The Algorithm Is Not Your Spirit Guide

Your feed knows exactly how to sound like the universe. A warm tarot reader looks into the camera, an "energy update" promises a breakthrough, and for a moment you feel seen. Then the weeks pass, the prediction doesn't land, and you find yourself right back where you started, searching for the next message that will finally make it click. We're not here to shame that impulse. We're here to explain it, clearly, and help you find your way back to something real.

We break down the psychology behind passive spiritual consumption, including the Barnum effect, intermittent reinforcement, and parasocial relationships, plus the plain truth about platform algorithms: they're built to maximize engagement, not your spiritual well-being. When ancient tools meet modern feeds, it can create a powerful loop that slowly weakens discernment and trains you to outsource your inner knowing.

From there, we pivot into what actually helps. Drawing on Columbia psychologist Dr. Lisa Miller's research on the neuroscience of spirituality and the "awakened brain," we share five practical daily practices that move spirituality from your screen into your nervous system and your life. We also explore somatic healing and grounded, ethical spirituality through thinkers like Resmaa Menakem, Prentis Hemphill, Rachel Ricketts, Adrienne Maree Brown, and more, with an invitation to notice what you want to pause and what you want to replace it with.

If you've been craving depth, steadiness, and spiritual sovereignty, this is your reminder that effort and return beat endless scrolling.

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Transcript

The Spiritual Scrolling Loop

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Blooming Wand, your home for grounded spiritual content. I'm Emily O'Neill, Evidential Psychic Medium, Intuitive Healer and Mentor. And on today's episode, I want to talk about spiritual content, passive consumption, and finding your way into a spiritual practice that truly nourishes you. Have you ever found yourself on your phone or computer an hour deep into tarot readings, astrology updates, or channeled messages, nodding along, feeling genuinely seen, maybe even taking notes, thinking, yep, this is exactly what's happening for me right now. I know I have, and I know that there's something that feels like recognition when the right message lands. And for a while it's truly comforting. You believe it and you carry it with you. And then slowly, quietly, whatever was supposed to happen doesn't. The shift doesn't come, the person doesn't return, the breakthrough stays just around the corner, and you're back to watching another video, looking for the next message, you know the drill. And over time you start to realize that what the content pointed toward and what showed up in your life don't match, and in most cases never will. And that gap is what I want to explore today. Now, how do we even get pulled into this loop? It usually starts somewhere pretty real. You're going through something, a relationship that's uncertain, a transformation that you didn't choose, a loss, a period where the future feels unclear. Maybe you're just anxious at 11 p.m. and you pick up your phone, you find a video. A tarot reader who seems warm and grounded looks into the camera and says something like, This reading is for whoever needs to hear it, or if this message landed on your feed, it's for you. And then they proceed to describe something that feels close to your life. You feel seen and you feel like maybe the universe is paying attention. The algorithm, which is now clocked that you watched that video, starts filling your feed with more, more readings, more energy updates, more the collective is going through massive shifts right now. And for a while, it's comforting, interesting, and engaging. And there's a community of people in the comments who feel what you feel. There's a language for your experiences, and there's something telling you that you matter and that things are going to be okay. The need underneath all of this is very real. The longing to be seen, to find pattern and meaning in hard times, to feel connected to something larger than yourself. That is not a flaw and it's something that we all go through. And research from Columbia University psychologist Dr. Lisa Miller, who has spent decades studying neuroscience, the neuroscience of spirituality, that is, what an interesting topic. And her research shows that humans are neurologically hardwired for this kind of connection. We are seeking connection to something bigger than ourselves. Our brains are looking for that. Our brains are literally built to seek relationship with something that's bigger than ourselves. So the poll is not a weakness or a flaw, it's our biology. But is the content we're consuming feeding our hunger in a way that is truly nourishing? At some point, for a lot of us, something shifts. We watch the videos, we consume the content, and we actively look for guidance. But instead of feeling more grounded, connected, or spiritually alive, we find ourselves feeling the same as we always did. Maybe that predictive reading from six months ago didn't pan out, or maybe we start noticing that every single week promises a massive energy shift designed to keep us tuned in. If you have felt a quiet sense of disillusionment lately, please know that you haven't failed your spiritual practice. You've just run into a very sophisticated machine. And when ancient tools and ancient wisdom meet modern algorithms, it creates a powerful psychological loop. And looking behind the curtain can help us understand what's actually happening.

