Eros: A Different Take on Love and Intimacy with Elayne Doughty

 

Dr. Willow: Welcome, welcome. You are all in for such an amazing interview coming up next. I love this woman so much. Elayne Kalila Doughty, she is the founder and CEO of Priestess Presence, a sisterhood of over 80,000 women around the world. And the Red Podcast, Elayne's background is in psychology; she's been on a path of passionate service for the past 20 years, inspiring women around the world to unleash their leadership gifts and step into their full potential.

To be more effective and whole in every aspect of their lives. And I can really attest to this personally. I spent a year studying with Elayne, and it was such a profound and inspiring year of really embodying all these different archetypes that were already there inside of myself and bringing them more fully into Willow as a human being in the world.

Announcer: Welcome to the Sex Reimagined podcast, where sex is shame-free and pleasure forward. Let's get into the show. 

Dr. Willow: I just love your work, Elayne. I'm so grateful that you're with us. Welcome, welcome. 

Elayne: Thank you, my love. Yes, yes. Awesome to be here. And I'm excited for the weaving of the conversation that wants to unfold during our time together. Really. 

Dr. Willow: Perfect. So today I think what we're going to kind of highlight and go into is this concept of erotic presence and what it means to hold erotic presence with integrity in life and the sort of light and shadow sides of what that means. And who better than Elayne to bring that to us?

Dr. Willow: Well, where should we begin? 

Elayne: Dive straight in, it's like a first date, let's get to know each other. I think what we should start with is by backing up a little bit into the whole idea of eros and what erotic really means because I think that many of us have a very narrow view of what eros is.

 

[00:02:14] Eros has nothing to do with Sexuality  

 

Elayne: We kind of understand the erotic to mean sexual, to mean pornographic to mean, oh, we're looking at people having sex, or it's the sexual act that's erotic. And that does eros a great disservice because eros is nothing to do with sexuality, truly. Eros is to do with the energy that rises up in us as desire.

It is the desire that we have for life, for good food, for fine wine, for the smells of perfumes. eros is by nature that quality that we all have within us, that draws us towards something that magnetizes us towards something that we are wishing to partake of, not even to possess, but to be touched by, to taste, to smell.

To listen to, to be feeling with. And this quality of eros is so absolutely gorgeous. It's an attraction. And the attraction field is for life itself. The plants are full of erotic attributes, the butterflies and the bees. Have you ever seen a bee go into a flower and roll itself around in the pollen and come out and be completely saturated with pollen and nectar?

That is eros happening. The bee is attracted to that flower. The hummingbird is attracted to the flute of the fox glove, right? We are attracted to all kinds of things, to environments, to landscapes, to things of beauty. Beauty is a big part of eros. What we feel as beauty, not just what we see, but what we feel.

A beautiful sunrise can be eros, it can have an erotic flavor to it, right? A sunset. The mist on the ground, the dewdrops. So I really want us to understand that when we talk about eros and the erotic, we're talking about our birthright as sensual, alive human beings. There is nothing in our life that is not touched by the erotic, and it has become this kind of dirty, I don't know, sorted, taboo kind of word.

And it's been, sort of, like cast out of our language and made to be something very narrow and very much something that we don't talk about, right? Oh my God, it's the erotic; oh, that's a naughty word. And I like a tab bit of naughty words, by the way. But anyway. So that's the thing that is so powerful for us to first recognize.

So that's the first thing I would say about it is let's explode our idea of what the erotic actually is. And I'll stop there and let you feel your eros for a moment with me. 

Leah: So what I really am getting out of what you're sharing is there's like a sensualizing of being passionate about the things that we're passionate about, of seeing life in our life.

 

[00:05:21] Eros at the Grocery Store

Leah: I'm reminded of going to the grocery store and wanting to pick out the most beautiful tomato of all the tomatoes. I want to smell it, and I want it to be the best tomato of the bunch because I'm going to feed myself with it; I'm going to feed my lover this tomato. And I feel that way about every piece of fruit.

And if I go to the butcher, I want to talk to the butcher. I want to find out, what's that and what's that and how should I cook that? And where did that part come from? And it's, there's an engagement. I hear that eros is really about engaging with our senses. Our whole life. 

Elayne: Exactly. 

Leah: We're on the same page? 

Elayne: We're on the same page. And it's this kind of aliveness that when we allow ourselves to be in the attraction of life, of what is attracting us. Right.

Leah: Good distinction. 

Elayne: Yes. So, we are attracted all day long, and we're attracted by not just people but places and things and experiences and animals and trees.

 

[00:06:26] Stop ignoring what's pulling your attention

 

Elayne: So there is this natural pull that goes towards that which gives us joy, and pleasure, and connection, and fulfills us. And at that level, eros is very innocent; there's a divine essence 

Dr. Willow: So sweet. 

Elayne: Yes. Because it's about going towards that what engages you, what is pulling you towards it.

The music that you like to listen to. The clothing that you want to wear, the person that you want to talk to, not just because they're hot and they're really attractive, but there's something about them that is attracting you, that may have nothing to do with sex, but is an erotic attraction because it is the power of attraction at work.

And yes, of course, within eros lives passion, deep love, and bondedness. Start to live our lives from a more erotically charged place that is giving permission, right? To be fully alive, to be in our aliveness around life. To go toward that which we are attracted to, and desire for the experience for nothing other than having the experience.

Leah: I love that you make that distinction with attraction. Because it's kind of easy to forget to put our attention on attraction to what gives us life, that feeling of aliveness. That pulse is an attractive force, I think like why this is waking me up in this moment right now is I'm just noticing, wow, it's been a lot about the to-do list. 

