Imbalance of power from the other side

Power imbalance from the bottom is an idea that doesn't (in my humble opinion) get enough exposure in the world.  It is part of the idea of "mental health" that is essential to peaceful and rewarding human relations: a balance of power in a power-exchange is the only way this is going to work.  The power must flow like circulating blood, to and fro, between the partners, an ebb and flow like tide and ocean.  The sun must not dry out the water supply without providing the relief of rain; the rain must not pour indefinitely without providing recovering spells of dryness.

It is an idea to meditate upon, for sure: it does not look the same for everybody.  It feels differently for everybody.  But we all know (or do we?) when our power is being drained without restoring it.

(I am not talking about topping from the bottom.  Sometimes a sub takes the top position if there is a power-vacuum and nobody else is taking control, and there's no whining about it:  if a dom wants the control back, it's there to take.  I am talking, instead, about a chronic abuse of power; a time-after-time lack of needs-met, and placing the blame squarely upon the shoulders of someone else.)

It has been my experience that people in dominant situations have drained me of all my good humour and loving disposition (historically, not presently) and it has been a good learning to discover I can prevent this from ever happening again.  My main source of frustration, historically, is the lack of self-governance -- the lack of mental clarity and self-respect among those who presume to dominate others.  (Sir Will, Sir Tony, Sir Dwight, Sir RB, and of course Tasdron -- you have a lot to teach the world about good mental health and I thank you for being such positive role models in the world.)  But what about if the roles were reversed?  What about submissives who drain the resources of a dominant?  Can a dominant personality recognize it and distance from it when it is happening, without feeling like a failure?

Just as a submissive might think, "I am a failed sub because I cannot obey every single thing he asks for..." when he is asking for too much, so can a dominant think, "I am a failed dom because I cannot govern her wild moods and incredible emotional outbursts, no matter how I try..." when she is asking for too much (time, attention, solitude, life-force, punishment, discipline, sex, whatever).

Finding the proper balance -- meeting the needs of others and meeting one's own regimen of personal care -- is the key, of course.  It is something to strive for daily.  It means dominating one's environment and one's life: it means a dom is really, through and through, a dom.  Of course there will be imbalanced days when one gives more than is restored, or when one takes more than one has given.  If this is a chronic, persistent state then the imbalance is unhealthy, obviously.  If this is acute and rare, on the other hand, it falls within the range of human experience that can reasonably be expected of people to handle.  We all have bad days, even bad weeks, right?  We bounce back and give back, later.

When the honeymoon between sub and dom is over and when the reality of day to day living comes into focus, the balance of power had also better come into focus.  And this touches on issues of compatibility: during the honeymoon everybody is on their best behaviour and high as a kite from all those happy oxytocin and seratonin bursts from cuddles and undivided attention.  But does that mean you both are compatible?  No; it just means you feel good together, physically.  Other elements such as common interests, common habits, common routines that take you both out of the house for a while, common friends, or common desires to keep separate spaces (for example) will determine overall compatibility which will, in turn, determine regular and healthy doses of oxytocin and seratonin.  Not to put too fine a point on it.  Time will tell, in other words, and so patience... patience... patience.

And what can go wrong?  Someone gets stuck in the honeymoon while the other moves on to more realistic living.  Or, someone's best behaviour becomes too exhausting to maintain.  Or, someone failed to spell out a few key expectations during the negotiation period.  Or, someone failed to negotiate at all.  So much can go wrong and that smile turns upside down.  How will the submissive react?  How will the dominant control the situation?  Is this a problem of communication within the relationship, or is this a mental health issue?  Is the dominant behaving according to his own code, and is the submissive deteriorating into an unmanageable mess regardless?  Are the two partners simply not finding their compatibility anymore, and is either one of them really to blame?

I would like to let both parties off the hook and propose that a) Domination works only when the submissive gives her power to be dominated; b) Submission works only when the dominant actively seeks to understand the wonderful complexities of that offering; c) Compatibility works only when both parties want it to; and d) If either one tries to suck the emotional blood of the other, there is no harm in cutting loose if that is what will save your life.  It is neither a failure of domination nor of submission if you must cut loose someone who drains you.  And there is nobody to blame, either: there is learning, and then there is flowing onward as the sun shines over the next hill.

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Also, I really like this 10 quick tips to boost your seratonin.  This relates to physical and mental wellness, and frankly I do not trust a dominant (or a submissive!) who does not strive for perfect wellness.  (Nobody can achieve perfect wellness, but we can strive!  And keep striving.  It is a discipline that demonstrates the right attitude.)

