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More words from Rob:

Images are Dangerous

How I Got Started in the Horoscope Writing Business

Your suffering is interesting and important, beauty and truth fans. No one can take that away from you. But we don't feel sorry for you. That's not our style, and it wouldn't help you anyway.

Our slogan is, There are only two healers: death and ecstasy. So as we flirt with healing you, we have to be sure we're always having fun killing off some worn-out part of you. If our words seem cruel or self-exalting or unlike what you've come to expect from healers, don't worry: They still work just as well. Better, in fact, exactly because we're not boring ourselves in order to figure out how to pierce your protective coat of narcissism. We just stay excited about you, and you do the rest.

We're effective healers because we never call ourselves healers. We don't allow our egos to appropriate and exploit that dangerous image. If someone accuses us of being healers, we deny it and claim to be poets or ritualists. Likewise, if someone admires us for being poets or ritualists, we deny it, professing to be guerrilla therapists or sacred janitors. We don't really mean any of it. We're just escaping from all the dangerous images that would force us to become parodies of ourselves -- that would fool us into being more passionate about the impression we make on you than being who we love to be.

We know it has all been said and done before, but the difference with us is that we're not just out to manipulate you into giving us your adoration and money. We really love you unconditionally. Not sentimentally. Not ironically. Not as a joke or a con or with the disguised hope that you're going to owe us big-time. This is not a simulation, beauty and truth fans. It's real life.

We may tease, but never for our self-aggrandizement. We may prank, but never to get one-up on you or to jack ourselves up with fantasies that we're more spiritual than you. We really do want to be in your dreams helping you carry the garbage out of your nightmares.