Grounded Mysticism, with Jessica Snow
This whole world is alive and vibrant, connected by invisible strands of meaning. In this conversation with one of my favorite meditation teachers of all time, Jessica Snow, we talk about how we can sync up with this web of Life, feed beauty into it, and bring forth grounded, deeply aligned change in our lives.
You can listen at the link below, on Spotify,, Apple, or wherever you stream. There’s also a written transcript below the audio file!
Welcome to a Wild New Work, a podcast about how to take wise, soul-centered action in your work life, all based on the wisdom of nature. I'm Megan Leatherman, a mother to two small kids, coach, writer, and amateur ecologist living in the Pacific Northwest, and I'm your host today.
Hi, friend. Welcome. I am so glad that you're here today.
You are in for a real treat. Today I'm in conversation with Jessica Snow, one of my favorite meditation teachers, a true master in her art. We talk about imagination and soul and your energy system, and how to make things happen in your life without this empty striving and grasping, but with real vision and alignment and ease.
This is a conversation I've wanted to have for a long time. I've been following Jessica's work for at least six years, maybe longer. And it's really, I think, helping us ground into the work that we're meant to be doing right now. And this is something I'll talk more about- I think it's an area where the podcast and my own work is growing.
But what I love about Jessica and the way that she approaches this is that she reminds us that we can start right now, the work that needs doing -the big capital W work- can happen right away in our internal landscapes with what we've got around us, and it can really change our lives and our relationship to the world, the universe, other people, the natural world. It's really powerful stuff, and I'm so excited that she came to share her insights with us today.
Before I introduce Jessica, I just wanna remind you that I'm offering a summer solstice retreat on Wednesday, June 21st. This is an all day in-person gathering in an old growth forest here outside of Portland, Oregon. We will be embodying the shift from spring to summer on this longest day of the year, and it will be a time really supporting you in stepping into greater flow and mastery and generosity through the work that you're being invited to do right now. And it will be particularly useful if you're feeling dried out or uninspired with work, or if you're in the midst of a growth edge and trying to figure things out and want to align with the wisdom of the seasons in this way, so you can learn more about that at a wild new work.com/summer-retreat. I'll also put the link in the show notes. And if you'd like to go deeper or work together more long term, then of course you can check out my one-on-one program and I'd be happy to talk more about guiding you through a bigger transformation that might be at your feet. So you can learn about all of those things at a wild new work.com.
So let me introduce Jessica to those of you who haven't encountered her or haven't met her before. Jessica Snow has significantly impacted my life's trajectory. I'm a fan. Her work, her meditations, her classes, her weekly newsletter has really helped me see gifts that I didn't know I had that all people have access to, and she has really helped me gain entry into an internal and spiritual treasure trove that I can't imagine living without. People have pressed play on jessica Snow's meditations over 100,000 times. Using her voice and imagination, jessica transports us to far out places, whether we meditate with her in real life or online. Her meditations lead to the most pleasant type of transformation, and she has a special gift for connecting us to nature each other and our highest and deepest selves.
So before we dive into our conversation, I'll just orient us to our opening invocation. Wherever you are, you can kind of feel into your body and time and space right now. Maybe make yourself a little more comfortable. Take a deep breath all the way into your belly. As I read these words, may each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet. May our work honor our ancestors known and unknown, and may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this earth with. I express gratitude for all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible, and I'm grateful to the Cowlitz and Clackamas tribes among many others who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on.
Jessica, thank you so much for being here with us today.
Jessica:
I'm thrilled to be here.
Megan:
I would love to start by hearing a little bit about what has led you to this work to be a meditation teacher, soul collage facilitator, all of the things you do. I know it didn't come out of nowhere, and so how did you get here?
Jessica:
Well, I've always loved spiritual mystical things. I'd loved fairy tales and Aesop's fables and myths, Greek myths. When I was young, I always have loved stories and however, in the family I grew up in, in my family of origin, there was sort of this unspoken thing that like to be a good person, that meant you had a nine to five job.
So after high school, I went to a four year college. After college I worked for a software company, a marketing company. I mean, I've worked for every different kind of nonprofits, a philanthropist. Like I, my routine in my nine to five life was apply, get hired, love the job for six months, get disillusioned. The honeymoon phase is over. Okay, now I'm looking for something else. And then I would jump to the next thing. And that happened repeatedly. And so the way that I was able to take the things I was naturally interested in, these sort of, you know, symbolic stories and, you know, alchemy and how do, how do we make our life more, the life that we want to be living?
The only way that I got to be able to do that professionally is ironically, it happened after I had my, my child and he was a baby. So now in my family of origin, I have a new identity, right? My nine to five job is being a stay-at-home mom with my baby. And that was a period where I guess I released my resistance to moving professionally into my strengths because it was sort of hidden away.
I did my first meditations here in my backyard with my friends, and then they started to invite their friends, and then those friends started to invite their friends. And so it was weird to do it here. So then we moved to my husband's work and we did it there. And eventually I worked up the courage to charge something for these experiences that I was bringing to people.
And something that I think will circle back around to as our conversation continues at that point, after teaching, you know, in this sort of like little haphazard way, each time I taught, I gave myself more permission to sort of be this person, right? Be someone who can guide others through a spiritual process.
And then I decided, okay, my logical mind decided we have to find a place where we teach once a week, right? So that's my logic mind. My logic mind came up with a path to that and a solution. A few weeks after I made that commitment, my helpers, or whatever you wanna call it, life itself, brought me an even better place to teach every week.