Why Vague Readings Feel Personal

SPEAKER_00 4:02

The first layer of the loop relies on a psychological phenomenon that I have mentioned many times before, known as the Barnum effect. In 1949, researcher Bertram Fauer gave students what they believed were highly personalized personality assessments. And the students rated them as highly accurate. The catch was that everyone received the exact same vague description, filled with universal statements about having doubts or wanting to be liked. Collective tarot readings and energy updates work the exact same way. They're structured to feel deeply personal while remaining broad enough to apply to almost anyone going through a transition. It's a completely natural thing to occur that these messages would land so hard in the moment that you receive them, but the structural vagueness explains why a quiet emptiness creeps in later.

The Slot Machine Reward Cycle

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Now, our continued engagement is driven by a mechanism called intermittent reinforcement. And this is really interesting and it's frankly not new. Psychologist B.F. Skinner discovered that when rewards are unpredictable, we pursue them more compulsively than when they are consistent. This is the exact design principle behind slot machines and social media notification feeds. So when one online reading happens to nail your exact situation, which I think that it's possible that they can, it creates a powerful neurological hit. And then we natural, naturally go looking for that feeling again. Sometimes we find it and sometimes we don't. And that very unpredictability is what keeps us scrolling. It's not a lack of willpower keeping us hooked, it's basic brain chemistry responding to an unpredictable reward. I just think that's interesting. I had forgotten about the concept of intermittent reinforcement, and it was interesting to revisit it in this context.

Parasocial Warmth And Algorithm Control

SPEAKER_00 6:03

This digital format also mimics intimacy, so consuming things online, that's what I mean by digital format, through what sociologists Horton and Wall termed parasocial relationships. And these are one-sided emotional connections where we feel genuine warmth and familiarity for a media figure who doesn't even know that we exist. And when an online creator looks directly into the camera and says that what you're viewing is not an accident, they collapse that distance between the two of you. And your nervous system responds to that warmth because the emotional experience that you're feeling is entirely real. The human craving for connection is beautiful, but a video broadcast is fundamentally one way and cannot do what a reciprocal relationship can do for you. We also have a name, we also have to name the platform architecture plainly. The algorithm is not a neutral tool, nor is the universe sending you a synchronicity. It's a machine engineered to measure and maximize engagement. It does not serve content because it's true, useful, or good for your soul. It serves it because you clicked on something similar in the past. And it serves it because the algorithm has deemed whatever the content matter is as being highly consumable. And then it will push it and push it and push it more and more and more, and even into new audiences. When we combine a real human need for meaning with a machine optimized to mimic fulfillment, we experience a slow atrophy of our own discernment. Spending all of our time letting someone else interpret the energy of our lives causes us to lose touch with our own brilliant ability to read our own terrain. And stepping back from the screen is not a loss of spirituality, it's a reclamation of your spiritual sovereignty and your own self-care practice. The universe speaks through your actual life, your immediate community, and your own quiet intuition. It's one thing to name the trap that we've all been caught in, but it's another thing entirely to find our way out of it. When we step away from the flashing lights of the algorithmic feed, the sudden quiet can feel disorienting. We might wonder where to look for genuine depth when our screens have spent years defining what quote unquote spirituality is supposed to look like. Fortunately, we don't have to reinvent the wheel or wander blindly into the dark. There are extraordinary thinkers, scientists, and practitioners who've spent decades anchoring transformation in the physical body. They've looked at rigorous data and in real-world communities. And they are the ones doing the quiet, heavy lifting to show us what lies beyond the screen. And their insights offer a beautiful, practical roadmap for anyone ready to ground themselves in something real.

