on flakiness, experimenting, and why your next project doesn't have to be the biggest bone in your skeleton with Taylor Morrison

📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that'll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what's holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you're never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeableLook, I’m not saying Taylor Elyse Morrison has figured it all out, but she did launch an entire coaching business in one week while actively avoiding her PhD coursework, which is either BIG galaxy brain energy or the most relatable form of procrastination I’ve ever witnessed. She’s out here juggling multiple businesses, consulting for Google, getting her doctorate, and casually dropping wisdom about portfolio careers while also seeming to have a lot of fun and make a lot of cool stuff. Which makes her the perfect person to talk to about embracing your multiplicity and experimenting in public. In this conversation, we talk about why so many of us are climbing career ladders only to realize we hate the view from the top, how to know if you’re being strategic or just performing for LinkedIn, and whether that thing you’re working on needs to be your magnum opus or if it can just be, like, a regular bone in the skeleton of your life’s work. We also get into the very real shame around being an experimenter, why consistency has been weaponized against creative people, and how to tell if you actually want the thing or just want to post about having the thing. If you’ve ever felt like you should want what you have but secretly dream about burning it all down and starting something new — or if you’ve been waiting to feel “expert enough” to do literally anything — this one’s for you.In this episode we talk about...In this episode we talk about...Action as expertise-building. Why “building expertise through just action” actually works better than waiting until you feel qualified enough, and how Taylor Morrison went from procrastinating on a PhD project to launching an entire coaching offer in one week (spoiler: it involved a lot of specificity and zero permission-seeking).The shame of experimenting. What it really means when high achievers are terrified of looking “flaky,” why consistency has been weaponized against creative people with active minds, and how to tell the difference between running away from a challenge versus running toward something that actually lights you up.Portfolio careers and the “so what?” moment. Why climbing the hill only to hate the view is the defining career crisis of our generation, what happens when external validation stops working, and how to figure out if you actually want the thing or just want to post about having the thing.The minimum lovable product approach. How to launch something in a week instead of spending months perfecting it, why AI can help but specificity is what makes your work actually good, and the surprisingly liberating truth that not everything you create has to be “your big thing” — sometimes it’s just your femur in the skeleton of your body of work. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.com/subscribe

📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that'll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what's holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you're never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeableI think that most of you should stop sending a newsletter. Like, right now. Immediately. CLOSE THE SUBSTACK TAB!When you start learning about marketing a business outside of Instagram or social media, one of the first things that gets shoved into your brain is the idea that you NEED to send an email every week to your audience.This is both terrifying and daunting, because* The idea of reminding someone you exist every week means they can reject you EVERY WEEK, vs. sliding under the radar hoping they don’t unsubscribe from your email list simply because they don’t notice you. Yery Jurassic Park “T-rex can’t see you if you don’t move” vibes.* Writing — not putting together a bunch of pictures, not talking in a 15 second IG story, not recording an off-the-cuff podcast, but actually WRITING something — every week is time-consuming, even for people who don’t have to google where the apostrophe goes for its and it’s every time. (It’s me, I’m people)So a lot of us don’t do it, or pretend that this advice doesn’t apply to us, or stick our fingers in our ears and go LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU.And — pay attention, this is where I vindicate you and you get to forward this to everyone who’s ever made you feel bad about your inconsistent email schedule — the advice to send a newsletter every week is burning people out, keeping them stuck in content loops that don’t convert, and creating audiences who don’t actually know what you do.Not because you’re doing it wrong! But because a weekly newsletter might be the wrong tool for you entirely.I know you’re punching the air in celebration right now. But before you get ahead of your skies, I regret to inform you that there’s some solid logic to the Internet Person