Wild Souls
Welcome to the Wild Souls podcast. I’m your host, Cat Mansfield. Together, we will return to our wild instincts; reconnect to our body, to our connection to something greater, to the Truth of our divinity + infinite potential. We are here to have the raw conversations about all aspects of this human experience- the incredibly painful and the unbelievably pleasurable - the dark and the light, the death and the rebirth. This podcast is about holding space for the whole spectrum of human experience as we navigate each of our unique + divine healing journeys and step deeper into our soul’s calling. These conversations are meant to be a resource for deep self inquiry, a guidepost in cultivating a deep, unwavering self love, and ultimately, empower you to create a life so on purpose, so aligned with your authenticity, you can’t help but embody your wildest soul. Lets dive in.
Wild Souls
57. Unlocking Desire: The Transformative Power of Sexual Fantasies w/ Artemisia de Vine
What if your deepest sexual fantasies hold the key to a more profound self-discovery? This week on Holistic Hotties, we're joined by the captivating Artemisia de Vine, a certified somatic sexologist + former professional dominatrix, as she unveils the transformative power of sexual fantasies.
Artemisia takes us on a journey illustrating how these fantasies serve as a gateway to understanding our deepest psychological + spiritual needs. Through her unique theory, we explore how embodying our fantasies can lead to greater self-awareness & fulfillment.
The conversation takes an intriguing turn as we explore the symbolic nature of fantasies & how they can be decoded to reveal our deeper fears + desires. Artemisia introduces the "desire compass" and the "map of sexual fantasies" as tools for navigating these complex, often paradoxical landscapes. In addition to the traditional healing modalities, Artemisia proposes that embracing the inherent friction within our fantasies can lead to ongoing self-discovery & richer erotic experiences.
This episode leaves you with a fresh perspective on your desires & a deeper understanding of the transformative power of fantasies.
How to Connect with Artemisia:
The Celeb Swoon Technique: Learn about your unique sexual psychology by taking a closer look at your fav swoon-worthy celebs at MyFantasyIs.com. And you don’t even have to tell anyone your sexual fantasies to do this exercise!
Interested in being a guest on the podcast? Send me a DM :)
Follow along on instagram <3
Welcome to the Holistic Hotties podcast. I'm your host, kat Mansfield. I'm a yoga and meditation teacher who's traveled around the world in search of all things healing and true. In searching for healing, in searching for truth, I uncovered the answers to all my ponderings. I grounded into peace amidst the chaos, I found myself. This podcast is about breathing life into who you already are. It's about remembering the truth of your power, the truth of your perfection. In each episode, we'll talk about the beliefs, the self-imposed limitations and the mindsets that are keeping us small, and how to cultivate safety in our bodies so that we can feel safe enough to be bigger, to take up more space and to truly and deeply love ourselves. On this journey together, day after day, we're choosing intention. We're choosing growth. We're choosing to dissolve our veils and breathe into our most authentic and thus most radiant selves. We're choosing to feel good naked. Let's dive in. To feel good naked, let's dive in. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Holistic Hotties. I am so glad you're here. I absolutely loved today's episode.
Speaker 1:Today I'm talking to Artemisia Devine. She's a sexual fantasy expert who teaches the world's leading sexperts the meaning of our sexual fantasies and how to bring them out of our heads and into our beds. Author of the upcoming book the Spirituality of Smut the Surprising Wisdom of Sexual Fantasies. She's a certified somatic sexologist, has a BA in anthropology and is a former sex worker and professional dominatrix. And is a former sex worker and professional dominatrix, offering a groundbreaking new theory.
Speaker 1:We dive into how stories work, how to begin to understand why you have sexual fantasies and how to create powerful, real-life, transformative sex experiences that satisfy the real desire behind the story symbolism. It truly is such an interesting conversation and it was one of those conversations that I was really hooked in. I wanted to know more and I couldn't wait to take what I learned in this conversation and open up conversations with my partner and with my girlfriends about our sexual fantasies and really using it as a lens for self-discovery and self-understanding and self-exploration. So I hope that you enjoy this episode and I hope that it offers another tool for you upon your journey. Enjoy, hello Artemisia. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. How are you doing, hello Artemisia?
Speaker 2:Thank, you so much for being on the podcast. How are you doing? I am excited to be sharing my favorite topic with you today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm so excited for this conversation. I think my audience is going to be just hooked. I'm so excited, so let's go ahead and jump in. Why don't we start with just a little bit about you and your journey and your work that you offer to the world?
Speaker 2:Okay, how did I become a sexual fantasy expert?
Speaker 1:Yeah, tell us.
Speaker 2:Well, sexual fantasies are something that everybody has, including me from a very young age, and I did not understand them, and so they actually motivate everything, sexual fantasies. But I noticed that we had all of these spiritual communities and well-meaning people avoiding this topic, and I didn't know how to make sense of it. So, being the kind of personality that I am, I of course head straight for the thing that I don't understand and I want to know all about it. I'm not going to hide under my covers, afraid of the monster under the bed. I'm going to crawl under the bed and find out what's under me and what I discovered was actually extraordinarily profound.