Reclaiming Spiritual Sovereignty Offline

SPEAKER_00 8:58

So I want to share some resources for doing the work. If you're ready to step away from the algorithmic feed and ground yourself into something that feels more substantive and substantive rather and supportive, you don't have to navigate that terrain alone. I want to introduce you to some researchers, therapists, and thinkers whose work offers a powerful anecdote to passive spiritual consumption. And these are people doing the rigorous, deeply human work of showing us what real transformation looks like. And we can start with the actual biology of belief. Dr. Lisa Miller is a psychologist and professor at Columbia University, where she founded the Spirituality Mind-Body Institute, the first Ivy League graduate program of its kind. Through over a hundred peer-reviewed studies and books like The Spiritual Child and the Awakened Brain, Miller has provided some rigorous research on how what spiritual on how spiritual engagement impacts the human body. Her work states that humans are neurologically built for spiritual experience. I think this is super interesting. We possess specific brain circuitry designed for connection, meaning making, and feeling held by something larger than ourselves. But here's the vital catch: that circuitry is only activated through actual active practice, not passive consumption. So when we think about kind of getting a hit through consuming a lot of online content, that initial hit, and we talked about this earlier on in the episode, does trigger something in us and make us want to go back for more. But to get a deeper, more meaningful practice built, we have to take our engagement a little bit further. So when we engage our neurological circuitry firsthand, our brains become more resilient and measurably protected against depression and addiction. So when we develop a deeper practice, it can actually help us with some issues like depression and addiction. And I think that that's really interesting. The deep peace and connection people chase in those online videos is entirely real. The brain states they point toward are real. They're just fundamentally inaccessible through your screen. So I wanted to outline some of the five daily practices that she mentions to activate your quote-unquote awakened brain. This does come from her book, The Awakened Brain. So just kind of diving into that, according to the groundbreaking research by psychologist Dr. Lisa Miller, human beings are hardwired for spiritual connection. We've already talked about this. However, this neural circuitry cannot be activated by passive consumption. We've touched on this as well. Instead, it requires active practice. What can that active practice look like? Let's see what she says. When we engage this circuitry firsthand, our brains physically change, building measurable resilience against depression, anxiety, and addiction. So here are five practical ways to activate your quote unquote awakened brain.

