Something wonderful is going to happen to you!

This is a perfect moment.

It's a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you and I are waking up from our sleepwalking, thumb-sucking, dumb-clucking collusion with the masters of delusion and destruction.

Thanks to them, from whom the painful blessings flow, we are waking up.

Their wars and tortures,
their crimes against nature,
extinctions of species
and brand new diseases.

Their spying and lying
in the name of the father,
sterilizing seeds and
trademarking water.

Molestations of God,
celebrations of shame,
stealing our dreams and
changing our names.

Their cunning commercials
and blood-sucking hustles,
their endless rehearsals
for the end of the world.

Thanks to them, from whom the painful blessings flow, we are waking up.

Their painful blessings are cracking open more and more gashes in the shrunken and crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality." And through the fractures, ripe eternity is flooding in; news of the soul's true home is pouring in; our allies from the other side of the veil are swarming in, inspiring us to become smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier.

We are waking up.

As heaven and earth come together, as the dreamtime and daytime merge, we register the shockingly exhilarating fact that we are in charge -- you and I are in charge -- of creating a brand new world. Not in some distant time or faraway place, but right here and right now.

If you do not bring the genius within you, it will destroy you. But if you do bring forth the genius within you, it will free you.

As we stand on this brink, as we dance on this verge, we cannot let the ruling fools of the dying world sustain their curses. We have to rise up and fight their insane logic; defy, resist, and prevent their tragic magic; erupt with our sacred rage and supercharge it.

But overthrowing the living dead is not enough. Protesting the well-dressed monsters is not enough. We can't afford to be consumed with our anger; can't be obsessed and possessed by their danger.

Our mysterious bodies crave delight and fertility. Our ancient imaginations demand fresh tastes of infinity.

In the new world we're creating, we need lusty compassion and ecstatic duty, ingenious love and insurrectionary beauty. radical curiosity and reverent pranks, voracious listening and ferocious thanks.

I believe reality is a marvelous joke that is staged for my edification and amusement, and everyone is working very hard to make me happy.

In the New World we're creating,
We will ridicule the cult of doom and gloom.
We will embrace the cause of zoom and boom.
We will laugh at the stupidity of evil and hate;
we'll summon the brilliance to praise and create.
No matter how upside-down it all may appear,
we will have no fear
because we know this big secret:

Pronoia is real. All of creation is conspiring to shower us with blessings. Life is crazily in love with us--brazenly and innocently in love with us. The universe always gives us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it.

Earth is crammed with heaven.

The winds and the tides are on our side, forever and ever, amen. The fire and the rain are scheming to steal our impossible pain. The sun and the moon and the stars remember our real names, and our ancestors pray for us while we're dreaming.

We have guardian angels and thousands of teachers
provocateurs with designs to unleash us
helpers and saviors we can't even imagine
brothers and sisters who want us to blossom

Thanks to them, from whom the blissful blessings flow, we are waking up.

The roads they pave us
the places they save us
the tomatoes they grow us
the rivers they flow us

Their mysterious stories
and morning glories
Their loaves and fishes
granting our wishes

The songs they sing us
The gifts they bring us
the secrets they show us
above and below us

Thanks to them, from whom the blissful blessings flow, we are waking up.

We are free
We are free
We are free

+

"This Is a Perfect Moment" is from the soundtrack for my book "Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings," which is available here:
http://bit.ly/Pronoia
http://bit.ly/PronoiaPowells

+

Credits:
Composer and producer: Rob Brezsny
Lead vocals: Rob Brezsny
Additional Vocals: Jessica Rice
Guitars: Josh Brill
Production assistance: Josh Brill

This Is a Perfect Moment

Your imagination is the single most important asset you possess. It's your power to create mental pictures of things that don't exist yet and that you want to bring into being. It's the magic wand you use to shape your future.

And so in your own way, you are a prophet. You generate countless predictions every day. Your imagination is the source, tirelessly churning out images of what you will be doing later.

The featured prophecy of the moment may be as simple as a psychic impression of yourself eating a fudge brownie at lunch or as monumental as a daydream of some year building your dream home by a lake or sea.

Your imagination is a treasure when it spins out scenarios that are aligned with your deepest desires. In fact, it's an indispensable tool in creating the life you want; it's what you use to form images of the conditions you'd like to inhabit and the objects you hope to wield. Nothing manifests on this planet unless it first exists as a mental picture.

But for most of us, the imagination is as much a curse as a blessing. We're often just as likely to use it to conjure up premonitions that are at odds with our conscious values. That's the result of having absorbed toxic programming from the media and from our parents at an early age and from other influential people in our past.

Fearful fantasies regularly pop up into our awareness, many disguising themselves as rational thoughts and genuine intuitions. Those fearful fantasies may hijack our psychic energy, directing it to exhaust itself in dead-end meditations.

Every time we entertain a vision of being rejected or hurt or frustrated, every time we rouse and dwell on a memory of a painful experience, we're blasting ourselves with a hex.

Meanwhile, ill-suited longings are also lurking in our unconscious mind, impelling us to want things that aren't good for us and that we don't really need. Anytime we surrender to the allure of these false and trivial and counterproductive desires, our imagination is practicing a form of black magic.

This is the unsavory aspect of the imagination that the Zen Buddhists deride as the "monkey mind." It's the part of our mental apparatus that endlessly spins out pictures that zip around with the energy of an agitated animal. If we can stop locating our sense of self in the relentless surge of the monkey mind's slapdash chatter, we can be fully attuned to the life that's right in front of us. Only then are we able to want what we actually have.

But whether our imagination is in service to our noble desires or in the thrall of compulsive fears and inappropriate yearnings, there is one constant: The prophecies of our imagination tend to be accurate. 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 all-too-often reflected back to us as events that confirm our expectations.
Does that mean our mental projections create the future? Let's consider that possibility. What if it's at least partially true that what we expect will happen does tend to materialize?

Here's the logical conclusion: It's downright stupid and self-destructive to keep infecting our imaginations with pictures of loss and failure, doom and gloom, fear and loathing. The far more sensible approach is to expect blessings.

That's one reason why I'm reverent in composing my messages for you. 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.

+

"You Are a Prophet" is from the soundtrack for my book "Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings," which is available here:
http://bit.ly/Pronoia
http://bit.ly/PronoiaPowells


You Are a Prophet


1

All I ask of you:
Be my slow-motion dance.
Be my birthday earthquake.
Be my spiral marble staircase
in the middle of a Vermont meadow.
Be my handstand on a barstool,
my whirlwind week in clown school,
my joke shared with a Siberian shaman
while shopping for T-shirts at Sears.
Be my last because.


2

All I ask of you:
Be my puzzle with one piece missing.
Be my ripe pomegranate
floating in a blue plastic swimming pool
on the first day of winter.
Be the imaginary conversations
I have with Thomas Jefferson
while watching the news on TV.
Be the waves crashing on my beach
in the south of France in the 22nd century
and the song
that my great-grandmother wrote for my great-granddaughter.
Be my golden hammer resting on a mossy rock
I've known for 10,000 years.

+

"All I Ask of You" is from the soundtrack for my book "Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings," which is available here:
http://bit.ly/Pronoia
http://bit.ly/PronoiaPowells 



All I Ask of You

Need help in purging your negative conditioning?

Mass Hypnosis Party

Bravo 
Viva 
Aloha
Blessed be
We are free
Abracadabra


This is a perfect moment. It’s a perfect moment because I have been inspired to say a gigantic prayer. I have been roused to unleash a divinely greedy, apocalyptically healing prayer for each and every one of us -- even those of us who don’t believe in the power of prayer.

And so I'm starting to pray right now to the God of Gods . . . to the God beyond all Gods . . . to the Girlfriend of God . . . the Teacher of God . . . the Goddess who invented God.

DEAR GODDESS, you who always answer our very best questions, even if we ignore you:

Please be here with us right now. Come inside us with your sly slippery slaphappy mojo. Invade us with your silky succulent salty sweet haha. 

Hear with our ears, Goddess. Breathe with our lungs. See through our eyes.


DEAR GODDESS, you who never kill but only change:

I pray that my exuberant, suave, and accidental words will move you to shower ferocious blessings down on everyone who hears this prayer.

