Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott
My deep dive into psychology taught me that we human beings have a major habit of taking unconscious pleasure in the "bad stuff" in our lives. This was well-known to the founding giants of psychology like Freud, Jung, and Lacan. Freud called it "psychic masochism," Jung recognized it as "the Shadow," and Lacan called it jouissance—pleasure that's so intense we repress it. All of these psychologists recognized that a major component of helping people involved getting them to acknowledge and "own" this kind of weird underlying desire for and pleasure in stuff that they ostensibly hate and feel very frustrated by. It's strange, but it's true. Jung said—and I'll repeat it a few times throughout this book—"Until you make the unconscious, conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it Fate."
I learned first-hand that by embracing my "psychic masochism," by recognizing and empowering the darkness of my "shadow," and in the end taking "pleasure" in my yucky stuff that I could do something amazing. I could completely integrate my "good" self with my "bad" self and become a whole person. Healed.
This is an insight that can be very, very offensive to our egos: the idea that on some level we could want or enjoy "awful" things in our lives is scary and troubling to most people. We tend to think we only want or enjoy "good" things, or that we should only want "good" things. But acknowledging our secret bliss in "the bad stuff" doesn't have to be a troubling recognition; it's just a normal part of human nature. We all do it, and there doesn't need to be any shame or blame in it at all. In fact, setting aside shame and blame is what allows us to make the enjoyment conscious, and thereby lets us remove its power to sneakily control us.
The very good news is, the minute that we're willing to make that previously unconscious pleasure a conscious one—-the minute we're willing to deliberately celebrate it and savor it—we create a massive pattern interrupt. We allow ourselves to finally receive the "dark secret joy" we've been (unbeknownst to ourselves!) seeking. We let the desire that motivated the negative pattern be fully known and satisfied, and then we're free to move beyond it and create something new.
As Milton said, "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."
Updated: Nov 02, 2022
What if, deep within you, you had a never-ending reservoir of wrongness? Like, what if deep down inside, everything about you was totally detestable, dangerous, a source of pain to yourself and other people? And what if that was absolutely great?
I've noticed that pretty much all of us human beings who aren't completely enlightened (so: the population of earth minus Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, the Dalai Lama, and some humble shamans who lack PR agents), all of us feel, at some level, that there's something unbearably deficient, horrible, ugly, and lacking about ourselves that we need to cover over (to hide, to bury, to run from) and we cover it over with accomplishment, with the approval of others, or with black tar heroin.
Even those in the "functional adult" camp with relatively mild addictive tendencies often find that despite their best efforts and intentions, dark patterns repeat in their lives. And repeat.
Somehow, one way or another, for the majority of us humans—whether it's through our addictions or through our lousy patterns, our hidden sense of wrongness makes itself felt. So a question arises: what the fuck are we gonna do about this? I say: let's transmute that feeling of "wrongness" into raw, hot, glorious power.
God is one kinky-ass motherfucker. God—the divine—whatever He/She/IT is—creates this world, and this world is a gonzo horror show of war and rape and abuse and addiction and disaster. If God is running the show, God must like it this way! Now, you might guess that a thought like that would lead to some kind of terrible nihilistic breakdown. But for me . . . actually, it didn't. Instead, it made me smile—perversely—and gave me a feeling of lightness, play, and possibility. Because I had also stumbled upon this further thought: maybe I'm one freaky-ass motherfucker too! What if—seriously what if—all the bad stuff had manifested in my life because I like it that way?
Then he'd come back, there'd be some nice kissing, and within minutes we'd be back to yelling and he'd be throwing things at me (coffee mugs, books, etc.). I hated how controlling and violent my partner was. And yet, after much inquiry and reflection, I realized I actually loved how controlling and violent he was. Loved, loved, loved it. I adored the feeling of being important that came from having this guy treat me like I was a supply of heroin that he had to manage in order to have it available at all times. In other words, my existence had meaning. Just as in the tale of Persephone and Pluto, I could use him to keep me contained, so that I didn't have to risk exploring myself or the world without him. Part of what kept me hooked into the relationship was the joy of resenting him and his controlling violence. Another part of what kept me hooked in was the feeling that I could only have this terrible relationship because I was terrible, and if I could just become un-terrible, then I could leave him.
I allowed myself to consciously feel the previously unconscious pleasure I felt in being violently controlled. It was in fact a previously unconscious turn-on. My "aha" moment. Turn-on is magnetic. Now I was faced with the stark realization that I had been unconsciously magnetizing abuse and scarcity and rejection to myself all my life. It occurred to me that I had been unconsciously enjoying and magnetizing self-devaluation for years, but I had never before let myself know it because it's a shameful, freaky, weird thing to be turned on by devaluation and scarcity in real life. I mean, in sophisticated circles it's totally cool to be turned on by devaluation in some spicy S&M bedroom scene—but in real life? That's just fucked up. And then it dawned on me: Shit, I don't just have bedroom kink, I have existential kink. I have perverse desires for pain and bondage in my daily existence.
Well if God is a kinky freak and I'm a part of God like all these "spiritual" people say, maybe deep down I'm a kinky freak too. And maybe I can get more in touch with my divine nature by giving myself permission to like all the scary stuff in life, instead of just resenting it.
You see, what I'll be sharing with you here is Existential Kink, a radical, somatic, hot, and eminently practical & quick method of coming to love the previously hidden and shamed parts of your own self, so that your old negative patterns dissolve. Those hidden and shamed parts? That's your shadow. And in the course of this book, you'll meet your shadow and learn how to dance with it.
As Jung emphasized: "Until you make the unconscious, conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it Fate." But Jung also pointed out: "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."
Updated: Jan 22, 2023
Jung's observation that "Until you make the unconscious, conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it Fate" means that your unconscious desires and curiosities have great power to shape your experience.
Updated: Jan 23, 2023
What this book proposes is a different method—the "EK" method—a method for rapidly making the unconscious, conscious—so that your unconscious desires and curiosities no longer rule you. When that happens, a huge vista of possibility opens up in your life. This method of integration works within days, weeks, and months rather than within years and decades. Why? Because Existential Kink doesn't just identify your shadow self. Existential Kink teaches you to embrace and love your shadow self.
Updated: Jan 24, 2023
To his unconscious, this is a giant victory and a great fulfillment of the deep underlying desire—his desire to want to be taken care of. Unconsciously, Alex is enjoying living with his parents and being taken care of. The ironic thing is: as long as Alex resists allowing himself to consciously experience his job loss and his being "taken care of" by his parents as a great victory and fulfillment (in other words, as long as he resists consenting to experience it as kinkily awesome the very same way his unconscious experiences it), then the more he will feel out-of-control and cursed by Fate. As long as Alex refuses to consciously enjoy his circumstance, he'll be inclined to see himself as a loser and a failure, he'll lose confidence, and he'll stay stuck. Paradoxically, the moment Alex becomes willing to "get on the side" of his taboo unconscious desire for dependence and goes ahead and deeply savors its victory—at that moment he can feel empowered again. He can realize that his taboo wish to be dependent has been fulfilled, and let himself receive the hot weird pleasure of that. Then, rather than being a loser, Alex is actually a massively fulfilled person. From this vantage point of deciding to consciously allow himself to enjoy and be satisfied by his previously unconscious pleasure, it's then much easier for him to go ahead and make his way in the world. In essence, he's no longer guilty; he's not beating himself up anymore. He's no longer resisting his situation, so it doesn't need to persist.
Dissolving unconscious patterns by making them conscious (and thereby integrating your being, your will) allows you to wake up out of this powerlessness and become the captain of the ship of your own life.
Through consciously enjoying and giving approval to these previously unconscious "guilty pleasures," we interrupt and end the stuck patterns so that we can get what we really want in our lives.
Let's return to a point mentioned in the Introduction: if the ancient wisdom of Vedas are correct and the whole universe is just God playing elaborate rounds of hide'n'seek with Godself, then God is a super-freak. We need only look around our planet to see that God's idea of a fun time includes some seriously edgy, ultra-taboo, hard-core stuff—including war and poverty and pain and ravaging and abuse and atrocities of all variety. That's a whole lot of sadism and masochism, dominance and submission, bondage and torture—in both extreme and subtle forms—that God enjoys playing out with Godself. I propose that all our suffering and stuckness in life comes from forgetting that we're divine sparks playing a wild kinky game and that great miracles can come forth in our lives when we reverse the process of forgetting by deliberately reclaiming the pleasure of the game—not just in our minds, but in our hearts and genitals.
Updated: Jan 26, 2023
And contrary to some airy Law of Attraction notions, we rarely get what we consciously want (unless we do the kind of deep solve work addressed in this book), but we always get what we unconsciously want. And if you're curious as to what you unconsciously want, you don't need thirty years of psychoanalysis to figure it out: you can just take a look at what you currently have in your life and know that that's exactly what your unconscious wants, because what your unconscious wants, it gets
And contrary to some airy Law of Attraction notions, we rarely get what we consciously want (unless we do the kind of deep solve work addressed in this book), but we always get what we unconsciously want. And if you're curious as to what you unconsciously want, you don't need thirty years of psychoanalysis to figure it out: you can just take a look at what you currently have in your life and know that that's exactly what your unconscious wants, because what your unconscious wants, it gets
Updated: Feb 05, 2023
The unio mentalis is a being that is not in conflict with itself; it's undivided and thus is extremely powerful.
"Until you make your unconscious, conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it Fate." In other words, the emotions and desires and positions that our ego disowns inevitably haunt us (personally and collectively) by generating painful synchronous experiences that urge us to confront and reintegrate the disdained side of a polarity. This is what Jung's predecessor, Sigmund Freud, called "the return of the repressed." Polarities include all sets of "opposites"—masculine and feminine, fire and ice, night and day, violence and healing, creation and destruction, good and evil, fulfillment and deprivation, power and powerlessness, etc. Let me give you an example: most of us have grown up in a society that exalts wealth, and we have disowned and denied the other side of the polarity: a love of scarcity. In doing so we make our love of scarcity unconscious, and thus scarcity synchronously shows up in our lives, until we agree to consciously, deliberately, "insanely," shamelessly love it. The Great Work involves making the unconscious, conscious and thus changing the locus of our agency and taking charge of our own fate. To change the locus of your agency means to stop aligning yourself with your ego's one-sided choices (the ego tends to want only what it labels "the good stuff") and to instead align yourself with the kinkier, more adventurous choices of the underlying total divine presence that we all are: the strange, vast Self which enjoys and is very curious about absolutely everything. To do this, we have to greatly humble our ego's denial and fictional (if we were feeling feisty we might even say delusional) sorting of all experience into "good" (what appears to benefit me) and "bad" (what appears to not benefit me). When we succeed in this, the ego loses layers of its absorption in the fiction of separation, and comes more and more to see itself as just a particular (rather funny) expression of a much larger divine whole, the Self.
In waking up out of our absorbing fiction of separation, we link up the gigantic sexual, taboo, electrical energy (the shakti, the turn-on) in our bodies with our most inspired ideals and intentions. Then our ideals and our intentions gain the high-voltage electric "oomph" that they've been previously missing.
The Basque word for witch, sorginak, means "one who makes her own fate." What I'm presenting to you here is a way to make your own fate: a witchy, tricksy, feminine path to enlightenment that's quite a bit different than the more publicly vaunted, masculine routes of asceticism, contemplation, and yogic saintliness. The witchy path of the Great Work involves learning to get off on (and thus to tangibly, viscerally reintegrate) the darkest, scariest dimensions of ourselves and our existence. It's a sexual, worldly, orgasmic, ecstatic path which bears a good deal in common with Hindu and Buddhist tantric traditions. To be completely blunt, this Existential Kink work is the left-hand path. The left-hand path is also…
If you want to know who you unconsciously believe you are, just take a look at your life, your surroundings, your relationship. Your life mirrors those deep beliefs.
I'm going to make explicit a concept that I will probably repeat many times, because it's key to this work. Please learn it. The concept is this: You are not who you think you are. Whoever you happen to think you are, I assure you, you are not that. I suggest that you remind yourself of this often, because it makes this work easier. When you brush your teeth in the morning, think to yourself, "I'm not at all who I imagine myself to be. I'm something entirely different and far more vast and strange. Hmmmm. I wonder what I really am?" Who you think you are is largely a societally constructed fiction held together by some compulsively repetitive thoughts and stories, and it bears little or no resemblance to the being that you actually are. As the wise and pithy magician Mr. Lon Milo Duquette says: "Magic is indeed all in your head, but your head is a hell of a lot bigger than you think it is."
You see, the super-power of the spirit is total approval, total embrace, total celebration, the total perception of the already-existing perfection of life. When the spirit exclaims "perfect!" the conscious mind/the ego tends to hear that as "make things more perfect! They suck now!"—but actually what the spirit is saying is "everything is perfect right now!" Yes, everything. The world and our selves in all their fucked-up glory. That experience of total approval and total embrace, total absence of shame or aversion, is what the spirit is always trying to teach us about and it's ironically what our conscious mind mistranslates as all those "shoulds" and judgments.
Existential Kink is a potent form of magic (also known as: "psychological integration") in which the receptive feminine—the unconscious, the disowned and denied, the soul—becomes pregnant with the perfection-vision of our spirit—the masculine, projective part of our being, and eventually gives birth to positive synchronous manifestations in our lives.
What that means is you're going to take all the embracing-approval-seeking-inherent-perfection-perceiving power of your spirit, tell your ego "thanks but you can shut the fuck up for a while," and send all that embracing-approval-seeking-inherent-perfection-perceiving down to your actual life, body, emotions, and present situation. In the process of Existential Kink you invite your spirit to have the realization that your life on earth—right now, right here, in this animal, human body—is actually exactly what it has always wanted to celebrate with its exultant songs of perfection. Another way of saying that is that the practice of Existential Kink is the work of becoming attuned to practical magic; you decide to fully incarnate, to agree fully to be who you already are, however messy or stinky that may be—with no reservation, no hold-back, no "if-only," no judgment, no shame.
The paradox is that once you fully commit to being who you already are, having what you already have, and hugely celebrating it, you become a masterful practical magician, a force of nature capable of shifting circumstances very easily.
Updated: Feb 06, 2023
And contrary to some airy Law of Attraction notions, we rarely get what we consciously want (unless we do the kind of deep solve work addressed in this book), but we always get what we unconsciously want. And if you're curious as to what you unconsciously want, you don't need thirty years of psychoanalysis to figure it out: you can just take a look at what you currently have in your life and know that that's exactly what your unconscious wants, because what your unconscious wants, it gets.
And contrary to some airy Law of Attraction notions, we rarely get what we consciously want (unless we do the kind of deep solve work addressed in this book), but we always get what we unconsciously want. And if you're curious as to what you unconsciously want, you don't need thirty years of psychoanalysis to figure it out: you can just take a look at what you currently have in your life and know that that's exactly what your unconscious wants, because what your unconscious wants, it gets.
"Having is evidence of wanting" is another way of phrasing the pithy quote that we previously read from the old wizard Carl Jung: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it Fate."
Whatever desires are in your unconscious, will be "born," will happen, and the results of those desires will seem to be come toward you from some unfathomable outside agency—in other words, "fate." The good news is, when you do the uncomfortable work of making these strong, unconscious desire-curiosities conscious, by giving them a vast, taboo-level of approval, they lose their fateful power to fuck with you.
Updated: Feb 08, 2023
Here's a rule of thumb: If we're talking about an annoying pattern that seems to recur specifically for you, and you know a lot of other folks who are free of that particular pattern, chances are good that it's something that's being created specifically by your own personal unconscious. But if we're talking about endemic human problems like war or racism or child abuse, odds are it's more of a collective unconscious issue.
A more extreme example: childbirth is a notoriously painful process, often depicted in modern media as filled with screams and groans and facilitated by numbing drugs. And yet there's something called the Orgasmic Birth movement, which consists of women who train themselves to experience the intense sensations of child birth as pleasure, and many women are indeed able to experience their births as an orgasm instead of a horrible painful ordeal. That's not to say that it's easy to train oneself to experience the very intense sensations of childbirth as pleasurable, but just that it's possible. And the fact that it's possible points very directly to the immensely flexible capacity of the human organism to choose how it perceives sensation. Exercising choice over how you perceive the sensations of happenings in your life and psyche is a profound step in releasing attachment to being "helpless" and at the mercy of "cruel fate."