Speaker 2:Like I did not expect to find profound things, but this journey, it took me through all sorts of different things.
Speaker 2:It's now 30 years of being a sex geek, of exploring sexuality through all sorts of different avenues, you know, in my personal life and in my professional life, and I did all sorts of things, including working in a sex shop for women, which I took my grandma to, by the way, and she, um, she was like I made the, so I I made sure that the shop was shut, so she could have the whole place to herself, unharassed, and and she went um, she went through the toys and I just let her do it.
Speaker 2:I just, I'm just like, I'm give her privacy. And then when she came out she said you're a bit behind the times, dear. I used to use one of those on your grandpa. I was not expecting that from her, I bet not yeah.
Speaker 2:So I discovered that actually amongst all of us, the people that we least expect, we all have this current. Amongst all of us, the people that we least expect. We all have this current, all of us. And the most powerful learning for me, the most astonishing learning for me was actually the 12 years I spent as a full-time sex worker and professional dominatrix, where I was paid to become the sexual fantasy of thousands of people.
Speaker 2:So I wasn't looking at sexual fantasy through an academic, peer-reviewed lens. I was looking at it through direct, embodied experience and being there, living it, live, with real human beings and witnessing and directly experiencing the power of how sexual fantasies change our state of consciousness from an embodied level. That got me curious. I got really, really curious about that. And you know, because the sex industry is just a concentrated form of how sex works everywhere else, like it's just the same people. It's just a concept. We have the same issues just in a concentrated form, right, so it's, it's the same. The same dynamics are playing out out. I got to discover how this is relevant to sex everywhere, and not just sex everywhere, but our relationship to desire itself everywhere.
Speaker 2:Once we started looking at the psychology of sex really closely, I realized, oh my God, this is the safe playground, the consensual playground, where we can live out on an embodied level our relationship to desire.
Speaker 1:And that affects everything, because desire, desire is I want, desire is motivation, desire affects and motivates everything yeah, and so are you able to kind of make the distinction for you know myself and my audience between desire and sexual fantasy? I mean, I'm sure desire kind of creates the sexual fantasy, but but what even constitutes a sexual fantasy for people?
Speaker 2:that's an excellent question. They are different things. So desire creates wanting and it can be a sexual desire. It could be a desire for a donut, but it's a desire is I want. So it's always focused on yourself. It's like what do I need to feel fulfilled? What do I need to change something about what currently is in order to move to somewhere I want to be? That's what a desire is, and it feels like another force. It's a very strong force. It feels like another because it lives in our unconscious mind, not in our conscious awareness, but we hear its messages when they arrive into our consciousness through wanting.
Speaker 2:So you might be sitting perfectly content on your couch, having just done your Zen meditation, and you don't want anything, because you're having a lovely peaceful experience and you're feeling content and satiated in that moment. And then, after a while, you might suddenly become aware that you desire a peanut butter sandwich. It just popped into your awareness. It wasn't there before, but now it's super clear. You know you want a peanut butter sandwich. You know what kind of bread you want, you know what kind of brand of peanut butter it is. You may even be motivated enough to get out of your pajamas and go out in the rain and buy the right bread so that you can satiate that particular wanting, because your body has already started responding to the imagination of having it.
Speaker 2:The fantasy of having this sandwich. Your mouth is already watering. Your stomach is already getting its digestive juices ready.
Speaker 1:And it's quite, you want one yeah.
Speaker 2:So desire is the force that creates wanting, and it's unconscious lives in that whole soup of unconscious symbolism. But we know it very clearly when we feel it. We know it, but most of us feel as though we're a victim to it. It does its thing to us.
Speaker 2:And we then have to resist it or suppress it because you know we can't trust it. We can't trust it. It might want to make us eat all of the donuts too. What if we don't actually have enough money in in our bank account? And? And spending money on peanut butter instead of bills is ridiculous like it. We can't what. How can we trust this force that doesn't understand real-life consequences? So I'll come back full circle to that one.
Speaker 2:Because we can trust it once we understand it and form a relationship with it. But it's really important to know that, because so many people really can't trust their sexual desire because they're afraid it's going to want non-consensual things or things that are going to humiliate them, or things that are going to humiliate them, or things that are going to make them lose face, or they're afraid that it might harm themselves, somebody else or the fabric of society. So, but the sexual fantasy, let's think about this. When you want to connect with somebody else, when you want to connect with somebody else, when you want to move from your I state, your ego state, to a we state where your guards are down and you're connected. There has to be a transition in state of consciousness for that to happen, because your ego would normally try and protect your sense of self, no matter what.
Speaker 2:That's an ego's job, isn't it? It's to create a sense of self and protect that sense of self with all its little might. Bless it. Well, it's important. You can't walk around the world if you don't have a sense of self. You don't have boundaries, you don't have any way of protecting yourself. It's a really important part of ourselves, but each organ of the psyche has its brilliance and its blind spots. So, in order to get your ego to stand down so you can connect, because it's busy protecting you, saying I can't to an ego all forms of vulnerability is threatening.