And that was Spellbound Sky. And that introduced me to a big community here in Los Angeles. And that was really how it became something that I could stand in and say, this is my profession, this is my vocation, this is what I'm gonna do as long as I can. I hope I'm doing this till I'm 80.
I think in light of like your work, like I think that there's a couple interesting little parts. One is, I wasn't able to step into it until I had this like, you know, ability to cloak what I was really doing and staying at home with my baby. And that was the first time I really gave myself the, I really was, was able to release resistance and start doing the thing that I really wanted to do.
And the second part that maybe we'll talk about in a little bit is like the difference between the logical minds path that it picks out to get to where you wanna go and what happens when we sort of open ourselves to other sources of help and inspiration. And often that path is much more elegant and you know, oddly effective.
Megan:
Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, I really resonate with the sort of, the... Permission slip that major life transitions can give us. And I think a lot of times people wait for that or they're sort of waiting to be laid off or for someone else to kind of decide. And we can help ourselves I think, by being a little bit more proactive. But there are times when we just need the big shift and we find ourselves in it and we can make the most of it. And I think that's so inspiring. And your son is older now? Like how long ago was that?
Jessica:
So he was born in 2009 and that's when I really stopped working for other people. Right. And then I did my first events in the backyard here in 2011.
And in that intervening time, I was deeply, so I was like nursing and also reading philosophical, spiritual texts, I was going to on retreats. I was really, really, from 2009 to 2011, I'd always been, you know, sort of a dilletante interested in everything. But I really started to zero in on these inner states of being and sort of how to synchronize with all that is, you know, like to again to let in that other bigger help.
And I will also say, I wanna say I've just, this has to come out. My family doesn't really think that you have to have a nine to five job to be a good person. That was something that in my teenage years, I gathered from context clues. But as time has gone on, like my family is so pleased with what I do for a living and there's no doubt about my worthiness as a person.
And that wasn't even like a conscious thing that they were actually thinking. It's what I thought they were thinking.
Megan:
Yeah, an important delineation that a lot of us don't investigate. We just assume it is that.
Jessica:
Sometimes in my household, we call it the Greek chorus that doesn't exist.
So if you know about, you know, Greek plays, like there would often be a chorus on stage saying sort of like, you know, adding context to whatever was happening. And I think we have that in our consciousness, in our awareness, but it's often either way off base or not real at all. So here we are making these powerful life decisions, listening to a Greek chorus, and we're thinking that everyone out there in the real world is, is thinking what the Greek chorus in our mind is saying.
But I would say 90% of the time that's not what's happening at all.
Yeah, that makes me think of something Martha Beck writes about, which is like, when we say like, "well, everyone will think I'm gonna do this," or "everyone thinks it's this," and when you really ask like, who is everyone? It's usually like three to five people that were formative in your life that, like you said, may not actually even think what you're ascribing to them. So yeah, that's so important.
Megan:
One of the things that you have really helped me with in my life and in getting to know your work is like really valuing my imagination and trusting that when I do your meditations, when I have my own visions, that even if it feels like I'm making it up, it's actually having an effect.
And there's actually a lot of information there, and I've been so curious to hear from you how you describe imagination. Is it different than the soul? Is it how the soul speaks? What about our energy? You also do a lot with like energy stuff, and I feel like things move when I'm, have been in your presence and working with you.
And so how do like imagination, soul energy fit together in your construct? And like how do they feed each other? Are they even different? What could you say about these three?
Jessica:
I absolutely love how you are placing these and, and I am so excited. This is the first time I've ever been asked this, so I'm really excited to share.
I have contemplated a bit. So to me, in my worldview, our souls are the place where our desires are born. And it's sort of the waiting room for our desires to get to be lived. And often there is a difference between what our soul wants to experience and our ego wants to experience. So we can also have egos from our, I mean desires from our ego, sense of self, right?
But to me, the soul is sort of the genesis of our desire. Like what thrills us, what brings us pleasure, like, you know, everybody is different. Some people would love, for instance, to like, Sit in hair and makeup and then like put on a fancy dress in high heels. That would be really fun for somebody. That's not fun for me.
I don't like all of that, right? Like so my soul, I would say like has a desire more to be in nature, which someone else that might not be a true desire for them. Okay. So the soul is where our desires come from. To me, our imagination has two roles. One is for us to be able to receive and understand symbol, metaphor, and make meaning.
And the other thing is then to use that information. If, if we're conscious and we're doing this kind of work that I love to do, we are then using our imagination to begin to envision where we'd like to go, what we'd like to experience, and also to, I think in our western culture, like we really need our imaginations to push past, to begin to be able to see things that the over culture perhaps is hiding from us.
And then the energy, the energy systems. I like to look at energy, my energy specifically as sort of rivers, right? And then I, Jessica, the ego, the persona, it's up to me to sort of craft river banks through my actions, through the structures and things that I set up in my life, my rituals, my practices, to help that energy flow, to support those visions that my imagination is showing me, which have their root in my soul's desire.
Does that all make sense? So we have like, yes desires coming from our soul, our imagination helps us perceive the world and also envision and project out what we want to head towards. And then our energy systems are sort of in my world, like can be wild and kind of expansive. And so then Jessica has to come in and be the river banks and be like, okay, we're taking this kind of energy.
We're actually gonna send it in this direction because that's what we've learned from all this. You know, being awake to our soul, being awake to what's happening in our imagination. Yeah. Does that make sense?
