(00:02) we have been duped by feminism sexual Liberation and anti-depressants we have been told that we are powerful and free now as women but we feel tired wired and bitter we’re mostly eating right exercising and meditating wrangling to-do lists and arranging playdates and yet there’s a haunting hollowness beneath the huge complaint what if I told you that there is a huge Storehouse a reservoir of energy inside of you that has not been tapped that you could feel light and pulsing excited and alive in ways that a wellness lifestyle
(00:49) cannot deliver that you could trust yourself that the world could feel safe and that unexpected and expected Delights could start to illuminate your path no coach therapist doctor or Guru required just you learning to get real present and attentive with you I feel like I’m here to matchmake your inner parts for the greatest love affair ever written I want to help you learn first where you’re buying eggs from the hardware store which is the source of all pain I want to help you master entering through the upset which is the
(01:27) only spiritual practice You’ll Ever Need and to get real comfortable putting on your villain Crown which is in my opinion the key to True power and then you’ll attune to your inner yes so you can live the life defined by the specific pleasure of who you are I am so excited to announce my latest book called The reclaimed woman which is available for pre-order now so if you head to the link in show notes you can learn more about bonuses events and companion offerings and I cannot wait to see your gorgeous face on the
(02:07) [Music] path I’m Dr Kelly Brogan you may know me as a New York Times bestselling author of a book with an exploding pill on the cover Renegade psychiatrist pole dancer or honorary member of the disinformation dozen what can I say I’m a born provocator I’ve spent most of my recent life exposing deceptions connecting dots and discovering the secret places my inner victim is still waiting to be liberated and now I feel called to help you reclaim all of your parts your health your sexuality your power and
(02:44) your expression so that you can finally truly own yourself I want to ignite in you that inner knowing and the pulsing Vitality that lives beneath your disempowerment disconnection and resentment so that you can audaciously courageously and playfully alchemize your struggle into the specific pleasure of who you are this is Reclamation radio a soulfire production the conversation that follows is from my incredible collection faces of fierce femininity where I sat down with the 12 women who have inspired my embodiment Journey For Real raw and
(03:23) uncensored inspiration you can purchase the collection at Kelly Brogan md.com and at the link in show notes hi all I am very very excited to be in conversation today with one of the most significant influences on my process probably in my entire process but it’s been relatively recent and I have put her work to very very deep application in the time since I have read her book I’m here with Carolyn Elliot who is the author of existential Kink and I am really really ready to unpack this for you all in a way that think will be
(04:01) immediately accessible like today and I’ll just start out by saying that I sort of penned a phrase in my last book called suffering ends where meaning begins and it was a really funny experience because when I wrote that I must have gotten that from somewhere right and so I put it in quotes and I put it into the old Google and the only thing three things came up and the only thing that came up was a Blog I had already written and something related from Victor Frankle and I thought well this is weird Okay so I must be tapping
(04:30) into something that is you know a more more Collective understanding and I really worked with that idea in my own life for a long time where every time I would encounter something I didn’t like about my lived experience I would immediately mine it for meaning for the lesson right and I started to enter into a dynamic I think it’s probably not uncommon especially maybe even for those who are listening you’re at this stage where I developed a relationship with the universe if you will where I was like an unconsenting
(05:00) right like to this like bad Dom who was going to arbitrarily deliver me punitive lessons and I would just have to beg for mercy and I promise I’ll get it right this time you know and I was living my life like a little bit like this like ducking spiritual lessons and Cosmic 2x4s and when I read existential Kink which came you know on really the wave of this process of embodiment that has inspired this entire s something so delighted within me to recognize that those two polarities are within me of course they are right like
(05:39) it’s one of those remembrances that just felt immediately like of course you know the dom and sub are in here and I’m playing with myself you know as an Alan Watts fan forever he talks about this you know how we how we play this game of hideand-seek with ourselves called our lives right and so I want to explore with Carolyn today how it could be that as she says having is evidence of wanting how could it possibly be that we have this much power this much creative agency in our lives and why would we ever create these
(06:16) challenges that we create so I’d love to start out Carolyn just because I know you know I’m like tickled by how how similar our worldviews are and how you have operationalized this idea of responsibility in such similar ways to the work that I’ve done in the health space and I want to start out just by sort of hearing from you where you found insufficiencies in spiritual rhetoric and you know desire and manifestation teachings that really must have given birth to this concept that you have put on the map and I know you draw from many
(06:54) ancient lineages however youve put it on the colloquial map so that we can all make use of it in meaningful ways so where did you start to feel as I did you know this is all great this you know meaningful Universe we’ve contracted to embody in however there’s something I’m still suffering right like I’m still struggling I’m still visiting with the same patterns even though I’ve gotten the lesson like why is this happening and how did that sort of dovetail into this this body of work that you’ve created yes thank you
(07:25) Kelly so yeah in my 20s I was in graduate school for critical and cultural studies so literature I was I taught English classes got a PhD and I was also involved in a Unity Church which is like new thought Law of Attraction you know Maryann Williamson is the pastor of a new thought church and I loved that stuff I’ve always believed in Magic and I always you know I would have vision boards and affirmations and I was just kind of puzzled like well it’s worked for some things definitely has worked awesome and
(07:59) Also, so well here I am I after I graduated I knew I didn’t want to be in Academia and I was sort of in this really weird liminal place and I was like living on Friends couches and I would call my mom and be like I don’t have any money for food and she would be like guess you got to go stand in line at the food bank then and I was like standing in line at the food bank I’d been I think I was like working as a freelance copywriter for online I was you know what can you do with an English degree is an old joke the answer is anything
