Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit mystical advice for living your very best life.

Jessica:            Megan, welcome to the podcast.

Megan:            Thank you.

Jessica:            What would you like a reading about?

Megan:            So my question was really about how I have psychic downloads, and they⁠—honestly, as I was reflecting after writing the question, they kind of scare me. And they're mostly scary because I don't know what to do with them. I don't necessarily want to be a working psychic. And then, also, it's scary what I realize, too, is that I don't want to be a know-it-all. That know-it-all feeling is really tender for me. And that, I think, is⁠—that's the origination of my question.

And as I was marinating on it between now and asking it, I also feel like there's some issue of spiritual boundaries. I grew up very, very Christian, mostly on one side of my family, so I did have some respite. And I feel like that psychic feeling⁠—not fully demonic, but definitely comes from a framework of evangelical Christianity that does not resonate at all anymore.

So those are the main pieces. I have some other little things that I think will come up as we talk about my chart, but yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Great. And you were born November 14th, 1994, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at 11:58 p.m.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. So much to say. But just as a quick aside, I will say I started seeing clients in probably November of 1994.

Megan:            Okay. It's so funny you say this because I always say, "Jessica has been reading as long as I've been alive."

Jessica:            It's actually true.

Megan:            There's me being psychic again.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's true. I moved to San Francisco in July of 1994, and then I think my first client was either November or December of '94. So it's kind of fun for me to get to do this reading because you shouldn't be able to speak; you should be in diapers still. But somehow, you are a full-grown adult [crosstalk].

Megan:            I made it.

Jessica:            Yeah. You made it. Welcome and congratulations. Okay. So there's so many things to say, but I want to ask you a couple contextual questions before we dive.

Megan:            Sure.

Jessica:            Evangelicals are a topic we will not even get into. However, something I've noticed with a lot of evangelicals is that they're all, "A cult is evil and of the devil," yet somehow are also very into the woo site of Christianity on some level, right?

Megan:            Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            So were you raised like that as well?

Megan:            No. Well, partially. My mother is definitely an herbal witch. That's what I would call her. Of course, I would never call her that to her⁠—and I think that that has really, really affected me and my future. But also, I told someone I was a Scorpio, and they were like, "That is evil. Do not repeat that."

Jessica:            Okay.

Megan:            So I did get a little bit of both, but not on the ritual side.

Jessica:            Okay.

Megan:            Sadly, I wasn't raised Catholic, so no candles, no⁠—we did do certain prayer night, which felt ritually, but that's still more in the traditional church context.

Jessica:            Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's one contextual question. I have another one for you, which is you reference your psychic downloads. Now, for the people, you have a Scorpio stellium. Let's not be surprised that you have fucking psychic downloads. It's not just that you have a Scorpio stellium. You've got Venus, Mercury, North Node, Sun, Jupiter, and Pluto. And Jupiter is what gives you quick downloads.

Megan:            Okay. That's helpful.

Jessica:            So all the Scorpio on its own⁠—it predisposes to psychicness, but the Jupiter part is the⁠—

Megan:            The quickness.

Jessica:            ⁠—the speed, the quickness. Exactly. So, in our modern language, we're going to call that a download, right?

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Uranus and Jupiter give downloads in really different ways. Uranus is not involved in this⁠—just Jupiter⁠—but it's quick. It just comes into knowing.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            And because your Jupiter is conjunct your Sun and your Pluto, yeah, you can be a total know-it-all.

Megan:            And okay. It's funny because I listened to the podcast once, and you were talking about a Sun/Jupiter conjunction leading to self-righteousness. And I was like, "Yeah." And it kind of helped check me a little bit. I was like, "I don't want that. I want to be in relation more than I want to be right," even though in my heart, I want to be right more.

Jessica:            Of course. And I think the thing about Jupiter is Jupiter comes with moral certainty. It's really just certainty. It's philosophical certainty. So Jupiter is associated with religion, but it's also associated with philosophy, international traveling. It's big truths, big learning, and it's big soapbox, big opinions.

Megan:            Yeah, such big opinions. I'm always like⁠—I have a new job⁠—well, a year long. And they're very much like⁠—they know what I think. I can't [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Yeah. Everybody knows what you think, unless you are putting them on ice, in which case they know nothing.

Megan:            Yes. I agree with that as well. That resonates.

Jessica:            It does. It does. Okay. But we'll come back to that. There's a lot of layers to your question. One is, okay, you're psychic; so what? What do you fucking do about it? What do you do with it? What does it matter, right? Am I hearing that correctly, that that's part of the question?

Megan:            Yeah. And I realize some of the question I left out was that I do feel a tug-of-war. I want to be present as much as possible, and then also, I thought of the show That's So Raven. Are you aware of this show, Jessica?

Jessica:            I'm aware of it, but I've never seen it. I'm of course aware of it.

Megan:            Okay. I figured, but⁠—

Jessica:            Yes. Yes. But I know nothing.

Megan:            Basically, I mean, the whole thing is that she'll get a download at the beginning of the episode, and then she'll try and fix it. And then it's hysterical. It never ends well. And then, of course, it⁠—it's ridiculous, and it doesn't work. It doesn't fix her issue.

Jessica:            Correct. So your psychic downloads are about the future; they're not about the present?

Megan:            Oh, I don't know if⁠—I think⁠—I can't always tell the difference. I feel like what I notice is that sometimes something will happen, and I'll have an image in my head of that same thing from before. I'll have seen an image that I don't know what to place it, and then it'll happen. And then I'm like, "Oh. That's where it goes."

Jessica:            Now it makes sense. Yeah.

Megan:            "That's where it belongs." And then sometimes they're very, very quick. So they're the future, but they're like five minutes into the future.

Jessica:            That feels really normal. That resonates with me. I can identify with that.

Megan:            Okay.

Jessica:            Let me start with something that I think is really important. And this might offend some people, and I don't mean to, but this is just my perception of the world from the perspective of who I am. I think religion strives to make it so that our only access to God is through an institution and a man. Right?

Megan:            Yes, 100 percent both.

Jessica:            Yeah. And so, through a lot of things that we could talk for hours about that have happened historically and are still happening presently, we have developed culture throughout most religions where the only way to access divinity is in a particular house, through a particular set of rituals or behaviors. But in fact, humans happen to be animals who live on a planet in an environment in which we are interconnected with the planet and the environment, including but not limited to energy. So, if we pull back, what is sound? You're hearing my voice, right?

Megan:            It's just energy.

Jessica:            It's vibration. It's vibration. It's energy, which is why I can't hear certain sounds, but other animals can because it's just the way my ears are configured. It's the way ears are configured. I just learned the other day that ravens and crows are not black.

Megan:            What?

Jessica:            They are actually rainbow-colored, but human eyes can't perceive the fucking colors.

Megan:            Oh my gosh. Wow.

Jessica:            Yeah. It broke my brain. It's still breaking my brain because I love ravens and crows, and I love their color. But the truth is they're black, but you can kind of see almost an oil spill you can kind of see.

Megan:            Exactly. An iridescent⁠—yeah.

Jessica:            Yes. It's because they're actually rainbow-colored.

Megan:            Wow. My friend told me about this, too, with starlings. They're also kind of iridescent that way.

Jessica:            Yes, and butterflies can see so many more colors than us. So it seems like we've taken a detour, but we haven't, and let me tell you why. The truth of the matter is a human's perception includes the complex, nuanced set of senses that is interconnected to the energetics of what is, what's coming, and what was. And for some of us, we're wired more for it. I'm not the person who's going to be like, "everybody's an artist." No. I can't draw. Don't ask me to draw you a picture.

Megan:            Please don't.

Jessica:            Exactly. Not everybody is good at all the things. That said, it is an inherent thing. Not everybody has a good ear for music, and that doesn't mean that hearing isn't part of a lot of humans' physiology. Not all humans' physiology, right?

Megan:            Right, but a lot.

Jessica:            A lot of humans. And similarly, psychic is actually a part of the human condition, from my perspective. Now, psychic like we see it on TV where it's like, "Oh, the woman⁠—she's wise. She knows things"⁠—no. That's actually not it. Most people who are psychic will say pretty much what you said. "I kind of know things, and I don't know what to do with it. It's not terribly useful. And then I get validation when the thing happens, and I'm like, "Oh. That's what that was. Right. Useless, or kind of interesting at best."

