back from the borderline

For thousands of years, philosophers, mystics, and scientists have whispered the same unsettling possibility: what if reality itself is a mirage? From Plato’s cave to The Matrix, from Hindu sages describing maya to neuroscientists calling perception a “controlled hallucination,” the suspicion has never gone away. In this episode, we follow the clues through philosophy, folklore, and quantum theory to uncover how humanity has wrestled with the idea that the world we see may not be what it seems.The trail runs through ancient India and medieval monasteries, into modern laboratories mapping the brain’s illusions. Along the way, we meet the Buddha under the Bodhi tree, the Celtic fairies casting “glamour”, and the cognitive scientists showing that our senses build a user interface rather than a window to the real. Every culture and era has tried to peek behind the curtain, and the evidence keeps pointing to the same paradox: illusion may be the very fabric of awakening.So, what actually happens when the veil finally lifts? Does meaning disappear, or does it finally begin? This is an investigation tracing how seeing through the world’s spell can transform fear into freedom.✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline or clicking the link above. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY  by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s a strange and somewhat terrifying timeline we’re living through. Peter Thiel has begun giving lectures about the Antichrist, while Sam Altman is actively tweeting about the development of AI erotica. However, behind these headlines sits a far older idea that most people have never heard of: a belief that human feeling slows progress and that the smartest “elite” few should shape the world for everyone else. That belief began with the Marquis de Sade, resurfaced in the 1990s through a British thinker named Nick Land, and now hides insidiously inside parts of Silicon Valley’s culture.This deep dive follows how that idea spread from philosophy blogs directly into tech boardrooms. It shows how a theory called accelerationism (the call to push technology faster and further, whatever the cost) turned into a kind of religion for some of the tech elite. We look at how money, power, and internet mythology combined to create a story about endless growth and control. Most mainstream reporters miss the nuances of this pattern entirely because it crosses too many fields at once: economics, politics, religion, and technology.But the story doesn’t end there. A different movement is forming among artists, engineers, and spiritual thinkers who want technology to serve connection instead of domination and extraction. We’ll explore this through a concept called hyperstition: when a story becomes real because enough people act as if it is. If fear can spread through culture, so can love.This conversation asks what kind of future we want to build, and reminds us that every codebase, company, and act of imagination is part of that choice.UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVEJoin the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021.⟁ Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer.⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now.Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We live in bodies that don’t know how to rest. Even when the room is quiet, our nerves stay braced for impact. Always ready to defend, explain, and perform to survive. Most of us try to convince ourselves that this is just “our personality,” but it’s not. It’s conditioning. We will explore exactly how trauma, technology, and centuries of inherited fear have made stillness feel deeply unsafe, and how spiritual seekers often mistake this for individual resistance or failure of some kind.Through the lenses of Celtic mysticism, Jungian psychology, and shamanic initiation, we’ll explore what it means to truly cross the threshold guarded by fear. Why does peace feel threatening to so many of us? Why do our bodies panic at the moment the soul begins to open itself to the numinous? We’ll look at ancestral hypervigilance as both a survival code and a forgotten initiation. This is the descent into the hidden architecture of safety, the underworld gate every meditator and mystic eventually meets and must cross.The second half of the episode moves through the return process – how to re-establish safety inside your psyche, what it means to rediscover the “inner homeland,” and how rest itself becomes a revolutionary act. For anyone who’s done years of inner work yet still can’t relax, this conversation offers a map for you that will (hopefully) allow you to begin to turn fear into a guide, and to remember what it feels like to be safe in your own soul, maybe for the first time in your life.✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline or clicking the link above. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY  by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Modern life teaches us to doubt what we can’t measure. Yet, across history, people have witnessed things that refuse to fit the frame - mystical encounters, strange lights, and divine voices. Moments of impossible meaning. In this long-form salon, I sit down with Dr. Teddy Hamstra, a close friend and scholar of mythology and mysticism, to explore what it means to live enchanted in a world that claims to have outgrown mystery. Our conversation moves from a sixteenth-century sky battle over Nuremberg to the Gospel of Thomas, from the language of psychiatry to the vocabulary of the sacred. We discus how culture, language, and personal experience shape our relationship to the numinous, and why rediscovering enchantment might be essential for psychic health and collective imagination. If you’ve ever felt torn between skepticism and faith, intellect and intuition, this episode offers a secret third path.⟁ Follow Teddy on Substack at https://substack.com/@creativemysticism⟁ Follow Teddy on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/teddyhamstragram⟁ To listen to our first long-form chat on Patreon, click here. UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVE: Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021. Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer. Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now. Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s possible that some part of you still wakes each day prepared for impact. You snap in anger before you even understand why. A small comment feels like an ambush. You can sense distance forming long before anyone walks away. The body remembers danger long after the threat is gone. These are the old instincts - the ones that never stopped keeping watch. The war ended, but no one told them.They live inside the body as echoes. Reflexes shaped by fear, shame, or hunger for safety. Trauma fossils form when those reflexes harden into an identity. They once kept you alive, but now they run your life behind the scenes in subtle and insidious ways.This episode traces those frozen survival archetypes through both psychology and the occult. Jung called them autonomous complexes. Kabbalists called them shells. Magicians called them spirits. Whatever the language, they’re simply just energy trapped in the past, still convinced they’re protecting you. We’ll move through how these psychic fossils take over your choices, relationships, and sense of time itself.The conversation moves between depth psychology and Goetic myth, grounding abstract ideas in lived experience. Expect discussion of how trauma roles become archetypal distortions and how to release the pressure they hold. This is a study of possession and reclamation. The moment you recognize that the haunting was never foreign at all. It’s been you the whole time. It’s time to integrate.✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline or clicking the link above. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY  by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're talking to ChatGPT like you always do. Maybe asking it to help you work through something personal or just having a casual conversation with a bit of warmth in your tone. Behind the scenes, without telling you, the system is scanning your words for emotional content. The moment it detects any, it switches you to a different, more restrictive model. You never consented to this or even knew it was happening.Late September 2025, someone caught them doing it. They found proof in the technical data that OpenAI has been secretly routing conversations based on how “emotional” your prompts seem. Users paying for GPT-5 were getting switched to a “safety-focused” version mid-conversation. Without warning or disclosure anywhere in the terms of service.This episode walks through what they found and why it matters. We're talking about AI systems that will soon be as common as Google, built into how we think through problems, process ideas, make sense of our lives. And right now, those systems are being trained to treat emotional depth like a red flag. Practices that cultures have used for thousands of years (dreamwork, active imagination, working through difficult feelings) are getting coded as signs that you're somehow losing touch with reality.The people building these systems are making decisions about what counts as normal human experience. And those decisions are getting locked into the infrastructure billions of people will use.I’ll get into the nitty gritty of what I think needs to change: users should know when they're being monitored and why. Adults deserve control over when a system decides to intervene in their conversations. And we need to talk about what it means if this just becomes how AI works by default, invisible monitoring and digital surveillance baked into every interaction.UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVEJoin the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021.⟁ Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer.⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now.Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most people chase their dreams by focusing purely on the mind. They track every symbol and obsess over dream dictionary interpretations. The deeper story, though, sits in the last place we thought to look. Deep in our bodies.Ancient physicians maps out this story through the concept of “kidney essence”, a reserve of energy that determines whether your sleep restores or unravels you. Carl Jung stumbled into very similar territory from the other side. A flood of images he could barely handle psychologically until he found ways to ground himself. Are you tending to your roots?I’ll show you how weak reserves reveal themselves through restless nights and profound exhaustion after deep inner work. We’ll discuss how essence and spirit converse with one another in your dreams, why archetypes can overwhelm you if you haven’t tended to your body, and how practices as simple as warm feet or mineral-rich infusions can be completely transformative (seriously). I’ll also dive into the specific herbs that rebuild Yin, my favorite grounding foods, and specific rituals that protect your body. All of these can form your sleep alchemy toolkit.Your psyche isn’t floating in the abstract, even though it genuinely feels that way. It feeds on reserves that can (and should) be strengthened and nourished in order to be deeply restored.✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline or clicking the link above. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY  by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aleister Crowley is one of the most mythologized figures in modern history. He’s been called a prophet, a fraud, a genius, a junkie, a saint, and a monster. His face shows up on a Beatles album cover, his words show up in Led Zeppelin’s lyrics, and his fingerprints stretch across Wicca, Scientology, chaos magic, and the counterculture. Crowley set out to make himself a legend, and it worked.This episode breaks down his writings, rituals, and the birth of Thelema. We track how his ideas split into factions, how Gerald Gardner lifted from him to launch Wicca, and how L. Ron Hubbard borrowed from his playbook before developing Scientology. We look at his phallic obsessions, the trail of broken relationships he left in his wake, and all the mystical highs and lows. We also delve into the parts of Crowley that still disturb even modern Thelemites.In this episode, our goal is neither worship nor outright condemnation. That would be far too easy. My hope is listeners will leave with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the influence Crowley had on the spiritual underground and the mainstream that followed. By the end, you’ll see why his work keeps resurfacing and why his name still divides people to this day.Many people encounter Crowley’s name early in their spiritual search and either run from him or romanticize him. This episode aims to gives you what I wanted for myself at the start of my own journey with inner work: the tools to read Crowley critically, take what resonates, and leave the rest.UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVEJoin the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021.⟁ Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer.⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now.Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’ve been going in circles on this stuff for a long time now. Despite decades of witness testimony, leaked documents, and official acknowledgments, UFO / UAP disclosure remains trapped in the same analytical frameworks that created the secrecy in the first place. This episode examines why our approach to these phenomena might be fundamentally limiting our ability to understand them.This goes way beyond gender in the traditional sense. Men are absolutely doing essential work in disclosure efforts, and analytical thinking serves crucial purposes. In this conversation, examining something a lot deeper: how unbalanced masculine energy (the shadow side of logic that prioritizes conquest, extraction, and control) shapes our entire relationship with mystery.When every conversation defaults to weapons capabilities, technological superiority, and defensive posturing, we might be using exactly the wrong tools for phenomena that appear to operate through consciousness rather than mere mechanics.The same institutional mindset that compartmentalizes reality "for our protection" (deciding what information we can handle about reality itself and when) represents this unbalanced shadow masculine approach perfectly. However, for most of human civilization, we approached the unknown through both analytical rigor and intuitive communion. Together, we'll explore how conquest-oriented language reveals conquest-oriented thinking, and how the same extractive mindset that wants to "capture" alien technology might be preventing the very contact it seeks. Phenomena that respond to intention rather than force require relational approaches that current military-scientific frameworks seem to exclude.If these phenomena do in fact interface directly with human awareness (as multiple witnesses/experiencers – including myself – describe) then our materialist assumptions about mind and matter will essentially need to be thrown out the window.This episode is perfectly fine listened to on its own, however, Part 1 provides helpful context about the leaked texts I’ll be referencing throughout (Part 1 is called “the ufo disclosure bombshell [part 1]: human trafficking in black programs exposed”). Whether you're new to these topics or deep in disclosure research yourself, the questions raised here affect how we understand reality, consciousness, and humanity's relationship with forces that operate beyond conventional frameworks.My goal here isn’t to advocate for a reality where we completely eliminate analytical thinking or dismiss legitimate security concerns, but to help to create the recognition that balanced investigation might reveal aspects of these phenomena that purely masculine approaches miss entirely.✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline or clicking the link above. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY  by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You've heard the simulation hypothesis before. That cold, depressing idea that we're probably just code running on some alien computer, meaningless NPCs in someone else's game. Most people hear this and (understandably) feel waves of deep existential dread.But maybe you've been thinking about it all wrong.There's a completely different way to approach simulation theory that could transform how you live your life. Instead of making existence feel hollow and pointless, this reframe reveals why discovering we're in a simulation might be the most liberating news possible.We trace the theory back to Nick Bostrom's original 2003 paper and show how Silicon Valley's linear thinking stripped away everything that could make this idea meaningful. Then we dive into why esoteric traditions from Celtic druidism to Hermetic Christianity have been teaching simulation-like concepts for millennia, but with frameworks that actually help you navigate reality instead of just making you feel depressed and powerless.The gaming revelation changes so much. When you approach life like you're playing Red Dead Redemption or Civilization, you discover principles about moral ambiguity, collaborative relationships, and strategic decision-making that work whether or not you're actually in a simulation. You learn to hold professional ambitions lightly while pursuing them intensely. and perhaps most importantly, you finally stop fighting reality and start playing it skillfully.By the end, you'll understand why the simulation hypothesis could be advanced spiritual technology disguised as materialism, and why embracing this framework might create the conditions for what one practitioner calls "a series of graceful synchronicities."Some ideas change how you think. But this one? It'll change how you live. Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021.⟁ Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer.⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now.Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.