How I Dismantled My Own Altar (And Why It Was the Best Thing I Ever Did)

Thirty years of mythology. Then the mechanics.

Even as a kid, I’d throw tarot cards across the room when I pulled ones I didn’t like. Then I’d announce to anyone within earshot: “No. I don’t want magic. I want mysticism. I want mastery from the INSIDE.” I was five. I had opinions. I had a pink dress with ruffles and zero tolerance for cosmic bureaucracy. The universe was going to explain itself or face consequences.

It took me thirty years to write those opinions down. Here they are.

Your body is reacting to that sentence right now. Something in your blood just shifted direction, rerouting toward a truth it’s been circling for years. Your belly either softened into yes or braced against the knowing. This is how your flesh reads before your mind even opens the envelope.

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I was five and a half when I first held tarot. I was deciding whether to start school or not, and it seemed perfectly logical to pose that question to a deck of cards my mother had ordered from Germany via Belgrade and waited six weeks to receive.

In our house, this wasn’t weird. What was weird was that the neighbors DIDN’T have an occult library in their living room. WEREN’T doing Reiki initiations while 1982 was happening outside. The neighbor called our apartment “the witches’ den.” Maybe as a joke. Maybe not entirely. (We never clarified. We liked the ambiguity. It kept the Jehovah’s Witnesses guessing and the Tupperware ladies nervous.)

My skin was already reading the room before I entered it. My blood would quicken at a card flip, rushing toward something my conscious mind hadn’t registered yet. I was fluent in frequencies while still struggling with the alphabet. My body was downloading from the Field while my brain was learning to tie shoelaces.

Mom taught me that cards are “windows into what could be” and that if you don’t like what you see, you can change it. Dad, a rationalist who plays guitar and writes lyrics but has a “spare me” attitude toward anything that can’t be verified by a guitar tuner, gave me my first real lesson: “Things won’t happen by themselves. You’re the key to the story.”

And my dragon of a mother engraved into my cerebral cortex a quote from Lord Chesterton that haunts me to this day: “I don’t believe in a fate that falls on people regardless of what they do, but I do believe in a fate that falls on people if they do nothing.” So from the very beginning, it was clear: cards get shuffled. Life turns. Nothing is fixed. Rota. Taro. The wheel.

That was the first seed. It didn’t live in my mind. It lived lower, deeper, in that soft animal place between hip bones where knowing gestates before language can name it. A truth that would pulse quietly for decades, waiting.

And then I grew up and spent a whole large chunk of life inside the narrative I’d inherited. Past lives. Karmic lessons. Soul contracts. Angel guides. Starseed contacts. The premium subscription to Cosmic Curriculum™, auto-renewal every full moon, no cancellation button, and customer service just keeps saying “it’s all part of the plan” while your nervous system files complaints that nobody reads. (The hold music is wind chimes. Obviously.)

I knew esoterica better than I knew math. (Which, honestly, isn’t a high bar. I still count on my fingers. But for mystical realms? I had a PhD in decorated cardboard and invisible friends with wings, and from cosmic other-dimension battleships. Could lecture for hours on the astral implications of Mercury in Gatorade, atmic body or whatever.)

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Then came Shiatsu school. Three years of learning a method that connects Western diagnostics with Traditional Chinese Medicine. Three years of looking at the body, not at stories ABOUT the body. Three years of hands on flesh instead of heads in clouds. And something cracked in me there. In a good way.

My fingers began speaking a language my mind didn’t know. My palms learned to read tissue like love letters written in a dialect of tension and release. Something in my bones started asking questions my mouth wasn’t brave enough to form. My hands became translators for a conversation that had been happening beneath words my whole life.

Because look. You can go with the story: “Astrologically you have this position so you’re prone to sadness. Maybe past lives. It’s your karma. It’s your PERSONALITY. It’s your CHARACTER. It’s written in stars that don’t even know you exist and wouldn’t return your calls if they did.”

But here’s the thing. If you work the lung element points... the sadness disappears. That “personality” disappears. That “character” disappears. Those “past lives” disappear. Gone. Poof. Like they were never the point. Like your “karmic destiny” had a terms and conditions page that said “void if you press here.”