Speaker 2:All forms of vulnerability are threatening and it just seems oh no, if I let my guards down and I tell you that I like you, you might reject me. Oh no, oh no, if I you know what, if I take my clothes off and you don't desire me and you don't want me? Oh no, I can't do that. You get naked first. Like, or prove to me how badly you want me. Right, like it's it's, it's this, um. This ego is like no, just no, we're not going to connect.
Speaker 2:But but most of us yearn deeply, this desire inside of us to connect with somebody else, with the fullness of who we are and with life itself. So the only way we can move out of those protective castle walls is to somehow get past those ego guards. And what I discovered in my 12 years as a sex worker and as a pro-dom was that if I took a close look at people's sexual fantasies, I discovered they were the exact story that their ego in particular needed to hear in order to stand the guards down, so that they could open to the vulnerability of pleasure and connection. And if I listened to that fantasy and followed its underlying narrative not its literal instructions, its underlying narrative all the way to the end, people started having experiences that blew their minds. They were like what?
Speaker 2:I didn't even know. I could feel this. What even is this? It feels like I've just taken ayahuasca or drugs or ecstasy or something, and yet it's the most real and grounded I've ever been. This is who I really am. What just happened? Wow, that's what they are. They're little maps. They're little love letters from our desire whispered into our ego's ear saying, hey, you're afraid of this.
Speaker 2:Let's include that fear in this little story, because you can't transform this. Let's include that fear in this little story because you can't transform anything that you don't actually include in the story. Let's include what you fear, which is the poison and the exact antidote to that poison. That makes sense to an ego's logic. Perfect, All right. And now we've got this wonderful alchemical reaction where the person would um, it's the exact opposite end result than what their ego feared it would be. If they were feared that they weren't good enough, they became so wanted and desired and amazed. If they feared that they were taking up too much space, then suddenly they ended up in a situation where they were absolutely able to take up as much space as they possibly could. Whatever the fear was was included in the sexual fantasy and its exact antidote. And that's alchemy for you, isn't it? That's alchemy of consciousness.
Speaker 1:So beautiful, so much to dive into there. So what I'm hearing is desire for one. I do think there's such a program in us to believe that if we indulge in our desires whether it be the example of the peanut butter sandwich or, you know, in this case, of sexual fantasy if, if we indulge in our desires, there will be no end, like you said, that it'll consume us and we'll never feel satiated. So we've been programmed with this. Well, first of all, shame around our desire and also the impulse to subdue them, to completely push them away and act as if they don't exist. But when we do that to anything an emotion, a desire, a voice, a ping to do something it just gets louder and louder and louder, to the point where it actually does take over our life, to channeling our desire into sexual fantasies.
Speaker 2:In that allowance, as you, in that alchemy, as you're talking about, we are, you know, essentially that is that kind of how it, how it, how you see it or how you experienced it more so yes, beautiful, and anyone who's had another, you know, access that sort of thing through a different avenue, through maybe an ayahuasca experience, or through front avenue, through maybe an ayahuasca experience or through meditation or through dancing together in a rave with, you know, thousands of people, or sinking their nervous systems until you lose yourself, will recognize that initially there is resistance, like when you get on that dance floor, initially your self-conscious you're like oh, do I look good am I?
Speaker 2:is my butt wobbling when I jiggle like that? Yeah, it was like cutie checking me out like, yeah, am I proud of the vibe with my outfit? You know my outfit's uncomfortable but damn I look good. So but I chose it for that. All of this resistance to just losing ourselves in the moment. But by the end of dancing after a really good set, you have lost yourself. You've abandoned the uncomfortable thing. You've flung that bra off into the corner.
Speaker 2:Don't care if you never see it again, you're just going for it and you're no longer caring what other people think of you, but you feel deeply in sync with everyone there and that's a mini oneness experience right there. But you had to move from one state to another and sexual fantasies are vehicles that do that. They help you move from one state to another.
Speaker 1:their stories yeah, I think that's a beautiful way to visualize it as well. It's a sexual fantasy, is the conduit from where we typically exist in our day to day. That illusion of separation, the ego, the self is over here. It's that conduit from there to oneness. It's the vehicle that brings us from one state of being to the other. And I'm curious with I mean I'm curious more so for women, everyone, but I feel like for women in particular. There's. So the world of desire, especially, is one that we've been programmed to subdue. It's it's we're in a patriarchal world. It's it's women are given even less permission to experience desire and and and let that move into a sexual fantasy. So if somebody is, let's say, feels like they don't even know where to start in unleashing desire, or what it even feels like in their body to be pulled towards something, to be pulled towards something else, how can they start to really tap in to that well of desire?
