CraigJustCraig

Tag: life

  • Not My Shadow, Not My War

    Carl Jung once said that “the most dangerous psychological mistake is the projection of the shadow onto others.”
    I feel that on this holiday break. Most conflict: interpersonal, communal, spiritual, starts when someone wrestling their own darkness mistakes you for their battleground.

    I used to think I could avoid this if I just explained myself well enough… moved gently enough… was compassionate “enough.”
    But I can’t outrun someone else’s shadow. It walks with them—cast on me.

    What I can do is learn to recognize the moment their shadow lands on me.

    For me, the first sign is intensity.
    Not every disagreement or discomfort is a projection. Humans clash all the time. Personalities don’t always mix: different values, different morals, different goals, different perspectives, different trauma, different strategies for getting needs met. I get that. That’s normal.
    But when the emotional charge is strong, out of proportion for what happened, or strangely personal… that’s usually not about me. That’s their shadow searching for a new battleground.

    My strategy starts with simple observation:

    Notice the flare.
    When someone’s reaction is harder than the situation called for, I pause. I feel it, but I let it pass.

    Acknowledge it instead of fighting it.
    If I argue with their projection, it only grows. Shadows get stronger when you deny them.

    Name what’s happening.
    Not out loud, but to myself: “This is not about me. This person is projecting.”
    That one sentence keeps me from internalizing their story.

    Stay rooted.
    Their shadow doesn’t overwrite my truth.
    Who decided their darkness swallowed my sun?
    The only one who can decide that is me.

    And sometimes the simplest thing you can do is let their shadow pass like a wave hitting a rock.

    The goal isn’t to be liked or understood, but to see clearly—your shadow and theirs—and not let either pull you out of yourself.

    How do you deal with it when someone’s shadow tries to make you their mirror?

  • The Chalice That Never Empties

    They say: “You’re only ENM because you want to cheat without guilt.”

    But those words are shallow, spoken by mouths that fear the depth of truth.

    If I hungered only for pleasure without consequence, I could do what so many men already do: lie.

    Whisper sweet nothings. Pretend at devotion. Disguise betrayal with flowers and empty vows.

    That is the easy path. The coward’s path.

    But my life is built on integrity sharpened into steel.

    I do not lie. I do not shrink.

    I stand in the open, naked in truth.

    To speak my desire aloud is to invite judgment, to summon contempt.

    But I accept that crucifixion.

    Because ENM is not escape. It is not indulgence.

    It is covenant. Expansion. A refusal to mutilate the heart into scarcity when it was forged for abundance.

    Monogamy has often felt like a cell:

    twenty-three hours in confinement, one hour of stale air.

    But ENM — ah, ENM is the sky without walls,

    a storm with no horizon,

    a freedom tempered by responsibility.

    Do not mistake me: I do not love less when I love more.

    Each bond burns with its own fire.

    Each person receives the fullness of me.

    I am cursed and blessed, like a priest whose chalice never empties —

    no matter how many drink, the wine remains.

    Sometimes love awakens in the smallest spark:

    two hands brushing in passing, a flash of lightning across the skin.

    Why should I chain that current, forbid the seed to sprout,

    simply because another flower already blooms in my garden?

    Love is not a ration. It is not prison food.

    Love multiplies. Love overflows. Love is infinite.

    And ENM is not only love — it is architecture.

    It is the building of life outside the blueprint of scarcity.

    Shared burdens, lightened by many hands.

    Finances braided into ropes that climb us out of poverty into legacy.

    An emotional ecosystem — one soul offering peace, another fire, another laughter, another wisdom.

    No single person crushed under the impossible weight of “everything.”

    This is not chaos. This is design.

    This is not cheating. This is covenant.

    A web woven with honesty, accountability, expansion.

    So I say: stop fearing abundance.

    Stop caging infinity.

    Stop binding the heart to scarcity when it was born to overflow.

    I do not choose ENM because I must.

    I choose it because I can.

    Because my blood sings freedom.

    Because my heart refuses to shrink.

    Because love is too vast, too holy, too dangerous to ever be caged.

    ✨ Love without limits. Build without boundaries. Live without fear. ✨

  • The Price of Staying Close

    Sometimes being close to someone costs more than it’s worth. That isn’t just romance. It shows up in families, friendships, jobs, groups you thought were “yours.” The pattern’s simple: things shift, and staying the same stops making sense.