The Dictionary, Page Seven

Adoration is a word of wonderment.  Going back through distant history, the word veneration is what people mean when they offer adoration -- a gift of personal sacrifice to someone greater, more enduring.  And veneration comes from, a long, long time ago, the Greek δοῦλος (doulos, “slave”).  Lately, we abuse the word "adore" loosely and terribly: sometimes we'll use the word when we are too shy to use "love," instead.  That colloquial substitution is not what the word means.  Rather, imagine an army of love singing with one voice, praising a God who walks now upon this earth:  "I wish you would think of me as your slave, for you are so bright that you shine like a God in my weak, human eyes. I will live only if it means you will make use of me, and otherwise I die."

It is natural for me to use a religious, spiritual lexicon when I speak about Tasdron.  It is natural for me to want to deify him because, as I've already explained, I do resort to hyperbole when the feelings become so grand and intense in my mind.

In my history with Tasdron, we have understood our transcendent revelations with each other through many different religions.  We have spent a long time in paradise, in the green olive groves sheltered by Mount Parnassus, and lately at the mouth of the Miya river in Japan.  We practice ritual and expression, art and intimacy, expression and thanks-giving.  Ways to forgive, and ways to elevate each other.  Ways to experience the elusive and evanescent joy of transcendence because of the realities that we create for each other.  Words are our reality.  Whoever says otherwise has not yet grasped that words actually have meaning, and that meaning is what creates -- nothing else creates.  When I cross my wrists above my head and plead only with my eyes, it is not until I cast the spell by speaking "I submit," that the reality of my condition explodes into meaning.  The word.

I have meaning now in the cathedral that represents the safety and knowledge and shelter of Tasdron.  Can I imagine ideas such as a dom unable to hear a safe-word?  Can I imagine ideas such as deception and collaring under an alternative character?  Can I imagine all the anxieties that come up in discussions where submissives grapple with how dominants have abused them, ignored them, taken from them, shelved them, deliberately manipulated them into a belief system that is not their own, insulted them or confounded them?  I can imagine.  I know that this process of adoration that I describe, in my incomplete way, is the intoxicating feeling of surrender and abandon that people seek:  the feeling of being adored by someone immensely powerful, and the feeling of adoring someone immensely powerful.  I know that what I describe is rare.  I also know that I am luckier than I can express.  The act of adoration offers a fulfillment that is more meaningful, more powerful than any other human action.  No bravery, no humility is so gratifying.  Adoration!  It is, incidentally, a chaste work, and a dominant can feel it from his submissive when she's offering, no matter how the offering looks within each individual sub.  Some doms force it out,  require it prematurely or demand it or push a sub into faking it... but a dom really knows when the submission is true.  Some doms have the patience to wait such that, in time, a sub will be so moved as to offer it spontaneously and completely of her own un-demanding heart.  It feels like a weightless flight with God.

No limits

After something intense and physical, a demonstration of the bond we share, something I was not expecting and something that awakened me to new levels of connection and new levels of understanding, he asks me, "I did not shock you, did I?"

No, of course not.  Yes, you totally shocked me. Both are perfectly true, and I love it.  But of course, they answer two separate questions.

The real, first question yesterday was whether I was alright, and so my answer is yes, I really am.  I am not shocked; I am alright.  The question that resonates now, though, in the aftermath, now that I'm thinking about it, now that I am awake and refreshed from a good sleep, now that I have eaten and worked and bathed and taken care of the home, that second question is much deeper: even though I am alright, am I affected?  Did I change?  A much different answer:  I am definitely affected.  It affects me.  Yesterday really affected me.  And I feel changed.  And that was the whole point of this journey:  and I want more.  

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Since I began this journey at the beginning of the year, I have come to the following conclusions about limits:
1.  When you are with someone new, limits are your best friend.  Make them strong, and make them hard.  They will, in turn, serve you as they prove yourself and prove your intended.  Treasure those people who defend your boundaries and encourage your boundaries, for they are true friends.

2.  When you are with someone more intimate than "new," limits are your barometer.  You choose whether or not you wish to test those limits and grow out of them, depending on the nature of your intimacy and the depth of your respect for each other.  Your limits may still remain strong, even if one person is allowed to approach them more easily than others.  And perhaps, not just approach but also alter.  Perhaps.  If you decide.

3.  When you are with the right person, and you both know that you can rely upon each other as though you were directly responsible for the daily breathing of each heart and the daily feeding of each soul, there is no such thing as limits.  You both want the same thing, and there is nothing else to want for.  Where you end and where he begins, there is hardly even a boundary separating you.  Intimacy itself becomes a boundary that you both create, and everything else lives outside of it while you both live safe, together, inside.  Doing whatever you want.  Knowing that you both are safe.  Safe as hearts.  That is, at least, how I feel.  I love this feeling.

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"At the bell tower" is the 100th post for One of Many Petals.  "No limits" begins the next hundred, and we begin it together, Tasdron and I, with all of my gratitude and love.  My exquisite submission, my great love, my perfect dreams and never-ending story.