Not really totally about attraction. And I'm starting to learn, and you're reminding me to pay closer attention, to like the mystery of attraction and that there is flow there, there's magic there, there's purpose there, there's spontaneity there. And it feels like I'm being reminded of like, that's part of being awake.

Pay attention to attraction. and I'm not talking about something that I want to have sex with. I'm talking about life force. I want to be like, what's attracting me? Like I've got figs growing. I know they're going to be delicious, I'm going to eat them in the fall. 

Elayne: Right?

Dr. Willow: They're going to be delicious. 

Elayne: And what's more erotic than that? 

Leah: And it's so erotic to watch the figs get bigger. And the leaves are all reaching for the sun right now, and it's making me want to, like, make a bathing suit out of the fig leaves. 

Dr. Willow: Like Eve in the Garden of Eden. 

Leah: Should I throw a party now?

You know, this could lead me somewhere really special. 

Dr. Willow: Oh, fig cocktails!

 

[00:09:17] Spontaneity, anyone?... How about Titillation? Could you use a little more Imagination?

 

Elayne: That's exactly what I'm talking about. And when we begin to tune into that channel, like what's going on with you right now, if you're enlivened by it, you're titillated by it. You start to get creative and spontaneous with it.

And that's the presence of eros. Eros is spontaneous; it's playful; it's imaginative. It's really the salt of all life. It's where everything comes from. If we weren't drawn towards something and attracted towards something, why bother creating anything? Why bother doing these podcasts or these offerings that you're making if you are not attracted to the subject? Or, like, all the sapiophiles out there who love the mind and are attracted by and pulled to the erotic nature of the mind.

I mean, it's everywhere. And when we start to attune to that, we start to play with that energy, and then life becomes much more flirtatious. And by flirtatious, I really mean there is this exchange of energy that happens that is; Let me say it this way, that is mutually enhancing. 

Dr. Willow: I love this word that you dropped a second ago of communing.

It's like you're communing with this fig, you're becoming in communion with some things so that it becomes a part of you, you become a part of it. And therefore, more wholeness is created. And actually, this might segue into the shadow and the light part of it.

 

[00:10:41] The Attraction Path of Light & Shadow

 

Dr. Willow: I gave a client this homework assignment. Okay, the path came up in his process, right? And so go walk the path. Go find a path near your home, walk the path, and go toward the things that like attract you, right? That it's like, Ooh, that's pretty over there. And stand there, watch, listen, and receive the message from that area of the path.

But then also go to the part of the path that's like ugly and repulsive, and I don't really want to go over there and stand there and behold and see what kind of message and wisdom comes through. 

Elayne: Beautiful. So light and shadow. So you know, for all of you who are listening, whether you're male or female, or however you are, wherever on the spectrum you might fall. In our wonderful moment in history right now where we're finally allowed to be exploring gender and sexual identity outside of these boxes that we've been in. Hooray. Finally, eros is being freed. Hooray. Harray. Harray. Let's have a celebration for that. I've just done a podcast on that, so I'm tuned into that channel.

Yes. So for all of us, we have got to understand that this erotic, natural, organic state of being has been for most of us co-opted. And it's been shaped around the desire for possession. I must possess you, I must try to get you to want me, or I must try to get you to want to keep me, or I must try to use my powers to seduce you so that you want me, and then perhaps I don't want you. Like, all the games that we play with erotically charged scenarios.

Because what happens is when eros comes up, there's a natural pool to come together, right? It's magnetic; it's a magnetic experience. But most of us have life experiences, usually in our childhood, around how we've done our attachments, what kinds of wounds or abuses have happened to us, and how we've experienced our first sexual awakenings. Whether those were wholesome or not so wholesome, whether they were tabooed, whether they were shamed.

All those things go into our erotic identity if you want to put it that way, or I erotic template. And so very few of us have a divine innocence erotic template because it's been morphed and shaped and kind of co-opted, right? So we find ourselves in situations whereby we are oftentimes using our eros, divine innocent eros, to get what it is that we think we want in ways that are not integris in ways that are manipulative and or seductive.

 

[00:13:35] Acting Out our Erotic Nature in less than Upfront Ways 

 

Elayne: And that is a very big shadow in the world of how we come towards our eros. And I want you all to think about this for a moment. I want you to think about a time in your life, and I know you've all got one when there was somebody that you really fancied, and that's such a great English word to say, right? You really fancied him. You really want to go out with him or her or them, but you didn't believe that they would fancy you back. Or you were full of that anxiety. And the games that you began to play in order to get their attention, in order to try to lure their attention, to try to snare their attention. Thinking all the while that the wound underneath it was that I'm not wanted, or I'm not going to be desired, or it's not going to be reciprocated. So we all have some version of how we have acted out our erotic nature in less than... how could I say less than upfront ways, right? Less than Integris ways. And this plays out for men and women and all those in between who, when we are in that field of the dating, of the attracting, of the courtship, the dance of all of that. And there's a lot of power in that, right?

So there's a lot of room for us to run energy. And this is a way that I would say it, running energy in ways that are not clean and clear. That is not coming from a clean and clear place. 

So of all the human traits that we could have, this one of eros is the one that, you know, in religious organizations and in religious systems, has been the one that's been really, you know, they're really grabbed hold of this one because it's the one where we tend to act out the most shadow material.

Dr. Willow: So true. Gosh. 

Elayne: Of course, it is, because it's so powerful. It's the basis of all life. All life is based on this erotic attraction. There would be no life if things weren't erotically attracted to each other. Right. That's the truth. 

Leah: Indeed. 

Elayne: Right? 

Leah: Ya know, like, it's in nature; it's doing it too. It's how this whole thing is spinning. 

Dr. Willow: The birds and the bees. The yin and yang. 