    Family is the hardest to walk from. Blood is supposed to mean unbreakable. But some family members don’t change. They repeat. Same fight. Same bullshit cycle. You hope the next holiday will be different, but it isn’t. At some point, you realize the only move is stepping out of the role they keep shoving you in. That doesn’t mean you don’t care. It means you’re done paying the toll with your sanity.

    Friendships rot quieter. Somebody leans too hard, or you’re the one chasing. Either way, the balance slips. You notice the weight. You carry it anyway until resentment eats the bond. Stepping back isn’t drama. It’s silence. Less calls, less texts, more space. Not exile—just not letting yourself bleed out alone on the rope.

    Work plays its own game. You become the reliable one, the fixer, the mule. People learn fast: dump it on you. Not always out of malice, just because it’s easy. The day you stop, the day you say no, suddenly you’re the bad guy. But nothing sacred broke. It was never sacred. It was just convenience, and it served them better than you.

    Stepping back here looks small. Closing the laptop. Saying no. Letting the phone ring. It’s not rebellion—it’s survival.

    Romance? That’s the stickiest trap. Love blinds. Attachment begs. You tell yourself loyalty is holy. You wait for “better.” But sometimes the most loving thing you can do—for them, for you—is distance. Enough space to see what’s real and what’s just wish.

    we’re wired to bond, and wired to protect. Those two instincts crash, and the crash feels like guilt, grief, relief—all tangled at once. No clean clarity. Just mess.

    Stepping back isn’t cruelty. It’s the line where you stop bleeding yourself dry. Ignore it too long and you’ll burn out everywhere else too. Distance gives you breath. Breath gives you sight.

    People won’t always get it. They’ll call it selfish. Cold. But stepping back is often the only way to keep something from rotting into bitterness. It’s not perfect, not painless. It’s just healthier.

  • No One Breathes for You

    The tension between responsibility for oneself and the creeping trend of infantilization, “safety-ism,” and universalizing one’s own perspective over another’s consent and choice

    There’s a troubling trend I keep noticing: the desire to treat others as if they are incapable of making their own decisions, as if they are children who must be protected at all costs.

    I watch as people step in and supplant another’s desires, another’s wishes, with their own judgments — robbing them of agency, interfering in their path of self-discovery.

    I spoke recently about responsibility — that I am responsible for my existence, my choices, my actions, my happiness, my relationships, the values I live by. No one can breathe for me; no one can give me self-esteem; no one can rescue me from the consequences of my choices. That is the work of my life alone.

    So why do so many now insist on “protecting” others by stripping them of this responsibility? Why pretend that people are victims of choices they themselves have made?

    When someone consents, when someone desires, when someone says yes — who are you to override them with your own discomfort, your own morals, your own standards? Why is your universalized perspective supposed to count for more than the actual will of the person in question?

    I see it over and over: loud voices declaring “safety,” when in truth what they create is suffocation. They destroy the spaces we’ve built in the name of protection, but protection from what? From being fully human? From tasting risk? From living by our own choices?

    And worse — the arrogance of it. To presume that your personal discomfort invalidates another’s freedom. To insert yourself as savior when no rescue was asked for. To yuck someone else’s yum, and then call it morality.

    There are no victims here — only people who choose. We each walk our path. We each live the consequences of our own decisions. To deny that is to deny our dignity. To rob people of their responsibility is to rob them of their humanity.

    So I return to what I know:
    I am responsible for my life.
    I am responsible for my choices.
    I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to everything I do.

    No one else can do that for me.

  • Needs vs Strategies

    Needs vs Strategies

    Needs vs. Strategies
    Part I: The Problem – Alienation from Ourselves

    Today I want to talk about three books and why they helped me describe a topic I have been extremely passionate about: The Art of Love, Nonviolent Communication, and The Body Keeps the Score. The topic is Needs vs. Strategies.

    What do I mean by that?

    Strategies are requests, desires, wants, and “solutions” to specific actions by specific people. Needs, on the other hand, contain no reference to any particular action; they exist regardless of who or what is available. Some examples of needs are rest, understanding, support, honesty, and meaning.

    This topic is so fundamentally hard to talk about, but it transforms everything. I am going to attempt to codify my understanding through this writing. Why? Because strategies disconnect us from our needs.

    Stop right there. Some of us can’t even name our needs. We live outside ourselves—and by that I mean we live on external directives rather than from our internal knowledge and needs. We become alienated from our natural state.

