Shownotes
There is a quiet moment when you catch your reflection and realize you have played a role so long you have lost the person underneath. This episode is for anyone who looks fine on the outside yet feels far from themselves inside.
Host Shreya sits with author Tom Snow for a raw conversation on identity, reflection and the road back to self-honesty. Tom shares the story that cracked his life open as a teenager and how hearing his own quiet inner voice changed everything.
About the Guest:
Tom Snow is an author and entrepreneur who ran a software company for decades before turning to writing. He describes more than five decades on a personal spiritual path and has authored three books, including The Daily Stand and Set the Captives Free.
Key Takeaways:
- The roles we perfect to earn approval can pull us away from who we really are.
- Seeing yourself clearly rarely arrives loudly. It begins as a small, honest question.
- The urgent inner voice and the quiet one are different. Telling them apart is the work.
- Guilt and unforgiveness keep you bound. Honesty is where the weight lifts.
Connect With the Guest:
- Website: just2beclear.com
- Substack: https://substack.com/@just2beclear1
- Books: three titles including The Daily Stand and Set the Captives Free
Episode Chapters:
[00:00] Welcome to The Soul Mirror: setting the tone for an honest look beneath the roles we play
[03:30] The First Mirror: the teenage years when Tom stopped recognizing himself (approx.)
[09:00] The Weight He Carried: guilt, anger and the cost of unforgiveness (approx.)
[15:00] The Quiet Turning Point: the night something shifted (approx.)
[21:00] The Voices Within: telling the conditioned mind apart from the deeper voice (approx.)
[26:00] Living From a Clearer View: what changes once you stop performing (approx.)
[29:00] Coming Home to Yourself: a closing invitation for the listener (approx.)
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Transcripts
00:00:08 Shreya: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Shreya, and this is the show where we go beyond the surface, beyond the masks, beyond the roles we have been carrying, and into the deeper layers of who we truly are.
00:00:21 Shreya: Tonight is a conversation about reflection, about awakening, about the courage it takes to see yourself clearly and the tenderness it takes to keep showing up after you do. My guest tonight is Tom Sloan. Tom carries the kind of presence that invites people to be honest with themselves in ways that they didn't expect. And his work supports those willing to look beneath the surface of their own lives. Tom, I'm really honored and I'm really glad to have you here on my show today.
00:00:52 Tom Snow: Thank you for having me.
00:00:54 Shreya: Thank you so much for joining. And just before we begin, a quick disclaimer for my listeners,
00:01:36 Shreya: And with that, Tom, first of all, welcome. Welcome to our show. And before we go in, I want to ask like, what is something simple that has been reflecting truth back to you recently, even something very small.
00:01:52 Tom Snow: Well, that's, that's probably a big question, but, uh, I think my daily life, I have that reflection. Uh, I wake up in the morning and I begin my day by starting to talk to Papa God. And when I ask him how he's doing and he talks back, we can, as Christian believers, can hear the still small, quiet voice of God. So I think as small as that sounds, it's how I start my day.
00:02:34 Shreya: That's really beautiful. And thank you for sharing with us and with our audience. And I want to start with your story because reflection is always personal before it becomes really personal. So can you walk us into the part of of your life when you first look into the metaphorical mirror and realize the person looking back wasn't quite who you had been pretending to be. What were you noticing and what was the cost of carrying that version of yourself for as long as you did?
