What is Erotic Devotion? 💋

Most of us are really familiar with trying to be good, well behaved, and nice as the goal of our gifts and our practices. But what if we could liberate our relationships, intimacy, pleasure, and power instead?

In this episode, grace re-introduces the show and explores the liberatory path of erotic devotion.

Because when our wounds, fears, and secret desires emerge, they’re not coming up so we can judge ourselves and feel bad forever. They’re coming up so we can burn more brightly and become free.

You can only be a true leader and lover from the path of erotic devotion. Tune in to embark on your journey of surrender, empowerment and ecstasy.

we discuss —

• What the erotic is + is not
• How to connect with sensuality + intimacy
• Why destiny requires desire
• Ways to get out of transaction mode and why that matters
• The paradox of power and surrender
• Why devotion is not about victimhood or obedience

If you enjoyed the episode, check out —

• The Transformative Power of Desire & Devotion w— grace allerdice x Erin Kelley
• erotic devotion for modern mystics

Free resources —

Take grace’s free class EROS : INITIATOR ❤️‍🔥 — Learn what the Erotic actually is, why it's the answer to what's not healing in your life, and who it’s calling you to become — someone delighted and powerful

Stay Connected —

Subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your listens

Visit grace's website

Join the newsletter 💌

thanks for listening. peace, be well. 🙏

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome to the Erotic Devotion Podcast. I'm your host, Grace Allardyce. Welcome everyone. I thought for the first new episode in a while I would take a few minutes to properly introduce this new face of the podcast so that we can feel oriented together. And the good news is that the tone, the pillars of the show, the embodiment of my work has already been shifting in front of you if you've been listening for a long time. So at this point, most of what's changed has updated on the outside to meet what has already transformed on the inside. So if you've been listening to the show or are familiar with things that we've been making over the past two years, you'll have already felt this shift and the name change, the images, the branding, et cetera, all of that is a superficial but important update so that they are matching the inner and the outer. When I first started the show, I didn't really have a plan for where it was going or what I wanted it to become. I just had this strong impulse to start a podcast, which I didn't know how to do. And so I followed that impulse, which I'm so grateful for. And I love how it's evolved, all of the beautiful relationships and connections I've been able to make and deepen through this show and all the things that I've learned from having a podcast. And now my work has grown into a more specific tone and focus. It really knows who it is now, and I know who I am in it. And in the beginning, I was just interviewing whoever I was found interesting, who I wanted to talk to about general magical things, spiritual things, and all of that is still true. But the realm and that this has landed in, and what I'm calling it is erotic devotion. And it's landed here through a very wild synthesis of my practice, my studies over the years, my personal initiations, the things that I authentically feel called to do, and that have really arisen from the ground of my being and my journey. These are the things that I also enjoy teaching the most, writing about the most, and helping clients with. And so it felt important and useful to really just reframe the door a little bit. So I recently described myself as a rogue scholar. I'm not an academic. I don't like being in school. I don't like having my schedule controlled that much. And I don't like to be around that much talking all the time. And I definitely could have been a theology or a philosophy major in college. And I've definitely been into all of the mystic and the esoteric and all of the things about the divine and our embodiment for my whole life. But I wasn't that. I was a dancer instead. And I find that the dancers and the artists, they have just as much intellectual rigor and inquiry, but they're interested in what does it feel like? What shape does it make? What sound does it make? How do we move this into real time? How do we transform this in front of people in real time? I don't want to just talk about it and read about it. I want to embody it. I want to do it. I want to conjure it. And I feel like that is a strong impulse that's been with me my whole life as well. And that's really been a driving force that has been a calling to embody the erotic. I don't want to just give you more content. I don't think that's what anybody needs at this point. We're not lacking information per se, but we're lacking this erotic approach, something that you will find consistent across all iterations of my work. Wherever you're encountering me, whether we're in ceremony together or a retreat or a class, in person, online, we're not just sitting at a seminar and talking about things all day, but we're gonna feel it, we're gonna move it, we're gonna do it. And that's something that's really important. So why the erotic? And that's because it centers our embodied experience. It centers how we move, how we actually live, not just how we think about how we live, how we love, how we feel, how we turn on, how we have sex, our sensuality, our full or not access to our senses, the quality of our relationships, how we're touching other people, engaging other people. It's how our soul actually hits the ground and how it does or doesn't feel good here on the planet now, and what that trajectory is going to ask something of us that's different if we're being intentionally erotic. And this has been the field of my greatest learning in life, my greatest challenges, but also my expertise. This is where I've spent the most years, the most sessions, the most reps guiding, learning myself hard lessons, guiding other people towards, and all the things that I do, all the things that I offer are pointing back to this erotic thriving, to your capacity to receive the full spectrum of what life is offering and how you relate to desire, how you do or don't feel pleasure at being alive. How do you grow your capacity to hold power and express this power in your body, your soul in your body? And in a lot of spiritual contexts that most people orient to, we take for granted that the erotic is something that's separate from spirit. It's something that we tolerate about our humanity. Like if we're being spiritual, then we're doing something ascetic. We're doing, we're meditating, we're praying, but when we're being erotic, it's just this, you know, this thing that we have to accept about being mortal. But in the threads and lineages that I hold in my work, the erotic is the expression of spirit. We are here because of desire. And so relating with and from desire and learning to embody that in a way that feels good and lets our heart get broken and lets our heart come back together again and lets us come into ecstasy, all of that is really important. It is an expression of spirit and your spirit. So when someone says to me, Oh, I'm super spiritual, I'm really devoted, I love being in ceremony, but like your marriage sucks and nothing feels good, and I hate everything going on in the world. What a terrible time to be alive, and I don't trust anyone, and blah, like to me, that's not enlightenment. That's a massive disconnect. That's not a sign of anything going right in your spiritual life. That's a disconnect that's being severed from the erotic, and we're calling it spirituality and devotion. Whereas I'm looking specifically at your erotic life, your relationships, your pleasure, your creativity, your sex life to be the food and the fuel and the flowering. It's where we find all of that. We can see how well that's going when we look at your erotic life. And so often what happens is that's where we're beginning. If you don't feel good in your body ever, then we have to start there. We can't just jump into devotion and God and all of these other things. We have to start where your body actually is. And I can't tell you how many times I regularly sit in front of people who tell me their stories of ways that they were shamed for being in their erotic flame as a child or high school students, whether they were caught self-pleasuring or having sex with their boyfriend and made to feel terrible about it, whatever it was, just enjoying being alive and feeling good. But it's cultivated a sense inside that they're bad, they're being bad when they feel good, or that it's not actually worth pursuing. It's not productive to feel good. And this is deeply ingrained in our culture and in our nervous systems. Even if it wasn't explicitly taught to you through some kind of religious system or doctrine or the rules of your house, we still inherit the imprints of how other people relate to the world. We inherit their physicality, their nervous system reactions, uh, epigenetically and otherwise. Everyone thinks they're hiding their fear and their guilt and their resentment and their shame because they don't talk about it. They think their kids can't tell that you're terrified and feel guilty, but they can. Just because you don't say anything about it out loud doesn't mean people aren't inheriting it and picking it up. Your nervous system, your aura, your emotional field, all of that is read aloud and clear. And it is translated to them and inherited by them, whether they consciously realize that or not, just like you inherited it, probably without consciously realizing it. And so the good news is all of that can heal, but it takes some magic, a radical ensolement and acceptance. It takes a really new story about what your life means, how it feels, what your life is up to, what life in general is up to, and how to get on board with that. And it also requires these felt, embodied experiences and practices that will expand who you are and what you're capable of feeling and thinking, what you're capable of freeing up. And while the erotic is wider than our sexual expression, it does include that. It does include your sexuality, your intimacy, your sensuality. I think that's really important to stay centered in that. There are conversations that are like the erotic is just this like vague connection to life force and blah. And that's true. It is that. And but I think we can get really comfortable in that and just find another way to keep it separate from our embodied experience from the things that where the pain and shame and guilt is really lurking and wants to be liberated. So when we say, oh, it's just a connection to life force, it is that. But let's be careful that we don't de-physicalize that, trying to clean up something that is inherently physical and sensual and relational. The erotic is also the force that's pulsing underneath all of life. As we said, we can and cannot see it. And this force is always transforming, it is always pulling us towards wholeness. And this theology of wholeness is really integral to the erotic, or it's what I call a theology of wholeness, and it's the center point of all of my work, the book that I'm writing, etc. If you want the wholeness of your erotic flame and all of its rewards, its desire, its pleasurable capacity, its healing power, if you want to be on the fullness of the great ride of your life and who you are, then your obsession with being right and good and perfect and judgy is going to have to go. And what becomes welcomed in its stead is usually something you've been trying to earn and deserve. But it's actually something that you can just receive. You can't earn it and you can't deserve it. That's not the transaction loop that it lives in. And this is a hard jump for people. It's an initiatory jump, meaning you're gonna have to do a little death resurrection to get into this new loop because we're so oriented to being very good. And we have different ideas about what that looks like, but I can smell when that's the engine driving somebody's life car, and I can smell it from very far away. I'm like a fucking hound dog for that shit. And the guides and the guardians and the lineages that I embody and weave into my work are blood drinkers for that shame and that unworthiness. They are ready to gobble it up and really move your conversation, your embodied experience into something ecstatically free and surrendered and powerful and delighted. And it makes me think of what Jesus said: that the yoke is easy and the burden is light. Or what is Mott weighing your heart against on the scales? She's weighing your heart against a feather. A feather is very light. You are enlightening the load on your heart until it weighs less than a feather. That's the entrance exam. And you better believe that that feels amazing. The erotic will get you there, and the enlightening feels good, and it is so different than everything we've been trained to be and appreciate and value. And so the topics that we will be getting into around the erotic are topics of desire, and yes, sexuality, intimacy, and relationships, also your destiny, because your destiny is intrinsically connected to your eroticism. Most people are not embodying the fullness of their destiny because they feel so unworthy and so ashamed and so scared. Their desire is so impaired. And they want to have a conversation about destiny. And it's like, we can't until we get this desire online. Your desire is trying to steer you towards your destiny, but you're afraid of looking bad. So how you relate to your desire is very important. How you work with it is very important. The ways that you've been taught to relate to it are probably not masterful and not true. Even in modern culture, social media culture, it's like you're entitled to everything you've ever thought about if you think you want it. Or, you know, shun desire, it's going to get you in trouble. And both of those and neither of those are true. We feel good when we are operating in what we're designed to do. But it takes a full inside out, full soul, full body coming so hard in the shower, shampoo commercial. Like, yes, like the most people don't have access to that. And that's why my work exists, because you need access to that if you want to embody the level of destiny and desire and fulfillment that you want. And that process will, of course, bring up all the reasons you are not already doing that. It will bring up all of the wounds as to why that's not already happening. And that's why this work exists and these offerings exist. The erotic is really difficult for a lot of people. There's usually a lot of wounding there. Everyone has relational wounds and injuries. Because we have so much inherent yearning and longing for connection in all of these ways, it is also where we get hurt the most. It's where our God wound shows up. And when all of these things start coming, when the erotic starts to invite and perk the body and perk the heart back up, it can be painful. We need to work in a way that's contained, in a way that's guided, because it can be painful to feel the distance between where we are and where we want to be, between who we are and who we want to be. And if you get nothing else from this episode, I hope that you're moved to not shy away from that. When the pain perks up, when all those things that you don't want to feel or acknowledge rise to the surface, the things that make you feel not successful, like you're not doing it right, whatever that is, that's desire trying to come back on inside of you. That's the pilot light of the erotic trying to turn on again. And I hope that you let it do that. And if you need support and guidance and magic and containment, well, you're in the right place. Because it's something that we must follow if we want to be who we are, if we want to feel alive, if you want to have beautiful relationships, if we want to have access to beauty in general, the erotic is always trying to lead you back to the self, the capital S self who is whole, always trying to lead you back to the divine. And I'm not so sure those are different. Most of us are really familiar with just trying to be good, with trying to be well behaved, with trying to be nice. But I promise you that this orientation to your story and your healing journey is going to be spicier than that. And it's going to not stop until all parts of you are bearing that light and free load. The erotic returns us to these paths of radical integration and orgasmic acceptance. And that's not about renouncing anything, but it's about embracing everything. And when we do this, bonus points, you experience more pleasure and more power. You feel yourself get more of your gifts. Other people start responding to you differently because you are in your life in that way. You become more of a healing presence. You feel less separate, you feel more free, you stop feeling like everyone else has to be different and life has to be different. In order for you to feel okay, you find that you're reveling in the joy of the gift of life, and then you are embodying life. And when you're in that space that's radically embodied, accepting, enjoying, you might even call it unconditional love. But when you encounter that, that's when you really find the acupressure point of true magic and the fire of transformation. That's paradoxically where things can really start changing. And I'll likely spend the rest of my life talking and working with erotic and devotion, unpacking what they are meaning in the moment, in this person's particular story, in this context, how it's healing and freeze. And so I'm not trying to fully encapsulate those here in one episode. This is the whole journey. And it's definitely my life's work.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