Elayne: So when I talk about showing up in your full erotic presence, which is a lot of what I teach about to women. And by teaching it to women and their men, right? Because all their partners or their lovers or whoever it is that they're with, there's this place where we have to understand that for, and I'm going to speak as a woman for a moment, from a woman who's in a woman's body.

 

[00:16:15] Elayne's journey of healing negative sexual conditioning

 

Elayne: From one is in a woman's body, I grew up in a situation being taught that my sexuality, that my expression of my sexuality or my erotic presence was something that was bad, wrong, and to be shamed. And that it was certainly, there was no place for it in the work world. There was certainly no place for it in public.

It was really only to be had in the bedroom. That's what I was taught growing up. Right? And I know I come from a different generation than you all. I'm in my fifties, so I grew up in the early seventies in England, and I grew up in a very different era than the one we're in right now. So I attest to that, right? I'm a product of my generation, the Gen Xs; that's who I am, right? 

So, within that, I was enculturated with the shame of my erotic presence. For me to be in my erotic power as a woman was somehow to be a fallen woman, to be a slut, to be a whore, to be all those names that we have been given throughout history.

So my expression of that has taken a long time to heal. And I think many of the people from my generation have had that peace to heal in the collective. That it's okay for us as women to go into the world and be in our erotic power. In other words, to be in our beauty, to be in the sexuality of who we are, our bodies, to feel beautiful, to allow that to show and to walk into the boardroom, or wherever, the office or the post office or whatever you're walking to, fully awakened with the sway of your hips and the curl of the hair around your face and just being in that beauty.

And there is plenty of women in my experience, and guys, if you're listening to this, you probably know these women who don't feel safe to do that still. Who doesn't feel free to do that. And certainly, in different areas of the United States and in vast areas of the world, women still don't feel safe to be in their full power.

Because that's really what we're talking about as well, is eros is power. It's the power that we hold in our bodies. And so, I think it's a really powerful conversation to have. And I'm not in a man's body, so I don't attest to know, from talking to men, I know the shadows that they experience.

I know what it is to be in a woman's body and to be at the subjugation, if you like, of that shadow material. So I'll just stop there because there's so much in what I've just said. It's such a disservice to the world around us as human beings, women, men, and anything in between, to not fully live in our eros.

Dr. Willow: To not fully give ourselves permission to be like, oh this!, or, oh that! And when you do see somebody who has embodied eros and who is in that practice and is in that way, it can bring up different things. It can bring up triggers of why that person is that way? And I can't? And then it's comparison. 

And so it can create even more of a downward spiral, but any kind of comparison or jealousy is like a golden arrow pointing toward what you want. 

And then it also can give permission, be like, oh, well, if they can do that, then I can do that too. So what perspective do you want to choose for yourself? Which direction do you want to take? Cause you have a choice. You have a choice in this every single moment of every single day.

 

[00:19:57] Self-Deception: Leah Shares her Shadow Journey with Eros 

 

Leah: I think it's so fraught with confusion. As I'm looking, reflecting back on my journey as a woman, I'm right on the edge of Gen X and millennial. I remember so desperately wanting love and being confused that the way to get love was to be sexually attractive.

So I led with sexual attraction, which never got me love. It got me laid. But it didn't get me love. 

Elayne: Great. 

Leah: I was living in this like false power. I'm an empowered, liberated woman. I can have multiple lovers. I am sexually free because I'll have sex with whomever I want, but I don't need love. I'm independent. Ah. And so then I'm carrying the message of, like, you don't need to love me. I'll gobble you up. I'm so powerful. I take what I want. It was kind of the opposite. I was hiding; I was wearing a mask of sexual empowerment to hide that I was desperate for love and thought I was unlovable. And I didn't know how to get love because no one taught me that the way to experience and have love in your life is to be yourself.

So I was putting on the masks to try to get what I thought would give it to me. It was so painful. And then I get to live this story out of being used, abused, and misused by men. So now it's like, then there's that next story, and now the rage. 

And I'll never forget when I first started my sexual healing and studying the goddess and looking at the archetypes. And I'm going to be Kali, and I'm going to be Durga. And I'm going to... I was so angry; I planned to slay the male egos while I got drunk and completely misbehaved. 

I'll never forget Elayne; I would go to the bar, I'm in my early twenties, and I literally felt like I had fireballs of sex in my hands, and I was going to throw them up in the air. Who's going to catch 'em? And you are not going to come out alive. I am going to take what I want. And it was like anger and rage, and I'm going to take because you've taken from me. And I really feel tender towards that self. And I got my ass kicked. I ended up rolling around in some poison ivy, poison ivy from head to toe, because of those fireballs of getting busy outside. I mean, I got, I got the smack SmackDown, the goddess gave me my lesson, and I'm super grateful because then I had to do the hard work of going, wow, look at all of this creation. 

Honey, what about love? You're missing out. There's something really... you're in so much pain, and now you're passing the pain on. And it was like such a powerful, transformative, painful, excruciating misuse of power. 

Elayne: Oh my God. 

Leah: And so,  as you were sharing, it made me go, wow, there it is. And that inflection point had me say, okay, let's get honest. I want love. And that's sexual power. 

Dr. Willow: There's eros. 

Leah: That's liberation, you know? At least, I think. What would you say to that 24-year-old Leah?

Elayne: Wow. Thank you for sharing that story. It's so beautiful. 

Leah: And I apologize to all the men I was unconsciously throwing fireballs at. 

Elayne: Well, and this is the thing, so eros is love; it's a form of love. In ancient Greece, there was six names for love, and eros was one of the names.

There was, you know, filler, and I can't even remember them all now. Philia and philautia and Agape. 

Leah: Agape. 

Elayne: Right. There are all these different kinds of flavors of love. Storage was another one. Charis was another one.