Speaker 2:you ask a very good question and initially, when I first discovered this theory about sexual fantasies being brilliant narrative stories, magical stories that change our state of consciousness, I thought, oh, that'll just solve everything. I'll just tell people how it works and they'll just know it and they'll be so grateful. Yeah, done.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No, there's more to it there is more to it. And you're right. The very first thing we need to do is form a new relationship with desire itself, because if our only modes of being are to either suppress desire, fight against it, which you know, means it's going to fight back and try and grab the steering wheel or hide behind a rock and never come out again because it doesn't trust you.
Speaker 2:It's like I was trying to show you the way and you didn't listen to. No, not coming out, yeah, or it's um, or we give into it and uh, without you know considering things, and take it literally instead of hearing what it was really trying to say, because it's a symbolic creature, there's a hint there, um, when it um, we give to it and then cop, the consequence hangover and we're like, wow, I felt really excited there, sexually excited there, or I felt a real high and a real hit. But now I have a shame hangover and I feel rubbish and I also have real-life consequences to deal with. What do I do with that? So, the very first thing that I teach in the divinery method because now I teach people how to access this part of themselves, I teach some of the world's leading sex spurts, how to have a new understanding of what sexual fantasies are and how to help their clients.
Speaker 2:And, um, I've just started teaching people monthly little seminars as well, if they're interested in learning. But how I start is you have to start with an embodied relationship with desire, and I call it the desire compass. The divinery method has three pillars of learning. The desire compass is both a philosophy and an embodied practice where you form a new relationship with desire, where you learn to go on dates with desire and you learn to trust each other, because, just like any dating process, you don't trust the person immediately, or at least you shouldn't. You get to know each other. That's the idea. That's what a relationship is is discovering each other.
Speaker 2:So let's form a new relationship with desire itself and get to know its qualities, what it really is, what voice is trying to say, how we can interact with it and bring to life its symbolic wisdom, rather than taking it literally. How can we do that? When we do that, we no longer go in this shame spiral process. We now move into a true satiation process where it gets to take us, where it was trying to take us, all along and discover. Oh my God desire was on our side all along. It actually wanted to bring us home to ourselves, to oneness with everything. Oh my God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so beautiful, especially the thought of almost personifying desire, as you're talking about, you know, taking it on dates with you, maybe even naming it, starting to really give it a seat at the table and listen to what it has to say. And, yeah, act as if it's an ally instead of a, you know, villain, someone who's there to help you in your journey, someone who's there to lead you in your journey. And I'm curious, in assessing a desire, let's say, or sexual fantasy, taking it from that literal state to more of the symbolic state. So that's how we're arriving at, kind of what our biggest fear is right. That's how we're uncovering the biggest thing that our ego is trying to keep us safe from right, like a fear of being seen or a fear of taking up space, or a fear of being big or whatever it is for each of us. The literal interpretation, let's say, of a sexual fantasy, might not necessarily be what we need in order to fulfill the desire. Is that right?
Speaker 2:You're right, you're absolutely right. This is when we move on to the second pillar.
Speaker 1:So the first one was the desire compass.
Speaker 2:The second one is the map, the map of sexual fantasies. And if you look at them through the lens of stories, suddenly you understand what's really happening and you know which parts you need to bring to life and which parts you don't need to take literally, because all stories, all stories, are stories of transformation, because the character starts in one state with certain things happening and some sort of incident happens and this change is forced or desired, and the entire story is how they navigate all of the obstacles to get to this new state at the end. So we're not conscious of that. We think we're just watching a movie because it's entertaining, but we only enjoy it because it's a story of a character transforming and struggling to transform and sub-characters also wrestling with the same issue and doing, you know, maybe, a bad job of the same transformation and showing us all sorts of different ways in which this could play out.
Speaker 2:That's how, that's why we love stories, that's what they are, and they always include obstacles. Otherwise, there is no story. You think about a love story If you want to. If the love story is everyone was nice, they met, they fell in love and they were nice and they got along, is there a story?
Speaker 1:Right, no, I'm from sport.
Speaker 2:The story is even if you don't have a villain, there is obstacles. There's always something in the way the villain and and the obstacles are how are they going to understand each other, connect and and, and that's what we watch. That's why it ends with and then they got together and it lived happily after. Because we're not interested in that part we want to know how they got there.
Speaker 2:That's what we want to know. The entire thing is exciting because, even though we know already that they will get together because that's a love story how did they misunderstand each other? How did they overcome that obstacle? How did they get past their society objecting to them being together because you know they're from the wrong side of the railway tracks or something I don't know, different religion or whatever it is? That's, how did they overcome these hardships and obstacles to be able to come together? And the climax here's a hint, kids the climax, or adults actually is how that finally resolves and comes together and lets go.