    All criticism, attack, insults, and judgments are the result of our attention being focused on classifying, analyzing, and determining levels. Our thinking becomes centered on dehumanizing one another with labels and judgments. Judgments, criticisms, diagnoses, and interpretations of others are all alienated expressions of our needs.

    But everything would change if we listened to the feelings and needs behind the message.

    Part II: Trauma, Survival, and Strategies

    We have an estrangement from feelings and get stuck utilizing survival strategies to assert our needs. This is both an inability to connect with our needs and an inability to assume responsibility for our needs. We put all our energy into protecting ourselves, developing whatever survival strategies we can. We may repress our feelings; we may get furious and plot revenge. We may decide to become so powerful and successful that nobody can ever hurt us again.

    Many behaviors that are classified as psychiatric problems—including some obsessions, compulsions, and panic attacks, as well as most self-destructive behaviors—started out as strategies for self-protection.

    Biologically, we need to attach to someone. Whether that is a loving and caring someone or a distant, insensitive, rejecting, or abusive someone, we will develop some way to get our needs met. And when your source of survival is also your source of fear, you are stuck with “fright without solution.”

    In The Body Keeps the Score it says: “It is much more productive to see aggression or depression, arrogance or passivity as learned behaviors: somewhere along the line, the patient came to believe that he or she could survive only if he or she was tough, invisible, or absent, or that it was safer to give up.”

    These adaptations will continue until we feel safe and integrate all the parts of ourselves that are stuck fighting or warding off trauma. Coping takes its toll. For many, it is safer to hate themselves than to risk their relationship by expressing anger or acting out.

    They survive by denying, ignoring, and splitting off large chunks of reality: they forget, they suppress, they numb. They reconfigure their minds to live with the worst. They develop defensive strategies to help them survive.

    What is unknowable causes anxiety. People need the illusion that everything can be known. Even if in this illusion they are the most hated, it feels safer than the chaos of the unknown.

    Part III: Turning Inward – Naming Needs and Affirming Worth

    When we live away from our needs within ourselves, our lives become limited by external and alien perspectives, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on our needs.

    But when we begin to live from within outward—in touch with the power within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us—then we begin to be responsible to ourselves.

    We begin to recognize our deepest feelings. We give up, out of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation, and with the numbness that so often seems like the only alternative. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within.

    To refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling at any time, however comfortable that might seem, is to deny a large part of the experience and to allow ourselves to be reduced.

    It requires a concern to know not only external reality but also internal reality—the reality of my needs, feelings, aspirations, and motives—so that I am not a stranger or a mystery to myself. The feeling that joy and fulfillment are my natural birthright.

    Part IV: The Affirmations – Owning My Existence

    Once you’re able to say:

    I am not here on earth to live up to someone else’s expectations; my life belongs to me.

    Each person is the owner of his or her life; no one is here on earth to live up to my expectations.

    I have a right to exist.

    I am of high value to myself.

    I have a right to honor my needs and wants, to treat them as important.

    I am lovable.

    I am admirable.

    I will usually be liked and respected by the people I like and respect.

    I should deal with others fairly and justly, and others should deal with me fairly and justly.
    I deserve to be treated courteously and with respect by everyone.

    If people treat me discourteously or disrespectfully, it is a reflection on them, not on me. It is only a reflection on me if I accept their treatment of me as right.

    If someone I like does not return my feeling, it may be disappointing or even painful, but it is not a reflection on my personal worth.

    No other individual or group has the power to determine how I will think and feel about myself.

    I trust my mind.
    I see what I see and know what I know.
    I am better served by knowing what is true than by making myself “right” at the expense of the facts.
    If I persevere, I can understand the things I need to understand.

    The more conscious I am of that which bears on my interests, values, needs, and goals, the better my life will work.

    To remain effective, I need to keep expanding my knowledge; learning needs to be a way of life. The better I know and understand myself, the better the life I can create. Self-examination is an imperative of a fulfilled existence.

    At the most fundamental level, I am for myself.
    At the most fundamental level, I accept myself.

    Part V: Responsibility and Aloneness

    I accept the reality of my thoughts, even when I cannot endorse them and would not choose to act on them; I do not deny or disown them.
    I can accept my feelings and emotions without necessarily liking, approving of, or being controlled by them; I do not deny or disown them.
    I can accept that I have done what I have done, even when I regret or condemn it. I do not deny or disown my behavior.

    I accept that what I think, feel, or do is an expression of myself, at least in the moment it occurs. I am not bound by thoughts, feelings, or actions I cannot sanction, but neither do I evade their reality or pretend they are not mine.