Five Practices For An Awakened Brain

SPEAKER_00 12:08

This is this is from Dr. Lisa Miller's work. So let's see what she says. Some of this stuff makes a lot of sense to me. She has the hosting council meditation, which is a 90-second imagery exercise to shift out of isolation out of isolation, rather. So you close your eyes, you take five deep breaths, and you visualize a table. You invite anyone who has your absolute best interest at heart, living or deceased, your higher self and your higher power to sit with you. And then you ask them, what do I need to know right now? This activates the brain's bonding networks, replicating the neural feeling of being safely held. Now I do something similar in one-on-one sessions with my ongoing clients where we kind of hold a little council meeting. And I can tell you, we've all found it to be very, very helpful. We don't do it exactly like this, but I don't know that that really matters. And I can tell you that it's it's really helpful. The second thing is shifting to spiritual listening. Treat your mind like an antenna rather than a factory. When hit with an unexpected roadblock, stop trying to force a logical solution. This is this is something that I have found helpful. Instead, quiet your mind and ask out loud, what is life showing me right now? This disengages hyper-focused task networks to allow for broader, more creative insights. So it it interrupts the loop. And I don't know about you, but I get real stuck in loops. I'll notice that I have a lot of mental loops and I have different practices where I have to engage them to help me break out of that so I can broaden or expand my awareness and not stay trapped in that loop. So the spiritual listening practice kind of rings true for me. The third is active altruism and service. Spiritual circuitry requires a deliberate choice to love and serve others. Actively choose to engage in community service, help a neighbor, or respond to an annoyance with kindness. This engages mirror neurons and bonding circuitry, dissolving the illusion of separation. Now, I'm a big believer in selfless service or helping people out as part of a spiritual practice because I do think that we consume a lot on our phones alone and online, and it almost makes us more and more separate from each other and gives us false sense of connection. But getting out into the real world and just helping a friend or helping somebody who needs something without expecting anything in return is a powerful spiritual practice. It's been central to mine for many, many years. And it has helped to make me feel less separate, which has been fulfilling to me. Cultivating awe in nature. Nature is a universal gateway to transcendent awareness. Spend dedicated time outdoors without technology, intentionally focusing on the vastness and complexity of the natural world. Deep awe quiets the brain region responsible for tracking the boundaries of the self, creating a physical feeling of oneness. So if you've been following along with me, you know that I'm a big believer in connecting to nature. Even if you live in a big city and it's hard, even visualizing it in your mind's eye can be really helpful, or bringing a bouquet of flowers into your home. Just this morning, I was taking the dogs out and I saw a trail of ants, and they were moving their nest, I guess you could say, and passing all the eggs along. And I just sat and watched these tiny, tiny ants carrying things way bigger than they are, and it did generate a sense of awe, and it made me feel so connected and also I don't know, just how beautiful nature is and how connected everything is. And I also spend a lot of time watching birds and bugs, and right now the butterflies are flooding my backyard and the garden space as well as dragonflies, and I'll just sit and watch them for a very, very long time and let the time pass. And it's just takes me out of myself. The other thing she recommends this is the fifth practice is tracking synchronicity. Train your brain's networks to scan for meaning rather than threats. Keep a journal of meaningful coincidences and sudden intuition or chance encounters that shifted your day. Because actively documenting these moments validates them and wires your brain to recognize that part of a larger supportive universe. So this is another thing that I recommend to people who are wanting, there's like, Emma, I want to develop my intuition. I'm like, keep a journal and keep track of these moments where you feel awe or you've had a meaningful coincidence or sudden intuition or a chance encounter that shifted something for you. Write about them, acknowledge them, and validate them because it does open you up to more of those experiences and it can be a very fulfilling practice.

Healing Through The Nervous System

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Now, I want to shift gears away from Dr. Lisa Miller's work into some other people's work who I have really enjoyed. And to move from the brain into the rest of the body, we can look to therapists and somatic practitioners like Rezma Menachem and Prentice Hempill. So in Menachem's book, My Grandmother's Hands, which I highly recommend, it's a foundational reading for anybody that wants to do deep inner work. His framework, which is called cultural somatics, starts from the premise that healing is not primarily an intellectual or cognitive event. It lives in the body, in the nervous system, and in the patterns of contraction and release that we inherit through generations. So much of the spiritual content we scroll through, it's purely cerebral. It's a collection of words and concepts and predictions and mental frameworks, and the body just doesn't know what to do with that. And actual healing requires our physical nervous system to be present. It also means that we might feel things that are uncomfortable, which is why it can be helpful to work with a practitioner. But I return to my grandmother, my grandmother's hands often, and I always learn something new when I return to it, and it's been a really helpful tool for me. Now, Apprentice Hemp Hill expands on this beautifully with their book, What It Takes to Heal. And Hemphill argues with immense compassion that healing is not a destination, a product, or something that you consume your way into. It happens in real-world relationships in the body over time and through steady practice and returning to ourselves. This is a direct, gentle answer to the algorithmic loop. Both Menachem and Hempel remind us that five minutes of being inside your own skin will do more for your spiritual life than five hours of watching someone else talk about theirs. And this is something I always offer to any client that I work with, and I say it doesn't have to be an hour-long thing. It can just be five minutes of quiet time and breathing and being in your own body with nothing, no technology. And it's simple, but simple doesn't always mean easy because I can tell you what, a lot of people have a hard time even picking up a five-minute practice. And I there's something interesting to me about that as well. And I've certainly sometimes found it hard to create five minutes to just be fully present in my body. Now, when we look at the broader outline of online wellness, we have to also examine what we are consuming.