We already talked about how a lot of what the erotic is trying to do within us, what it will ask us to do, is integrate these paradoxes.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

And devotion is another big paradox. So we have this path of the erotic that leads us towards the body, our mortality, our sensuality, our vulnerability, our intimacy, all of these things that are fleeting and mortal and impermanent. But rather than seeing them as less valuable because they are those things, the erotic asks us to see them as equally valuable. And this is where devotion comes in, because we're devoted to what we're able to love. Devotion isn't just something for the things that are eternal and divine and spiritual. It's not just for the things that we think are pure and perfect and good. It's for the everyday. It is for every situation. It is for every moment. It's for your spouse. It's for your partner. It's for your coffee date. It's for Tuesday. It's not just for the retreat or for the meditation. It is for your work and for your rest. And devotion is this deepening of commitment. Commitment is important. It gives us containment and direction that we need for really lasting important alchemy to happen. Commitment brings our will and our desire online into something that is spacious enough and big enough to where we can really get into the fruits of our labor and our desire. But devotion is a deepening of that or an elevation of that to me, in that it's not enough that you have staying power or willpower. It's not enough that you can stay with the thing. You have to bring desire. It's not just enough to do the thing, it's how you do it. It's not enough to touch it or complete it or check it off. It's how you touch it, how you do it, who you are while you are touching it. You have to bring your soul and your spirit and offer your body and bring all of these things online willingly, not just willfully, but willingly, desirously, not just dutifully. And that will ask a lot more of you, probably more than you have access to right now. And that's okay. That's part of the ride, and that's part of the promise of this work is to restore you to you so that you can even play the devotion game. Devotion is this way of being with life that takes us out of transaction mode where we're giving X to get Y. Devotion gives because it loves. Devotion offers itself up as an offering as the gift because it could do nothing else. Maybe it will get why in return, but that's not why it's giving it. Together with the eroticism, these are going to ask for all of you. And that's something I say inside of my containers all the time, because it's what I'm always pointing back to that we're retrieving. The parts of you that you think are not worthy, the parts of you that don't know how, the parts of you that think you're not good enough, the parts of you that you think are bad, the parts that you disdain, the parts that you love, the parts of life that you wish would just go away and get better. They seem to not just be getting better. And why are they here? All of these things, the way that we love life, if it isn't perfect, that's going to ask you to become someone who can and who does and who enjoys that and is devoted to that. And the rewards of that are a healing force of life that can meet anything and heal anything. And it's an ecstatic exchange with life. It's not a transaction, but this ecstatic exchange of devotion pulls us into the field of magic and miracles and beauty. I was just teaching a class that deepens around this inside of my mom membership. But basically, when we think about exchange, we're used to thinking about a linear transaction. Like we go to the ATM, we put in the car, we get $20 out. I give you X, I get Y. And if my boundaries are good enough, that's how it works. You know, we love our money back guarantees. We love going back with the receipts to making sure that we get what's ours. But