Gratitude - Where I am Led (by Julala)

Yes Sir, Thank You Sir.

In D/s do we use gratitude as a tool?  "Be grateful for your service", "Be grateful for your spanking", be grateful for your punishment".  What is the purpose of this tool?  Is it used to remind and strengthen the submissive's understanding of their place?  Is it to widen the divide between the roles of Dominant and submissive?  Gratitude is given and received in this context.  Does it increase the power of the recipient?  Does it decrease the power in the giver?  ...or is it the other way around? That is an interesting deliberation.

“A grateful mindset can set you free from the prison of disempowerment and the shackles of misery.”

― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

In society in general, saying thank you is good manners.  When the cashier hands me my change at the till and we both nods and smile and say "thank you"....Am I truly grateful for her service?  I expect her service.  (Actually, in an age of terrible customer service I am bloody grateful and shocked when good service is given).  Perhaps this is gratitude is superficial.

Gratitude can be superficial and gratitude can be so deep that it touches the very core of your being.

"Serving others reminds me of my gratitude for the gifts I have to offer others."

 Christina Parker - Where I am Led

I remember in a previous discussion some months ago when we were talking about learning, I shared my thoughts from when I had considered the topic as a task for Master. At that time, there was someone at the discussion who was totally shocked by what I shared and could not believe that someone could be so delusional. *smiles*

Here is what I shared:

I’ve made mistakes, had sad times...done stupid and reckless things....but I have learned from them, I have done wonderful and brave things, had happy times.......and I have learned from them, I have met wonderful people, and a few not so wonderful...and learned from them....I have watched and listened, taken and given....and I have learned. I will continue to learn each step of the way.

Today, I stand by what it says and could easily replace "...and I have learned from them" with "...and I am grateful".  Am I delusional? perhaps.....but I don't feel delusional....I feel.....free.  A Zen Buddhist or Taoist might look upon it as a small step toward enlightenment....in a similar fashion to finding contentment.  *shrugs* well....I suppose one man's enlightenment is another man's delusion :o)

“Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses.”

― Alphonse Karr

How do you use gratitude in your D/s?  Which bits are superficial, are good manners or part of the scene, the roles, and which bits lay deeper in your being?  Last week we talked about Faith and the possibility that D/s as a "lifestyle" can be something that some people have faith in (in contrast to it being the people they have faith in).  Is it the same for gratitude?  Are you grateful to D/s?  Has it given you something that you are grateful for?

Please do join us on Monday (1st July) at 12pm SLT at the Temple of Discussion on Respect sim. Discussion is voice led but text also very welcome. Everyone welcome.

These Monday discussions are loosely using the service exploration workbook "Where I am Led" by Christina Parker as a point of reference. You do not need to have read or even seen the book to fully participate in the discussion.

oh...and...thanks for your reading this, for you turning up to the discussions, for your contributions large and small, for your thoughts, for the tips, for the laughs and for your company.  

Faith - Where I am Led (by Julala)

The definition of "Faith" gives us two main avenues to explore in its relevance to D/s.

noun
[mass noun]

1. complete trust or confidence in someone or something
2. strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof

Let us start with the first of these two.  Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

There are many that would say this would be a wonderfully positive trait of a submissive to have in their Mistress or Master.  In fact, one could argue that in order to give oneself to another, one would surely have to have complete trust or confidence in that person.  How foolish would it be to give yourself to someone that you had not complete trust or confidence in?

But....is it unrealistic to consider having complete trust in someone?  When we discussed Trust, it was widely accepted that trust is layered and that whilst we would require certain "must have" elements of trust in that person we might not trust "completely" in order to take steps towards submission and that it would be something that grew - not that was given as a whole.  

If this is the case....if we choose to submit to someone that we do not implicitly and completely trust in every aspect of life and being....is that in itself the act of faith?  The leap of faith.  The belief that it will be ok.  Is that rather a faith in the relationship rather than the person? or indeed faith in something completely different...

