triumph of overcoming old, dull, and indeed, now ridiculous inner limitations without having to mention that someone else kicked your ass, but it was good for you. Thus, having decided for yourself alone, when the next (and rapidly approaching) stage kicks in like rocket engines, you will get to travel that much further, and that much faster, along a magnificent course of events you alone have chosen, and know it well.GEMINI (May 21-June 20)
Belief has the power to make what is false seem utterly real, or to flatly deny the most profound wisdom or obvious perception. Belief is a dangerous but necessary process, for while we must believe in something, what we believe in will seem to have god-like power in our lives. Whether beliefs are false or true, reality stands untouched, though our experience is distinctly affected. Given the current stellar setup, I am here to propose that for the coming five or so weeks, you avoid thinking in abstraction. Every lofty concept has its measurable, tangible counterpart in earthy reality, and it's on this relatively simple aspect of life upon which your awareness now needs to be focused. Beware of dead religion, and note the extent to which such rigor-mortified ideas have a way of blocking much that is fresh and real in our world. As for the truth, I will say but this: It's alive within you. Let it grow.CANCER (June 21-July 22)
These days are likely to arrive with a sense of being taken into yourself, or far beyond yourself, with the veils of time, space and matter falling away to reveal a different world than the one you lived in even yesterday. Though this process is now passing like a wave through all of humanity, this is a strange and awesome moment in the lives of Cancerians, and the vortex in which you stand can lead you anywhere, and I mean this very directly. If you are not feeling this, please consider whether you are consciously trying to block the process by hiding in a room of your mind. There is no point, really, and while it is clear that 'security' is a major theme of your life, I propose you consider carefully what really brings you a sense of safety and belonging, and what merely reinforces fear. The more outwardly you now live, the more awareness will flood you, and, I propose, the more real and solid you will feel. As the young Allen Ginsberg wrote in his poem, "A Western Ballad," I gather directly to you: 'I never dreamed the sea so deep/ the earth so dark/ so long my sleep./ I have become another child./ I wake to see the world go wild.'LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)
Put passion first. I've said this before, and I will say it again. Not merely the love or desire for another, but the inner and inescapable fire of life smoldering, glowing, burning red and hot within you. Do you know what I am talking about? If our society with its structures and norms and death-inspiring schools and television broadcasts has spared anyone total loss of consciousness on this, it is you, so fear not that your damage is greater than anyone else's, nor that you are wounded beyond salvation. That is a lie, and lies do not change the truth; they merely conceal it. You who have lived within so many borders, with so many expectations placed upon you, and cruelly reminded that death always seems to prevail over life, cannot imagine the boundlessness that is yours. This is an idea that manifests first in the unseen worlds, but once embraced, quickly expresses as both potential and experience in your actual physical life. You really are free. Think it through. Figure it out.VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sep. 22)
You are in a rather unique position to have profound foresight into the dramatic and unusual changes that are coming, both for yourself and for the rest of us. In fact, were I to engage a psychic now, it would be from someone with a strong Virgo component in his or her natal chart. Remember that the future is never really seen in the future; it is seen in the present, and this is where your emphasis must be to make maximum use of the unusual taps into wisdom you now have available. Present moments will be emphasized by experiences of what feel like time stopping, leaving you in a state of suspended awareness; by reflections of large ideas in small details of life which you perceive; and by a sense of bringing your own light into situations which may otherwise, to other people, seem quite dark. I would add one last thing here. It's far more important to understand the future than to predict it. And at this moment, I recall from somewhere in my explorations of Chinese philosphy the idea that prescience -- the art of foreknolwedge -- is granted to people who practice sincerity above all else. Not bad advice for any month of the year. Very good right now.LIBRA (Sep. 23-Oct. 22)
I get the idea that you are struggling to change your mind about something large and overwhelming, and yet also very personal. I don't know what it is, and it could be a meta-theme that affects numerous aspects of your existence. But I can give some general lines of approach to the process. Using astrology itself as a metaphor, consider that this craft involves exploring existence through most technical analysis of data (traditionally a Virgo process) alternately with, or simultaneously with, surrendering to the most etheric influences of soul and cosmos (traditionally a Pisces process). Composing music or creating art works the same way; full expression is achieved through what is at once mystical and highly disciplined. In the coming two months, I suggest honoring art as a divine process. Listen to music as if it was a direct expression of religious wisdom; consider lyrics over and over again, as a rabbi would read the Torah; view visual art with awe and wonder and as a direct window to the universe. If you practice daily, it will help -- help, that is, to move your soul to the act of creation itself. And only this will save you.SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)