Megan:            Right.

Jessica:            Now, sometimes it can be exceptionally helpful, like in random, isolated things in life that are kind of like pinnacle experiences, or if you become somebody like me where you're like, "Okay, I'm going to dedicate my life to cultivating this skill and using this skill." My skill is exceptionally helpful for other people. You want to know how helpful it is for me to be psychic? I won't say zero percent, but I'm going to say maybe five to seven percent. Not very. Not very.

Megan:            Yeah. That sounds right.

Jessica:            Exactly. And so, in fact, the more you cultivate the skill⁠—it's kind of like I have excellent hearing. I have really good hearing, actually. But that means I can hear all my neighbors' shit. Do you know what I mean?

Megan:            Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, I was sitting in my house, and I could hear the tape on something rattling.

Jessica:            Correct.

Megan:            And I was like, "Oh my God."

Jessica:            So it's not just the physiological function of hearing. It's also having the kind of mind where you're listening and you're tracking⁠—Scorpio.

Megan:            Yes. That really relates to me because I tell my friends a lot, and I⁠—we've talked of kind of how I build those energetic boundaries around that because I don't even⁠—for a long time, I didn't think I was psychic. I thought I was just paying attention.

Jessica:            Correct. Yes.

Megan:            I was like, "You don't know that this person⁠—if you look at them, you can tell that this happened and that." So, now that I'm like, "Okay. Not everyone pays attention like me, but also, maybe there's this other piece of me that is really tapped into those vibrations"⁠—yeah. How do I—because I am interested in cultivating it because I don't want to dislike this part of myself. I think that's part of my, also, spiritual healing. And I've read Cyndi Dale's book about energetic boundaries, and I think my spiritual boundaries are really difficult for me.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Megan:            But yeah, it's just confusing.

Jessica:            It's confusing. So, again, I'm going to speak to layers of what you're just mentioning. One is you've got a stellium in Scorpio. You're tracking everything. You're tracking the sounds you're hearing in the house. You're tracking the sensations in your body. You're tracking your grudges from high school.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            You're tracking everything all at once because you have a stellium in Scorpio. And so how do you separate that from psychic ability? My answer is, why would you bother to try and separate it? Why would you bother? To what end?

Megan:            True.

Jessica:            The reality is, psychic to psychic, I'm always shocked when people don't pick up on the same⁠—it seems like it's obvious. It's just sitting there. It's just sitting there.

Megan:            So obvious. And I feel rude.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's fair. And I don't know. Maybe I am being psychic, and sometimes maybe I'm just being perceptive and tracking things because when we have a lot of Scorpio in the chart or we have a really strong Plutonian dynamic, it turns you into a tracker, right?

Megan:            Wow.

Jessica:            You track things as a survival mechanism. You track things unconsciously. So is it a psychic perception, or is it a perception? And does it matter?

Megan:            Good point.

Jessica:            I would contend it doesn't matter.

Megan:            And I think that's fair because I think the reason I'm contending with it mattering is based on that bullshit. It's not bullshit for everyone. You know, whatever. But it feels like a weight of⁠—

Jessica:            It's a judgment that you have and a fear that you're dealing with matters that are inherently evil, which we need to speak to. Okay?

Megan:            Yeah. And I think even you saying that⁠—I'm like, "I don't think it's evil." But⁠—I don't, but I did. I was just talking to my friend. I was literally homeschooled growing up. I was in it. So it is hard for me because my other parent is like an atheist, so I did have some context. But yeah, I do have a lot of that stuff. And it shows up in so many ways because I am interested in so many new spiritual practices, but I'm slow to pick up on it because I'm afraid of how that's going to up my psychicness, I guess.

Jessica:            Here are my theories about the belief in the occult being evil. Again, the primary belief that I hold around that is it gives you direct access to divinity, to guidance, and then you don't need the church.

Megan:            Or the man.

Jessica:            Or the man that runs it. And related to that, who tends to be the most psychic? I know psychic men are very loud on the fucking internet. They've been loud before the internet, psychic men. It really is a thing. It really is a thing. However, it tends to be women who are tapped in and receiving this guidance. So what would this world look like? I don't know if you know about the spiritualist church. Have you ever heard of the spiritualist church?

Megan:            I don't think so.

Jessica:            They're a church of mediums. And it started in basically Europe and the U.S., from what I understand.

Megan:            Oh, yes. Okay. yes.

Jessica:            You've heard of it? They're like big abolitionists. And being a medium, a practicing medium, was one of the first ways that white women got to work, right?

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            They got to make their own money. They got to travel. They got to be self-fulfilled. This is what happens when you kind of get into the woo. And I think that that is part of the demonization of this stuff. And there's a ton more we could talk about culturally and politically and all the things. But I will add something else. It can be dangerous. That's not 100 percent wrong.

Megan:            Come on. That's just it.

Jessica:            That's just it. And the truth of the matter is, how do you protect yourself from something you're not sure you're perceiving and you cannot see with your eyes or touch with your hands? I don't know.

Megan:            No.

Jessica:            No.

Megan:            When you find out, please let me know.

Jessica:            I know. Okay. Well, I actually do know. I actually do know. It is a lie. [crosstalk].

Megan:            I just was like, "Damn. If you don't know..."

Jessica:            Yeah. No. I mean, I do and I don't, right? Okay. I'm going to share with you something. Okay. And what I do is I check my Tarot cards, so checking to make sure this would be a constructive thing to share. A number of hours ago⁠—because we're on different coasts. You've been awake a lot longer than me.

Megan:            Yes. True.

Jessica:            A number of hours ago, I was sitting around in my home, and I could feel in my third eye something really in there. Something was physically uncomfortable. Something was hurting. Do you ever get that, where you're⁠—in your head, the center of your head, you get a weird headache?

Megan:            Yeah, I do.

Jessica:            That's your third eye, right in the center. That's your third eye. And the reason why we call it the third eye⁠—and I know, again, from a Christian perspective, it can be a scary concept. But it really is just a point where we hear. So you can hear through your ears. You also can hear through this energy center in your physiology. So it's feeling what felt really kind of bad. Now, before I knew I was psychic, I'd be like, "Oh God. I have a headache. What's wrong with me? I have a headache. Oh shit. I have to do a reading later, and I've got a headache. What's going to happen?" Da-da-da. But I was like, "Oh, okay. Well, what is this?" And you were nervous about your reading. You were nervous about your reading.

Megan:            I was so nervous. I literally knew⁠—I said, "Jessica's going to be able to tell, so I gotta relax."

Jessica:            Well, you were fine by the time we actually got in the reading, but what I was feeling in my third eye was you were nervous, and you were trying to get ahead of the experience. You were like, "What's going to happen? What's going to happen?" So, because you're a good little tracker, you were energetically trying to ferret it out. And so I could feel it, and I was like, "Okay. It feels bad in my system." But I feel that it wasn't anything harmful. It was just⁠—I could feel your fear was in my system. So I just gently moved you back to guidance.

Megan:            And I felt that. I'm going to be real. I was, like, driving⁠—I noticed I was anxious because I thought I didn't have headphones. I drove to Target, and then I⁠—as I was coming back from Target, I was like, "It doesn't matter what happens. Nothing matters."

Jessica:            All it was was you connected with your guidance. That's all. It was just getting more like⁠—instead of looking outside of yourself, you tapped into yourself, right?

Megan:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            That's the move. So, as a psychic⁠—and there are so many different levels of psychic. I am also a medium. There's a million different things, and again, I've been cultivating this skill on purpose for a long time, so that makes it stronger, just like if you're building any muscle, like you're building a bicep, it gets stronger.

Megan:            Yeah. Going to the gym.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It gets stronger, it gets stronger, and you can use it more adeptly. So, again, the psychic, right? I want to say if you had the experience you're going to hang out with a new friend, and the new friend is nervous because they have a little bit of social anxiety and they think you're really cool, you might experience physical pain or mental anxiety or whatever it is because you're open. And they're not trying to harm you. They're just having a human experience, and you are permeable.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            Being psychic is really like being a loofah sponge, right?

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            It's permeability. And so you might start to feel that anxiety and then be like, "I don't want to hang out with this person anymore because"⁠—

Megan:            Oh my God. Yeah.

Jessica:            ⁠—"I feel anxious. What's wrong with me?"

Megan:            I feel that. It's really hard because I'm in this relatively new place. I used to have all my friends from childhood. I do feel that a lot out here, and it's been interesting because I've only had a positive experience with the people, but I'm paranoid. I'm a Scorpio stellium.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Megan:            And I feel a lot of that. Yeah. This very much resonates.

Jessica:            You're going to feel other people's stuff. And so the practice, the lifelong practice, of navigating your sensitivity⁠—like let's say you can eat pizza. You can have an ice cream cone, but you're going to have consequences. It's not like it's going to ruin your whole entire life. You're lactose sensitive, maybe.

Megan:            My friends listening to this are going to laugh so hard. I literally start sneezing when I have dairy. It's basically an allergy. But I just don't care.

Jessica:            You just push through every damn time. What I'm talking about with psychic is similar to having a lactose sensitivity. In your 20s, are you going to run around the world eating all the ice cream, scarfing all the pizza? Yes.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            When you hit your later 30s, are you going to maybe not so much? Maybe in your 30s, you're going to start using Lactate or something. And then, by the time you hit your 40s, you're going to be like, "It's not fucking worth it to me." Sure. Yeah. Okay. Similar with psychic, right?

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Eventually, what the big-picture practice is is to develop psychological, emotional, and energetic boundaries so that you can be like, "Okay. I'm feeling a lot of anxiety before I go and have this social experience. I'm going to practice, for a moment, just breathing, getting really present, bringing all my energy inside of myself, and releasing whatever is not mine back to whence it came.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            When I do it, personally, I do what I did with you⁠—was I didn't just give you your energy back; I gave it back to your guidance. I gave it to your guidance because that helps you get aligned.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And to me, that is the most gentle and supportive way I do it. And so that is my hot tip for you.

Megan:            Yeah. I mean, I felt it.

Jessica:            And it makes it a lot easier. So, because of your permeability, you felt it when it happened. Somebody else isn't going to be really completely aware of what they're feeling, right? But you feel it. So the practice is noticing what you're feeling and knowing yourself well enough to know what's not yours.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's really hard to do at your age. It's, again, like you're at the beginning age of where it starts to become possible. Do you know what I mean? Because you're⁠—

Megan:            Yes. I know what you⁠—I always still call it my brain turning on. My friends laugh at me. I'm like, "No, my brain turned on a few years ago, and I think it's still booting up."

Jessica:            It is. Yeah.

Megan:            But it's booting up.

Jessica:            Yeah. I mean, your Saturn is in Pisces. It's early Pisces. So your Saturn Return is completed, but you haven't hit your Christ year, right?

Megan:            No.

Jessica:            You haven't hit your 33rd year, where everything kind of gets integrated into the system.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And right now, you're currently going through a number of Uranus transits. So you're changing rapidly and in ways you hadn't predicted.

Megan:            Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned that, because I do consult with another astrologer, who's been great, and I really love working with them. And they talked about these Uranus transits, and I've been trying to learn more about Uranus. And every time, I'm just so⁠—I guess I'm overwhelmed because I'm still a new student. And also, it does feel like, "Yeah, you're never going to be the same. Everything you're going through"⁠—it's like a true chrysalis, like I'm in the cocoon. I'm turning into mush, and then I'll come out.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Megan:            But I also feel like I need to live while that's happening.

Jessica:            You do. So what Uranus transits want you to do is live. Uranus transits, whenever they occur, want you to try new things in new ways; go to new places. When somebody is like, "I've lived in the same place my whole life," I'm like, "Okay. Walk to your bestie's house in a different route than you usually do. Change it up, at the very least," because what Uranus wants you to do is to live in new ways. And that doesn't mean all the new things are going to work.

Megan:            No.

Jessica:            It's not about being perfect or landing. It's about experience. It's about experimentation. That's what Uranus wants. Uranus governs the nervous system, and so this buzzing self-awareness without conclusiveness is Uranus. Conclusions come after the Uranus transits are over.

Megan:            When do you think that⁠—when does that look like for me?

Jessica:            I don't have to think about it. I know exactly.

Megan:            Exactly. I had a feeling.

Jessica:            Hold on. I didn't write it down. So okay. Currently, for the record, Uranus is opposing your Sun at 22 degrees Scorpio, 35; opposing your Jupiter at 24 degrees Scorpio, 39; and opposing your Pluto at 27 degrees Scorpio, 45.

Megan:            For the people.

Jessica:            For the people. So the Uranus opposition to your Sun will be over the 13th of March 2025.

Megan:            Oh. Okay. All right.

Jessica:            Soon.

Megan:            The horizon.

Jessica:            Yeah. Oh, very soon. Very soon. The Uranus opposition to your Jupiter⁠—that one will be over⁠—let's see⁠—in late April 2025.

Megan:            Okay. So spring '25.

Jessica:            Yeah. Spring '25. And then the Uranus opposition to Pluto will be over in the spring of '26.

Megan:            Yeah. I knew that one was going to be a long one.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. It's also just like⁠—it's barely begun is what it is.

Megan:            True.

Jessica:            But because whenever we have a transit impacting a planet that's in a stellium⁠—because your Sun, Jupiter, Pluto are all conjunct, and your Mercury/Venus is conjunct each other but not conjunct the Sun/Jupiter/Pluto. Whenever we have a stellium get hit by an outer planet, what happens is it drags out the effects of each of the transits because they function as somebody in a three-legged race.

Megan:            Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            Your Sun doesn't really function outside of your Jupiter or your Pluto.

Megan:            Right. That's, I think, been the hardest part because I was so interested in having this stellium, and then when I realized these were the actual planets that were conjunct⁠—because the whole thing felt like a stellium before I was learning more. Then I was like, "Oh shit. I need a lot more information," because these are heavy-hitter planets, from my baby astrologer perspective. And again, like you said, I totally feel it. It really does⁠—it's my life. It's me.

Jessica:            Yeah. The thing to know is that your ability to track things is relentless, and you have a lot of skills with which to do it. You have your intellect. You have your obsessiveness. You have your capacity to make connections, and you have your psychic abilities. Right?

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            All of these are different skill sets. They're all kind of rooted in different planetary placements. What's important is that you allow yourself to be yourself. You have these perceptions. You are intense. You have very little chill.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            All these things are true stories. Cultivating self-acceptance and self-awareness is the foundation to acting in integrity, acting in alignment.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And you don't have to act in alignment with somebody who's just got lots of Libra and prefers to keep things a little more on the surface and isn't going to start at the roots. You're you. Start at the fucking roots. And the roots, for you, go into the underworld. And I know, again⁠—

Megan:            Fourth house.

Jessica:            Well, yes, but also, I meant like Pluto.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            They go into the underworld. They go into people's motivations. You meet somebody, and you're not just like, "Oh, they're fun." You're like, "Oh, they're fun, but clearly they're just clocking power in the room."

Megan:            Yeah, 100 percent, all the time.

Jessica:            Yeah. All the time. And so, again, from the Christian⁠—and I am very far from an expert on anything to do with Christianity, but⁠—

Megan:            Thank goodness.

Jessica:            Well, and also, to be fair, because I know enough to know how little I know, right? But, that said, I know that from a Christian perspective, the concept of the underworld is associated with hell and demons and bad.

Megan:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            But from my concept, I don't believe in hell, and I don't have any kind of negative association with the concept of what's deep at the core and the root. I don't fear that [indiscernible 00:26:33]. So I want to give you that kind of contextual⁠—

Megan:            That's helpful. Yeah. And it's helpful to hear because when you said that, I'm like, "Me neither." But I do, right?

Jessica:            Of course. Yes.

Megan:            That's kind of why I'm here.

Jessica:            Yes. Of course. And again, coming back to it's not 100 percent wrong. For me to tell you as a psychic person that I haven't encountered really terrible energies would be lies. I, of course, have. This morning, when I could feel you in my third eye, you had no negative intentions. You were just a little scared⁠—life. Shit. Have I met people who actually wished me harm? Fuck yeah. Is somebody right now listening to this reading who actually actively wishes me harm? Probably.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            This is the reality, is that when you're sensitive, you're going to receive. You're going to feel. And when a person has a trauma history, a strong Pluto, or a Scorpio in stellium⁠—maybe all three; I'm not pointing fingers⁠—what happens is your survival mechanisms say, "I'm going to track everything. I'm going to track everything, and it's going to keep me safe because if I track it, then I know what's coming. And if I know what's coming, I can protect myself."

                        And the truth of the matter is, when you have psychic ability, tracking things can be a burden that harms you. It can have you calling in the very things you wish to keep at bay. It can also have you fixated on everything outside of you, abandoning what's within you, which is actually what you can and should control, right?

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            Yes.

Megan:            Yes. And I noticed that even just in some of my psychic ways because I also feel like I tend towards judgment in a way I don't like. And I'm sure you can see that.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Megan:            And what I've noticed has started happening is maybe I'll judge someone for something, and then that thing will happen to me.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Megan:            And I know it's a lesson. Listening to you, I'm like, "That's a lesson to my self-compassion. I gotta get that together." But it's uncanny how often this is happening.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. And that's how you know that you're on the right path. I know it feels like it's punishment, but the truth is, again, the kind of Christian perspective is that the universe is a carceral system. It's basically like bad people go to jail, and they get punished or tortured in jail, right?

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            People deserve bondage if they are bad people in this life.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            And I think it's way too easy to dismantle where that comes from and what that's really about. You know what I mean?

Megan:            I mean, yeah, it's right there. It's literally right there.

Jessica:            It's right there. It's on the surface. It's not hard to unpack. And also, it goes generations and generations and around the globe.

Megan:            Yeah. Yes.

Jessica:            So how do you reject that? And what I would encourage you to do is to not reject it, but instead to explore it, because the truth is⁠—I don't know. I mean, I talk to dead people, and I've never talked to anyone in heaven or in hell, personally.

Megan:            Oh. That's good to know, I guess.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Megan:            I wish evil politicians hell all the time, but that's not going there.

Jessica:            I mean, this is the tricky thing about having such strong Scorpio stuff in you is that it does give you a carceral lens.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            It gives you this punishment drive, like, "Bad people deserve bad things, and I should bring the bad things upon them."

Megan:            [crosstalk].

Jessica:            It does give you that. Yes. Yeah.

Megan:            And I mean, I don't like it. I don't believe it. I consider myself an abolitionist. And also, if I said something to my friend and that happens, I have to actively stop myself from saying, "I told you so."

Jessica:            Yep. Mm-hmm. Okay. Good. So the "told you so" is Jupiter. It's Jupiter/Pluto in particular. But what it is is practicing a true appreciation that I cannot ever learn your lessons for you. You get to learn your lessons at your pace in your way. And the truth is you can have a friend who's dating some fucking fuckboy, whatever, and you're just like, "Babe, I love you. Don't do it. Let me explain it to you."

Megan:            Yep.

Jessica:            And then exactly what you say is going to happen happens. And then they're like, "I don't get it. I'm so confused. But I like him." Right?

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            This kind of thing can happen over and over on a million different levels. And when we get into trouble as the advice giver is when we assume that other people have the same chart as we do⁠—let's use astrology terms, right⁠?—the same path that we do. You can be really wise about some things. I assure you you are absolutely not about others, because you're a person, right?

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And the thing about, for instance, for me, giving readings is⁠—listen. I see your chart. I see where you've been. I see what's coming next. Okay. Fine. I don't have any attachment to you or anyone I give readings to taking my advice⁠—none, zero percent⁠—because the only thing that my advice is good for is helping you figure out what's right for you.

Megan:            That's helpful.

Jessica:            It's helping you live your life. Your problems, the bad things that are happening to you and around you, the mistakes you make⁠—they are not a deviation from your path. They are your path.

Megan:            Yes. Even⁠—yes. Yes.

Jessica:            You know it. Intellectually, you know it.

Megan:            But I don't feel it.

Jessica:            Not yet. That's okay. It's a practice. This is the thing. This is your path. With all that Scorpio, of course you have a punishing streak. Of course you're like, "I'm going to find the answer, and then I'm going to own the answer, and then I will give you the answer or not. And then, if I'm giving you the answer, you better fucking take the answer because I've given you the answer." Right?

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            So that's in you. Your factory settings are not your destiny. They're your factory settings. They're strengths to the relentlessness and the intensity and the depth of Scorpio. And there's challenges with the relentlessness and the intensity and the depth of Scorpio. And knowing that there is a part of you that really resonates with the concept of heaven and hell⁠—if you're good, you get a reward; if you're bad, you get a punishment. There's a part of you that really⁠—that makes sense. That feels right. And then there's a part of you that just knows that is outside of what's in alignment with you.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            If you reject the carceral heaven and hell thing, then you never explore it. And if you don't explore it, then you don't find your truth in it.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And the mistake that all humans make⁠—and some of us make it relentlessly and forever, and some of us make it at times⁠—is we reject the things that spike fear. And when you reject what provokes fear inside of you, then you never get to truly understand why. Why, why, why, why, why? Why is it that you need people to listen to you when you're right? Is it because you need validation that you're right from the outside of you? A little bit.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            A little bit.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You got Mars conjunct your Ascendant in Leo. Do you want your flowers 100 percent of the time? Yes. You want people to say you were right; you know things.

Megan:            Literally. Yes.

Jessica:            Yes. You do want that.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Also, Sun/Jupiter conjunction⁠—you do want that. Is it also because there's a part of you that feels, "If I worked hard enough to give you good advice, and then you didn't take my advice, you've wasted my time"? Because you were in it in kind of a capitalistic way. You're like, "I am doing this labor for you, so you need to do the labor for me of listening to me."

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            "Otherwise, I've wasted my time." And this kind of perspective⁠—make sense? And don't feel bad. Don't feel bad. I want you to not feel bad about it.

Megan:            No. I don't feel bad, and I work a profession where this is literally the transaction.

Jessica:            Okay. What do you do?

Megan:            I'm a librarian. I like it when people, obviously, come to me to ask for new information. And then, also, I work in a university. Students are very much⁠—they come back to me, and I'm like, "Well, we already talked about this."

Jessica:            Yeah.

Megan:            "We did already discuss this."

Jessica:            "We discussed this." So okay. I'm so glad you brought this up because in that situation where there's clarity and structure to the transaction⁠—right?

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            There, you get to have behavioral boundaries. I need you to write this down. Pull out your phone. Put it in the notes of your phone.

Megan:            Good point.

Jessica:            Yep. That's a great boundary for you because you don't want to have to repeat yourself. That's fine. That's great. That's a professional boundary.

Megan:            Yeah. That's a good point.

Jessica:            And it's fair. It's completely appropriate to the dynamic. If you have a friend⁠—so here's my rule. Three times. Three times. If I have a friend who comes to me and is like, "I don't understand. This is freaking me out," and they're going through a thing, I'm going to give them advice one time. The second time, same exact question⁠—I'm going to really listen. I'm going to really think about it. I'm really going to give them advice.

Megan:            Right.

Jessica:            Third time, identical⁠—I'm going to truly listen. I'm going to search inside of myself. I'm going to give them advice. If it's the exact same question, I'm treating it like⁠—that's okay.

Megan:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Let's go there. I mean, and this is like⁠—

Megan:            Fourth time?

Jessica:            The fourth time is like, "Oh, babe, we've talked about this. Do you want me to listen, or do you want feedback? Because I feel like I've given you lots of feedback, and I'm just not sure that you actually want it."

Megan:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            So I ask them to take responsibility for what they're asking me to do because, for me, as a professional advice giver, there is a boundary there. There's a line there. And that doesn't count if somebody's going through a death in the⁠—you know. There's exceptions to every rule.

Megan:            Yeah. Right.

Jessica:            There's exceptions to every rule. But this is not about me controlling how I give advice to my loved ones. It's about me navigating my own tendency towards resentment. Right?