Megan:
Yeah. And I like that you bring in the ego too, because it is an important part to that.
Jessica:
I'm like, probably the only, like meditation, guys that's like pro ego.
Like you probably met some people and, and we can all probably think of people who could use a little logic, could use a little containment, could use a little focus or clarity or direction. And I think those are things that our egos are really, really good at helping us. And we, you know, everything is about a harmonic balance between all of our parts, you know?
So I am not one of those "Kill your ego" type of meditation people.
Megan:
Right. And we can't anyways.
Jessica:
Yeah. So good luck. Right.
Megan:
So what are some ways in where people can start to, I mean, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like the soul and the genesis of desire, I think is just sort of inevitable. It's just a matter of paying attention to, but we don't always know how to work with the imagination to then like, Make meaning and receive symbols. I mean that's like, those are skills I think that a lot of us unlearned or are trying to come back to. So I know you have like a wealth of ideas and resources and ways in, but what are some things today that you think are good gateways to start working with the imagination?
Jessica:
Well, I like to think of the imagination as a muscle. Just like we wanna work out a muscle, we put load on our muscles, right, to build them to get stronger. And the imagination is the same. And I just wanna guarantee to everybody who is listening or watching: your imagination, if you turn towards it and give it your attention, it will never leave you hanging.
It will always supply you with something. Now the ego may come in and be like, I don't like that thing that that's too ordinary, or that's too mundane, or that's whatev, whatever. But the imagination will, when you turn towards it, it will always serve something up, even if it serves up sort of a void or like nothing.
That's grist for the mill, too. Is there something we don't wanna be seeing, et cetera. So the idea of a gradual strengthening of the imagination is number one. Number two, here's the mechanism by which I think we strengthen our imagination.
We use it. And we do this by sort of cycling through our inner experience, perhaps seeing something in the meditation. So the example I always use is if say I'm in a meditation and some sort of helper or teacher in my meditation gives me an orange, you can bet when I come out of that meditation I'm going to, even if I have to go to the store to get it, I'm gonna go get an orange and I'm going to eat that orange while paying attention, while offering presence to the moment of eating that orange and see what occurs to me.
So there's sort of this dance, this cyclical dance of, you know, I see something in a vision. I do my best to bring it into ordinary reality. I see what happens in ordinary reality and I do my best to bring it into a vision. Let me give you a very down to earth example. I have been working lately with timeline jumping, which is pretty far out on the edge of the edge, but essentially the process is pretty simple.
You basically, you know, choose your hot topic and then you sort of acknowledge it and then you put yourself in a void state. You try to get, you know, in the spaces in between things, and then you call the you in some other dimension, right? That is as close as possible to what you're talking about with your hot topic.
And then you see them. Well, recently I did this and the me that I saw was so dressed all in blue, so dressed all in blue. So when I'm teaching, if I can wear something blue, there were other things in this, and I'm not sharing, but I'm gonna wear blue because that is showing, first of all, it's showing fidelity to what I, my imagination has shown me, so, right.
It likes attention. So yes, I see you said blue, now look at me. I'm wearing blue when I'm talking with Megan and all these people. Right? And then things sort of can feed into that. I may notice, I may go to a class and the teacher may be wearing blue, so now that's another little piece of information.
Then I can go back in and I can more easily contact or find that person wearing all blue, that version of me. Does that make sense? So you can really, it's really the circle of like the inner experience feeding into the outer. Then we learn from the outer and we take that back into the inner. And it's just a perpetual cycle like that.
And my suggestion with imagination, because it's also like meditation, we can sort of be like, I'm not good at it. Instead, it's sort of like, let me get one little nugget, one little symbol out of this meditation, and let me work with that in my ordinary life. Then let me go in again, and I guarantee you this is how you step by step, sort of like, help your, your gut believe that there's resources in there and they do affect what happens out here.
So it's, it's a gradual process. So rather than trying to like visualize like the high peak point of your entire, everything, of your whole life, like, instead it's like, oh, I know I have to take my kid to the doctor tomorrow. Like, let me just check in. Is is there anything that, you know, oh, I'm getting a little picture of an, of a red apple.
Like maybe I'm gonna bring him a snack so that you know the whole thing. Little, little small, repeat it over and over and then you can generate, I mean, I'm very loyal to my imagination. Even things that I see that don't make sense, I now have lived long enough in this process to go ahead and, and do what the, eat the orange, like go get an orange and eat it.
It's really amazing. It's actually like thrilling once you get a little momentum with it. Does that answer the question?
Megan:
Yeah. I think one of the things I struggle with is exactly that: the fidelity to it and not just sort of sloughing it off is like just, you know, what I learned in college that it's just all like sort of garbage or like your brain's just processing or it doesn't have anything to say.
Jessica:
Well, yeah, and let's look at that, right, because there is someone named Robert A. Johnson and he, my favorite book of his is Inner work. Which is about active imagination and dream interpretation. But one of the things that he talks about in that book is that you actually can't make anything up. So when we see something in our imagination and we sort of like push it to the side, you know, because of logic or whatever, we're missing an opportunity to detect some symbolism. We're missing an opportunity to learn a little bit about our own personal lexicon of symbols and like what things mean for us we're missing. Even if you make something up, it still means something. For instance, he tells a story about one of his patients tried to trick him and so his patient turned in all this active imagination, he had to write out all this stuff.
And Dr. Johnson was looking at it and then the patient goes, "ha, that's all lies, everything. And there is lies. I made it all up." And Dr. Johnson's like, well, there are three witches in this story. Aren't you having a problem with your mom and two sisters? There is meaning in even the things that we think are devoid of meaning.
I just did a meditation last Thursday where people find an animal, and I assured the group that either an animal shows up, which happened for some of the people, but this is gonna work just as well if you just pick an animal.
And it does, because even if I pick elephant, there's meaning in that and I can discover that meaning, and then I have more knowledge and also I'm working that little cycle right from the inner to the outer. The outer to the inner again.
Megan:
Could you expand a little bit on how you can see this actually changing people's paths? Like how, okay, I go get an orange and, and you mentioned like start really small and I can see how the imagination would build, but how can it also help when we're trying to sort of navigate our paths or change, or we have this sole desire that wants to come into the world, but we don't know how?
Jessica:
So again, I recommend being small and gradual to sort of build that muscle, that confidence. Like I couldn't go into a gym today and lift 200 pounds, I don't think, but if that was a goal of mine and I worked up to it, I certainly could. And so let me see if I can think of a, a good example. Let's say we, we go into meditation or let's say even we're taking a walk.
This is better. We're out on a walk. We're sort of maybe mulling over something we're trying to achieve or do or whatever. And then maybe we see a crow. And instead of being in a normal crow place like the crow's, like on the street, and it's like pecking at something, the more we're in touch with our inner being, for lack of a better phrase, our self with a capital s, we can sort of make a connection. Like, "oh, I was thinking about this thing and then I see this crow and it's usually, you know, up high now on the ground and, and oh, now another crow is coming. They're sort of fighting over something." And I can look at how that fighting energy might be happening with me with this thing.
Maybe, I do wanna do this thing, but I also have a lot of resistance and fear, you know? And so we can look at ordinary things in life or things we see in meditation or things that we, you know, consciously endeavor to envision. And we can sort of just like if we were gonna analyze a fairytale or a Greek myth, we can sort of start to see like, oh, this is playing out in front of me.
Then let's say the person that we were involved with and thinking about calls us, we can decide, are we gonna be like two crows, like pecking at something on the street or like, should I do something a little different to elevate this energy? Or is there like a few sentences I could start this call out to sort of make sure we're not those two crows, like fighting over a little piece of something in the street. Right? Like the more you bring it into your, the real world and do something a little different on that call, I mean, I wanna say, I guarantee you, cause I've seen it a thousand times when we behave a little differently because of something we've realized through symbols or our imagination, then the world responds differently.
It's like the person's like, oh, actually, like I don't think I, I'm gonna be working on this project. I wanna have you meet this person who's gonna work on this project, which is a much better fit, personality wise, ends up, et cetera. So it's really gaining that confidence of like getting a little symbol or something and then you, it makes you act a little different and then the world acts a little different and then you're like, you clock it.
I was working on a meditation and there's a phrase in, it says, "bathes in light." And then I was looking through a huge database of, among many other phrases, I was looking through a huge database of music and I was like, oh my gosh, am I gonna have to listen to all of these to pick one?
And guess what, I see a song, it's "bathes in light," it's four minutes. This thing is four minutes. Boop boop. Sounds great. Right? So I'm confident now in that mechanism of synchronicity, of coincidences. So it's really just deciding that you're someone who can read the symbols of your life and then reading them.
Megan:
I love that.
I have two next questions percolating. I'm trying to decide where to go. Well, maybe I'll ask you and you can pick. Okay. Um, one is like, does this mean that the universe, every sign we get is all about us? Like, did the crows come just for us, or is it, are they just there and we're like, reverberating? And two, how does this all work?
Like, how is it that you do this meditation with this phrase and then you see this song like, how does this happen?
Jessica:
I believe it's actually happening a lot more than even someone like me is able to notice.
In my experience and my belief is that we are all little parts of a, like infinitely expanding sort of cosmic holographic, multi-dimensional web of energy and just like in the brain when certain thoughts, you know, have easy neural pathways, cuz we've thought that thought over and over again, it's the same thing. And that there's just habits that we have within this web and we're both woven into this web and we're also the weavers of it. So when we begin to sort of out of the corner of our eye, like look at the underlying meaning of the crows, right? The crows are just crowing, right? They're just living and we're just living ordinarily.
But when we sort of decide to be, offer a little presence and offer a little awareness, I do think it causes new points on that web to light up. Just like when we decide to make a new neural groove, right? And it takes a little work at first, but then it gets easier and easier. Those things light up. So I also heard in the first question, I was like, is it happening just for us?
You know? That is very interesting. Who, who am I? Am I just Jessica? Or am I a point in this larger thing? I believe I'm part of this larger thing. So yes, it is for us in my opinion, but "us" is way bigger than you or I. It's more than human, right? We're talking plants, animals. I'm even putting AI into the more than human category.
Like it's the energy of all that is of all, we know existence. That is us. So it is for us, but it's not necessarily, like, for Jessica.
Megan:
Yeah, I really appreciate that. That's helpful. 'Cause I think there is this inclination, at least like in Western culture, where it can become very just about me and like everything is for me and it's this very little me, but I really like how you expand that and it's very exciting to think of yourself as just part of this vast changing web that you can have.
It's a relief.
Jessica:
Oh yeah. It's a relief. Okay, so let's circle back to when my ego itself was like, "I have to teach someplace once a week," right? This is in 2012. At this point, my logical mind's like, "go to the yoga studio." I auditioned for the owner of the yoga studio. So I did a meditation, just her and I, and she was like, "great, you can do once a week. We'll try it out. Here's your time slot. Seven to 7 45 on a Thursday morning. Okay?" Hint, that's not a very good time slot at a yoga studio, okay? But, okay, so now I've checked it off my list. I, I teach someplace once a week.
That's just Jessica. That's how she thought she could make this thing happen. Here's what happened. So then I release my resistance cuz that's checked off my list. I go to a wedding in the desert a couple weeks later. After the wedding, you know, after the reception, we're all sitting out in the desert.
And I met at this event, some acquaintances, and one of them turns to me and is like, we're talking about meditation and stuff, and he's like, "oh, well we just opened a crystal shop. Like maybe you could do a meditation, a weekly meditation there." And I go, "okay." And then it took us like four times till we came up with the idea of like, oh, each week we'll match the meditation to a certain crystal, right?
And then it really started to take off, and that was really where I found my community. Of course, I force myself to be a good person to stay at the yoga studio. So I would have these great nights on Wednesday night with like, at one point we had people waiting outside, we had to do a second session and was just like so juicy and like full of flow and like so magical.
And then I would come home, try to calm myself down cuz I had to be at the yoga studio at 7:00 AM the next morning. So do you see the contrast there? It's like, one was little Jessica just trying on her own to make this thing happen and the other one was Jessica and "all that is" having a part in the process.
And again, we had like a much more elegant and fruitful situation from just, you know, having, I had the intent still, but like the universe in that case had a way better idea for me.
Megan:
Do you think you had to agree to the yoga studio thing to sort of set the intention into motion?
Jessica:
Yeah. And also, you know, that little audition was easier for me to do for the woman who owned the yoga studio that I had been going to for years. Right? That was an easier audition and it did help me that first night at Spellbound Sky, right at the Crystal Shop, it helped me because I was like, okay, she saw it, right?
My friends in my backyard have seen it, their friends have seen it over here. People are giving me five, 10 bucks, you know, putting it in a bowl. Cause I was too shy to like set a price. So, yeah. So I do think that the structure of that and also, let's talk about resistance for a second. When we really want something, we invite in an equal amount of resistance.
So by checking it off the list, it's the same thing as like, because I'm a stay-at-home mom with my baby, I release the resistance of "I have to have this traditional type of job," right? And so it's like whatever, whether you need to get like the smaller version of the job first, or you know, ease your way into it to release that resistance, that can be a really effective thing.
Does that make sense? Resistance. It's not something that we can push away, because as we're pushing it away, it pushes right back. We almost have to like, Obliquely trick it into relaxing. And so, yeah, so getting that yoga job, I already have one job, right? It's easier to get one job when you have another one, you know, et cetera.
So, yeah, so I think that it did help. And while the Spellbound Sky job was so juicy and fun, even though it wasn't as much fun, I did build skills in the other one. Some skills I built - how to like keep my ego in check when only two people show up for meditation for a long while. One of the women who came to that group was newly widowed. She would often cry the entire time. So I built, had to build skills around someone who's really in a hard time, right? That kind of vibe was not happening at the Crystal Shop on like the fun nights. But there were skills that I built in the yoga studio job that have helped me a lot. And I always look at that yoga studio owner who said yes to me, even though she gave me like a questionable slot. Like that helped me too. You know, like that helped my, my confidence as well. So yeah, even though you know, it wasn't the most fun thing, but it was good. And it probably did free up some of my energy, right, for this, like to be really excited about this other opportunity.
Megan:
Earlier when you were sort of previewing this experience, this pivot, you mentioned like, "and then my helpers or life itself brought me this thing," and I think it would be wonderful if you could share with listeners how you think of helpers and who they are and how they're already there supporting us.
Jessica:
So in my own mind, I call them VIPs, but they're not even persons. So that doesn't make any sense. It's lazy on my part :) I started meditating in 2002, mindfulness, which is what I think most people think of when they think of meditation. I do not teach mindfulness meditation, and my practice has veered from mindfulness type of meditation.
So in mindfulness, you're just like, "Hey, I'm meditating, I'm awake to what is. Whatever happens, however it is, it is, I'm awake to it." I had a spiritual experience about probably seven or eight years into meditating mindfulness style where we meditated in a shamanic style and we meditated for someone else.
And I just had this revelation of like, "oh, I just been in this little tiny bubble," right? And now like, oh, I can like meditate with people. It can be shared. And so I became really... having a lot of fidelity and allegiance to my meditation practice when I did that, and I sort of took off, I took my mindfulness teacher out to lunch and I was like, oh, I, you know, I'm gonna start doing something different, you know, da da da, da da.
He was very supportive. I began to develop a cosmology in my meditations, meaning there was like, for instance, a field of lavender where I could go if I needed to cry, and I tried to do all my crying there in meditation. And then once I sort of built out this little cosmology of different places and spaces in my inner world, I began to connect with guides, helpers, teachers.
They can be as simple as something as like a beam of light all the way to something very specific, such as a creature or what someone might call a deity. Just like we can find symbolism in the crows in the street, I was able to receive symbolic, metaphorical information from these helpers. And I am, to this day, how I write all my meditations is I meditate. I may have little seed of something I wanna make something about, and I consult before I teach. I consult, I consult with these, whether you wanna regard them as higher energies or inner energies specific to me, doesn't matter to me. They're super helpful. And again, just like the imagination, when I turn towards them, when I quiet down and turn towards them, they are always there for me.
And I've learned through experience over the last 10 years, like their advice is right on, right? So this is also helping me to build my confidence as an intuitive person because they've shown me things. I've gone out into the world and executed what they've shown me. Good things have happened. Great.
They show me something else. And you can really make it the whole way that way. So I'm rather uninterested if these helpers are figments of my imagination or spiritual beings, like I may never know. I'm very efficacy based, so they help me and they help me really make right choices that I may not, I can see I may not have made, especially in terms of my work.
I feel super honored and privileged to get to essentially whisper into people's brains all the time. I take it super seriously. I always have, for instance, a script when I'm doing a live event and these same helpers have shown me. I'll be going down the script and my throat will close. I'll get a feeling in my throat.
I know that's my helper saying, don't say that, so I don't say it. Other times, words will pour out of my mouth that aren't on the script. That's them too. So over the years I've just, through experience and spending time with them and then carrying their ideas out into the outer world and then spending time with them again, I have a deep trust in them.
And like I said, it doesn't matter to me whether I'm imagining them or not. 'Cuz going back to what we were talking about before, even if you're making something up, the thing that you made up has meaning in it.
Megan:
Oh, that's beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, I think that's one of the most life-changing things that I've gotten from your work - is this, my own cosmology, this place that I go every morning where, you know, there's these little pockets. I have my like rage moss, where I just lay down the moss and let out all my rage and you know, I have this little cabin. I mean, it's like, it's so rich, it's so special. I can't believe I didn't have it at one point.
Jessica:
And think about children for a second. When we are children, We have this capacity, we'll turn a cardboard box into our house, right? We'll spend the whole day in there. Somewhere along the way that Greek chorus blooms in our awareness, right? For whatever reasons. And we start to hide away or denigrate that part of us that knew that the cardboard box is a house and also a cardboard box, right?
It's a cardboard box. It's not a house, but I can play house with this cardboard box, right? So when we're little, we really, that's really easy for us. And you know, we've done Soul Collage, which is a process that I teach with kids. And when a, when an adult looks at their card, it's just all this hemming and hawing and da, da, da, da, da.
And a kid's like "this is anger," right? So they know, they're clear. We were clear once too, and we can get back to it fairly easily. And I will say one more thing, sorry, about helpers. If anyone listening is interested in making relationships with helpers, it's my experience and the experience of other people that it can be nice to make a relationship with one helper and then that helper can introduce you to other helpers. Or when we're talking about cosmology, get yourself one little space and then you can branch out and start mapping out from that space.
Megan:
Could you say a little bit about how you see this work also changing the world ? Like, actually bringing in a different, maybe more caring culture or the demise of capitalism or birthing something else. How do you see the connection between us and our personal practices? Also the huge US that's part of this web and then, you know, culture or society?
Jessica:
Well, you know, I think one, like going back to souls and desires, the more people I work with, the more people's experiences who interact with me spiritually, the more I hear. It's becoming clear to me that one of the prime benefits of going inward, each of us going inward, is that over time we begin to recognize that the desires that were put onto us by the overculture are not actually our pure desires.
And actually, our true desires are often much more achievable, simpler, more rewarding, less damaging ecologically, less damaging financially, less exploitative of not only other people, but also less exploitative of the more than human world. And I'll, I'll give you a little example. I, this is probably like seven years ago, realized that although it was habitual in our household after dinner we sort of clean up, we take a walk, we watch tv, right? The three of us in our household. And in a meditation I realized like, "oh, I would like one night a week to spend outside." And in that time outside, it's been super beneficial for my family.
And the over culture would rather we sit in there and watch TV for various, you know, consumer capitalist reasons, colonial reasons. We still watch tv, we watch tons of tv, we love tv. My husband works in the industry. Like it's, it's nothing bad about tv, but it just, that little thing that I got in my meditation of like a little flash of us back there and the TV was off and it was like, oh that actually is a desire to like, Spend time with my family outside at night and we are able to do that cause we have a little yard here. Okay. So that's something, that's an example of that. Another thing I realized is like, I don't mind going to the grocery store. I'm a mom. I have to like da da da. But I got a little ping of like, "oh, it's the parking lot of the grocery store that is a hassle for you." So I went and I got a little old lady cart, and now I walk and drag my cart. So yes, that's good for me, Jessica, but we can all see that me not starting my car, driving over there idling in the parking lot, that's good for the planet, right? So our true soul desires not the ones that the over culture have put on us and not the ones that are sort of blooming out of like, uh, pushback on whatever trauma that we have suffered, but like our true desires are often very simple, very achievable, much nicer to planet earth and so forth.
Megan:
Yeah, I completely agree. And it makes me think of the conversation we had earlier about how everything that you've talked about today is free, and it's so simple, it's already in your being. It's just an orientation and definitely skills, of course, that you've built, but it's not, you don't need to buy all the crystals, all the, you know, sage or whatever. Like, it's so simple and life giving.
Jessica:
And let's go back to permission, right? So let's say you woke up today, right? And you're listening to Megan and Jessica talking, and you're like, huh. Like, that sounds, that sounds kind of good, like to have that kind of knowingness, like that, that sounds good. Just give yourself permission right now that you can imagine things, you can envision things, you can make this little journey into the inner world. Bring things into the outer world. Look around at the outer world now. Bring things back into the inner world, and just decide and give yourself permission.
And you're that kind of person. You don't have to wear crystals and long flowing capes or whatever. You're certainly welcome to. I've been known to, but you know, like let's say this cuz I think this is really interesting, especially for younger people, younger than me, I'm 48. Recently I was talking with some young women and they were like - They're beautiful and perfect just like they are - and they were all tied in knots over morning routines because I guess on TikTok, like a lot of people get viral and popular showing different morning routines.
I was like, first, I guarantee you that whoever you're watching, that is not their real morning routine. That is the one that they're filming. By filming it, you change it, right? Number two, who cares what her morning routine is? What are you already doing in the morning? "Oh, well I get up, I make coffee, I go walk."
It's like, oh, well why don't you just gently add on little bits to the existing morning routine that you're already doing? Congratulations. You're a success, A+, right? And you know, we just really have to be careful. The internet is wonderful, especially social media is wonderful. We have access to so much spiritual, mystical information.
And also we can mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon. We can mistake something that looks spiritual or that looks connected or that looks aligned with something that is actually spiritual, connected and aligned. And do not forget that the wellness industry is an industry. And do they really want you to like, To connect to your soul and use your imagination and act in ways that not only benefit you, but benefit the whole world?
Or do they just wanna sell you this x, y, z, this green thing or whatever? So, we're lucky. We have a wealth, a treasure trove of things that we can learn and find out. And we have to use our discernment and we have to understand that what we are, what we are engaging with or aiming to engage with, is something that feels nourishing spiritually, even if it doesn't look that way to anybody else - who cares. I'm very un interested in someone who's just looking like they're that person and still being really unconscious about how they're making their life choices.
Megan:
Right. Yeah, and that's something I so appreciate about the way you approach this work is that it, it's just like very grounded. It's about how it feels. It's very empowering and again, like you said, so much about the feeling of it. And again, I think that's how our, one way our energy can sort of help mobilize this work.
So what are some of the edges for you? You mentioned timeline jumping, like how do you feel like your work is changing and evolving now?
Jessica:
I'm definitely in, in a changing time right now. So when I started in 2012, live events were my bread and butter - people getting together in a room, having a mystical experience. Obviously in 2020, I really had to like, I tried to gracefully let go of the live events for a while and I switched everything into the zoom of it all, as you know, cuz you've been in the Zoom with me. And also the pandemic threw me off my game a little bit creatively in terms of the meditations I was recording, what I was writing, because I had to really investigate my white privilege. I had to really in investigate my geographical privilege. I had to investigate my privilege of being married to a white guy. You know, like I really had to like, tease a lot of things apart in my spiritual work just to ensure that I am showing up in the most anti-racist, the most anti-capitalist way . I really needed to Get in there.
And now I'm in this like spiritual sort of renaissance that happens when you are in this as long as I am. Like, you have like a month where like your meditations are like, okay. And then you have like six months where they're like, blow your mind. And every day is like a sparkling rainbow of like, oh my gosh, you know?
And then you have your low times too. So I'm in a sort of spiritually high point, but I have a lot of question marks. Like the last week I've talked to many people about locations. I live in Los Angeles, so look, finding the perfect location for events is a really hard thing for me. And when I find a place, I tend to stick with it for a while.
Well, I had to let those go and some of them closed frankly, over the pandemic. So I am meeting with people and talking to people, like, could this be a space for us to gather regularly? Could this? And also because I'm in a sort of spiritual renaissance, I'm like spewing out creative things every week. So I'm making new work. I think as the more AI of it all that we have, you know... right now there's a computer program. You could play it one minute of me talking and then you could type in and make my voice say whatever. So I'm anticipating that as we move into the future here, meditating together in person is gonna be a nice thing that people are gonna want. And also just like really challenging myself to make things that the AI can't make yet.
So that's sort of where I am. So I am in a turning over every stone, you know, like I went yesterday to check out a location, you know, and it does feel like the beginning of a new era and I'm remembering the lesson of the yoga studio and then the other place as I work through these things, you know, so I'm, I'm doing my part to turn over all the stones.
I'm meditating when I get a little hit. Like, keep going down that path or that one's not for you. You know, I'm using that sort of compass of my helpers and my inner work to help me through this really uncharted territory because there is nothing I love more than being together in a room and like everybody feeling one kind of way when they walk in, and a totally different kind of way when they walk out. That's magic to me. Like, that's delicious. But I also wanna find the right relationship to a location. So yeah, so I am, I'm, I'm with everybody else. I'm like, what is this gonna be like? And you know, I'm enjoying the parts that are flowing, which is like making things, I'm just making things and making things and talking to people. But I have not yet had like that clarity of like, ding, that's the spot.
Megan:
Thank you. It's really helpful to hear how this is working out for you in real life, in real time.
Jessica:
I'm just a little human being in this over culture as well. Yes.
Megan:
Oh, this has been so nice. Is there anything else you wanna leave people with?
Jessica:
If you're listening to this and there's a part of you that's like skeptical, maybe instead of like pushing the skeptic, engaging the skeptic and being like, okay, I'm gonna have a, let's get a notebook, right? Let's try some of this stuff. Let's take field notes. Did it work? Did it not, and let's do an experiment almost like we're a scientist, right? And it's like, okay, this is my hot topic right now.
I'm gonna meditate on it. And then after I meditate at night, I'm gonna take a five minute walk and just notice what I notice, right? And I'm gonna write it down. And then the next day, if someone says to you in conversation, something you saw in your walk the night before, then you'll start to get that sort of mojo going.