 

[00:24:00] The Destructive Face of Eros

 

Elayne: And I think you're really talking about the power and destruction of love. The power of the destructive face of eros. You know, that image of you in the bar with the two balls of fire, ready to throw them at someone. And for me, that story of using my eros, using my power to destroy, also came in my late teens and early twenties when I started to realize, I started to wake up to the feminine. I started to become a feminist and read about goddess history and what was available to me back then. And I got really fucking mad. Excuse my French, but really fucking mad at the patriarchal, at the men. And I couldn't, at that point, separate men from patriarchy, which obviously, I have since done.

But I was horrifyingly mad at my first husband. I got married when I was 21 and was desperately in love with this man. And I destroyed him as he destroyed me. We destroyed each other, quite frankly. We did 10 years of destroying each other in that relationship, and it was highly erotically charged.

And it was coming from all of the unhealed feminine within myself, right? All of the trauma of my own past, but not just my trauma, the collective trauma of the feminine that I couldn't even name. I had no idea that I was plugged into the collective trauma of the feminine. And that was why I was so mad.

So this is the dark side, right? The dark side of this, the shadows of eros, and the dark side for the men. That also has to do with domination, manipulation, control, and being in charge. And having been masculine, having been in charge, and having been the patriarchal model and mindset of what we've been shown around attraction, desire, ownership, and possession.

And I always remind all of my men folk and my women folk that it's only a hundred years since we've had the vote. 

Dr. Willow: It wasn't that long ago. 

Leah: That's so true. 

Elayne: We're talking about a blip on the horizon. We're talking about women still in places in the world with no rights, no voice, no right to vote, and no say. That women still, in many parts of the world, do not have the right to ownership of property, to earn their own money, to drive outside of the home, or to drive, or to have any other life other than the life that they have with their husband and their children, right. 

Dr. Willow: And so to serve.

Elayne: And when we really grok that, we grok where we are in the journey of remembering who we are. And is it any wonder that the world of sexual and erotic relationships between us is so mired with so much projection and so much fear and pain. 

And what you were saying, Leah, about the fear of, really, what you wanted was love, but you were wielding your sexual power because guess what, you could, and you knew how to. And that is something that women have done throughout history is to wield their sexual power because that was the only way they felt powerful. 

Leah: Right. 

Dr. Willow: And interestingly enough, it is an extremely powerful energy, which is why it has been oppressed for so long and, you know, swept under the rug and put down. And don't feel that power. 

Leah: Because don't express that power; it'll get you in trouble. the fear of a sexual woman's power, wow, did that control us for a long time—the fear of female sexual power. 

Dr. Willow: So where we are now in our timeline, in our history, is like we have this opportunity to hold it with integrity. To not use it to overpower and also not to be afraid of the power that is there.

So what would you say to our listeners who are like, oh, where do I sit in that? How do I embody that? How do I become whole in that way?

 

[00:27:54] The Royal Road to Liberation & Healing

 

Elayne: Well, I think it has to start with the question of how you have misused it. I always go to the shadow first because those are the places we don't want to look. That's where we want to hide out. 

But as you said earlier on, it also points to the gold, right? It points to the place where the growth is. And so perhaps if you're looking at your relationship history, or you're looking at your current relationship, or you want to get into a relationship, I would say it really behooves us to take a real kind of deep inventory with self. Maybe with the help of another mirror of another person to help you see the blind spots. 

But, who have you been inside your erotic nature? Where is your own repression and shame or judgment? What do you judge in others right around their sexuality? 

Leah: That's a good one to take an inventory on. 

Dr. Willow: That's a really good one. 

Elayne: because when you really look at what you're projecting onto other people, like, oh, she's just full of herself, or, you know, he's just too good-looking. 

Leah: Or, they're so arrogant. 

Elayne: Right, right. All of these places. And turning literally the mirror back towards self and saying how does that live within me? How am I? That is the royal road to liberation right there. 

You know, because then you can start to look at, particularly for us as women, the place I would tell you to go as a woman, is looking at where you compare yourself, look at the women that you compare yourself to and that you judge, and what you judge them for. 

And that competition and comparison because one of the deepest wounds to our erotic nature as women has been that we've been placed in competition and comparison with one another to undermine each other. 

And that goes into what I was just talking about, and I can't help but say it, which is that if you, as a woman, can't survive without a man, then what do you do? You have to secure the best man. Well, that puts you into competition with all the other women around you to secure the best man who will be able to provide for you and your family. 

Dr. Willow: You have to use your sexual power for that. 

Leah: There's that unconscious animal... 

Dr. Willow: survival... 

Leah: status... 

Elayne: Well, and that's what it's joined to, it's been joined to our survival, and it's been manipulated and controlled, and therefore women have been at each other and unable to be in sisterhood. 

One of the biggest things I deal with is women stepping into their full power, their eros, their aliveness. They're scared to do it around their sisters because they set up a field of comparison. They don't want to be judged, they don't want to be shamed, and they don't want to be in competition. They'd rather hide their power and light than step out. 

Dr. Willow: Or they don't want to make someone else feel like less than. 

Elayne: Exactly. Oh, that's huge. Isn't that huge? 

Dr. Willow: That's a big one. 

Elayne: It's like a huge one. It's a massive one. 

Dr. Willow: That's a tricky one I feel like I get stuck on that one sometimes. Where it's like, I want to shine my biggest, brightest light, but I know it's going to trigger so-and-so because they haven't dealt with that shadow yet. After all, I know them well.

And it's a tricky one to navigate sometimes, right? 

Leah: Well, I feel like we're given two choices in our conditioning as women. It's like, be a good girl or be a bad girl. You know? It's like the good girl is devoid of sexuality and stays virginal and is pure, and then the bad girl is the slut, who wears her sexual energy on the outside. So we either have to tamp it down, or we're overexpressed, and there is no and. And we do the same thing with mothers. When a woman becomes a mother, suddenly, we desexualize her. And so it keeps on coming back to the Virgin Mary and the slut. And it's like, we're so much more than that. We're that, & everything else. 