I pray that you will give us what we don’t even know we need—not just the boons we think we want but everything we’ve always been afraid to even imagine or ask for.


DEAR GODDESS, you wealthy anarchist burning heaven to the ground:

Use your brash magic to help us see that we are completely different from what we have been led to believe and more exciting than we can possibly imagine.

Help us to become disciplined enough to go crazy in the name of creation, not destruction.

Teach us to know the difference between oppressive self-control and liberating self-control.

Awaken in us the power to do the half-right thing when it is impossible to do the totally right thing.

And arouse the Wild Woman within us -- even if we’re men.


O GODDESS, you who give us so much love and pain mixed together that our morality is always on the verge of collapsing:

I beg you to cast a boisterous love spell that will nullify all the bad ideas and dumb decisions that have cursed all of us wise and sexy virtuosos.

Remove, banish, annihilate, and laugh into oblivion any jinx that clings to us, no matter how long we have suffered from it, and even if we are addicted to its ugly companionship.

Conjure an aura of protection around us so we get an early warning if we're ever at risk of bringing another curse into our lives in the future.


DEAR GODDESS, you universal virus with no opinion

Give us bigger, better, more original sins and wilder, wetter, more interesting problems.

Help us learn the difference between stupid suffering and smart suffering

Provoke us to give away all the things we own that encourage us to believe we are better than anyone else.

Brainwash us with your compassion so that we never love our own freedom more than anyone else's freedom.

Make it illegal, immoral, irrelevant, unpatriotic, and totally tasteless for us to be in love with anyone who is no good for us.


DEAR GODDESS, you psychedelic mushroom cloud at the center of all our brains

Give us license to bend or even break all rules, laws, and traditions that alienate us from the riotously tender, hauntingly reassuring, orgiastically sacred feeling of your presence in our soft warm animal bodies.

Show us how to purge the wishy-washy wishes that distract us from our daring, dramatic, divine desires.

And teach us that we can have anything we want 
if we will just ask for it in an unselfish way


DEAR GODDESS, you riotously tender, hauntingly reassuring, orgiastically sacred feeling that is even now flowing through all of our soft warm animal bodies.

Help us to be just like you -- extravagantly disciplined, shockingly friendly, fanatically balanced, paradoxically truthful, and ferociously tender

Amen 
om 
hallelujah
Shalom 
Namaste 
more power to you

Bravo 
Viva 
Aloha
Blessed be
We are free
Abracadabra


+

The lyrics for "Prayer for Us" are drawn from page 178 of my book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184/ref=ed_oe_p">PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia</a>. 

+

Composer, producer, vocals: Rob Brezsny
Sung vocals: <a href="http://jessicarice.net/">Jessica Rice</a>
Guitar, bass, production assistance: <a href="http://www.joshbrill.com/">Josh Brill</a>

Prayer for Us

Ommmm Shanty Town
Welcome to the K-Mart Tribal Ballet
It all started in a small town in South Africa called Johannesburg
And quickly spread through the first world,
Third World, fourth dimension
and seventh heaven
Forever and ever Amen

My body is bread in a holy war
Change Change Change Change
My body is love in a holy store
Your body is God and I want some more now
Your body is money and I'm spending it now

Kick your own ass Now Now
Kick your sweet ass Now

No pride No fear No shame
Your body never lies
No guilt No sin No blame
Your body never lies
No grudge No spite No greed
Your body never lies
No gloom No doom No doubt
Your body never lies

The K-Mart Tribal Ballet all started
when I was only 10 years old
and I was in a K-Mart
in Johannesburg, South Africa
This was not a dream
This was completely real
I was in the only K-Mart
in Johannesburg, South Africa
and I could not find my mother
And the blue light was flashing
And my head was spinning
And I could hardly breathe
And everywhere I turned
there were white white white people
and sickly sweet smells
And the white white white saleslady
was in my face snarling
Can I help you Can I help you
Can I help you Can I help you
And I was out of luck
But just when I thought
that I could not go on
I looked up into the blue light flashing
And I saw a vision
of the Wild Black Virgin of Johannesburg
And she looked down at me and said
HONEY, KICK YOUR OWN ASS

+

This tune and others available via the album 
<a href="http://bit.ly/GiveTooMuch">GIVE TOO MUCH</a>

<a href="http://bit.ly/WorldEntertainmentWar">More info here</a>

(from the soundtrack of the book <a href="http://bit.ly/Televisionary">The Televisionary Oracle</a>)

Kick Your Own Ass

There are 8 million stories
about sex and violence
and I've heard them all
In this naked city if it sells a million
then it must be true

It's time for celebration
Got to make a demonstration of our rights
And it's time to fight
We want some better stories
No boring glories No more easy lies

Transmission is my ambition
Like a real magician Not a politician
Transmission ambition magician conspiracy
Conspiracy for unity

If we started at opposite ends of the dial
and slowly turned
Would we meet in the middle of a story
that burned the book of love?

The rebels joined the system
They revel in the twisted song of pain
The pain that has no name
We've got some better stories
No boring glories No easy lies

They have ways to make us watch
They have ways to make us talk
They have ways to make us disappear
We have ways to look away
We have ways to disobey
We have ways to make them hear the music

There are 8 million stories
about sex and freedom
And I want them all
In this naked country if we sell a million
Then we will be true

We have ways to celebrate
We have ways to agitate
We have ways to make them hear the music

+

This tune and others available via the album 
<a href="http://bit.ly/GiveTooMuch">GIVE TOO MUCH</a>
<a href="http://bit.ly/WorldEntertainmentWar">More info here</a>

(from the soundtrack of the book
<a href="http://bit.ly/Televisionary">The Televisionary Oracle</a>)

We Have Ways

The world is young, your soul is free, 
and you are finally ready
to fall in love again and again
every day and every way.
So please feel free to fall in love
with this perfect moment
and this perfect place
with these perfect feelings
and all these perfect faces.

	I love you
	I love me
	I love you and me together

	I love us 
	I love them
	I love us and them together

All of creation is alive and conscious, and all of creation deserves our burning, churning, yearning love. All of it. Not just the people and creatures and things that we personally find beautiful and helpful and interesting. But everything. All of creation.

If we want to become the gorgeous geniuses we were born to be, if we want to give back as many blessings as we are given, we've got to be in love with every single part of the Goddess's extravagant masterpiece.

And so we can't possibly be mere heterosexuals. We can't possibly be mere homosexuals or bisexuals. 

If we want to commune with the world the way the Goddess does, we've got to be Pantheosexuals -- we've got to be experts in the art of Polymorphous Perverse Omnidirectional Goddess Diddling. Anything less is a lie, an obscene limitation.

With this in mind, I invite you to perform the ritual of the World Kiss. To do the World Kiss, conjure up your most expansive feeling of tenderness -- like what you might experience when you're infatuated with a new lover or when you gaze into the eyes of your new-born baby for the first time -- and then blow kisses to all of creation. 

Blow kisses to the oak trees and sparrows and elephants and weeds. Blow kisses to the wind and rain and rocks and machines. Blow kisses to the gardens and jails, the cars and the toys. the politicians and saints, to the girls and the boys and every gender in between.

And with each World Kiss you bestow, keep uppermost in your emotions a mood of irreverent adoration and horny compassion. And remember that it's not enough simply to perform the outer gesture; you've got to have a heart-on in each of your seven chakras.

	I love you
	I love me
	I love you and me together

	I love us 
	I love them
	I love us and them together

Rilke said that
"for one human being to love another
is the most difficult task.
It's the work for which all other work is mere preparation."

Teillard de Chardin said:
"Some day after we have mastered the winds, the waves and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for a second time in the history of the world, humans will have discovered fire."

Leo Tolstoy said:
"Everything I understand, I understand only because I love."

Pascal said:
"If you do not love too much, you do not love enough."

Emily Dickinson said:
"Until you have loved, you cannot become yourself."

You and I say:
Because we love
Ruby-throated hummingbirds sip from plum flowers
and the moon sings its silver fragrance
to the swans and volcanoes and fields of wheat

Because we love
Wild grapevines coil around the roots of the mountain
and mangoes ripen in the smoke of forest fires

Because we love
Everything alive swims in an eternal river 
that flows through our dreams all night long

	I love you
	I love me
	I love you and me together

	I love us 
	I love them
	I love us and them together

I'm blowing World Kisses to you right now, and to everyone you love and to everyone you hate. I'm blowing World Kisses to all the convenience store clerks in the world. I'm blowing world kisses to the Norwegian widower working on an oil rig off the coast of Nigeria and to the weaver playing cards with her nine-year-old granddaughter in a bus station in San Salvador. 

I'm blowing World Kisses to all the ravens in Ontario, and to the tornado rolling along the eastern coast of the Black Sea, and to the 15-year-old tractor rusting in a junkyard in Montevideo, Uruguay. 

I'm blowing World Kisses to the woman who broke my heart, and to the friend who betrayed my trust, and to the rich old white male politicians in Washington who hate everything I stand for.

I'm not afraid of running out of love. The more love I give, the more love I have to give.

On you and me and all of everything, I bestow my ripest blessings, and hereby declare that since my atoms and your atoms were ripped asunder at the Big Bang, I have fantasized of our rapturous reunion.

World Kiss is brought to you by the ecstatic state of mind that the poet Daniel Ladinsky enjoyed when he said,
	"One regret, dear world, 
	that I am determined not to have
	when I am lying on my death bed 
	is that I did not kiss you enough!"

	I love you
	I love me
	I love you and me together

	I love us 
	I love them
	I love us and them together
	
+

Credits:
Composer and producer: Rob Brezsny
Lead vocals: Rob Brezsny
Additional Vocals: <a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~cedarsongs/">Nina Lakshmi</a>
Production assistance: <a href="http://www.joshbrill.com/">Josh Brill</a>

+

"World Kiss" is from the soundtrack for my book, 
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184/ref=ed_oe_p">PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia</a>.

World Kiss

You taste delicious
Animals understand you
Your importance is unusual

The funny faces you make are interesting to look at
You fight for power in all the right ways

Ecstatic gratitude is pouring out of you
I see the best in you
Your divine attitude

You have strong feet and a pioneer heart

No one can overflow as well as you can

You are famous with God
You are famous with me
You are famous with the snakes and birds
and roses and pines
and oceans and earth and sky

A lost tribe salutes you from the other side of the veil

You remind me of a star

+

This song is from the soundtrack for my book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184/ref=ed_oe_p">PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia</a>.

+

Credits for Version 1:
Composer and producer: Rob Brezsny
Lead vocals: <a href="http://www.myspace.com/adrienneshamszad">Adrienne Shamszad</a> (And <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Adrienne-Shamszad/286801170720?ref=ts">here's Adrienne's Facebook fan page</a>)
Backing vocals: <a href="http://jessicarice.net/">Jessica Rice</a>
Guitar, bass, production assistance: <a href="http://www.joshbrill.com/">Josh Brill</a>

You Taste Delicious, version 1

You taste delicious
Animals understand you
Your importance is unusual

The funny faces you make are interesting to look at
You fight for power in all the right ways

Ecstatic gratitude is pouring out of you
I see the best in you
Your divine attitude

You have strong feet and a pioneer heart

No one can overflow as well as you can

You are famous with God
You are famous with me
You are famous with the snakes and birds
and roses and pines
and oceans and earth and sky

A lost tribe salutes you from the other side of the veil

You remind me of a star

+

This song is from the soundtrack for my book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184/ref=ed_oe_p">PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia</a>.

+


Credits for Version 2:
Composer, producer, and lead vocal: Rob Brezsny
Backing vocals: <a href="http://jessicarice.net/">Jessica Rice</a>
Guitar, bass, production assistance: <a href="http://www.joshbrill.com/">Josh Brill</a>

You Taste Delicious, version 2

excerpted from <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184/ref=ed_oe_p">PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia</A>

More and more creative people find they do their best work when they're feeling healthy and secure. We know writers who no longer need to be drunk or in agony in order to shed the numbness of their daily routine and tap into the full powers of their imagination. We have filmmaker friends whose best work flows not from the depths of alienated self-doubt but rather from the heights of well-earned bliss. Singer-songwriter P.J. Harvey is the patron saint of this new breed. "When I'm contented, I'm more open to receiving a lot of inspiration," she has testified. "I'm most creative when I feel safe and happy."

At the Beauty and Truth Lab, we've retired the archetype of the tormented genius. We have zero attraction to books and movies and songs by depressed jerks whose work is celebrated but whose lives are a mess. Stories about supposedly interesting creeps don't rouse our perverse fascination because we've broken our addiction to perverse fascination. When hearing about illustrious creators who brag that they feel most stimulated when they're angry or miserable, we unleash the Official Beauty and Truth Lab Histrionic Yawn.

*

Sadly, many storytellers and artists are still addicted to the old delusions about the risks of good mental health. Even those who don't view peace of mind as a threat to their creative power often believe that it's a rare commodity attainable only through dumb luck. "One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness," said novelist Willa Cather. "One only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere."

There is another obstacle to overthrowing the status quo. Oppressively nice, indiscriminately optimistic, sentimental comfort-hoarders give happiness a bad name. They seem to justify Flaubert's mean-spirited observation that "To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost."

Here's a third blotch on the reputation of happiness: that it's mostly an absence of pain. In The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche frames the issue well: "Would you prefer the happiness of scratching a mosquito bite over the happiness of not having a mosquito bite in the first place?"

*

It's possible to define a more supple variety of happiness that does not paralyze the will or sap ambition. For the first clue about how to proceed, we turn to Buddhist researchers Rick Foster and Greg Hicks.

In their book How We Choose to Be Happy: The 9 Choices of Extremely Happy People, they reveal that the number one trait of happy people is a serious determination to be happy. Bliss is a habit you can cultivate, in other words, not an accident that you stumble upon by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere.

For another clue about how to conjure up a kind of happiness that does not anesthetize the soul, we call on Kenneth Koch. Here's what he wrote about Nobel Prize-winning poet Saint-John Perse: "So many poets have the courage to look into the abyss. But Perse had the courage to look into happiness."

Gazing into the Abyss

Although we are all born geniuses, the grind of day-to-day living tends to de-genius us. That's the bad news. The good news is that you have the power to re-genius yourself.

I'm going to give you a ritual you can use to jump-start the process.


The Greek philosopher Plato long ago recognized that in addition to eating, drinking, sleeping, breathing, and loving, every creature has an instinctual need to periodically leap up into the air for no other reason than because it feels so good.

 Please face south, leap up in the air, and say these words: "From the south, I purify, electrify, beautify, and fructify this sacred space."

+

When I was a kid I used to love to go out in the middle of a meadow and whirl around in spirals until I got so dizzy I fell down. As I lay on the ground, the earth and sky and sun kept reeling madly, and I was no longer just a pinpoint of awareness lodged inside my body, but rather I was an ecstatically undulating swirl in the kaleidoscopic web of life. I invite you to feel that way right now.

 Spin yourself around until you topple over. And while lying on the ground, face west and say these words: "From the west, I sanctify, unify, clarify, and intensify this sacred space."

+

The people I trust the most are those who are always tenderly wrestling and negotiating with their own shadows, making preemptive strikes on their personal share of the world's evil, fighting the good fight to keep from spewing their darkness on those around them. I aspire to be like that, which is why I regularly kick my own ass. Will you try that right now wherever you are?

 Jump off the ground and snap your heels up against your butt. Then face north and say these words: "From the north, I immunize, psychoanalyze, satirize, and exorcise this sacred space."

+

In one sense each of us is an intriguing, intricately unique individual, justifiably proud of and in love with our own personal story. In another sense, we are all one body, descended from the same primordial mother and made of identical stuff -- the calcium in all of our bones and the iron in all of our blood originally forged in a red giant star that died billions of years ago.

 Rotating slowly in a clockwise direction, look down at your belly as you imagine that at this moment, everyone in the world is breathing along with you. Then face east and say this: "From the east, I lubricate, pollinate, consecrate, and emancipate this sacred space."


Now it's time to confess the truth about who you really are.

 Gaze upward and stretch your arms out high. Say the following: "I am a genius."