what devotion gets you, the field that it opens you up to, it cannot be consumed and it cannot be guaranteed. It is devotion is not linear and it has a lot of unknowns. And who you become on the journey is also unknown, and it is also the reward. And I would love to tell you that when you step into the field of love and liberation and ecstatic beauty, erotic devotion, that you know, you and everything about your relationships and your sex life and how you relate to God will just turn into a Disney princess movie. Like that would be great marketing for me. And I can't tell you that because that's not how devotion works. Devotion is an exchange with the universe for its own sake, art for art's sake, devotion for its own sake, life for life's sake. And all of your other exchanges within that with other people, with your work, et cetera, those are all just cosplays of your greater devotion with the universe. And our culture doesn't support that. It has a really hard time with that. We can't possibly understand the value of going to something that we don't know all about the guarantees beforehand, what time it starts and when it's going to end, partaking in exchanges without guarantees, embarking on journeys where our comfort isn't a top priority, or embarking on journeys where maybe we'll get to the place that we have X on the map, or maybe something magical will happen and we will end up somewhere and someone else entirely. Culturally, we don't have a huge value on that, but that is the field of miracles and magic and capital B beauty. That's where devotion wants to take you. And so it's no wonder that devotion in general, but also, you know, not to mention devotion to partners and pleasure and life and destiny, these are hard to come by. It's a masterful exchange to be in. And we want the guarantee, we want the receipts. But when we're stuck in needing and wanting that, we're in transaction mode and we will be barred from the field of devotion. Because the paradox is devotion and its rewards, the fulfilling fruit that we really want, can only be accessed if we surrender the need for a specific outcome. Rewards of devotion, the field of magic and the great beauty and the great work, we can only eat the fruit of that exchange if we surrender the need for a specific outcome and timeline. We don't offer X just to get Y. We offer X to get into the game, to get into the devotional field. And then we learn the euphoric paradox of surrender meets power rising up to meet each wave and tide and ebb and flow to what comes next. It's like stepping into the elevator with the hot dom in the suit who's like, sign the contract. And he then puts a blindfold on you and leads you to the sexy, sexy room where he's gonna do whatever he wants to you and you can't wait. It's like that. That's entering the field of devotion. You surrender control and you get taken for the ride. And this is where we get stuck. We get stuck in our relationships to one another, our relationships to our bodies, to sex, to the divine. We're stuck on the shitty Ferris wheel of transaction because we like our guarantees and we like our effects of certainty and control, going around and around and around, just waiting for our partner or our body to give us what we think we want and deserve. When, like, I'm just gonna hang out here and sit here until I get this, and they are on the rack. They're punished until we get that. We did it right. Where's the thing that I get for my right action and my formula? And around and around it goes. But the back and forth, the transaction field has to be broken. You have to leave it, you have to step sideways, get off the shitty ride, get off the Ferris wheel, get all the way off of that loop, which is going to require a whole new way of relating to yourself and to life and desire. It's a whole other loop entirely because devotion doesn't buy anything.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

