{"podcast":{"title":"Back from the Borderline","slug":"back-from-the-borderline-4079851","podcast_index_feed_id":4079851,"rss_url":"https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/60e8deaefb090f0013116d69","website_url":"http://backfromtheborderline.com","image_url":"https://assets.pippa.io/shows/60e8deaefb090f0013116d69/1735679446378-b2e8272f-396f-4979-a13e-2172ecffa88e.jpeg","author":"mollie adler","episode_count":358,"summary":"Back From The Borderline is a podcast about depth psychology, symbolism, spirituality, consciousness, and the search for a more meaningful life. I started this show years ago while trying to understand my own mind. Somewhere along the way, the questions became much bigger than me. They led into Carl Jung, mythology, Christian mysticism, dreams, tarot, philosophy, esotericism, religious history, artificial intelligence, and the symbolic patterns that quietly shape the way we see ourselves and the world around us. The word borderline has taken on its own meaning over the years. It speaks to the edge almost all of us eventually reach. That place where our old explanations stop working and we’re asked to learn an entirely different way of seeing. That’s the space my work inhabits. Some episodes are conversations with researchers, psychologists, philosophers, historians, and spiritual teachers. Others are long-form essays where I follow a question wherever it leads. Lately I’ve been especially interested in symbolic literacy, the way images, myths, dreams, and archetypes quietly organize human life, often long before we’re consciously aware of them. I’m not very interested in being “ce…","last_synced_at":"2026-09-08T16:23:45.590679+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/back-from-the-borderline-4079851"},"episode":{"title":"How to Tell When a Spiritual Teacher Is Full of Shit","slug":"how-to-tell-when-a-spiritual-teacher-is-full-of-shit","published_at":"2026-08-25T09:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/back-from-the-borderline-4079851/how-to-tell-when-a-spiritual-teacher-is-full-of-shit","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/back-from-the-borderline-4079851","url":"https://shows.acast.com/back-from-the-borderline/episodes/how-to-tell-when-a-spiritual-teacher-is-full-of-shit","audio_url":"https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/60e8deaefb090f0013116d69/e/6a8ca37866c4a1e81afd9b9b/media.mp3","summary":"In 2020, I almost paid $4,000 for a shadow work course. One of the first books I was told to read was Carolyn Elliott’s Existential Kink . I read it, tried to understand what I was being sold, and kept getting the same bad taste in my mouth. It’s been six years since then, and I’ve come back with receipts. I understand why it bothered me now. This episode digs into the history behind some of online spirituality’s favorite borrowed ideas, Jungian shadow work, Tantra, sex magic, Thelema, Babalon, occult initiation, manifestation, the Left Hand Path, passive mediumship, and the modern spiritual coaching industry that learned how to package this material into high ticket programs. I look closely at Carolyn Elliott’s work, what Carl Jung actually wrote about the shadow, how Western neo Tantra differs from older tantric traditions, and the ethics of a teacher who can reinterpret your hesitation as resistance, scarcity, fear, or evidence that you need their teaching. We also need to talk about why psychologically intense spiritual work can go badly when authority outruns training, why so much ancient wisdom being sold online has a surprisingly modern family tree, and why people sometimes leave these spaces burned enough to decide that every form of esotericism must be \"demonic\". If you’ve ever looked at a $3,000 retreat, a spiritual certification, an initiation, or an Instagram teacher promising transformation and thought, what the fuck am I looking at , this episode is for you. For my full exploration of Aleister Crowley, Thelema, and sex magic, you can listen here . If you want to join my card-by-card study of the Tarot through Christian Hermeticism and deep symbolic study, you can start from the beginning on Patreon. Click here or visit patreon.com/backfromtheborderline .…","meta_description":"In 2020, I almost paid $4,000 for a shadow work course. One of the first books I was told to read was Carolyn Elliott’s Existential Kink . I read it, trie…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":7109,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/back-from-the-borderline-4079851/episodes/how-to-tell-when-a-spiritual-teacher-is-full-of-shit/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/back-from-the-borderline-4079851/how-to-tell-when-a-spiritual-teacher-is-full-of-shit.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}