CraigJustCraig

Tag: love

  • Threads of Desire: A Rope Ritual

    The room was warm, the air thick with the scent of clove and frankincense, candles casting dancing shadows on the walls. Each coil of rope laid on the altar, every flickering flame, and every soft whisper of silk against skin was deliberate, chosen, sacred.
    I stood at the center, barefoot on the smooth wooden floor, the prophet of this gathering. My hands caressed the length of a rope, its fibers humming with potential. Around me, the participants waited, some standing, others kneeling, their anticipation woven into the air like an invisible thread.
    “Awaken,” I murmured, my voice low and rich, carrying the weight of an invocation. The first binding began. Slowly, deliberately, I wrapped the rope around the first participant’s wrist. The pull of the knot wasn’t just physical; it was a tether to something deeper—a journey inward.
    The room vibrated with a hum as they repeated the chant I had taught them earlier:
    “Threads of fire, threads of soul, bind me whole, make me whole.”
    The words were more than a mantra—they were a spell, stitching their desires into the fabric of the ritual.
    I moved from one participant to the next, the ritual’s Augmentation unfurling like a symphony. warm hands explored untouched places, and quiet gasps filled the room as each soul began to bloom under my touch. The ropes were not just bindings; they were invitations—to feel, to explore, to awaken.
    “Deeper,” I whispered, as the rhythm shifted into Intensification. Now the ropes tightened, snug against flesh, pushing boundaries but never breaking them. I watched as participants danced at the edge of their pleasure, their bodies trembling, their breaths uneven.
    “Feel it,” I urged. “That line, the one just before release. Step to it, linger, but do not cross.”
    The art was in the tease—in retreating from the precipice only to approach again, each time drawing closer, each time building more. The room pulsed with shared energy, the air electric as we hovered in perfect tension.
    Then came the Quickening.
    “Now,” I called, my voice cutting through the symphony of moans and gasps. “Hold your focus. Bind your intention.”
    Each participant closed their eyes, their bodies trembling as they balanced between the physical and the spiritual. My voice guided them through the storm of their sensations, tethering their thoughts back to the spell we had woven at the beginning.
    “See it,” I commanded. “Your desire, your will—shape it now. A flame, a bird, a bolt of lightning. Whatever form it takes, hold it steady.”
    As the crescendo reached its peak, the room erupted—a symphony of cries, bodies moving in perfect harmony, the energy coalescing into a singular, unstoppable force. In that moment, each soul released their intention, their visualization bursting forth like a star shooting into the universe.
    I stood still in the center, feeling the ripple of their release like a wave passing through me. The ropes glowed faintly with the residue of our work, their marks on skin shining like sigils of a script.
    As we descended into the ritual’s Relaxation, I moved among them, untying knots with gentle hands, whispering words of grounding. The room filled with quiet laughter, warm smiles, and the soft buzz of shared satisfaction.
    This was not just a ritual. It was art. It was magic.
    The spell, our spell, now danced beyond these walls, moving through unseen realms, carrying with it our desires, our intentions, our truths.
    And as I stood there, the last flicker of candlelight brushing against my skin, I knew one thing to be true: in this space, through these threads, we had touched the divine.

  • Breathless Bonds: A Journey Into Focus

    The room was quiet except for the sound of our breathing. Candlelight flickered, casting molten shadows on bare skin, and the air carried a hint of earthiness from the ropes in my hands. I guided your wrists together, resting them gently over your heart, feeling the rhythmic thrum of your pulse beneath my fingertips.

    “Close your eyes,” I whispered, my voice low and steady. “Feel it. Your heartbeat. Let it guide you.”

    Your chest rose and fell, the warmth of your breath mingling with mine. I began to loop the rope, slow and deliberate, as if each pass over your skin were a sacred incantation.

    “Breathe in for four beats,” I instructed, my voice brushing against your ear. You inhaled deeply, your chest expanding beneath the ropes. “Hold for two. Now exhale for four.”

