http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrnkrQlgXIk
Often when you do work for/with people regarding their energy, you end up loving them. In some ways this is because we are forced to see their highest selves and push out toward that. It is also easier to catch the flow of energy when you are riding the waves of bliss, which come easily when you beckon them if you have a loving heart.
The toughest lesson for me, and one I am forced to re-learn, is that not everyone you work with is yours to keep. I don't necessarily mean this in the ownership category, though that could apply. But it does sometimes mean that you don't get to keep them in your life in any meaningful way.
I've been blessed to be able to keep many of the people I've worked with in my life as friends. But there have been a few that I may never get to see again. And those are the ones which cause me the most pain.
As I may have mentioned, I'm also a pervert, and I always have to ask myself what level of interaction with people is ethical when they are also in the lifestyle. Some people you can sleep with and it's not an ethical question, others it would be unethical to do so. The question has to be asked and answered on an individual basis, person-by-person. Will it negatively affect them and their energetic or spiritual progress? Is it necessary to sleep with them to aid their progress? Will it do harm to them, to you, or to someone else in their lives?
It's exceptionally important for me to honestly answer these questions before I act, and sometimes if my own needs aren't being met it begins to cloud the issues. I have people with whom I am becoming energetically intimate and I am needy and I begin to push in a way that threatens to cross the line...
Right now I am struggling because I have unmet needs that have to be addressed. At this point in time, I am only hurting myself, and I am trying to be careful not to harm anyone else. I keep saying I am not an emotional masochist, but apparently my actions would belie that...
I need to do everything I can to be harmless, as I want to keep everyone in my life that I can, especially people in whom I invest a lot of my energy and who I love.
I carry a laminated four-leaf clover in the change pocket of my purse as a physical reminder. It's not just that it's luck, and we can all use some of that. It was a small token that was given to me from a man I couldn't keep and who is no longer a part of my life. I miss him. I stalk him online every once in a while to make sure he's still in the land of the living.
But this small pressed piece of life reminds me that those preserved moments in time are precious, no matter what happens after.
And in the end, I don't serve for myself, though I need to make sure my own needs are getting met so I'm not playing the martyr card or becoming a husk of a woman.
In the meantime, I will be sad if I need to be sad, and try to respect the thin line.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Vulnerability and the Upper/lower Case Letters
What I'm going to talk about on this post may ruffle some feathers. I'm going to be talking about some psychology involving Dominants/Masters/Mistresses and some people think that one shouldn't assume to speak for (or about) those who don't fall into your own letter designation. So if nothing else, maybe this post will just offer some ideas to start the argument ("Oh, won't that be nice!")
Back in grad school during group therapy, I remember saying to my group that if there were a boot and a head underneath it, I wanted to be the boot. Now this was referring to things in life rather than a hot scene in the lifestyle. But what it said was that in a situation where there was an aggressor and perhaps a victim, if I got to choose I wanted to be the aggressor. This of course assumes that one must be involved in this dynamic, instead of there being a "conscientious objector" category. But at the time, I felt like if one had to choose, I would prefer to be the boot.
Why? I think that there is a feeling that if you are the one in the aggressor position that you are safe. That the things that get perpetrated upon you in life won't touch you because you are in control.
Now let me tell you I don't believe this any more. But I have often looked at some of the people in the lifestyle that have suffered from abuse in the past and wondered if their reason for choosing a specific designation in the D/s categories relied less on their organic way of being in the world and more because of what they perceived as a "safe" location in a fucked up world.
I think there are some people who feel like if they are the Dominant or Master that this safeguards them from having to deal with chaos, heartbreak, or any number of other woundings that life can bring. On the other side, some choose slavery as a way to make someone else responsible for them not for love or service, but for perceived safety.
This may keep a person from the slings and arrows of daily existence, but it doesn't keep anyone necessarily safe from emotional vulnerability. I have friends on the Capital letter side who really want a relationship which includes love, but they have been burned before and so try to safeguard themselves by not being emotionally vulnerable to their lower case relationship counterparts. This is also the case with some in the little "s" department who will give you service, let you beat and humiliate them, but will come unglued if you tell them they are loveable and loved.
The thing about receiving gifts of intimacy is that you have to allow yourself to open up to fully receive them. Which means that you are then vulnerable to the person who is giving this to you. This means that you both equally have the ability to hurt each other.
And no matter what side of the slash you're on, you are vulnerable.