It was in reflecting on this phenomenon of sexual kink/BDSM especially that Existential Kink was born. I started to wonder why it is that we don't usually experience the painful parts of life as similar playful pleasure. I think it has to do with the matter of choice. People participating in BDSM consciously choose to be tied up and flogged, and that element of deliberate choice allows them to experience that pain and bondage as a kind of play, as something fun. But usually when painful things happen in our lives, we don't feel that we have a "choice" whether or not to experience them as pain, so we don't find it very fun—instead we tend to experience it as very disempowering and defeating. So a big part of Existential Kink involves deciding to at least start by "pretending" (i.e., experimentally accepting the axiom "having is evidence of wanting") that some hitherto-unconscious part of you playfully, humorously, curiously chooses and desires a given painful situation, behavior, stream of thought, or mood. When you make a kinky game of it, you greatly expand your sense of agency, you unite your will, and you open up room for a sense of fun and playfulness to come into the scene.
The notion of "getting off on every stroke" is something I learned while in the Orgasmic Meditation movement. In Orgasmic Meditation, a "stroker" strokes a woman's clitoris very lightly for fifteen minutes, within a very specific container involving a timer, gloves, lube, and a "nest" of pillows and blankets. Orgasmic Meditation is a kind of very simplified, "Zen" sort of tantric practice (if you look up traditional Hindu or Buddhist Tantra you'll see they're quite complicated) where the goal is to focus on the sensation at the point of contact between finger and clitoris, much like the point of Vipassana meditation is to focus on the sensation at the point of the breath entering the nose. If you're a woman being stroked in Orgasmic Meditation, you soon notice that there are certain kinds of clitoral strokes that you automatically prefer and enjoy, and some that don't feel as good, or even that feel a little uncomfortable or painful. So an advanced challenge in the Orgasmic Meditation practice is to attempt to open oneself to enjoy, to be turned on by, and "get off on" strokes that are outside one's automatic range of preference. In this way, one learns to expand one's experience of orgasmic (i.e., pleasure) energy (in Orgasmic Meditation, as in Existential Kink, the definition of "orgasm" or "getting off" is not…
It's possible to experience exactly the same set of events in a way that's a turn-on, or in a way that's a turn-off and this includes the "internal events" of your emotions and thoughts. How turned on and approving you are tends to have a lot to do with whether you're willing to playfully perceive your life as a wild, kinky game or whether you're hell-bent on taking it seriously and believing that it "should" follow a certain ego-pleasing pattern. The more you allow yourself to be "turned on," the less resistance you offer to the positive, creative current that's always attempting to move through you into manifestation.
It's possible to be sad, angry, disappointed—in a turned-on way. It's just a matter of giving yourself permission to fully feel the raw sensation that those emotions present, to meet the sensation with your innocence rather than your cynical judgment and "stories" about what these emotional sensations mean. In other words, it's magically useful to take an aesthetic, imaginative, artistic approach to your life and feelings rather than a dire, moralizing approach.
Let's take the feeling of sadness as an example. An open, receptive approach to this emotion might be, "Ah, a deep heavy feeling of sadness, how exquisite. Hmm, let me feel into this, what is the texture, the sound? It's rather spongy, and when I pay close attention, I notice in my heart it sounds like a slow xylophone melody playing in a rainy alley." As opposed to, "Oh no, a deep heavy feeling of sadness. This must mean I'm a failure and my life sucks and I'm screwed.…
As Oscar Wilde once observed in a letter to a magazine in response to criticisms of The Picture of Dorian Gray, "If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will…
We have all these unconscious desire-curiosities, and many of them are quite taboo and "wrong" according to the standard of our conscious mind. Some of these include the desire for scarcity and limitation, the desire to feel wronged, the desire to feel rejected, the desire to feel not good enough, the desire to feel offended. Even though these unconscious desires are met in our lives by circumstances and events, we tend to miss a crucial step: celebration of fulfillment. We don't usually allow ourselves to consciously experience a turned-on sense of fulfillment and joy when these desires are met, because we habitually deny having them in the first place. The longer we deny the fact that these dark, "fucked-up" desire-curiosities are a part of us, and that we enjoy their fulfillment, the more they continue to shape our lives. When we deliberately allow ourselves to gratefully feel, celebrate, and receive the fulfillment of our previously denied and disowned desires, we give those desires freedom. We give them space and light in which to evolve and change. For example: once I've realized that I'm fulfilling my previously unconscious desire to feel "not…
can know right away that anything in my life, any attitude, any feeling, any situation I have shame about, that's an area of my life where I am accidentally suppressing my magic, and seeding the procreation of what we would call negative synchronicities—bad luck. The more you give yourself permission to be shameless, the more the channel of communication between your conscious and unconscious mind opens, and the more effectively you can…
1) Get yourself into a relaxed state. Do whatever it is that helps you to relax. You could simply sit or lie down and breathe deeply for some moments, or you could precede your EK work by taking a nice hot salt bath or doing your favorite yoga stretches. Be flexible and experimental in how you go about getting yourself relaxed. Relaxation is key. I recommend relaxing yourself as part of EK because the more relaxed your body is, the easier it is to feel subtle sensations flowing within it, and this practice is all about sensation.
2) Create a container for yourself by lighting a candle and some incense, and setting a timer for 15 minutes. Creating a container means setting up some basic bounds of space and time to contain your experience so that you can more deeply sink into it. When you have a container, you don't need to worry about getting "lost" in this far-out bizarro meditation, because you have set aside a special, finite time and place for it. I suggest that you create a spatial container for this work by going into a comfortable room where you can close the door and not be disturbed. I also suggest that you create a temporal container for this work by setting a timer for fifteen minutes and lighting a candle and/or burning some incense. If incense smoke doesn't agree with you, you could spray some rose water or Agua de Florida.
Lighting a candle and burning some incense also signal to your deep unconscious that you are doing important transformational work, something special and outside your ordinary activity. Sending this kind of signal to yourself can help you feel more grounded and centered in the process.
3) Identify a situation in your life that your conscious mind, your ego, does not like.
Also, EK is best applied to "don't like" situations that are repeating, persistent patterns in your life. If you've been fired from three jobs for the same reason, then yes, that would be something to work on after processing your grief. If it's a bit of a random happening that you've been let go from your job, then perhaps just grieve it and apply your EK work to things that are more recurrent issues in your life.
4) Identify exactly what feelings and emotions you associate with this situation. This is important because EK works best when we do it on the feelings, emotions, and sensations associated with a situation, and not on the fact of the situation itself.
Here's an example: one of my clients, Elsie, used to get tremendously anxious whenever she felt criticized or judged by someone in her social group. She practiced Existential Kink on the matter and discovered that the very same sensations that she had initially perceived as painful anxiety were actually kinky excitement. This reminded me of psychotherapist Fritz Perls' famous observation: "Fear is just excitement without breath." In other words, fear is just excitement without embrace and approval for the sensations. Through EK, Elsie discovered that she actually loved the intensity of attention and the feeling of theatrical momentousness that came with being criticized. Indeed, it turned her on immensely. It literally created arousal in her body: flushed cheeks, a faster heartbeat—the same physiological response that comes from being alone with a lover. When Elsie got very honest with herself and looked at her behavior, she noticed that she would unconsciously provoke people into confronting her with criticism because she got so much shadowy satisfaction out of it.
So to emphasize: focus on allowing yourself to take sadomasochistic pleasure in the sensations and emotions stirred up by your "don't like" situation. Don't put your energy into trying to get yourself to like the bare facts of what you "don't like."
5) Gently allow yourself to get in touch with the part of yourself that actually, passionately enjoys the feelings and emotions associated with your "don't like" situation. This step of the Existential Kink meditation process is to take some time to gently, vulnerably allow yourself to get in touch with the previously unconscious, kinky part of you that enjoys this "don't like" situation. Consider that fear or aversion and desire always go hand-in-hand.