    I felt the way your breath synced with mine, our rhythms tangling together. Each knot was a marker in time, each pull of the rope grounding us further into this shared ritual. The world outside dissolved, leaving only the two of us.

    “Let yourself feel it,” I continued, my words soft but commanding. “The air filling your lungs, the pulse in your chest, the way the rope hugs your skin. Feel how alive you are in this moment.”

    The tie progressed, the rhythm of your breathing steadying, though every now and then, I noticed it quicken—an involuntary response to the intimacy, the closeness. I smiled. “If the dizziness comes, let it flow through you. It will pass. You’re safe here.”

    Once the tie was complete, I rested my hands on your shoulders, grounding you. “Now,” I said, my thumbs pressing gently into the muscles at the base of your neck, “rock with me. Forward and back, just like this.”

    I swayed, my body brushing yours as I led you through the motion. The rocking grew smaller and smaller until, together, we found stillness.

    “Good,” I murmured. “Now side to side.” My hands guided your torso, the subtle shift of weight drawing us closer. Your breathing slowed further, your body relaxing into the rhythm.

    “Can you feel it?” I asked. “Your roots. Push them into the earth. Let them grow as deep as they need, as far as they want, until they naturally stop.”

    You nodded, your body leaning into mine, the ropes binding you to the moment as much as to me.

    “Now, feel your energy.” My fingers traced the rope lightly, teasing your skin. “Draw it in. Let it flow from your feet, through your legs, your core, and out through your arms. Feel it expand, past your body, beyond the ropes. Let it radiate into the room.”

    I felt the shift, the way your awareness grew. “Good. Now open your senses. What do you hear? The flicker of the candle? My breath? How many sounds can you name?”

    Your head tilted slightly, a dreamy smile playing on your lips as you listened, attuned to the space we shared.

    “Now, what do you see with your eyes closed?” I pressed. “The color of the floor? The shape of the door? See it in your mind. Visualize it. Walk around it in your thoughts. Look from another angle.”

    Your body responded to my voice, your posture softening. “Let your attention shift. What’s at the edge of your awareness? What do you feel against your skin? The rope? My hands?”

    You sighed, your breath shaky but content.

    “Focus,” I said, my lips just barely brushing against your ear. “Be here. Now. Let this moment consume you.”

    The stillness deepened, the space between us charged with an energy that felt ancient and electric.

    “This,” I whispered, “is the law of connection. Like calls to like. You feel me because I feel you. My breath matches yours. My focus anchors yours. Together, we make this moment magic.”

    I leaned back, letting you bask in the energy we’d cultivated, the ropes a sacred seal on our work. “And when you’re ready,” I said, my voice like silk, “you’ll return. But for now, let yourself linger in this trance. The balance. The calm. The power.”

    The ritual was complete, but its effects lingered in the air, like the final note of a song that resonates long after the sound has faded.

  • questions from the group chat

    My mistress was the greatest teacher I could have asked for when it came to topping. Serving her taught me the intricacies of power dynamics and the responsibilities of a top in ways nothing else could. Through service, I learned not just what to expect from a bottom, but how to anticipate their needs, read their responses, and hold space for their experiences.

    I served her for years before I ever considered topping, and even then, my first experience was as a service top for one of her friends. That meant my introduction to topping came from the lens of a bottom—understanding submission, surrender, and trust before ever stepping into the role of a top. That perspective shaped me. Topping was never about wielding power for my own gratification; it was about receiving power as a gift and asking, What would you like me to do with it? How do you want to feel? What emotions are you prepared to receive?

    Even after leaving my mistress, when I was asked to service top, I carried that same understanding with me—giving what is desired, not just what I want to give. Over time, I expanded my skills to include all styles of play (with a few exceptions), but I never forgot the feeling of making her proud. The weight of her commands. The way structure and discipline shaped my sense of fulfillment. The deep satisfaction of being trusted to serve.

