But that's only partly useful if you have not yet won the most important struggle for liberation, which is the freedom from your own unconscious habits and conditioned responses. Becoming an independent agent who's not an unwitting slave to his or her past is one of the most heroic feats a human being can accomplish.

Some of them arent very interesting to me like those sought out by people who use cocaine or methamphetamines, for instance while others are states I aspire to inhabit, like lucid dreaming, deep meditation and a visceral perception of the fact that love is the fundamental law of the universe.

Broke. Payday. Broke. Payday. Another said, Oh, no, not again. Again. Again. But the testimony I really wanted to call your attention to is this: I never learned how to swashbuckle.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): The European Union has had rules banning the sale of ugly carrots with knobby protrusions, cucumbers that are grossly curved and equally unaesthetic specimens of 24 other fruits and vegetables. Recently that changed, however. The stiff standards were relaxed.

Your health is likely to be at its peak, and so will your generosity of spirit. Your senses will bring you a wealth of fresh perceptions and your love of life will expand and intensify. And who knows? This enhanced vigor might help you corral a pile of cash or hot suitors or an upgrade of social status.

Companies like IBM, General Electric, Boeing, and others rake in over $100 billion of subsidies each year. In other words, socialism has been a prominent feature of our so-called capitalist system for a long time.

Our country is at war in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as with a ghostly omnipresent foe known as terrorism. Our national debt is stupendous, our stock market has plunged and many companies once thought to be towers of strength have failed. Meanwhile, right next door, Canada has universal healthcare and a budget surplus.

Our government spends an obscene fortune on its armed forces — almost as much as do all the other nations of the world combined. In fact, we are by far the most weaponized empire in the history of the world, with 761 military bases in over 100 countries. If our military costs were cut down to a more reasonable size — say the same as China’s — we’d have a trillion-dollar bonus to deal with the financial infection that erupted here and sent toxic ripples throughout the world. Keeping that in mind as a metaphor, Aries, make this your hypothesis: By reducing the hostility, combativeness and judgmental ire that you personally generate, you’ll be far more likely to navigate your way toward prosperity.