Discipline - The Aspiration

Our destiny is frequently met by taking the very paths we have chosen to avoid it.  Sayuri's "destiny" in Memoirs of a Geisha comes up against her aspirations in nearly every chapter.  It is difficult to determine whether the happy ending to the novel is due to her destiny or due to her single-minded, purely-focused aspiration.  If we call it "destiny," she has been a passive passenger on a pre-ordained journey, and there has been no point whatsoever to her mental conditioning and emotional tribulations.  If we call it "aspiration," she has taken charge of her fate and brought about exactly that which she had set out to do on the day she changed her living.  From the moment of her prayer to the gods, she directed her mind, body, and spirit towards the one man she knew in whom kindness came easily.  The discipline of her aspiration is expressed here:  "With  my eyes squeezed tightly shut and my hands together, I prayed," she explains.  "I would suffer through any training, bear up under any hardship, for a chance to attract the notice of a man like the Chairman again."  And, every moment thereafter was devoted to this singular vision until, finally, at long last, she realizes her vision.

Sayuri remembers, "For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness."  She continues, "And when I raised myself to look at the Chairman, I had a feeling of leaving my misery behind me there on the stone wall."  To get very, very picky here, I notice that she says when I raised myself to look, and that is the key to this sentiment.  That is the definition, as I would understand it, of aspiration.  When I raise myself to look.  When I raise myself to look, I see more, and I see further.  I can change things before they happen.  I am not a passive recipient of destiny's hand (if I do not wish to be); I take an active participation in that which shapes me (if I wish it so).

I do not take it for granted that there is a destiny for me.  I do discipline myself so that I can face the world and all of the choices presented to me.  I do not wait passively:  I wait actively.  Behind my eyes, there are dreams, and there are ladders I craft to reach them.  There are butterflies - the symbolic metamorphosis is the achievement of aspiration.  My geisha name, Choji, a butterfly name; my sole aspiration, to become that which You have always wanted in me.

Discipline - The Body

"I wanted more than anything," says Sayuri in the novel  Memoirs of a Geisha, "to see the smooth skin of his face once more with its broad brow, and the eyelids like sheaths of marble over his gentle eyes...  I did finally let my eyes flick upward, though I blushed and looked away so quickly that he may never have known I met his gaze.  But how can I describe what I saw in that instant?  He was looking at me as a musician might look at his instrument just before he begins to play, with understanding and mastery.  I felt that he could see into me as though I were a part of him.  How I would have loved to be the instrument he played!"   This quotation is among my very favorites in the book.  It speaks in but a few lines what it takes me pages and pages of this blog to articulate.  It speaks from "my" point of view, the way that I see You (when You come to me, finally, wherever and whoever You are).
I enclose a picture here of some of my preferred musical instruments in Second Life: a lute created by Grey Kurka among the best crafted builds I've yet come across.  There is only one song ("Greensleeves") -- and when I say "only" I say it with the due reverence and awe that there is any music at all emerging from the collection of prims that performs its artistic beauty -- but it's nicely done.  There are other lutes with still more collections of songs in the world, but none that look like this.  And the two hanging shamizen built by Kahiro Watanabe are just a sample of what this music-maker has created in the world of Japanese instruments.  Kahiro's talent is extreme and perfect.  The music soothes exactly the ache that the soul requires when it craves music.

The technical perfection required of an instrument -- nevermind the player of the instrument -- is an expectation that goes without saying.  When I put a flute to my lips, the wind-pipe must be perfect.  The sound that results will be the perfect result of my mastery of the instrument.  My perfect mastery of the flute will not yield pleasing music if the flute, itself, is badly flawed.  Conversely, if the flute is perfectly-crafted and maintained, the sound will be off if the mastery of the instrument is incomplete.  So it is with my body and Your mastering, when You come.  In the novel Memoirs of a Geisha, Sayuri makes a point of saying that the Japanese value imperfection insofar as a hand-thrown cup is of more value (emotionally, meaningfully) than a store-bought, mass-manufactured cup:  there will be slight imperfections to the hand-thrown cup, and those imperfections contain the character of the vessel.  (Imperfections are not flaws: a badly-flawed cup that cannot perform the duties of a cup is of no value.  But a cup whose perfection dips and ripples in interesting ways... that is character.)  Sometimes if the chip or crack is significant enough, it will be filled and healed with gold.  This is how I, too, have been trained to find beauty.
My picture of my Japanese house; stepping stones that I created; water ripples at each post and cherry blossom trees in the distance; lamps suspended from the roof and resting on the platforms.  All the straight lines in the making of this house --  all the perfect straightness -- where does such straight wood come from? The tree that becomes the straight-line beams is curved, rounded, knotted and imperfect.  The man who makes the straight beam is a wood-master.  A carpenter.  An artist.  The mastery of the body, the making of the straight beam, doesn't erase the lines and rings and character of the wood: there will always be the ripple that softens and balances.