For some people, this vulnerability means weakness. For some, this is automatically thrown in the "unsafe" category, even if your soft squishy parts (like your heart, I mean:) are being held very lovingly on the other side. And if your self-concept cannot let you be vulnerable, you cannot open up to receive the gifts that are being given.
I also think that it might seem easier to just happen to be vulnerable to someone than to consciously make the choice to become vulnerable to someone. It takes a huge amount of courage. You have to believe that you can recover from any blow they might make and that you are willing to take that risk on the chance that the gift is worth it.
There are many upper case types who say that a lower case type's full submission is a thing of great worth and something they crave deeply. However, I'm not sure that all of them realize what this asks in return. In order to receive that level of submission, you must answer in kind. In a perfect union, our counterparts make us be more rather than less in order to stay in harmony with them. In a perfect union, the level of openness in a submissive or slave is answered by the openness and care of their Master/Dominant.
I realize that the world is less than perfect, and even in healthy couples or groups we aren't always functioning in accord. I realize that people can be helped and benefited by relationships where they are only getting some of what they need in the long run. I understand also that I don't get to say whose relationship is healthy and whose isn't. People do what works for them, or at least what they perceive consciously or subconsciously is working for them.
I guess one thing the lifestyle gives us is theoretically a leg up on the communication spectrum from people in "less alternative sexual lifestyles." I know how hard it is in a vanilla-esque relationship to have to try and ask for what it is you'd like or need sexually. Talk about being vulnerable! You are possibly risking your relationship because your SO might be repulsed by your desires. Granted this can happen in a BDSM arena also, but we'd like to think that our openness about our strange desires and our openness to communication will spare us some of the hurts that this action might cause.
I have found that asking for what I want is extremely difficult. Some of this is the notion that I will be told no. And what will I do then?
I also find that I am vulnerable about any number of pedestrian things, such as will my lover or play partner find me pleasing or the experience I am having with them to be a satisfying one? And what does it mean if they don't?
What I mean to say in the end is that I want to have an authentic relationship where vulnerability occurs. If I am giving my soft, squishy parts into the care of an "other," then I want to be given theirs to care for as well. Perhaps how we care for each other looks completely different, but the desire to care for and protect one another should be present. Not because we fear hurt and cannot bear the idea of it ever happening, but because we trust that the person on the other end of the slash from us will try their very best not to hurt us, to be gentle with our emotions and practice compassion for us as much as they are able.
And we will probably hurt one another. And we will have to deal with that and make amends and learn to trust each other again.
But in the end, I prefer to risk being vulnerable, to choose it again and again, in order to have the chance, however small, to have something real.
The appearance of safety is an illusion we pay dearly for. And at this stage in my life I am no longer willing to trade an empty reassurance in exchange for that which will honestly free me.
Back when I was young and had my first real broken heart, I camped beside a creek in the middle of the wilderness for several days and read the love letters between Kahlil Gibran and one of the women who he loved, Mary Haskell. (http://www.amazon.com/Beloved-Prophet-Letters-Haskell-Private/dp/0394432983/ref=pd_sim_b_9).
I had grieved for the loss of my own love and had begun to heal, and it was time to move on in my life. The world was crystalline, poignant, greener and more filled with wonder than perhaps it had ever been for me. Something in me had sharpened, had been baked in the kiln of loss. And before I left this place, I wrote this on a sheet of paper. It isn't poetic, it's slightly redundant, but it meant the world to me at the time.
"Be that I may never give my larger self for some smaller comfort, for in the smaller comfort is the losing of my larger self."
Back in grad school during group therapy, I remember saying to my group that if there were a boot and a head underneath it, I wanted to be the boot. Now this was referring to things in life rather than a hot scene in the lifestyle. But what it said was that in a situation where there was an aggressor and perhaps a victim, if I got to choose I wanted to be the aggressor. This of course assumes that one must be involved in this dynamic, instead of there being a "conscientious objector" category. But at the time, I felt like if one had to choose, I would prefer to be the boot.
Why? I think that there is a feeling that if you are the one in the aggressor position that you are safe. That the things that get perpetrated upon you in life won't touch you because you are in control.
Now let me tell you I don't believe this any more. But I have often looked at some of the people in the lifestyle that have suffered from abuse in the past and wondered if their reason for choosing a specific designation in the D/s categories relied less on their organic way of being in the world and more because of what they perceived as a "safe" location in a fucked up world.