Commandment #1, “Thou shalt email your list every week.”Here’s what it gets right:* building your email list is important because it’s the only digital audience real estate you “own,” meaning it’s independent of a platform (like Instagram or Youtube), you can take it with you anywhere, and it’s not impacted by petty algorithm changes that hide your content from you audience at the exact moment you’re really trying to reach them* but an email list full of people who don’t know who the hell you are or WHY they signed up for you email list in the first place is another type of hell, and definitely not a hell that you can make money in (more like a hell that makes you feel like a unwelcome guest in your own home, like you’re interrupting a party that you organized… yuck)* so you should email your list regularly to create trust and recognition — this creates a relationship between you and your audience members, especially when you provide them value* and putting out regular content is a great way to test your ideas and gauge general audience interestBasically, help people remember who you are and what you do and give ‘em a little somethin’ somethin’ that makes them happy to see your name in their inbox instead of feeling dread or annoyance when your name pops up next to a subject line.It’s easy to reduce all that logic down to a quick and dirty bottom line — I’ve gotta email my audience every week OR ELSE — and forget the very important why and to what end behind the action.In the past, when my students or clients have inquired about the Weekly Email Problem I’ve recommended a few solutions.PROBLEM:I don’t know what to send, and so I send nothing. Or it takes me a really long time to write an email every week because I spiral into an existential crisis about whether anyone cares about my thoughts on Wednesday mornings, so I just... don’t do it.SOLUTIONS:Create a template you can easily replicate every week and fill in with content, like a newsletter.Figure out what you’re actively selling or promoting, and using the stages of awareness reverse engineer what you’ll talk about each week in your weekly email.Use your weekly email to promote your other content (like a podcast, or a Youtube video, or a blog post) and have that be the “focus” of the email.But I have to amend my advice — because not everyone should send out a weekly newsletter instead of an original piece of content to their audience.And for some of you, a dedicated weekly newsletter might be doing the opposite of what you want it to.Think of it this way: content educates, a newsletter informs.It’s a great format for showing your audience a ton of information. You can easily include links to events, information about upcoming offers, quick updates about what’s up in your world and what you’re enjoying or inspired by.That’s perfect for a product aware audience — an audience who knows what you do, who you are, and what the value of your product or service is.But most people who subscribe to your email list are not product aware. They’re still figuring out what you do, and if it can help them, and if they can even trust you.While they might enjoy the link you share to that chic shower lamp you’ve been using for low-sensory night showers, they’re probably not frothing at the bit to work with you or buy your product. Confused people don’t buy things.I could argue that confused people also don’t stay subscribed to a Substack publication long-term, but perhaps that’s a discussion for another day.This is how the weekly newsletter trap creates Void States:The Uninspired State: You’re on autopilot, filling a template with links week after week. You’re not teaching your actual perspective or expanding anyone’s thinking—including your own.The Burnt Out State: You’re exhausted by the hamster wheel of it. Another week, another newsletter to cobble together. You’re prioritizing consistency over clarity, and it’s draining you.The Overwhelmed by Possibility State: You’re throwing everything at the wall — links, personal stories, half-formed ideas, updates — hoping something sticks. But you have no idea what’s actually working or who’s paying attention.Sound familiar?When you’re trying to decide what to send email-wise to your audience, remember it all goes back to what you’re trying to do — what’s the most important point for you?Trying to grow your audience?Trying to teach or sell?Trying to build brand identity?Trying to test your ideas?Trying to gauge audience interests?Decide what you’re trying to do FIRST, then design what your regular email missive could look like… not the other way around.And here’s where I get to the good news: You don’t have to publish on the same day at the same time every week with military-like precision.You can skip a week, you can publish on different dates, you can change it up! I personally believe that done is better than perfect, but I don’t think you should shortchange quality just to hit an imaginary deadline that no one else really cares about. Your subscribers aren’t sitting there with a calendar and a sharpie marking off the days since your last email, grumbling to themselves if you don’t hit ‘em with a freshie