00:03:06 Tom Snow: Well, once again, there's probably many moments in my life, but the first moment was when I was a teenager back in the late sixties. Um, I was a creator, creative, um, an inventor. I had a father who double double major engineer. Uh, and my goal was to have his attention. I had two older brothers, and nobody had his attention. Unless you sat down at the kitchen table to discuss math and engineering. Uh, it was not. He didn't take you fishing. He didn't take you out to play ball. And so did you have his attention? That's what I did. Um, and, you know, it created a, um, uh, it was great for teaching. It was great for learning. I, I'm fourteen and at that point I started creating state science fairs that, you know, science fairs in my school that went all the way up through the state of Ohio and would win. And one year to meet that ego, to meet my father, I created an invention that would gather asbestos dust, uh, from around the brake shoes of every car. Uh, back in the sixties and truly from the beginning of nineteen hundred through ninety seven, all brakes were made with asbestos. Well, we know today how dangerous that is. It wasn't until ninety seven that here in the US, uh, the EPA banned asbestos. Um, but I saw the issue. There were sixty million tons of brake dust coming off of cars around the world every year, and that's going in the air, causing all kinds of disease. Lung disease, including cancer and heart disease. So I created this invention, had a really big ego, had to please my father, win the state science fair, create an invention that could be patented. All that happened. Um, and along the way though, uh, my mother, who was a, the only source of love in the house, the cheerleader, uh, would come down in the basement, watch me create my invention, which was not perfect, wasn't perfectly sealed. Uh, I had, I was given gifts of great intelligence as a teenager, but there's no common sense at fourteen to fifteen. And so, uh, I would have mounds of dust flying in the air. And you'd think by my own studies of what the dangers were, I would know better, but ends up my mother got cancer. Riddles through her body. She dies at that point. All of my pride, all my ego, all my wanting to win the state science fair. Even though I did nothing. It was patentable. Didn't mean a thing because I just had the guilt of the world that I just killed my mother. So I'll try not to get into the whole story. I can literally take forty five minutes to tell the story. It's in my beginning of my first book. I have three books in case anyone's interested in learning. I'm not here to sell books, by the way. I couple bucks I make from Amazon is not my goal in life, but I hope I can help people. That's my goal. And so, uh, I noticed a month after she died, I had a rock hard tumor in my gut near my liver, about the size of a walnut. Well, long story, without going into all the details, I got to see visions from God for four months. He talks to me audibly at the end of that four months, tells me he loves me and surrounds me with his love. I mean, it's loud, booming, audible. Only time I've ever heard audible voice of God. I don't know how to meet the true and living God. My mother wasn't afraid. She. When she was dying, she had met the Lord. I didn't know how to meet the Lord. I was raised in churchianity and denominations, but I didn't know. Long story. By the grace of God, I find out how to meet him. But I don't feel anything on the inside. And my whole haywire life went haywire. My father took out when he found out months afterwards. Right. He took out a multi million dollar life insurance policy on me. Now, I already had the guilt of the world for killing my mother. I had the hate of myself for doing this invention. Maybe it was meant to help people, but my ego was so big it killed my mother. I now had a tumor in me, and I'm not telling anybody about it because I feel I deserve to die. By that point, it's already grown to the size of a softball, hard as a rock. And so many months later, my father finds out and I'm thinking, you know, he's a hard rock, but maybe he could figuratively put his arm around me and show me comfort, maybe seek medical help, even though I didn't deserve it. That's what I felt. And now he goes out, takes out a multi million dollar life insurance policy on me. Now, at this point, I'm enraged. I'm full of hate and anger at him. It's like, how in the heck can you do that? How can you? Yeah, I know you just lost your wife, my mother, you know, seven months ago. How can you do that to me? Your youngest son. And so, you know, I'm now enraged, and I. I was listening to all the voices all around and they're all saying, go haywire and you know you're going to die. So live your life to the fullest. And, you know, take what little control you can because you don't have much time. Um, so I did, I went totally haywire, became the second biggest drinker in my school, built a Harley chopper, started riding with motorcycle gangs, the Hells Angel back in the day, the worst gang. Um, I just going berserk. And at the end of a well before the end of the eight month rant. I actually had planned to blackmail my father and tell him that I knew about his insurance fraud as soon as I could get that Harley running right. Never seemed to run right. Couldn't leave the city, But I was going to blackmail him and tell him I'm going to. I need, you know, so much money. I'm going to go take my last hurrah. Go cross country, and then you can come pick up the pieces and cash in. But I wasn't going to tell him. Was along the way from Ohio to California. I was going to stop at the Grand Canyon and run my motorcycle off. I planned my own suicide. I was going to pull an Evil Knievel where you jump across that, but I wasn't going to go all the way across. I just was going to jump off. And so my goal was to, you know, like, if I'm going to die, I'm going to take control of my life and I'm going to take my life out. But I also was going to pin a letter on the inside of my clothes so that when they picked up the pieces at the bottom, that it would reveal my father's insurance fraud. He'd lose the whole payout. He'd lose the money he had to give me and my. I was so full of anger and hate and