Updated: Feb 12, 2023
Remember, "having is evidence of wanting"—if there's a situation or a feeling that's present in your life, no matter how awful it is, it's present with you not because it's "true" or "real" but because some part of the vast, strange, kinky Self that you are finds it fascinating, compelling, beautiful. And it's time to let that part of yourself and its taboo pleasures come to your conscious agreement and embrace. Softly, temporarily put aside your ego and your usual judgments about who you are and what you want. To increase your self-honesty here, it can help to strongly imagine that the "don't like" situation will be utterly and completely removed from your life in just one month from now, as if "by the hand of God." Since the "don't like" situation is going to be inevitably, totally removed anyway (you allow yourself to imagine), you can relax, open up, and allow yourself to feel just how very much a secret, taboo part of you enjoys it and cherishes it right now. That part of you has been silent up to now because your conscious mind has been shaming the enjoyment of the "bad" things in life, like scarcity, rejection, and self-hatred. So you need to carefully coax it out. Experiment with playfully saying the following EK statements to yourself: "I'm willing to stop pretending I don't enjoy XYZ tremendously." or "I'm willing to allow myself to know about my secret, weird pleasure in XYZ." or "It's okay for me to feel my forbidden,…
Alternatively, you can take a coy, indirect, teasing approach to help disarm the defenses of the conscious mind. So sometimes in EK I like to say things to myself with sexy sarcasm (as if begging a devastatingly hot Dom not to whip me): "Oh no no no, not feeling wrong & bad, anything but that! Please, please, no, I just can't stand feeling . . . mmmmm . . . wrong & bad!" It's a bit silly, I know, but it works. Often the enjoyment in Existential Kink can be felt as jolts of electricity or genital sensation. Just as often it can be felt as a movement of emotional energy. Sometimes it's felt as lightness and laughter, or just a soft sense of relief. That's "getting off" in Existential Kink. "Getting off" in…
Get on the side of your shadow (your previously unconscious sense of desire/curiosity/enjoyment) and deliberately, consciously, humbly allow yourself to receive, feel big gratitude for, and get off on the situation your unconscious so brilliantly created. This part of the Existential Kink process is crucial. Until you deliberately let your unconscious self fully receive and enjoy and delight in the situation and emotions she's creating (however "fucked up" it may be), that situation will just hang around and stay the same. The scarcity/romantic rejection/self-hatred will stay there, because your unconscious will keep just keep enjoying what she enjoys. Why? because you haven't consciously given her the freedom to shamelessly receive and experience the fulfillment of her desire, to receive and delight in all the bloody, operatic, nasty, spectacular fulfillment of her perfectly reasonable enjoyment of scarcity/romantic rejection/self-hatred, etc. It is through gratitude, deep receiving, and orgasmically enjoying the result you've already created (unconsciously) that you make space for your conscious and unconscious minds to sexually (magically) merge, fertilize each other, and eventually give birth to a new upward spiral of positive synchronicity in your life.
You can experiment with more EK statements like: "This unconscious enjoyment matters just as much as any other enjoyment in my life." "My enjoyment of this fucked-up stuff is just as worthwhile and important as my enjoyment of sunshine and roses." "I honor this desire. I respect it. I'm allowed to enjoy this as exactly much as I do." "I embrace and receive these sensations." "I'm willing to feel the depth of my love for this." "I open up to feeling wild, insane gratitude and excitement about these sensations and this situation." This is the "kink" part of Existential Kink. In BDSM kink, people get off on things that they normally don't like. Pain, flogging, being bossed around. Well, in life in general, we have the same opportunity to interact playfully with pain. All we need to do is shift the context in our imagination from one of "awful thing happening to me against my will" to "kinky fun thing happening that I fully consent to." Get off on this thing, this situation, this feeling that your ego thinks that you hate. Feel the freedom of that, the liberation of it. Allow yourself to be touched by the magnetism and electric spark of the "awful" thing that's present.
Like "Ooooooh, what if I somehow forget something totally important and then I just FAIL and everyone, the whole internet, just hates me, for good reason, because I completely suck. . . ." You get the idea. I was basically obsessed with how hot and vulnerable it would be if I totally screwed something up. So when I really let myself feel that, it helped make it clear to me that my anxiety is something I choose to do to myself instead of some horrible automatic fate I can't control. And then once I saw that, it was a lot easier to let it go. You can also do this kind of future-oriented EK on discomfort associated with completing tasks that you usually avoid, but that you know are good for you, like deep cleaning your home or cooking and eating lots of vegetables.
So, I practiced doing EK on the pain and awkwardness that I imagined I would feel in doing core exercises, taking perverse pleasure in it. I reminded myself that going right into my aversions is how magic happens. A part of me still hates core exercises (and what a joy it is to hate them!), but by perversely savoring my awkwardness and hatred, I've also gotten my core much stronger than it's ever been.
Probably the biggest barrier to "getting off" in Existential Kink is feeling so much guilt about an unconscious enjoyment that we tighten up and thus refuse to feel the enjoyment and make it conscious. With especially sticky unpleasant feelings, like guilt, it can be tough to feel the pure underlying, kinky desire for that feeling, but it can be simple to get in touch with the motivation for that feeling if only we're willing to investigate. And if you think about it, finding the motivation for something is quite similar to finding the desire for it. You see, every unpleasant feeling we have has an unconscious motivation. Some part of us believes that by feeling the yucky feeling, we'll "get" something that will enhance our survival.
Does this feeling of guilt come from a sense of wanting to control the situation? By feeling guilty, do I think I'll somehow change the situation, or at least get the approval of others? Am I willing to stop trying to use this feeling of guilt to get a sense of control? Am I willing to stop trying to use this feeling of guilt to manipulate others into approving of me? Would it be okay if the ability to use guilt to get approval or control just left me? What would it be like to live my life without ever using the feeling of guilt?
Here are some example answers to the prompt: As an all-powerful being, I currently find it richly entertaining to play a game wherein it seems my ultimate value and strength are dependent on what other people think of me. . . . so I need to meet certain qualifications to "prove" that I'm valuable and "win" the game. Other people and the judgments that they have are my adversaries in this game. I'm trying to be so perfect that "they" can't possibly negatively judge me. When I play this game, I work myself into a state of feeling anxious and spread-thin. Whenever I fail to meet "the qualifications," I get to feel guilty and afraid. The more I do this, the more separate and alienated I feel. It's amazing.
"Shame is the magic killer."
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness visible." —CARL JUNG
Finding and healing the unconscious, lack-obsessed part of you with deep erotic love (not weak-sauce "acceptance") is the essence of Existential Kink.
Updated: Feb 15, 2023
Do Existential Kink on both the pain of pursuing your desire and the pain of not already having it, (i.e., the pain of your current "don't like" situation of not yet having the new boyfriend, or the completed novel, or the cash, or the liberation of all sentient beings). I really just dare you to cherish both kinds of pain, as they're equally wonderful. At the end of three months, if you've stayed focused on pursuing your reason-less desire, you will have your shit vastly more together than it is right now. At such a juncture, either decide to keep pursuing the same reason-less desire, or choose a new one.
The idea behind Deepest Fear Inventory comes from Marianne Williamson's famous, wise observation in her book A Return to Love, that "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond all measure." Many of us would do anything to avoid the intense sensations of having giant power.
Updated: Feb 20, 2023
Uncover your real values and commitments, the ones you actually already live by, the ones that actually govern your moment-to-moment actions and emotions, and fully, consciously embrace them, at least temporarily. To fully, consciously embrace your sadistic "operating instructions" is to stop shaming your villainous
Here's example "operating instructions" to get you started: I will guilt myself for at least three hours if I offend or disappoint anyone for any reason. Feeling supported and safe is utterly forbidden, no matter what. I must always find flaws with the people stupid enough to love me. I am totally, 100% committed to doubting my own value and worth. If I fail to meet any of my responsibilities, I will hate myself intensely. I am utterly not allowed to feel total self-forgiveness. Feeling a little bit of self-forgiveness is okay, but feeling total self-forgiveness is not allowed, ever. The more I reject my own work and being, the more I can get approval from authority figures. I completely agree that my value is fully dependent upon other people's perception of me. I decide to relentlessly shame and repress my aggressive and sexual feelings towards others so that I can only experience them as free-floating anxiety or depression. I am 1000% committed to insulting myself whenever I fail at anything. My deepest value is to feel bad about myself and to help my loved ones feel bad about themselves by relentlessly pointing out the ways they let me down.
Next, try treating your list like "reverse psychology affirmations." Read these affirmations in front of the mirror in the morning with great enthusiasm or with a Disney villain cackle every day for the next week and see what happens. Remember, the point of this exercise is never to bring yourself down. The point is to notice what inner sadistic prohibitions are already operating in you at a previously unconscious level and to make those prohibitions explicit and conscious by spelling them out, giving them your full conscious agreement, and savoring their extreme Villain-esque sadistic ridiculousness. When you make…
Take the sadistic operating instructions, "I am absolutely never allowed to feel good about . . . XYZ . . . (my worth, my body, my creativity, etc.)" Ridiculous, right? You are totally allowed to feel good and loving and fabulous all the time, about every part of you and your life. But if you don't already feel completely good about XYZ, then it's a guarantee that there is indeed some major part of you that unconsciously already agrees and believes in the sadistic prohibition to not feel good about it. So the trick is to make space and time to honor that sadistic part of you, to affirm the dictates of the Inner Villain in their full glory, to stop resisting them for a…
Updated: Feb 20, 2023
Be infinitely willing to feel and experience all the bad stuff endlessly because a part of you already is infinitely willing anyway. You don't have to "try" to love all the fucked-up stuff in your life: the simple fact is that you already do love it, immensely. All you need is honesty. Just be honest with yourself about the subtle erotic joy you get from dwelling on/fearing all the "bad things." Be honest about how exciting it is that you'll definitely die, and in dying, you will totally fail to keep your ego projects in motion. You're a complete failure no matter what. A dead failure.