Megan:            Yeah. And my loved ones⁠—

Jessica:            Does that make sense?

Megan:            Yes, because I think a big reason I've tried really hard to swallow that "I told you so" is that my loved ones are great, and I love them, and they're very honest with me. They're like, "I don't tell you things because I feel that." And that makes me sad because, again, I want to be in relationship more than I want to be right.

Jessica:            Yep.

Megan:            So I'm grateful that they tell me these things, but then that means I get off the phone, and then I'm furiously journaling.

Jessica:            Yeah. Of course. So here's a golden nugget. I really hope you take it to heart and practice it. When somebody says something's going on or you can feel something's going on, say, "Do you want me to give you my patented real-talk feedback, or do you want a friend to just listen? Because I can just listen."

Megan:            Yeah. I've gotten better at that.

Jessica:            Yeah. You know what? Even if you get great at it, it's never going to be your complete, full-throated tendencies. Do you know what I mean?

Megan:            True.

Jessica:            Your factory settings are to be a little like, "I'm going to tell you what to do. Go do it. Fuck off." And that's okay because we have free will within our nature.

Megan:            Okay. I'm always curious because one of my questions from before was, is that Mars? Is that Mars in my Ascendant? Because I feel like I have a lot of anger that I don't feel comfortable displacing because it's not anyone else's but mine, and it doesn't have productive use. And there are times when it does, right? But most times, I feel like I just⁠—yeah, that resentment, that, "You made me feel bad for no fault of your own"⁠—what is that?

Jessica:            Okay. It's an Aries Moon.

Megan:            Forgot about that one.

Jessica:            Did you? It's a Mars conjunct into the Ascendant in Leo. It's a Sun conjunction to Jupiter and a Sun/Jupiter conjunction to Pluto. It's also a Scorpio stellium.

Megan:            Yeah. All [crosstalk].

Jessica:            It is all the fucking things. So it's all of those things at once.

Megan:            Wow.

Jessica:            You do need an outlet for your anger. What I would recommend is practicing noticing when you're angry because your Mars is conjunct the Ascendant, but it's in the twelfth house, so it's still a twelfth-house Mars.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You have value judgments around anger⁠—

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            ⁠—which is why all that Scorpio takes over, and it's like, "That's cool. We'll just do bitter resentment." You're welcome.

Megan:            It's colder. It's on ice.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And also, it's deep in your fucking guts. And so it doesn't come out on the surface. Now, you're terrible at hiding things because Mars is conjunct your Ascendant, and you do have an Aries Moon. So this is why friends are scared of telling you shit sometimes. So here's the move. Have a dance practice.

Megan:            Yeah. It's so funny you say that because I think a lot of, also, what I'm feeling with my psychicness is I know what to do. The dance practice⁠—I used to have a little note that was like, "Try and dance every day."

Jessica:            Yes. That's right.

Megan:            And I bike because I just gotta get some energy out of me.

Jessica:            Okay. So here's the negative about biking.

Megan:            Oh, hit me with it.

Jessica:            Bicycles are Mercury. And what they do⁠—a bicycle navigates cars, Mars.

Megan:            Tracking.

Jessica:            Yeah. So it puts you in this place where you're defensive, and you're not completely safe if you're driving in a city.

Megan:            Yes. Oh, yes.

Jessica:            And so this is where, if we want to channel Mars, try to do it through the actions of Mars. So learn how to box. Learn how to kickbox. Do capoeira. Dance. Those are all actions of Mars. Work with copper. Make copper jewelry.

Megan:            Oh. Yeah.

Jessica:            You know what I mean? You can go ahead and google, what is it that Mars governs? And make a list of those things. And then, when you're like, "Oh, I can feel my agitation, my irritation, my anger coming to the surface," you can pull out that list in your phone and be like, "What on this list can I do for three minutes today?" Maybe you could do it for a half hour. Maybe you could do it for two hours. But maybe you could do it for three minutes.

Megan:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            We're going for practice, not perfection here. And so finding ways of embodying⁠—because Mars is about your body⁠—embodying Mars will help you, and they can't be the same all the time because you have Uranus and Neptune in your sixth house, so you get bored.

Megan:            Oh, yes.

Jessica:            So you can't dance every day. You can dance every day for four days, and then you get bored of it.

Megan:            That's so true.

Jessica:            Yeah. So sometimes it'll be dance. Back in the '90s, there was this thing that was really popular. It was called primal scream therapy. And really, all it was⁠—have you heard of it?

Megan:            I used to be obsessed with this as a kid, and my mom was so freaked out. She was like, "Why do you know about this?" I was like, "It just sounds so fun."

Jessica:            It is. So all you have to do, if you live in a city, is just scream into your pillow. It's really that fucking simple. Just scream your fucking face off. The value judgments you hold around experiencing and containing your emotions⁠—they're inherently⁠—you're colonizing your own emotions, basically. Right?

Megan:            Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            You have a North Node in Scorpio, and you're too young to overly fixate on it. I do not want to encourage you to fixate on it, but I will say this. In this lifetime, you're not supposed to play by all the rules that are conventional to society. You're supposed to do what is deeply authentic for you⁠—deeply authentic. And one thing that's deeply authentic for you is you get mad. You get mad. You get irritated, you get restless, and you get mad. And that's not bad. What you do with it is bad. Power's not bad. Rage isn't bad. Anger isn't bad. I know a lot of spiritual woo-woo people will disagree, but I say fuck that. Be fucking mad. There are so many things to be mad about.

Megan:            Sound advice.

Jessica:            Don't be mad about the shit that's not worth it.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's where it's about if you have a lived practice of being like, "I know what's happening in the world, and I'm carrying rage. And it's coming out when my friends do stupid things, but I know it's not about my friends. It's that I haven't processed and expressed and explored the rage I'm having about this other thing, and so it's coming out in safe places⁠"—your friends.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Right?

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            That's a lot of what it is. And when you're psychic, it's worse because you're more sensitive. And so what a lot of people do is they avoid politics. They avoid what's happening in the world because then their mind and their energy is on the same plane, so it feels worse in the short term. But it's actually empowering because you can be able to track⁠—I have this particular sensitivity. You want to talk about useless sensitivities? Get ready. Get ready.

Megan:            Oh no.

Jessica:            I feel like⁠—I live in California, where there's drought.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            But I travel also. And when rain is about to come⁠—not a drizzle, but a big⁠—you know how sometimes the environment drops a rain? My mood goes bananas. My psychic instinct⁠—

Megan:            Whoa.

Jessica:            ⁠—around rain dropping, a big rainfall coming, is⁠—it's a psychic thing that I have, and it's so useless and so annoying. Literally, there's no utility to it. But once I was able to figure out, "Oh, that's what this feeling is. There's this unique experience of agitation that is one of many, many, many, many, many ways I feel agitated. I feel agitated in a lot of ways. I have no conflict with being mad or irritated myself. And so there's lots of ways that I feel, but there's this one particular way. And it took me a long time, like years, to figure out, "Oh, this is related to weather. Okay."

                        So now, when I start to feel it, I will look at the weather app. I will check in and be like, "Well, this is really consistent with how I usually feel before weird weather things happen. And I'm just going to try to notice that in my body." And then, nine out of ten times, the weird weather thing happens, and then it's over. It breaks. But the thing is I could never figure that out if I was busy judging my anger or reacting in a knee-jerk way.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Does that make sense?

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And what you have a habit of doing at this time, trying to judge it, or letting it leak out of you in weird ways instead of being interested in it and exploring it.

Megan:            Yeah. Yeah. Completely.

Jessica:            And the thing about all that Scorpio in your chart is you could apply your detective shit to your own self, to your challenging emotions. It's not your habit. It's not your current skill set, but it is in your nature. It's a way you can kind of adapt so that you're not wasting so much time trying to change or track things outside of you; instead, you're using it to evolve the things inside of you, track the things inside of you, because through that practice, if it's not done in a carceral way, what you can achieve is greater self-awareness about what you're actually feeling.