And then when you stop working the points? They come back. Like a subscription you forgot to cancel. Like that ex who texts every Mercury retrograde with “hey, been thinking about you” and zero self-awareness. Like the mythology was never a truth, just a screensaver your nervous system runs when nobody’s touching the keyboard.

My hands knew before my head did. They’d felt the shift, the softening, the moment when someone’s tissue stopped guarding a story that was never theirs to protect. My body started asking the question that would eventually dismantle everything: what’s actually going on here?

That question didn’t arrive in my mind. It arrived in my chest. Took up residence between my ribs like something that had always lived there and was just now introducing itself.

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That’s when I started doing readings for clients. And by sheer luck, somehow despite running the wrong narrative, I was giving good somatic exercises. Exercises from Traditional Chinese Medicine. From Taoism. Breathing. Regulation. Organs. Inhale, exhale. No angels required. No higher powers on speed dial. Just the body and what the body can do when someone finally stops telling it what’s wrong with it and starts showing it the way out.

And I started noticing a pattern that couldn’t be ignored. People who did the exercises, who breathed, who regulated their nervous system... they got better. They changed reality. Actually, measurably, tangibly. Their faces softened in places I hadn’t touched. Their posture remembered something their mind had forgotten. Their stories stopped looping.

And those who didn’t? They came back a year later with the same question. Same drama. Same situation. Same fractal spinning in circles like a spiritual Peloton going nowhere but really committed to the aesthetic. Paid for another session so I could tell them exactly what I’d told them last time. Same leggings. Same crisis. Different moon phase. Same soul contract they’d apparently signed without reading the fine print and couldn’t find the cancellation clause for.

(This is the part where I’m supposed to say “and I felt so fulfilled helping them on their journey.” I did not. I felt like a spiritual Groundhog Day extra who hadn’t read the script. Bill Murray at least got to learn piano. I just kept watching people choose the labyrinth and call it growth. The labyrinth, I should add, had a gift shop.)

But every time a client came back and said “I did the exercises and now it’s different”... something in my spine would lengthen. My vertebrae stacking themselves into attention like they were finally hearing testimony that mattered. My whole system leaning toward a truth that the esoteric library never held.

That’s when I started seriously researching WHY. Quantum physics. Biology. Neuroscience. Polyvagal theory. Papers about vagal tone at 3am like they were texts from an ex I couldn’t stop checking. Research binges that looked like obsession but felt like coming home. Anything that could give me mechanics instead of mythology. Receipts instead of reassurance. Something my body could verify, not just my beliefs.

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Around the same time, I remembered something my grandmother used to tell me when I was little.

“Child, you have thin nerves.”

That was her way of explaining why I was so sensitive. Why I react so immediately. Why I feel everything as if there’s no skin between me and the world. Why a raised voice in another room could rearrange my entire internal weather system. Why I’d cry at commercials and absorb strangers’ moods like emotional second-hand smoke. And I’d answer her instinctively, even as a kid: “That’s because it’s my main antenna. That’s how I feel everything.”

My grandmother’s rough working hands had touched a truth that science would take decades to confirm. “Thin nerves” wasn’t a flaw to fix. It was a configuration to understand. Different fascia. A more sensitive nervous system. An antenna calibrated to frequencies others don’t even know are broadcasting. My body wasn’t broken. It was equipment nobody had given me the manual for.

And that’s how I learned: it wasn’t just me. It’s US. A whole species of people with amplified reception and zero instructions. People who’ve been told they’re “too sensitive” when actually they’re just receiving more signal than average and nobody taught them how to work the volume knob. And that’s exactly why we’re prone to looking for explanations in “other dimensions” when the explanation is sitting right here, screaming from our own tissue, wondering why we keep consulting the stars instead of consulting our own spine.

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You might say: “Well, whatever. Does it matter if it’s an archetype from the Noosphere or a past life? Tomato, tomahto. Same spiritual salad, different dressing.” But… It matters. It matters more than almost anything I’ll tell you in this book.