    Now, every time I top, I ask myself:
    • What feelings am I drawing out?
    • What emotions am I shaping?
    • What fantasies am I bringing to life?
    • What desires or taboos am I touching on?

    Topping, for me, is deeply empathetic, but also intentional. I constantly ask, How did this make you feel? because I know what sensation I was aiming for—but did it land the way I intended?

    Not everyone shares my background, so I’ve also become a corrupter of sorts—exposing people to new sensations, desires, and experiences so I can later build on them. Maybe they’ve never felt real embarrassment before—so I introduce just enough to spark curiosity, then nurture that desire. Over time, they start fantasizing about it, longing for it. And once they crave it, I have new tools to satisfy that hunger, deepen their pleasure, and push them further into their own discovery.

    This is how I top. It’s never just about control—it’s about exploration, emotion, and fulfillment.

  • before you engage, know this

    I do not hide who I am.
    I don’t downplay it. I don’t dress it up.
    I don’t lie about who I am.
    I show up exactly as advertised.

    You don’t need to decode me—I’ll tell you flat out:

    I’m a sadist.
    I move in the realms of fear, pain, pleasure, and surrender.
    My path is intense. My kinks are dark.

    I am not here for your comfort.
    I celebrate my darkness. I honor and seek the abyss.
    I show you my fire, my darkness, my pleasure.
    I don’t tone it down.
    I don’t offer comfort. I offer intensity.
    I don’t want fans. I want energy, I want honesty, and I want devotion.

    This is the body, mind, and soul set ablaze.

    My kinks are not cute. They are not digestible.
    They are dark, deep, and dangerous to the unprepared.

    This is edgeplay, pain, degradation, fear, sacrifice, ritual, and power—expressed with precision, purpose, and consent.

    I walk the path of hedonism, debauchery, and indulgence—

    Pleasure is my power. Indulgence is my devotion.
    The erotic is my altar. The shadow is my sermon.
    And this practice is my truth.

    I don’t offer entertainment. I offer awakening.
    And awakening is not comfortable.

    I negotiate with clarity and intention.
    If I tell you I’m going to do something, and you agree to it—you are responsible for that agreement.

    If you choose to dance in darkness, step into the abyss, and merge with my will—you must also accept the consequences.

    Once you step into my temple,
    once you sip the wine,
    once you kneel at the altar—
    you are accountable.

    If you chase the flame,
    you don’t get to be shocked when it burns.

    If you comes into my space without intention, without honesty, without readiness—
    you will be removed.
    Not out of pettiness, but because I have a responsibility to protect my work and my energy.

    I don’t tolerate dishonesty, disrespect, or shallow engagement.

    If you’re not grounded, focused, and serious, then you do not belong in this space.
    That’s not a punishment—it’s protection.

    This is a sanctuary.
    A path for the devoted, the willing, the aligned.

    This is sacred, sadistic, shadow work.
    This is practice(cultivate experiences connecting with something beyond your self). philosophy(systematic study of existence, knowledge, values, and reason,). power(the ability to act, influence, or produce change).

    I mix the erotic and the spiritual. I use ritual, altered states, shadow play as tools of expansion.
    Pleasure isn’t just something I enjoy—it’s something I use.
    This is the fire of shadow and flesh.
    This is the unrelenting truth of ecstatic soul.

    this is a path of integration and reverence.

    I seek the disciplined, the passionate, and the willing to engage deeply.

    Those who understand that showing up here comes with expectations.

    I give my time, my energy, and my presence fully.
    That must be reciprocated—whether through time, contribution, support, effort, or service.

    Access is granted only through alignment, action, and sacrifice.

    If this feels like too much
    If this does not resonate,

    If this path does not stir your soul,
    if this current does not call you home—

    turn back now.

    This will swallow you whole.

    But if it does…

    if it speaks to something deep inside you

    If you want depth,
    if you’re ready to be broken open and reshaped with care, cruelty, and intention—step forward.

    Strip bare.
    lay down your offering.
    And step into the flame.

