Hidden Treasure in Desires, Sexual Fantasies, and Turn-ons
Inside the ocean of your unconscious, there is precious treasure.
It is full of important insights about the parts of yourself that you are not normally aware of. These parts of you are that mysterious thing you are in contact with when your creativity, inspiration and vitality is flowing. Think artists, dancers and musicians in the flow… an inventor “downloading” a whole new concept… or even a martial artist in the flow of combat where they are no longer thinking, but moving from some nameless instinct… and of course the best sex comes from this place of flow too.
In all of these situations, people often say something along the lines of, “It felt like something bigger than me was coming through.” They feel as though they have access to ideas and ways of being they did not before, because when they are in the flow, they have contact with the resources they had all along but were not conscious of.
Learning how to be actively in a relationship with this force in your unconscious can have a profound effect on your life.
Whether it is an intelligent force within you, or simply a natural side effect of having a subconscious, well, that is up for debate. Others may call it spirit. Honestly, it doesn’t matter and I will leave that meaning-making up to you. The fact that, no matter your belief, this part of you does exist and is a constant companion in your life, means that creating an intentional relationship with it can only lead to good things.
Guess what! Playing with sex on purpose is an excellent way to form a two-way relationship with this source of unconscious treasures.
Remember that maps are not the territory. The frameworks I am offering you are only useful to bring your attention to something and help you conceive and work with a part of yourself, but all frameworks are fallible. It is best to approach them like a pair of glasses you can try on and see the world through for a while and take them off when they become too limiting or don’t quite fit the current situation. With that in mind, let’s try on a pair of glasses.
How does that mysterious part of you communicate?
What if I were to tell you that the part of you that you have access to when you are in the flow, wants to be in conversation with you. If it helps, think of these conversations in the same light as you would when having a conversation with your inner child, only this part of you feels a lot bigger and wiser. The thing is, it can’t speak in words. The only tools it has to communicate are:
- Body signals
- Emotions
- Images in your mind’s eye that you associate with certain feelings or concepts
- Intuitive impulses that feel like a knowingness.
It can also use desire.
Basically, if it wants to draw your attention to anything, it has to play a game of charades with you using these tools.
Let’s imagine for a moment that you are that force in your unconscious, trying to get your everyday awareness to understand what you are trying to say. Imagine that you notice your everyday consciousness is so busy being the responsible family member, or employee, or solving problems, that other parts of you are being neglected simply because you haven’t had time to put your attention and focus on them.
For you to be balanced and whole, you need to give those other parts of yourself attention too.
(If you are more comfortable thinking of this force as simply a mechanism rather than an intelligent force with a goal, this is not a problem. The mechanism still works even if it is just a cog in a machine playing its role but for the sake of this experiment, suspend reality and join in this thought experiment for a minute. If it helps, think of it in the same light you would view conversations with your inner child, only this part of you feels much bigger and wiser).
Ok, so now imagine trying to communicate that message with that busy everyday consciousness/awareness of yours. What body signals and daydreams could you send to draw attention? Without words, you can only use symbols. It is hard to communicate literally.
Lucky for you, you have a powerful tool to help direct where that everyday awareness wants to put its attention. You can send desire as a way to direct where the attention goes. Desire acts as a magnetic pull towards the symbol that you’ve sent.
Let’s say you try sending daydreams of driving a shiny new sports car in an attempt to remind your everyday awareness of the importance of your youthful awe at the adventure that is life, and the attitude you had before you were weighed down with responsibilities.
However, to get that everyday awareness to notice the symbol you are sending it, you give it a kick. You supercharge it using desire. Not only are there now daydreams of the sports car but whenever the everyday awareness sees a sports car, they feel a desire to be behind the wheel, driving free. Their body lights up with the urge to feel the power of putting the pedal to the metal.
If the everyday awareness part of you does not understand that you are playing charades, it may take this symbol literally and think all your problems will be solved by buying a new car and miss the point.
Mind you, even with this misunderstanding, in buying that car, you may indeed drive down a beach road with the wind in your hair and re-experience youthful excitement and vigor in yourself, at least for a moment. The point is, you didn’t actually need the car to access it. You could have found it in other ways that satisfied something deeper if you realized the car was a charades symbol pointing towards what would really fulfill you.
Our sexual turn-ons are playing the same sort of game. Sexual desire is basically the urge to merge with Other. Other parts of ourselves, symbolized by other people, situations or objects.
The charades game in sex focuses on what turns us on and what qualities you are attracted to. The fantasies, body signals, and desires that seem to bubble up mysteriously from within, act as a compass, pointing us towards what we need to symbolically interact with in that moment in order to access sexual flow state.
Sexual arousal is both an altered state that naturally gives us more access to our unconscious, and a signal telling us when we are on the right track. How turned on we feel lets us know when we are getting close to hearing the symbolic messages by using a game of hot and cold. “You’re getting warmer… no cold, cold, cold… oh warmer, warmer… hot! hot! HOT!”
(There are times when this model doesn’t quite fit, like when your body becomes self protectively aroused in a non-consensual situation but that is a complexity to discuss another time).
Desire is wanting. You can’t want something if you already have it. It is literally an urge towards something. It is a motivating force. If you do not desire you do not bother to move. You stay curled up in bed all comfy and don’t get out. However, a desire to eat might kick in so you get up to hunt for food.
A desire for company may kick in so then you bother to pick up your phone and message a friend… and (hopefully) put effort into learning and using social skills to attract that company…
Sexual desire is a compass pointing you to what you don’t currently have too, at least in that moment, and it bubbles up from that unconscious part of you. This is why opposites attract so often! We tend to be attracted to people who have those qualities we don’t have.
