One excellent use of Rob Brezsny’s weekly horoscopes is to set a context for the week. The context that he recommends is always outside of the ordinary for you, and therefore it will have the potential to dig into the beyond, where all the power you lack and want comes from.

This is my horoscope for this week…

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “This morning I walked to the place where the street-cleaners dump the rubbish,” wrote painter Vincent van Gogh in one his letters. “My God, it was beautiful.” Was he being ironic or sarcastic? Not at all. He was sincere. As an artist, he had trained himself to be intrigued by scenes that other people dismissed as ugly or irrelevant. His sense of wonder was fully awake. He could find meaning and even enchantment anywhere. Your next assignment, Virgo — should you choose to accept it — is to experiment with seeing the world as van Gogh did.

Now, how do you use a horoscope as a context of your life? Remember, this whole month will probably be about context…

Your key to this context are the sentences: “His sense of wonder was fully awake. He could find meaning and even enchantment anywhere”

What happens when you awaken your sense of wonder? First: you take your nose off the grindstone… you step back, and suddenly the grindstone (your work, your duties, your relationships, you complains) become just one thing among many things that were not inside your cone of vision.

If you have a difficulty stepping back, which is not an easy thing to do, then do this: start to look around, gently and slowly rotating your head left to right and right to left, where you are and start noticing the things that you normally don’t look at, because you take them for granted. [note]This simple move, I learned from a psychologist, can take you out of all upset and all fear, as well![/note] People, things, plants, buildings, vehicles, clouds, birds, and you will suddenly put yourself into the mind of van Gogh… who looked at things instead of just looking at what was bothering him or what was threatening him… because that is what you normally look at.

With practice you’ll be able to do this really fast, meaning: you’ll be able to look at the big picture more often than not, and your life will change, dramatically, as long as you are willing to do this simple spiritual practice.

In the Context webinar I’ll have conversations with participants to find out what is their default context… it is more effective to transform something that you know, than something that you don’t…

The webinars are free, and fun… Don’t come if you don’t have a headset… I’ll remove you and block you. Please… don’t risk it. No lookie loos.

Read the original article: Rob Brezsny’s horoscope as a viable context for spiritual practice and big picture being