It offers and it receives. And there are no guarantees.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

You have to enter a whole other field, a whole other story that plays by different rules. Anyone selling you devotional work that says anything different is either lying to you or they don't know what they're talking about. Because there are no guarantees, and yet the partnership you want, the destiny you want to embody, your pleasure potential, your divine belonging, all those things, they're not a guaranteed transaction, but they live on the other side of devotion.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

And that's the paradoxical puzzle ride.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

When we do things in this field of devotion, this is how you become someone whose touch and words and sex changes the world. And this can't be faked. You can't fake being in the field of devotion because the fruit tells you what kind of tree it is. If you're showing everybody, if your behavior, if your life is just showing everyone a bunch of rotten figs, you can't be like, I'm a pomegranate tree. It's not going to work like that. You can tell what kind of field someone is in by looking at their life. It will tell you what kind of fruit it is. That doesn't mean everything's always going right for the devotional people and it's always easy. It's not. But there's a quality, there's a taste of fruit that tells you what field someone is in. And the effect tells you what kind of seed it was. The fruit tells you what kind of tree it is. And so you have to enter the field of devotion. And what you want is on the other side of that.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

And you have to release the need for what's on the other side of it and do it for its own sake.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

And so I've been calling it erotic devotion for leaders and lovers because you will have to become both. You will have to become both a leader and a lover. There are all sorts of things in life, obviously, that happening beyond our control, but the thing that is your responsibility is your life and your destiny and your experience. And leaders are taking responsibility for their healing and their lives and their vision, their relationships, their power, their pleasure, not from a place of resentful obligation, but from a place of devotion and a willingness to be carved out by life and to hold life. Everyone has a purpose. Nobody can take that from you, nobody can give it to you. But your destiny is this whole other layer. Your destiny is something that you get with your arrows, with stepping into the devotional field, and you can't unlock it and step in like the leader, like the protagonist, unless you're willing to say, I don't know, but yes. And there will be people who come into my field of work and they you definitely resonate with being a leader. You're really good at structure and form in the material world. People respect you like a leader. You're organized, you're good at being in front of people and making things happen. And your edge is becoming the lover. And then there's others who come into this space who very easily identify with being the lover, but being the leader is their edge. The leader, the lovers have so much to give and so much desire and yearning and longing, and they want to pour out so much. But you need to learn to do this from an empowered place that's devotional and not just from martyrdom and victimhood. Because devotion is not about those things. Devotion is not about obedience. And so there's a new compass they have to find and learn the language of. And it's a lot more fun to be a lover when the loving feels good and you're not just bleeding your heart to death for existing. And so these are the paradoxes that must be integrated. These are the initiations that you are invited into, and you will find in them your unique embodied expression. And so as you listen to this, or as you return to it, as you found yourself on your own journey on purpose or accidentally, whatever is coming up to be healed, whatever desire or longing or wounding rears its head, it's not coming for you so that you can judge yourself more and hate yourself more. It's coming up because it wants you to burn more brightly and become more free, because liberation is what all of this wants. And you can only be a true leader and a true lover from a place of freedom. And freedom feels like bliss coming over and over and over and over again. And maybe that's what reality is doing all around us, and erotic devotion wants us to get with that program. So this is the ride that we're on. This is the ship that I'm sailing, the pilgrimage that I'm leading to a known, unknown destination. And I want to thank you all for being here. Thank you for listening. You are all invited. You can see in the show notes there are some free offerings and invitations to help you go deeper with this work. If you'd like to take a step closer into embodying your own unique stamp of erotic devotion and liberating your relationships and your intimacy and your pleasure and your power. And I'm so grateful that you're here. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please take a moment to subscribe to the show, leave us a review, or share the episode with someone who would enjoy it. Check out the show notes below for more about our guests, plus links to gifts and other resources to take you deeper. Our podcast music was produced by Santiago Paramo, our podcast art graphically designed by Sarah Mendoza, and photography by Charlie Watts. Thank you for being here, and we'll see you next time. Be well. Peace.