This from one of my favorite sites..........
http://www.freewillastrology.com/




Changing the Way We Change

Dear Readers,
I love our relationship. You feel like my extended family. And if you know the importance that family often holds for people born under the sign of Cancer, like me, you're aware of how evocative it is for me to make a statement like that.

A substantial minority of you aren't Americans, and so have had only a marginal interest in the electoral spectacle that we Americans were enthralled by for so long. I hope that my writing about the Obama-versus-McCain showdown (and its parallel theme, the Uranus-versus-Saturn showdown) has yielded some useful fodder for your personal evolution, even if you haven't been riveted by the specific details of the unfolding drama.

Among the American part of my readership, there have been a few outcries and uproars about my involvement with the political process. Those of you who are McCain supporters or Nader devotees haven't been happy with my tilt toward Obama. Other readers don't think I should sully myself with any kind of political meditations, but should remain above it all. One of the most interesting emails I got about this issue is here.I've welcomed your dissidence and complaints, as I do any time my writing piques your desire to speak out.

One of my favorite tasks is to inspire you to liberate your imagination. To do that well, you have to be eternally primed to question the ideas and motivations of any so-called authority, expert, leader, or teacher -- including me.And besides that, I love the fact that my extended family is a diverse group of wildly different characters. I certainly don't want to hang around exclusively with people who are like me.+With all that as a preface, I'll go ahead and express my joy in Obama's ascendancy:BRAVO! VIVA! HALLELUJAH! EUREKA! ABRACADABRA!

More than a vindication of a particular ideology or political agenda, his selection by a majority of American voters (ratified by an even vaster majority of the world's citizens) is a triumph of emotional intelligence, integrity, reasonableness, compassion, and the higher powers of human consciousness.
It is a profound sign that Americans are growing up. Obama invites us to be motivated not by fear and hatred but by the "better angels of our nature," in Abraham Lincoln's phrase.What's especially thrilling to me is that Obama's spirituality is the soulful, thoughtful kind. His humble, rational relationship with the divine mysteries suggests that fundamentalists, whether they're the religious right or the new atheists, will no longer be able to frame the mainstream debate about spiritual matters.

Here is a good essay about the issue.I think the rise of Obama also vividly demonstrates an important point about pronoia. Many of us have been convinced that we've been living through the New Dark Ages; we've been entranced by the belief that the world is in terrible trouble and we're all on the brink of disaster. Even those of us who don't swallow that cynical meme have had to acknowledge that some crazy bad stuff has been happening.But the way I see it, the election of a smart, spiritual black man who is a good listener with a flexible mind is not some impossible miracle, not some inexplicable escape from certain doom.
The truth is that many of us have been preparing the way for this outbreak of pronoia for years. Obama's emergence as a prime leader is a natural evolution of the work we've all been doing behind the scenes and outside of the media's spotlight -- both on ourselves and on our local institutions.As Sam Smith has written: "Obama is not a catalyst of change, but rather its beneficiary."

Here are two essays that capture some of the essence of other important themes in Obama's victory:"Obama is the first postmodern president""Very smart people are thinking and talking in serious conversations from which narrow ideologues have been rigorously excluded,"
Now I want to mention two big caveats about this monumental shift in the collective destiny of America.First, Obama and his team have a lot of work to do. That's why I endorse many of the points listed on these two websites:
The first 100 days: What Obama can do to address the cratering economy, broken healthcare system, two wars, poverty and inequality, and the stained US reputation in the world. and here:
Fix This, Barack
Second we Americans have a lot of work to do. The resuscitation of our country will have to be accomplished primarily by we-the-people, and as much on the local level as in the federal realm. This won't just be a matter of political organization. It will also require us to be continually at work on ourselves, purging the parts of us that resonate in harmony with the dying world and feeding the parts of ourselves that are capable of creating a paradise-on-earth.Here's a quote from my book:As much as we might be dismayed at the actions of our political leaders, pronoia says that toppling any particular junta, clique, or elite is irrelevant unless we overthrow the sour, crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality" -- including the part of that hallucination we foster in ourselves. We can't change the world unless we change ourselves.The revolution begins at home. If you overthrow yourself again and again, you might earn the right to help overthrow the rest of us.Here's a quote from Carl Jung:"The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others."Finally, a quote from Tom Robbins: "Political activism is seductive because it seems to offer the possibility that one can improve society, make things better, without going through the personal ordeal of rearranging one's perceptions and transforming one's self."++++++++++++++++++++++++++++