Speaker 2:So if you start then looking at a sexual fantasy through that lens, we might want to literally live some of them out. But often I found as a sex worker that when people literally lived them out, they didn't feel what they thought they would. They might feel some excitement, they might even be in and have a really powerful orgasm, but there's still some unsatisfied itch that hasn't been scratched in the back of their mind and it didn't feel like they thought it would in their mind's eye, their imagination. So instead I started to listen to these fantasies and say, hey, you came to see me because I have blonde hair and gigantic boobs of doom and you thought that that was going to be the thing that satisfied you, that took you to the feeling you're yearning to feel. But that's actually just a symbol of something that you're trying to feel. Let's take a closer look at that. So I sat them down on my red velvet couch and I had a conversation with them and I didn't make them psychoanalyze themselves before a play session, because that would not work in the adult industry, but we had a little tea ceremony together and I would ask them all about their sexual fantasies and their past peak experiences as well, because their memory of a past peak experience is not the reality of what really happened, it's their fantasized version of it. They will tell you all of the highlight parts that will reveal their particular psychology. So that works as well.
Speaker 2:Or the other one you can ask them is can you imagine your ideal date this Friday night? You're going to be touched exactly the way you want your lover's going to react exactly the way you want them to. Everything's going to feel exactly the way you want your lover's going to react exactly the way you want them to. Everything's going to feel exactly the way you want to. What's happening? Tell me what's going to happen on this date. What's that date like? And that's a fantasy too.
Speaker 2:So it's not always fantasies of you know gangbangs and threesomes and domination from you know sadistic billionaires. Yeah yeah, it can also just be sweet, but we still look at the narrative that's underneath that there will still be, even in the ideal imagination of that date on friday night, there will still be obstacles that had to be overcome, like. There'll be shyness, maybe the shyness of their partner that they were so heroic in being, so charming in overcoming. Right. There's always something in there, and when I understand what it is that they're trying to transform and how their particular ego will accept it, I've got the keys to be able to create any story I want with that.
Speaker 1:True, yeah, right, uh-huh, because you're just repositioning the same symbol or the same element into any fantasy. But it will have the same effect on the ego, will have the same kind of unshielding effect on the ego, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And when you know to look for three things. Because sexual fantasies. People make the mistake of reducing all sexual fantasies to your unfinished childhood business or from your societal oppression, and those things absolutely can be processed through your sexual fantasies, but they're not the main reasons we have them. My theory is and this is a unique theory that I've been telling you today there's no one else in the world who's come up with this way of understanding and engaging sexual fantasies, come up with this way of understanding and engaging sexual fantasies. So my theory is that even if we had the most perfect childhood ever, with a society that was sex positive and thought sex was healthy and wonderful, we would still have so-called kinky sexual fantasies of being dominated, of being used, of multiple sex, of cheating, of all of these things that we think are low vibration, that we don't want to give energy to, because we need to include our ego's fear. That's the and it's the ego's job to always be afraid of connection always. And these same things will always come up. And the three things to look for, the three guards to look for, are how is this person afraid that if they follow their desire, they will harm themselves? Oh no, if I follow my own desire, I might be embarrassed or humiliated. Oh, they've included being embarrassed in their fantasy. How interesting. How did that resolve? Cool, um.
Speaker 2:And the second thing is to look how? What am I afraid of? Um, that, what? How will I harm my partner if I follow my desire? Oh, my god.
Speaker 2:What about non-con? Like I can't focus on myself because that's selfish. I can't focus on my needs. Their needs are different to mine. I should focus on this. Have I taken up too much time receiving oral sex? I should you know it was really good and I loved it and everything. But I should hurry up and make myself of an orgasm so that I can focus back on giving to you now, because I'm a giving person. I can't be selfish. Being selfish might harm you. So a sexual fantasy might say oh, oh, I've resolved that for you.
Speaker 2:Let's have a fantasy that they, they, they broke into the house and they tied you up and and then forced you to receive the exact oral sex you wanted for as long as you could and as a pleasure. And now you don't have to care. Give the other person, you can just receive without fearing that you're harming the other person by being selfish, because the other person is being selfish by forcing you so in inverted commas because you know to receive the thing that you really wanted to receive. So their needs are already being met. You don't need to take care of them for them. So this is a little logic that it does here, right? Just put a little footnote right here Nobody in the world genuinely wants non-consensual things to happen to them. So we don't want to live this out literally. We don't want to have someone actually break into your house and tie you up. That's devastating. That's trauma. That's just poison and poison. There's no antidote there.
Speaker 1:Right right.
Speaker 2:In the safety of consent and play, you include the poison and the antidote and the exact opposite end result to trauma happens. You have intimacy and connection. Now we're just playing. Even puppies know the difference between play fighting and actual fighting. We know the difference right. When it's consensual and you include them so-called forcing you to receive the thing you really wanted to receive and you get the thing that you really wanted to receive there's the antidote. Now you can just completely melt, feel all of your barriers just dissolving and we can receive all of that pleasure and go there together into this wonderful feeling together, which is the opposite end result. And the third thing to look out for is how do they fear they will harm the fabric of society if they follow their desire? Because that's our other big fear.