at exactly 9a on Wednesday morning.Here’s what I believe: there’s always a more creative way to get what you want. Including with email.The weekly newsletter is one tool. Not the only tool! And definitely not the right tool for everyone at every stage of their business.Over this next few emails, I’m going to show you how to think about your email strategy differently:* What to send when you’re building an audience vs. converting sales* How to structure content that actually moves people through your world* How to design an email rhythm that serves your goals instead of someone else’s rulesBecause the point isn’t to email your list every week. The point is to build a relationship with your audience that converts them into paying clients.And there are a lot of ways to do that that don’t involve scrambling to send a link roundup every Tuesday at 9am :) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.com/subscribe

📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that'll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what's holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you're never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeableI've seen no fewer than 17 different examples of people creating self-learning syllabi for themselves, whether it's "these are all the movies and books and podcasts I'm gonna consume in September" or "these are the things I'm going to read and think about in Q4."And I love that impulse! The impulse is correct, it shows a sense of intrinsic curiosity and — dare I say — whimsy which we DESPERATELY need more of in this world. Personally, I’m an absolutely sloot for learning. I would identify as a lifelong learner — it's arguably one of my most deeply held values.Buuuuuuuuuuuuut I think when you just give yourself a list of things to read or consume without a little digestif moment at the end of it all, you're kind of knowledge hoarding without real transformation. It’s a touch of capitalism-inspired scarcity mindset — just endlessly accruing and consuming stuff without stopping to breathe and check in and decide what to do with everything you’ve acquired.This will win me no friends, but to me this rabid consumption of information without taking time to metabolize and process what you’ve ingested is almost equivalent to just endlessly doom scrolling on TikTok.That doesn’t mean I think you should light your self-learning syllabus on fire and commit to a life of smooth brainery. Instead I have a small suggested amendment to your study plan — an artifact.In this episode we talk about...The confidence-competence flywheel. Why sharing your half-baked thoughts actually makes you smarter (and how this loop can take over your entire life in the way that holistically improves your experience of being).Knowledge wants to be used, not hoarded. What happens when information sits unused in your brain like books gathering dust on a shelf, and why that miiiiiiiight be contributing to our collective de-evolution. The artifact approach that changes everything. How creating something — anything! — that helps you process what you learn transforms you from consumer to creator (and why your weird interests are exactly what the world needs, not to go all cheesy on ya).The stuck-in-student-mode solution. If you've been collecting ideas but never sharing them, waiting until you're "expert enough" to have opinions, or convinced your thoughts aren't valuable enough yet, this approach helps you transition from consumer to creator while building confidence and credibility simultaneously. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.com/subscribe

📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that'll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what's holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you're never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeableThanks for tuning into our series these last few weeks on divination and channeling — did you have fun? I had fun! I hope you had fun. I went into this divination series experiment with a pretty strong opinion about people who throw around the word "channeling" in their marketing copy. Six weeks later, I haven’t totally changed my stance… but there were quite a few ideas that emerged in our research that’ve really stuck to my ribs. As we wrap this experiment, I’m left with four big ideas that I’m still rolling around in my brain that directly relate to channeling. In this episode: I.The body always finds a way to become a divining rod.It’s not all about freeing your mind and opening your third eye.The body plays an integral and oft overlooked role in divination/channeling/flow state, and even thought I know this it still surprises me how involved the physical body is in the quest to become an antennae for cosmic information. It’s very easy to get all ethereal and heady and mental about spiritual stuff and forget your body is a necessary (and literal) vessel of information.Regulating the nervous system through somatic practice — meditation, breath, repetitive motion, routine, etc. — is key for clear downloads.This realization hit me like a brick to the face, which is