(08:29) you can do without one so it was basically like I might as well have been a high school dropout in terms of conventional career choices I didn’t know what to do so standing in line one day at the food bank was like freezing cold and standing in line for my government cheese and I was like wow I really and I was also involved in the orgasmic meditation movement which something that Nicole Deone did I think there’s going to be like a Netflix documentary about the big Scandal there were definitely messed up shadowy things
(09:00) going on in the orgasmic meditation movement but I also learned a lot of really beautiful positive stuff there mainly about like the shocky and the orgasmic energy in my own body like is the goddess is the generative force and I would have visions in orgasmic meditation sessions where I would see like whoa the energy from my [ __ ] is like this it’s waterfalls and then it turns into a butterfly and then it turns into a rose like all of these like weird conventional feminine symbols but like I could physically like see it and feel it
(09:35) within the context because orgasm when worked with in a tantric way is absolutely like an endogenous psychedelic within our bodies so it’s having all this Awakening and on one level I was feeling very powerful I was like whoa I I used I mean my dad brought me up in like Wiccan and Druid things but like the goddess there just seemed like this Hallmark card fluffy bunny I don’t know didn’t know how to have her be Rel into my life and I was like oh my gosh she is the pleasure energy in my body so I was having this like very deep
(10:07) Awakening realization of magic in that form and I was super broke and I was like living on my friends couches and I was kind of a sad sack and so standing in line there I was thinking about all of this Law of Attraction stuff and I was like wow my ego really wants to be rich my ego really does not want this humiliation of standing in this line right now this is not where I thought that I would be when I was you know 29 years old I thought I was going to be a fancy Professor but no so I got curious because in grad school I had read all of
(10:40) this Carl Young and Sigman Freud and you know they talk about the unconscious and they talk about the unconscious has desires within it that the conscious mind is not aware of like at all and I was like standing in this line I was like I wonder if some part of me really really desires all of this anxiety and humiliation attached to not having any money or any idea of what to do for money and maybe that part of me is totally working in a law of attraction kind of way maybe that part of me is completely getting what it wants but my
(11:16) conscious mind my ego has all of these negative judgments about it so I’m not enjoying it I’m not receiving the Fulfillment that this unconscious part of me is receiving and I got this idea you know what if this is happening anyways so what if I just let go for like tried to let go for 15 minutes 30 minutes at a time of my conscious mind’s negative judgments about this is so terrible this shouldn’t be happening this means that I suck this means that the world sucks what if I just set all of that aside and let this unconscious
(11:49) part of me that perhaps really desires this stuff see if I can get in touch with that and let it experience fulfillment and I did and I found that you know probably also because my body was pretty awake and alive from participating in the orgasmic meditation stroking which for those of you who don’t know orgasmic meditation is a partnered practice and it’s 15 minutes long and it involves one partner usually a guy it can be anybody stroking the clitorist of a woman for 15 minutes in this very precise way that’s like very
(12:22) light little strokes and wearing like gloves and using a specific kind of lube and there’s this whole sort of ritual pattern of it basically Nicole Deone innovated a sort of Zen version of Tantra like a very simplified where it’s all about focusing on the sensation of the stroking and not trying for climax or not going up into like pornographic fantasy or anything just like purely focus on the sensation so I did have a lot of that energy and sensation in my body and I found that I could access like oh my gosh there is so I was
(12:58) also doing the work with iron which highly highly recommend right Byron Katie is such a genius so I think I started out because I was trying to get into being a coach at the time and I think I was doing coaching for like $100 an hour and like that’s what I was paying my friend to like sleep on their couch a few hundred dollar and I was aware that I had these other friends in the orgasmic meditation movement who were being paid like $1,000 an hour as a coach and that like blew my mind because I grown up in this sort of blue collar
(13:26) environment where everybody that I knew worked for nonprofits and they made like maximum $25 an hour and so a $1,000 an hour I was like what how is that even real and why aren’t I being paid that I’m a better Coach than they are anyways so I was doing this byen Katie judge your neighbor on you know people should want to pay me lots of money for coaching and of course byon ktie you do turnarounds so you turn it around to the opposite so you ask questions about it is that true can I absolutely know that
(13:57) that’s true who would I be with out that thought and then you turn it around so I turned it around to nobody should ever want to pay me any money for coaching ever and I just sort of let let that land in my body and I felt this like Zing like I was so turned on by the thought of nobody ever wanting to pay me just like and I was like oh my God I don’t just have like a hip bedroom kink I have an actual sexual attraction to not being valued with money that is affecting my whole life and that was really big for me and so I just I would
(14:39) spend time each day just opening up and just okay well this part of me enjoys it so I might as well just let it move through let it take satisfaction in the situation that it’s created and see what happens and it was really amazing to me because I just did that for a few weeks every day and one day I woke up and I had this idea to do these things things I they were very simple like basic business things that everybody in the coaching and online course world knows about talks about constantly but they had been things that were like veiled
(15:11) for my eyes like they were impossible like I couldn’t think about them or do them and then suddenly I could and then within like two months I was you know running my online business from Bali making $10,000 a month instead of $2,000 a month my life was completely changed and a billion times better and I was like wo baby that was fast and I was like I need to tell more people about this so anyways I I hope that wasn’t too long but that was sort of like my initial foray of realizing existential King I I was going to ask
(15:48) you for that exact story because so many of us struggle with that you know the root chakra uncertainty around these seemingly very black or white linear like first you make this amount of money then you make that amount and if you’re struggling then you’re probably destined to continue struggling and your your story is obviously living proof I want to clarify and and we’ll get more into this when you talk about that Zing right when you talk about that sensation how much of it because I’m a big Barron Katy