 And say this: "I am a lucky, plucky genius."

 And say this: "I am a lucky, plucky, good-sucking genius."


Thank you for finally confessing the truth. It's about time you admitted that you are a miraculous work of art.

You came into this world as a radiant bundle of exuberant riddles. You slipped into this dimension as a shimmering burst of spiral hallelujahs. You blasted into this realm as a lush explosion of ecstatic gratitude. And it is your birthright to fulfill those promises.

I'm not pandering to your egotism by telling you these things. When I say, "Be yourself," I don't mean you should be the self that wants to win every game and use up every resource and stand alone at the end of time on top of a Mt. Everest-sized pile of pretty garbage.

When I say, "Be yourself," I mean the self that says "Thank you!" to the wild irises and the windy rain and the people who grow your food.

When I say, "Be yourself," I mean the rebel creator who's longing to make the whole universe your home and sanctuary.

When I say, "Be yourself," I mean the dissident bodhisattva who's joyfully struggling to germinate the seeds of divine love that are packed inside every moment.

When I say, "Be yourself," I mean the spiritual freedom fighter who's scrambling and finagling and conspiring to relieve your fellow messiahs from their suffering and shower them with rowdy blessings.


Now let's move on to the next stage of your confession.

 Squat. While patting and massaging the ground or floor in front of you, say this: "I am insane."

 And say this: "I am an insane hurricane."

 And say this: "I am a highly trained, entertainingly insane hurricane."


Thank you for finally confessing the truth, which is that you are constitutionally incapable of adapting nicely to the sour and crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality." You are too amazingly, blazingly insane for that.

You are too crazy smart to lust after the stupidest secrets of the game of life. You're too seriously delirious to wander sobbing through the sterile, perfumed labyrinth looking in vain for the most ultra-perfect mirror. Thank the Goddess that you are a fiercely tender throb of sublimely berserk abracadabra.

You will never get crammed in a neat little niche in the middle of the road at the end of a nightmare.

You refuse to allow your soul's bones to get ground down into dust and used to fertilize the killing fields that proudly dot the ice cream empire of monumentally demeaning luxuries.

You're too brilliantly cracked for that.

You're too ingeniously whacked.

You're too ineffably godsmacked.


 Now stand up and make a series of small jumps, rotating a quarter turn in a clockwise direction with each jump. And as you do, say this: "I am a lucky, plucky, good-sucking genius and a highly trained, entertainingly insane hurricane."

+

This is a piece from the soundtrack for my book, 
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184/ref=ed_oe_p">PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia</a>.

Re-GeniusYourself

In the land where nothing's sacred
Where the doctors make people sick
If you stand on your head
you might see things more clearly
But then again you might become
addicted to conflict

I...I have a problem
I know that lawyers cause all the crime
And the banks make the drugs flow
The priests make the porno
And you might be responsible
for poisoning the sunshine

Names have been changed
to protect the guilty
Names have been changed
What is the difference
between apathy and ignorance
I don't know and I don't care

In the land where nothing is free
Where the homeless are the brave
Where the females are equal
as long as they're macho
And all the shopping malls
are built on Indian graves

You have the right to remain silent
You have the right to refuse to vote
Can you tell me the difference
between the two parties
Believe it or not Believe it or else
Hope leads to dope

What is the difference
between apathy and ignorance
I don't know and I don't care

I agree with everybody
Football is sex and soup is good food
And new cars are religion
and beer is emotion
And everyone's a nobody
and nobody's perfect 

+

This tune and others available via the album 
<a href="http://bit.ly/GiveTooMuch">GIVE TOO MUCH</a>
<a href="http://bit.ly/WorldEntertainmentWar">More info here</a>

(from the soundtrack of the book
<a href="http://bit.ly/Televisionary">The Televisionary Oracle</a>)

Apathy and Ignorance

Don't kill your television yet
Have another cigarette
in your imagination
Tiger tiger burning bright
Take back the airwaves of the night
in your imagination
The world is young Your soul is free
Don't be afraid of the TV
in your imagination
Making love with holograms
Swallowing a million grams
of your imagination

Television television
Televisionary television

Activate your love spells
Synchronize and reverse your hells
Agitate your alligator brains
Rip into the heart of the pain
In your televisionary dreams
Your imagination's always free
To turn the spirit of the television inside out
This is what it is all about

Love song for my little terrorist
The way you look at me
is like a deathly kiss
Every time I see myself in you
I remember why I created you
Relax Be brave
Take back the airwaves

Television is the light of our lives
Television is the light and the law
and the love of our lives

Love song for my little monster child
You look just like me
You've got my eyes and smile
Like flying saucers or Jesus Christ
You bring out the best in me
You make me pay the price
Relax Be brave
Take back the airwaves

Television is the light of our lives
Television is the light and the law
and the love of our lives
Television is the light of our lives
And we will heal it of all of its lies 

+

This tune and others available via the album 
<a href="http://bit.ly/GiveTooMuch">GIVE TOO MUCH</a>
<a href="http://bit.ly/WorldEntertainmentWar">More info here</a>

(from the soundtrack of the book
<a href="http://bit.ly/Televisionary">The Televisionary Oracle</a>)

Televisionary

I greet the god 
within your id
Nothing matters now 
and so what if it did
Break loose 
Get wild 
Be wrong that's right
Uncomplicate your life if just for one night

That was rock but this is roll
This is shock but that was soul

You don't have to control yourself

Do you have to control yourself
(I don't have to control myself)

This is the place This is the time
Time to lose control
and start changing your mind
This is a clue This is a sign
Mine could be yours and yours could be mine

This is then but that was now
This is then but that will be now 

+

This tune and others available via the album 
<a href="http://bit.ly/GiveTooMuch">GIVE TOO MUCH</a>
<a href="http://bit.ly/WorldEntertainmentWar">More info here</a>

(from the soundtrack of the book
<a href="http://bit.ly/Televisionary">The Televisionary Oracle</a>)

You Don't Have to Control Yourself

Welcome to the Beauty and Truth Lab.

We're coming to you live from your repressed memories of paradise, reminding you that you can have anything you want if you will just ask for it in an unselfish way.

Welcome to the end of your nightmares, beauty and truth fans!

The world is young, your soul is free, and a naked celebrity is dying to talk to you about your most intimate secrets right now.

Just kidding.

In fact, the world is young, your soul is free, and at any moment you will feel a flood of ecstatic compassion for salamanders, oak trees, clouds, toasters, convenience store clerks, and even the ocean itself.

I'm your host.

My name is the Sacred Janitor at the Edge of Time, and I'm proud to announce that this is a perfect moment.

It's a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you are on the verge of finally figuring out exactly what it is you really want more than anything else.

Bravo! Viva! Whoopee! Oooo Eureka! Hallelujah! Abracadabra!
Bravo! Viva! Whoopee! Oooo Eureka! Hallelujah! Abracadabra!

The Beauty and Truth Lab's experiments are brought to you by the pine trees whose seeds are so tightly compacted within their protective covering that only the intense heat of a forest fire can free them and allow them to sprout.

+

"Beauty and Truth Lab" is from the soundtrack for my book 
"Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings," which is available here:
http://bit.ly/Pronoia
http://bit.ly/PronoiaPowells



Beauty & Truth Lab

"Unhappy Hour" is from the soundtrack for my book 
"Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings," which is available here:
http://bit.ly/Pronoia
http://bit.ly/PronoiaPowells

Here are the lyrics: 

You're invited to celebrate Unhappy Hour. It's a ceremony that gives you a poetic license to rant and whine and howl and bitch about everything that hurts you and makes you feel bad.

During this perverse grace period, there's no need for you to be inhibited as you unleash your tortured squalls. You don't have to tone down the extremity of your desolate clamors. Unhappy Hour is a ritually consecrated excursion devoted to the full disclosure of your primal clash and jangle.

Here's the catch: It's brief. It's concise. It's crisp. You dive into your darkness for no more than 60 minutes, then climb back out, free and clear. It's called Unhappy Hour, not Unhappy Day or Unhappy Week or Unhappy Year.