Wellness Culture And Ethical Spirituality

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Spiritual activist and author Rachel Rick Ricketts explicitly addresses this in her book, Do Better. This was required as part of my trauma-informed life coaching certification that I did a while back, and it's a book that I again I return to over and over. And Ricketts examines how the modern wellness industry centers whiteness while systematically extracting from black, indigenous, and other traditions of color. This is very true. A large portion of the energy updates and collective ascension content floating around the internet does draw heavily from ancient lineages that it doesn't ever acknowledge, and it's stripped of its historical context, its community accountability, and original depth. And this content becomes watered down and it unmoored. And by connecting spiritual practices directly to justice and systematic accountability, Ricketts is grounding spirituality in a way that makes it real, historically, and deeply responsible for the world we live in. And I feel like this is the way that the old people I think that my ancestors would have practiced in this similar way. That's something that I deeply, deeply feel. The exercises and prompts at the end of each chapter go really deep and they prompt a thoughtful deconstruction of your own behavior and beliefs. So it's it's a very well-written book that's easy to read and get through. But at the end, there are these prompts and questions. And let me tell you, like, that's what takes longer than reading the book, is going through the questions and the explorations that she asks of us when we read that book. And for a model of what grounded spirituality looks like in action, we can turn to Adrienne Marie Brown. And in her book, Emergent Strategy, she describes a spirituality rooted in nature, in relationships, and in the fractal patterns of living systems. She reminds us that true change and transformation happen at a level of the small and the intimate. And I really believe this. It does not occur in massive portal activations or overnight collective energy shifts, but in how we show up for each other and For ourselves and for the earth on an ordinary day. And if you want to understand the exact mechanics of your feed, this I haven't read the book yet, but I've looked at some YouTube content, and I'm definitely going to look for the book at the library and see if I can get my hands on it. But this is super interesting to me. So this is about the mechanics that shape our algorithms, and it's Dr. Sophia Umoja Noble's Algorithms of Oppression. It's a very interesting place to take a look. This is a professor, she's a professor at UCLA and Noble documents how digital platforms are shaped entirely by private profit motives and are anything but neutral in what they amplify. The spiritual community is not exempt from this. The voices, aesthetics, and versions of spiritual truth that get pushed to the top of your feed are not a random assortment, nor are they the universe curating your awakening. It is a corporate machine prioritizing engagement over your well-being. Lastly, if you love the tarot and you also love anti-racist self-exploration, you'll really love Tarot for the Hard Work by Maria Minis. I love this book, which transforms the tarot from a traditional tool of personal divination into a powerful mirror for collective liberation. By mapping the evolutionary journey of the major arcana into the heavy labor of anti-racism, Maria Minnes elevates tarot as a spiritual practice beyond a tool for mere self-comfort. She reframes it as a tool for self and social accountability. And these this practice forces radical self-honesty, using the cards to reflect our unexamined biases, privileges, and internalized complicit complicency and systematic oppression. This book and working with it has really changed the way that I look at the tarot and engage with the tarot in my self-care and spiritual practices, and also when I use it in sessions with clients, I just love it. I'm remembering how with one of the archetypes in the tarot, the Herefont, which has always been a little complicated to me, it was through her book that I was really able to connect with that archetype in a deep and meaningful way. So it's a good tool. Now, rather than allowing for spiritual bypassing, so using mysticism to escape harsh social realities, Tarot for the Hard Work explores the idea that inner insights turn into real-world action, right? It positions the inner shadow not as the end in itself. So shadow work isn't something you do once and there's an end to it, but as the essential spiritual practice required to dismantle systematic injustice by starting with you and your self-care practice and how you're doing that work for yourself. Now, through this lens, engaging with the cards becomes a sacred, active ritual of unlearning. And proving it proves to me at least that true spiritual awakening requires us to look honestly at our own reflections and take active responsibility for repairing harm in our communities.

