Your dreams are yours

Private means private

A dream you keep private is for your eyes only. No other traveler can read it. No administrator can read it. Gene cannot read it — the app gives him no way to, the same way it gives no way to anyone else.

How that is true

It isn’t a promise resting on trust alone — it’s built into the ground the app stands on:

• The database itself refuses. Your dreams live behind a rule called Row-Level Security. When any request asks for a private dream, the database hands it back only to the one account that wrote it — and turns everyone else away, at the data layer, before a single word is read. It is not a setting in the app that could be flipped; it is the database enforcing the law on every request.
• Gene’s tools are blind to it. The administrator area — the part of the app only Gene can open — is built so it can only ever touch what you’ve chosen to share, and simple counts, never the text of a private dream. Even Gene’s own account, opening the app, is turned away from your private dreams by the very same rule that turns away every other traveler.
• He can see when you last wrote, never what. Gene has one list showing who in the circle hasn’t written for a while, so he can send a word to someone before they drift away — a teacher noticing a quiet student, which is what he would do anyway if the circle were eleven people in a room. It shows a date and nothing else: no title, no words, not even how many dreams you’ve kept. Nothing is counted against you, nothing is sent automatically, and you are never told you have been quiet.
• If you report something the doorway made. Under an answer, a reading or a painting the doorway made, you can quietly report it to Gene. Only when you press Send does he receive it: the doorway’s own words or painting, the reason you choose and any note you add — never your dream or your question. If an answer quoted your words, the quote goes with it. A recap, a letter, Threads and “Look closely” retell your nights, so none of their words go with a report — only which piece it was, the reason and any note.
• Locked in transit and at rest. Your words travel over an encrypted connection, and are stored on encrypted disks. Nothing is left lying in the open.
• Unless you choose to share it. This is the one thing that is entirely up to you. If you offer a dream to the shared shore, then that dream — its words and its picture — becomes visible to the circle, with your first name — or, if you offer it anonymously, with no name, no face, and no picture unless you tick to include it. A reading of that dream — your own, its interpretation, or the reading from the tradition of Gnosis — goes with it only if you send that reading too, and you can take it off the shore again on the dream’s page. That is the whole point of sharing. Take it back whenever you like and it leaves the shore at once, picture and all. Everything you have not shared stays exactly as private as before.
• Your voice stays yours. When you speak a dream, the recording is kept with that dream, and only you can hear it — even on a dream you share, the circle hears nothing. You can let it go on the dream’s page, or stop keeping them in Settings.

Payments

If you become a member or buy a course, Stripe takes the payment. The app never sees your card. What it keeps is what you bought and when, so the door opens for you, and nothing about your dreams is ever part of a payment.

If you support Gene on Patreon, Patreon shares with him, as the creator, his supporters’ names, emails, tiers and payment status. The app uses them for one thing: to open your membership. It compares each supporter’s email with account emails on its own server; where they match, the membership opens by itself, and the app keeps a link between your account and your Patreon account (your Patreon name, tier and status) so it can end when your support does. You can also make that link yourself, by signing in with Patreon in Settings.

For each supporter the app also keeps a keyed fingerprint of the Patreon email (not the email itself) beside the Patreon name, tier and status, so a membership can open the first time you arrive, and so one letter of invitation is sent only once. Nobody can read these through the app, Gene included. The app never sees your card, and Patreon is told nothing about your journal. Unlinking ends the link and the membership it opened; the app keeps only a note that you unlinked, so it never links you this way again.

If you are a member of Gene’s YouTube channel and enter the month’s code, the app keeps only that your account used it, and until when. YouTube is told nothing.

If you joined through a friend’s invitation link, the app keeps a note of whose link it was, so the two of you can each receive the thank-you when you become a member. Neither of you is shown the other’s name by it, and it goes when either account is deleted.

Videos

A class recording you read along with, and each teaching of the free courses, plays inside the app through YouTube’s privacy-enhanced player (youtube-nocookie.com) — and only when you press play. The app sends it nothing about you; what YouTube sees is the same as when anyone watches a public video. The one thing kept is the teaching you opened last, so the course can offer Continue; nothing is counted or marked watched.