    I accept the reality of my problems, but I am not defined by them. My problems are not my essence. My fear, pain, confusion, or mistakes are not my core.

    Once you own that:

    I am responsible for my existence.

    I am responsible for the achievement of my desires.

    I am responsible for my choices and actions.

    I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my work and other activities.

    I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my relationships.

    I am responsible for my behavior with other people—co-workers, associates, customers, spouse, children, friends.

    I am responsible for how I prioritize my time.

    I am responsible for the quality of my communications.

    I am responsible for my personal happiness.

    I am responsible for choosing or accepting the values by which I live.

    I am responsible for raising my self-esteem; no one else can give me self-esteem.

    In the ultimate sense, I accept my aloneness. That is, I accept that no one is coming to make my life right, or save me, or redeem my childhood, or rescue me from the consequences of my choices and actions. In specific issues, people may help me, but no one can take over primary responsibility for my existence. Just as no one else can breathe for me, no one else can take over any of my other basic life functions, such as earning the experience of self-efficacy and self-respect.

    Part VI: Healing, Neuroplasticity, and Self-Care

    In order to play, mate, and nurture , the brain needs to turn off its natural vigilance. We must identify strategies beyond denial or repression for navigating pleasure in relationship to others.

    Drop low-performing strategies and replace them with tested alternatives. Once I could name my needs, I became aware of my strategies—how I cope with the fear of my needs not being met.

    I learned to listen for feelings, to express my needs, to accept answers that I didn’t always want to hear. I learned to grow, to accept, to love, to be fulfilled.

    The most important job of the brain is to ensure our survival, even under the most miserable conditions. Everything else is secondary. Psychological problems occur when our internal signals don’t work, when our maps don’t lead us where we need to go, when we are too paralyzed to move, when our actions do not correspond to our needs, or when our relationships break down.

    The brain is formed in a “use-dependent manner.” This is another way of describing neuroplasticity, the relatively recent discovery that neurons that “fire together, wire together.” This creates the communal, spiritual, and historical contexts that shape our lives.

    As we begin to re-experience a visceral reconnection with the needs of our bodies, there is a brand new capacity to warmly love the self. We experience a new quality of authenticity in our caring, which redirects our attention to our health, our diets, our energy, and our time management. This enhanced care for the self arises spontaneously and naturally, not as a response to a “should.”

    We are able to experience an immediate and intrinsic pleasure in self-care. The body needs to be restored to a baseline state of safety and relaxation from which it can mobilize to take action in response to real danger. Building up internal resources fosters safe access to sensations and emotions. Feeling the pleasure of taking effective action restores a sense of agency and a sense of being able to actively defend and protect ourselves.

    Part VII: The Call – From Survival to Liberation

    When we don’t know how to directly and clearly express what we need, we make analyses. Criticism and diagnosis get in the way. Pain can get in the way of our ability to hear clearly.

    Translate any message into an expression of a need. Understand the pain.

  • Step Into the Fire, its warm

    Fine. Make me your villain.
    You could have walked away, but you stayed. You screamed. You dragged a crowd to watch me fall—now you’ll watch me rise.

    I’m a sadist. I deal in fear, pain, pleasure, and surrender. I’m dark, heavy, and dangerous. I don’t hide that. I don’t it dress up. And I don’t care if you approve.

    You want safe and cute? Leave .
    You want truth?Come .

    your comfort doesn’t matter. the crowd cant’ save you. When you’re shallow, dishonest, and unprepared, you wont make it

    You wanted the fire? Now burn.

  • Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg Review

    seriously this book is casting out spirits disguised as a communication manual.

    Marshall Rosenberg didn’t just hand me a tool, he handed me a mirror, and a scalpel. and said get to work.

    This book is not about how to “communicate better.” It’s about how to stop speaking like a colonizer. and how to stop letting the colonizer speak through you.

    This was a wake up call to how much of our everyday speech is laced with violence, shame, and guilt. This book really pulled back the veil of socially acceptable manipulation and all the ways we’ve learned to control, manipulate, and people.

    Most of what we call “communication” is a poorly disguised threat without even realizing it.

    Judgement, blame and guilt are expressions of our own unmet needs.””survival stragtegies” we us to avoid facing fact we dont know what we need and hoping someone else can figure it out for us.

    The book said “All criticism, attack, and insult vanish when we listen for feelings and needs.”