(16:19) fan too and I think mental folks you know are very attracted to that kind of work because it it’s humbling right how could you be so sure and then and then the ego kind of finds a way to tuck in okay well I can’t be social you know okay fine but you’re talking about this sensation this embodied acknowledgment and awareness did you have to reframe the bodily sensation right because we can label a sensation whatever we want we can label something anxiety or excitement and the actual feeling of the
(16:50) butterflies and the clench and the energy moving up could be exactly the same right so how much of of your practice at that time let’s say early practice was like a mental frame shift and how much of it was simply just like a kind of sematic experiencing approach of just being with whatever was in nonresistance yeah beautiful question so it was definitely both and I’ll I’ll try to tell you more about that I’m a very heady intellectual person and one of the reasons why I recommend to people that
(17:21) they do the work of Byron Katie on whatever topic it is before they try eing it because I do think that those questions and those turnarounds help so much to like loosen things up and let some of the Judgment go so I I had done that I had like loosened it up a little bit and it was I’d also been steeped in this culture of orgasmic meditation and one of the other interesting useful things that Nicole Deone taught was that orgasm is truth so that or the truth is orgasmic so in other words this idea that Honesty authenticity vulnerability
(17:56) will always have this sort of limic involuntary quality to it you know we blush when we tell somebody we love them for the first time when you know when we feel when we’re really in it we just it’s intense so that was also part of it was I was like oh my gosh my body so it was a very direct static thing when I said to myself nobody should ever want to pay me anything ever and I felt this like my clitoris was like and I was like okay well there’s orgasmic sensation there must be some truth here because that’s you know like I said I’ve
(18:36) been steeped in that situation and and I found it to be it matched up with my experience that there is turn on Whenever there is honesty and I was like wow this is a level like that turnaround from Byron Katie sounds so exaggerated and so nasty but that’s the actual truth of what my body responds to and says yes to yes please please please don’t want to pay me money and I’m like I have to pay attention to this because my ego thinks that my body should say yes please to being paid lots of money but my body
(19:10) does not say yes please to that my body is like you know gets no why would you want it like I couldn’t quite you know so what’s interesting about existential Kink is I think it totally fits with all of the more conventional teachings about the law of attraction you know I’m sure that Abraham Hicks would say yeah like what like what you’re really turned on about that’s what the universe will bring you more of and it just so happened that what my body and my unconscious were actually turned on
(19:38) about was an experience that my ego had oh endless amounts of Shame and judgment about and so what I found and and then strangely though if I found that I could set aside that shame and judgment long enough to let the sensation move through and it was like it climaxed it and I didn’t need to keep you know repeating it again and again because the way that I think of it as I think of existential Kink is like so a courtly love metaphor if we imagine that the conscious mind the ego is a knight and he’s out on a quest and he has certain
(20:15) goals and then the unconscious the generative creative orgasmic part of us the body you know the body most of it runs unconsciously all the time right our breath and our blood is the lady and the lady is you know doing exactly what she’s doing creating exactly what she’s creating she’s bringing forth whatever seeds have been planted in her through past lives through Karma through childhood experiences maybe childhood trauma and certainly I grew up with a lot of scarcity so there are definitely those seeds in me and but she’s just
(20:48) doing what she’s doing she’s just giving birth endlessly and the Knight needs her power in order to succeed in his quest and as we know from courtly love what the Knight has to do is get down on his knees and humble himself and praise her he doesn’t go up to the lady and say hey you know what I got to make some money so get on board with that right instead he like gets down on his knees and he’s like oh my you’re so beautiful you’re so perfect exactly as you are just let me celebrate you and enjoy you
(21:22) and enjoy what you’re already creating because it’s so beautiful and that is the attitude that has the lady be like okay all right well you know we could work together I could support you on your quest and and so it’s it’s really it’s the alchemical marriage is what I realized I’m also really into all this hermetic Western esoteric stuff but the union of the conscious and the unconscious mind is the alchemical marriage that’s what all of the that’s what all of occultism is about and it
(21:52) turns out that you can you can start doing the alchemical marriage in this very simple way by just getting you know letting the conscious mind letting the ego be very very humble and saying okay there’s something about this experience that we’re creating and it’s not the cruel world just doing it to us it’s like there’s some attraction some orgasms some participation we might have all sorts of judgments about how it shouldn’t be happening it’s wrong it’s bad it’s terrible but those judgments
(22:23) don’t make it go away that’s that’s like something I love to point out to people it’s like we have this weird idea that if we judge something or shame something enough then it will stop that absolutely is not how it works if anything if we want to influence anything we have to be in a love relationship with it yeah yeah to CH love is the essence of magic it’s the essence of alchemy so loving the parts of myself that want and create things that my conscious mind doesn’t like that’s that humbling that’s that yeah
(22:57) just true love that allows for True un so then the way that I see it like so I was asking myself well how did this happen so quickly I went from this like struggling this like limping along to this flourishing and it was a story that I had never heard anybody tell me a story of I mean maybe an internet marketer I don’t know but certainly never anybody in my own life had hadn’t gone through that transition and it really seemed to me it still seems to me that what happened was because my unconscious mind humbled
(23:27) itself in that way like the night to the lady my unconscious got fertilized with the desires of the night to have a beautiful flourishing life to have plenty of money to be surrounded by beautiful things got impregnated with those desires and started to gestate and bring that forth so in other words instead of just being impregnated by my painful childhood experiences or my painful past life experiences it’s now impregnated by my conscious desires and I found this again and again to be true I’ve you know I’ve shared it with tens
(24:01) and thousands of people through my online programs through my book of all sorts of stories you know it doesn’t just work for me and I guess you’ve had experiences with Kelly I’d love to hear about your experiences and I think it’s so so cool because it’s like this big secret that’s kind of been kept from us but what is I find so amazing you know I’ve read the collective works of Jung I’ve read the collective works of Freud those guys the fathers of psychotherapy absolutely knew that this was how it
