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

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.

what we all are is the context in which our lives happen.

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.

essence of growth is to put more attention on context rath...

The content always dissolves.

ultimate context of who you are remains,

context of who you are is presence, awareness, consciousnes...

Isn't it a bit suspicious that you've been wishing for all this good stuff for your whole life and yet no matter how much you may have, the big, perpetual, longed-for fulfillment still feels just out of reach?

real reason the big fulfillment still feels out of reach is not because you haven't gotten it yet.

you already have it, but you're actively

avoidi...

Your havingness level is the amount of sensation and energy that you'll let yourself have before you unconsciously, automatically turn yourself off . . .

One way to do that is by closing your eyes, checking in with your state of being, and asking yourself, as we just did:

What if whatever

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 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.

pay very close attention to your moods and the kinds of thoughts and perceptions that accompany them.

I want you to begin to get sensitive to your own habits of distortion.

notice when you feel some flavor of

close, connected, energized happy, hopeful, prospe...

notice exactly how long you are willing to tolerate feeling good before you start to turn yourself off with worry...

Notice whenever you feel good and notice when you turn yourself off, and exactly how you turn yourself off.

The good news is that it's possible to get turned on about being turned off. I know that sounds weird—but you can be:

“turned on”

be in total, unreserved approval of that state.

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.

next time you fee...

savor it as if it was a virtual reality experience crafted for you by the w...

Practice liking that you're feeling what you're feeling.

Practice liking that you like what you like to feel.

reaction formation occurs when a situation stimulates a forbidden feeling,

before you can become consciously aware of that forbidden feeling,

your ego stages an over-the-top performance of an emotion which is opposite t...

way of hiding the forbidden feeling both from you and ...

classic e...

high school jock who feels and acts disgusted whenever he see...

over-the-top performance designed by the jock's ego to keep out of awareness his own feelings of homosexual att...

Re-read, again and again...

ego

it needs a sense of opposition, of refusal, of rejection in order to maintain itself.

the divine often actively seeks out extreme experiences of pain in order to show off how divinely accepting it is.

just because the divine in you enjoys or feels pleasure or attraction to someone or something doesn't mean you automatically have to pursue it.

let those feelings

exist

noticing them, not judging them, not r...

let the ripple of glee arise in your body, feel it without judging it, and stay centered and present with the flow of life instead of throwing yourself into a stinky pool of reactive guilt.

allow ourselves to feel the unconscious, divine, kinky pleasure we've been suppressing,

we are left with just our intelligence to guid...