    How everytime you hear the word “should” or “I have to,” you’re handing your agency to the abyss. and saying Fuck it. you’re outsourcing your power. you’re kicking your inner child on your way out the door…. again

    When you been taught to that sacrifice = love, when actually… your just neglecting your needs and Wearing your pain like it’s a badge of honor.

    What sucked and was heard to swallow was “Nobody makes you feel anything.” The way I interpret what someone says or does is on me. “Anger isn’t about anyone else. It’s about your unmet needs.” see that one i need a minute ….

    “The difference between a request and a demand is what happens when someone says no.” Ouch. you see what i mean?

    This man said : “Depression is your reward, for being good.” like wtf!!!!!!!

    That we are taught to be good, be obedient, be productive, and above all be quiet your actual needs.

    What the real struggle is: Don’t label. Don’t judge. Just say what’s happening, say what you feel, say what you need, and clearly, concisly, ask. Language is a spell to liberate, not to control. Guilt, shame, blame? Just masks to avoid your needs.

    This book is not gentle. But it will help you grow.

    Rosenberg is calling for a revolution dismantling the internalized systems of domination that keep us distant from ourselves and each other. He teaches you how to get real and get in touch with your needs. He’s asking us to speak in a language of life. A language of need. A language of choice.

    And honestly? That shit slaps.
    Highly recommend

  • On time

    Magick is all about mythoform and mythology—the deep stories we tell that shape how we see and move through the world.

    One of the core myths we’ve inherited?
    That ever-present sinking feeling that we’re “wasting time.”
    I still feel trapped by it. Caught in an antagonistic system that breeds confusion, anxiety, and fear.
    That’s not an accident—it’s a built-in feature.

    “Where do these white people run to every morning? To their workplaces, of course. Why do they have to run to something that is not running away from them? They do not have time.”

    I had to say this word in French because there is no equivalent in the local language. The conversation came to a halt when the elder had to ask what this “time” is.
    (Malidoma Somé, Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community)

    Let that sink in.

    This isn’t just a philosophical take—this is about how myth (yes, even modern, “rational” cultures have them) is silently scripting our lives.
    Because “time” we’re so afraid of wasting—it doesn’t exist the way we were told.

    This is my second time coming across this.

    In Yurugu by Marimba Ani:

    “Time” in this view moves ceaselessly towards some point never reached in the “future.” This sense of telos (Greek for “end,” “purpose,” or “goal”) is an important aspect of European mythology—the stories a culture uses to explain the world, its origins, and the fundamental aspects of human existence.

    It gives meaning to European life.

    Yet the “future” creates more problems than it resolves. Ironically, this “future” is approached by the ever-present line of time through which the European seeks fulfillment, but at the same time assures her/him of never being fulfilled.

    The “future” represents unattainable perfection.
    It is an abstraction that is unreachable and, therefore, unknowable.
    And what is unknowable for the European causes anxiety.

    The European psyche needs the illusion of a rationally ordered universe in which everything can be known.

    A future that never comes.
    A perfection you never reach.
    A loop of anxiety, fear, and shame dressed up in suits, clocks, and productivity.

    And the gag is—this was all by design.

    European mythoform—the unconscious structural pattern shaping its worldview—creates an unknown and unknowable future whose only relationship to the past and present is that it determines them, but cannot be determined by them. This antagonistic situation causes emotional confusion, anxiety, and fear for the European.

    Yet this oppressive future cannot be avoided,
    Because the clock moves them toward it at an uncontrollable pace—
    Which seems to move faster and faster.

    All of this is an effect of the limitations of lineal, secular time.
    It is neither phenomenal nor sacred nor spiritual.
    Participants in the culture have only one recourse against the fear: Science (Purchasing of “insurance” a attempt to escape the fear.)

    They seek to relieve their anxiety by gaining control over what controls them. Failing, in the end, to find fulfillment. Because the European conception of science is above all secular, alienating, literate, rationalistic, and linear.

    This abstract and oppressive future continues to threaten, to intimidate, to frighten. They move inexorably toward it, a movement that imparts value (“progress”), and yet the perceived destiny is fear-producing.

    The European worldview doesn’t just teach this logic—
    It hides it beneath the illusion of being “universal.”
    Then turns around and sells that illusion to the rest of the world back to US

    The culture teaches its logic. It hands you its worldview.
    You absorb it, bury it, act on it—and forget it’s not truth, it’s programming.

    “Experts” dig that logic back up, slap a label on it, and sell it as universal truth.