If you think it’s a past life, you have no agency. Your fate is etched somewhere you can’t reach, decided before you, without you. You’re a passenger in a vehicle someone else is driving, reading a map someone else drew, heading toward a destination someone else chose. You’re waiting to be explained instead of explaining yourself.

But if you know it’s a pattern in your nervous system, a fractal that formed in THIS body from THIS life’s experiences, resonating with collective archetypes you can actually NAME and WORK WITH... then your hands are on the wheel. Then the groove is workable. Then regulation becomes possible. Then YOU become the author instead of the character.

Narrative isn’t decoration. Narrative is operating system. And most people are running Windows 95 in a quantum universe, wondering why their manifestations keep buffering and their downloads never complete. They’re waiting for tech support from angels who, let’s be honest, have not been returning calls since approximately 1987.

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This book is my new operating system. Grown from thirty-something years of research. From thousands of clients who trusted me with their pain and their hope. From love that demolished every belief I’d built my life on. From personal heartbreak that felt like dying and turned out to be birth.

Because… You’ve been spiritually gaslit for years and you’re just now realizing it. Every time life got hard, someone told you it was a “lesson your soul chose.” Every time you couldn’t manifest, you weren’t “vibrating high enough.” Every time you attracted another disaster, it was “karmic debt from a past life.” And you believed them. Because what else were you supposed to believe?

So you stayed stuck. Repeating the same patterns. Blaming yourself for not being spiritual enough, positive enough, healed enough. Paying for another course. Buying another crystal. Waiting for the universe to finally notice you’ve been doing everything right.

Meanwhile, your nervous system was drowning in concepts designed to keep you searching, never finding. Your body was filing complaints in the form of chronic tension, mystery symptoms, and that thing your jaw does at 3am. Nobody was reading those complaints. The spiritual customer service line just kept playing wind chimes and telling you to breathe deeper.

Here’s what the spiritual industrial complex doesn’t want you to know: most of what you’ve been taught isn’t just wrong. It’s a cage.

“Your soul chose this trauma before birth.” No. It didn’t. There is no cosmic classroom that required your suffering as tuition. There’s fractal inertia in your nervous system, inherited patterns you can actually change, and a billion-dollar industry that profits when you believe your pain is a curriculum instead of a consequence.

“You’re paying karmic debt from past lives.” You’re not. You’re running inherited neurobiology from THIS lineage. Your grandmother’s anxiety. Your mother’s silence. Three generations of “we don’t talk about feelings.” And unlike karma, neurology can be rewired. Today. Not in your next incarnation.

“Twin flames are divine unions.” They’re trauma bonds in sacred drag. Your nervous system recognized familiar dysfunction and called it destiny. Intensity isn’t proof of cosmic connection. Intensity is often proof that two wounded people found each other’s wounds and called it love.

“You just need to raise your vibration.” Translation: suppress every “negative” emotion until your body stores it as chronic pain and your jaw clenches every time you try to be grateful. High vibe culture isn’t spirituality. It’s emotional constipation in a flower crown.

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This book dismantles every lie that kept you stuck. Not with more beliefs. With mechanics. This book shows you what’s actually happening in your body when you “manifest.” What your nervous system is really doing when you feel “intuition” (spoiler: half of it was anxiety in a spiritual costume). Why you keep attracting the same partners, the same problems, the same fucking patterns, and how to actually stop.

This is the book that replaces the cage with a key.

For everyone who’s been told to “trust the process” while the process bankrupted them emotionally.

For the ones who suspected the emperor had no clothes but couldn’t find anyone willing to say it out loud.

For anyone who’s spiritually exhausted, intellectually starving, and ready to stop being a prisoner of concepts that were never designed to set you free.

Your blood already knows what you’re about to read. It’s been circulating this knowing through your capillaries for years, waiting for your mind to catch up. Your bones have been holding the shape of this truth since before you could speak. Your cells are already rearranging themselves around what’s coming, making room, preparing the architecture for a homecoming they never stopped believing in.

Your body has been waiting for you to stop believing and start understanding. It already knows how to heal. It already knows how to change. It already knows the way out. It just needed you to stop asking the universe and start asking your own shimmering, knowing, infinitely patient flesh.