  • I was talking to a goddess

    She didn’t speak in words, but in heat, in breath, in the ache behind my ribs:
    “You are not responsible for their feelings.”

    …I used to believe otherwise.

    I shackled my worth to people’s moods, contorted myself into someone else’s idea.
    I made myself small.
    I apologized for existing.
    The fear of abandonment, of rejection, of being too much and not enough at the same time.
    Boy, what a time.

    Then came the revolt.

    I told myself I didn’t care.
    I wore detachment like armor.
    If I couldn’t please them—fuck them.
    I became loud with boundaries and quiet with vulnerability.
    But I wasn’t free.
    I was still ruled—by them.

    Then came a knowing:
    That I can hold space without setting myself aflame.
    That my needs matter.
    And that theirs did too.

    I was not taught this.
    I was taught to blame—either myself or them.
    I was taught to focus on them and to lose myself.
    I’ve learned: feelings are not caused by others, but shaped by how we receive them—filtered through our own needs and expectations.
    Now, my work is to OWN that.

    This is hard to learn.
    Trauma trained me to see everything and everyone as dangerous.
    I forgot how to play.
    I forgot how to imagine.
    But my body remembered, even when my mind forgot.
    And shame clung deep.

    But pleasure is not sin.

    So I began to ask myself:
    What makes me feel good?
    Can I ask—clearly—for what I want?
    Can I speak in a language that is not vague or coded in shame?

    Instead of “Don’t ignore me,”
    I would say, “Would you be willing to check in?”

    Instead of “You don’t care,”
    I would say, “I feel lonely and need connection.”

    This is power.

    I wasn’t given these tools—I had to make them.
    Walking around yearning, yet terrified to feel it.

    Risk, with clarity.

    For the child in me who never learned.
    For the adult in me who is still learning.
    Knowing it’s safe to say:

    I don’t know where I’m going.
    But I promise: I know the way.

  • Stop Apologizing: The Undoing of Oppression @TheCheshireKink

    –Excerpt from Getting Past the Pain Between Us: Healing and Reconciliation Without Compromise and Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg and
    Compliments and apologies operate in a system of oppression;
    that rewards are as harmful as punishment, that killing is the easy way out. Such statements are typically uttered as expressions of life-alienating communication…

    Notice, how, they reveal little of what’s going on in the speaker; it establishes the speaker as someone who sits in judgment. Judgments—both positive and negative—are life-alienating communication.

    For example, if we find ourselves reacting reproachfully to something we did (“Look, you just messed up again!”), we can quickly stop and ask ourselves, “What unmet need of mine is being expressed through this moralistic judgment?”

    The process of fully connecting with the unmet needs and the feelings that are generated when we have been less than perfect. It is an experience of regret, but regret that helps us learn from what we have done without blaming or hating ourselves. We see how our behavior ran counter to our own needs and values, and we open ourselves to feelings that arise out of that awareness.

    When our consciousness is focused on what we need, we are naturally stimulated toward creative possibilities for how to get that need met. In contrast, the moralistic judgments we use when blaming ourselves tend to obscure such possibilities and to perpetuate a state of self-punishment.

    The second overall step in the healing process is “mourning.”

    In the role of the brother, after the empathy, I mourned. Here’s what that sounded like:

    “Sister, when I see how my actions have contributed to your pain, I feel very sad. It didn’t meet my need to nurture and support you in a way I really would’ve liked.”

    The main thing here is that it requires that we see a big difference between mourning and apology. I see apology as a very violent act. It is violent to the person receiving it and violent to the person giving it.

    And what’s even more tragic is the person receiving it usually likes it, addicted by the culture to want the person to suffer and see them hating themselves. What I find to be true is that nobody will ever apologize or want an apology if they have experienced sincere mourning instead.
    Let’s look at the difference between mourning and apology more closely.

    Apology is based on moralistic judgment—that what I did was wrong and I should suffer for it, even hate myself for what I did.