We're either in our body or we're not in our body. It's really challenging, confusing. It kind of just comes back to the confusion. 

Elayne: I hear you. Well, it's no wonder that we get mired. And so when you ask people about the areas of their lives that they're most stuck in or get most challenged in, it's in the area of our intimate connections.

And and I think that's the area where we get to experience all of these shadows coming up.

 

[00:36:01] The Role of Shamanism in Healing Work

 

Willow: Lauren, tell us a little more about how you bring Shamanism into your work.

Lauren: Wow. Well, I think that these practices have worked through me in a surprising way because opening the door to sexual healing work, I all of a sudden it was like I became this hollow bone that spirit came through.

So I would have these experiences of not understanding why, but the instinct inside of me would be to move like a hip one way. And then, a cry would erupt from like their very beingness. And then I would get this message to ask them about their experience at three years old. 

And, and those things came upon me by surprise. I studied psychology and I was an artist. And I had no idea that I would receive this gift, that to be a sexual healer and to have this clear sentience where I can actually feel things in my body that other people are feeling in their body.

And I can track where it's going or where it's come from and help it transform. When I was in my twenties, I received Shamonic healing and I had past life regressions and it was so cool. I loved it. But I had no self-concept that I also had that gift inside ,of me. And I think many people do, many people have these deep instinctual knowings that they ignore.

And if they were to actually listen to them, they would be surprised at how accurate they are. 

Leah: So would you say that was a skill that you went and learned, or was it something that you began to notice, trust, and then experimented in the delivery and turned out to go well? 

Lauren: Yeah, that second part. it was a creative time of my life. I gave my former partner at the time, my first session and he started to cry and it was like my body took over and knew what to do. And then every time I practiced with someone or gave someone a session, those skill sets kept increasing and kept getting deeper and, and more vast. It's such an amazing thing when you start to trust that. I hope that the listeners here can absorb what Lauren just templated, like the mirror neurons that she's giving us right now, like the, what she knows how to do, what she just described, you can also tap into, it's really like trusting in magic and getting outta your own way and letting it come through you and just taking a little leap of faith.

Willow: Oh, it's so powerful. And would you say, Lauren, that when you drop into that shamonic state, there's a release of the mind? There's like a you're dropping into more of a feeling state, an embodied state. How would you describe it? 

Lauren: Absolutely. it's a liminal state. It often, the mind just quiets and thinking if you do any thinking, it gets in the way. It's, it's really a feeling, and a knowing, and a listening, and then taking action from that listening. And, most people have intuition, but often they ignore it. It's about really following the action of those sometimes very illogical things. Like even if you get this instinct like, I'm supposed to go to this coffee shop today.

Oh, well, it's all the way across town and I don't need to go there, and that doesn't make any sense, so I'm just gonna not do that. But those weird whispers of instinct, they're always right. They're always, always, always right. 

Leah: That's such a good reminder. 

Willow: And they lead you to the next right step as well. So that's how the journey unfolds in this beautiful, pleasurable, upward spiral way instead of, you know, oh damn, I should have listened to my intuition. I knew it. Now look at where I'm at now. Look at what I'm dealing with. and we were just talking about this in another interview where the opportunity to listen to your intuition in that particular way is going to continue to come up over and over again until you start to listen.

Until you get good at it. And it's a practice.

 

[00:32:15] Your Eros, your attractiveness is not based on how others see you.

 

Elayne: And it gets so hard when you're in the erotic attraction to figure out whose stuff is what and that the field of projection between you and your lover is so thick. And the idealized and the whole idea of falling in love, and what does that even mean? To fall in love on, who are you falling in love with? You're falling in love with the idealized self that the other is showing you, right? And that's not real, either. Right? 

But there is an attraction there that's running this, that we are called to navigate, and that if navigated and held within the sovereign self. In other words, my attractiveness is not based on you being attracted to me.

Oh, let's say that again. If I understand and I'm rooted in myself, specifically as a woman, that my attractiveness, that my eros beauty, beauty is not based on you being attracted to me. 

Dr. Willow: That's right. That's so powerful. Then you are standing in integral power. 

Leah: Say it one more time. Let's just hear it one more time, sister. 

Elayne: If my beauty, my eros, my attraction, my innocence of that in myself is based in me and is not based in how you see me. In other words, it's not based on your attraction to me. 

Leah: Right. It's not about the other; it's not external. It's an inside relationship. 

Dr. Willow: Then you're truly in love. Then you're truly in love, like a capital I, capital N. You're standing in your own love for yourself. 

Elayne: That's right. So when I say your full erotic presence, what I really mean is your capacity to locate your own sovereign sense of your energetic being, of your field of attraction. Of your field of desire and truly owning that within you. And You, and only you, are responsible for meeting the needs of that desire. No one else.

 

[00:34:15] What is Sexual Sovereignty?

 

Elayne: It's not another person's job to pleasure you, which is much of what we're told. Well, he's not pleasuring you. He needs to slow down. You've heard this, right? Y'all know what I'm talking about. 

Dr. Willow: Oh yeah. 

Elayne: And it doesn't mean that you don't need to slow down, by the way, FYI. And I'm responsible for my own pleasure. In other words, I'm responsible for communicating about my own pleasure. I'm responsible for my own body for how I choose to be pleasured or not. And this piece about eros being sexual sovereignty or being erotic sovereignty is super important.

I've been with my partner for, we're in a ninth year this year, and this is my longest ever relationship, y'all. I've been married three times. I've had pretty hectic relationship life, so this is definitely an area of study for me. 