Not fuel for big tech

Your journal is not a product. It is never sold, never used to advertise to you, and never handed over to the big technology companies. It lives in its own private, well-guarded home — paid for, not free — kept for this circle alone.

During a course, the doorway may send you one email a week of what Gene posted, and between courses one at the start of each month — only while no device of yours receives its notices. They carry nothing from anyone’s journal, and one click stops them.

Gene also writes letters by email, sent through Mailchimp. Only if you tick “Send me Gene’s letters too” when you join, or press “Send me Gene’s letters” in Settings, the app sends Mailchimp your email address and first name — nothing else, and nothing from your journal. Every letter has its own unsubscribe.

Some of what you write is read by Anthropic’s Claude, and some by OpenAI (pictures, voice, and the quiet indexing that lets your words be matched against Gene’s teachings). Exactly these things, and nothing else:

• when you press an AI button on a dream (a painting also carries the few words you may have given the painter in Settings about how you look, and whether you asked to be painted as a woman or a man; and Understand this dream also carries the symbols, people and places the doorway has counted across your own nights, and your dream signs — yours alone, never the circle’s);
• when you bring an old journal in, which sends the text you pasted (or the words of the files you chose) once, only to find where each dream begins and to name it;
• when you offer a dream to the shore, leave a reflection on one, start or answer a discussion in the Forum, or ask Gene a question (each passes a quiet safety check — an offered dream is also read once to note its recurring images for your themes and the circle’s night, and a question is read once more to file it under a topic in the room);
• when you ask Gene a question aloud: your recording is sent once to be written down, and those words once to be tidied unless you have turned tidying off, so you can read them before you send it — and if you ask fully anonymously, the recording is then let go and only the words are kept;
• when Gene answers a question, so the question and his answer join what the Lantern can draw on for the whole circle;
• when you write your three oaths (the same quiet safety check);
• when someone offers an Island dream to the shore, it is read once beside the short notes members have sealed in What I Left on the Island — never who wrote them — to see whether it describes something one of them left; a sealed note is otherwise read by no one, Gene included;
• when you ask for Threads or a recap of your recent nights, which read across your journal — private dreams included — and send them once;
• when you press “Look closely” in My Crossovers — your nights that touch another traveler’s (private ones included) are read once beside those travelers’ shared dreams, to keep the true crossovers; a dream whose traveler has switched off the circle’s readings is never among them;
• if you turn on A letter from your month, when you open that month’s letter and ask for it to be written — your own nights of that month are read once, to write it; nobody else can read the letter, Gene included;
• when you use Ask Across My Dreams, which sends your journal and also the readings, notebooks, inner-work notes, marked lines and dream signs you have kept — all of it yours, none of it anyone else’s;
• when a shared dream is drawn on for the circle’s dream-links, for the true meetings the doorway looks for between shared dreams, or for the Circle Week Reading it writes to the whole circle every Monday night, New York time, from the dreams shared since the last one — which carries the public replies left beneath those dreams too, so it cannot claim something the circle has already answered, and which names the travelers who shared (never anyone who shared anonymously) — unless you switch that off in Settings;
• whatever you say to the Lantern;
• when any member asks to read something SHARED — a dream on the shore, a reflection, a message by the fire — in their own language, or asks to hear a shared dream — or the Class-Week Reading — read aloud, any of which sends those already-public words once and keeps the rendering so nobody has to ask for it twice;
• when something is read aloud to you — your own dream, a shared dream, a chapter of the Circle Week Reading or a recap of your nights — the finished recording is listened to once more, by OpenAI, only to learn when each word is spoken, so the words can softly light up as the voice reaches them; what is kept is those timings alone (numbers, never words), with the recording they belong to, and a recap’s are let go within about a day;
• when someone translates a private message you sent them — that sends your words once, at their press, and the rendering is kept nowhere;
• when you write to Gene privately and he asks for a short summary of what you are asking him — a message he can already read, in his own inbox, sent once so a long letter gets an answer instead of waiting, and the summary is kept nowhere;
• when you consult the Observatory’s Egyptian Tarot, which sends your three card numbers, the card names you typed if any, the question you typed, what you have written about those cards in Your Card Meanings, and — if you photographed your spread — that photograph, and nothing from your journal unless you ask it about one of your dreams (below);
• when you consult the Observatory’s Classic Tarot, which sends the cards you laid and which way up they lie, the spread you chose, the question you typed, what you have written about those cards in Your Card Meanings, and — if you photographed your cards — that photograph, and nothing from your journal unless you ask it about one of your dreams (below);
• when you ask the Observatory’s I Ching for a reading, which sends the six lines you cast, the figure they make, the way you cast them and the question you typed, and nothing from your journal unless you ask it about one of your dreams (below). Casting itself, and the book’s own words, send nothing anywhere;
• when you ask the Egyptian Tarot, the Classic Tarot or the I Ching about one of your dreams — a door that appears on your dreams only once you turn on Use with my dreams in that reader’s room — which sends that one dream’s title, date and words with the reading, and nothing else from your journal;
• when you ask a birth reading, a tarot spread or an I Ching casting a further question, which sends that one reading and your question each time you ask — or, when you look across your readings, every spread you have kept in that one room (the newest forty) and your question — and nothing else of yours;
• when you ask for a book of a life in the Observatory’s Your Life Under the Stars, which sends the name, birth date, time and place you typed (for a family book, each person’s, the family’s name and what you wrote about who they are to each other; for a book for two, both people’s, your answers about the bond, and your children’s details if you give them), anything you chose to add about a person under “Anything else the book should know” (another name, their work, where they grew up or live, a short note) and the chart worked out from them — and nothing from your journal; the book comes back and is kept only for you, until you let it go. When you ask for a Deeper Octave of a book you have, the same details are sent again, with the words of that first book and the sky worked out for the year ahead — and still nothing from your journal;
• when the Tone of the Day is written out in words, which sends the arcana it worked out and nothing more — never your name, never your date of birth, and nothing from your journal — and, for the long reading of a life, the years of that life and the ages they open at;
• when you press “Search by meaning” in your journal, which reads your own nights once each so they can be found by what happened in them rather than by the words — that press is the only time a private dream is read for this, and a night already read is never sent again unless you change its words. A dream you OFFER to the shore is read once for the same purpose at the moment it is shared, so the circle’s own search can find it — the same moment it passes the safety check above.