    They present it with such authority—it can only be the only valid way to think.
    But what they’re really pushing is their assumed reality, dressed up as logic and objectivity.

    And because of the way it’s delivered, It gets imposed. Globalized.

    Meanwhile, its roots—Christian morality, Western value systems, white fear, capitalist logic—stay camouflaged under this fake-ass pseudouniversalism.

    It’s clever.
    It’s violent.
    And it keeps us divided.

    In a magickal practice, we don’t work with those stories—we create new ones.
    We bend time.
    Pause it.
    Let it circle back.
    Let it disappear.

    We can reclaim time, redefine time, and name our own rhythms.
    We can create moments that are timeless.
    This is the beauty of the path.

    The further I go, the more I realize this isn’t just about rope, or candles, or chants.
    It’s about epistemology.
    It’s about which stories get believed—and why.
    It’s about what we can do once we stop believing the lies.

    Because the mythoform of the dominant culture is designed to make you chase something you can never catch.
    It tells you time is linear, scarce, and slipping away.
    That if you’re not productive, you’re not valuable.
    That rest is lazy.
    That pleasure is dangerous.

    But we know better.
    This requires deep consideration of all the bullshit that’s been assumed.
    We remember who the fuck we are.
    We strip it.
    Burn it.
    Build Anew.

  • “Exploring Sensory Deprivation: Unlocking the Healing Power of Intentional Kink Modalities”

    im going to pull a quotes for this a build my point from them the first one is: ” Jung’s says “Until you make the unconscious, con
    scious, it will rule your life and you will call it Fate” which means that
    your unconscious desires and curiosities have great power to
    shape your experience. “

    This is tricky:Because, these deep desires and curiosities are unknown and unconscious (meaning: you are not knowingly aware of them, so they do not seem like they are
    yours at all!). Yet these taboo, disowned, and repressed desires get fulfilled in your life. because these taboo desires have been disowned and repressed, you
    won’t recognize their fulfillments as fulfillments. you see them as calamities.

    There are 7 axiom to practice sacred kink/ intentional kink these are:

    • Having is evidence of wanting
    • We have a choice as to whether we experience sensation as pleasure or pain
    • It’s possible to get off on every “stroke,” and every happening in life is a “stroke”
    • The degree of being “turned off” or “turned on” is a factor of approval
    • Desire evolves through fulfillment, not denial and repression
    • Shame is the Magic Killer
    • The truth is sensationa

    The largest most powerful part of practicing intentioal kink is that you hold the power to change your mind, im going to quote 2 different things here but the oddly end up saying the same thing from two different source one medical the other mystical. the first on comes from urban tanta “Every thought you think is creating your future. … A basic premise of Tantra is self-acceptance. Another is self-love. With these, you can create or change anything in your life. Your mind is either your most powerful ally or your worst enemy. The choice is yours.

    How do you wish to use your mind?

    What is it you want in your life and in your sex?

    Will the thought you’ll think when you look up from this page be something you want to see happen in your life?

    Get clear on what you really want and start talking and acting like it already exists, because on some level it already does; it just may not have fully manifested yet. The thoughts you think today create your tomorrow—so when tomorrow comes, would you rather be greeted with your fondest dream or your worst nightmare?” and the next quote comes from the body keeps the score here is states the very real phenomenon about being ADDICTED TO TRAUMA: THE PAIN OF PLEASURE AND THE PLEASURE OF PAIN how Fear and aversion, in some perverse way, can be transformed into pleasure. hypothesized that endorphins—the morphinelike chemicals that the brain secretes in response to stress—play a role in the paradoxical addictions okay not the quote sorry really love this book should really be a must read but “The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux and his colleagues have shown that the only way we can consciously access the emotional brain is through self-awareness, i.e. by activating the medial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that notices what is going on inside us and thus allows us to feel what we’re feeling.5 (The technical term for this is “interoception”—Latin for “looking inside.”) Most of our conscious brain is dedicated to focusing on the outside world: getting along with others and making plans for the future. However, that does not help us manage ourselves. Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going inside ourselves.”

    and here is where im going with all this this intentional kink allows us to have soul deep level acceptance of our situation, our perception, our reality, and simply accept it love it actually get off on it this allows us to repair the alarm systems of our body and restore our somatic self to its ordinary job of being a presence that takes care of the housekeeping of the body,mind and soul ensuring that you eat, sleep, connect , protect, and defend