Faith can give strength, can give comfort.  Faith can keep you going when nothing else can.  Faith can kill, can break your heart, can save your life.  Faith is an undeniably powerful thing.

Faith is a rare loving strength that is a blessing to have even when it hurts to keep it.

Christina Parker, Where I am Led

The second definition of faith gives us something else to consider.  How much do we see D/s as a "belief system" in itself?  I was at a discussion last night and among other things we were talking about how much more we consider our values as part of a D/s relationship than we ever did in a vanilla relationship.  That is not to say that the values are different...but that we perhaps spend more time considering them, reflecting upon them and talking about them (I certainly never went to discussions about such things during my vanilla relationships).  We do, in D/s, tend to have a defined set of desirable values and qualities in the people and the relationships and the community.  Nobody can deny that familiar topics for discussion will include Trust, Honour, Love, Service, Obedience, etc.   It came to my mind though that there are other communities that get together to talk about values, and to reflect upon them - that base their relationships on standards and values that have been defined and are actively encouraged among their fellow [insert religion here].

So....how much faith do you have in D/s as a chosen [yikes I'm going to say that word] lifestyle?  Is it D/s as a way of living in a relationship that you have belief in? Have you found that you have lost faith in D/s?  

Danger tends to lurk when the second definition of faith starts to merge with the first.  When one develops a trust and confidence in someone purely because of our strong belief in the D/s religion lifestyle/values.  "He is Master, therefore I must obey, therefore when He tells me to lay down in the road I will, and I will take joy in it",  "She is Mistress, therefore I belong to Her and only Her and so when She denies me seeing my friends and my family I know She is doing it for my best interest and I accept it with joy".  Yes, we hear such things......yes, some of us may have thought such things, yes we might have thought that this was the "done thing", the way it must be if you want to be a "true submissive".  Blind faith can be dangerous in every context.  But is not blind faith....the only type of faith there is?  

“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Please do join us on Monday (24th June) at 12pm SLT at the Temple of Discussion on Respect sim. Discussion is voice led but text also very welcome. Everyone welcome.

These Monday discussions are loosely using the service exploration workbook "Where I am Led" by Christina Parker as a point of reference. You do not need to have read or even seen the book to fully participate in the discussion.

Event Preview: Literary field trip on Friday, June 28th, 1 pm SLT

On Friday, June 28th 2013, at 1 pm SLT all D/s Academy members are invited to participate in a field trip to PCX Erotic Arts in SecondLife.

PCX Erotic Arts Adult Library was initially created for the Second Life adult community. What started as a ‘Post: Confidential’ tell your secrets sim in the Second Life virtual world, PCX Erotic Arts grew to house a library of original erotica,written by and for Second Life library patrons of all races, gender, preferences and avatar types over the adult age of 18.

http://pcxeroticarts.com/

Meeting point: Welcome Pavilion, D/s Academy, Respect
Tourguides. Gigi, Mysteri et al.

Being your slave, what should I do.....

Being your slave, what should I do but tend

Upon the hours and times of your desire?

I have no precious time at all to spend,

Nor services to do, till you require.

Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour

Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,

Nor think the bitterness of absence sour

When you have bid your servant once adieu;

Nor dare I question with my jealous thought

Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,

But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought

Save, where you are how happy you make those.

So true a fool is love that in your will,

Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.

William Shakespear, Sonnet 57

Dreams - Where I am Led (by Julala)

What is it that you dream of?  I don't mean your sleeping dreams...the surreal ones where your foot turns into your mother and suddenly you're eating toast in the back of a pickup with a small hamster in your lap...no...not those dreams.  I am talking about the dreams you have when you see the future you wish for yourself.  Your aspirations, your wishes, your holy grail, your fantastic goals.