The more I thought about other people absolutely refusing to highly value me and my work, the more aroused I got. Gradually it dawned on me: Well of course I don't make $1000 an hour; I am so turned on by being devalued and rejected! Turn-on enthusiasm is always magnetic, and now I was sitting with the stark realization that I had unconsciously been magnetizing scarcity and rejection to myself all along. It occurred to me that I had been unconsciously enjoying and magnetizing devaluation for years, but I had never before let myself know it because it's a shameful, freaky, weird thing to be turned on by devaluation and scarcity in real life.
Updated: Feb 25, 2023
Uncover your real values and commitments, the ones you actually already live by, the ones that actually govern your moment-to-moment actions and emotions, and fully, consciously embrace them, at least temporarily. To fully, consciously embrace your sadistic "operating instructions" is to stop shaming your villainous sadistic aggression and instead to celebrate it.
By imagining myself being paid "staggering sums" for my work, I practiced being willing to experience the sensations of being highly valued. And then I discovered something even more odd: as I consciously, deliberately got off on my scarcity kink and practiced growing my havingness level, I felt fulfilled and I simply lost my kinky hunger for scarcity, poverty, and humiliation. It just left. I lost my ability to take my empty bank account personally. My poverty no longer felt remotely relevant to me anymore, either as a kink or as a sorrow. Instead, I would think about being paid a staggering sum for my coaching, and it no longer felt impossible or intimidating; rather it felt hot. I started getting turned on by lots of money, rather than turned off by it. With this new kind of turn-on, I became willing to take mundane actions towards growing my business that in the past I had totally avoided, like building an email list. Suddenly, business-growth efforts that had sounded too scary or too intimidating to me in the past looked simple and obvious. I found I had huge creative energy to take these steps. I discovered that all along there were things I could do, that were not that difficult, to rapidly grow my business. I simply wasn't able to even see them until I changed my havingness level. It felt like having a veil lifted from my eyes.
Why? Because the Law of Attraction ideas always seemed a little—well, how to say this diplomatically?—extremely stupid to me, but I could never put my finger on exactly why. But now I could put my finger on precisely why: the usual Law of Attraction crowd strikes me as so dumb because they're only half-right, I realized. We do always get what we deeply desire, but most of us aren't that aware that much of what we deeply desire is some highly unpleasant, painful, secret, repressed, fucked-up shit. As it happens, the way to have profound success in altering your inner state and thereby altering your outer experience isn't through endless "positive thinking"—it's by being willing to look at the darkest, most twisted stuff in your experience and in your own heart and to feel great gratitude for it.
Imagine that you're a kind of cosmic masochistic slut (and I mean that in the nicest possible way—yay sluts!) who just beamed down into your life and body. She feels the heart-pounding panic of impending doom too, and she loves it. She feels the pressure of having to find a way to make ends meet again this month, and it turns her on. She feels the stretch and strain of having to prove herself worthy of support in this hard, cold world, and she trembles and moans and asks for more.
Both scarcity and bounty are highly sensational. The flavors of sensation that they carry are just a bit different. You can choose to have all the sensations that go along with wealth, but first you need to get crystal clear on your fondness for all the sensations that go along with scarcity. Why? Because if you keep truly believing that you "hate being broke" or "want to get rid of this anxiety about paying the bills"—you're likely to hold onto being broke and anxious about paying the bills, for the simple fact that the game is still totally absorbing you, because you won't let yourself realize it's a game. Once you accept how thoroughly you cherish being broke and having this anxiety about paying the bills, the entrancing spell of the game is broken, and you'll find yourself drawn into a new game, with new stakes that are more mesmerizing than the last ones.
Updated: Mar 03, 2023
Once, in the midst of a harrowing adventure, a dear friend said to me: "Carolyn, tell me something funny!" I looked at her, with her eyes squeezed shut, and said, "What, the fact that we're all gonna die isn't funny enough for you?" Her eyes opened with shock and then she doubled over with laughter. Mortality is tragic, but it's also hilarious because it's so common and inescapable. We habitually think that we're our personalities, our bodies, our histories, our thoughts, our feelings, but all of that is just content, and it will all dissolve when we die. Ultimately, what we all are is the context in which our lives happen. Even if people remember our life's story and accomplishments for thousands of years after our death, eventually, the last person who remembers us will die and then it will be as if we never existed at all. Vanity is called vanity because it's in vain.
Once, in the midst of a harrowing adventure, a dear friend said to me: "Carolyn, tell me something funny!" I looked at her, with her eyes squeezed shut, and said, "What, the fact that we're all gonna die isn't funny enough for you?" Her eyes opened with shock and then she doubled over with laughter. Mortality is tragic, but it's also hilarious because it's so common and inescapable. We habitually think that we're our personalities, our bodies, our histories, our thoughts, our feelings, but all of that is just content, and it will all dissolve when we die. Ultimately, what we all are is the context in which our lives happen. Even if people remember our life's story and accomplishments for thousands of years after our death, eventually, the last person who remembers us will die and then it will be as if we never existed at all. Vanity is called vanity because it's in vain.
After becoming proficient in that fundamental "move," of Existential Kink—of getting off on "the ugliness" in such a profound way that it no longer strikes you as ugly, but as an adorable, funny part of the whole—the next step is to practice allowing yourself to feel, receive, and truly get off on how wonderful your life already is. That's right. And I'm not talking about just some dusty old "gratitude" or "appreciation." I'm talking about soul-ripping, heart-pounding, genital-throbbing, gut-busting reception.
After becoming proficient in that fundamental "move," of Existential Kink—of getting off on "the ugliness" in such a profound way that it no longer strikes you as ugly, but as an adorable, funny part of the whole—the next step is to practice allowing yourself to feel, receive, and truly get off on how wonderful your life already is. That's right. And I'm not talking about just some dusty old "gratitude" or "appreciation." I'm talking about soul-ripping, heart-pounding, genital-throbbing, gut-busting reception.
You tell yourself you might get "it" if you just worked hard enough, improved yourself enough, figured out enough—if you got the right relationship, the right career, or the right level of fitness. But the real reason the big fulfillment still feels out of reach is not because you haven't gotten it yet. It feels out of reach because you already have it, but you're actively (unconsciously) avoiding it. Life, the universe, is already stroking you right on your most sensitive, hottest, most fulfilling spot with the situations and feelings present in your life right now. But you won't let yourself feel or receive or even consciously know that the Big Fulfillment is right here, right now—because to do so would make all of that worry, doubt, complaint, and resentment utterly ridiculous.
You tell yourself you might get "it" if you just worked hard enough, improved yourself enough, figured out enough—if you got the right relationship, the right career, or the right level of fitness. But the real reason the big fulfillment still feels out of reach is not because you haven't gotten it yet. It feels out of reach because you already have it, but you're actively (unconsciously) avoiding it. Life, the universe, is already stroking you right on your most sensitive, hottest, most fulfilling spot with the situations and feelings present in your life right now. But you won't let yourself feel or receive or even consciously know that the Big Fulfillment is right here, right now—because to do so would make all of that worry, doubt, complaint, and resentment utterly ridiculous.
Updated: Mar 04, 2023
A Simple Havingness Check-In Close your eyes for a moment and feel into your current state. Are you holding any resentments? Judgments of yourself or other people? Worries? Criticisms about the state of the world? Complaints about your body, your work, your life? Is it possible that these judgments, complaints, criticisms, resentments are mechanisms whose sole purpose is to help you avoid feeling tremendously good, loved, valued, inspired?
One way to do that is by closing your eyes, checking in with your state of being, and asking yourself, as we just did: "Is it possible that these judgments, complaints, criticisms, resentments are meaningless mechanisms whose sole purpose is to help me avoid feeling tremendously good, loved, valued, inspired?" When you're wrapped up in feeling miserable about something, it often seems that the content of what you're miserable about is very real and important. What if it's just not? What if it has no intrinsic meaning whatsoever? What if whatever "problem" you're hung up about is just a vehicle for numbing yourself to the massive turned-on joy and fulfillment you could otherwise be feeling?