Dr. Willow: And this one has also gone, had its ups and downs, this nine-year one, hasn't it, Elayne? 

Elayne: Of course. They all have. They all do, darling. They all do. I'm on a fast track of relational alchemy. That's, that's for sure. However, what I can say to you about this current relationship, and I'm now 54 and he is also, so we're at a different phase of life, right? We met when we were in our early forties when they're in our early fifties.

It's a big shift, y'all. I'm going to tell you. Any of you out there who were going through the whole menopausal thing, I hear you. Yes. That shifts everything about your erotic being too, and it's actually fascinating, but that's probably a whole nother session, right? Okay. Yes. Which I'd be delighted 

Dr. Willow: to talk about Future podcast.

Leah: Yes. Yes. 

Elayne: That has been really, really, really powerful. Yes. What I will share with you that I have come to realize is this peace around sovereignty. So one of the reasons why this relationship that I'm now in has continued to grow and change and develop, is because this is the first time in my life that I have been sovereign to myself, and I'm with someone else who is sovereign in themselves.

And from our sovereignty, we come together in partnership, but neither one of us believes that the other person is responsible for our happiness. Responsible for what we do in life, responsible for the sexual pleasure, responsible for any anything other than what gets created consensually between us.

Dr. Willow: Hallelujah. 

Elayne: Right. So that is really truly, when I talk about full erotic presence, that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about you giving up the part of you that seeks externally for validation. That seeks externally to be told that you are desirable. That can sit in the center of your own desire and your own being, men and women and anyone in between. Whatever you identify as, whether you're cisgendered or not. 

This is really, really important because when you start to sit in the seat of your own erotic power, you also cease to be caught in that web of needing the validation from someone outside of you because you are already giving it yourself. I know, right? And that is liberation and that is freedom. And that is where eros gets to be back into its divine innocent play. 

Leah: And it's freedom from the comparison too, right? It's going inside and you free yourself from your conditioning, from whatever culture says you're supposed to be.

And you get to really allow yourself to be your own recipe that is unique. You don't have to dress it up. 

Elayne: No. You don't have to dress it up. And I think to your point earlier on, Leah, when you were talking about the mask .

Like the mask of your sexual empowerment being used as a kind of weapon and a fuck you, right? This sexual erotic sovereignty. This place that we're talking about has completely relinquished that place, it's actually a very centered but vulnerable and open place in self. Because there isn't any longer trying to get something from another person. 

Dr. Willow: It's such liberation. It's such freedom from all the stress and the drama and the trauma that gets created by those shadows. 

Leah: Freedom from having to be impressive. Oh my god. Freedom from having to be, like you said, attractive or desirable or wanted, or needed. Well, or popular, you know? Like just in our inner circles. 

Elayne: And this is the thing that I've noticed about for myself and on the journey into this, because this is a lifelong journey, right? This is, I'm in my fifties. This took me a long time y'all, like, I didn't just arrive at this.

So I'm saying we're all on a journey of recognizing where we are not sovereign in that place. And what I believe really happens is we reach this place inside the Self, which is really about individuation. It's about self-growth, right? It's about being on a path of maturity within self.

As you enter into that, you are more free to play with it all. It's okay. Then flirtation and play an erotic attraction and erotic delight. And being in the eros no longer is so intensely mired in all of that game playing that happened when you were seeking to be accepted, loved, adored, most beautiful whatever. Most sexy, best in bed. I don't even know. Like the best in bed award. Who knows, right? You know what I mean? 

Leah: And the best in sex goes to. 

Elayne: All of those things get in the way actually of the expression of the sovereignty. Right. And it's like woof, you know. So when we are no longer coming from the wound of having to try to prove ourselves or be better than, or be the best or you know, the whole freaking whatever, looking in the mirror and going, I am the fairest of them all. Just all of these cultural myths that we've been given about beauty and sexuality and da, da, da. 

When we reside within the truth of our erotic nature, which is connected to the earth and to the seasons, and to the sky, and to the deep cosmos and to the deep thundering, orgasmic bliss that we can have by just looking at life and being part of life. When we detach it from being about something another person has to give us. 

Dr. Willow: Such a relief. 

Leah: What would you say to the part of us, that aspires to that? 

Elayne: That aspires to which bit? 

Leah: That aspires to our sovereignty, that aspires not to be caught in the external need for approval and validation, right? Because we stumble into it before we even know it, and then there's a self-attack and we can be so hard on ourselves. 

Dr. Willow: And there's also a level of being accepted, being loved, being popular,of survival or part of the tribe. We're part of the tribe, and we're accepted into the tribe than we survive better than if we're shunned, outcast, and on our own. 

Elayne: Totally. So I make a distinction for myself from my own work and from working with women for a long, long time. For me, there's a distinction. We're always going to want to be appreciated and adored and loved and cherished. I mean, come on....! 

Dr. Willow: Who doesn't want that? 

Elayne: That's the oxytocin of life. And it feels good, is part of the erotic flow. We're always going to want that. And we are relational by nature. That's who we are. We are not separate. we're connected. And it feels good to receive and give the love and the adoration. I mean, an example today, I was sitting on the stool downstair in the kitchen.

My love comes back from doing all the grocery shopping for me. Oh God bless him. And he walks into the room with a big bouquet of flowers and gives it to me. 

Dr. Willow: Sweet. 

Elayne: And I'm just like, ohhhh! Because I know what that means. That means he's basically saying, I really love and appreciate you. Thank you for whatever it is. And he knows that it's a language of love for me. He knows that. So that point being is that we're never not going to want that, the question is it tied into a wound in self that if we don't get it, we start to judge and shame and be angry with the other person? So if he walked in the room and didn't give me the bunch of flowers, would I then be like, "well you don't...."