Make no assumptions now. Peg everything you believe to verifiable reality. Collect actual evidence, not wishes or scant guesses. More specifically, the depth of work you have been doing in relationship may be yielding some results, but I know you are not seeing all the necessary connections, and that you are not taking the benefits of all that you have so recently learned. Under normal circumstances, you would have a few years to mull it over, but at this particular moment in history, it's more like thirty or forty days tops, or perhaps even as many hours. Here's a clue. You are unlikely to be working with the awareness of the extent to which your mistaken beliefs and fears were intentionally given to you to 'guarantee' your existence as a non-threatening entity to the secretive and paranoid freaks involved in your upbringing. But get it clear. You are a walking engine of progress, and they could not stop it then, and cannot stop it now. Progress indeed threatens the cowering masses, but change is at hand, and you are Special Agent of Change Number One. Keep laughing, and may the Devil be damned.SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 23-Dec. 21)
Many people on spiritual paths have a little problem involving the seeming lack of a relationship between the esoteric ideals and truths they are studying, and the practical affairs of the world. It drives some seekers to new levels of cynicism, and can provide a basis of attack for critics of life to whom anything gentle is bullshit. And it can push some who practice esoteric learning to yet more spacy visions and versions of ungrounded thought. And that is a risk you cannot, at this time, hazard. Yet my sense is that this reality gap is the very space that we are working to fill thorough our study and practice. The reality gap is within us, and it's within us that we perfect the integration between a world that seems, so often, to be made of darkness and deceit, and a path of life expressed consciously and intentionally such that darkness and deceit are undone.CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)
Capricorn is considered the sign of the past, associated with history and tradition. But we forget that every time-honored tradition was at one time an innovation that was looked upon as shocking, inappropriate or an accident at the time it entered the human community. Such is your life now: a striking set of contrasts between what is old and what is new, and an ongoing exchange between what is yours, and what belongs to the other. Everything about you is subject to movement, mixture and trading, from ideas and personal values, from platic to cash, from real property back around to the very personal way you perceive your talents. This process will seem to force changes on you, yet they are likely to be vital and lasting changes you will thank the heavens for in the coming decades. Given this potential, I suggest you not be upset at what may be disguised as loss, since the over-riding theme of your solar chart at the moment is really exchange; particularly since you clearly have so much to give, and so much to gain.AQUARIUS (Jan. 19-Feb. 18)
As this month builds toward a strange and magnificent lunar eclipse in your birth sign, the veils concealing your vision will seem to fall away one by one. Lies, whether those told on CNN or by a person looking into your face, will become so transparent, you'll wonder how anyone could be so morally twisted or intellectually impoverished to concoct such idiocy, much less try to foist it on you. Yet seeing through what is false is pointless unless you look further toward what is true. Every lie has, as its specific purpose, the intent of concealing some aspect of reality, so you can be sure that when the bullshit is being laid on thin or thick, it will be well worth taking a closer look. But if I may add a little twist: the worst lies conceal not facts, but questions. And the central question obscured by these falsehoods you are now penetrating is far more important than any supposed 'answers' this world manufactures. This is within the nature of living truth, and within the nature of your present quest.PISCES (Feb. 19-Mar. 20)
The idea of a "blind spot" is a useful notion to consider in life, and in astrology (which is a little picture of life). There's quite a bit of strange activity shaping up in what traditional astrological readers would call your blind spot, but remember, as a Pisces, feeling is believing. If you find yourself in the dark, I suggest you look at all the places in your life in which you are holding back fun and pleasure, and go exploring. On the other hand, behind every drudgery will be an important gift, be it of awareness or opportunity. More change is developing than you may now realize. Yet at the moment, you are not in a position to really understand which aspects of your present life you will be carrying forward into the future, which you will be leaving behind, and what will seem to appear out of nowhere. Hence, for the time being, I suggest you not rush matters; not push matters; and consider the experience of impatience as evidence of being caught in one of those blind spots which, if explored, will reveal many important gifts.++In & Out of Time | What's new
Important Note to My Readers The Cassini Space Probe is one of those incredibly important non-stories the media loves to ignore (and hence, deny). After all, what can you really say about a phenomenal technological device that can help us expand our knowledge of the universe, while at the same time, risking all human life on Earth? On what values system could such a bargain be evaluated? In the coming weeks, though, you're likely to hear a lot more about the Cassini Space Probe, which whizzes back past the Earth at 42,000 miles per hour on August 18th, just one week after the notorious total solar eclipse. I've set up a special index on the Planet Waves homepage to help people find information about Cassini, and take appropriate action on the issue. The address is: www.PlanetWaves.net/CassiniIndex.html. Please let people know this resource is available. Thanks!
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