Do you have the cheeky temerity to drench yourself in your paroxysmal alienation from life? Unhappy Hour invites you to plunge in and surrender. It dares you to scurry and squirm all the way down to the bottom of your pain, break through the bottom of your pain, and fall down flailing in the soggy, searing abyss, yelping and cringing and wallowing.

That's where you let your pain tell you every story it has to tell you. You let your pain teach you every lesson it has to teach you.
But then it's over. The ritual ordeal is complete. And your pain has to take a vacation until the next Unhappy Hour, which isn't until next week sometime, or maybe next month.

You see the way the game works? Between this Unhappy Hour and the next one, your pain has to shut up. It's not allowed to creep and seep all over everything, staining the flow of your daily life. It doesn't have free reign to infect you whenever it's itching for more power.

Your pain gets its succinct blast of glory, its resplendent climax, but leaves you alone the rest of the time.

If performed regularly, Unhappy Hour serves as an exorcism that empties you of psychic toxins, while at the same time -- miracle of miracles -- it helps you squeeze every last drop of blessed catharsis out of those psychic toxins.
Pronoia will then be able to flourish as you luxuriate more frequently in rosy moods and broad-minded visions. You'll develop a knack for cultivating smart joy and cagey optimism as your normal states of mind.

+

Now let's get you warmed up for Unhappy Hour.

First, let me hear you groan.
Second, let me hear you howl.
Third, let me hear you sigh.

Now say or sing these declarations:
Life is a bitch and everything stinks.
My pain is so bad I can hardly think.
I'm afraid to live, I'm afraid to die.
The world's so messed up, I can't even cry.

OK. You're almost ready. When I say GO, you will have as much freedom as you want to dredge up and steep yourself in your savage sorrow, your unspeakable doubt, your shrill anguish, your secret shame, and your fearful fantasies.

Give yourself permission to make guttural moans, rueful cackles, or animalistic growls and squawks. Argue with God or your parents or the past while blurting out manic, explosive wails. Allow yourself to be crushed and dissolved, flung around and flayed, appalled and unhinged.

And while you're at it, use the clean white space on these pages to scrawl down curses, scratch out narratives, or scribble symbolic drawings incited by your misery.

Later, make photocopies of these curses, narratives, and drawings, and conduct a ceremony of purification, burning them to ash, being careful not to set your house or the woods or yourself on fire, too.

As you burn, pray that you will extract all of the mojo you possibly can from the pain, and that the pain will make you smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier.

Pray that you will grow to feel gratitude for the pain, thereby turning the pain into a blessing and diminishing its power to hurt you.

Ready? Get set. GO. Be unhappy -- but for no longer than 60 minutes.

+

Sacred Advertisement

Unhappy Hour is brought to you by the origin myth of the Iroquois' Thunderbird Clan: Earthmaker woke up to realize he was the only being in the universe. Out of the depths of his loneliness, he cried, unleashing a flood of tears that became the oceans and rivers and lakes of our world.

Unhappy Hour

Life is a vast and intricate conspiracy that's guaranteed to keep you well supplied with blessings.

What kind of blessings? Ten million dollars, a gorgeous physique, a perfect marriage, a luxurious home, and high status?

Maybe. But it's just as likely that the blessings will be interesting surprises, dizzying adventures, gifts you hardly know what to do with, and conundrums that dare you to get smarter.

Novelist William Vollman referred to these types of blessings when he said that "the most important and enjoyable thing in life is grappling with a complicated, tricky problem that you don't know how to solve."

Sculptor Henry Moore had a similar idea. He said, "The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is -- it must be something you cannot possibly do."

So in other words, pronoia does not guarantee that you will forevermore be free of all difficult experiences.

It doesn't ask you to pretend that everything is sweet and harmonious all the time.

On the contrary, when you embody the spirit of pronoia, you build your optimism by loving your challenges, not repressing them.

You know that your problems are gifts from the Goddess that are designed to make you smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier.

You welcome each fresh puzzle as a potential source of your future bliss, as an exciting teaching that will usher you to your next breakthrough.

Now here's a spell to commit pronoia. I invite you to say it with me.

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;

Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within me;

Opening to my loss and pain and ignorance,
I remember who I am and what I'm here for.

Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.

Each condition I flee from pursues me,
Each condition I welcome transforms me

and becomes itself transformed
into the blessing it always was.

+

"Shadow Blessings" is from the soundtrack for my book 
"Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings," which is available here:
http://bit.ly/Pronoia
http://bit.ly/PronoiaPowells


Shadow Blessings

Thousands of things go right for you every day, beginning the moment you wake up. Through some magic you don't fully understand, you're still breathing and your heart is beating, even though you've been unconscious for many hours. The air is a mix of gases that's just right for your body's needs, as it was before you fell asleep.

You can see! Light of many colors floods into your eyes, registered by nerves that took God or evolution or some process millions of years to perfect. 

The interesting gift of these vivid hues is furthermore made possible by an unimaginably immense globe of fire, the sun, which continually detonates nuclear explosions in order to convert its own body into light and heat and energy for your personal use.

Your hands work wonderfully well. Your heart circulates your blood all the way out to replenish the energy of the muscles and nerves in your fingers and palms and wrists. And after your blood has delivered its blessings, it finds its way back to your heart to be refreshed. This wondrous mystery recurs over and over again without stopping every minute of your life.

You can smell intoxicating aromas. You can hear provocative and soothing sounds. You can taste a thousand different tastes. How is any of this possible? You can think thoughts any time you want -- big, wide, colorful thoughts or tiny dark burrowing thoughts. You can revel and wallow in great oceans of emotion. What colossal secret intelligence or improbable series of fabulous accidents conspired to bestow these superpowers upon you? 

Language is another stupendous marvel. Millions of souls have cooperated intricately for untold centuries to cultivate a system of communication that you understand very well. Your ability to speak and read and write makes you feel strong and dynamic. It connects you with the world. It allows you to indulge in one of your greatest pleasures, which is to hear and tell stories.

Maybe this is the best gift of all: You have a staggeringly potent creative tool: your imagination. You use it to create mental pictures of things that don't exist yet and that you want to bring into being. Your imagination is the engine of your destiny, the catalyst with which you design your future. 

Or maybe this is the best gift of all: You know that you are you. You are exultantly and extravagantly aware that you are alive and conscious and awake and unique. You have a million different feelings and fantasies about what it means to be you.

Do you remember when you were born? It was a difficult miracle that involved many people who worked very hard on your behalf. No less amazing is the fact that you have continued to grow ever since then, with new cells being born within you all the time to replace the old cells that are dying. 

At this very moment, there are 50 trillion cells in your body, and each of them is really a sentient being in its own right. They all act together as a community, blessing you with their astonishing collaboration. It's just like magic.

Everywhere you look: glory

Every step you take: glory

Every breath you take: glory glory

Soaring roaring uproarious glory 
is our story

This succulent burst of glory has been brought to you by the imaginary lightning bolts you can shoot out the ends of your fingers any time you want to.


+

"Glory in the Highest" uses material from a much longer piece called "Glory in the Highest" in the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184/ref=ed_oe_p">PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia</a>. The longer piece can be found online in three parts: 

<a href="http://bit.ly/GloryPart1">Part 1</a>
<a href="http://bit.ly/GloryPart2">Part 2</a>
<a href="http://bit.ly/GloryPart3">Part 3</a>

Glory in the Highest

I wanted to let you know that this is a perfect time for you to learn more about the difference between your fearful fantasies and your authentic, accurate intuitions. 

It's always a good time to do that, of course, but even more so right now. This is an exciting turning point, when the future is up for grabs. Worn-out old habits of thought are unraveling. Structures that have kept us enthralled to fake values are crumbling. The coming months and years will be ripe with opportunities for us to lay the foundation for a new world that's actually fit for the human soul.

And in the midst of this grand mutation, it's predictable that so many so-called leaders are trying to fill up our imaginations with scary visions and angry emotions. They want us to buy into their visions that the sky is falling.

In the face of their toxic paranoia, it's wise to remember that we always have the power to turn away from their fear-mongering and tune in to the guidance of the still, small voice within us -- the still, small voice of intuition that will, if we allow it, lead us very capably through every twist and turn of our destiny, even when our destiny brings us right into the thick of our civilization's massive transformations.

