The inspiration for this article came to me out of nowhere a few weeks ago. I was sitting in silence during a weekly group meditation, when a single phrase pierced my awareness: There are no hungry ghosts in spirit. Humans are the hungry ghosts. I shared this insight with the group, who did what they often do, by silently taking the insight on board, nodding in acknowledgment and leaving it at that. I made a note to return to this idea when I had the time to really sit with it, and here’s what came up.

Working as an evidential psychic medium has led me to become interested in the history of mediumship in the United States. My interest is rooted in wanting to understand my own place in this history and the role I’d like to play in the field going forward. As I began exploring, it became clear that to understand this history you must consider the rise of Spiritualism in America in the late 19th century.

We are not short on information about intuition and inner knowing, the content is everywhere, and people are hungry for it. The IONS (Institute for Noetic Studies) course I took recently made that really clear to me. The participants were curious, engaged, and genuinely motivated. And yet what stood out to me was how many people were struggling to build an actual living practice around their intuition or noetic style (to borrow IONS language).

I’m always looking for ways to learn and grow, not only as a person, but as a medium and channel. I try to keep up with my skill development and look for opportunities to come together with others in the field around areas of common interest. When IONS (Institute of Noetic Studies) put out a call for participants to pilot their new course, Noetic Integrity: Navigating Inner Knowing with Clarity, I signed up. This is my area of expertise, and I was curious to see what they had to offer.

If you read the first piece in this series, you might be interested in exploring the emptiness that settles in when spiritual content (or practices) fail to satisfy. We unpacked the traps we can fall into including algorithms designed to exploit your attention, parasocial relationships that trick your brain into one-sided bonds with strangers, and the Barnum effect that makes generic advice feel profoundly personal.

In this piece, I want to take the conversation somewhere different. Because here’s the thing: that hollow feeling doesn’t only show up for people who watch too many tarot videos. It shows up for people who have been genuinely engaged, often for years, in a consistent self-care and spiritual practice.

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 yes, this is exactly what’s happening for me right now? I have. There’s something that feels like recognition when the right message lands. And for a while it’s comforting. You believe it. You carry it with you.

In mid-May of 2026, a three-year-old female gray wolf designated BEY03F, affectionately known as Bae, crossed into Sequoia National Park. She is the first wolf to enter this highly protected territory in more than a century. She has entered this place alone after traveling over 1,000 miles since leaving her birthplace in Plumas County, located in the northeastern region of California. Her historic trek has now spanned at least 12 California counties, including a milestone crossing into Los Angeles County, a first for any wolf in over a century. After traversing the rugged Sierra Nevada range, she has most recently been tracked roaming high-altitude terrain inside Sequoia National Park. Her journey will continue until she finds mate.

I’ve been following Brit Hartley’s work for a while now. If you haven’t come across her, she runs No Nonsense Spirituality and does exactly what her name promises. She takes dense spiritual ideas and breaks them down in a clear, manageable way. Her commitment to education, discernment, and personal experience over rigid doctrine appeals to me. We come from different backgrounds, and our paths don’t look the same from the outside, but I recognize the same orientation: ask the hard questions, value direct experience, share what you’re learning, and keep growing. So, when she offered a course on mysticism with her own spiritual teacher, a Sufi mystic named David, I signed up.

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