Dr. Willow: Where are my flowers? 

Elayne: Right? And that entitlement and the wounded girl in me who doesn't feel valued and doesn't feel appreciated because he forgot to buy me flowers. Right. So that is a discernment place for when that, if that, happens to go to self and go, wow, okay, maybe I need to go buy me a bunch of flowers if I need the flowers.

I mean? Like what's that actually really about? And again, there's the royal road to self-development, right? That activation with him, in the mirror, it shows me a place in self that doesn't feel loved. So how can I love that part more? 

It sounds like that would be the same. answer to when we're being really hard on ourselves Yes. To feeling like we messed up of, or we fucked up and it's like, I did it again! When am I going get this? What's wrong with me? Like, why?! Why did I fall into that? I was so unconscious... whatever the loop is.

Oh, I know, right? 

Leah: Is it the same, breath and going, what is it that I need from me, that I'm looking for outside of myself?, 

Elayne: I mean, from my lensing, right? All of my work is around understanding that love is the elixer. That self-love, love of self, love of the other, that love is the thing that transforms everything.

And by love, I don't mean the romantic love, I mean, unconditional love, love that says, I'm going to love you no matter what. 

Leah: Right? Self-forgiveness, all the names for it. 

Elayne: And eros is attracted to unconditional love. Eros is attracted to this field where it gets to express itself in whatever shape form it is, right? It's not one thing, it's life force. 

And so I think, when it comes to our working with the shadow, we also want to work with the light. So the other part of it is, what is it that you truly desire that you do not allow yourself to have? Good question, you know? And where does that di desire come from?

What's motivating it? You know, because there's also shadow motivations. If I get that love over there with that person, that means, we all know about the trophy wife and the trophy husband. Like, all of that stuff. If I'm with them, then I'll become more important or whatever.

I mean, it's so wonderful for any of us that are on a path of self-exploration, relationships and the erotic attraction is so fantastic because it's never ending, you know? 

Dr. Willow: Yes. It's a very deep, well, very deep well of wisdom to dive into, inside of your own journey.

Leah: It's a beautiful mess, you know? It is lovely, it's oftentimes a sexy, yummy, delicious, hot, sexy mess. And other times it's a mess filled with grief. 

Elayne: So good. So good. 

Leah: So good. So much to sit and marinate in. And to be with oneself and ask these deeper questions, like, what our underlying motivations. Where are we coming from? Are we coming from ego? Are we coming from that divine spark? 

Elayne: Right. And that's inevitably a question that we are constantly going to be in until the day we're not here anymore. I mean, like, a healthy ego is a good freaking thing. You know, having good boundaries, knowing what you want, what you don't want. Being clear on how you communicate that. Needed, right? Ego is a good thing. And there's a relationship between the ego and the essence of who we are, you know, and the deeper, more altruistic parts of self that are not mired in the third dimensional world in such massive ways.

 

[00:46:35] Where do you begin finding the sovereignty within?

 

Dr. Willow: So in wrapping up and closing, Elayne, a word of wisdom for our listeners who are, they're on that path to finding sovereignty, to exploring that, and to really figuring out what that is for them in their own lives. What would you say? 

Okay. So I would really say, I'm tuning in for a moment to really feel.

Elayne: Where you give your power away to other people. Where you leak your power, let's put it that way, is a really massively fantastic place to begin an inquiry. And the way that you know know that you are leaking your power. Power synonymous with your eros, right? Where you are leaking that power is to look at the places in your life where you feel drained, where you feel separated from yourself, where you feel like, oh God, do I have to do that?

Where you are procrastinating, where you don't want to have to show up, but you're obliged to and you're trying to, right? Relationships, projects, things. Where are you draining your power there? And then, conversely, look into areas of your life where you're trying to get something that you think it is that you want, that will complete you.

Dr. Willow: That's so good. 

Elayne: And when you recognize what you're doing there, the question is, how do you bring your power back to yourself? In other words, how do you sit in the center of your own selfhood and make yourself responsible for your desires? For your deeper yearnings in life, for your fulfillment on your purpose, for being here? That's part of your eros too. So... 

Dr. Willow: beautiful. 

Elayne: Blessed be. 

Dr. Willow: Beautiful, so powerful. Thank you so much, Elayne.

 

[00:48:39] Elayne's Free Gift

 

Dr. Willow: You have a really fun, free gift for us as well, the Six Faces of the Magdalene. 

Elayne: I do. I do. 

Dr. Willow: So how does that play into us finding ourselves? 

Elayne: I would say for the women in the crowd, this is especially for you.

So, the Six Faces of the Magdalene, okay, the reason that I'm giving this away as a free gift is because the Magdalene could go into a whole story here, but essentially she holds an archetypal frequency of the fully awake erotic woman. And there are Six Faces of the Magdalene. And this is an opportunity to find out which face of the red power you sit within.

And so I invite any of you who are curious about what it means to walk as a fully awake, embodied, erotically alive woman in your life. These archetypes serve. And so there are six different archetypes within this quiz, and you will come out with a top scoring archetype that hopefully will give you some pinpoints of areas for you to go deeper with.

Dr. Willow: Lovely. 

Leah: Love it. Great homework for us. 

Dr. Willow: Super fun. Anytime I've done any of Elayne's archetype work, it's completely made a 180 in my life, like really shifted things. High, highly recommend grabbing those three gifts. Plus quizzes are always fun ? 

Elayne: Totally. And I love to do quizzes. I love to create them. I think they're really fun. 

Dr. Willow: Oh, love it. 

Leah: So if people wanted to study with you, Elayne, how would they look into that? 

Elayne: So you can find me on Instagram @ElayneKalila or @priestesspresence either. I have two different Instagrams. And on Facebook you can find me under Priestess Presence or Elayne Kalila Doughty, any of those places. 

