Carolyn Elliott - Existential kink : Unmask Your Shadow and Embrace Your Power (A method for getting what you want by getting off on what you dont)

Carolyn's words cut through the popular light-washed self-help and spiritual canon, offering deep soul relief and a celebration that warmly invites our shadows to be unleashed from closets shrouded by shame. Beyond soul relief, Carolyn shows us that our spiritual growth and magical practices can be deeply fun even in their slimiest iteration. Her skillful way of teaching ancient tantra and alchemy that we can access without robes, mantras, or gurus is a gift.

Alexandra Roxo, author of
F*ck Like a Goddess: Heal Yourself.
Reclaim Your Voice. Stand in Your Power.

Elliott, in this evocative debut, encourages the exploration of taboo desires hidden within the unconscious mind. Elliott uses the Jungian concept of the shadow to posit that repressed and denied aspects of oneself manifest in negative ways, and she moves on to argue that individuals, on an unconscious level, can enjoy these feelings, and get off on the forbidden enjoyment they bring to one's shadow. Her meditation method (existential kink) is presented as a radical, somatic, hot, immediately practical and quick method to bring these patterns to light, therefore dismantling them by tapping into one's unconscious mind and soul-spirit realms through meditative and spell-casting practices. Elliott's novel methods could help spiritual readers looking to bring more positivity into their lives.

Publishers Weekly

I have a confession to make. There are some painful stories of my past that I have held on to for far too long. It never made sense on the surface. Why would I obsess over these situations? Why can't I just let them go? Carolyn Elliott's Existential Kink provided the answer that I've been searching for all these years: on some level, I got off on these sad stories. Playing martyr felt good. When I began applying the practices in this book, I was able to turn around that thinking and release those trauma tales once and for all. This book will challenge you to look at your shadow side in a new way. Instead of ignoring it or covering up the old scars with love and light, you'll learn how to find power in the darkness. When you do that, a funny thing happens: you're free.

Theresa Reed, author of Astrology For Real Life:
A No B.S. Guide for the Astro-Curious

This is shadow integration made practical and completely understandable. No one else explains shadow integration in such a way that it makes solid sense. It can be so difficult to embrace parts of your being that you've been rejecting your entire life let alone see those parts. But I love that Carolyn finds a way to poetically and articulately explain why it's so important and that she teaches how to do it in simple stages!

Akhera Unpa Shepsutera

It straight up works. The Existential Kink method is effective in bringing emotions up and out. I finally have a tool that takes the mystery out of any emotion. Emotions are no longer torturous devices that stick around forever.

Ellen Garbarino

Existential Kink is such a liberating approach to seeing and facing my dramas and traumas. The way it twists my victimhood into strengths, debilitating my blame reactions, is maddening and now unstoppable. I am facing myself better. I am seeing my self-pity and reactivity in new light. I am much closer to taking full responsibility for my life. And I am doing all that with a lighter heart and a lack of self-loathing.

Moira Lowe

I admit that I am still learning to celebrate and get off on the fuckups instead of the old knee-jerk reaction of disappointment. It's definitely a mind-twister but oh my god, it is such an exponentially more fun and fulfilling way to go through life!

Michelle Lewis

This edition first published in 2020 by Weiser Books, an imprint of

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

65 Parker Street, Suite 7

Newburyport, MA 01950

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2020 by Carolyn Elliott

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-57863-647-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

Cover photograph by Rolfo / Moment / Getty Images

Interior illustrations by Eroshka / Shutterstock

Typeset in Aller Light

Printed in Canada

MAR

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

www.redwheelweiser.com/newsletter

To all the participants of my online courses INFLUENCE, FORCE OF NATURE, MONEY, LOVE, and THRILLthank you for your depths of honesty and commitment to this wild work; it's a beacon and a joy to me.

To my coven-mates Crystal Woodling, Annie Derek, Angela Morelli, Carolyn Burns, Alyssa Schlumpf, thank you for all the encouragement, wisdom, strong medicine, and big belly laughs.

To my husband, David Lee Elliott (aka Taia Kepher), thank you for driving me crazy in all the best, freakiest, and most magical ways.

Prologue: The Underworld Mystery
(revisited in all its shadow)

An Introduction to the Shadow
(and why it's such an unconscious turn-on)

INTERLUDE
Stories of Transformative Experiences

INTERLUDE
More Stories of Transformative Experiences

A provocative titlebut what exactly does it mean? Existential Kink is an amazing, rapid shadow-integration process that I developed over many years of teaching my courses; a process that I've used again and again to help my coaching clients and course participants get astounding results. That is what this book is aboutsharing that process with you.

Existential Kink is a specific meditative practice that I teach that's all about dissolving negative patterns by being willing to uncover and celebrate the previously unconscious pleasure that we actuallyparadoxicallyderive from those yucky patterns.

And to be clear: by negative patterns I mean common troubles like:

• Not being able to make more than a certain smallish amount of money each month, no matter how hard you try
• Perpetually dating people who end up bearing an uncanny resemblance to one of your abusive parents
• Feeling stuck with certain health or weight conditions
• Having intuitive or creative blocks

These are the kinds of things that tend to afflict all of us at some point, if we're honest. And if we're extra, super-honesthonest on a level below our usual awarenesswe all take a freaky, kinky, sado-masochistic delight in our afflictions, which is why we end up with them again and again.

This notion is by no means entirely new. I earned a doctorate in Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, and along the way I read a lot of psychology. My deep dive into psychology taught me that we human beings have a major habit of taking unconscious pleasure in the bad stuff in our lives. This was well-known to the founding giants of psychology like Freud, Jung, and Lacan. Freud called it psychic masochism, Jung recognized it as the Shadow, and Lacan called it jouissancepleasure that's so intense we repress it.