is this the internet?
48 hour FLASH SALE - 40% off AUDIO
For a boring reason, I had to go change something very small in all the product listings for our 100+ audio meditations in the shop. As I was going through them all, I was reminded that there are some very helpful processes hidden inside each meditation.
Even though I wrote these meditations, have recorded and performed them, and people have pressed play on them over 115,000 times; I sometimes forget the magic they contain.
From now until 6pm this Thursday night - 11/21 - you can download as many audio meditations from the shop as you like and get 40% off your order with code DIGI40.
One reason why it is a good idea to have a few meditations downloaded, is that you can listen to them any time without being “connected” to the internet.
Also, and perhaps more importantly, I prefer downloaded meditations when I’m developing consistency in my practice. Just like putting on tennis shoes is cognitively easier than deciding your lifelong workout goals, having a private playlist on my phone – with just four or five meditations waiting for me - takes a lot of the guesswork out of my practice.
Less guesswork = more consistency. If I decide ahead of time that in the morning I will listen to You Are Here and in the evening I’ll listen to More Than Human, then it is just easier to show up for the already delineated practice.
If I just say “I’m going to meditate in the morning and evening tomorrow”, but don’t have a plan to rendevous with certain experiences, it’s too easy to let my practice give way to more time-sensitive (but ultimately less-important) things.
When I am revisiting meditations day after day, their power (and mine!) grows. There is a helpful resonance that naturally arises and keeps me coming back to practice.
All of this to say that a nice personal playlist of 5-7 meditations is a great home base.
What types of meditations would I want to have on that abbreviated playlist?
If I am having trouble getting nice sleep, I might want to listen to Dreams or Night Magic for a few nights in a row.
Or, if I can’t seem to get a consistent practice going, I listen every day to a really vibe-y pleasurable meditation – like Liquid Color or The Magician - that feels so good I look forward to it.
Or, if I need to get out from under the concerns of my smaller sense of self, I might enjoy some nature meditations in there like Plant Life or Crystalline.
Or, If I am in a phase of being interested in learning more about myself I would add a strong divination mediation in there – like House or Mirror 2.
Oh, and I’d need a grounding practice – maybe Circle of Stones or Earth and Sky.
And, if I was into working with the cycles of the moon I would definitely have Full Moon and New Moon to listen to every month.
And then a release-type of meditation, Release is always good and so is Ocean.
These are some ideas, but there’s so many more ways you could craft a playlist - all animal meditations, meditations by element, astrological meditations, meditations that increase your magic, meditations that heal, meditations for the heart, etc….
I’m offering this code- DIGI40 - for just the next 48 hours. If you want 40% off your own micro-collection, you have until this Thursday (11/21) at 6pm (L.A. time) to make your picks.
Also - three more things of note:
I was interviewed on Hillary Rae’s Five Word Life Story podcast. If you like my work, I think you will get fired up listening to the interview. The episode was recorded on September 27th and as I listened to it I was shocked at how a lot of the things I was talking about then are vital practices for making it through all that has happened since then. Also, listening back, I am REALLY PASSIONATE about nature and magic. Give the episode a listen here or here.
Thank you for all the book orders last week. All books have been sent out USPS media mail. I had a great time packing them up for you and I am so grateful for your support!
Next week we’ll be done with discount codes and back to a big post on magic, time travel and how to wield meditation to mitigate and “right-size” our intrusive thoughts.
Until next time,
Jess
"The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest."
—May Sarton
“Shadows, I think, have always been of interest to me. It is an enjoyable perspective, when the right day allows for it, to get to see the world as its reaction.
Today is one of those days, the kind where light and darkness have agreed, it seems, to split the afternoon. Every person walking carries a person-shaped patch of darkness attached at the ankles. I write this in the sun and my hand creates another hand, identical in almost every way (besides dimension and autonomy).
I love the fall because of the light and when I say the light I mean the darkness and the way it lets us see the light, finally after all these months of trying to shelter from the sun. It appears I am becoming less interested in summer as I grow up.”
a song with no end
when Whitman wrote, "I sing the body electric"
I know what he
meant
I know what he
wanted:
to be completely alive every moment
in spite of the inevitable.
we can't cheat death but we can make it
work so hard
that when it does take
us
it will have known a victory just as
perfect as
ours.
- Charles Bukowski
"The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it is only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create."
- Chuck Palahniuk
"There is the inner life, which is the world of final reality, the world of memory, emotion, imagination, intelligence, and natural common sense, and which goes on all the time, consciously or unconsciously like the heartbeat. There is also the thinking process by which we break into the inner life and capture answers and evidence to support the answers out of it. That process of raid, or persuasion or ambush, or dogged hunting, or surrender, is the kind of thinking we have to learn, and if we do not somehow learn it, then our minds lie in us like the fish in the pond of a man who cannot fish."
- Ted Hughes
A Valley Like This
Sometimes you look at an empty valley like this,
and suddenly the air is filled with snow.
That is the way the whole world happened -
there was nothing, and then…
But maybe some time you will look out and even
the mountains are gone, the world become nothing
again. What can a person do to help
bring back the world?
We have to watch it and then look at each other.
Together we hold it close and carefully
save it, like a bubble that can disappear
if we don't watch out.
Please think about this as you go on. Breath on the world.
Hold out your hands to it. When mornings and evenings
roll along, watch how they open and close, how they
invite you to the long party that your life is.
- William Stafford
“It is a better world with some buffalo left in it, a richer world with some gorgeous canyons unmarred by sign boards, hot-dog stands, super highways, or high-tension lines, undrowned by power or irrigation reservoirs. If we preserved as parks only those places that have no economic possibilities, we would have no parks. And in the decades to come, it will not be only the buffalo and the trumpeter swan who need sanctuaries. Our own species is going to need them, too. It needs them now.”
Wallace Stegner
“As I read the Book of Genesis, God didn't give Adam and Eve a whole planet.
He gave them a manageable piece of property, for the sake of discussion let's say 200 acres.
I suggest to you Adams and Eves that you set as your goals the putting of some small part of the planet into something like safe and sane and decent order.
There's a lot of cleaning up to do.
There's a lot of rebuilding to do, both spiritual and physical.
And, again, there's going to be a lot of happiness. Don't forget to notice!
What painters and sculptors and writers do, incidentally, is put very small properties indeed into good order, as best they can.
A painter thinks, "I can't fix the whole planet, but I can at least make this square of canvas what it ought to be.'' And a sculptor thinks the same about a lump of clay or marble. A writer thinks the same about a piece of paper, conventionally eleven inches long and eight and a half inches wide.
We're talking about something less than 200 acres, aren't we?"
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Rolling Stone magazine, May 28,1998
“Jess for real, every thing you post is just unbelievably helpful I am eternally grateful for finding your wisdom.”
- Heather