Speaker 2:There is always an inherent paradox between what is good for the individual versus what is good for the collective community. There is just always an inherent conflict, even in the most perfect of societies. You can think about it in terms of well, here's a really, really obvious example. It's best for the soldier to protect their own life. It's best for the community if that soldier risks their own life and obeys the leader so that they all move together as a unit and are therefore stronger, interesting. It's best for you as an individual to sleep in on Sunday because you have a really busy week and your body actually really needs the rest. It is better for the community that you actually get up and turn up to the charity sale because you've committed to turning up and helping the collective overcome this problem that they've got. And it's only going to work if you all work together and turn up at the same time. It happens through everything all the time.
Speaker 2:So there is not a single society that I know of and I did study anthropology, I've got a BA in anthropology as well. There's not a study, a culture that I know of that does not have some sort of morality story that tells you you're a good person if you sacrifice the self for the greater good Wow, right. So if you follow your desire, which is always self-focused I want, it's what I need, I want how is it going to be in conflict with community and that can play out in sexual fantasies, in oh, I can't focus on my sexual, sexual desires because you know somehow the society will disapprove of me and that will be bad, you know? Oh, it's so exciting. The fear of getting caught, oh, but we're not actually going to get caught, but oh, we might. Oh, how exciting.
Speaker 2:Oh, this is so good. What do you know? Having a quick grope in the elevator? Or you know, oh, we had sex in the cupboard at the hospital and other people were right there and they didn't know we were right there. But oh, we managed to get away with this conflict between what we needed for ourselves in reaction to, you know, the people that are around us as well. So they're the three things to look out for the paradox between ego and desire, the paradox between self and your own needs and your lover's needs, and the paradox between self and the greater good. And those are the three themes that sexual fantasies process, so that you can let go.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is so. I mean it's one of those just kind of mind fucks in a way, because it's such a portal to start to really invite your desire and sexual fantasies to the table. There's no longer any shame attached to a sexual fantasy because it's almost more like therapy, you know, and like a window into further understanding your partner. I think this conversation could be so lucrative for deepening the intimacy even just having the conversation, not even fulfilling the sexual fantasy in that it gives us that insight into some of our deepest wounds.
Speaker 1:I think one of the examples that you gave that really resonates in my life is so a few years ago, I guess a couple years ago, I had an experience in the ethical, non-monogamy community with a lover I had at that time in my life and he was really into the world of kink, and before that I had not been exposed to any of that.
Speaker 1:Before that I was pretty much a vanilla lover and in that world I learned so much about myself, my sexuality, my sexual desires and one of the examples you gave of truly being able to receive, truly being able to receive, and that looked like being tied up, that looked like having no option but to receive. And what's interesting is, since that time that desire no longer really exists in me, or I guess that sexual fantasy no longer really exists in me, really exists in me, or I guess that sexual fantasy no longer really exists in me and I feel like I've learned how to integrate and embody that full sense of receiving, that full sense of totally relinquishing power without being tied up. So I'm wondering if you see that, if you've seen that as well in your work with clients or couples, even once you bring the sexual fantasy to life, in whatever way you do, if that sexual fantasy almost disappears because you've healed that deeper wound that was creating the sexual fantasy to begin with.
Speaker 2:What a great question, and it's a topic that most of us default to automatically, and I'd like to try, on a different set of lenses, to look at the same thing. So, instead of looking at it through the wounded to healing model, what if we just looked at it through the paradox lens? So these paradoxes are always going to be there. What is really common, what I've noticed, is that people's fantasies will change depending on what's happening in their life and what their relationship with themselves and others are in that moment, but the core narrative that you find underneath their fantasies they seem to stay with you for your whole life, because they're always dealing with those three paradox themes you know ego versus desire, because ego and ego paradox is not a wrong versus a right.
Speaker 2:A paradox is two rights that are in conflict with each other and can't be reconciled. So it's not a wound, it's a friction point between two existing truths. So it is right for your ego to protect yourself. It is right for your desire to entice you to let down all of your guards and have no self-protection so that you can connect. Both of them are true and they are in conflict with each other.
Speaker 2:Both of you lovers do have different needs and different erotic stories that you need to enact at the same time in order to experience this moment together. So we do need to take turns, focusing on each other's narrative and not just focus on our own. And yet we have to focus on our own in order to be able to get to where we need to go and share this part of ourselves with somebody else. That conflict is just there and the inherent conflict. So one of the things that I love about paradoxes and liminal spaces is this is where we really get into the spirituality of consciousness, of the erotic mind. Paradoxes are brilliant. They create friction. It's actually what turns us on If we look at it through the healing wounded to healing model we're always trying to fix ourselves until we can feel some mythical land of oh now, I've made it, now. Now my sex is right where if?
Speaker 2:we look at it through this, oh, there's always going to be friction. How is it playing out for me now? That's a different lens and with, if you try and get, we make the mistake of trying to be 100% safe because we think that's what healed sex looks like, but then there's no sexual excitement. Sexual excitement comes from the friction between the paradox rubbing up against each other and, more than that, the paradoxes rubbing up against each other and not being able to reconcile is the switch that changes our state of consciousness. It is the portal that opens us to the great beyond.