If, as I do, you want to take seriously the experience of thousands of yogis throughout the millennia who emphasize that the fundamental nature of existence feels like bliss (i.e., Eros, pleasure, enjoyment), then it's worth getting really suspicious about your relationship with reality whenever you're not blissful. In other words, if the content of your experience feels awful, if your thoughts are grim, your energy leaden, your feelings flush with self-pity: I suggest getting very, very curious about what element of reality you're denying, repressing, and hiding from.
I want you to begin to get sensitive to your own habits of distortion. Specifically, I would like you to notice when you feel some flavor of "good"—close, connected, energized happy, hopeful, prosperous, etc., . . . . . . and then to also notice exactly how long you are willing to tolerate feeling good before you start to turn yourself off with worrying, doubting, getting offended.
Notice whenever you feel good and notice when you turn yourself off, and exactly how you turn yourself off. What's your favorite mode of turning yourself off? Is it worry about the future? Or maybe doubting your own value and capability? Regretting a past mistake? Or saying something snippy to your partner to start an argument? How exactly do you turn yourself off? How often? Your task is to become the world's foremost expert on this subject, and to record your thoughts and reflections on the subject in your Magical Diary.
To continue with our noticing—I would also like you to get curious: What if you just kept feeling really, really good for a whole week? Why not?
To be "turned on" about any feeling state, including feeling any variation of "turned off," just means to be in total, unreserved approval of that state. When you're in total, turned-on approval of your state, you're deciding to see that state as a way that you are "good for yourself" rather than as a way that you are "bad for yourself." So rather than resenting that something made you angry, try getting excited that you're angry. Rather than thinking you shouldn't be sad, try celebrating the tender exaltation of your sadness. Instead of being annoyed with yourself for being so self-pitying, give the most fan-girl level of approval you are capable of giving to your self-pity—the kind of approval that you might normally reserve only for your favorite musician or movie star. I'm saying: Adopt an aesthetic rather than a moral attitude to your feeling states. In doing this, you practice being the artist of your life rather than the judge of it. As an experiment, the next time you feel funky, rather than judging how you feel, just savor it as if it was a virtual reality experience crafted for you by the world's foremost artist.
Feeling tremendously guilty when you've disappointed someone (A way to cover up awareness of sadistic desire to inflict pain) Feeling very anxious in social situations (A way to cover up feelings of budding connection and intimacy, and also vicious aggression—usually both)
Updated: Mar 06, 2023
The most repressed item in your unconscious is your own total grace.
The thing about the ego is that it needs a sense of opposition, of refusal, of rejection in order to maintain itself. It has to say: "No! That is awful! I don't like that! No, that's not me!" to something in order to define itself as separate from the undulating whole of the weird fractal hologram of life.
In fact, according to some of the most touching myths we have, the divine often actively seeks out extreme experiences of pain in order to show off how divinely accepting it is. Odin, for example, put out his right eye and hung from a tree for nine days in order to gain knowledge of the mysteries.
The next time you notice yourself feeling guilty or resentful in the course of your day (hint: it's usually a sticky, stinky combination of both that's otherwise known as "feeling bad" or "feelin' some kinda way")—try this: Take a moment and imagine as strongly and as vividly that you can that there is a very loud, very colorful chorus of utterly fabulous, silly, adorable, over-the-top cheerleaders celebrating your guilty resentful yuck. They're dancing, they're shaking their butts, they're shaking their pom-poms, they're jumping up and down, trying to do splits and failing at it, jumping back up and grinning. They're splashing rainbow glitter paint around. Maybe they're all drag queens, maybe they're all roly-poly pink elephants, maybe they're all your best friends in super-goofy sequined outfits. They're chanting, "How do we want to feel? LACKING AND WRONG!" "When do we want to feel it? NOW!" "WOOOOOO-HOOOO! FUCK YEAH! Go Team Wrong and Bad! Go Go GO!" Just visualizing this can be great; it's even better if you also join in and start jumping up and down and shaking what your mama gave you along with your imaginary pom-poms. "We're injured! We're hurt! We're wounded!" "We suck! THEY SUCK! We suck so much! They suck worse!" "nah-NAH-nah-HEY-hey-HEY life SUCKS!" "YEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"
The more you do this, the more you associate feeling bad / wrong/resentful with hilarious, sexy quirky silliness, which—wait for it—is its true nature. After practicing The Cheerleaders for a good while, you'll eventually feel the twitches of a guilt trip or a blame session coming on and you'll automatically find it funny. By the way, this is a very deep and super-serious mystical teaching.
Tonglen Meditation Notice the pain that you're feeling. It could be a specific pain somewhere in your body, or it could be an emotional pain that comes from judging your body as "not good enough" in some way. Take a moment to imagine all the millions of people in the world who are currently feeling exactly the same way that you are right now. There are millions of people with fibromyalgia, millions with acid reflux, or with an ache in their shoulders. Millions who feel shame and guilt about the shape and size of their bodies. Bring these people who share your particular affliction to mind. Decide that you're heroically willing to experience all the pain and suffering of these others. Decide that you're infinitely, courageously willing to experience the total sensation, without an ounce of reservation or holding back. Inhale slowly. Imagine that as you breathe in, you're breathing in a thick, cold, heavy smoke filled with all the pain of "this ache" or "this shame" that's experienced by millions of people around the world and down your block who are suffering with the same suffering that you have. You're breathing in the pain and experiencing it fully on their behalf, so they don't have to. You are dropping all your resistance, all your resentment, all your refusal of this pain and instead you are opening your heart fully to it. Hold your breath for a few moments. Imagine as you hold your breath that the cold, acrid smoke dissolves a brittle shell around your heart. Now, with its brittle shell dissolved by the pain of others, your heart is tender and exposed and shining a gold light. Imagine that the gold light transforms and purifies the cold black smoke of pain that you've just breathed in. Exhale slowly. As you exhale, imagine a warm golden healing light pouring out from your heart, riding your breath, and touching all the other people in the world who feel the same pain and suffering in their bodies that you do. Breathe normally for a few minutes while you visualize people in your neighborhood and around the world being healed, and warmed and made happy by the golden light emanating from your bare heart. After a few minutes of seeing everyone who shares your affliction freed of it, again take in a deep breath of thick cold black smoke, full of the pain that you feel and that others feel.
For a single session of Tonglen, aim to do ten taking-and-sending breaths, giving yourself ample time between taking-and-sending breaths to breathe normally while you visualize the healing of others.
When pain and suffering are thought of as universal, and not personal, they can no longer prove that you are uniquely deserving of them. In other words, you come to realize that you're not and you never have been uniquely terrible or wonderful. Instead, you're a "a garden variety human" just like "a garden variety cabbage."
Updated: Mar 07, 2023
It is a truth universally acknowledged that most of us suck at love, at least a little bit.
What is less universally acknowledged is that our partners (or lack of partners) are always exactly as we unconsciously wish them to be. You knew I was going to say that, didn't you?
Demartini's Breakthrough Experience process is very thorough. You take an influential person in your life (say, your mom or your husband) and make lists of every quality you enjoy and don't enjoy about them, then make a list of at least a handful of other people who would say that you have the exact same quality to the exact same degree. Then, you write about how the other person having the not-enjoyed qualities has actually benefitted you, and about how you having the same not-enjoyed qualities have benefitted others, then write about how the other person's enjoyed qualities have actually harmed you, and how your having the enjoyed qualities has harmed others. Whew. After doing work like that, it's miraculously impossible to maintain self-righteousness. In doing this kind of examination of how the other people in our lives reflect qualities in our own selves, we thereby take the unconscious creative power of our perception and belief, and begin to make it conscious.
Likewise, as long as you believe that only the deprivation of rich fulfillment that you perceive in your love life is real, you will continue to perceive only deprivation. You will experience your partner as "lacking" in some way. Or, you'll perceive yourself as "lacking" a partner altogether. But the minute the hungry ghost gains enough awareness to see that in truth, a mechanism of ever-present, seamless, circular, self-confirming fulfillment is at work, then he perceives that fulfillment is actually much more real than deprivation.
Updated: Mar 11, 2023
Here's a common example among spiritual, growth-oriented types: let's say you're always about a half an hour late to everything you commit to. Now obviously, this has negative effects for you—it's embarrassing; you might risk losing jobs or relationships due to this habit. But when you go to EK it, you start to notice that what lies underneath your compulsion to be late all the time is a shadowy desire to make other people wait, to put your needs ahead of theirs, to make yourself important.
Here's a common example among spiritual, growth-oriented types: let's say you're always about a half an hour late to everything you commit to. Now obviously, this has negative effects for you—it's embarrassing; you might risk losing jobs or relationships due to this habit. But when you go to EK it, you start to notice that what lies underneath your compulsion to be late all the time is a shadowy desire to make other people wait, to put your needs ahead of theirs, to make yourself important.
When you "get off" on patterns that unpleasantly impact others, you are allowing yourself to fully feel, with genuine shamelessness, the sensations and the underlying human desires of a situation. The desire to make others wait is a desire for power. Similarly (to mention some other common patterns you may have), the desire to pick fights with your partner to get attention, the desire to troll people on social media, the desire to bad-mouth colleagues as a way of gaining leverage at work, are all sideways manifestations of a desire for power. This desire for power, this desire to have an impact on the world around you and to be significant, is an immensely normal, lovely, garden-variety human desire. The fact that you have it doesn't make you uniquely evil; it makes you just like the rest of us. Folks who don't humble themselves enough to accept that their lust for power is both completely wonderful and utterly, unremarkably ordinary tend to either hide and suppress it into "nice" personas thoroughly laced with passive-aggressive behavior (like always being late) or, to mix this basic drive with grandiose resentment and to give it extraneous justifications like, "I must rise to power so I can eliminate all the evil-doers! I will implement THE FINAL SOLUTION!"
When you "get off" on patterns that unpleasantly impact others, you are allowing yourself to fully feel, with genuine shamelessness, the sensations and the underlying human desires of a situation. The desire to make others wait is a desire for power. Similarly (to mention some other common patterns you may have), the desire to pick fights with your partner to get attention, the desire to troll people on social media, the desire to bad-mouth colleagues as a way of gaining leverage at work, are all sideways manifestations of a desire for power. This desire for power, this desire to have an impact on the world around you and to be significant, is an immensely normal, lovely, garden-variety human desire. The fact that you have it doesn't make you uniquely evil; it makes you just like the rest of us. Folks who don't humble themselves enough to accept that their lust for power is both completely wonderful and utterly, unremarkably ordinary tend to either hide and suppress it into "nice" personas thoroughly laced with passive-aggressive behavior (like always being late) or, to mix this basic drive with grandiose resentment and to give it extraneous justifications like, "I must rise to power so I can eliminate all the evil-doers! I will implement THE FINAL SOLUTION!"
All nonhumble reactions to the human, all-too-human thirst for power have the effect of warping that natural, beautiful drive into numbness that steamrolls over other people instead of inspiring and uplifting them like genuine, epic power can. If you boldly claim and revel in your previously suppressed desire for power, allowing yourself to savor the intense secret pleasure of all the times you've "accidentally" inconvenienced or upset others, you will find this doesn't morph you into a murderous fascist. Instead it gives you the opportunity to compassionately feel your connection to all us other "awful" humans out there who have the exact same desire for power, and it liberates your awareness and energy so that you can start finding energizing, gorgeous ways to make your power felt in the world rather than acting it out in sideways, resentful, passive-aggressive fashions.
All nonhumble reactions to the human, all-too-human thirst for power have the effect of warping that natural, beautiful drive into numbness that steamrolls over other people instead of inspiring and uplifting them like genuine, epic power can. If you boldly claim and revel in your previously suppressed desire for power, allowing yourself to savor the intense secret pleasure of all the times you've "accidentally" inconvenienced or upset others, you will find this doesn't morph you into a murderous fascist. Instead it gives you the opportunity to compassionately feel your connection to all us other "awful" humans out there who have the exact same desire for power, and it liberates your awareness and energy so that you can start finding energizing, gorgeous ways to make your power felt in the world rather than acting it out in sideways, resentful, passive-aggressive fashions.
One of the amazing insights that Tani Thole and Leslie Rogers of the Light/Dark Institute passed onto me is that sadism isn't necessarily the desire to inflict pain; it's the desire to inflict sensation, to make oneself felt.
One of the amazing insights that Tani Thole and Leslie Rogers of the Light/Dark Institute passed onto me is that sadism isn't necessarily the desire to inflict pain; it's the desire to inflict sensation, to make oneself felt.
So if you're working on dissolving a passive-aggressive pattern that negatively impacts you and others, I encourage you to consider all the ways that you hold yourself back from giving others the exact sensations that it would truly please you to give them. For example, maybe you're late all the time (thus inflicting sensations of frustration on others) and this is a compensation because you never let yourself inflict the kind of sensations on others that would be actually fun and inspiring to you to inflict—like your sexiness or your gut-busting zany humor.
So if you're working on dissolving a passive-aggressive pattern that negatively impacts you and others, I encourage you to consider all the ways that you hold yourself back from giving others the exact sensations that it would truly please you to give them. For example, maybe you're late all the time (thus inflicting sensations of frustration on others) and this is a compensation because you never let yourself inflict the kind of sensations on others that would be actually fun and inspiring to you to inflict—like your sexiness or your gut-busting zany humor.
Make it into a fine art. Consider the idea that all the best artists and the most inspiring leaders are masters of torture. They torture us by getting us to feel deep emotions, by exposing taboos, by leading us through almost-unbearable sensations of anticipation, surprise, and revelation. Your problem is not that you torture others; it's that you don't torture them exquisitely enough. So stop shaming yourself for torturing us, get off on all the sensation you've already inflicted, and learn to torture us in much better, more beautiful and consenting ways.
Make it into a fine art. Consider the idea that all the best artists and the most inspiring leaders are masters of torture. They torture us by getting us to feel deep emotions, by exposing taboos, by leading us through almost-unbearable sensations of anticipation, surprise, and revelation. Your problem is not that you torture others; it's that you don't torture them exquisitely enough. So stop shaming yourself for torturing us, get off on all the sensation you've already inflicted, and learn to torture us in much better, more beautiful and consenting ways.
What if your brain is tuned to cynicism and dread? Maybe you've just had a lot of hard-knocks in your life and it's tough to trust that everything will suddenly get all rosy for no reason? Well, there's a way to leverage that. Faith in an outcome is just a sensation of certainty. So you can take the very same well-developed brain muscles that you use to get a sensation of certainty about the negative stuff you dread, and turn that around into certainty about positive outcomes. Here's how: dread the wonderful.
What if your brain is tuned to cynicism and dread? Maybe you've just had a lot of hard-knocks in your life and it's tough to trust that everything will suddenly get all rosy for no reason? Well, there's a way to leverage that. Faith in an outcome is just a sensation of certainty. So you can take the very same well-developed brain muscles that you use to get a sensation of certainty about the negative stuff you dread, and turn that around into certainty about positive outcomes. Here's how: dread the wonderful.
Here's how it works. Try leveraging your dread by saying this to yourself: "Oh no, if only there was something I could do to stop the inevitable arrival of this magnificent new partner in my life. This is so awful. Now I have someone sane and healthy and hot who adores me. It's utterly disgusting. I'm really grieving that my singlehood is coming to this tragic and decisive end. It's just that I'm powerless over this new romance thing; I just know it's unavoidably going to happen—ugh. I really wish it was somehow possible for me to escape this relentless, terrifying fate of being completely fulfilled in love." Ahhhhh, can you feel the honesty there? Refreshing, isn't it? Because there is some shadowy part of you that's disgusted and miserable at the idea of fresh new love, isn't there? Otherwise you'd be such a radiant beacon of romance that you'd get swept off the scene in a hot minute.
Here's how it works. Try leveraging your dread by saying this to yourself: "Oh no, if only there was something I could do to stop the inevitable arrival of this magnificent new partner in my life. This is so awful. Now I have someone sane and healthy and hot who adores me. It's utterly disgusting. I'm really grieving that my singlehood is coming to this tragic and decisive end. It's just that I'm powerless over this new romance thing; I just know it's unavoidably going to happen—ugh. I really wish it was somehow possible for me to escape this relentless, terrifying fate of being completely fulfilled in love." Ahhhhh, can you feel the honesty there? Refreshing, isn't it? Because there is some shadowy part of you that's disgusted and miserable at the idea of fresh new love, isn't there? Otherwise you'd be such a radiant beacon of romance that you'd get swept off the scene in a hot minute.