+

Knowing the difference between your fearful fantasies and your authentic, accurate intuitions is one of the greatest spiritual powers you can possible have. So let's explore what it means: knowing the difference between the frightening, alienating pictures that sometimes pop into your imagination, as opposed the simple, warm, clear direction that is always available from the deepest source within you. 

Strangely enough, many people get these two things confused. They are especially prone to believing that the frightening, disempowering images that erupt in their mind's eye are coming from their intuition. 

For many people, if they get an image of a scary future possibility popping into their imagination, they worry that it's a prediction of some event that will actually occur in their lives. For instance, they may have a fantasy of themselves getting into an accident, or maybe they dream of losing a loved one, or maybe they internalize the toxic vision of some talking head on TV who slaps them upside the head with a prediction of imminent doom. When these people get images like these stuck in their imagination, they may begin to obsess on the fear that these things are literally going to happen.

Almost every time, scary fantasies like this are not true intuition. Our true intuition is just not very likely to be fueled by fear, and it rarely if ever motivates us to act by making us feel afraid. 
	
No. Our true intuition emerges from the wise, loving core of our being. It blooms in us like a slow-motion fountain of warmth. It reveals the objective truth about a person or situation with lucid compassion. It shows us the big picture.
	
Fearful fantasies, on the other hand, burn and itch and make us feel like we're coming apart. They drain our energy and cloud our judgment. They fill us with obsessive urges to run and hide or do something desperate and melodramatic.
	
I don't want to say that true intuition is always calm and emotionally neutral. It isn't, necessarily. But I will say this: The emotions that accompany true intuition are never alienating. They don't make us feel superior to other people or fill us with hatred and terror. They don't disempower us or make us feel helpless.

True intuition may rouse our anger, but if so, it is the kind of invigorating anger that leads to clarity and constructive action, and thus it is an anger that ultimately relaxes us. 

True intuition may show us a difficult truth, but it always does so with a suggestion of how to deal gracefully and courageously with that difficult truth. True intuition may reveal imminent changes that could compel us to adjust our behavior, but it always does so in a way that empowers us.

Let me emphasize this point: True intuition may not always reveal that everything will be fine, or that we will be able to continue to live in the ways be have been living -- true intuition is certainly not falsely optimistic -- but if it does alert us to circumstances that are in flux, and how we will have to transform ourselves, it does so with love and poise and clarity, not with fear.

Here's one more thing, *. Just as our true intuition never works by scaring the hell out of us, neither does it flatter us with grandiose suggestions about how superior we are. In fact, it may often gently inform us of some correction that should be made in our attitude. It may tactfully but firmly lead us to the understanding that we have been suffering from some form of ignorance and that we need to wake up and get smarter.
	
True intuition reveals the story of our lives from our soul's point of view, not our ego's. In my understanding, true intuition is the voice of our own personal inner teacher, which just happens to be the divine part of us. The certainty that true intuition provides us is therefore not loud and puffed up, but rather humble and graceful.

+

This is a perfect moment to think on these things, and to add some insights of your own. It's also an excellent time to flush away the fearful fantasies that may have seeped into your imagination -- and thereby make it possible for you to hear your true intuition better.

One way to facilitate this process, by the way, is to cut way back on the amount of terrifying and disorienting images you allow to flow into your imagination from the TV, Internet, newspapers, movies, and other mass media. In fact, I invite you to consider the possibility of going on a media fast for a while and spending more time in nature than you usually do.

In conclusion, my beloved companions on this beautiful, interesting planet, please get to work on seeing your fearful fantasies for what they are and enhancing your connection to your true intuition.

+

"Fear Versus Intuition" is from the soundtrack for my book 
"Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings," which is available here:
http://bit.ly/Pronoia
http://bit.ly/PronoiaPowells


Fear Vs. Intuition

This is a piece from the soundtrack for my book, 
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184/ref=ed_oe_p">PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia</a>.

Some religious traditions teach the doctrine, "Kill off your longings." In their view, attachment to desire is at the root of human suffering. But the religion of materialism takes the opposite tack, asserting that the meaning of life is to be found in indulging desires. Its creed is, "Feed your cravings like a French foie gras farmer cramming eight pounds of maize down a goose's gullet every day."

At the Beauty and Truth Lab, we walk a middle path. We believe there are both degrading desires that enslave you and sacred desires that liberate you.

+

Psychologist Carl Jung believed that all desires have a sacred origin, no matter how odd they may seem. Frustration and ignorance may contort them into distorted caricatures, but it is always possible to locate the divine source from which they arose. In describing one of his addictive patients, Jung said: "His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst for wholeness, or as expressed in medieval language: the union with God."

+

Psychotherapist James Hillman echoes the theme: "Psychology regards all symptoms to be expressing the right thing in the wrong way." A preoccupation with porn or romance novels, for instance, may come to dominate a passionate person whose quest for love has degenerated into an obsession with images of love. "Follow the lead of your symptoms," Hillman suggests, "for there's usually a myth in the mess, and a mess is an expression of soul."

+

In Maldoror and Poems, the French poet Lautreamont wrote about holy yearning disguised as mournful complaint. "Whenever you hear the dogs' howling in the fields," his mother told him as a child, "don't deride what they do: They thirst insatiably for the infinite, like you, me, and the rest of us humans. I even allow you to stand at the window and gaze upon this exalted spectacle."

+

"The primordial fire that sparked millions of galaxies is the same fire that sparks the human creative impulse." - Cindy Spring, "The Non-Profit Universe," EarthLight, Summer 2002. "The human reproductive drive is a watered-down version of the godsex that spawned our solar system." - "Lieutenant" Anfortas, the homeless guy in the Safeway parking lot

+

"Feelings that originate in the human genitalia are among the most powerful forces on earth. They have a complex relationship with the feelings that stem from the human heart: at various times in competition or in harmony. Together these primal energies have forged and toppled empires; unleashed terrible and wonderful ideas; and generated the greatest stories ever told. Our goal is to harness our sexual urges in service to the heart's wisdom." - Sheila Samizdat, "Ritual Foreplay for a New History," Underground Pronoia

+

"Mad! One must become mad with love in order to realize God. When a person attains ecstatic love of God, all the pores of the skin, even the roots of the hair, become like so many sex organs, and in every pore the aspirant enjoys the happiness of communion with the Supreme Universal Self." -Ramakrishna

+

Like all of us, you have desires for things that you don't really need and aren't good for you. But you shouldn't disparage yourself for having them, nor should you conclude that every desire is tainted. Rather, think of your misguided longings as the bumbling, amateur expressions of a faculty that will one day be far more expert. They're how you practice as you work toward the goal of becoming a master of desire. It may take a while, but eventually you will get the hang of wanting things that are really good for you, and good for everyone else, too.

+

"The only way anyone is ever cured of desiring nonsensical things is by getting the nonsensical things and then experiencing the unpleasant but educational consequences." -Ann Davies, <a href="http://www.bota.org/">BOTA.org</a>

+

"To become a master of desire, keep talking yourself out of being attached to trivial goals and keep talking yourself into being thrilled about the precious few goals that are really important. Here's another way to say it: Wean yourself from ego-driven desires and pour your libido into a longing for beauty, truth, goodness, justice, integrity, creativity, love, and an intimate relationship with the Wild Divine." -Raye Sangfreud, "Black Market Orchids," Underground Pronoia

+

"God has desires. Since I want to be close to God and to model myself after God, I therefore don't aspire to extinguish my desires, but rather to make my desires more God-like: i.e., imbued with an inexorable ambition to create the greatest and most interesting blessings for everyone and everything." - Collin Klamper

+

"'Heterosexual,' 'bisexual,' 'lesbian,' and 'gender queer' are not terms I use to describe myself. They're too limiting, like every other name and role I've had the pleasure of escaping. In a pinch, I might agree to call myself ocean-fucker or sky-sucker or earth-bonker. As much as I love men and women, they can't satisfy the full extent of my yearning. I need intimate relations with clouds and eagles and sea anemones and mountains and spirits of the dead and kitchen appliances and the creatures in my dreams. To be continued. To be enhanced and amplified and enlarged upon, world without end, amen. One day I really do hope to be a wise enough lover to be able to fuck the ocean. To give a forest fire a blow job. To make a pride of lions come just by looking at them." -Jumbler Javalina, "Bite into the Mysteries," Underground Pronoia

+

"When I hold you, I hold everything: crones praying in the foamy sand at low tide, a shocked waterfall gracing a new housing development, the drunk fetus in the womb of a saint, the foxglove by the fence sipping the fragrance of distant blue straggler stars, my dream of the white crow dreaming of me. In your eyes I see everything that lives." - mash-up of Pablo Neruda and Rob Brezsny

+

Imagine it's 30 years from now. You're looking back at the history of your relationship with desire. There was a certain watershed moment when you clearly saw that some of your desires were mediocre, inferior, and wasteful, while others were pure, righteous, and invigorating. Beginning then, you made it a life goal to purge the former and cultivate the latter. Thereafter, you occasionally wandered down dead ends trying to gratify yearnings that weren't worthy of you, but usually you wielded your passions with discrimination, dedicating them to serve the highest and most interesting good.