(24:27) worked and when they were try to tell their patients about it their patients would freak out so much they’ be like no I don’t want this what are you talking about that they created all of dream interpretation the whole point of dream interpretation in early Psychotherapy was so people so the therapist could be like look your own dreams are telling you that this is true I’m it’s not just me that’s telling you this to get people to accept this thing which is very difficult for the ego to accept and
(24:53) still to this day you know I have people leaving reviews from my books that are like they’re they’re super upset but my book and some people just really don’t like me because they really hate this idea that some part of them even an unconscious part of them might have a pleasure in a painful circumstance in their lives and I understand that because it is very hard to understand from a conventional point of view and it it is a Viewpoint that ultimately involves shifting to identifying instead of with the ego part of us with the
(25:24) whole of our psyche and when we’re identifying with the whole of our psyche what that Tim timately is we’re identifying with the fractal hologram of the whole of God that we actually are so most people you know every I mean it’s cute it’s like I feel like everybody who considers themselves spiritual is like yes I am a part of God you are a part of God we’re all God well if we’re all God like God must be a kinky ass [ __ ] because we’re all suffering and it’s like and so for me I’ve just
(25:56) accepted that I am God I am a kinky ass [ __ ] so it’s interesting because existential Kink is a mode of taking total responsibility for what we experience in our lives and ironically what’s very interesting to me you know it’s been a few years since I wrote the book I think I wrote it in you know 2019 it got published in or 2018 it got published in 2020 it’s been a while I’ve been doing the practice every day and as I’ve done the practice I’ve like my psyche has flipped and like I feel more
(26:27) and more the way that the way that everything is being done through Me by grace through me and for me by Grace is also totally true it’s like it’s totally true that I’m totally responsible and it’s totally true that it’s all happening spontaneously by Grace or God’s will or whatever so well I’ve been rambling for a while let me let you no I mean it’s such a perfect download of this it’s complex right and I think at least theoretically the the folks listening have some introduction
(26:58) to what it is is to take this level of radical responsibility for their experience and their innate power what I find revolutionary about these Concepts is that it it goes beyond simple acceptance you can get somewhere with Byron Katie’s work which is in the acceptance Arena where you can accept that there are dimensions that are subconscious that are you know up to no good right but you’re still aligned fundamentally with your conscious desires and you’re still at really with with those like sneaky annoying
(27:31) embarrassing shameful fetishy you know desires for punishment let’s say like this masochistic part of us and what I get from your teachings is that it’s not just about acceptance and it’s even not just about approval it’s actually another dimensional step into EOS right into the Reclamation of the erotic nature as you were describing of this experience of healing right like coming into wholeness right if I I think too in like gendered polarities right if that masculine container that masculine
(28:05) Consciousness is turning towards all of the kinetic motion through the body whatever it may be because just think about like when we get what we want it just happened to me this morning I got something I have been like sweating up at night about and it was like tasted like nothing so it explains why the charge in my body when I get what I don’t want comp compared to the charge in my body when I get what I do want what is more right like it’s like of course but this comportment of Consciousness towards that moving
(28:40) feminine energy of devotion right like that I love that like that night kneeling at her feet right that is that is way more than tolerance right that’s way more than acceptance and it’s even more than approval it brings in that sacred erotic energy field and you know the first time that I was exposed to this idea I guess if I could relate it was through Robert Masters when I first started to look at you know Shadow work as like a modality and he taught me about eroticized wounds right like why would it be that I would be attracted to
(29:17) this person so intensely who you know IMO style like represents so much of the pain and suffering of my childhood but like really attracted to him right like not just like okay and and not super attracted to somebody who might represent healthy love right and so he talks about how you know we we have this I don’t know this this tendency to eroticize that hurt right so it’s it’s taking it from the dimension of the familiar right because it’s one thing to say like oh of course you’re going to surround yourself with the same
(29:48) patterns you were exposed to in your childhood but what if we actually eroticize them what if we get wet about the [ __ ] that hurt us you know in the same way back then that it does now so it’s it’s really it explains so many of these really addictive like chemically addictive patterns of suffering and struggle in our life in a way that you know just sort of the mundane layer of like you kind of keep doing the same thing you know to do from your upbringing it’s it’s not a sufficient explanation you know so yeah I love this
(30:26) and and I do think that part of it is is many many of the women in the salon have referenced Parts work I think we all have found like tremendous healing through that modality as well and this like how do we interact with these aspects of ourselves without judgment right and recognize that you know you can try and lock that little part in the closet but she’s going to be screaming and tantruming you know audibly whether you like it or not and how how else have you been able to I’ll ask like put that
(30:57) shame and judgment aside right so you mentioned Byron Katie and sort of like the intellectual cognitive layer of like turning these beliefs once you’re aware of them on their head sort of like really interrogating them through inquiry partsw work is really just sort of the dispassionate maybe even compassionate exploration of all of the different aspects you know the managers and the Exiles everything that’s kind of in there the circus I call it you know that’s in there experiencing one single feeling one single sensation
(31:29) have you found anything else to be particularly helpful with putting aside the shame and judgment the resistance right because you talk about you know in in your writing and you’re such an incredible writer I just want to make that so I’m such a biblo file and your book is so excellent your writing is I mean you could read it in in an afternoon just because it’s like literally that much of a a page or it’s so so well done you know you talk about how once we get this concept and maybe we’re brave enough courageous enough to