unforgiveness to him. I was hoping he'd go to jail forever. So that's how much rage and anger was in a sixteen year old at this point. It's a whole lot of trauma, and at the end of about an eight month period, I didn't pull my blackmail scheme because I could never get the motorcycle running good enough to get out of town. And at the end of the eight months, I was sitting around one night with my biker buddy gang, and we were drinking bottle after bottle of cheap wine. Great thing for a sixteen year old. As I said, I was a messed up person and at we were sitting around. We'd have a discussion. We always had discussions, but that night we had a spiritual discussion. We didn't normally have spiritual discussions at all. These are rough, tough crowd. So I told them all about the people I knew and the things that had happened and thought they'd scoff. They didn't. And I thought, okay, I'm going to tell what happened to me because, you know, hearing the audible voice of God and all the stuff. And I asked, you know, I had repented and asked the Lord to come into my life and I didn't feel a thing. And when I told him all that, and I was hoping they'd stop with me, they didn't scoff. And as I told him, nothing happened to me in that instant, I knew I was wrong. That when I had asked the Lord to come into my life, he had actually sealed my innermost being with His Spirit as he promises in the Scripture. And he was there. But I was so full. You know our innermost being is our spirit, while our spirits like a tiny ball inside the next ball, which is our soul, where we have our heart, mind, feelings, thoughts. And then we have the outer ball, which is our body. Well, the innermost being, we don't know from our spirit that we were dead with from God before, and we don't know we're alive after unless somehow breaks through into our soul and more. And Jesus actually said that in John chapter seven, that from the innermost being will flow rivers of living water. This he spoke of the Holy Spirit flowing through us. And it's an amazing thing. Well, in that moment, all of a sudden, something broke through all my anger, hate, rage, unforgiveness, wrath, and all of a sudden I felt the presence of God, the unmistakable presence of God, the peace that passes understanding. Philippians four seven. And all of a sudden I knew I was wrong. In that moment, I was instantly sobered. And from that point on, I gave my life to God. The whole Grand Canyon trip was off and I. He was gracious. He led me to a small group, small church where I began to study his word. Learn the Bible in and out. I love to study the original text, the Greek and the Hebrew. There are a lot of healings going on. It was a time called the Charismatic Move. Amazing stuff. I didn't get healed that way. I actually didn't care. I was no longer afraid. I knew why my mother wasn't afraid to die. I knew I had met the true and living God, and I knew where I was going, and I just wasn't afraid anymore. And so, uh, I'd have a wonderful time. I was learning to hear the still, small, quiet voice of God. Just like I said, how we start my morning every day. And one night I was riding home from one of these meetings and riding on my loud motorcycle. And the Lord and I are having a chat. And the Lord says, do you see in Isaiah where I said, by his stripes you are healed? And I said, uh, huh? He says, well, do you see in first Peter, where I said, by his wounds you were healed. I went, aha! All sudden it dawns on me. Are and were. And the verb language says one is looking current to future. The others past. And the Lord said Isaiah was looking forward to the cross. Peter was looking back to the cross. He says, I completed everything at the cross. He says, would you like that healing? And I'm like, hey, I don't care. Like, I'm getting to go home and be with with God. I'm not over my own guilt for killing, thinking I killed my mother. I'm I don't think I deserve healing. So I'm like, yeah, whatever. In that moment, I felt a change. And within twenty four hours, the rock hard tumor that had grown from the size of a walnut to larger than a football at that point in my abdomen, melted, dissipated, and was gone. That's the beginning of a life changing moment.
00:16:01 Shreya: Thank you so much for sharing your story with our audience. And I want to ask this very carefully. Like there is a very particular kind of dialogue that begins to happen when we sit with ourselves long enough and honestly enough, and the inner self begins to speak not in dramatic ways, usually in a quiet one. So, uh, let's name it like in your experience, what does that inner conversation actually sound like when it begins? And how does the person tell the difference between the voice of the conditioned mind and the voice of the soul?
00:16:40 Tom Snow: Oh, those are good questions. There's actually a source of many, many sources of voices. We can hear ourself. We can hear others. We can hear from the spirits around the world. The God of this world, who has ten thousand different voices coming through ten thousand different spirits. And then we can hear from the true Spirit of God, which is a singular. And so it's a real important question to learn how to be able to hear the right voice. Um, my story, I told you there is the beginning of my first book called The Daily Stand. Uh, in my second book called Set the Captives Free, I actually teach how to hear those voices, how to distinguish. So I don't think there's anything we can discuss in the next few minutes as how to clearly do that. But I do recommend, and this is the reason I wrote the books. After fifty six years of walking daily with the true living God and having my life turned upside down, and I've lived a normal life. I've worked for big companies, I had forty five years running my own software development company, now I'm creating a natural foods company. Uh, I'm just a work hard, uh, love my family, love my kids. And but now I feel like I'm supposed to share in the three books I've written just a little bit of what I've learned along fifty six years to help others. So maybe in your show notes, we can include my website that points to those books and links to Amazon, whatever. But you know, things, social media, if they want it.