For most people, when we were children our dreams were full of fantasy, full of magic and wonder.  As we grow up, often the realities of life squish and reshape our dreams to be smaller, longer, wider or simply hard to find at all in among the necessities of survival.  Our dreams will change as we go through our lives.

Sometimes it is difficult to express our dreams - perhaps we will be seen as weak, as a romantic fool or as an idealist in a far from ideal world.  Does D/s offer a small way to live out parts of our dreams?  Or does D/s set ideals that make it seem impossible to reach those dreams?

For many the idea of being able to live with their Dominant/Master/Mistress in a full-time relationship, to serve them daily, to feel cherished and owned....those are the dreams.  For some to come home to their submissive, have their dinner served to them, sex on demand and happily given, and to own someone....is the dream.  For others, even within D/s, this might seem a nightmare and not fulfill their idea of a dream at all.

For some submissives the dream is to wear a Dominant's collar.....but these days is that dream far too achievable...with velcro collars so readily available ....does the ease of wearing a collar make it less valuable a dream?

As a Dominant, do you encourage Your submissive to pursue and explore his/her dreams?  How do You do this?  and why?  Does Your submissive enable You to pursue and explore Your own dreams?

Do your dreams restrict your development or finding of happiness?  Do you put too much weight in attaining your dreams?  Will nothing less be good enough?  Do you spend more of your life seeking to reach your dreams....than living them?   Have your experiences in life left you willing to settle for nothing less than the ultimate dream?  Where is the line between having high standards and having idealistic dreams when we consider our relationships?

Perhaps dreams are a little like contentment.  Very short lived because if we achieve them we then seek new dreams to reach for.

For some of course, particularly in relationships, what they thought was their dream turns out to be a nightmare.  We have all heard the horror stories at the extreme end of the scale but even in every day relationships....our dreams can become....grey....lose their sparkle....or be dropped from a height and smashed.  What happens then?  How do we move forwards from there?

Please do join us on Monday (17th June) at 12pm SLT at the Temple of Discussion on Respect sim. Discussion is voice led but text also very welcome. Everyone welcome.

These Monday discussions are loosely using the service exploration workbook "Where I am Led" by Christina Parker as a point of reference. You do not need to have read or even seen the book to fully participate in the discussion.

Dignity - Where I am Led (by Julala)

Dignity

noun (plural dignities)

[mass noun]
1.  the state or quality of being worthy of honour or respect:

• [count noun] a high rank or position

2.  a composed or serious manner or style:

• a sense of pride in oneself; self-respect

For many in the "vanilla world" the concept of submitting to another....of being slave to another...to sit at a Man's feet (or woman), to be flogged or bound (despite it being through choice) is a surrendering of one's human dignity.  Those same people might also think that to strike a woman, or to expect to be served, to restrict pleasures and to enjoy the pain of others (even when consented and enjoyed by the the recipient) also bears the same lack of dignity.

Personally I put this down purely as a lack of understanding of the D/s lifestyle.  It is easy to see that an untrained eye will draw these superficial conclusions and bear a poor view of D/s and BDSM as a whole. 

However.....

Even when we (the D/s community) see through these superficial layers and recognise and embrace the dignity in submission, in Dominance, in the giving and receiving of pain, the giving of service.  Even within this understanding - we still see many different levels of dignity ....or lack thereof.

Like many other aspects of D/s that we have covered in this series of talks, I observe that many of its core values, or desirable qualities - weave symbiotically with those of simple and good humanity.  Whilst some will be heard to say "I am Dominant through and through" or "I am submissive right to the core of my being" - I might suggest that we are all....just "human".  These values [dignity, trust, honour, courage, etc] that we revere in D/s are those of any good "person".  Perhaps it is our D/s that merely helps us to achieve them.

I hear many lovely anecdotes and examples of how a D/s relationship has helped either or both parties to improve their self-confidence, their self-image, their self-repect and pride in themselves, their dignity.  How it has helped them become a balanced and healthy individual and beyond that in many ways.