(32:01) start to sit with the sensations that arise when experiences unwanted experiences are crossing our path right but we still are going to and you talk about it like I don’t know maybe I’m like misrepresenting your your thoughts but like like a like rubbing one out quickly right like it’s like a quick like okay let’s just get this done right and that is not it right that is that is like being in a relationship with a man who’s just like tolerating your hysterics or whatever it’s a different
(32:29) thing right so I just want to like drill down a little bit more on like how how do you set up this container for yourself of that kind of devotion and adoration so that the ego isn’t like sneaking around just I’m speaking from experience you know saying okay okay this is the way to get this is now the practice to get what I want and what I really want I’ll get this other part that’s kinking out on what I don’t want out of the way so that I can get what I want right and obviously this is a pra
(33:01) it’s called a practice for a reason you said you you do it every single damn day right so that may be it that may be the answer is just do it every damn day right yeah well this is such a wonderful question Kelly because that is the challenging part about existential Kink is getting to the point where one can set aside enough of the conscious mind’s fear and shame to really touch that place in a way that is super surrendered super devotional super not I’m just going to touch you so you shut the [ __ ]
(33:30) up and I can move on to better life but like I am here with you like yes like let’s feel what you’re feeling let’s you know be on your side it is super super challenging and I think what often happens with existential pink and what happened for me is that people will have some very quick early big Transformations when they first start doing it like there will be some things that are just like ready to pop like some things that you’re just like tired you don’t even have the energy to feel
(33:58) shame and judgment about anymore you’re like well this is here so that is often The Experience so there’s a bit of beginner luck with existential King which is cool and then people tend to get down into things where like okay well there’s still all these other issues in my life that are like still doing these things that my conscious mind really isn’t into I would really love to change them I would really love to apply existential kink in the process of alchemizing them and integrating them and that’s when it does tend to get down
(34:25) into the nitty-gritty and I have this process in my book book called deepest fear inventory yeah it’s like stripping fear and shame away like layers of paint and that’s really great and also I mean for me the process is definitely like daily work and definitely getting into a devotional posture to like what already is what is already happening the Great Dance of you know this you know whatever it is Maya this great thing unfolding and so different things like one is I like to maintain awareness that my ego
(35:02) it’s always going to be on the side of Maman survival it wants money it wants appreciation it wants love it wants status it wants everything that enhances survival always and it does not want anything that takes us closer towards humiliation pain death all of the things that do not support survival but the part of me that is here for Incarnation that my soul is here for the whole ride like it wants the experience of surviving and it wants the experience of dying it wants the experience of everybody liking me and it wants the
(35:41) experience of everybody hating me and you know just like we were talking about the Alan Watts like it’s it’s God playing hide and seek with God self so I do part of my process in letting go of my continuing layers of guilt and shame I mean I’ve gotten pretty deep with it there’s this whole theology I’ve got but I work with Babylon who is I consider her like the patron goddess of existential King and Babylon is she’s like Ishtar Anana estarte but who’s been through the ringer of patriarchy so Babylon first
(36:16) appears as a figure in the Book of Revelations and she’s riding this great beast and John of Patmos the writer of Revelations says you know I beheld this woman she was covered with Jewels she was holding a loft this Grail and on her forehead it said mystery Babylon the great mother of harlots and of the Abominations of the earth so she appears in Revelations and she appears also in the Angelic channelings that John D and Edward Kelly did and she appeared also in the visions of Alistar Crowley so basically I have I’ve I mean for myself
(36:52) and what I offer in my online courses about magic and in my mystery school is really this whole path of initiation so Babylon is that which um she gives herself freely to all she permeates everything she holds herself back from nothing she’s a [ __ ] because she is completely giving and completely receiving everyone and everything and it’s pretty much a metaphor for Christ Consciousness except instead of being focused on the crucified guy on the cross it’s about this tantric taboo you know she was scared to the the guy in
(37:30) the second century CE who saw her but this is really the disowned feminine from you know we’ve been under more than 2,000 years of heavy duty patriarchy where the predominant judeo-christian Mythos that still you know reverberates in our culture recognizes a father a son and a holy spirit like where’s where’s the mom you know so she’s like the missing mom and she’s not just a little you know saintly virginal mom she’s like a mom who does what the [ __ ] she wants and gets off on everything so I’ve done a lot of so it’s
(38:12) it’s tantri hermeticism it’s fic gnosticism Gnostic Christianity to really invite that Devotion to that archetype of she who receives everything and gets off on everything and yes so that that is not an easy answer because probably a lot of your listeners aren’t like wow I was just looking for a super weird Pagan Christian religious thing to get involved in but that’s what I’ve done that’s how I work with my layers of Shame so the work of Byron Katie deepest fear inventory super weird
(38:48) magic I also you know it’s it can be so that’s pretty complex and it can also be just as simple as really remembering yeah yeah my conscious mind hates this it totally judges this and none of that hatred or judgment has done a single thing to like move the situation an inch none of this shame has moved it so like just being you know just saying to oneself well you know can I drop the shame for five minutes can I drop it for 10 minutes could I pretend that I’m like a space alien who’s beamed in From
(39:26) Another Dimension and I don’t even know yet that I’m supposed to be ashamed of this situation in my life and just feel the sensations that are here so that that simple space alien beaming in can help too yeah like those new eyes right yes look so you have a quote I love that I I wrote about too so you write in fact the conscious mind worries about all the bad stuff and thinks about how to avoid it but that worry is secretly shadowy a kind of erotic caress obessive dwelling with wrapped Fascination on the face of
(40:00) the very beloved failure and humiliation right so I’ve talked about like the deliciousness of victim Consciousness too like obviously our needs are being met by these sort of like crumbs of fulfillment and we know there’s like a delicious banquet we could show up for we just don’t know how to get from the crumbs to the banquet but this to me is a very important link that this concept of worry as an erotic caress I’ve brought this concept to a lot of the activists that I work with and really just foregrounding this possibility that
