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Horoscopes | Week of March 31-April 6, 2014

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Okay, then, without any further ado… Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! And believe me, Aries, if I could get away with just typing 'Do it!' another one-hundred-and-nineteen times and calling that your horoscope for the week, believe me, I would. You are now officially in the 'Do it!' hot-spot of your entire year. There is no better moment to hop the fence, jump the hurdle, dash towards the cliff, and/or dive into the unknown. Will there be fallout? Probably. Will there be a certain someone who is, shall we say, less-than-enthused about whatever 'crazy' action you've chosen to take… and could well fight you on it? Wouldn't be surprised. And is there a certain 'no going back' sense to such actions, which represent the inconvenient (and liberating?!?) truth of your now-unignorable inability to bow down to structures, superiors, or straitjackets that no can longer contain your rising power? Seems that way. But though you may hold understandable concerns about bidding farewell to a version of yourself rapidly falling into the past, you really can't not keep moving. Should you try to backtrack, you'll likely get trampled by the whole platoon of marching forces also under these same energies, who also know their future now demands a radical no-looking-back attitude so they might triumph under these erratic conditions. March on, then, with one warning: You won't know exactly what sort of results your actions are getting for at least another few weeks.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Pencils down, hands up. Step away from the desk. The time for hurriedly jotting down final answers to questions which, themselves, haven't even been fully fleshed out yet has now come and gone, Taurus… and while you can carry these supposedly confidence-inspiring crib notes along with you for reference, I'm not sure they're going to do you much good. You are as prepared as you can be for what's about to happen. As I told you a couple weeks back, a lot of April's strange happenings will feel flagrantly out of your control—which, strange as this may sound, needn't be a bad thing. In fact, despite the suspenseful manner in which I just described 'what's about to happen', I don't want you to worry that upcoming events are arriving to destroy your life. They could, from another angle, be arriving perfectly on time to save your life. Who's to pin any interpretive certainty onto developments still developing? To ride out this ride as painlessly and self-protectively as possible, I suggest reminding yourself that all of this seemingly concrete 'external reality' is also a mere consciousness-projection, convincing though it may feel… the events playing out so earnestly and obviously in this hyper-dense dimension mere holographs, illusions, meant to further our spiritual evolution (or something like that)… and therefore needn't be halted, hindered, or overcompensated for. Helpful hint: Throughout the weeks ahead, your best asset is not your own active agency, but the loving and supportive company you keep.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): During these upcoming weeks, you could surprisingly discover your train-car hitched to a whole new set of companions… creating a new-and-improved dream-team of energized, enthusiastic comrades ready to zoom down this track, full-steam-ahead, to a destination you're all excitedly anticipating. Such shufflings amongst your cast of characters might at first feel strange, Gemini, as if you're abandoning certain folks who no longer serve you (not because they're 'bad people' as much as you aren't quite as 'on the same page' as you used to be) in order to follow a flock better suited to your future ambitions. Just because you may sincerely wish to keep all your people around (the old and the new), since you're perfectly able to perpetuate a wide network of disparate allies with no problem, that doesn't necessarily mean the ones being 'left behind' (since that's how they are liable to experience it) are going to be cool with your shifting priorities. Still, you've got to move where the social currents are clearly carrying you, without holding yourself back due to some sort of 'loyalty-pledge' guilt-trip certain pals are trying to lay on you. Though you may rightfully see these shifts as fruitful for your continuing evolution, there are those who'd rather suck you back into stifling patterns from yesteryear—and they could make this shakeout more unpleasant than need be, though that's still no reason to backpedal.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): No hedging, blushing, or scurrying away to a safe place on the sidelines, Cancer. This is your moment to dashingly, daringly, dynamically step up to your next level of professional achievement or public renown. The inner prep-work has already been taken as far as it can go. The colleagues have been consulted. The friends have been leant on for support. All that's left is for you to leap into the sky, knowing you'll be kept aloft by a beautiful blend of determination, moxie, and magic. Will you fly sleekly and powerfully straight to a warm welcome? Doubtful. And the first few wing-flaps are liable to be exhausting, incidentally. As you learn how not to fight the wind's-gusts in your flight patterns, there will likely be moments of flustered fluttering during which you fear you'll crash. Yet, if you keep on concentrating your all on this epic ascent, you will get some sort of life-changing result—though, please, let's just agree right now that, even in the most amazing of circumstances, the result won't look quite like you've imagined it. Who gives a fuck, though? (Please don't answer: 'I do.' You've got to be open-minded about this.) You'll most definitely reinvent your outer-world reputation, should you indeed go for what you really want, some way and another. Certain individuals' conception of who you are will change, too… to such a dramatic degree, in fact, the relationship must either deepen or decay.