infuriating because I literally study embodied cognition. I'm training to be a Feldenkrais practitioner for pete’s sake. I should know this. Yet I'm constantly trying to bypass my body — can't I just think my way through everything? Can't I just sit down and make art without paying attention to whether I'm breathing?But every single divination practice we explored came back to the body. Spiritualist artists used repetitive motions to access trance states. Automatic writing requires that flow state you can only reach through breath work or movement. Even your morning pages routine is a somatic practice, though we pretend it's just "journaling."II.Fluency in your preferred medium makes channeling more powerful.You’re able to more accurately describe what you’re channeling when you have more words to say it.Think of it like a computer's operating system. If channeled information shows you "a green tree taller than the tallest building you've ever seen," but your reference for "tallest building" is a two-story house, you're going to translate that as a three-story tree instead of a massive sequoia.Agnes Pelton, trained from childhood in oil paint and color theory, could translate her visions with precision that someone who took art classes in middle school simply cannot match. It's not about the information being wrong — it's about having enough vocabulary to communicate what doesn't work linguistically.This is why I get annoyed when people dismiss skill-building as "too academic" or "not intuitive enough." If your first language is movement, energy will communicate through movement because that's the path of least resistance. But if you only speak one creative language, you're limiting what can come through.III.Channeling is kind of a code word for “ego-less information.” It’s simultaneously not that special and so goddamn special.Just like giving birth or falling in love.When someone uses the word "channeled" to describe something they’re presenting to the world, I think they're kinda of covertly messaging: "I don't have skin in this game. I'm delivering this information without agenda. I'm just the messenger." Whether that's actually true is another question, babyyyyyy.IIII.There are benefits to delusion and meglomania!Self-trust is essential for accessing flow states. The thing that blocks most of us from channeling anything useful is self-surveillance — watching ourselves from a distance, judging and editing in real time. Narcissists don't do this. They're like "yeah, that's divine wisdom" without questioning themselves for even a second.I'm not endorsing spiritual megalomania, but most of us could benefit from like, ten minutes a day of drinking our own Kool-Aid. Spend the other 23 hours and 50 minutes of the day doubting yourself if you want! That’s none of my business. But you have to get over yourself is the bottom line.OK, so those are my direct influences from the last seven weeks — but I wanted to take some time to zoom out a bit and reflect on some pattern observations I’ve seen in the intuitive business and creative work space.Things I’m noticing whether I like it or not I’m of the belief that you need to change up your inputs (experiences, habits, research, practices, influences) to get new outputs (ideas, lessons, beliefs, skills, outcomes).There were a bunch of things that I did this summer — some planned, some coincidental — that shifted my inputs:* I went on a “summer break” from seeing 1:1 Matrix of Destiny clients* I spent two weeks in Ann Arbor training in the Feldenkrais Method (normally my trainings are over three days on zoom)* Saw a new round of 1:1 business advising clients* Welcomed lots of new members to the North Node and personally did onboarding calls with about half of them* My schedule changed a little bit because we (blessedly!) enjoyed a nanny share for two half days a week, which meant that I got 4-8 more hours of “free time” in every week* Put a 15-minute per day timer on my social media use (truly I’m rolling my eyes at this myself because it’s just SO BASIC IT’S SO ANNOYING but it really did impact my inputs and outputs for the summer!)And all of that ^^^ contributed to the things I spent time doing, thinking about, getting annoyed by, etc. There were a few striking patterns that seemed to emerge this summer in the intuitive business and creative work world as a result of those shifting inputs. It’s tough to say if what I’m noticing are actually global patterns, or just microtrends within my little ecosystem. I’ll let you be the judge — either way, I think it’s curious! One of my favorite parts of my job is that I get to talk to lots of people from lots of walks of life and it’s gotta mean something that these concepts have come up so many times with so many different people this summer. "Wait, I Don't Actually Want This"Nearly every new business client this summer had the same realization — they didn't really really want to pursue what they'd initially contacted me about. They'd been on autopilot toward goals that were no longer theirs. And these aren't people following societal expectations; these are self-directed entrepreneurs who'd outgrown their own