Speaker 2:It's that thing that you think about, like, try and think about infinity. That's a really great paradox, like you're trying to think about. You know, is there an edge to space? But what's outside the edge of space? Oh my God, is there even more space? There's nothing. How long does the nothing go for? Is there an edge to the nothing? That has to be an edge to the nothing. No, that's not and your mind can't handle it. It just like it's too big. Your mind can't handle it. But you can feel the friction of the discomfort as you try and contemplate it build, build, build, until at some point you just kind of go, whoa, I have to face my own mortality and my own infiniteness at the same time, just by contemplating infinity, and I just have to let go and become nothing and become everything at the same time. And just whoa, this oneness experience. We burst into this beyond, into this oneness experience.
Speaker 2:Sexual fantasies are the exact narrative that know exactly how to create that same paradox friction. And when you know how to really embody the right part of that narrative, which is the third pillar of the diviner method, how on earth do you do this Right? Is the journey of actual play and discovery. Is that's when you really keep finding oh my God, we don't want these friction points to go away, we don't want to heal them, we want to be in relationship with them and have them come up in a myriad of ways, like a kaleidoscope that we can just consensually play with forever. Imagine unfolding date nights that just never run out, because you're just following this self-discovery thread through your erotic desire right, yeah, it's so.
Speaker 1:I I love that reorientation around, around our sexual fantasies, from healing from wound to healing, more so, like you're saying, the acceptance of. Well, first of all, our journey here is to always be evolving. So, almost like you're saying, arriving at this point of healed quote unquote where we were no longer affected by childhood wounds or just the soul wounds that we're here to evolve with in this lifetime, that doesn't necessarily exist. You know it's what we're working towards. We can work towards enlightenment and perhaps for a handful of yogic masters or whatnot, you know that might exist. You know that might exist. But for the, for the most part, our time here is the whole point is to discover, is to uncover more of our healing and, as opposed from moving from wounded to healing, it's more so playing with this window of sexual fantasy to gain a deeper understanding of where we are at any given point on our journey yeah, doesn't that make life an exciting game, to shift it from?
Speaker 1:so much more fun right.
Speaker 2:So much more fun and so much less guilt. And.
Speaker 1:And it's such a, it's such a playful outlet for self discovery, as opposed to some of our other practices in spirituality and self discovery and spiritual development that might feel a little bit less exciting to somebody. You know sitting down for a formal meditation practice, talk therapy, even practicing, you know, yoga, some of these more, I guess, widely accepted modalities for self-discovery or portals for self-discovery. Now we can add, you know, sexual fantasy to the Rolodex and approach that especially through the lens of self-discovery with a partner, if we have a partner or if we are unpartnered, giving ourselves the permission slip to explore in a way that feels safe and in environments that feel safe. But really opening up that discussion with a partner feels so exciting so intimate.
Speaker 2:It's so incredible. I wanted to just say something for the people who are not partnered. I'm not currently partnered by choice. That's what I want to be at the moment, right I'm 49. I do not want another human in my space, thank you so right, I don't know how I don't know how long that's gonna last but that's how it is for me at the moment, my primary lover is desire itself and I can tell you I can.
Speaker 2:I can regularly follow this um, this organ of the psyche, if you like, this inner, this inner wisdom, this to you know, dance with it, engage with it, explore with it and take myself into extraordinary ecstatic states where, you know, my whole body is alive with pleasure and my heart is as big as the sun and you know, it just feels like I've got access to all of these sort of insights you can only get when your ego's disappeared temporarily, right, and like I've just got access to this whole bigness of myself which feels like my primal self and my higher self have merged into my everyday self in perfect sync for a moment, like this is not a state I can stay in forever, but my desire keeps bringing me back to these states and they are exquisite. So I now deeply trust my dance with desire. And if I was to try and only have high vibe thoughts, high vibration thoughts.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't be able to hear where desire was trying to take me, because desire can come up with some seriously smutty stuff. I have to have these tools to be able to understand and navigate this strange consciousness that we have, this strange primal wisdom that knows the way home. So it has. I have to have the tools to be able to encounter and embrace the whole of myself.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, yeah, and so for someone who is open, they're listening to this conversation, they're open to start exploring their desires, or even just they're open to opening the door to desire. And, let's say, what comes in first is more of the smutty stuff or some of the more quote-unquote shameful desires or shameful thoughts. What are some of those tools that people can use to really separate themselves and use it as a roadmap, like we've been talking about?
Speaker 2:and use it as a roadmap, like we've been talking about. Yeah, that we really. I really discovered that even amongst the most advanced sex educators in the world, they didn't have the tools to be able to do that.
Speaker 2:They thought they did, but they didn't so we had to walk them through this embodied process of learning how to actually uh um, it's like an internal martial art or an internal yoga, if you like, of being able to dance with desire, these different organs of the psyche being able to have interactions with each other. But one simple thing you can do for yourself is you can, as part of the desire compass. I encourage people to create an imaginarium. I ask them to imagine a giant soap bubble that's covered in all of these rainbow colors and inside the entire universe exists in symbolic form. But it's the land of stories.