What To Pause And What To Replace

SPEAKER_00 25:24

So this is not an invitation to quit the internet forever or decide that everyone making spiritual content is doing something wrong. I'm a spiritual content creator. It's simply an invitation to notice honestly and without shame whether the content that you consume is truly nourishing you or if it's become a substitute for the real-world action and connection that you're really looking for. Now, if you feel ready to reclaim your inner landscape, you might find it useful to step back from a few specific things for a time. Collective readings that claim to tell you exactly what the universe has in store for millions of strangers simultaneously. Maybe take a step back from that. Weekly energy updates that account accounts that frame every regular planetary alignment or lunar event as a crisis requiring outside interpretation. Channeled messages that position a single online creator as an exclusive conduit between you and spiritual truth. Timeline shift and ascension content that promotes a sudden, passive, collective transformation that never quite arrives. There's a lot of this out there. None of these things are, I would say, inherently evil or bad, but a steady diet of them quietly replaces your own vibrant inner life with someone else's interpretation of it. Consider what you might like to put into your newly opened space instead. You can pick up your own tarot or oracle deck, pull a single card, and just sit with it, let it act as a psychological mirror, surfacing something from deep inside of you rather than delivering a message to you from the outside. You can sit, breathe, and sense what is happening in your body without trying to fix or interpret anything. You just acknowledge it. And you can journal with intention. You know, I'm always going to mention journaling, asking yourself the hard, beautiful questions that only you can answer, like what am I feeling right now? What do I know to be true for me today? And what am I avoiding? Building the capacity to stay with those questions is exactly what a true practice does. And when you spend time in your own emotional landscape and set aside hours to be in the living, breathing world with your attention off the screen, you can step out of the spell and back into your own sovereign life.

Questions For The Road

SPEAKER_00 27:42

And I have a few questions for you. Questions for the road, if you will. Which of the psychological loops mentioned today, so the Barnum effect, intermittent reinforcement, or parasocial connection, do you recognize most in your own digital habits? If you took just half the time you currently spend watching online content and gave it back to your own direct practice, what is one small thing you would love to do with that time this week? Looking back at the thinkers introduced today, of which there are many, whose work feels like the specific medicine your or perspective your inner life needs right now. So just remember if you're looking for more, there is more. We've mentioned The Awakened Brain by Dr. Lisa Miller, My Grandmother's Hands by Resma Menachim, What It Takes to Heal by Prentice Hempill, Do Better by Rachel Ricketts, Emergent Strategy by Adrian Marie Brown. I also want to throw in Breeding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall-Kimmerer. That book really changed me. Algorithms of Oppression. I've researched this. I haven't read it yet. I've got it on my to be red list. I'm fascinated with this one. I also uh have really enjoyed No Nonsense Spirituality, the book by Britt Hartley. She's also got a lot of online content. She goes by the tagline No Nonsense Spirituality, Tarot for the Hard Work by Maria Minnesota. And there are other different things like podcasts and newsletters that might feel like they get you to cultivate a deeper spiritual practice. I hope that's what Blooming Wand does for you. And don't forget you can sign up for my newsletter at BloomingWand.com. Don't forget to like and subscribe to the Blooming Wand podcast wherever you choose to listen to it, or like and subscribe on YouTube. I try to be a place that curates and cultivates a thoughtful, deep, and meaningful practice. Obviously, what I offer here is free. It's free to you to incorporate as you see fit. Now I just want to remember that, I just want to remember, I just want to remind us all that a spiritual practice can be any anything, genuinely anything, but it does require one thing that the algorithm or the internet actively works against, which is effort and return. Not perfection, not a dramatic awakening, just showing up again and again. And the difference between consuming content about spirituality and having a practice is essentially the difference between reading about swimming and getting in the water to learn to swim. The content can point at the water and it can describe what it feels like, but you're the one who has to get in. And if you feel that you're at the threshold of wanting to go deeper into the waters in terms of your spiritual practice, do stay tuned. The next episode is all about how we move from consuming spiritual content to developing a practice that feels supportive and fulfilling. And we'll talk about the dark night of the soul and other spiritual allegories that speak to the sacred times when we begin to yearn for something more. So stay tuned. And in the meantime, you know what I'm gonna say. Get those journals out, take good care of yourselves, and I'll see you soon.