    Sacred Kink/intentional kink is an awareness of sexuality for exploring spirituality and energy. Though it may come in the forms of play, sensual exploration, and bliss, this is the work of our souls. What is important is access to an altered state of consciousness, why we go into them, and what we do once we are there. okay another quote from dossie new topping book “..play directed to the purpose of attaining altered states of consciousness, of traveling beyond our habitual perceptual screens to another way of being in which everything becomes special, extraordinary, brilliant. Goals for such a scene might be a quest for guidance, or a vision, the pursuit of personal truth or understanding, or the experience of spiritual communion” these tools provide an opportunity to tap into routes for self-focus, self-expression, and connecting with ourselves and others.

    okay lets talk about the intentional kink/sacred kink modalities in healing there are alot. like ALOT. like the oldest tools for shamanic and trance practices worldwide. and while i would love to give a exhaustive list im going to settle for one list the 8 fold path: you know the drill by now another quote

    “Eight stories. Eight life moments. Eight journeys towards beauty, change, manifestation, catharsis—towards the limitless. These eight erotic adventures will create a roadmap of exploration, uncertainty, truth, hope, desire and passion. A roadmap that might give insight to your own journeys from the past, or your own journeys ahead.

    The Path of Rhythm: Dancing Into the Infinite Beat
    I close my eyes and dance. The rhythmic music pumps my body back and forth between 2,000 leather clad bodies, sweat pouring over our hides and the hides of what encases our forms. I can hear the beat of the music in my breath. I can feel it in my pulse and I dance. My boots hold me firm on the ground and my hips sway, my lips part, making love to an unseen force. I grab hold of the Boy, my Boy, in front of me. I begin drumming my hands against his leather vest, the hide under my fingertips, and he grunts in time with the music, pushes back in time with the music, trances out with me into the music… and we fly.

    The Ordeal Path: Trials of Rope and Balance
    She looks at me defiantly, but I can see her fear just on the other side of that sternness. Suspension lines locked off, I pull one foot up in the air. Her toes brush against my breasts and she is tethered to the ceiling by the ropes on the back of her chest harness and by her thigh. For the first five minutes she is fine, until the foot on the ground cramps up. By the end of 35 minutes she will be screaming. By the end of an hour she will be sobbing and broken—facing the demons she came here today to look at. I hold the space and I wait.

    The Path of Flesh: Embracing Skin and Desire
    He growls at me and I growl back. The single tail isn’t an ordeal for me, because it brings me here and now, because I need it, want it, long for it. The lash is my lover and I can feel it lick me open and bring me back from the emptiness I fill myself with to survive the day job. I am decadence reflected, I am glistening, I am hungry as the blood pours down and I beg for more. My feral lust echoes back to him with every touch of its pain and I can feel myself opening up not to him but to myself. Looking within I can see all of the reasons I am the way I am and I love myself for it. This is not a test, this is love, and I love myself in this, I love the world in this, I am the world in this.

    The Path of Ritual: Into the Ceremonies of Life
    Each morning I wake and do as my Mistress has commanded. I lay out my clothes on the bed and while still nude, prostrate myself before the image of her that lives on my altar. She is my Goddess, my inspiration, and I repeat the mantra of her name and my place in her life. I am her Slave, her thing, her property. I say all her holy names and remind myself of my place in her life as I lift the collar to my neck, lock it on, and look in the mirror next to her image. I see myself in her collar, know I am in her collar, and begin to touch myself as she commanded. I cum in her honor, as I always cum in her honor, and in that space between tension and release, I catch myself in the mirror, feel the collar, and can feel the divine in this truth.

    The Path of Breath: Inhaling Our Potential
    “Hold.” Their voice is sensual and still as I sit before them and they kiss my lips and then say, “Release.” Ze sucks in my air between tender lips and breathes it back to me in time. Our bodies rock back and forth into one another, me into them with each breath out, they into me as I breathe zir back in. We become a single circuit. We are a single circuit. Ze locks eyes with me again and adds noise to each breath, pumping me higher and more acutely into zir, feeling zir hunger against mine, feeling zir in me at each push of oxygen. I am high, and the world floats away.

    The Path of the Horse: Riding Into the Storm
    He called and said he needed to feel divine wrath. I will not be myself tonight. I will become the vessel to hold his pain, to give him space to atone. Black lace and silk wrap around my form, knee high boots, and a mask slips in place moments before he knocks on the door. I slip into the back seat of my own soul and watch as SHE comes forward, watch as SHE has him crawl inside, and am inspired as I know, together, SHE and I will create an evening he will never forget.