Sadly all too often we also hear of both Dominants and submissives behaving in such a way as to reduce each other's, or their own, dignity.  Indeed some (even within our community) might even go as far as to say that a slave deserves no dignity.  We sometimes see Dominants work carefully to remove their submissive's dignity, their self-confidence and self-worth in an effort to retain greater control over them.  As I have said before - to me this type of behaviour has no place in D/s and is not Dominance or submission.  I do however accept that everyone has different definitions of what dignity is, what D/s is (or is not) and will have many differing opinions on where dignity lays within it.

Often I see behaviour on Fetlife, on Facebook, in Secondlife.....and yes, in real life too, that shows little dignity.  Squabbles, childish fights, rudeness, aggressiveness,  snarky comments, nasty retorts, attacks.  In my humble opinion little of this type of behaviour has dignity.  But also, I recognise that it also has little to do with D/s....and everything to do with simple human nature.

Enough of my rambling.

What are you thoughts and experiences on dignity and D/s?  Has a D/s relationship helped or hindered (grown or depleted) your own dignity?  What do YOU consider to be dignified and undignified within humanity and within D/s?

Please do join us on Monday (10th June) at 12pm SLT at the Temple of Discussion on Respect sim. Discussion is voice led but text also very welcome. Everyone welcome.

These Monday discussions are loosely using the service exploration workbook "Where I am Led" by Christina Parker as a point of reference. You do not need to have read or even seen the book to fully participate in the discussion.

Kinky? You're mentally healthier than 'vanilla' bonkers! (by Rik Myslewski)

Linkback to original article on The Register

Extract from article:

A new study has discovered that practitioners of "bondage-discipline, dominance-submission, sadism-masochism (BDSM)" tend to be less neurotic, anxious, and paranoid, and more extroverted, conscientious, and open to new experiences than members of the "vanilla" general public.

BDSM practitioners "either did not differ from the general population and if they differed, they always differed in the more favorable direction," concludes Andreas Wismeijer, coauthor of "Psychological Characteristics of BDSM Practitioners", published in the prestigious Journal of Sexual Medicine, reports Live Science.

The good doctor Wismeijer's primary field of research is the psychology of secrets and secrecy, and a "chance meeting with the founder of the Netherlands' largest BDSM Web forum," Live Science reports, got him to thinking that BDSM practitioners might be an interesting set of folks to study the psychology of secret-keeping.

He then put out a call to members of the BDSM community asking for volunteers for a survey; 902 signed on. For his control group, he advertised on a woman's magazine and university websites, plus a "personal secret website" to obtain non-BDSMers; 434 subjects agreed to participate.

Without telling his respondents the aim of his study – he merely told them it was a study on "human behavior" – he then asked them to complete questionnaires designed to measure their personality, rejection sensitivity, relationship-attachment style, and overall sense of well-being.

After tabulating and analyzing their findings, Wismeijer and coauthor Marcel van Assen came to the following conclusion: "The results mostly suggest favorable psychological characteristics of BDSM practitioners compared with the control group; BDSM practitioners were less neurotic, more extroverted, more open to new experiences, more conscientious, less rejection sensitive, had higher subjective well-being, yet were less agreeable."

Of course, the BDSM community is not homogeneous. Specifically, there are dominants, submissives, and those who enjoy playing both roles – "switches" in the leathery lingo. According to Wismeijer and van Assen, dominants tended to score the highest in all measurements, submissives the lowest, and switches exactly where you'd assume: in the middle.

But don't think that submissives are sniveling self-loathers. On the contrary. "Within the BDSM community," Wismeijer told Live Science, "[submissives] were always perceived as the most vulnerable, but still, there was not one finding in which the submissives scored less favorable than the controls."

Wismeijer is quick to admit that his study is not bulletproof. The self-selecting nature of the participants is one cause for caution, as is the fact that it's possible the BDSM practitioners skewed their answers to make themselves look good. But the fact that none of the participants knew what the study was about lessens that latter concern.

