Why do I call Sexual Fantasies 'Story-based Consciousness Tech'?

What do I mean when I say that our spicy fantasies are consciousness tech?

Actually, all stories are consciousness tech. They have an effect on our physical responses, feelings and mind state. They activate our internal experience, change our beliefs, and take us somewhere inside ourselves. 

In other words, they change our state of consciousness.  Sexual fantasies are a specific subcategory of story that has an even more precise effect on us because our own psyche makes them up. Who knows us better than our own subconscious?

How are all stories Consciousness Tech?

A woman smiles and blushes while reading a book, demonstrating that stories create physiological, emotional and mental effects.

Empires rise and fall on the strength of the stories they tell. Companies are aware of this and spend a fortune on branding and marketing stories. 

Humans can’t even think without stories. Stories are the core operating system of human experience and thought. 

We think we remember facts about what happened yesterday, but we don't. We remember a story about select facts from yesterday.

Similarly, we don’t get sexually turned on by facts like our partner's physical appearance. We largely get turned on by the story we project onto physical appearance.

The Mistake Tech Founders, and Sex Researchers Make...

... when integrating relational and erotic intelligence into AI, sex tech, dating apps, gaming, films and fantasy platforms.

Most models of erotic intelligence are focused on the wrong thing. Relational and sex tech innovators are trying to customise the user experience by focusing on the physical appearance, costumes, and props of the actors, while missing the story unfolding in the theatre of our minds. Click data and role-play tropes are not the real story either. 

Sexual fantasies are a specific kind of story designed for specific effects. They are designed to overcome our natural, healthy egoic resistance to vulnerability so we can open to pleasure and/or intimacy. They help us lose our inhibitions so we can lose ourSELVES in the moment… and in each other.

In other words, they are ego-dissolution tech (they quiet our default mode network). And they are precisely tailored to each individual. After all, they are made by our own minds. 

Most people take them literally and think that “living them out” is the point, but that isn’t the most effective way to harness them.

Understand how to map the unique story engine underneath each person’s sexual patterns and fantasies, and you unlock exactly how to help them ethically create real-world, and tech-assisted experiences that create the satisfaction and intimacy they truly desire. 

That's exactly what The deVinery Method does.

It was by shifting from the traditional psychological lens, and analysing sexual fantasies through the lens of story-theory and consciousness studies, that enabled me to decode what sexual fantasies are, what they mean, and how we can use them in ethical and precise ways. This shift opens the possibility for billion-dollar innovations and brand strategies.

Think you don’t have sexual fantasies or that they are all overtly saucy? Think again.

The mental part of what arouses us is pretty much universal. The propensity to have sexual fantasies is pre-cultural and pre-childhood experience. Sexual fantasies are built into the operating system of the human mind from the get-go. Some people are more aware of them than others, but they run in the background of the moment nevertheless. I argue that sexual fantasies manifest in unconscious micro relational moments every day and drive our behaviour in all areas of our lives, not just the bedroom. They are the basis of all sexual turn-ons and, in fact, all human desire. This is not just relevant to the shady corners of the internet. This is relevant wherever humans relate and tech supports relating.

Read a case study example: I show a woman, who is convinced that she is "fully present in the moment with her partner", that she too has sexual fantasies.

Learn more about how sexual fantasies function as consciousness tech and the mechanisms that trigger responses in our bodies, feelings and minds. Read this broader definition of what sexual fantasies are, and the story of how I worked it out, in this excerpt from my upcoming book, 'The Spirituality of Smut: The surprising wisdom of sexual fantasies.'

(Note: the term 'spiritual' here refers to the way that sexual fantasies can help us have the kinds of experiences where we temporarily quieten our default mode network. From mild to wild. From simply losing our inhibitions and entering flow state, "two-become-one" romantic experiences, right up to subspace, ecstatic states or full-blown non-dual Oneness experiences.

I do not assign any meaning to this other than that it is the kind of experience referred to as a spiritual experience in almost all cultures across continents and throughout history. The changes in state of consciousness are objectively real and measurable, but the meaning you place on them is up to you.) Author: Artemisia de Vine: Erotic Intelligence Architect for AI and Humans | Desire and Consciousness Philosopher | Mistress of Paradox | Founder of The deVinery Method This article is cross-posted in variant form on GitHub, Zonodo, Substack and LinkedIn, but this version on this version on https://devinerymethod/blog is the canonical version. ORCID: 0009-0001-6420-5561

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