00:18:33 Shreya: I think, I think that distinction is so important and most spiritual conversations skip it because the conditioned mind is loud and fast and full of urgency, and the soul is quiet and slow and almost embarrassingly very simple. It asks for things that are usually inconvenient to the personality but obvious to the heart. And learning to tell them apart is the work of years. Oh, and thank you for sharing it with us. And before we end like we have come to the end of the show. But I would really ask you, like, once a person begins to see themselves clearly, they cannot unsee it. The mirror is not closing again. So as we move toward closing this section, I want to ask, like, what does it look like to actually live from that clearer view of self? Like in the relationship, in work, in everyday choices? And what does the world look like through the eyes of someone who has stopped performing it?
00:19:34 Tom Snow: No, those are good questions. Uh, it's a total, total different perspective, right? You're pointing definitely to the truth. Uh, once you've touched that level in your soul with the true and living God and you're honest with who you are. By the way, I'm not religious. I'm not fake spiritual. I don't play religiosity. I don't I'm not of any religion or denomination. I've walked with the true and living God and we all can. We all have that option. And when we actually touch that level in our lives where we now have that consciousness of him in every part of our day, then the perspective is different. I don't just work to make money. I don't just have a family to have a family. I don't just have friends for friends. I don't just have children for children. Every aspect of my life, every thought that goes through my mind, everything I do is a reflection of that relationship. It's a very deep, soulful, as you call it, a mirror, you know, reflecting through my life. And it, it changes your perspective. It's also if it was just man made, if I. If I had the ability to do it, I couldn't continue it for fifty six years. I'm actually not that smart. I'm not that good. Not that capable. I already know that. You know, I can't do a bunch of stuff in life, so, uh. And none of us have that ability to make ourselves that self conscious. But when you have a relationship with the true and living God, singular and by His Spirit that lives deep within us and can flow through us, and because he sealed us with the promised Holy Spirit, then he's only a heartbeat away to talk to our soul.
00:21:36 Speaker 3: I think I think that's.
00:21:37 Shreya: Reassurance is exactly what people need to hear at this threshold because, uh, the early days of seeing yourself clearly can be disorienting. The rules you laid down still get requested by the people around you, the The performances you stopped giving were something. The only version you. Of the new and the patience to walk this path while the outer world catches up is the part of mature soul work. And thank you so much for joining and sharing so much of the information. I think this conversation is really, really helpful for my listeners. And if after this, my listeners want to connect with you or want to learn more about you, about your work, uh, then what's the best place to find you?
00:22:21 Tom Snow: Okay. Well, as I say, I'll give you to the show notes so you can add them as links below. Hopefully, um, the website is just to be clear dot com and it's the number two. So just number two, be clear dot com. There. It talks about the three books I've written and ten more that are in the queue. So you can learn a little bit about me. Uh, and as I say, the books kind of chronicle basically different parts of my life and how I've learned to sort through all the spiritual options that are out there, because there are many, and not all of them are right. And we have to learn how to sort through to know what's the true path we're supposed to walk on. Um, I also have a couple social media, uh, links I'll give you. And I also have a Substack link I'll give you where I, I only put out two podcasts or two posts a week. One is on podcasts, the other is just a blog post, a review, a book or whatever. So, you know, I don't like to inundate people. I personally don't care for the people who give me posts every day and multiple times a day. It's like, personally, I don't like to be inundated. So I'll give you all those info, uh, links to the books. They're available on every major platform, but I'll give you the ones for Amazon. Uh, right now I'm putting out, uh, audio books, so those will be available here soon, along with the written in the book.
00:23:56 Shreya: Yes, I will definitely make sure to attach all these details and links below in the show notes, so that the listeners can find them easily and get in touch with you. And thank you so much again. I think this was the kind of conversation the Soul Mirror podcast was made for. Honest, reflective, and unwilling to settle for the surface version of any of us. And to all my listeners who has been quietly aching to come home to themselves, I will leave this with you. The version of you underneath the rolls is not lost. She is patience. She is waiting. She has never stopped being who she really is. And tonight, even one moment of honest reflection is enough to begin to the return. You are allowed to come home, take care of yourself and we will meet again on the next episode. Until then, do not forget to hit the follow button. Subscribe and feel free to share your thoughts because your ears deserve. Premium content. Thank you.
