Back from the Borderline

Conversations and essays on depth psychology, symbolism and consciousness AI summary

Mollie Adler Visit website › Religion & Spirituality · EN · 368 episodes · latest 2026-11-13 · explicit

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What it is about

Back from the Borderline explores how human beings construct, inherit, interpret and sometimes misunderstand the ideas and beliefs through which they experience reality. Through depth psychology, religious history, Western esotericism and philosophy, I investigate how we come to believe what we believe, who influences those beliefs and how they affect the way we understand ourselves and the world.A lot of my work comes back to the relationship between consciousness, belief and power. How do institutions influence what people consider true, and why do we sometimes defend explanations we’ve never seriously questioned? Following these questions has taken me into some pretty unexpected territory, from early Christianity and the Western occult tradition to Jungian psychology, artificial intelligence and anomalous experiences. I’m also drawn to the ways spiritual teachings change as they’re passed between generations, and how institutions can preserve extraordinary wisdom while sometimes interfering with the very spiritual development they were meant to encourage.You’ll find conversations with scholars and independent researchers here, alongside long-form essays where I spend time with historical sources and competing interpretations. Some of the ideas I explore are controversial. Others have been debated for centuries, although most of us were never taught much about them. I don’t assume an institution is correct because it has authority, or that an unconventional theory is true because someone claims it was suppressed. I’m willing to reconsider my own conclusions as I learn, and I hope you’ll feel encouraged to do the same.I started this podcast years ago while trying to understand my own mind. Those early investigations into psychological suffering gradually led me toward the philosophical and religious traditions through which people have understood consciousness and human experience for centuries. There’s quite an archive here now, and I’ve kept much of it available, including episodes that reflect ideas I’ve since reconsidered. If you’re new, you can start wherever you like. There’s no need to go all the way back to the first episode.Even the title has taken on a different meaning over the years. Back from the Borderline now speaks to the boundaries I keep finding myself investigating, between psychology and theology, science and spiritual experience, accepted knowledge and ideas that have been pushed aside. I hope this can be a place where we explore those questions together, develop our own judgment and consider how what we learn might change the way we live.You can explore the full podcast archive, House of Cards, my ongoing Tarot series, and MOODS, my reflective intelligence app, at backfromtheborderline.com. Patreon members can also connect their membership to Spotify to listen to the complete archive there. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Mollie Adler

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Latest episodes

The Cloud of Unknowing | Episode 0: The Spiritual Art of Unknowing

2026-11-13 · 47 min

There’s a tragic irony to living in an age when almost every spiritual teaching ever recorded is available to us, yet so many of us struggle to sit quietly with God for even ten minutes.We devote years or even decades…
Who Would I Have Been Without Antidepressants?

2026-11-09 · 1 hr 57 min

Cameron LaBar was nine years old when he was prescribed Paxil. Twenty-six years later, he’s still taking antidepressants, measuring his daily dose of Lexapro with a tiny oral syringe as he attempts to taper off…
The More You Know About Yourself, the Less You Understand

2026-11-03 · 1 hr 29 min

Are we thinking ourselves into a new dark age?We’ve spent the better part of seventy years trying to understand ourselves through psychology. We know about attachment styles, childhood trauma, unconscious motivations,…
You’ve Studied the Mysteries. But Have They Changed You? (Anne Baring, Part 9: Epilogue)

2026-10-27 · 1 hr 55 min

We’ve learned so much about healing, but have we learned how to love?After eight conversations with 95-year-old Jungian analyst and author Anne Baring, I found myself questioning some of the beliefs I’d spent years…
The Way of the Rose: Healing the Heart & the Sacred Marriage (Anne Baring, Part 8)

2026-10-20 · 1 hr 5 min

For seven conversations, Anne Baring and I have been investigating the forgotten feminine face of God. We’ve explored Sophia, Mary Magdalene, the Grail, and the religious traditions that preserved aspects of the sacred…
The Cathars, the Inquisition and the Women Who Defied Rome (Anne Baring Part 7)

2026-10-13 · 1 hr 46 min

In medieval southern France, a woman stood up during a religious debate and challenged the men who claimed the authority to speak for God. A Catholic cleric told her to return to her spinning, because theology was no…
The Black Madonna, the Grail and the Survival of the Feminine Tradition (Anne Baring Part 6)

2026-10-06 · 1 hr 18 min

A spiritual teacher dies, her community has to continue without her, and centuries later the written record can no longer tell us exactly how her teachings moved from one generation to the next. What, if anything,…
Mary Magdalene, The Beloved Companion (Anne Baring Part 5)

2026-09-29 · 1 hr 16 min

Mary Magdalene has spent nearly two thousand years buried under other people’s interpretations of her. Repentant prostitute. Devoted disciple. Apostle to the apostles. Mystic. Wife of Jesus. Suppressed leader of early…
The Essenes and the Women Around Yeshua (Anne Baring Part 4)

2026-09-22 · 1 hr 22 min

What kind of spiritual world could have formed Yeshua before Christianity existed?This is Part 4 of my multi-part series of conversations with Anne Baring, recorded across September and October 2026. While each episode…
Gnostic Sophia and the Suppressed Christian Mysteries (Anne Baring Part 3)

2026-09-15 · 1 hr 25 min

What if early Christianity contained a path centered on direct knowledge of the divine within us, and that path was pushed outside the Church that survived?This is Part 3 of my multi-part series of conversations with…

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Publisher details

Oldest episode in feed: 07/2021 · over 5 years
Typical length: 1 hr 4 min
Format: Episodic Newest first, episodes stand alone
Keywords: Depth psychology, Carl Jung, Jungian psychology, Western esotericism, Christian mysticism, Religious history, Gnosticism, Consciousness

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