    That’s radically different than mourning, which is not based on moralistic judgments. Mourning is based on life-serving judgments.

    Did I meet my own needs? No. Then what need didn’t I meet?

    When we are in touch with our unmet need, we never feel shame, guilt, self-anger, or the depression that we feel when we think that what we did was wrong.

    We feel sadness, deep sadness—sometimes frustration—but never depression, guilt, anger, or shame.

    Those four feelings tell us we are making moralistic judgments at the moment we are feeling those feelings. Anger, depression, guilt, and shame are the product of the thinking that is at the base of violence on our planet.

    And I’m glad to have those feelings, because if I’m thinking in a way that I believe supports violence on our planet, I want to as quickly as possible transform that thinking.

    In our second step, then, I mourned; I didn’t apologize, I mourned.

    clearly distinguishes three components in the expression of
    appreciation:

    1. the actions that have contributed to our well-being
    2. the particular needs of ours that have been ful lled
    3. the pleasureful feelings engendered by the ful llment of those needs

    e sequence of these ingredients may vary; sometimes all three can be
    conveyed by a smile or a simple “ank you.” However, if we want to ensure
    that our appreciation has been fully received, it is valuable to develop the
    eloquence to express all three components verbally. e following dialogue
    illustrates how praise may be transformed into an appreciation that
    embraces all three components.
    Saying “thank you” in NVC: “is is what you did; this
    is what I feel; this is the need of mine that was met.

    Apology says: “I’m wrong, punish me.” save that for the bedroom fun times
    Mourning says: “I see where I stepped out of alignment. I feel the ache of that. And I want to return to connection with you, and with my own values.”

    That’s the spell.
    That’s the fucking magic.

    replaces guilt and punishment with shared human needs, center connection over shame, and acknowledges harm without groveling or self-erasure. Shifts the “I was bad” into “my actions didn’t meet my values or your needs”

  • Finished The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm Review

    A Masterclass in Emotional and Intellectual Dragging. Let me tell you something: this book hit. Hard. I picked up The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm thinking I was about to get some soft, philosophical musings on romance and relationships. What I got instead was a complete philosophical takedown of society, ego, capitalism, and our inability to connect. Fromm doesn’t just explain love — he dissects it, deconstructs it, demands better from us. And he does it all with the most elegant, intellectual side-eye I’ve ever read.

    The tone? Everything.

    It’s like watching someone set up dominoes — precise, methodical — and then knock them down one by one until suddenly you’re left staring at the last one, trembling. And that last domino is you.

    Fromm builds to this absolutely chilling indictment of modern society:

    “Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy… man is an automaton—well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is his peculiarly human quality and function… If it is true… that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes… the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction.”

    Read that again. That’s not a quote, that’s A warning.

    Fromm breaks down why love is missing in the modern world — how we’ve confused love with consumerism, performance, control. He talks about why we don’t know how to love, how it all got tangled up in the machinery of profit and productivity, and why learning to love is not just cute or noble — it’s essential to our very humanity.

    And the way he says it? Impeccable.
    There is shade in every sentence. It’s not preachy — it’s precise. It’s like being read for filth by someone in a velvet smoking jacket, sipping wine, quoting Hegel, and daring you to catch up. It’s the politest, nastiest intellectual takedown I’ve ever read. A masterclass in soft-spoken audacity.

    The tone is calm but cutting. Thoughtful but brutal. High-key shade on every page. There’s a scoff baked into every sentence. I swear, I could hear the arched eyebrow.

    And yet… underneath all of it is this beautiful, radical, sincere hope. A belief that love can be cultivated. That we can unlearn this disconnection. That society can be reshaped in the image of true love — not the romanticized fluff we’re sold, but the real, difficult, honest kind rooted in care, discipline, humility, and commitment.

    I took so many notes. My notes are chaos. My brain is cooked.

    And let’s talk about that last chapter — the one I will be re-reading every month until further notice. It cracked me wide open. If you talk to me anytime soon, be warned: I will be quoting this book like scripture. I see why bell hooks cited it in All About Love.

