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CallaFirestormBW -> RE: "The Rise & Fall of the M/s Community: A Cautionary Observation" (8/26/2008 12:48:13 PM)
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~fast reply~
Ok, this is kinda long -- the following paragraph had a profound impact on me:
quote:
I believe that comparison holds even truer for our M/s community, because unlike the “Top” and
“bottom” of an SM scene, whose energies are generally centered in the physical body, the energy
of a Master/slave relationship, because of its archetypal nature, is centered in the spiritual body.
That being the case, then as I said to those gathered at that LLC, “when spiritual teachings and
practices—and that includes SM and our M/s-D/s culture—are fashioned into a communal
doctrine , a dogma, really, pollution sets in. As the community then evolves into an institution,
whether by design or otherwise, the pollution increases, and the underlying intention of the
community’s leaders mutates from that of facilitating the awakening of the students to
maintaining the institution at all costs. When that happens, the community’s pursuit of
freedom—freedom in its most profound sense—is pushed aside by a toxic tribal dynamic of
coerced reverence, oppression of new ideas and the vilification or banishment of those who
would question either the dogma or the authority of those who created it.”
I've been exploring the relationship between BDSM and spiritual expression since I became actively involved in the community a little over a decade ago. I've been walking a path, over the past 26 years, that is so far outside the mainstream of spirituality that we have abandoned most doctrine (I can't say 'all' doctrine -- we do have aspects of our path that we hold close... but they are more 'practice' related than 'perspective/concept' related). I've seen my journey reflected in my attitudes and behaviors in the D/s community, and seen my comprehension of BDSM and D/s reflected in changes to my understanding of spiritual expression. In the process, I've become much less judgemental, I think, about other people's choices, placing my boundaries at the point at which an individual gives consent or accepts consent from another regarding any given action. In the same way, on a spiritual level, I do not find myself judgemental about how an individual recognizes and expresses hir presence and awareness of existence (hir own or the Universe's) as expressed through hir spirituality and religious choices. I've found that, for me, the flexibility of doctrine has made it possible to develop meaningful relationships with individuals whose beliefs are dichotomous to my own belief structures, made it possible for me to share concepts without inciting hostility in others or creating a hostile environment for communication, and has broadened my own experiences and understanding profoundly, since I can hear others ideas without seeing the persons or the ideas as a 'threat' to my dogma, and recognize when someone else's concept has a value that might clear a cloudy space for me, or open up an area of expression that I hadn't considered. Both my D/s life and my spiritual life have flourished.
I believe that existence is a unique experience for each person, and that this is important -- because it is this unique perspective that each of us has, even when we share experiences, that broadens the knowledge in the Universe... I cannot judge the value of someone else's experience or perspective. In the same way, no-one can judge my perspective or experience. It is completely subjective, and even when we choose to share information about how we perceive, we and our listeners are both bound by the perception of what is being shared. At the same time, while I may recognize that someone else's perceived experience (and therefore, the concepts xhe derives from that experience) cannot be -wrong-, I can also recognize that it may not be functional for -me-... that something in my own perceived experience makes that perspective ineffectual or invalid in my own life pattern. It doesn't mean that the other person is bad, wrong, or mis-informed... it just means that we're working with incompatible data sets.
I think that the biggest issue, and the greatest threat to our capacity to exist in civil cohesion comes from our need for external validation of our practices and beliefs. If we believe, within ourselves, that what we are doing is right FOR US, we don't seem to need to knock other people down in order to validate our own power. For the people who accept and embrace their own power (whether they use or yield that power), these individuals don't seem to feel the need to be rude, or crass, or judgmental. They are willing to offer knowledge where it is asked for, and they are both able and willing to accept that another's different choices do not negate their own.
Before we can lead, we must accept that we have a right to -be- leaders. That validation cannot come from outside... no matter how many people say that someone is 'good', that person is unlikely to believe it until xhe recognizes hir own worth -inside-. By the time that happens, xhe doesn't -need- people outside of hirself to validate that xhe is a 'good' person or a skilled master/dom/keeper or a quality servant -- xhe already understands hir own worth, and is comfortable and healthy in that place, regardless of what outsiders think or say.
CFB
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