Speaker 2:So here you know, a cartoon character can jump off the cliff and bounce back up unharmed. Here the magic carpet actually flies In. Here the consequences for self, for other and for the fabric of society do not exist. You're safe to explore any thought at all that comes up here, and so here is a place that you might want to deliberately go into and then leave afterwards when you're thinking about your sexual fantasies, so that you give yourself permission to think here. This is not the same as using your manifestation techniques, where you're imagining your desires coming true. That's a different bubble. The Imaginarium has to have a safe place where everything is allowed. You cannot form a relationship with something that is not allowed. You have to allow it.
Speaker 2:So you have to begin there. But one of the first things that I get people to do is actually a really fun exercise to get to discover yourself, and it seems really silly but it's actually super powerful. So, and you can do it. I can give you a link in the show notes for, and you can go and do it for free, um, but basically it's an exercise that is called the celeb swoon technique.
Speaker 2:So you think about a, um, a celebrity that you think that you find attractive. And if you can't find a celebrity because you're not that way wired, just look it up a dating site and see who you find is attractive. As long as you've got several pictures of the same person right that you can look at and you will think, on the surface we go, oh, I'm attracted to them because they're that body type, or, you know, they've got giant boobs of doom, blonde hair or whatever it is that, that hairstyle for me, like I have a hair fetish oh my god, that hair always catches my attention anyway and you think, oh, it's because of that. And yet you look at these images of these celebrities, five of them, or six of them in a row, and you will find yourself more attracted to some images than others. Why, how, what are they embodying in that image that they're not in that? How does it fit you in a narrative to look at that particular body language and and way of presenting themselves and the look in their eye, and you know what you're imagining, their thinking and feeling and then all of that in that image is different to that that. Their body's the same. So it wasn't just their physicality that drew you to them. It's something about them that is being a really great mirror and reflecting your personal narrative.
Speaker 2:Right now, and if you want to go to myfantasyiscom, you can do this exercise and I'll walk you through the kinds of questions to ask yourself and become aware of your yeah, become aware of your narrative through through this little exercise with that, and you don't have to tell anyone your fantasy to do it, so it's quite safe. Like most people are really scared to start. Oh, my god, I've got to confess that I really want to have a gangbang. Oh, no, no, you don't have to confess that, any of that sort of thing here. You can just do this exercise together with your friends if you want to, and have a giggle and discover, um, all sorts of things that you weren't aware of in your own narrative there oh so wonderful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I will definitely. Will definitely be linking that in the show notes for people. I I can just imagine that this conversation is, you know, really only scratching the surface for people and instead actually creating so many more questions and curiosities for people to follow up on. Can you tell us more about how people can find your work, a little bit about your book and, yeah, how people can stay in touch with you and and hear more about this work?
Speaker 2:Okay, excellent. Um, so my website is just my name, artemisia divinecom, uh, and it's the best thing you can do with anyone who's had anything to do with the sex industry is to follow their newsletter, because we're algorithm muted just for existing everywhere. All right, so you might follow us on social media, but you'll never see our posts. So, and you can do that by actually just downloading the freebie I told you about. You'll get on there. Otherwise, just go through my website.
Speaker 2:But this book that I'm writing has all of the theories that I just talked about in it, but lots of stories of the sex industry and real life fantasy, breakdowns of how it all works, and things that you can do, exercises you can do, and that's coming out in April 2025. So it's not out yet, but the best way to make sure that you don't miss out is to be on that newsletter, because you bet I'm going to be talking about it on there, but I'm also really generous on there. I share an awful lot of insights, like I just I can't help geeking out about this, so it's my favorite thing. So if you want to be there but you know, be aware that I will be talking about sexual themes, and sometimes that means including talking about actual fantasies and experiences that I had in the adult industry that helped me learn that particular thing. So be aware that that's what you're signing up for, if you want to do that.
Speaker 1:Awesome, I'm aware and I'm signing up. I can't wait because I think this conversation, like I said, I think it'll probably just scratch the surface for a lot of people. It's just scratching the surface for me and it's creating so much curiosity within my own desire, within opening the conversation up with my partner, people to start to understand, just using their sexual fantasy as a blueprint, as a way to further self-inquire and also feel like they're not alone in their sexual fantasy, Whatever it is, I'm sure that there's somebody else in the world who has something similar or a parallel sexual fantasy. So, creating that community amidst us all and that we're all sexual beings, really we really, are we really?
Speaker 1:are well. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation and, yeah, I can't wait to continue following your work. Thank you so much for having me. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Like I said, I had so much fun diving in with Artemisia. She is such a breath of fresh air and it's so refreshing to discuss a tool for self-discovery that is different than the other tools we have, different than meditation, different than yoga, different than some of the more common mindfulness practices that we know about. If you did enjoy this conversation, it would mean so much to me if you left a review or sent it to somebody in your circle that you think would also enjoy. It will really help this podcast grow and for more people to hear this message. All right, well, I'll be back next week with another conversation.