(40:36) we are in an erotic Dynamic with our so-called you know enemies thinking about them every single day and monitoring you know the tick or tape of news to find out what they’re up to and how could you call that an enemy right that is an erotic caress and so I think that this work has the capacity to generate empathy and compassion and an acknowledged connectedness where we might consciously say we want to disconnect from let’s say to just recognize we’re already in Dynamic so why don’t we just check it out right and
(41:13) I and I’ll share a little story because I could share many but I’ll share a little story of how this work and my awareness of your work afforded me an experience of empathic compassion where it was not formerly available which is you know that I grew up my parents but mostly my dad right is like and I know a lot of people have Dad types like this but he he loves like the negative stories right like you can’t walk into a room without him having some story about like you know somebody who was murdered
(41:43) killed broken into raped you know it’s like it’s a joke now you know that every single time he’s got like these like horrific horror stories of like his cousins cousins cousin who fell off a bridge or whatever and it’s just so much catastrophizing and and almost like crying wolf kind of energy that everybody’s just kind of like please stop and it’s a very annoying trait and one that as I’ve like developed a more individuated relationship to my parents over time I felt more comfortable saying
(42:11) like listen I’m not available for this kind of update thanks and then I had I did an interview recently this wasn’t too long it was maybe like four months ago five months ago and I was telling a story there is a father who father turned activist named David car I’ve written about and I’ve spoken about extensively and long story short I’ll make it very short so that I don’t get into the Kink territory again telling the long version which is to say that he was started on an anti-depressant and
(42:40) was one of many individuals who experienced what’s called athesia impulsivity induced athesia and he murdered his son right he murdered his 11-year-old son at the time and woke up to this whole world of what these medications can be capable of inducing right so I’ve told that story as just an anecdotal evidence of a lot of what is actually in the medical literature around the potential for these medications to you know in a way that we’re not risk stratifying for induce these pretty horrific unexpected
(43:12) outcomes that are morbid and anyway I was like in an interview and I kind of referenced that story talking about the untold adverse effects of these medications and I could feel I could feel it I could feel the shift from whatever the hell I was talking about before to telling this story and I could feel myself I hope nobody Clips this out of context I could feel myself getting off on it honestly I really could feel like something in my I became almost like a PR predatorial energy and something rose up energetically inside me and I could
(43:48) feel my own body shift as I told this super [ __ ] up story about a horrible thing that happened and of course I’m telling it in service of other people’s awareness that they could potentially maybe hear this story and one person will not start you know not walk to you know CVS to fill the script because they heard this story and in the rational mind there’s all sorts of reasons I might share it but I felt it in my body and then I thought of my dad and I thought oh my God that’s why he does that because it feels good because it
(44:25) feels alive it feels something other than you know the whatever limited capacity we have as I was saying earlier to experience pleasure Joy you know even just like a basic sense of expansive ESS in our body we don’t have that capacity largely because of our habituated trauma Dynamics neurologically I don’t know and so we get really attuned to getting little hits off of scary horrible [ __ ] that we say we don’t want to focus us on or feel or we say is bad and shouldn’t be happening so it’s like all of these
(45:01) Dimensions right of this work where Not only was I able to see you know in myself but I was able to then relate differently to something I was judging I could see it you know I could see it happening in my own little sphere and so if that’s true you know that I like many people am getting off on horrible things in the world and you know I’m a huge David data fan and he’s informed a lot of my awareness around polarities and he talks about the dark masculine and feminine and that that’s why we sit down
(45:33) to the news because we’re not getting [ __ ] right by our partners and we listen to these horror stories one after another and we enjoy it right we enjoy it without this Dimension we are hapless victims wandering through you know the battlefield of our own struggles not recognizing that it’s this inner War right and so I wonder how this has informed the way that you relate to desire right because I know that you believe in a desire-based existence and you’ve described that already as being you know this Vector of feminine life
(46:11) force right shaki when you have a new desire in your life is there a way that you treat it right because let’s say I I want I don’t know let’s say related to that little example like let’s say I want for all of the humans who might otherwise interact with their own emotions through you know the pharmaceutical model I want them to just know there’s another way that’s it not attached they’re following that path just be aware right so if that’s what I really want is fetishizing the scary
(46:45) stuff that can happen is that the best path maybe it is I don’t know what I came to ultimately was that celebrating you know what’s possible and Publishing in the medical literature you know what’s possible these Reclamation stories of Health felt better in my like consciously better in my body but without acknowledging that I’m also enjoying you know the other path the fighting path then I’m going to probably have limited Gams right so like when you have a new desire like that you become
(47:10) aware of is there like a special way that you hold it when it’s just born you know because obviously when we get down the line of not having what we want you’ve already described how to relate to it I mean this is the way as far as I’m concerned but what about like a new like a nent little like firstborn butd of like oh I think maybe I maybe I want to live in the country or something you know like whatever it might be is there a way that you handle that so that it it doesn’t necessarily get twisted up into
(47:39) these like hidden and exposed polarities of fulfillment or maybe it always does maybe you would I don’t know yeah I love the question so I mean I think when I become aware of a new desire I do practice opening up to it erotically the same way that I open up to things already manifesting in my life and you know I like I mentioned I’m into FMA and magic and there’s this saying in FMA uh it’s big part of it which is do what thou Wilt is the whole of the law love is the law love under will and you
(48:14) know so with this do what thou Wilt as the whole of the law it begs the question well who art thou you know who is The Vow that is that is willing and Desiring and for me I’ve had this interesting process of like with sorcery with magic I met so many of my material desires like my material desires get met very quickly these days which I’m very grateful for you know I give flowers people give me presents like it’s so nice so I guess what what is sort of front and center for me more these days is like things