The mythology was the prison. The mechanics are the escape. ✨

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ALSO… This is the moment I lose half the audience and gain the other half for life.

The moment when those who’ve invested years in a relationship with the Arcturian Council decide I’m a devil’s agent, and those who’ve suspected all along but didn’t dare say it aloud finally exhale.

Your spine already knows which half you’re in. Your blood is already voting. Your nervous system made this decision three sentences ago and is just waiting for your brain to catch up.

Let me be clear about something: I’m not a skeptical scientist who always hated this stuff and finally found evidence to destroy it. I’m not coming from the outside with a wrecking ball and a peer-reviewed smirk.

I lived it. All of it.

Thirty years of tarot. Energy work. Channeling. Past life regressions. I’ve seen the 3am downloads. I’ve felt the “entities.” I’ve given readings that made people cry and leave their marriages and quit their jobs. Every example in this book is mine. My life. My nervous system. My clients. My spectacular spiritual meltdowns. I didn’t read about this in a study. I was the study.

And then I kept asking questions until the framework collapsed under the weight of its own mythology.

Not because I wanted it to. Because my body wouldn’t let me stop. Because something in my cells knew the story didn’t match the mechanics. Because after thirty years of watching what ACTUALLY heals people, I couldn’t keep pretending the wrapping paper was the medicine.

The medicine was always the nervous system. The mythology was just the packaging. Pretty packaging. Expensive packaging. But packaging.

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This book is for people with thin skin and thick bullshit detectors.

For burnt-out brains who finally realized they’ve been living from the neck up while the body downstairs has been filing complaints for decades. HR is overwhelmed. The inbox is full. Someone needs to answer.

For somatic therapists who always knew neurology was underneath everything but didn’t have the language to say it out loud without losing clients and getting uninvited from the breathwork retreat.

For trauma survivors who felt physically sick every time someone told them “your soul chose this lesson” and didn’t know why it triggered them so hard. Now they know. Because it was a lie dressed in spiritual clothing. Dressed well, I’ll give it that. Great accessories. But still a lie.

For everyone who sensed something was off about “soul contracts” and “past life karma” but didn’t want to be “the negative one” in a room full of people manifesting abundance while their nervous system was screaming into a pillow.

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This book is NOT for:

Channelers who talk to entities and built a business on it. Your 5D council meetings are not in danger from me. I’m not coming for your income stream. I’m just not going to pretend it’s anything other than you talking to a very creative part of yourself. Which is, honestly, more impressive. But that’s not how you’ve been selling it.

Spirit guide salespeople. If Archangel Michael is on your payroll, we’re not going to agree. That’s okay. He probably has opinions about me too.

The “I receive messages from the Pleiadians” crowd. I’m sure the Pleiadians are lovely. I’m sure they have great skincare routines. I’m just not convinced they’re running a customer service line for Earth and you happen to have the number.

If your entire identity depends on spirits existing as separate entities outside of you, this book is an existential threat to your framework. And I mean that gently. I’ve been there. I know how it feels when someone kicks the scaffolding. But don’t come to my comments to educate me about indigenous wisdom while defending your product. I can smell a sales pitch disguised as sacred tradition from three timelines away.

I’ve been where you are. I’ve believed what you believe. I’ve taught what you teach.

And then I kept going.

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A friend told me recently she’d been avoiding reading this book. Kept putting it off. She was afraid I’d take away the beautiful stories. The reincarnation. The cosmic meaning. The comfort of thinking there was a plan.

Then she started reading.

Every few pages, a message: “Wait... this is liberating?”

She didn’t lose the magic. She lost the cage she thought was the magic.

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This book says: that was you, babe. It was always you. The angel? You. The guide? You. The council? Also you.

You are God incarnated. Field compressed into flesh. The infinite squeezed into a nervous system so it could feel what it’s like to forget and remember again.

Plot twist: the call was coming from inside the house. It always was.

For some, that’s liberation. For some, that’s an insult.

Your body already knows which group you’re in.

She decided before you finished reading this sentence. 💎