LEO (July 23-August 22): It's just about time now, Leo, to pull that rip-cord… and to release into the vital currents of this great wide world your first major Declaration-of-Intent regarding your next big Life-Step. For you Leos who know exactly what precious intention in your life my words must be referring to, this news has got to feel pretty friggin' exciting. Over these weeks ahead, you're liable to encounter all sorts of responses from those around you… from enthusiastically supportive (cherish that support as a most valuable gift) to pragmatically concerned (use their concerns to help flesh out solid answers to looming questions of practical import) to deeply threatened and hostile (acknowledge the threat to their worldview that your decision to evolve in wild new directions may symbolize). Engaging with all these responses, the awesome and the disappointing, is a necessary step in the process of turning your dream into reality. (That said, might I suggest cherry-picking a couple surefire supporters with whom to kick off this process?) But for you Leos who have no damn clue what your 'next big Life-Step' might entail, let's say it's definitely your moment to start actively figuring it out. Follow this same advice—only, instead of declaring your intention and engaging with the responses you get, declare your desire to find that intention and see what everyone says.

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): The only way to really 'get this right', Virgo, is to voluntarily sign on for first making a huge unruly mess of it. It does unsettle me a bit to have to endorse mess-making in a Virgo horoscope, for you're probably the sign least fond of disarray. If your innate 'putting things in their proper place' attitude doesn't literally play out in your physical space, it almost assuredly does in how you mentally create order from logically sorting disparate fragments of information. However, if you'll let me extend the Virgo-as-neat-freak metaphor a little further, I'll explain why you'd actually want to embrace the notion of inviting in this chaos: If you wanted to thoroughly clean out a room in your home, you'd probably want to start by taking everything out of its storage compartment and strew it all across the center of the room so you can actually see what you've got (and so, meanwhile, you can scrub out all the nooks and crannies without having to navigate around the clutter). Only after you've got the fullest view of the scene—which would likely include becoming reacquainted with things you'd swept under the rug or altogether forgotten were there—can you do a comprehensive reorganization. Apply this thinking, then, to all the complications you've accumulated psychologically, financially, and/or emotionally: Got to dump them all out into one messy mass, to determine what goes where, what you're going to keep, and what needs getting rid of.

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): Wild-card interpersonal energies begin in earnest this week, Libra… though whether you're the instigator of said wildness or the one who's merely responding to someone else's wild behaviors depends on your circumstance. Of course, allow me to point out that, as the current brandisher of Mars's self-assertive potency, you probably shouldn't be waiting around for the other person to surprise you with some abrupt twist that'd likely impact your well-being beyond the mere context of the relationship itself (while you get to act all passively put-out or victimized or otherwise superior). Knowing these unruly energies are feverishly pushing for expression, a more self-suiting bet would be for you to take that person-to-person risk yourself, upsetting the expectations, scrambling the dynamics, stepping out of your standard role in order to reach for greater satisfaction. Your whole way of relating to others is, after all, under great pressure to evolve right now. In your simultaneous process of (1) claiming your bigger piece of the professional or public-world pie and (2) overthrowing any inner-demon and/or family-related voices that have kept you acquiescent or overly polite for too long, you can't help but show up differently in your primary relationships. Embody this change, rather than have it thrust upon you.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): The winning solution to those growing tensions around how to balance (1) your dynamically-shifting day-to-day responsibilities with (2) this ongoing impulse to escape responsibility altogether, at least enough to quench your present thirst for mystical and/or non-'productive' experience, is not to pull any shady shit. You can do way better than that, Scorpio, as long as you're honest and upfront about your now-urgent need to shuffle your schedule, reorder your slate of duties, and/or experiment with new health-and-wellness habits—first with yourself, and then with anyone whose blessing is required in order for you to carry out such changes. These conversations could prove awkward or intense, due to the fact that you may be asking for 'special treatment'. Don't shy away from that fact: You are special. And in exchange for being granted certain freedoms in how your organize your workload and/or your day, you of course must be willing to muster extra-special results to demonstrate how much more smartly and contentedly you'll be able to work when you're working with your own unique rhythms. Your other choice? Permitting your continuing resistance to 'playing by the rules' to build up to a breaking-point… one which actually causes harm to your capacity to oversee these responsibilities you've been charged with and/or to safeguard your own bodily well-being.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): Everything you most love about yourself, the weird and the wild, the playfully provocative and the contagiously hopeful… put these self-delighting goodies on display center-stage, Sagittarius. That'll invite the kindred goodies which others possess to naturally gravitate toward you, according to the universal law of Like Attracts Like. You're hitting one of those jarring 'life is too short' moments (though, if we're being honest, this is just an accumulation of previously forestalled impulses demanding their expression at last), and it likely feels as if you just cannot bear one more minute of pretending to be obedient, well-behaved, diplomatic, or subtle—when, in reality, you know it'd be much more fun to let those who can't stand irreverence, provocation, straightforwardness, or healthy mischief deal with their own damn uptightness. Is anybody else's rigidity really your problem? No. And certainly not if it's sapping all the joy out of your day-to-day life. The one flashing-red warning-sign I must mention, alas, isn't exactly new news: When it comes to your economic security, don't be so foolhardy in your actings-out that you bite the hand that feeds you. Considering these crazy astro-pressures bearing down on everyone, your 'innocent' button-pushing could hit the person who signs your paycheck like a 'last straw'… and that hand might suddenly stop feeding you. (Or maybe it's time to find a less precarious income-stream?)