    The Path of Asceticism: The Call of Erotic Monasticism
    It never comes all at once. I find myself in the quiet places when others sleep. Universal truth slips out as I’m washing the dishes or licking his boots. Sleeping on a pallet at the end of his bed, wearing what he requires, following his rules—this is the order of things. I become his nun. I wake at the same time each day, bathe in the same way, act according to his rules—and with my mind stilled of gibberish, I find calm, and in the calm, understanding.

    The Path of Sacred Plants: Consuming Our Fate
    On my knees, my coven stands around me and the Priest opens up the tin to reveal what is inside. I close my eyes—I have the right to say no, to not go on this journey that we planned months ago, but I know that in the safety of this circle that this is what I need. I keep closing myself off, keep stopping short, and having negotiated this I am ready. Hand to mushroom to lips and I begin with bowing before each of them, thanking each of them, as the music begins and their hands slowly descend onto my body.”

    okay to so let me recap for a sec and tie lol this together really quick so i have previsously talked about the 16 rules tthis basically says your always doing magic whether you like our not, this says you definitely like it you little freak and your getting off on it. we also talked about “What cannot be communicated to the others cannot be communicated to the self. If you cannot tolerate what you know or feel what you feel, the only option is denial and dissociation. Maybe the most devastating long-term effect of this shutdown is not feeling real inside,” so here is the healing aspect right we need to be able to feel what we feel and know what know or your magic will litteral make YOU cease to exist!!!! bell hooks talks alot about this condition but im going use a quote from erich fromm that also mentions this condition “it is important to avoid bad company. By bad company I do not refer only to people who are vicious and destructive; one should avoid their company because their orbit is poisonous and depressing. I mean also the company of zombies, of people whose soul is dead, although their body is alive; of people whose thoughts and conversation are trivial; who chatter instead of talk, and who assert cliche opinions instead of thinking.” these people are also magical they just have lost control of their magic and have given control over to some one else these people are dangerous unstable and these are the people in most need of healing. so we talking about that and the living dead now we need talk about the power of culture, or idealogy, mythoform, and mythogolog but that ill need its on post all together but what i will say here is that. as we have seen how importent our mind is, our words are, our thoughts are, so is the stories we tell ourselves, the fantasy we keep, the media we consume the belief we hold all of it i will one day talk about yurugu and how that is the last piece in the magical practice and until you what divides you you can never finish the first step of the great alchemy,

  • Do Nothing

    Sometimes I think about weird things all the time and prompted by the weirder things still. Recently, I was talking to a friend and I asked them what were they doing, and they replied, “Nothing.” That set me off for some reason. I have friends that seem to always be doing nothing even when they are clearly doing something. Then I started to wonder—why are we so encouraged to do nothing?

    I thought doing nothing is our rest, but rest is our rest. Rest is an action, just like nothing is an action. Then I wondered, who benefits from us doing nothing? Obviously, it’s us—but really? Do we benefit from nothing? No. Well, then I thought no one benefits from nothing. And I thought that again is not true—all the people that would much rather you do nothing would definitely want you doing that than anything that could possibly hinder their objective or agenda.

    This led to a series of thoughts and ideas till I got to: action comes from ideas, and ideas are not always our own. Ideas are not forced onto us. They don’t have to. Persuasion often works through cues we barely register. Things are phrased the way they are phrased because it’s a nudge to point you into a given direction. The more your perspective widens, the more you realize you have no clue what is actually happening around you and how your perception is just a series of filters that shape your possible thoughts and narrow your inside reality.

    Ideas take root in your mind whether you want them to or even notice it. They live inside our minds and wait for you to water the seeds. Our culture is amused by distraction. We talk at each other. We entertain one another, but we can no longer challenge one another. We cannot be allowed nuance in our rigid reality. We no longer talk to each other because we’re all wearing team jerseys. We no longer exchange ideas, we exchange the illusion. We are fed a constant stream of information designed for you to take no action at all. Our stories are stripped of implication, leaving us with inescapable anxiety.

    Our inaction is a tactical decision designed to get you to look no further, think no deeper, and feel no longer. Grow comfortable with nothing. This is the perfection of slavery, because while you give and consume, the very key to your freedom is hidden in plain sight.

    This brings me back to Yurugu again and again—our worldview is shaped by so little, and it feels so natural. We never resist what we never see. So we continue to do nothing at all.