(48:49) that come to me in my dreams like things to create things to do and I would say like my relationship with those is very much surrendered devotion because I’ve learned and you know maybe there can always be easier softer ways discovered but I’ve learned that as I follow these like sort of spirit inspired dreams and Visions what happens is always an intense alchemical process where parts of me get you know things get really shaken up so it’s I’ve learned that the process of realizing desire is very very
(49:27) much not usually jiving with the conscious mind’s ego preferences no matter if it’s like some sort of intense kinky thing like scarcity or rejection or if it’s a positive beautiful Vision to create something there’s still always going to be things that the ego’s preferences are like so yeah it’s it’s a deep ride and it’s a deep ride into great and greater surrender and greater and greater identification with the Divine self you know in the start of the book I have this prologue that is a retelling of the
(50:07) Pluto and panie story which is about let’s see if I can go into it right now but we all know the story like chepan is this Maiden she’s the daughter of Deiter Hades Pluto comes up from the underworld big bad guy in a chariot kidnaps her down to the underworld you know holds her prisoner there is basically kidnap and tragic you know rape scenario and her mother Deiter is grieving her and pulling her hair out looking all over the Earth for her refuses to let it be Springtime until she finds her and the
(50:40) usual version of the story is pany eats some pomegranate seeds and that means she has to spend six months of the year in the Underworld so even after her mother finds her and rescues her she still she can go up to Mount Olympus but she has to go back down the end right the kind of kind of a sucky story it’s sort of like oh that’s it she just has to hang out with her kidnapper and rapist for six months of the year oh yay so I sort of inted this like deeper meaning one day when I learned that you know another name for pany is cor and
(51:14) cor was worshiped as the goddess just you know full stop like the only thing going on for thousands of years before anybody ever thought of a male god of the underworld or male Pluto it was just was cor cor is the earth cor is everything all cor all the time and I was like Wow there is some deep way so this in this retelling this at the start of my book when she eats the pomegranate seeds she remembers that she divided herself into this innocent Maiden part and this evil kidnapper rapist part and that she played this game of hide and seek with
(51:55) herself so she could have these like terrible Thrills and chills and that Hades instead of just being this evil monster is actually a part of herself who is so in love with her who will do absolutely anything for her even play the role of this evil detestable monster in order to fulfill her having an experience essentially of her own power because if we were just if we had and someday we will and in some Dimension we already do but if we just have full knowledge of our divine power what is there to do but just float in
(52:29) Bliss which obviously is awesome and obviously some part of us is currently doing that right now and will again and everything but this part of the journey where we feel powerless at times where we feel like terrible traumatic evil things are happening to us and our loved ones the world that is in its s a way that the Divine gets to experience its own power in Duality so we all love you know nighttime and day time you know winter and summer the these polarities of the natural world well they go hand inand with polarities of everything else
(53:04) polarities of Good and Evil tragedy and comedy so we’re in this polar world because that’s where the and and that’s where electricity is you know we have this life energy Chi orgasm whatever we call it it can really only be experienced in these polar situations so in one way it’s like we can yeah we can have a a super victimized attitude about that and just be like you know poor me I’m just this innocent mortal that’s been born into this terrible world or we can start being like maybe not Poor Me
(53:39) Maybe I’m not just this poor innocent Maiden who’s being subjected to this maybe I am a Divinity so great that I am both completely the innocent maiden and completely the evil monster at the same time and maybe I can celebrate that wholeness and you know so that’s the interesting thing about existential Kink is it sounds really weird and it’s really far out but ultimately it’s super wholesome and I feel so much more relaxed hanging out with people like yourself Kelly who have done some of this integration work
(54:11) than I do with people who are in victim mode because people who are in victim mode are just looking for people to blame for their you know their issues and it’s actually very you know people every villain in history has seen themselves as a victim you know Adolf Hitler felt super victimized by life and they see everything that they do to others as like some sort of justification for what they themselves suffered or some sort of restoration and of course it’s insane and of course you know not all of us are as bad as Hitler
(54:42) thankfully in our delusion but that level of delusion is so pervasive in our culture that there has to be some I don’t know it’s very very interesting to me and I’m very very glad that we’re talking about it because I’m really happy that more people are waking up to this willingness to understand that we are but characters in a dream you know it’s like God is dreaming this dream the Great Goddess Divinity whatever we want to call it Kelly’s a character Carolyn’s a character you know there’s evil abuser
(55:15) criminal characters who are also themselves sweet innocent babies who were born you know it’s like we’re just characters and it’s just like our nighttime dreams you know if I get get attacked in my nighttime Dream It’s a part of me that I’m encountering and it’s the same thing in this level of the dream and so I get really excited about people becoming Lucid in this way because that’s truly what it is it’s Lucidity to remember that I’m the whole thing I’m not just this
(55:45) character and it’s this fun thing that the Divine is doing with itself getting to experience itself as this little character who seems to be powerless in these ways and it gets to experience all this polarity and all of this electricity and so yeah it’s it is kind of challenging because what I’ve I mean at least for myself really waking up to that involves not looking down on any anybody who does anything wrong like the tendency is I think even a very sweet spiritual people to be like well yes I can forgive crazy evil criminals like
(56:22) Adolf Hitler I you know but it’s like yeah you’re you sort of you think you’re better than him don’t you like you think you’re not as bad and what my continual process is is to get to the place where I don’t see myself as better than or less than anyone in a very visceral way but instead just really directly recognize them as other faces of myself feel like I’m I’ve been on a pretty far out metaphysical I love it back to you yeah know I mean the most fertile soil for that work at least in my own life
