I’ve been on a path of what I was calling ‘awakening through the Erotic’. It’s not a concept I made up. There are lots of people walking the path of Eros. There’s Nicole Daedone. There’s Tantra. There’s ISTA. But the devil is tricky, and it has many faces.

My celibacy vow is already helping me in the ways I intended it to. To help me stay and see clearly. To find a deeper connection to myself and God.

Desire is not always divine

I have been in circles where desire, of mostly any form, is encouraged. I have even been the one asking people, ‘What do you desire?’ and working to make it happen. I typically loved that role.

There are many young people following in the footsteps of a few rebellious few (who are now in their 60s) that promoted desire in all forms. That slept with followers. That created followers even to begin with (so many issues with that). That later created large organizations like ISTA, etc. You can watch the Nicole Daedone ‘cult’ film on Netflix. It’s really horribly biased, but it’s some good info. You make your own determination of her guilt or innocence.

I have been through ISTA Level 1 twice. I love lots of parts of ISTA (the shamanic work they do is awesome), and I already very much know its shortcomings. It’s sort of just what I do. I, uniquely, find the holes like a mouse looking for a home in the winter. I don’t usually have to look very hard, but I find them. And again, when the emperor isn’t wearing pants, I’m usually the first one to notice it. The phrase, beat to your own drum, is part of my constitution.

So, recently, I’ve been meditating on the world of ‘Eros’ that I recently found myself in. What has it really added to my life? Who are these characters and what are their motives? Is this getting me closer to my aim, to be in service to something greater than myself? What I’ve come to is this: while awakening through the erotic can be powerful, especially when we’ve been cut off from our bodies or aliveness, not all desire is trustworthy. Some desires are echoes of trauma, craving, or ego, not soul. When we treat desire as the highest guide, we risk becoming enslaved to it, like a child who wants cookies for breakfast, confusing compulsion with liberation.

Trustworthiness is maturity. I think we’ve forgotten, especially in these ‘Eros’ spaces, that maturing is the goal. Not staying as an infantilized child who wants wants wants. Fucking hell, if I’m in my 50s and still around 20-year-olds trying their polyamorous three-way with a new guy named Sage. Anyone who encourages you to continue to act on your impulse to fuck a guy who’s married (even if the couple is consenting to it) is not a person I want in my life.

This is where the Devil comes in

In many mystical traditions, the Devil archetype represents temptation, illusion, and inversion—the perversion of the sacred. He seduces us with what feels good now but leads us further from the truth. A desire that flares in the body isn’t necessarily eros—it might be addiction in disguise. Sensation alone isn’t God.

Desire is personal, often rooted in lack or projection. Eros is impersonal—it’s the life force itself, the energy of creation moving through us. Eros is not about "what I want," but what wants to move through me in service to life. Eros is what wants you to go through that really challenging thing, that will literally be physically painful, and you, as your mind, can’t understand why, but you know you have to keep going. True eros can feel inconvenient, humbling, even painful—but it’s aligned with soul.

Eros isn’t dressed in lace and leather. It’s actually the fire inside that brings you to work day in and day out because back at home, you have a family that needs you, a community that you’re in service to, and a purpose so big you can’t even see the edges of it. What if we saw Eros as quiet? As inspiration, first? Not lust and flashing lights but sparkling, like stars in the night sky. Oh, that’s beautiful, I think I’ll go there. It’s not the thing that keeps you high or that keeps you spinning in destructive patterns. It’s the thing that keeps you alive. Eros isn’t available to us only in the bedroom. It’s waking up every day to enjoy saying, I’m living the dream.

Desire as danger

When we elevate our low-level desires to God, we risk worshiping the false. And what I mean by low-level desires is stuff like this:

• Just ‘wanting sex’ because you like it or want to feel good

• Engaging in sexual play for the ‘fun’ or the ‘thrill’

• Engaging in sexual play that causes physical harm to feel sensation (work through numbness)

• Using sex as a way to have intimacy or connection

• Engaging in desire for experience alone

We can mistake our hungers for holy instruction. The body becomes a temple not of the sacred, but of the self—and the self, when unexamined, can be the Devil’s favorite playground. If you don’t ‘believe’ in the Devil, you’re doing yourself a disservice, but that’s for another day.

Choosing more than perversion

I think where we might get attached to temple nights, Eros parties, the belief that we can have and engage with sex if we just use an R-BDSM talk, if all parties are ‘consenting’, is a disservice to our growth and a perversion of what Eros truly is. Eros is the spark of life that you can access at all times in your day. That wants an aim for your endeavors, not for your cock. That is asking you to leave your 9-5 because it’s ready to do new things, not just wear a Viking costume and kiss two women at once. You move on from your perversion by choosing to. So what choice are you making?

Love,
Val