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): So many of the puzzle pieces are now sliding into their new places, Capricorn, at least on the level of tangible outside-world circumstances and concerns. You've, in fact, already taken care of a lot of these earthly tasks and items… while another significant chunk of them remain the responsibility of other people, and don't really require your attention. The most radical piece still left sitting in your lap, waiting for you to address with some dramatic action? Your emotional freedom, my dear. You can line all your ducks up in perfect strategic precision, but until you're willing to get out of your own way and allow yourself to surge forward—knowing you can't possibly prepare enough to eliminate all variables, yet possess enough on-the-spot ingenuity (after any first-reaction shocks pass, naturally) to be okay anyway—you will remain stuck in that very same niche which was primordially assigned to you by parent-figures and/or societal-shoulds so very long ago, and which you've been struggling to escape (even while you'll simultaneously struggled to succeed at fulfilling it) for just as long. From this spot, looking ahead, you really have no choice but to crack yourself free from that confinement (and, quite likely, revolutionize certain familial relationships in the process), if you wish to respond to these erratic times without feeling like your arms are tied behind your back. Well, there is one other choice: to bear incredible pressure (and probable suffering), in a desperate attempt to 'hold it all together'.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): Take shrewd advantage of Venus's last week in your sign, Aquarius, by proactively initiating or advancing conversations where others' viewpoints could come in handy… whether by inquiring into their interests, asking for alternative angles, and/or humbly engaging with their oppositional opinions. Your job, in such exercises, is decidedly not to lead a conversation to some outcome you've determined in advance is your goal. (That type of controlled 'dialogue', if you can legitimately call it that, misses the whole point.) Instead, you must simply start the talks or, if they've already been in progress, nudge them further into unexplored territory. The more open-minded you are about (1) hearing the other person out, (2) asking follow-up questions and/or offering incomplete first-responses, and (3) seeing where the synergy between you may surprisingly carry you, the richer this experience can be for all parties involved… and especially so, when it comes to providing you further sparks of inspiration, in your larger process of re-creating your day-to-day routine so it better suits your life-principles. Venus's presence helps ensure your side of the discussion—which could otherwise feel edgy to the listener, due to your fervent urge to get more information—is received in a welcoming spirit. You, meanwhile, must beware of strange suspicions or panics creeping into your consciousness when encountering feedback you didn't expect. Remember: Such feedback is actually what you're seeking.

PISCES (February 19-March 20): It is no longer necessary, appropriate, or especially worthwhile for you to wait until you've gathered more skills, tools, experience, or startup-capital before shamelessly hawking your proverbial wares. Everything you need to get started—which, incidentally, isn't the same thing as 'having it all together'—is already yours, except maybe the audacious self-assurance to dare to give it a shot. But not only are the planets aligning to push us all out of our comfortable nests at this timeliest-of-moments for demonstrating our ability to fly, Pisces. You're also greeting the arrival of Venus to your sign at the week's tail-end (Sat Apr 5)… a cosmically well-timed aspect of auspiciousness that specifically provides you a cover of blessed good-favor, in perfect coincidence with the choppiest astrological waters of the year. During this coming month, everybody's being cornered into making seemingly split-second choices that radically reorient them, or will risk suffering intensified angst from their refusal to respond. Yet, you Pisceans are in perhaps the best spot for making such choices, due to Venus's looking out for you at this very critical time. Here's the catch, though: You have got to do this for yourself, using what's at your disposal, to shift your life in ways that serve your interests and desires. While this self-focus might seem to outside eyes as the simplest possible approach, you have an innate knack for convoluting such simplicity by needlessly involving others where they don't belong. Can you resist that temptation?