(56:55) has been you know to leave a relationship let’s say like a romantic relationship to choose to leave and not have to make the person bad and wrong you know leave a dynamic to close a door without the person needing to be bad and wrong is it’s the hardest work I have ever done in my life and I have been on this path you know of radical personal responsibility and resolution and transformation of victim Consciousness for some time now right so this is it is the work and it’s the practice and I think that’s also why I’ve become as
(57:27) I’ve spoken you know to some of the other women about very interested in Kink and how and conscious Kink and how limited my understanding was you know secularly colloquially of course I’m sure there are people listening who are you know experts however for me it’s delightful because it’s like it is the ultimate sacred expression of that which would otherwise be endless pain and suffering and you know what I mean by that I know you agree is that you know we look at unconsented dynamics of domination and
(58:01) oppression and you know the sort of subm of victimization and those who are subjected to all of the pain and suffering right that is the story of human history right like that is the story of most of our lives and whether it’s with the universe or whether it’s with an individual or just your life circumstances it’s like I didn’t consent to this what the [ __ ] is going on this is horrible and painful and meanwhile you’re enjoying it right which is what we’ve been talking about the whole you
(58:30) know conversation so what is it to actually understand what you desire understand your pleasure right understand what it is that you consciously and unconsciously want and how do you enter into intentional containers with yourself in your own life with your partner right whatever little segments of of focus you’re going to attend to how do you intentionally enter into these containers acknowledging that the pleasure pain spectrum is totally married it’s totally married and in fact that’s what embodiment is about I mean most of the
(59:09) let’s say like female Subs I’ve talked to who play that part in their you know erotic Dynamics find that there’s no way for them to better get into their bodies than like a good slap right and that they are the ones in fact who determine the strength of the slap the location of the slap the timing of the slap the frequency of the slap right so they have studied themselves enough to know this is how pain feels good to me right pain with quotes and entering into a dynamic where it’s organized right where power
(59:42) and hierarchy and all of these things that are fundamentally going to sneak out right because yes we want to believe and strive for like this flat plane of spiritual egalitarianism but we didn’t come here for that right we would still be you know disembodied if we just wanted that so we came here for this play and so how do we organize it into that complimentary space where all of the needs are met everyone’s enjoying themselves and it’s not as simple as like you know eye gazing into energetic Divinity and you know I don’t know
(1:00:17) whatever I thought like tantric experiences work so for me this framework it is the resolution it is the sacred Reclamation of that which which we otherwise would like unconsciously continue to experience without awareness without intention and without pleasure right that’s already there as you were saying like what you felt in your [ __ ] the moment you first you know reflected on this it’s it’s there and so how do you interact with it and I just I love this for me this has been like just a level of breaking through into an
(1:00:54) expanded Arena that I just feel like Delight in my body like just the whole experience of my life these days every single time that’s why I asked you you know about the desire every single time I find that I I want something right the way that I interact with it as you’re saying is is so different the way that I interact with the things that I don’t want that are happening is so different and then there’s an imperative you know as you started your process with orgasmic meditation there’s an
(1:01:21) imperative to understand the body’s language of pleasure and sensation and to really attend to those Sensations because you know like it’s very easy to fly up there and leave this numb and disconnected so I’m just so so thrilled to have this conversation here Carolin and I want to end with a question I’ve asked everyone which is you know you have so many tools I know youve an enormous toolkit and you’re always expanding and growing and you have yeah just an amazing process underway I I wonder if you have another book in works
(1:01:56) as put that out there it’s the most annoying question people ask me so sorry if it is but what is one tool that in your embodiment process right so in that in that Journey Down from your head into this beautiful body that you devote yourself to as an oracle right in your process what was one tool that always seemed to work right to get you out of here and and down here oh wow what a great question so I do a self stroking practice and I lead a guided self- stroking practice in my electric Yes program which is called
(1:02:35) orgasmic nosis so orgasmic meditation was partnered this is like you don’t need a partner you just need your fingers or your hands so that that simple practice of just you know touching myself very lightly and slowly in a way that is much lighter and much slower than if I was just trying to give myself a CLI and really just focusing in on the sensation and spending you know 15 minutes 20 minutes 30 minutes doing that you know people call it self-pleasure and totally it can be that but to me it is not just about pleasure in the sense
(1:03:16) that usually there’s a very small window of Sensation that my mind will label as pleasure and what the practice is about as I understand it is working on slowly expanding that window and being able to receive more of the sensations as pleasure which means you know surrendering more opening more and you know it’s analogous in life like if Elon Musk just showed up my door with a check for $20 million and was like I just really liked your book I just really wanted to give you this you know that would be outside of my range of
(1:03:50) sensation like I might just faint I might just like I wouldn’t be able to feel like oh hey Elon thanks like and really connect with him in a heart opened way because I would just be like blacked out so it’s like both good things and negative things can have this effect of being outside of our range of sensation and the more we expand that range the more we can be present you know in relationship and with good things and challenging things in our lives so that sort of stroking practice that’s descended from what I learned in
(1:04:21) orgasmic meditation I love that I love that and yeah I I think that I have lived to to know that my capacity is very very limited that’s why I don’t even call my practice self-pleasure anymore I call it sensation play because it’s like I just need to start at the basics of like how many minutes as you’re saying can I you know literally like run a feather or my fingers over my body before I can’t be with myself any longer I mean it’s minutes wow so you know that’s also why this is a practice and a LIF style and
(1:04:57) you know whole worldview so thank you so much for your work for your Intrepid spirit and for for yeah being willing to to be with me in this thank you Kelly it’s been so much fun
