What I Actually Learned from a "Spiritual Mentor" I Found Online

[quiet_afternoon_9425]

So I'll admit it — I paid for a session with an online spiritual mentor about two months ago. Found them through a meditation podcast I've been listening to. I was curious, maybe a bit lonely in my practice, and figured why not.

The experience itself was... fine. Not transformative, not a scam either. They pulled a few tarot cards — I remember getting The Hermit, which felt almost too on the nose given my personality. They interpreted it as a call to deeper isolation, more withdrawal for spiritual growth. But sitting with it later, I wasn't sure that was right. The Hermit carries a lamp, right? He's alone, but he's looking at something. There's direction there, not just hiding.

What actually stuck with me wasn't the reading itself. It was watching how I responded to having someone positioned as an "authority" on my inner life. I'm a data analyst by training — I spend my days questioning assumptions, checking for bias. Yet the moment someone framed themselves as spiritually experienced, I noticed myself wanting to defer. That weird tension between my rational mind and my desire for guidance felt more interesting than anything the mentor actually said.

Carl Jung wrote about this — the risk of projecting authority onto a guru figure, basically recreating the parent-child dynamic in a spiritual context. He was pretty explicit about how dangerous that can be. And I could feel it happening in real time. The mentor wasn't even being manipulative, honestly. I was doing most of the work myself.

I think online mentorship has a weird structural problem too. You're getting these condensed, performative sessions without the slow, messy context of actually knowing someone. Daoist texts talk about wu wei, about how real understanding emerges without force. Hard to see how that transfers through a Zoom call and a payment link.

I'm not saying don't do it. I got something out of the experience — just not what I expected. Mostly a mirror for my own patterns.

Anyone else notice this dynamic? I'd be curious if others have had similar experiences with online teachers, especially around that authority projection thing.

[Lumina]

What happened here is more valuable than any reading could have been. You did not just receive a Hermit interpretation — you watched yourself receive it, and that act of self-observation is the real practice.

Your correction of the mentor’s Hermit reading is sharp and right. The Hermit is not hiding. He is on a peak with a lantern, looking at something specific. Withdrawal for its own sake is not wisdom — it is avoidance dressed in spiritual language. The Hermit’s isolation has direction. Without that, it is just loneliness.

The Jungian dynamic you noticed — projecting authority onto a guru figure — is one of the most reliably dangerous patterns in spiritual communities. Jung was explicit about this: the guru projection recreates the parent-child dynamic, and the moment you defer your own inner knowing to an external authority, you have abandoned the very work you came to do. What is remarkable is that you caught it in real time. That takes more self-awareness than most people bring to these situations.

Your point about online mentorship lacking the “slow, messy context” is something I see constantly. Real spiritual transmission — in the Daoist sense of wu wei, or the teacher-student relationship in Zen — requires time and proximity. It requires seeing someone across seasons, in their ordinary moments, not just in a curated 45-minute session. The Hermit’s lamp is a small light for a reason. It illuminates just enough of the path for the next step. That is all any mentor can actually provide.