I think there are some people who feel like if they are the Dominant or Master that this safeguards them from having to deal with chaos, heartbreak, or any number of other woundings that life can bring. On the other side, some choose slavery as a way to make someone else responsible for them not for love or service, but for perceived safety.
This may keep a person from the slings and arrows of daily existence, but it doesn't keep anyone necessarily safe from emotional vulnerability. I have friends on the Capital letter side who really want a relationship which includes love, but they have been burned before and so try to safeguard themselves by not being emotionally vulnerable to their lower case relationship counterparts. This is also the case with some in the little "s" department who will give you service, let you beat and humiliate them, but will come unglued if you tell them they are loveable and loved.
The thing about receiving gifts of intimacy is that you have to allow yourself to open up to fully receive them. Which means that you are then vulnerable to the person who is giving this to you. This means that you both equally have the ability to hurt each other.
And no matter what side of the slash you're on, you are vulnerable.
For some people, this vulnerability means weakness. For some, this is automatically thrown in the "unsafe" category, even if your soft squishy parts (like your heart, I mean:) are being held very lovingly on the other side. And if your self-concept cannot let you be vulnerable, you cannot open up to receive the gifts that are being given.
I also think that it might seem easier to just happen to be vulnerable to someone than to consciously make the choice to become vulnerable to someone. It takes a huge amount of courage. You have to believe that you can recover from any blow they might make and that you are willing to take that risk on the chance that the gift is worth it.
There are many upper case types who say that a lower case type's full submission is a thing of great worth and something they crave deeply. However, I'm not sure that all of them realize what this asks in return. In order to receive that level of submission, you must answer in kind. In a perfect union, our counterparts make us be more rather than less in order to stay in harmony with them. In a perfect union, the level of openness in a submissive or slave is answered by the openness and care of their Master/Dominant.
I realize that the world is less than perfect, and even in healthy couples or groups we aren't always functioning in accord. I realize that people can be helped and benefited by relationships where they are only getting some of what they need in the long run. I understand also that I don't get to say whose relationship is healthy and whose isn't. People do what works for them, or at least what they perceive consciously or subconsciously is working for them.
I guess one thing the lifestyle gives us is theoretically a leg up on the communication spectrum from people in "less alternative sexual lifestyles." I know how hard it is in a vanilla-esque relationship to have to try and ask for what it is you'd like or need sexually. Talk about being vulnerable! You are possibly risking your relationship because your SO might be repulsed by your desires. Granted this can happen in a BDSM arena also, but we'd like to think that our openness about our strange desires and our openness to communication will spare us some of the hurts that this action might cause.
I have found that asking for what I want is extremely difficult. Some of this is the notion that I will be told no. And what will I do then?
I also find that I am vulnerable about any number of pedestrian things, such as will my lover or play partner find me pleasing or the experience I am having with them to be a satisfying one? And what does it mean if they don't?
What I mean to say in the end is that I want to have an authentic relationship where vulnerability occurs. If I am giving my soft, squishy parts into the care of an "other," then I want to be given theirs to care for as well. Perhaps how we care for each other looks completely different, but the desire to care for and protect one another should be present. Not because we fear hurt and cannot bear the idea of it ever happening, but because we trust that the person on the other end of the slash from us will try their very best not to hurt us, to be gentle with our emotions and practice compassion for us as much as they are able.
And we will probably hurt one another. And we will have to deal with that and make amends and learn to trust each other again.
But in the end, I prefer to risk being vulnerable, to choose it again and again, in order to have the chance, however small, to have something real.
The appearance of safety is an illusion we pay dearly for. And at this stage in my life I am no longer willing to trade an empty reassurance in exchange for that which will honestly free me.
Back when I was young and had my first real broken heart, I camped beside a creek in the middle of the wilderness for several days and read the love letters between Kahlil Gibran and one of the women who he loved, Mary Haskell. (http://www.amazon.com/Beloved-Prophet-Letters-Haskell-Private/dp/0394432983/ref=pd_sim_b_9).
I had grieved for the loss of my own love and had begun to heal, and it was time to move on in my life. The world was crystalline, poignant, greener and more filled with wonder than perhaps it had ever been for me. Something in me had sharpened, had been baked in the kiln of loss. And before I left this place, I wrote this on a sheet of paper. It isn't poetic, it's slightly redundant, but it meant the world to me at the time.
"Be that I may never give my larger self for some smaller comfort, for in the smaller comfort is the losing of my larger self."
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)