Susy is great at being empathic and is really tuned into being considerate of other people but is not so great prioritizing her own needs and boundaries. She finds herself attracted to folk who are really good at prioritizing their own well-being but not so good at considering others.
If she took these symbols literally, she would form relationship after relationship with people who don’t notice or care for her well-being. However, if she were to hear her desire as a compass pointing to a charades symbol, she would be able to notice that her desires are telling her she could be more in alignment with herself if she took care of herself and set fabulous boundaries.
She could do with taking on some of the qualities of the selfish people she is attracted to.
She could, of course, go get therapy around this, and yes I think that is a great thing to do. However, another tool that is often overlooked, is to engage our natural inclinations towards sexual play, to consensually and purposefully explore relationships with whatever our turn-ons are symbolizing. To trust that our turn-ons are rich messages from that source in our unconscious and find safe, symbolic ways to explore them by bringing them out of our heads and into our bodies, and into the room with our partners, through sexual experiences.
It is super fun and extremely hot, while also being a powerful tool leading us to be in relationship with the whole of ourselves.
Susy’s turn-ons include a bunch of symbolic ways in which she can play with her relationship to boundaries and to selfishness/selflessness. What would happen if she asked a lover, who does indeed care about her, to role play the recurrent themes in her sexual fantasies?
Maybe Susy’s fantasies include being turned on by arrogant people who use her for sex. She does not have to actually have sex with someone arrogant who doesn’t care for her well being, but she can instead have the option to form sexual relationships with people who do care about her safety and needs while still accessing all the hotness by asking her lover take on those arrogant characteristics for her in the bedroom. (More on how that flips the power dynamic in future writings).
When we are driven by an unconscious, ambivalent or mistrusting relationship with our sexual desires we end up doing the sexual equivalent of buying the sports car in order to try and find fulfillment. It works for a little while but then you need another hit. It doesn’t actually meet the deeper need.
Listening to your erotic psyche and engaging it intentionally through purposeful adult playdates can lead to another level again!
Guess what happens when you listen to your unconscious source of the symbols, and start to form an aware relationship with it? Those sexual desires not only act as a way to connect with part of you that you are not in contact with, but they also act as a map that guides your everyday awareness to have encounters with the source in your unconscious itself!
Following these signals takes you into erotic states of consciousness that feels like you’ve dived down into the ocean of your subconscious. A place you can no longer really think in words, but just feel and know. It is often simultaneously peaceful, ecstatic, deeply moving and profound and you feel fully alive with eros/erotic life force energy. This is the kind of sex people often call transcendent, and with good reason!
That my friends, the power of sex right there. It blows my mind every time I put this theory into practice and experience for myself how damn clever our turn-ons are in leading us home to all levels of ourselves.
Beginning to form that relationship starts by paying attention to your turn-ons and interacting with them more intentionally. This is what I call Purposeful Adult Playdates.
(Keep reading for examples of how this works)
So if you have a desire or fantasy that turns you on, but it is the kind that you would never want to live out in real life, it does no good to simply suppress it. Instead, recognize that this is only a symbol that your unconscious is using to point you towards your sexual flow state, and get curious about it. Even try asking the part of you what it is pointing you towards? Then allow time for that part of you to come up with other charades for you to consider. You’ll be surprised at how the messages start to become clearer now that you are listening properly.
The good news is, you do not have to live out your desires or fantasies in literal ways for them to work. If your fantasy is to cheat, you do not actually have to cheat. Instead, find the feeling you get when you imagine cheating and find ways to activate the same feeling through play.
Your unconscious spoke to you in symbols and you can speak in symbols back. Playing with these symbols in the safe container of purposeful adult playdates is actually what your source of desire wants from you. Now you are having a two-way, conversation.
For example imagine you become turned on by imagining that you are a baby being breast fed. What that means will be different for everyone but let’s say that for you, being a baby is a symbol of having no responsibility and being free to feel and express your impulses. A great goddess like figure will take care of your food, warmth and every need. You will be held in big strong arms, safe, and free from judgement. You get to just be and express every emotion that comes along without any filters.
You do not have to actually become a baby to access this. Instead you can take on some of the symbols of being a baby to enter into that head space. A diaper. A dummy. The smell of baby shampoo. You can take on the body language of a baby and make baby sounds. You can use the words “mommy”.
None of this means you want to have sex with your actual mother. In fact that idea may revolt you and leave you cold (a sign you are not on the right track, remember).
The thing is, symbols are seriously powerful, even more so when you take them out of your head and into the room with your sexual partner/s and into your body through play. That wise part of you that sent the turn-on symbol in the first place knows exactly what you need in order to get in touch with sexual flow state, and when you follow its symbolism, it is your personal map leading you where you need to go.
Does this mean that if we healed all our childhood wounds and became the perfect whole person, our turn-ons would only include sweet love-making?
What are practical ways we can form that relationship with sexual desire?
If your arousal style is not fantasy and you consider your preferred sex to be pretty “standard”, does this framework still apply? (Hint: Hell yes!)
Won’t this path lead to overthinking and kill the sexy?
If we approached our all our desires (not just our sexual ones) as charades symbols leading us to parts of ourselves that need our attention, how would that change our relationships and our lives? How would it change the way we interact with the planet?
Members of The deVinery get to ask me these things and more at our monthly live zoom chat. The deVinery is basically a book club where you receive a chapter, or part of one, every fortnight as I write my book. It is full of stories, insights and exercises for you to try.
We then all get together and discuss how this might apply to our lives and chew on the writing together. You get to hang out with other people into this body of work and get to talk directly to the author (that’s me! Artemisia de Vine!) about the book content as you work through it.
Here is where you can join and find out more about it.
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