In an argument where I don't even remember the subject (it wasn't remotely important in the end), I again found myself giving in, letting go of my desire, and letting my partner get what they wanted at the expense of my own plans. Instead of feeling disgusted with myself or berating myself for being weak, I relaxed into the feeling and gave myself permission to enjoy it. And enjoy it I did. The thought "I love being a martyr to other people's decisions" brought an amazing rush of physical pleasure and mental clarity. On a physical, emotional, and intellectual level, I enjoy being bound by other people's beliefs and desires. It makes me feel self-righteous, and I take a huge amount of pleasure in making them feel guilty over how they've made me a victim. I really, really don't hate to say, "I told you so." Standing up for myself robs me of the opportunity to experience the bliss of martyrdom. (See, therapists? It's not self-esteem.)
In an argument where I don't even remember the subject (it wasn't remotely important in the end), I again found myself giving in, letting go of my desire, and letting my partner get what they wanted at the expense of my own plans. Instead of feeling disgusted with myself or berating myself for being weak, I relaxed into the feeling and gave myself permission to enjoy it. And enjoy it I did. The thought "I love being a martyr to other people's decisions" brought an amazing rush of physical pleasure and mental clarity. On a physical, emotional, and intellectual level, I enjoy being bound by other people's beliefs and desires. It makes me feel self-righteous, and I take a huge amount of pleasure in making them feel guilty over how they've made me a victim. I really, really don't hate to say, "I told you so." Standing up for myself robs me of the opportunity to experience the bliss of martyrdom. (See, therapists? It's not self-esteem.)
Updated: Mar 12, 2023
So if we humans love dark pain and horror as entertainment soooo much, don't you think it's just a little bit possible that we might unconsciously create painful and horrible situations in our own lives—not because we "deserve them" or because we're "losers" and "failures," but just because we have an attraction to the nail-biting intensity of it? If there was a TV show about healthy people who were totally happy, thriving in all of their work and relationships, with no problems or challenges, absolutely no one would watch it.
So if we humans love dark pain and horror as entertainment soooo much, don't you think it's just a little bit possible that we might unconsciously create painful and horrible situations in our own lives—not because we "deserve them" or because we're "losers" and "failures," but just because we have an attraction to the nail-biting intensity of it? If there was a TV show about healthy people who were totally happy, thriving in all of their work and relationships, with no problems or challenges, absolutely no one would watch it.
If you're a habitually miserable, self-pitying person, odds are very, very high that you will find yourself with more and more things to be miserable and self-pitying about; and if you're a grateful, enthusiastic person, the odds are also quite high that you'll find yourself with more and more things to be grateful and enthusiastic about.
If you're a habitually miserable, self-pitying person, odds are very, very high that you will find yourself with more and more things to be miserable and self-pitying about; and if you're a grateful, enthusiastic person, the odds are also quite high that you'll find yourself with more and more things to be grateful and enthusiastic about.
Hell yeah, I generated this! Hell yeah, a part of me fucking loves it and that part of me deserves to enjoy itself too, because every part of me is worthy and awesome, including the perverse shadowy parts!
Hell yeah, I generated this! Hell yeah, a part of me fucking loves it and that part of me deserves to enjoy itself too, because every part of me is worthy and awesome, including the perverse shadowy parts!
Q. I don't feel anything at all when I try to do Existential Kink. What's going on? A. You might need to relax more before attempting the Existential Kink practice. Try taking a hot bath and taking some deep belly breaths to help you become more present in your body; then try the Existential Kink meditation again.
Q. I don't feel anything at all when I try to do Existential Kink. What's going on? A. You might need to relax more before attempting the Existential Kink practice. Try taking a hot bath and taking some deep belly breaths to help you become more present in your body; then try the Existential Kink meditation again.
When I've been depressed, The Work of Byron Katie inquiry practice has helped me immensely. We humans tend to make ourselves depressed by believing bleak narratives about ourselves and other people. When you question these, often the heavy feelings tend to lift. So, definitely do that. See the Appendix for more information on The Work.
When I've been depressed, The Work of Byron Katie inquiry practice has helped me immensely. We humans tend to make ourselves depressed by believing bleak narratives about ourselves and other people. When you question these, often the heavy feelings tend to lift. So, definitely do that. See the Appendix for more information on The Work.
I also (speaking as a human being and not as any kind of psychologist or medical professional, since I'm not those) recommend practicing Brahmavihara meditation as an antidote to depression. The book Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection does an excellent job of explaining how to do the Metta sort of Brahmavihara meditation, which involves sending powerful well-wishes to others.
I also (speaking as a human being and not as any kind of psychologist or medical professional, since I'm not those) recommend practicing Brahmavihara meditation as an antidote to depression. The book Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection does an excellent job of explaining how to do the Metta sort of Brahmavihara meditation, which involves sending powerful well-wishes to others.
Q. I can definitely feel some strong electric sensations when I do EK, but so far nothing close to climaxing. Am I doing this right? A. Yes, you are totally doing it right. When I talk about "getting off" in EK, I mean experiencing pretty much any kind of pleasure surrounding a topic that previously only brought frustration. This could be a sexual climax experienced genitally; or it could be sensations of electricity moving in the body; or it could be an emotion of simple relief or of joy and laughter.
Q. I can definitely feel some strong electric sensations when I do EK, but so far nothing close to climaxing. Am I doing this right? A. Yes, you are totally doing it right. When I talk about "getting off" in EK, I mean experiencing pretty much any kind of pleasure surrounding a topic that previously only brought frustration. This could be a sexual climax experienced genitally; or it could be sensations of electricity moving in the body; or it could be an emotion of simple relief or of joy and laughter.
Also, keep in mind: depending on the issue, it may take you a few hours, days, weeks, or even months of practice before you're able to relax fully enough to give yourself permission to "get off." Even if it takes you months, remember, that's still a relatively very brief span of time and effort to permanently change a life-long negative pattern. Consider that most human beings only shift their negative patterns after years of therapy or, you know, never.
Also, keep in mind: depending on the issue, it may take you a few hours, days, weeks, or even months of practice before you're able to relax fully enough to give yourself permission to "get off." Even if it takes you months, remember, that's still a relatively very brief span of time and effort to permanently change a life-long negative pattern. Consider that most human beings only shift their negative patterns after years of therapy or, you know, never.
Updated: Mar 13, 2023
The Existential Kink approach to life is absolutely not about denial; it's about fully feeling what's honestly there. So if immense grief and feelings of betrayal are what's there, then go all the way into it, mourn in the most profound ways you can. Wear all black. Make performance art about it. Burn effigies of your betrayers. Whatever you gotta do.
Third, traumas require immense grieving. See the Q&A above about EK and grief. Reminder: I am not a psychologist or a medical professional. That said, as another human being who has suffered trauma, I suggest plenty of regular ole' therapy, exploring bodywork and acupuncture, gathering tons of support from friends, and moving heaven and earth to get thyself to many ayahuasca ceremonies and to legal MDMA therapy sessions if you can find them. Ayahuasca is the most useful, beautiful, and rapid means I know of for addressing deep trauma (it has helped me immensely), and studies have shown that MDMA in a therapeutic context is also quite powerful for resolving trauma.
My friends Pam and Brown at the Avatar Centre in Peru are quite experienced and excellent ceremony leaders, and I very strongly recommend (speaking as a human, not a psychologist or medical professional) seeking their help.
You can find free information on how to do The Work at thework.com. You can also find tons of videos on YouTube of Byron Katie leading people through the process. If The Work interests you, I suggest that you invest in Byron Katie's books, Loving What Is and A Thousand Names for Joy.
Similar to the Work but less well-known, the Option Method also involves investigating one's habitual perceptions. You can find instructions on the Option Method at www.optionmethodnetwork.com.
This form of Inquiry is perhaps the most direct of the bunch, focused on "letting go" of difficult emotions. You can find the basic instructions for the Sedona Method at www.sedona.com. If the Sedona Method interests you, I also recommend buying and reading The Sedona Method book because it contains more detailed context and perspective that makes the practice more helpful. David Hawkins' book Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender also focuses on principles related to the Sedona Method.
My general advice for practicing any form of Inquiry is to approach the practice with a willingness to set aside everything you think you know to be true and to simply investigate with a radically open mind. Gradually, with Inquiry, you might discover that when a statement or proposition is true for you it feels different in your body than a fictional statement. True statements (or your being giving an affirmative answer to a question) tends to feel warm, soft, expansive, resonant, and open in the heart. Untrue statements (or your being giving a negative answer to a question) tend to feel tight, heavy, weakening, and constricting. For example, in doing the Work, if I write down a judgment and ask myself "Is it true?" (the first question of the Work) and find only a tight, heavy, weak, and constricted feeling in my body, that's a clue to me that the judgment is not true, that it's an unhappy fiction.