WHAT IS THE EMOTIONAL PATH? |
Originally, it takes courage to consider slavery because it sounds to us like it is so far from the ordinary. And, first off, anyone who doesn't feel successful isn't even qualified to become a slave, because being slave is the final and highest level of consciousness, it is the acceptance of destiny. It is easy to give everything up when there isn't anything to give up. It is, however, a real challenge to risk anything when everything is going well for you, everything except for being who you are, except for having your integrity. Once the courage is found to begin the pursuit of slavery, a method to begin has to be discovered. Some advertise and spend a night or a weekend at a time with someone who has mutual interests in providing the slave environment. Others pay for the experience by the hour from professionals. Others research, and find a safe and supportive environment for a weekend where they can be with many others at the same time, such as at Butchmann's Academy. When those who are slave are first exposed to real slavery, when they have a chance to experience and consider slavery as a possible life, there is a tremendous elation and a tremendous release. The hole in our life that has become bigger and bigger over time feels as though it might have a "cure." It feels as though there might really be a solution to what is missing from our life. Phase 1. Acknowledging that there is something real and satisfying in our lives that has been suppressed by our self control. Our lives are a tremendous investment. A lot of bumps and bruises, many attempts and failures, and finally, personal, ego-driven success has been experienced. We deny ourselves the easy way to make it to success. We do what those we respect have told us to do to achieve. We do many things that no one else has supported us in, but that worked out anyway. The success is our pride. If we are healthy, it doesn't feel like the effort was wasted. There might be some regrets. We might have gone without a childhood. We might have denied our gay sexuality. We might have lived like we were straight, without even the enjoyment of our fetishes or non-standard heterosexual passions. We have acted ordinary, when we aren't. When the light starts coming in the window, it feels wonderful. We think that we are through having to experience anything negative. We hope that it will all be down hill from here. We feel we might have reached the end of trials and tribulations. Life is now going to be as easy as putting on a pair of handcuffs; easier, because someone else will put them on. Phase 2. Realizing that we have to let go of our facades and the images we have built. It has taken a long time to realize our current success. It has hurt us to have to live in the slave closet and keep up the smiles and faked excitement in our lives while our secret interests have haunted us. It seems like good news that we can let go of all of that. When we start to let go of that which we thought we hated doing for all these years something strange happens. We learn that the lies and deceit protected us. Our pride is even, partially, a product of how well we were able to manage the unmanageable. It's uncomfortable for us to let go of what we thought we detested or disliked doing. It has become a part of who we are. The people who know and love us have come to expect a certain consistency from us. If we begin to change, we rationalize that it will undermine the security that others feel from us because we are so predictable. Even if we can face our own fears regarding the loss of a self image that we have come to respect along with others who have come to respect us, we reason that we must hold on to the lies for the family and friends we have accumulated and developed over time. We find an internal objection to doing what we thought we have wanted to do all our life. It isn't as simple as we expected. It requires overcoming even more challenges that all those that made us successful, and in which we take such pleasure and satisfaction. Phase 3. We are faced with making the biggest decision of our life. The most basic of all sales theory is that we buy when the reasons to buy outweigh the reasons not to. Like any balance scale, we collect the reasons to buy on one side of the scale and the reasons not to on the other. When making a decision, we collect the reasons to proceed on one side of the scale and the reasons not to on the other. The reasons to become slave include because it opens us up to a part of our lives that has been hidden and suppressed. Other reasons are that it provides an improved environment from which we can sexually express ourselves, and that it gives us a way to belong, to feel a part of a community that is more specifically ours. On the "reasons not to buy" side, we know that it is going to change our life. All change has associated stress. Everyone we know is going to have to change their perception of us, decide whether they are now going to accept us, and many are going to criticize us. Life is never going to be the same, and we don't know how it is going to be. There will be more unknown, than known. The further we get into the process of identifying both the reasons to become slave, and the reasons not to become slave, we find that there are many reasons not to. Finally, we see the list of reasons to become slave is relatively short, and that many of those reasons sound selfish. Phase 4. Recognizing that there isn't sufficient reason to become slave without a strong belief in the spiritual imperative of life. There isn't enough fun, enough excitement, enough sexual satisfaction to justify giving up our current life for slavery. There has to be a bigger reason to become slave. What we naively associate with being slave can be acquired on the weekend, from those who are also satisfied by giving their attention, and interest for two days without feeling any responsibility for the remainder of the slave's life. Every conceivable benefit won't raise the stakes to the point that giving your life to slavery is worthwhile without adding to that list the fulfillment of our created purpose. There are many other alternatives such as becoming a regular SM practitioner, or finding a lover who likes to play. If we aren't ready to give our life to slavery, we can't become slave. It isn't that we become poor slaves, we don't become slaves at all. Phase 5. Accepting that being slave is about unqualified obedience. Slavery can occur only after all limitations of what will be done with our lives, and which areas of our life will be released to the authority we recognize are eliminated. There is no such thing as partial slavery. We live as we must live, in moral certainty, and without the possibility of moral failure, or our slavery isn't granted to us. Our slavery remains a moving target that we can't reach without unqualified surrender to obedience. The Universe is the only decider of who and when someone becomes slave. No man has ever been entrusted with that decision. Neither the man who might be slave, nor the one who develops him can decide that someone will now be slave. No one will ever become slave by accident, prematurely, or in error. Obedience is doing what the Universe wants us to do. We have to recognize that life isn't about us, and never was. Ånd, of course, it never will be. The confusion occurs when we try to take credit for the spiritual investment the Universe has made in us. The spirit can't act through us until we are qualified to have it work through us. So, it has given us the education, I.Q., and environmental influences necessary to to become qualified. If, after becoming qualified by the spirit, we egotistically claim credit for all that the spirit has done for us, we have pride we don't deserve, and we act as though we are trying to steal the result of the spiritual investment. We have no such right, and it should be no surprise that life is difficult and unfulfilling when we are egotistic, and in pursuit of what we egotistically want. Accepting our destiny, becoming obedient, to surrender or not, is the only real choice we have. It is a question of letting the spirit have its purpose. Are you going to give the spirit its purpose? Is it worth it? It is the only question that matters, and will be the hardest to make. When you feel you have more to gain than to lose, you will proceed with your slavery. So long as you feel you have more to lose than you have to gain, you won't proceed. It's that simple, and that straight forward. The answer comes in knowing the value and purpose of the spirit. The pursuit of slavery is the experience of all the right things we need to experience to gain sufficient information to make this one, single decision. Look forward to, and invite into your life everything, so that you will finally know what you need to know to decide what to do with your spirit's life.
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