What if Your Desires Are Holy

Breathe sweetly and deeply. As you inhale, remember that the calcium in your bones and the iron in your blood were originally created at the core of a red giant star that died billions of years ago.

As you exhale, allow your perfect animal body to gentle explode with luminous gratitude. Feel streams of orgiastic compassion flowing out of your wild heart in spiral hallelujahs . . .

This is a piece from the soundtrack for my book, 
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184/ref=ed_oe_p">PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia</a>.

Moon Lodge

I have a dream that you will conspire with me to unleash outbreaks of freedom everywhere we go. 

I have a dream that we will live without fear, emancipated from the bad ideas that tyrannize and terrorize our curious minds.


This is a story about love and glory
Everybody's thinking it now
Break the law 
Break the law
This is the mystery 
about the end of history
Imagine paradise
Break the law
Break the law
Break the law
Break the law
Break the law


I have a dream that one day we will love the questions more than the answers, and we will swear our vows to delight, not to dogma. 

The dark places will be laboratories for experiments in liberation, and the sacred places will be playgrounds where we learn to love the way everything changes all the time.


Escape the matrix
with your crazy love tricks
Come smashing through the veil
Break the trance 
Break the law

Be the strong heart
Play the wild card
Sing your freedom song
Break the law 
Break the law
Break break break break the law
Break the law


I have a dream that paradox will be a shining sign of glory, and we will thrive on brain-scrambling riddles that drive us into the frontiers of shrewd and skillful joy. 

And we will be free at last, free at last, inflamed by a longing for everyone everywhere to be free at last.

Break break break
the law

Break break break
break break break
the law

Break the law

Unless the law is love

obey the law of love

obey the law of love 

Break the law
Break the law
Break break break break the law
Break the law

Break the law
Break the law
Break break break break the law
Break the law

Break the law
Break the law
Break break break break the law
Break the law

Break the law
Break the law
Break break break break the law
Break the law

+

This is a piece from the soundtrack for my book, 
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184/ref=ed_oe_p">PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia</a>.

Break the Law, Part 2

"The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words," said Terence McKenna, "and that if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish."

Here's my version of that hypothesis: What world you end up living in depends at least in part on your use of language.

Do you want to move and breathe amidst infertile chaos where nothing makes sense and no one really loves anyone? Then speak with unconscious carelessness, expressing yourself lazily. Constantly materialize and entertain angry thoughts in the privacy of your own imagination, beaming silent curses out into eternity.

Or would you prefer to live in a realm that's rich with fluid epiphanies and intriguing coincidences and mysterious harmonies? Then be discerning and inventive in how you speak, primed to name the unexpected codes that are always being born right in front of your eyes. Turn your imagination into an ebullient laboratory where the somethings you create out of nothings are tinctured with the secret light you see in your dreams of invisible fire.

P.S. "The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words," wrote Philip K. Dick in his essay, "How to Build A Universe That Won't Fall Apart in Two Days."


This is a piece from the soundtrack for my book, 
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184/ref=ed_oe_p">PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia</a>.

MagicSecret

Come on everybody,
don't put your hands together    
I said, don't put your hands together  
Don't you people do what you're told?
Good! That's what I like to hear 
So come on everybody  
Don't put your hands together some more

Now that you're in an insurrectionary mood
I'd like to enlist your troublemaking help
as we change the meanings
of some rotten old worn-out obscenities
That's right, beauty and truth fans 
The best cure for censorship 
is the same as the best cure for lazy thinking
Which is to change the meaning of the dangerous words.

So for instance if we say "you asshole"
What we will really mean from now on is 
"my beautiful friend" 

And when we say "goddamn you," 
We actually mean 
"love and joy to you"  

And if we say "go fuck yourself," 
What we really mean from now on is
"May you be blessed with stupendous bliss" 
"May you be blessed with stupendous bliss"

So let's try it out. Are you ready?

You asshole, goddamn you, go fuck yourself
You asshole, goddamn you, go fuck yourself 

What we REALLY mean by that is this:

My beautiful friend  
Love and joy to you
May you be blessed with stupendous bliss

My beautiful friend  
Love and joy to you
May you be blessed with stupendous bliss

OK. Let's do it again, and really air it out this time.  

You asshole, goddamn you, go fuck yourself  

What we REALLY mean by that is this:

My beautiful friend  
Love and joy to you
May you be blessed with stupendous bliss

You asshole, goddamn you, go fuck yourself

What we REALLY mean by that is this:

My beautiful friend   
Love and joy to you
May you be blessed with stupendous bliss

My beautiful friend   
Love and joy to you
May you be blessed with stupendous bliss

My beautiful friend  
Love and joy to you
May you be blessed with stupendous bliss

+

Rob Brezsny: Vocals, lyrics, some programming
Yehoshua Brill (http://joshbrill.com/): Bass, some programming



Don't Put Your Hands Together

I dropped out of kindergarten
to explore eternal youth
I talked back to Mr. Science
to defend eternal truth
I saw angels on the playground
They taught me to kiss the sky
I unlocked all nature's secrets
Cross my heart, I'll never die

I bailed out of Daddy's airplane
Fell to earth like angel dust
I broke into Caesar's Palace
looking for eternal lust
Every time I found a goddess
we had sex by accident
No one ever tried to stop me
when I fired the government

I don't need no paradise
Living here is twice as nice
I don't need no enemy
Free of fake emergencies

I lucked into symbiosis
Worked my voodoo to the bone
Everything I love surrounds me
Never never am alone
I broke into kindergarten
to destroy the evidence
I danced backwards on the tombstones
to restore my innocence


I don't need no paradise
Living here is twice as nice
I don't need no therapy
Free of freedom
Free of me

I totally l-l-l-lost my pattern
I totally l-l-l-lost my pattern
I totally l-l-l-lost my pattern

+

Tunes like this are available via the album 
<a href="http://bit.ly/GiveTooMuch">GIVE TOO MUCH</a>
<a href="http://bit.ly/WorldEntertainmentWar">More info here</a>

(from the soundtrack of the book
<a href="http://bit.ly/Televisionary">The Televisionary Oracle</a>)

I Dropped Out of Kindergarten

Oh god who never kills but only changes:
What is the difference between right and wrong?

Oh obvious god, father of the stagnant water and mother of the funny words I thought of while I was there:
All the things I believe in are wrong, and I know it, and yet I still have as much power as people who hate.

Oh god of the names that are changed to protect the guilty:
I'm not myself
So then who am I
I want as much emotion as women
I want to be disciplined enough to go crazy in the name of creation not destruction.

Oh god of ointment and bullets and glamour and poop and lipstick and skeletons:
I confess.
I confess that I hate myself for loving everything so much no matter how stupid or worn-out or sick it is.

Oh dearest darling god:
I confess that I have learned to worship the lies you love the best.

Oh god you eater of cruelty:
I confess that I am not like you.
I am you.
I confess that I always eat the heart first and throw the rest away.

Oh god you pregnant criminal who scorns all my mediocre desires:
I have confessed everything.
I'm living without ulterior motives.
I have renounced all my opinions.
I have shut up until I had something to say.
So reward me now.
Reward me now.

