My shadow loves kink
“The brighter the light, the darker the shadow.” – Carl Jung
For those of us turned on by kink, we know just how dark our shadow can be. To be raped, tied up, choked with cum, mummified and electrocuted all in the name of orgasm might seem perverted and weird to some, but it’s when we embrace our fleshly desires the deepest satisfaction occurs.
All of us have a shadow.
Even if we save the world, never lie, cheat, covet, envy, if we give money to the homeless and feed the poor, we all have a dark side, a shadow. The shadow is the part of our unconscious mind made up of everything we’ve tried to repress throughout our lives: feelings, impulses, desires, perversions, wild taboo thoughts. This starts when we are young; we learn some thoughts are best kept to ourselves for fear of being ostracized. Our conscious selves are groomed to believe we should what we’ve been taught- a stable career, 2.5 kids with white picket fence, happy marriage, blah blah. Yet, for those of us who are here dancing with Coner’s shadow, our unconscious wants more - domination, rape, submission, and objectification. Although we may have locked some thoughts away which forced our shadow deeper into the recesses of our minds, as you well know, those shadows that live in our unconscious never go away.
In fact, the less our shadow is embodied into our conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. The ‘better’ we are, the darker our shadow becomes.
For the biggest part of my young life, I thought sexuality meant straight up missionary, banging one out to please my husband, make babies and create more followers to serve God. Boy, was I misguided. Instead of all THAT, I started to play, first with my 1st grade girlfriend where recess was most exciting in the bathroom stall fondling our nether regions, and by middle school we had a shoe box stashed under our beds filled with chapstick dildos. My god-faring self shoved my kinky self further into the depths however. The church girl I was on the outside, my conscious mind and identity, had a subconscious that became even more vicious and insatiable.
There is a parable about the light wolf and the dark wolf.
The light wolf is made up of love, truth, courage, faith, joy, peace and generosity while the evil wolf is filled with anger, laziness, greed, regret, lies, jealousy, and arrogance. Both live inside everyone and they are in a constant state of war. The old adage is, the wolf you feed the most wins. But this isn’t entirely true, you need to feed them both. If you starve one wolf, the other will become ravenous. If you only focus on the good parts of yourself, your shadow will become resentful, it will hide behind every corner waiting for your defenses to lower at which time it will attack.
Do not shun your shadow, for if you do it will sabotage your life.
Basic physics and the law of polarity tells us that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The more we try to repress our shadow, the more it will come out. The more you focus on ‘being good’, the more you neglect your ‘bad’ side your shadow will grow in proportion. This may come out in the form of alcoholism and drug abuse, cheating, child abuse, cyclical relationships that don’t go anywhere, the inability to move up in your career, meaningless spending, unfulfilling one-night stands, you get the idea.
Your shadow wants to be acknowledge.
Our taboo self wants acknowledgement that it too is worthy of our attention. It’s not just the good side of us that should receive love, our dark side also needs love. As long as we nurture the conscious as right and resist the unconscious,. until we acknowledge and embrace ALL of our thoughts, they only become more fragmented.
Until you embrace ALL of your self, even your most dark, twisted, perverted thoughts you will feel like you’re constantly fighting an internal battle. You’ll slink around on FetLife wishing you had the balls to do all those crazy, cool and kinky things you see other people doing, and you’ll wonder why you aren’t. You’ll feel held back and assume victimhood.
Instead of repressing my shadow’s needs and shoving it deeper into the dark, I have learned that stroking my dark side brings a level of self acceptance I never knew possible. This lead to self-content, self-realization, better focus, and thus more power, than I ever imagined possible. Liberating my shadow meant shamelessly owning up to all the immoral, debased, evil, defiled and depraved fragments of my self.
When we embrace our taboo self and bring our shadow into the light is when true empowerment occurs.
For many of us, BDSM and kink is one way we feed our shadow. Looking at Coner’s art, trolling FetLife, stanning our Fet crush, fantasizing out Doublelist hookups, watching porn, getting tied up, pissed on, slapped around, or otherwise engaging in sexually deviant behaviors is a healthy way to feed our shadow. Let me repeat that, our sexually uninhibited selves IS our healthy self. So next time your secret slips out and you’re caught red-handed buying used panties off craigslist, just tell yourself it serves you well to feed your shadow.
If you don’t nurture both sides of you, one will not simply go away, you cannot suppress either. Both need to live side-by-side. This is the balance of life, embracing both human and divine. Taoists call it the yin and yang, Buddhists the middle way. You need to integrate to become your whole self, and only then will you be free.
Additional Reading
Luna and Sol, https://lonerwolf.com/
Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott