Existential Kink: Unmask Your Shadow and Embrace Your Power (A method for getting what you want by getting off on what you don't)

by Carolyn Elliott

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.

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.

take an aesthetic, imaginative, artistic approach to your life and feelings rather than a dire, moralizing approach.

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. Everyone knows only losers feel sad.”

something to practice

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.

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 generate positive results.

“the truth is sensational” matters a lot in Existential Kink practice, because as you explore the possibility that “having is evidence of wanting” you'll begin to notice that when your body is relaxed, it responds strongly.

“Fear is just excitement without breath.”

When Elsie stopped resisting the sensations she felt when criticized and came to kinkily experience them as excitement, she lost the need to get her thrills sideways, and instead had the clarity to go seek out people whom she found to be just naturally more thrilling.

focus on allowing yourself to take sadomasochistic pleasure in the sensations and emotions stirred up by your “don't like” situation.

It's impossible to desire something without also fearing it a bit, and it's impossible to fear and dislike something without also desiring it.

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.

put aside your ego and your usual judgments about who you are and what you want.

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.”

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.

“I'm willing to stop pretending I don't enjoy XYZ tremendously.”

“I'm allowed to want exactly what I want, even if it's ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ or ‘destructive.’”

“Oh no no no, not feeling wrong & bad, anything but that! Please, please, no, I just can't stand feeling . . . mmmmm . . . wrong & bad!”

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.

“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 open up to feeling wild, insane gratitude and excitement about these sensations and this situation.”

you start to see that you always and without fail create what you most deeply (unconsciously) enjoy. It's just that your whole divine Self is curious about and hungry for all incarnate experience, not just the “nice” ones.

If you find yourself feeling anxious or fearful, practice the meditation on your imagination of what it would feel like if the thing you're anxious about actually happened.

Any time I'm anxious about something, I'm actually tenderly caressing the possibility of it, pushing on it with my tongue like it's a loose tooth, savoring the little jolts of misery it gives.

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.

We put off doing tasks that are key to maintaining our well-being and fulfilling our goals.

let kinky enjoyment, pure and simple, be far, far more important to you than the “change” that you consciously want to bring about.

you're just faking an orgasm to try to appease your unconscious so it will stop bothering you and give you the good stuff. That's manipulation, coercion, and it simply doesn't work.

let yourself have the enjoyment, the happiness, the bliss right now in the midst of so much in your life and psyche being highly imperfect and fucked up.

“highly imperfect and fucked up” is the signature of duality,

The mind tends to say that you'll be allowed to have bliss once you get everything sorted out—once you're fit, financially secure, romantically adored, etc. etc. This is just the mind's hot, fun way of torturing you! The truth is you're allowed to experience bliss all the time, whether you're lying in a gutter, getting yelled at by your boss, getting ignored by your date, whatever.

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.

guarantee the survival of “you as you currently know yourself to be.”

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?

Exercise To work through

all dramas come from the same exquisite impulse to feel the fun of tension, conflict, uncertainty. Imagine that an all-powerful being has freely decided to be you, in your life, exactly as it currently is. Writing from the perspective of this all-powerful being, explain what dramas and games and fictions are being played out in your life. What motivates the game? What are the pay-offs? Who are “the evil-doers,” in the drama, the adversaries in the game?

Exercise to do

“You are allowed to crave whatever you want to crave.”

everything imprinted on that film is actually a kind of shadow. It's there to block or distort the light into a specific shape, so that there's something to be projected—so that we see the world.

the problem seems irrefutably to be something that's somehow external to what we have agency over in the present moment. That's how we end up feeling powerless, why it seems that we're just at the mercy of the mean old “out there.”

once your psyche is filled with eros (i.e., united, brought together in love), your negative projections end and you instead produce a field of deeply beautiful positive projections and synchronicities around yourself.

You don't need a reason to do anything. Your own kinky, hot, fucked-up desire to do it is enough.

When you just own your desire, without trying to prop it up with reference to anything, you gain a sense of responsibility for that desire which can clarify all your actions and slice through the Gordian knot of your conflicts.

Write it down in your journal: “I have a kinky, weird, fucked-up desire to ________ and I'm going to do it, just ‘cause I'm a nasty freak like that.”

savor all that exquisite discomfort because—again—your desire is just your own lil' sadomasochistic trip, and nothing else, really.

Do Existential Kink on both the pain of pursuing your desire and the pain of not already having it,

Eventually these fears get so boring that they're nonsensical, and you just let go of them because they're no longer interesting, at all.

Instructions for Deepest Fear Inventory

Exercise to do

If you notice that your fears include worries about what other people might do, be sure to turn that around in your inventory so that you phrase it as your unwillingness to feel (in a centered, turned-on way) the sensation of other people doing that thing.

instead of writing down actual fears, mentally turn each fear into its super-positive opposite and then write that super-positive thing after