Terms & Privacy

Who it is for

Anyone may join. Your account is tied to the email you sign in with; please don’t share your sign-in with anyone else. Your journal stays private whatever you choose to do here.

Memberships and courses

Free. Your journal, the shared shore, the Fireside and reading Questions for Gene are free, and a free account may try each of the Lantern’s tools once. Asking Gene a question comes with Doorway Membership, or with any of his courses.

Doorway Membership (and the larger Doorway Membership Plus) opens the Lantern and all its helpers. It renews automatically each month or year until you cancel. You can cancel at any time in Settings → Your Membership, or by signing in to the Astral Doorway in a web browser; it then stops at the end of the period you have already paid for. If you change your mind within 14 days of joining, you’ll be refunded. After that, payments already made aren’t refunded.

Courses are paid for once. A course opens in the app as soon as you pay, and the words above the Pay button say what that means for a refund. For The Wordless Teaching: if you change your mind within 14 days of buying, you’ll be refunded; after 14 days the course is non-refundable. For the recorded Astral Doorway Course: because it’s yours straight away, it can’t be refunded.

Credits for Your Life Under the Stars are paid for once and added to your account straight away, so they can’t be refunded. They never expire, and if a book can’t be written, its credits are given back to you.

A top-up adds extra replies, paintings and dreams read aloud for when a month’s allowance runs out. It is paid for once and added to your account straight away, so it can’t be refunded. It is used only after the month’s own allowance, and only while you are a member; what is left never expires.

None of this affects your rights if something isn’t delivered as described. Prices are shown before you pay and include any tax where you live.

Be gentle with the circle

What you keep private is entirely your own. What you choose to share — on the shore, in the Fireside Chat, in a question — is seen by other members, so bring the same care you’d bring to a room of people you respect. No cruelty, harassment, or content that would harm another traveler. Gene may hide anything shared, or remove a member, to keep the circle safe. There are no streaks, scores, or badges here, and there never will be.

Everyone on the island gathers at the shore. By entering, you agree to keep it kind.

• Speak from your own experienceWhat you have lived, not what you have only read about.
• Be gentle with each otherEveryone here is at a different point on the path. Patience, never mockery.
• What is shared here stays herePeople open their inner lives on the shore. Never pass their words on.
• No selling, spam, or preachingDon’t advertise or recruit, and don’t pull people away to other groups.
• There are no foolish questionsIf you’re stuck, ask. Your question may be the one someone else needed.
• Take partShare what you find. The shore is only as alive as the people on it.

Blocking, and the one thing that comes through it

You can block any member. It works both ways and it is complete: no private messages, and neither of you sees the other’s words in the Fireside rooms or their dreams on the shore. They are not told. You can undo it whenever you like.

There is one exception, and it exists for one reason. When something you make public — a dream offered to the shore, a reflection, a question to Gene — reads as real danger to you in waking life, it is held back from the circle and reaches Gene privately, and he may write to you even if you have blocked him or turned private messages off. That is the only message that comes through, and it comes from care. Your journal is never read to decide it, nor are your conversations with the Lantern.

The AI helpers are yours to choose

The tools that tidy words, paint a dream, or reflect with you are opt-in — they only ever touch a dream when you press their button. They’re companions for your own reflection, not oracles or a substitute for professional care. If you’re struggling in waking life, please reach a person you trust or a crisis line where you are.

Offered with care, as-is

This app is made with love for a season of practice, and kept running with care — but it’s a companion, not a guarantee. It may occasionally be unavailable or imperfect. Keep your own copy of anything precious (you can export your whole journal anytime). These terms, and the app itself, may change as it grows from the circle’s suggestions; we’ll keep this page current.

What we hold, and why

Only what the app needs to be your book of the night:

• — Your journal: the dreams, reflections, tags, photos and any AI results you create. This is the heart of it, and it’s yours.
• — Your account: the email you sign in with, and the display name and photo you choose to show the circle.
• — If you buy something: the email you paid with, what you bought, the amount, the date, and the words you agreed to at checkout. Your card details go straight to Stripe; the app never sees them.
• — If you link another email address to your account (for a course bought with it), we keep that link so anything bought with it reaches you.
• — If you turn on reminders: a record of this device so notifications can reach it, and your reminder settings.
• — A list of the notices sent to you over the last two weeks — what kind each was and where it opens, never the words — so you can find one again. It clears itself after fourteen days, and you can clear it sooner.
• — A few private counts (like how many AI images you’ve made this month) so the gentle limits work. We do not track your behavior for advertising, and there are no third-party trackers.

Your private dreams are unreadable to anyone else

A dream you keep private is for your eyes only — not other travelers, and not Gene. This isn’t a promise resting on trust: the database itself enforces it, handing a private dream back only to the account that wrote it and turning everyone else away before a word is read. Gene’s own tools are built so they can only ever touch what you’ve shared and simple counts, never the text of a private dream. Your data travels over an encrypted connection and is stored on encrypted disks. The fuller promise is here.

Who helps run it (our processors)

A handful of trusted, respected services do specific jobs, each bound to protect your data:

• — Supabase — the private database and file storage where your journal lives, and the sign-in system.
• — Vercel — hosts and serves the app.
• — Resend — sends your sign-in codes and delivers your suggestions to Gene.
• — Mailchimp — sends Gene’s letters, only if you asked for them (a tick when you join, or a press in Settings). It receives your email address and first name, nothing else.
• — Stripe — takes payments for memberships and courses. It receives your email and your payment details, and keeps its own record of each payment, as the law requires.
• — Anthropic (Claude) and OpenAI — power the AI features. They see the words you send them: when you press an AI button, and when you make something public (a shared dream, a reflection, or a question), which passes a quiet safety check and may be drawn on for the circle’s shared readings. Under their business terms your words are never used to train anything, held briefly for abuse checking and then deleted, and never passed to another company.

Taking your journal with you

Everything you’ve written is yours to keep. In Settings you can download your whole journey as a night-and-gold PDF, or as plain text or a data file, anytime.

Leaving, and what that erases

In Settings you can erase your account. This permanently deletes your journal and everything in it — dreams, reflections, photos, AI results, messages, questions — and your profile. (A question you chose to ask fully anonymously has no link to you, so it stays anonymous rather than being traced back and removed.) It cannot be undone, so export first if you’d like to keep it. Shared dreams and reflections you posted are removed too.

If you have a membership, erasing your account stops it first, so you are never charged again. A membership opened through Patreon or YouTube is paid there, not here: to stop paying, cancel it on Patreon or YouTube. Stripe keeps its own record of past payments, as the law requires; your journal is deleted either way.

How long we keep it

Your journal stays for as long as you want it — through the course and beyond. You’re always in control: you can export or erase it whenever you like. When you erase your account, your data is deleted right away; it then ages out of our short-lived disaster- recovery backups within about a week. If the app is ever retired, you’ll be given clear notice and time to take your journal with you first.

When you change a dream’s words, the last five earlier versions are kept for thirty days so you can put one back; after that they are gone.

Reaching us

For anything at all — a question, a concern, a request about your data — write to gene@genehart.com.