previous desires without noticing.Running Experiments / “Adjust, try again. Adjust, try again.”People are running experiments and adjusting in real time instead of going back to the drawing board. Launch didn't work? Adjust one thing and try again. This health intervention failed? Try a different approach. Less "burn it all down," more "tweak and iterate."The rage fuel ain’t fuelin’ like it used to.The sacred rage that fueled so many businesses and activist projects is running out of steam. Anger is fast fuel but burns out quickly. People who built entire platforms on rage against AI, MLMs, patriarchy, corporate America are finding it unsustainable. The rage is still valid, but it can't be your only creative fuel source.I’m seeing people reaching for sustainable fuel that doesn't require you to stay perpetually pissed off.Whew, OK let’s wrap this upThis whole exploration reminded me that channeling might just be the magical-mundane experience of accessing flow state where ego steps aside. Whether you call it channeling, intuition, or getting out of your own way, the mechanics are surprisingly consistent: get present in your body, develop fluency in your medium, trust what comes through, and create something that didn't exist before.What stuck with you from this? I want to know what you're noticing in your own creative practice or in the patterns around you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.com📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Mentioned in today’s episode: * Channeling a Manifesto Class — happening on 8/28! * Trance mediumship and channeling spirits (and the uncomfortable questions no one's asking) with medium Hannah Macintyre* can an AI tool “channel” messages?* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that'll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what's holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you're never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeableI almost didn't record this episode because, honestly, I think we’re all a bit AI'd out. Or maybe it’s just me, IDK. But since we're deep in a series about channeling, creativity, and the importance of wielding your consciousness, I figured it was time to address the elephant in the Substack server room.Here's the thing: I'm not anti-AI, but I'm also not about to let a computer do my thinking for me. Like???? Have you guys even read a sci-fi novel before? That’s an obvious recipe for disaster-slash-technological apocalypse.I can have empathy for why someone might be tempted to outsource writing, thinking, creating, innovating, designing, etc. to a non-sentient algorithm. But I believe using your brain and wrestling with ideas and concepts and art and reality and consciousness and self-concept is like… a biological imperative. Is that not kind of the point of living? Anyway, I’m by no means the first person to point this out.After spending weeks talking about why the wrestling and way-finding process of creativity is so essential to our humanity, I've got some thoughts on how to use these tools without, you know, completely atrophying your gorgeous brain.My Personal AI Commandments* I don't use AI for anything I can't do myself * I don't use AI “just for funsies” — it’s a waste of resources, like leaving the water running or turning your AC on full blast at noon in the middle of August. Also AI is boring! Why would I talk to a chatbot when I can just talk to a smart person. Or even a dumb person, at least that would be entertaining. * I always ask: What am I going to do with the extra time? It better be thinking, reading, creating, playing with my kid, channeling spirits, or touching grass… otherwise I fear I have lost the plot. Actual brain rot — “use it or lose it”I grew up in the 90s and have an irrational fear of contracting something like Mad Cow disease and my brain turning into Swiss cheese. If you also fear brain rot, let me introduce you to a concept that will either help you sleep like a big brained baby or keep you up at night staring into the black hole of your ceiling — “use it or lose it.”Scientists studying dementia found that individuals who started to use a hearing aid as soon as they lost some of their hearing — vs. those who did not use hearing aids once they become audio impaired — had lower rates of dementia later in life. Why? Because the anti-hearing aid group stopped using the part of their brain that processes listening and language comprehension, resulting in neurological atrophy.Spooky. I think about the “use it or lose it” principle when it comes to my physical muscles, my creative muscles, my intuitive muscles, and I can’t help but feel it’s totally true.So here's my first rule: If I can use my own brain to do it without emotionally thrashing myself, I'm going to try. Basically, I don’t want to run to AI first if I’m feeling lazy. Feels like a slippery slope that ultimately robs me of my abilities, which leaves me totally reliant on AI.Before you automate anything, ask yourself: What are you going to do with that extra time?If your answer is "make more mediocre content faster," please stop. The world doesn't need more AI-generated blog posts. But if your answer is "think deeper thoughts, read more books, have actual conversations, or create something genuinely meaningful," then yes—let AI handle your grocery lists and email sorting.Think of it like the nutrition concept of "crowding out." Instead of just removing the bad stuff, you add so many good things that there's no room for the junk. Use AI to clear mental clutter so you can fill that space with the stuff that makes you more human, not less.What AI kind of sucks at as of right now* Good writing: There are tell-tale signs (the “It’s not *** — it’s ***” formula…) and honestly, the majority of the writing that LLMs are pulling from is mediocre at best.