    10/10, no notes. Except, you know, the entire notebook I filled.

  • 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

  •  Intentional Kink Modalities For Healing?

    “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung

    Jung’s words ring especially true in the realm of sacred kink. Our unconscious desires—especially the taboo ones—shape our reality, even if we don’t recognize them as “ours.” These disowned parts of ourselves, the ones we repress or ignore, still manage to fulfill themselves. And because we’re disconnected from them, we often misread their arrival in our lives as tragedy rather than fulfillment.

    But what if we could see them? What if we could meet those desires in ritual, in sensation, in play? That’s the heart of intentional kink—a sacred, embodied practice of conscious transformation.

    Seven Axioms of Sacred Kink

    To begin practicing sacred kink intentionally, we start with these seven axioms—guiding truths that reframe sensation, shame, and desire:

    1. Having is evidence of wanting.
    2. We have a choice as to whether we experience sensation as pleasure or pain.
    3. Every happening in life is a “stroke”—and we can get off on all of it.
    4. The degree to which we’re turned on or off is shaped by approval.
    5. Desire evolves through fulfillment—not repression.
    6. Shame is the magic killer.
    7. The truth is sensational.

    These axioms challenge us to stop resisting life, to stop pathologizing desire. They ask us to lean into the body, the breath, the truth of what’s happening right now.

    Intentional kink teaches that our thoughts, like our desires, are tools of creation. The mystical and the neurological meet here. As Urban Tantra reminds us:

    “Every thought you think is creating your future… With self-acceptance and self-love, you can create or change anything in your life.”

    This echoes the neuroscience laid out in The Body Keeps the Score: the only way to access and change the emotional brain is through self-awareness—through interoception, or looking inward. When we engage in kink consciously, we activate this internal gaze. We stop outsourcing our lives and begin witnessing ourselves again

    There’s a darker truth, too. For many, trauma and pleasure have become entangled. As Bessel van der Kolk notes, “fear and aversion can be transformed into pleasure.” Trauma lives in the body and builds patterns that repeat until we interrupt them—through ritual, through embodiment, through sacred play. This is where kink becomes alchemical: it transforms the pain of the past into the power of the present.

    At its deepest, sacred kink is about radical, soul-deep acceptance. When we surrender to what is—when we stop resisting our fears, our shame, our desires—we reclaim the “alarm system” of the body and restore it to its sacred function. The body knows how to care for us. Through intentional kink, it remembers.

    As Dossie Easton describes in The New Topping Book:

    “Play directed to the purpose of attaining altered states of consciousness… becomes a quest for vision, guidance, personal truth, or spiritual communion.”

    Kink becomes a ritual container for trance, surrender, and revelation. It isn’t just play—it’s pilgrimage.

    There are many ways into this sacred terrain. Here are eight powerful modalities—erotic gateways into transformation:

    1. Rhythm – Dance and movement as portals into ecstasy.
    2. Ordeal – Challenge and intensity (rope, balance, endurance) to confront fear and awaken strength.
    3. Flesh – Pain as revelation, skin as scripture.
    4. Ritual – Daily devotion, service, worship, and structure as spiritual discipline.
    5. Breath – Erotic breathwork, connecting energy circuits and expanding presence.
    6. Horse – Roleplay and possession, invoking archetypes and the divine.
    7. Asceticism – Erotic monasticism, obedience, simplicity, and quietude.
    8. Sacred Plants – Entheogenic tools to expand consciousness and dismantle ego.

    Each path opens a different door in the psyche—offering catharsis, communion, clarity, or collapse. And each one, when practiced with intention, brings us home to ourselves.

    Here’s the truth: we are always doing magic, whether we know it or not. Intentional kink simply teaches us how to do it well. When we repress our truth, when we deny what we feel, we don’t stop creating—we just create chaos. As Erich Fromm warns:

    “Avoid the company of zombies—people whose soul is dead although their body is alive.”