Priestess Presence you can just pop into your web browser. It'll come up with all kinds of places where we're hanging out. But that's basically where I'm teaching most of the time and mentoring and working with people. 

Dr. Willow: And if you take this amazing, fun quiz on the Magdalenes, then you will be getting all the emails to remind you of where to go and how to find Elayne & your next steps.

What a blessing to be here with you both. Thank you for juicy, yummy conversation. 

Oh, oh, thank you, love. 

Leah: Thank you so much for helping us reimagine a new world for us too, 

Dr. Willow: what's possible with eros 

Leah: co-create. Love it. Thank you so much.

 

[00:51:01] THE DISH

 

Announcer: Now our favorite. The dish.

Leah: Oh my God. 

Dr. Willow: What an epic one. 

Leah: I'm so in love with her. 

Dr. Willow: I know. I knew you would be.

Leah: Oh Gosh! You did know. 

Dr. Willow: She's just so eloquent and regal, she's got this regality about her. 

Leah: The poise, the elegance... 

Dr. Willow: The pause. I know. The delivery. 

Leah: The delivery. The use of language. Really, really was into her queen energy. 

Dr. Willow: Plus she has that great English accent. 

Leah: Yes. Yes. I mean, you're probably geeking out with us if you just listened to the episode with Elayne. Oh my gosh, I can't wait to read your comments everyone, about this interview.

I hope you were taken with her as much as I was, the whole piece on eros. 

Dr. Willow: Yes. And the difference between what eros truly is and erotic energy and like how erotic energy is born of eros. But eros actually carries this really deep innocence and this like curiosity and how eros is what makes the world go round.

Eros is the thing that makes us go to a certain spot on the trail we're hiking on and pause, and look at the beauty of it. 

Leah: Yes, I really felt like I had an inflection point moment during that interview, where I was able to step out of my distraction of believing that if I can follow this formula, everything's going to be all right.

And I really got the hit during that interview that what I need to follow is what is calling my attention through attraction through this eros. What's opening me? Not what do I think I have to do? 

Dr. Willow: That's right. 

Leah: In order to get some sort of outside validation, it's this connection to this opening within me that is the flower that is blossoming, the flower that's catching my attention in the yard right now, needs my attention. And I can't even know the possibilities that are going to open. 

Dr. Willow: That's right. 

Leah: Until I go follow that muse. I want to look at life that way. I felt like it so deeply reconnecting me to my feminine and even your comment, willow, which I thought was totally genius you said.

Even something that repels us to stay present with that and discover what that's about too. It just, it opened my senses, it opened my imagination. It opened me to my feminine. It made me feel like I was in my body. I just had such a rich experience personally.

Dr. Willow: Yeah, I know. Me too, I always do when I sit with Elayne. She really gave us such a great synopsis too, of the shadow and the light.

One side of eros and the other side, there's this bright and shiny side of eros that we all want, you know? And we want to bring that into our sexuality and our erotic but if we don't pay attention to that shadow side, the other side of that coin, that's what can bite us in the ass. That's what can really take us out of integrity. 

I mean, those are some hard lessons, using our sexual energy to be impressive or to create status or to get something. it's like we're really misdirected and we get so much cultural information that wants to seduce us to give into those more base motivating kind of manipulations.

Dr. Willow: Absolutely. So the final thing that I'll say that really hit home for me with this interview with Elayne was just the permission that she gave to allow eros to be, a pleasure pathway. And even though repulsive the shadow sides, there's pleasure in that too.

So there's a lot of yin within yang and yang within yin when you're attuning your life to erotic desire and drive and following this thread of desire. Desire is not something that is going to for sure cause suffering, though it could, but it's this opportunity for you to actually discover more of who you are here to be.

Leah: Sorry. Okay. That rattle wasn't going to stop, I was like trying to stop. You know, the other thing I really appreciated is that over time we are collecting wisdom and we are hopefully maturing. 

And I really loved the example that she showed regarding her own journey of being in love and out of love and some of her personal path of relationship and that she's in this place of true sovereignty. Of really having developed her own sexual and spiritual and mystical connection to herself so that she's who she gets to be in partnership is really whole, is really mature. Is from this place of not needing outside validation, but knowing that you know where that really comes from, the richest place of knowing that you're okay is an inside job. And I loved, I loved that she left us on that note. 

Dr. Willow: She really brings the high priestess to the table. So, we all have that inside of us and we are all on the journey, herself included. 

And everyone's in a different place on their journey and it's all really valid. So this devotion to eros, the big thing that you can walk away from this with, is just devoting to that desire Oh, that over there. Oh, that's interesting over there. Rather than the, I need to get all these things done. Because that causes constriction in your nervous system. And when you go to like, oh, that thing looks interesting, and it's even just a perspective shift. Like you still need to get the checklist off, you know, done.

But you can look at it differently instead of like, oh, I need to go edit that interview. You could be like, oh, that was such a great interview. I'm going to go back and like re-scan and look through it. And just re claim your perspective and how you look at things in life . Through the lens of eros. 

Leah: So true. And I think the other gift is that when you lean into what kind of sparks that aliveness in you, the gifts that come from that. And so, ooh, let's everyone just lean into the sparkle plenty. 

Dr. Willow: The sparkle plenty. And let us know how that interview hit home for you. We want to hear . 

Leah: Love, love, love. 

Elayne: Thanks for tuning in. If the hosts seem to know what they were talking about, that's because they do. Leah Piper is a Tantric sex master coach and a positive psychology facilitator. Dr. Willow Brown is both a Chinese and functional medicine doctor and a Taoist psychology teacher.

Don't forget your comments, likes, subscribes, and suggestions matter. Let's realize this new world together.