The last thing I wanna say in regards to that is that there's a, a famous thing that I'm gonna paraphrase and maybe like, not say exactly how it is written, but it's a little passage about how if I'm in LA and I wanna get to New York, I can't see New York yet through my, my windshield, but all I need is to see as far as my headlights and I can make it the whole way to New York just by seeing this section and then this section, and this section, and this section.
And that is really, you know, I'm not one of those people who's like, you know, "do these things and you'll have like an instant manifestation" or whatever. And actually I think the instant manifestations are like quite unpleasant for the soul and ego actually. But you know, that's often what we're sold, right? But instead it's like, yeah, like have more of this experimenting and like, okay, I can see this much with my headlights. Like, so let me do my best with that section of road. Oh, now that I'm here, I can see this much more. Okay, let me take that section of road and you can make it the whole way to wherever you wanna go.
And maybe even someplace better than what you can currently imagine you wanna go. Yeah. And so that's sort of like the pep talk.
Megan:
I love that. Yes, absolutely.
Jessica:
There's a lot of ways in, you know, like if you're a movement person, walking is probably your best way in. If you are someone who has a lot of like standing up responsibilities, lying down is probably gonna be a really good way in for you.
If you are very distractable, you know, something that is, has headphones and maybe has a video component is gonna be good for you, you know, and really like, you know, not everybody has to do this the same way. But I really wanna encourage everyone to do it in their way.
Megan:
Yeah. It Has to make sense for us and be sustainable for us. So where can people ride this wave of spiritual renaissance with you?
Jessica:
So my website is youaremagicla.com. My name is Jessica Snow. If you Google me plus the word meditation, I will be the first thing that comes up. I also, in my, in my Renaissance era here, I started a Substack, which is my new favorite way to communicate because I've always had a weekly newsletter, which has always been pretty popular.
But with Substack I can actually include audio, I can include transcripts, I can include media and links that didn't sort of come through as well in just a traditional email. And it's also a space where people can comment and interact with me. There's more space in Substack for nuanced conversation and the dispersal of information rather than say, like a caption on Instagram, like we're having a, a group sort of teasing a part of these things and Substack gives us more space to do that.
So yeah. So youaremagicla.com. I'm on Instagram, you can tell by my tone that I like these other spaces more. So I would suggest you come find me there. I have books, I have recorded meditations, there's videos. You can, you know, I mean there's all these ways in. Do you like to read? Do you not like electricity? Great. Here's a book.
Megan:
And do you still Do the free page every month?
Jessica:
Every month there's a free page. And I really recommend, whether it's me that you're coming to meditate with or anybody else, I really recommend, like privately, secretly, trying it to see if their style has chemistry with who you already are.
And you know, you're gonna get the best results by having that allegiance to yourself, to your Self, not your little ego self. I don't mean that, but like to your soul, right? Not every teacher and student is a good match. So I have a free page every month. It changes every month. So you can try different things so you can listen with no strings attached. You don't have to put your email in, I'm not, I'm like the worst marketer. I'm not harvesting your information in any way. My site is completely ad free. Like I, you know, you're safe. So yeah, so go to the free page. There's always things there to listen to.
There's also tons of free videos to watch. I'm on YouTube, like, you know, and then take a little taste and see if that's the flavor for you. And also I wanna say that, Things that might be right for us today, spiritual practices or teachers as we grow and evolve... maybe a teacher that you weren't into before, like, now now's the time for you to engage with that teacher.
Or now's the time for you to separate from that group or teacher and, and find your next new thing. You know, you really wanna have that allegiance to yourself and what's right for you. So yes, I always have a free page and also like everything that I do is intentionally low cost because I know that these teachings are meant to be given freely. They are freely given to me. However, I must live. I must go drag my little old lady cart to the grocery store and buy food from my family. I must drive a car in my town and et cetera. So those are the things that the $5 or whatever, you know, are going to support because as they say, the teachings are priceless. You can't put a price on it, no matter how much Instagram endeavors to.
Megan:
Yeah. Okay, great. I'll put everything in the show notes so it's easy for people to find you. Thank you so much!
Jessica:
Your questions were so like exactly the stuff I like to talk about. I really like that soul imagination, energy systems... I'm even seeing it now as a little pyramid or a little triangle, and each piece, you know, has its place. It belongs in the cycle of it. So thank you for that.
Megan:
Okay, my friend, I hope you loved that conversation. I encourage you to go access all of Jessica's entry points into working with her. Definitely check out her meditations, books, wherever you feel drawn. All the links for those will be in the show notes. Thank you for being here and sharing this space with me.
Again, if you'd like to go deeper, I'm offering the summer Solstice retreat on June 21st, and we'll for the foreseeable future, offer one-on-one support as well as a guide. Take such good care and I'll see you on the other side.
About Jessica Snow:
People have pressed play on Jessica Snow's meditations over 100,000 times. Using her voice and imagination, Jessica transports us to far-out places whether we meditate with her IRL or online. Her meditations lead to the most pleasant type of transformation and she has a special gift for connecting us to Nature, each other and our highest and deepest selves.
Jessica’s website: https://youaremagicla.com/
Jessica’s Substack: https://jessicasnow.substack.com/archive
Jessica’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@jessicasnow4782/videos
To learn more about my Summer Solstice Retreat on June 21, 2023, visit: https://awildnewwork.com/summer-retreat