    To dissociate is to disappear. But to feel fully—to accept and embody desire, sensation, pain, pleasure—is to come alive again. Magic works either way. Sacred kink lets us choose how.

    To truly heal, we must also confront the stories we live inside. Our ideologies, our fantasies, our inherited myths—these shape our consciousness just as much as our actions do. Until we understand what divides us—internally and culturally—we cannot complete the alchemical journey. This final step, often referred to as “meeting Yurugu,” is the confrontation with the colonial, fragmenting force within us and our society.

    But that’s a whole blog post on its own.

    Sacred kink is not about performance or preference—it’s about presence. It’s about confronting ourselves in the mirror of eroticism and asking: what do I really want? What is my truth? What am I ready to feel, love, and integrate?

    If you’re practicing kink without intention, you’re still doing magic—but you’re blindfolded, spellbound, and chasing shadows. Sacred kink removes the blindfold and hands you the wand.

    The work is deep. The stakes are real. But so is the transformation.

    Welcome to the path.

  • Romance, Brought to You by Late-Stage Capitalism: Fromm, Freud, and the Marketplace

    Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving critiques several prevailing—yet deeply flawed—conceptions of love in contemporary Western society, often presenting them in a satirical or critical light by contrasting them with the idea of genuine love.

    He argues that these modern understandings actually represent a “disintegration of love.”

    He writes:

    “No objective observer of our Western life can doubt that love is rare, and that its place is taken by a number of forms of pseudo-love, which are in reality are many forms of the disintegration of love.”

    He says we often treat love like a commodity, focusing only on two things: being loved and being lovable

    This leads men to chase success, power, and wealth, while women cultivate attractiveness. But these are STRATEGIES!!!!!! (I’m going to write about strategies one day)

    Fromm sharply points out how capitalism has influences our character:

    The owner of capital can buy labor and command it.
    The owner of labor must sell it or starve.

    He says this mindset is tied to the idea that finding love is simple—that the hard part is finding the right OBJECT
    He argues our entire culture is built on capitalism, and our idea of love follows it. We emphasize the importance of the OBJECT against the importance of the function. Our culture revolves around mutually favorable exchange.

    Happiness?
    Fromm says it lies in the thrill of looking for the best and buying all that you can afford. In dating, this translates to a neatly packaged “attractive” set of qualities sought after on the personality market. And what makes a person attractive? That depends entirely on the fashion of the time both physically and mentally.

    In the 20s, a drinking, smoking, tough, and sexy woman was attractive.
    Today? The fashion demands domestic coyness.
    At the turn of the 20th century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious.
    Today? Social and tolerant.

    But either way, the sense of “falling in love” is just people feeling like they’ve found the best object available on the market, given the limitations of their own exchange value.

    We’re out here marketing ourselves. And the OBJECT must be desirable, socially valuable, complete with hidden assets and future potential.

    This was written in 1956. My grandmother was 4. My grandfather was 6. And yet it feels like he could have written this yesterday. We’re still following the same tired pattern of exchange that governs the commodity and labor market—and we’re still calling it love.

    Then Fromm drags another contradiction:
    The idea that love is just a spontaneous feeling or an “irresistible emotion,” especially when it’s mixed with sexual attraction. He says this mindset completely neglects the importance of WILL.

    Love, he insists, is a decision, a judgment, a promise.
    If love were only a feeling, then loving someone forever would be impossible.
    The only forever is an ACT.

    Love is an act of will. A commitment.
    And fundamentally? It does not matter to who.

    Let me bring up another contradiction that caught me:
    Fromm breaks down different kinds of love—Love of God, Mother, Father, Brother, Erotic Love.

    What stopped me in my tracks was his take on Mother Love vs Father Love:

    • Mother Love is unconditional love. Love for the helpless.
    • Father Love is earned. Conditional. Merit-based.

    He even shows this in how religious systems reflect it.
    Matriarchal religion? That’s Mother Love: all-protective, all-enveloping, unconditional. We are all equal before Mother Earth.
    Patriarchal religion? Father Love: making demands, setting rules, establishing laws.