All things considered, he said, "We did not have any findings suggesting that people who practice BDSM have a damaged psychological profile or have some sort of psychopathology or personality disorder."

Or, as the abstract to the paper sums up Wismeijer and van Assen's findings, "We conclude that BDSM may be thought of as a recreational leisure, rather than the expression of psychopathological processes."

Creativity - Where I am Led (by Julala)

Every one of us has creativity inside of us.  Our imagination provides a canvas for us every day - each time we imagine the simplest of tasks that we will be undertaking in the day ahead of us.  Each time we remember parts of our days before.

Anyone that steps foot into Second Life and gives their avatar character, life, a look, a persona....has creativity.  For those who can not explore the wilder side of their own real life personalities, the darker side, the sexier side, the Dominant side, the submissive side.....the creative stage of Second Life provides a welcome release for many.

In reality, when living in a D/s relationship, creativity flourishes still....or is it that creativity enables the relationship to continue to flourish?  We inject passion, fantasy, romance and story-line into our otherwise rather normal lives.  Is it the creativity that allows the spark to stay strong?

 “Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious...and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” 

― Walt Disney Company

In creating scenes, planning every detail, what He says, what she says, the plot and the cast.  The lifestyle allows us to be directors of our own movie scenes at times.  Perhaps for some, it is the need for creativity that leads them to the lifestyle in the first place.

A Dominant can see creativity as a useful task of learning.  Indeed, my own Master has given me many creative tasks in order to help me self-reflect and for Him to learn about my fantasies.  I have always found it very hard to answer the question "what are your fantasies?  what do you fantasize about?" - it is much easier for me to demonstrate it through poems, art, photos, or moving pictures.  So in this way....Master can learn about what excites me, drives me, and what lies in my secret fantasies...without ever having to ask the question outright.  I can show Him much more honestly and clearly through my creativity.

Sometimes creativity can lead to disappointment.  I remember in my first D/s relationship being drawn so deep into the fantasy of it all that I often lost track of the reality.  I filled in the gaps, made my Master into a super-human.  Ignored the truth and painted over it with a wonderful fantasy.  At first it was all meant to be fantasy for me anyway....and it was a shock to me to find that the fantasy was spreading through my veins in real life and consuming my mind and body.  I refused to acknowledge Master's mistakes....found myself always making excuses, often turning it around on myself making it my mistake....not his...not Master...he could never make a mistake...he was my hero....so high on his pedestal.  Of course, when reality came calling I was left bemused, and shaken, and hurt.  But....whose was the fault?  Who had not been honest?  Could it all lay at his feet? No....my own creativity must take some responsibility in that.

This self imposed "creative plastering" works in other ways.  We often see the Dom/me (or submissive actually) who "plays the part" but in reality is not as big as the part they have cast for themselves.  A trap easily walked into in an online/virtual arena.  Often the mask becomes so comfortable that rather than admit that it is a mask....the wearer will disappear and don a new mask of similar stature to carry on the facade with someone new.  We also see this in communities as well as relationships.  People who profess their mighty experience "in the lifestyle" and then.....when their facade has become weak...or someone finds chinks in their armour of "truth"....they disappear....and sometimes re-appear as someone new.

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Remember though...we all lie...without exception....there is always an element of creativity in our own memories of how things happen.  It is not always with bad intent....just the way the human mind works its magic.  Those who say they never ever lie....are liars. *winks*

So....over to you....what have been your positive and negative experiences of creativity on your journey through D/s?

Please do join us on Monday (3rd June) at 12pm SLT at the Temple of Discussion on Respect sim. Discussion is voice led but text also very welcome.  Everyone welcome.

These Monday discussions are loosely using the service exploration workbook "Where I am Led" by Christina Parker as a point of reference. You do not need to have read or even seen the book to fully participate in the discussion.