                        And then, if you have a friend who you absolutely love who talks a lot, and you know⁠—and I bet you do because [crosstalk]⁠—

Megan:            Oh yeah. I'm a yapper.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. So, if you have a friend who talks a lot and you're like, "I am actually just feeling really prickly right now," then you might know that the friend who talks a lot might receive more of your judgment because when you're prickly, you're more likely to cling on to external things.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Megan:            So, depending on where the friend is at and where you're at, you might reschedule plans, not because you don't love them, not because they're doing anything wrong, but because you're learning how to navigate the boundaries of what you can do in a healthy way.

Megan:            Right. Right.

Jessica:            Now, I want to come back to something if I can.

Megan:            Let's come back.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. It's the second part. I'm going to have you say your full name out loud.

Megan:            I am so honored, I want to say, to get to do this.

Jessica:            Oh. Okay.

Megan:            My name is [redacted].

Jessica:            Okay. So we've kind of touched on the parts of you that are scared of psychic because of your Christian upbringing. But there's this other part which we haven't touched on, which is, "If I have this, it's a gift. And if it's a gift, I'm supposed to use it."

Megan:            Oh my God. Yeah.

Jessica:            And you don't want to.

Megan:            Yeah. So then I'm glad that you asked this because I think that "So what?" piece of my question is how I feel about all of my gifts because I think the way that it comes up mostly right now is in beauty. I'm pretty, but I don't care. What does that mean, and why would that matter? And I think that about so many things because I do a lot of things well, and I'm very proud of that. Not really, actually. I'm not proud of that. I don't care.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Megan:            But I kind of should care, I think⁠—or maybe not should, but I think I do want to. I want to feel like I'm in an alignment with using being here for a reason. And there's a lot of Christianity upbringing of, "God gave you these things. You have to use it. You should leave here empty."

Jessica:            Oh, that's weird.

Megan:            There's a lot of that in here. It is weird. Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. I never heard that before. Okay. So there's layers to this. Don't leave here empty. I mean, that's weird. I mean, I kind of get⁠—I never heard that before. I think I can kind of get what it means, but that's so weird. So, if we hold what you're saying with an anti-capitalist lens⁠—right?

Megan:            Sure.

Jessica:            Then, essentially, that's an extractive idea. "If I can do my friends' taxes well, I should be a CPA." Right?

Megan:            Sure.

Jessica:            It's like, "I should pull these skills."

Megan:            Yeah. I totally feel that way. And I think of the generation I'm in. I'm around so many people that do that, and not my close intimate friends, but when I'm on the internet, it feels like everyone just took the thing they're good at, and now they're selling me something.

Jessica:            Yeah. Well, everybody has turned themselves into an advertisement board, really.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            This is like the end of Web 2. I don't know. Maybe it'll stick through Web 3. We are in a really odd place. And while we are living through a time where I think anti-capitalist values are really much more mainstream, ironically, so many individuals have turned themselves into billboards. And that's⁠—it is what it is.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            We could judge it. We could recognize how it's really valuable⁠—pros and cons of it all because we're living in broken systems, and everyone's trying to fucking survive, and some people don't give a fuck. Right?

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            So it's all the things. But, that said, this gets to a core issue, which is, what is the point of life? What is the point of life? Are you here to get into heaven? Because if you are, okay, you should follow a set of instructions and do all the things you can do to get into heaven, and then that's the whole point of life. If you don't believe that, which⁠—I will say you don't believe that, but you don't not believe it.

Megan:            No, definitely.

Jessica:            It's in there. It's in there.

Megan:            Definitely. And for me, I think heaven becomes a sense of, like, "Will people talk about me when I'm dead?"

Jessica:            Interesting. Well, that's your Mars and your Jupiter, okay?

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So that's like⁠—people talking about you when you're dead⁠— I can tell you, as somebody who talks to dead people, it doesn't do you any good one way or another. What do you fucking care if people who live on another dimension are talking about you? You really aren't going to care. What you're going to care about is how you lived your life and how it felt to you.

Megan:            Right.

Jessica:            That's what you're going to care about.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            It's the emotional part. It's the part that's at the bottom of everyone's list of things to do in capitalism, in industry, and even in religion. It is the emotional health part, which is why I'm obsessed with that and that's the thrust of my work as a humanistic astrologer. And the truth of the matter is this is your one precious life. It doesn't matter if there's reincarnation. It's irrelevant to this conversation. It doesn't even matter if there's a heaven or hell. This is your one precious life as you.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And you actually have free will and agency.

Megan:            I have a hard time tapping into that sometimes.

Jessica:            Yeah. Well, I think everybody does. And also, it's a lot of responsibility. How do you want to live your life? Why do you want to be alive? What are you going to do while you're stuck on this planet?

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Me and you both. I don't fucking know. Also, when you come up with an answer or a series of answers, life gets easier to live because the truth of the matter is, if you have the ability to say to yourself, "I want to be happy. I want to have relationships that are good for them and for me. I want to have abundance, and I'm going to define it in x, y, and z ways," okay. Then you don't have to be a professional psychic if you're a psychic, and you don't have to be a professional CPA if you're good at taxes.

Megan:            Right. Right.

Jessica:            You don't need to do those things. You can choose to do those things if you believe that they are in alignment with your bigger-picture ambitions.

Megan:            I don't even know if I have ambitions. That's my other thing.

Jessica:            That is the thing. It's part of the Scorpio stellium, actually.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            It's not worldly.

Megan:            No.

Jessica:            I mean, this is the thing about all this Scorpio energy. It's not Neptunian. It's not Piscean. It's not otherworldly in that way. It's otherworldly in a deep, sticky, roiling way. It's like magma at the center of the earth. It's undertow or the unexplored parts of the ocean. That's Scorpio for you.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And so what is really important to you is what's under the surface, which is why these worldly ambition questions make you feel, "I don't fucking care. I don't know." Also, you do care and you do want to know because you are ambitious. You have Mars conjunct the Ascendant in Leo. You want people to not talk about you when you're gone. You want them to talk about you in very specific terms. Right?

Megan:            Yeah. I had a moment literally just today where I was like, "Oh, I think it might be harder for me not to be ambitious than it is for me to be ambitious."

Jessica:            Correct. Yeah. That's right. So here's the thing about ambition. If your ambitions are pointed outside of you⁠—in other words, what you do, and not what you are⁠—

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            ⁠—and it's not authentic to you, it will feel exhausting. It will feel like it's draining your energy⁠—

Megan:            Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            ⁠—which is why the way you have been thinking about your ambitions and what you, quote unquote, "should or shouldn't" do⁠—it's exhausting to you. It strips you of your energy. It's because you're thinking about the outside thing instead of the inside thing. So, when people tell me they want to be self-employed, what I often will say to them is, "Think about what you want your day to look like. Think about what you want your life to look like, and then think about what job to have. Don't think about what job to have and then try to squeeze your square peg into a round hole. You know what I mean?

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Instead, practice from the inside out. And this is an anti-capitalist lens, and it is a humanistic lens that I share with you. Right?

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So, when you think about, "Well, if I have psychic ability, I should be using it," what I want to say to you is what's the value? What is the personal value to you in extracting your psychic ability for utility?

Megan:            Yeah. I guess it's a sense of rightness, I think. I think that's what it is. It's like⁠—

Jessica:            Like being correct?

Megan:            Yeah, like being correct, like, "I have a gift. Now I use it. That is the right thing to do," and also a sense of, maybe, transparency where I'm like, "I don't want people to know"⁠—people don't always know that I have this thing that I can do. So, if I do it as a bigger thing, then they'll know.

Jessica:            I see.

Megan:            And then I won't feel as much that I—because I do feel a lot like I hide because I'm⁠—so much. You can see it. And I hide mostly because I'm like, "I don't want anyone else to be less of themselves around me," which is a feedback that I've gotten. So I think with the psychic thing is I'm like, "Well, then I can be in my own little lane, even though I'm also afraid of isolation, and people can kind of cast me off and I won't"⁠—I don't know. I don't know. That's kind of what I'm feeling right now.

Jessica:            Yeah. So what I want to reflect back to you is all those different parts of your truth are all parts of your truth.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Right? It's messy right now.

Megan:            Oh yeah.