* Original ideas: Once again, LLMs use large data sets to predict the probable next word in a sentence, and then the probable next idea in a paragraph. This predictive nature means that even if you really work the platform to help you come up with new ideas, you’re still probably reheating someone’s nachos.* Working reliably: A few weeks ago I spent 30+ minutes trying to get ChatGPT to make a simple grocery list based on five recipes I’d uploaded to the chat. It kept forgetting ingredients, miscalculating numbers, hallucinating recipes. It would’ve taken me less time to just grab a pen and paper and write out what I needed.The Tools That Actually Make My Life Better

📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that'll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what's holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you're never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeableWeek four of our "Divine Downloads" series and we're asking: what happens when "channeling" becomes a convenient shield for questionable authority?Today KP and I are diving into Breath of Fire, the HBO docuseries about Guru Jagat and the Ra Ma Institute. The series, “chronicl[es] the shocking secret history of Kundalini yoga and the evolution of one of its most prominent leaders,” and is based on a 2021 Vanity Fair article by Hayley Phelan titled, The Second Coming of Guru Jagat. (I recommend at least reading the article before tuning into this ep.) Kundalini is a tough topic to broach — there are so many well-meaning people who practice it and who’ve found it incredibly supportive who know close to nothing about founder Yogi Bhajan. (Who was problematic at best, allegedly criminal and abusive at worst.) It’s hard to square how a “technology” that connects its practitioners to the otherwordly could come from such darkness. Breath of Fire does a decent job at explaining the sordid background of Kundalini yoga and Yogi Bhajan while detailing the story of Guru Jagat, an equally complex figure. The Vanity Fair article doesn’t mince words: “Depending on whom you ask, Jagat was a bona fide spiritual leader—or a fraud; a controversial thought leader; a bigot; a feminist; a rape apologist.” It’s tragic that Guru Jagat, neé Katie Griggs, passed away at such a young age under such strange circumstances. And this documentary series does an excellent job investigating some of the questions we’ve been asking about the role of channelling or “divine downloads” in illustrating spiritual authority. On today’s episode, we're talking cults, frauds, the racism that built Western yoga, and why you might want to take a beat if your spiritual teacher is shooting fake money out of guns on Instagram.In this episode we talk about...We somehow connect startup culture to cult behavior, discuss why Venice Beach should come with a warning label, and explore the uncomfortable truth that you can have genuine spiritual experiences in fundamentally dishonest containers.The perfect cult storm. Anti-structure times + low-boundary people + extreme charisma = Venice Beach spiritual empire. It's a formula, people! Why breathwork actually works (and why maybe that's the problem). When the practices are genuinely helpful but the authority structure is complete b******t, what do you do with that?The trickster necessity. Maybe we need spiritual frauds to keep us sane? This theory will hurt your brain in the best way.Plus: why you should never give anyone your credit card information after breathwork. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.com📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that'll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what's holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you're never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeableWeek two of our "Divine Downloads" series and we're diving into the big question: what's actually happening when someone says they're "channeling" something?Today I'm talking to Hannah Macintyre, practicing medium and host of Mediumship Matters. While most people in the mediumship world just repeat the same old talking points, Hannah's out here asking the questions we all have — even the slightly (very) uncomfortable ones. I really love listening to Hannah’s show, and I’m delighted to chat with her on The Twelfth House today. In this episode we talk about...The "special gift" myth. Turns out most mediums don't have some dramatic spiritual awakening.

📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that'll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what's holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you're never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeableWe’re officially in week two of our “Divine Downloads” series — and buckle up, y’all, because we’re talking about spiritual possession, but in a cool way? Today novelist, poet, astrologer, and the cohost of COSMIC VALLEY GIRL (season two starts in Sept!) Emmalea Russo joins me to explore the murky, magical territory between creative flow and spiritual channeling.In this episode we talk about… The weaponized use of "channeling." We get into why the word can make our hackles rise — is it a cop-out from creative responsibility, or are we all just vessels for something larger than ourselves? Spoiler: it's complicated.Characters as atmospheric spirits. Emmalea describes how her novel characters literally inhabit her while writing, shifting her mood and language almost automatically. Haters will say she’s possessed! The alchemical writing process. From chaos to gold, we explore how the vessel (aka you, the writer/creator/maker) is the most important part of the creative work. Plus why strategic silence beats oversharing your works-in-progress every time.Editing is channeling, too. Through repetition and that delicious friction of working with a human editor who challenges you, something transcendent emerges.We somehow manage to connect medieval mystics to modern publishing, discuss why your natal chart isn't for public consumption, and explore what it really means to be a "pure channel" (hint: we're all too human for that). Plus, Emmalea spills on her Book Sherpa accelerator program that, in my opinion and the opinions of many of her students, is more valuable than getting an MFA. If you’re ready to finally write the book that’s been haunting you for years, Em hooked us up with a special discount code for the sherpa-curious — use EARLYBOOK for $330 off! Fair warning: we end on some cancellable opinions so… forge ahead to the end at your own discretion. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.comFound ObjectsWelcome to Found Objects, where we give you a behind-the-scenes look at what we’re thinking about, haunted by, reading, making, and what's generally floating around the spiderweb of our etheric minds. These are the building blocks — some directly, some indirectly — that contribute to what we’re focusing on for the next six weeks in our series, The Divine Download: What is Called Channeling?This is the second post in the series. If you want access to the full curriculum for this series, subscribe to The Twelfth House.Private PortalsThe beginning of the summer felt like being shot out of a cannon — two weeks on X-Games mode (studying / parenting / entrepreneuring) in Ann Arbor, during a particularly busy season at Holisticism (doors opened to the North Node and we welcomed so! many! amazing new members; Ruthless Clarity hit hard and fast for eight full weeks and whooooweeee did it pack a punch) followed by family time on the east coast for a few weeks.In between all that, the quotidian details: doctors appointments and test results and exercising and being present and hugging friends and making bad art and annotating books and watching movies and finally (finally!!!) getting eight hours of childcare a week. My brain felt deliciously rung out by mid-July.As I write this, it feels like the dust has momentarily settled in my personal life. I love backstroking through the long, thick days of high summer — no need to rush. The pools of my mind have time to replenish themselves. It’s nice to feel ideas gently bubbling to the surface but free of the urgency to pursue them immediately (rare for me, I’ve gotta enjoy it while I can).Over the past few months my deepest conversations have circled back around to the genocide and man-made famine in Palestine, the presence of ICE terrorizing our neighborhood and kidnapping our community members, and the general existential helplessness one feels watching fascism consume our government — what do we do? What can we do, when it seems like nothing we try makes a difference?Well, here’s how I think of it:If I do nothing, it won’t make a difference to the cause.If I do something, it won’t make a difference to the cause — but at least I’ll sort of feel better. So why not do something, even if it’s small?In my mind Chef José Andrés is a Roma Downey “Touched by An Angel”-level earth angel and deserving of the goddamn Nobel Peace Prize for his work at World Central Kitchen. WCK is on the ground in Gaza baking loaves of bread and handing them out daily. They’re a great organization you can donate to here.8 Ideas Floating In My Psychic Field