Oh god of howling, god of skulking, god of pouncing,
god of biting:
Give me what I want
exactly when I want it
forever now once upon a time

Oh god who gives me so much love and pain mixed together that my morality collapses:
Make sure that I never know whether I am really a good person or really a bad person.

Oh god of everybody loves everyone for all the wrong reasons,
Oh god of everyone lies all the time:
Please teach me bigger, better, more original sins.

Oh god you wealthy anarchist burning heaven to the ground:
Force me to march past your scorched faces and shattered limbs
and brainwash me with your freedom
so that I never love my own pain more than anyone else's pain.

Oh god of unnatural animals living in me like sex on other planets:
I want songs about sex and war that shock people so bad they pay me to stop suffering.

Oh god who teaches that screaming is good exercise,
Oh god of so much change I want to puke:
Give me what I want
exactly when I want it
forever now once upon a time.

+

Vocals: Rob Brezsny
Harp: Steve Coulte?

Prayers for Bigger, Better, More Original Sins

The book "PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia" is a conversation, not a dictation. It's an inquiry, not dogma. 

We're explorers in search of the ever-evolving truth, not authorities proclaiming doctrine from on high. We refuse to be salespeople intent on getting you to be like us or buy our ideas. In fact, let's look at the downsides of the perspectives we celebrate.

The first thing you should consider before leaping into a relationship with pronoia is that it is utterly at odds with conventional wisdom. The 19th-century poet John Keats said that if something is not beautiful, it is probably not true. But the vast majority of modern storytellers -- journalists, filmmakers, novelists, talk-show hosts, and poets -- assert the opposite: If something is not ugly, it is probably not true.

In a world that equates pessimism with acumen and regards stories about things falling apart as having the highest entertainment value, pronoia is deviant. It is a taboo so taboo that it's not even recognized as a taboo.

The average American child sees 20,000 simulated murders before reaching age 18. This is considered normal. There are thousands of films, television shows, and electronic games that depict people doing terrible things to each other. If you read newspapers and news sites on the Internet, you have every right to believe that Bad Nasty Things compose 90 percent of the human experience. The authors of thousands of books published this year will hope to lure you in through the glamour of killing, addiction, self-hatred, sexual pathology, shame, betrayal, extortion, robbery, cancer, arson, and torture.

But you will be hard-pressed to find more than a few novels, films, news stories, and TV shows that dare to depict life as a gift whose purpose is to enrich the human soul.

If you cultivate an affinity for pronoia, people you respect may wonder if you have lost your way. You might appear to them as naive, eccentric, unrealistic, misguided, or even stupid. Your reputation could suffer and your social status could decline.

But that may be relatively easy to deal with compared to your struggle to create a new relationship with yourself. For starters, you will have to acknowledge that what you previously considered a strong-willed faculty -- the ability to discern the weakness in everything -- might actually be a mark of cowardice and laziness. Far from being evidence of your power and uniqueness, your drive to produce hard-edged opinions stoked by hostility is likely a sign that you've been brainwashed by the pedestrian influences of pop nihilism.

Before the onset of pronoia, you may feel fine about the fact that you generate much of your dynamic energy through anger, agitation, discomfort, and judgmental scorn. But once the pronoia kicks in, you'll naturally want more positive feelings to be your high-octane fuel. That will require extensive retraining. The work could be arduous, delicate, and time-consuming.

Are you truly ready to shed the values and self-images that keep you locked into alignment with the dying civilization? Will you have the stamina and inspiration necessary to dream up bigger, better, more original sins and wilder, wetter, more interesting problems? Do you realize how demanding it will be to turn yourself into a wildly disciplined, radically curious, fiercely tender, ironically sincere, ingeniously loving, aggressively sensitive, blasphemously reverent, lustfully compassionate master of rowdy bliss?

+

Try saying this aloud: "I die daily." It's one of our favorite formulas for success. Is it right for you? Say it again, using a different tone of voice this time. "I die daily." Chant it in a fake foreign accent. Sing it to the tune of the nursery rhyme "Frere Jacques." Play with it in the voice of the cartoon character you loved best as a child. Repeat it 10 times, or try other vocal experiments. Then muse on the following questions.

What do you need to kill off in yourself in order to tune in to the beauty that's hidden from you? What worn-out shticks are blinding you to the blessings that life is conspiring to give you? Which of your acerbic theories may have been useful and even brilliant in the past but are now keeping you from becoming aware of the ever-fresh creation that unfolds before you?

"I die daily" means that it's not enough to terminate your stale mental habits just once. The price of admission into pronoia is a commitment to continual dying. You'll have to ask yourself rude questions and kick your own ass again and again. Today's versions of beauty, truth, love, goodness, justice, and liberation will pass away. To keep abreast of the latest developments -- to cultivate tomorrow's versions of pronoia -- you will have to immerse yourself regularly in the waters of chaos. Your relationship with pronoia will have to be a never-ending improvisation.

The dream of a steady-state utopia is anathema to Beauty and Truth Lab researchers. We're allergic to any paradise that resembles a spotless shopping mall within the walls of a gated community in heaven.

+

Pronoia is fueled by a drive to cultivate happiness and a determination to practice an aggressive form of gratitude that systematically identifies the things that are working well. But it is not a soothing diversion meant for timid Pollyannas strung out on optimistic delusions. It's not a feel-good New Age fantasy used to deny the harsh facts about existence. Those of us who perceive the world pronoiacally refuse to be polite shills for sentimental hopefulness.

On the contrary, we build our optimism not through a repression of difficulty, but rather a vigorous engagement with it. We understand that the best way to attract blessings is to grapple with the knottiest enigmas.

Each fresh puzzle is a potential source of future bliss -- an exciting teaching that may usher us to our next breakthrough.

Do you want to be a pronoiac player? Blend anarchistic rebelliousness with open-hearted exuberance. Root your insurrectionary fervor in expansive joy instead of withering hatred. Enjoy saying "no!" but don't make it the wellspring of your vitality. Be fueled by blood-red yeses that rip against the grain of comfortable ugliness. 

+

"A Spell to Commit Pronoia," by psychotherapist Jennifer Welwood:

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,
I am given unimaginable gifts;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.

Each condition I flee from pursues me.
Each condition I welcome transforms me
And becomes itself transformed
Into its radiant jewel-like essence.

I bow to the one who has made it so,
Who has crafted this Master Game;
To play it is pure delight,
To honor it is true devotion.

+

This is a piece from the soundtrack for my book, 
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184/ref=ed_oe_p">PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia</a>.

Pronoia Is a Dangerous Taboo

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is composed of stories, not of atoms. The physicist Werner Heisenberg declared that the universe is made of music, not of matter.

And we believe that if you habitually expose yourself to toxic stories and music, you could wind up living in the wrong universe, where it's impossible to become the gorgeous genius you were born to be.

That's why we implore you to nourish yourself with delicious, nutritious tales and tunes that inspire you to exercise your willpower for your highest good.


Universe Is Made of Stories

Your lucky number is 3.14159

Your magic talisman is a thousand-year-old Joshua tree whose flowers blossom just one night each year and can only be pollinated by the yucca moth

Your special time of the day is the moment just before the mist evaporates

You have fire in your blood and sea salt in your tears

Your vision of power is the red-tailed hawk soaring over the shopping mall

The colors of your soul are ivory vermilion, sable, and jade

Your soil of destiny is peat moss

The legendary deed that most resembles the method in your madness is the story of the hero who tames the monster without touching it

You have a secret name that will be revealed to you very soon

Your sweet spot is between the true believers and the scoffing skeptics

Your holiest pain comes from your ability to sense other people's cracked notions about you

Your magic verbs are dig, descend, and disclose

The garage sale item you most resemble is an old but beautiful and sonorous accordion with a broken key

Your mythic symbol is a treasure chest dislodged from its hiding place in the earth by a flood

+

This is a piece from the soundtrack for my book, 
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184/ref=ed_oe_p">PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia</a>.

LuckyNumber

If you enjoy listening to my free music, I invite you to make a contribution to support my work.

Visit my Gift Page — https://paypal.me/GiftsForRob — and contribute via the "Friends and Family" option.

No pressure, though! Whether or not you donate, I will continue to give away my music. And 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.

SacredUproar

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