Jessica:            But what you're talking about is insecurities and your fears and your sense of obligation. You're not saying, "I want to cultivate my psychic ability because I believe that it makes me safer," or, "I feel called to make this a bigger part of my life at this time."

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And I want to add the "at this time" because you're how old? 30⁠—

Megan:            I'm not 30 yet. Almost. 29.

Jessica:            So you're 29.

Megan:            Yeah. I know. I'm still in these 20s.

Jessica:            You're still in these damn 20s. And it is possible⁠, it is in fact⁠—

Megan:            Probable?

Jessica:            ⁠—very possible/probable, that you will say to yourself one day, "Oh, I want to expand or explore my psychic ability because it feels aligned, because it just feels like⁠—I tap in, and it feels like a yes." And on that day, do it. And until that day, it's a "not right now."

Megan:            And I'm curious about that because I do feel like maybe that is what I'm getting at, is I feel like I want to tap⁠—mostly, I just want new spiritual practices that feel authentic to me.

Jessica:            Okay. So let me just jump in on that. Being psychic is not a spiritual practice.

Megan:            Okay. That's fair. And I think that's something that is obviously hard for me to decouple.

Jessica:            Yes. Yeah.

Megan:            And I think what I almost believe is that I'm holding myself back from these separate spiritual practices because it will affect my psychic abilities, and that's scary.

Jessica:            I see. I see. So, again, you're doing that Scorpio hyper-track, right?

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You're trying to track all the things.

Megan:            The tracking is going to stick with me. Yeah. Totally.

Jessica:            Yeah. You're trying to track all the things so you can get ahead of the problems before they come.

Megan:            Totally.

Jessica:            So the first thing you just said about that was, "I think I'm getting really close to wanting to explore my psychic ability." So what you said, in too many words, is, "I do not want to explore my psychic ability now. I could see that changing soon." When it's not a yes, it's a "not right now" or it's a no.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay? So let's take "maybe" out because "maybe" feels wishy-washy. It's "not right now."

Megan:            Hate it.

Jessica:            Yeah. "Not right now." That's all. "Not right now" is totally doable because, tomorrow, it could be a yes. But today, it's just not right now.

Megan:            Right.

Jessica:            And the thing about spiritual practices⁠—there are so many spiritual practices to have.

Megan:            Totally.

Jessica:            You do not need any spiritual practices to go deeper. Zero. You're naturally very deep.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            Right? So you need spiritual practices that help you to achieve alignment because alignment helps you have peace.

Megan:            [crosstalk] containment. "Containment" feels almost negative as a term, but it's that boundary, that⁠—I have walls in my house so that I'm inside.

Jessica:            Yes. Okay. Okay. So the boundaries part I like for you. The containment part is a little carceral. It's a little bit of a consequence of being too much, right?

Megan:            Yeah. Totally. Totally.

Jessica:            So the thing about the walls⁠—we can't move your walls. And inside your walls is insulation and electricity. We don't want you to have walls. Boundaries⁠—okay. You've seen Wizard of Oz?

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Glinda the Good Witch⁠—her bubble, that's the boundary. It expands. It can go smaller. And it's not penetrable. It's not penetrable, but it's also not like a wall.

Megan:            Right. I can see in. She can move within and⁠—

Jessica:            Correct.

Megan:            ⁠—also could pull something inside.

Jessica:            It flows. It flows. It's not a wall. It flows. Think of this as a butterfly net made out of stars. Now, that visual is⁠—actually, I have a book of meditations coming out, and that is⁠—one of the meditations I have uses a butterfly net made of stars. So it's in my head also. But I want to just say, whatever works for you, come up with a visual that is as strong as a wall, as protective as a wall, but that is fluid like water, that has the adaptability to ripple, to get bigger or smaller, to change colors.

Megan:            Like taffeta.

Jessica:            Yes. There we go.

Megan:            Yeah, like some fabric.

Jessica:            Yes. Yes. Exactly. So what you want to play with is that concept of boundaries because when we come back to this question of, "Well, if I'm good at this, I should do this," what I want to say is "shoulds" are not helpful. "Is it in alignment for me to make this choice, to make the choice to center this at this time?" When I look at you psychically, no, it's not in alignment for you to center your psychic ability at this time.

Megan:            Not at this time.

Jessica:            You're learning how to adult. You're at the end of your 20s.

Megan:            Yeah. Literally.

Jessica:            Fucking adult. Adult.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Being interested in your thoughts and feelings about your psychic ability⁠—that's in alignment. Being willing to explore the heart of your Christian value system and spiritual beliefs that are still in you that⁠—maybe some of them are a yes, and some of them are a no. Exploring that stuff⁠—that looks painful but in alignment.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            That looks triggering but in alignment.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            Developing your psychic ability? No. I mean, being interested in it, working with what is when it presents itself⁠—yes. Cultivating it? No. You don't fucking need that. Why do you fucking need that? Your life is hard enough. You don't need that today.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And tomorrow you might.

Megan:            Right. Yeah. And it's interesting because I feel like when you say "cultivating it," what my mind automatically goes to is, "I should ignore these things," because the small moment⁠—I wrote in the question about⁠—I put my bike on the bus, and one of the buses had too many bikes. But the other bus was coming, and I knew that. I just knew that. Or one day, I was supposed to take my bike keys. And so I think sometimes when I hear, "Oh, I shouldn't cultivate it," then I should ignore those things.

Jessica:            No, no, no, no.

Megan:            And that's not what you're saying, which⁠—I want to hear myself say that.

Jessica:            I'm glad you're asking this. Okay. So, when I say cultivate, what I mean is you have clothes in your closet. Some of them are super cute. Some of them are not. Some of them fit great. Some of them don't.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            This is probably not a great time for you to actively cultivate a bigger wardrobe.

Megan:            No.

Jessica:            Does that mean if somebody gives you clothes, you throw them away? No. Does that mean you don't put together cute outfits? No. It doesn't mean you stop watching TikToks of people that you think look adorable in their clothes or that are showing you how to put on eyeliner in a new way. It doesn't mean you reject it, but actively cultivating it means shopping. It means⁠—

Megan:            Talking to a stylist⁠—

Jessica:            Correct.

Megan:            ⁠—which is something⁠—you used the perfect metaphor because I've been kind of teeter-tottering on this, too, where I keep being like, "I think I want to do that," but it's very much a "not right now" as well.

Jessica:            It's a "not right now." You're doing other things. Either you're going to have enough time to work all this shit out over the course of your life, or it's not going to be that relevant because you won't be here anymore⁠—either/or. Or things will change, right? Things will change. But coming back to this metaphor⁠—so, when I say cultivate⁠—because this is something I say a lot, not just to you, but on the podcast and in my work a lot. Cultivating is an active engagement in making it more. It's planting the seeds, watering the seeds, tending to the earth. It's cultivation, whereas working with what you got⁠—that is a different thing.

                        Of course, keep on wearing clothes. Feel cute in your clothes. People give you clothes? Take the fucking free clothes. If the Universe is like, "Walk into that store," and there's a sale and it's the perfect item, buy the fucking clothes.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            But you don't need to go out of your way to make that happen at that time. That would be cultivating it.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            But we don't want to reject the gifts of the Universe, right? Not looking for new friends doesn't mean you're not actively investing in your existing friendships.

Megan:            Right. Right.

Jessica:            Right. Right. So that's a very important distinction. And this feeling that "I should be doing something. If I can do taxes, I should be a CPA"⁠—part of what I want you to track in that is the belief is not just, "I should be doing something." It's, "I should be doing something now"⁠—

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            ⁠—that urgency, that immediacy that Pluto and Jupiter brings, that Mars brings, that a Moon in Aries brings. You have a lot of urgency to you. So what I want to encourage you to do the next time you have that urgent sense of, "I should be doing x," ask yourself⁠—maybe, maybe not, but, "But do I have to do it now?" This is a hot tip for somebody with a lot of urgency to their nature.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            Do you keep an altar?

Megan:            Not yet, but I've really been thinking about it a lot. So⁠—

Jessica:            I mean, listen. An altar is just a fucking shelf somewhere where you put important things and you maintain them, okay?

Megan:            Exactly. Yeah.