Here is the part worth understanding, in plain words:

• Your words are never used to train an AI. Not this one, not any other. Nothing you write becomes part of a future model, or of anyone else’s answers.
• They are not kept for long. Your words are used to answer you in that moment. The AI company holds them briefly — about a month — so they can check for abuse of their service, then deletes them. They are never added to a profile of you.
• They are never passed on to any other company or AI.

This is not the same as using a free public AI website. Free plans often reserve the right to read what you type and learn from it. The doorway runs on paid business accounts, whose terms say plainly that what you send is never used to train their AI. It costs more; it is the reason your dreams stay yours.

And a dream you keep private never travels anywhere, to any AI, unless you ask it to. A few tools look across more than one night when you press them — “Gather my themes”, “Ask across my dreams”, “Threads”, “Look closely” in My Crossovers, a spoken recap of your recent nights, and a letter from your month, if you have turned letters on. Pressing one sends those nights — private ones included — to the AI that one time, and nothing else does. Nothing reads your private dreams on its own.

When you sit

The Meditation Timer runs entirely on your phone. Its bells are downloaded once and kept there, so a sit works with no signal. How you sit — the ways of sitting you save, your age if you give it, how long you sat — is never sent anywhere and never kept by the doorway.

The one gentle exception

If a dream you make public — on the shore, in a reflection, or in a question — ever seems to signal that you might be in real danger in waking life, it is held back from the circle and a quiet, caring note reaches Gene instead, so he can check in. This never touches your private dreams, and never reads them. Nor does it read your conversations with the Lantern. A dark dream is just a dream; it is the waking life behind the words that this listens for. It exists only so that no one in the circle is ever left alone with something heavy.

It is also the one message that comes through a block. If you have blocked Gene, or turned private messages off, he may still write to you in that one situation — and only that one.