    Then he speaks on Brotherly Love—love among equals. He writes:

    “If I love my brother, I love all my brothers; if I love my child, I love all my children; no, beyond that, I love all children.”

    Each kind of love is different, but by their very nature, they aren’t meant to be limited to one person.

    Erotic love, though? That’s the craving for complete fusion with ONE other person. It’s exclusive—not universal. Why?

    Fromm directly challenges the belief that love is just the byproduct of sexual pleasure. He says just because two people learn to sexually satisfy each other doesn’t mean they love each other. Sexual desire is often mistaken for love. People think they love someone when really, they just want other.

    But fusion isn’t just physical.
    He says love is not the result of good sex—what we’re really seeking is relief from the painful tension and anxiety of separateness.

    Without love, physical union never leads to true connection. It remains orgiastic and transitory, leaving two people “as far apart as they were before.” So we keep chasing the high with a new person. A new stranger. Over and over again. Because closeness, like novelty, fades.

    Yo!!! Like… are you feeling that in your chest too?
    I damn near cried.

    Then Fromm goes in on Freud. Freud claimed:

    “Man, having found that genital love offered him his greatest gratification, made it the central point of his life.”

    That idea was revolutionary in the 1890s—but Fromm calls it conformist. It completely misses the mystical essence of love: the root of intense union with another person—the feeling of fusion, of oneness—the “oceanic feeling.”(im definitely going to write about the oceanic feeling or the sea of orgasmic bliss)

    To Freud, love was irrational. And the thinkers of the time?
    They were busy trying to prove capitalism matched the natural state of man:

    • That we are naturally competitive, insatiable, hostile.
    • That we’re driven by limitless desire for sexual conquest.
    • And that only society prevents us from going full feral. ( and they have the nerve to call anyone savage)

    So love, hate, ambition, jealousy?
    Freud chalked them all up to variations of the sexual instinct.

    Sound familiar?
    I’ve been trying to tell y’all—you only think the way you think because you live here, and some old fuck told you to.
    This brings me back to Yurugu (which I will write about one day).

    Freud didn’t see that the key to understanding life is not the body, or hunger, or sex, or possessions—it’s the totality of human existence. That’s a very Eastern thought, one that echoes in the Tao and ATR.

    Fromm ties this all together and says:

    Our character (in capitalism) is shaped by the need to exchange, to barter, to consume.
    Everything—material and spiritual—becomes an object of exchange.

    We are automatons with personality packages who have forgotten how to love. We seek security in the herd—and in not being different: not in thought, not in feeling, not in action. Everyone tries to remain as same as possible while remaining utterly alone—racked by insecurity, anxiety, and guilt.

    Our palliatives? A strict routine of bureaucratized, mechanical work—where you remain unaware of your desires, unaware of transcendence, unaware of unity. You overcome your unconscious despair with the routine of amusement, passive consumption, and the hollow satisfaction of buying new things—then exchanging them for others. You are sedated, compliant, obedient—and you like it. Hoping for a fair bargain.

    This shows up nowhere more clearly than in marriage—a union structured like a corporate team.

    In the Victorian age and in many other cultures: love was not a spontaneous personal experience that might lead to marriage. Marriage was contracted by convention, and love was expected to follow after the paperwork was signed. This is the background of what we call marriage: a contract to exchange objects.

    The ideal partner is well-functioning employee: independent, cooperative, and tolerant, and yet ambitious, and aggressive. Intimacy is but as a refuge from unbearable loneliness. We enhance “collaboration,” by adjusting our behaviors for mutual satisfaction, pooling common interests, and teaming up against a hostile world.

    But this, Fromm argues, is pseudo-love.

    It’s the disintegration of love. True love, he says, is an art—one that requires discipline, concentration, patience, care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.

    And it is completely incompatible with the consumerist, market-driven, alienated society we live in.