Jessica:            So what I recommend doing is get a box or a vase or some sort of container, and what I like to do⁠—I used to do this in my 20s and in my early 30s, but really did a lot in my 20s too⁠—was I would write down, fortune-cookie style on a little piece of paper, all the things I was tracking. All the things I was tracking⁠—and the important things and some of the stupid, petty shit.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And I'd pop them in the bowl. I'd pop them in the bowl, keep it on my altar, and then when the vibes were right and I was like, "I need to know what's happening," I would empty it out on my bed and I would go through it.

Megan:            Wow.

Jessica:            And I would see if any of those things have evolved, if I needed to get rid of some of those things, throw them away and rewrite them and put them back in the bowl. It's a good practice of relating to your goals and things that are important to you that is not too linear; it's emotional. But it's also a way of giving the part of your psyche that tracks things some space because you don't have to track it; you wrote it down. You know where it is.

Megan:            That's huge.

Jessica:            It's labeled on a shelf. You're welcome.

Megan:            Yeah. Yeah. I think that's something I've been thinking about a lot, is I track so much, and then even sometimes when I journal about it, I don't even release it.

Jessica:            Correct.

Megan:            Yeah, which is like⁠—there.

Jessica:            Then you get backlogged. You get jammed.

Megan:            I've been calling it constipated.

Jessica:            Yes.

Megan:            I feel like I'm emotionally constipated, partially, but not even so much that as much as I'm creatively constipated right now. And I think that comes in the same vein.

Jessica:            It's really energetic at core. And Pluto and Scorpio govern shitting, and they govern constipation. Fun facts, right?

Megan:            Don't I know that? Oh, I know that. We don't gotta get TMI, but...

Jessica:            Okay. We don't, but we know. But we know. So what I'm being shown by my guides is that you could take all this advice and get weird and perfectionistic and controlling about it and use it to harm yourself. So that's something for you to track.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            Okay? So taking kind of a⁠—we could call it too much of a⁠—I want to use the word "Christian," but it's not about Christianity. It's about the patriarchal structure⁠—

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            ⁠—and control. You have a tendency to impose that structure and control over the things that are spiritual and important to you.

Megan:            I can see that.

Jessica:            Yeah. What I want to encourage you to do is practice being aware of when you're doing that. That's all, because when you're aware in the moment, you can check in with yourself and say, "Does this feel authentic? Do I want to practice making a different choice?" You can't change this without being present with it. There's no way through this other than through this. You're not going to, from a great safe distance, change what's happening deep inside of you. You have to be deep within in order to do that. And so any tool⁠—any tool. Any tool. I know I am being emphatic, but I must⁠—can be used as a weapon.

Megan:            Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            And so your job⁠—a billion planets in Scorpio and Mars on the Ascendant and Aries Moon⁠—is to be aware of your own tendency to use weapons against yourself and sometimes the people and things you care about, and when you do it, to acknowledge it and acknowledge the harm you've caused. And I'm not just talking about to your friends. I'm saying, if you're a dick to yourself, be like, "Oh shit. I'm being mean to myself. Sorry, self."

Megan:            Oh my God. Yeah. I just was thinking a lot about how, growing up⁠—my dad is also a thinker, and he used to just mutter to himself, "Idiot," if he did something wrong. That was just⁠—and I do that now. And I'm like, "That's bad."

Jessica:            That's not it.

Megan:            That is unhelpful.

Jessica:            Yes. Yeah. And have you heard me talk about puppy-talk rules?

Megan:            Yes. I think about the puppy talk all the time because I'm like⁠—

Jessica:            Okay. Good. Good.

Megan:            It's easier now that I've heard about this from you for years.

Jessica:            Yes.

Megan:            But day one, it was not easy.

Jessica:            And this is the thing, is I came up with this idea of puppy-talk rules in my 20s. I'm a couple months from 50, and I'm still practicing. Right, right, right, right, right. So⁠—but wait. But I'm still practicing. What I'm saying is you're not supposed to get perfect at it. You only need puppy-talk rules if it's not your nature, if it's your nature to say, "Fucking idiot," every time you make a mistake. You know what I mean?

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            And you're not the only one. I'm not the only one. A lot of us do this. And so the reason why we have these tools is not so that we no longer need the tools, although that would be great. It's so that we can practice being different. Right?

Megan:            And maybe eventually, you don't have to practice anymore; it's like you've got it on lock. Great. But you might never have it on lock, and that's also great because it's really about, again, your problems are not a distraction from your path. Your problems are your path. So, if you're a dick to yourself, then your path is practicing being kind in the presence of your own judgment and cruelty. That's the path. It's not a distraction. It's the literal path.

                        If your struggle is to figure out what you do and don't want to take from your Christian upbringing and from the church with you, that's not a distraction from your spiritual path. That is your spiritual path. And if you have psychic ability that is half the time useless, half the time scary, half the time interesting⁠—I know there's not that many halves, but we're just going with it. If that's the case for you, that's not a distraction from your path. That's your path. That's the path. And so, if we pull out judgments around timelines and how it should be and how⁠—whatever else, then you can just actually be here now, whatever that is. And that⁠—if there is a power to cultivate, that's the one.

Megan:            Yeah. Yeah. I really feel that.

Jessica:            Yeah. yeah.

Megan:            I really do.

Jessica:            Good. Being psychic is not about the future. This is why I was asking you earlier in our conversation⁠—

Megan:            That's helpful.⁠

Jessica:            It's not about the future. I mean, listen. I was driving my car the other day, just like your bus story, and I heard this subtle voice in my head say, "Yeah, you take this street; there will be traffic." And I was in the mood to zip, zip, zip.

Megan:            All the time.

Jessica:            And I didn't listen, and I fucking was stuck in traffic. And I was like, "Motherfucker. Why don't I listen to myself?"

Megan:            This happens to me all the time.

Jessica:            All the time. Is it useful? Yes. Is it also kind of useless? Yes. All it is is being connected to the active flow of energy. It's not a prediction. It seems like it to our brains. The traffic is already happening. The conditions are already in place. You're just connected to the conditions. You can judge that. You can get in your head about it and then think it's magic. It's just a way of being a person in a body in an energy field with other bodies and cars or buses or whatever it is.

                        And so, again, when the ambition is presence and alignment, these questions get a little smaller because you're really just looking for, "Is this in alignment in this moment?" And if the answer⁠—I feel like I need to repeat this, so I'm going to. If the answer is, "I can see how it's going to be in alignment or how it might be in alignment, but in this moment, it's not," then it's not now. It's not, "Therefore, I should get ahead of it because it's going to be in alignment." No, no, no, no. If it's not in alignment, it's not in alignment, period.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Even if you're a millimeter from alignment, if it's not in alignment, it's not in alignment. And that's okay because, if you're a millimeter away, it will be. You just give yourself the grace of being where you are when you're there.

Megan:            Okay.

Jessica:            I know. What annoying advice it is I've given you.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. I feel like we did⁠—did we do it? Did we do it?

Megan:            I think we did it. This was really helpful. This was helpful. What a chart I have that I love, because I love myself.

Jessica:            Yay. I love to hear that. And honestly, I've never seen a bad chart.

Megan:            I tell that⁠—all my little coworkers and people in my life, I'm like⁠—I really take to heart that astrology as we talked about differently⁠—

Jessica:            Yes. Thank you.

Megan:            ⁠—[crosstalk] people who are not nerds like you and I.

Jessica:            Yes.

Megan:            I mean, you are the ultimate astrology nerd, but⁠—

Jessica:            I mean, I'll take that mantle, and I will hold it [crosstalk].

Megan:            But yeah, and I hear people talk about all these things, and I'm like, "That's just not it. That's just not it."

Jessica:            It's not it. It's not it. There are bad people. There are not bad charts.

Megan:            Yes.

Jessica:            You've got free will. You've got free will. You could do terrible things with your chart; you could do gorgeous things with your chart⁠—everything in between. And most people are going to do both. You know?

Megan:            Yep. Yep.

Jessica:            That's so hard, but it's life.

Megan:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You are a joy.

Megan:            Thank you.

Jessica:            I'm so glad we did this.

Megan:            Thank you so much.

Jessica:            It's so my pleasure.