The fitness of the thing

Kinky thoughts came to me completely naturally and unprovoked as a child. I'd see a scene in a movie, or read a few lines in a novel, or overhear someone say something and I was instantly aroused. No-one else was involved in this response. That is to say, I wasn't attempting to please a partner or to follow him along a particular path. My mind was aroused by the scene and that was that.

It is said that we fantasize within very specific parameters about our kinks. If it's a school disciplining scenario we might have in our mind's eye very particular details such as the type of dress or the type of instrument; perhaps a wooden stool in involved or there is a particular cupboard where the canes are stored.

It's fascinating and troubling at the same time that these scenes never really grow old. I happened upon a school disciplining scene in the past few days - one that would be grotesque in real life, utterly barbaric - and I slipped right down the kinky rabbit hole as if I were 15 all over again. My body will never stop being instantly aroused by particular scenes, done in a particular way. That is to say, the girls have to be helpless and at the mercy of the disciplinarians, and the disciplinarians have to be ruthless in the discharging of their duties.

The girls have to cry and howl and beg at the same time that they know they must do everything possible to hold their position. The masters and mistresses have to turn a blind eye and ear to the ministrations of their charges and go about their task in a professional manner.  There is a clear demarcation of who is in charge and who has zero power and everybody in the room knows their place.

To analyze it a tad, there's complete helplessness on the part of the girls and total power in terms of the rights of the masters and mistresses to uphold the  sanctity of their contract to educate the girls to particularly high standards. Let's be clear. If the girls had behaved well, none of this would have been necessary. Under normal circumstances those who watched over them would have kept a tight ship but not a particularly onerous one for the girls, for there is only one rule at this establishment really - to follow the rules and to do as told. Simple.

It's interesting (to me at least) that I have been prepared to follow through with this thought in other ways; ways I wouldn't have thought of as a child and which I didn't even necessarily know much about as a fully grown woman. I 'got' on some subliminal level that my kink was about 'place' and that meant that I moved quite effortlessly from having a spanking kink to a kink that related to whatever it was that I was presented with. The proviso was that I really did need to feel that the contract - obedience - was at the heart of 'it'. I really did need to feel an abiding affection was at the heart of everything too. This could make it complicated.

Nowadays there is no sense of a contract in my life. Put more bluntly, there is no contract. I'm a free agent in that sense. This means that I am not likely to experience the mind blowing highs of the past but nor, logically speaking, am I likely to experience the downs, and there were downs, for complicated reasons which not everyone has to go through.

There is, of course, always 'play'; the sort of play where a partner suggests a spanking. But, for reasons as explored above, unfortunately that doesn't do it for me. In essence, I like the idea of a contract; not the one with lists that you tick, but the sort of contract where roles are clearly designated, understood and embraced, not just for three minutes but innately. I guess what I am saying is that either it is authentic and I feel it down to my toes, or I'll see through the veneer and it will do nothing for me. Either it works for us both or I think it's best we do what we do rather well, just be ourselves.

I can almost hear you asking...but can you separate your kinky self from your self? I'm not sure I know, or ever knew the answer to that. It's sat in my being all my life; that girl who is so deeply aroused by certain situations not well understood by nearly anyone. An exchange of power with a partner such that this part of me that sits bubbling below can find expression was far more elevating and satisfying than I have ever been able to express in words. I remain forever grateful for those experiences. I'll cradle them in my old age.

But, there's a lot more to me and to my mind than kink, and somehow, maybe, just maybe, now might be the right time to fully explore if I can put it away in a box; not in some dusty box in the darkest and deepest recesses of my mind never to see light again, but far enough away that I can get on with life without pining for what I once had in the lusty May days of Camelot. There is a season for everything. I had my time and now there is a new time.

Looking out and then reaching in

If you want something enough, perhaps for someone to be different to the way they are, there is a little part of your mind that says something like (regardless of how much evolving that has taken place or how much awareness has been gained), 'why can't he or she gain some awareness too', or maybe 'Why can't he or she grow?'

I help out at an elementary school and last week I was working with some children who are progressing at a slower place than the rest of the class. I was trying to show them how to add on 10 to a number, but I found myself frustrated by their ability to distract themselves from the task. There was bickering about turn taking as well as considerable moving about, since we were asked to work on the floor. One girl insisted on trying to do the sums on her own only for me to discover she had all the sums wrong and therefore had not understood the concept. The boy who was very still and right beside me had difficulty locating the starting number let alone understanding the concept of locating the number right below it on the 10 x 10 grid. (59+10 = 69, and what do you know, 69 happens to fall right below 59 on the grid.) I found myself worried for them, for their futures.

It's been on my mind since; how to adapt the small group for it to function better. Honestly, we need a quiet space to ourselves (it's an open plan school which is nothing short of a nightmare for children with learning difficulties) and we need to be sitting in chairs with me on the other side of the table so that I can see what they are all doing. We don't need lap tops or opportunities to go 'splat' on a number using some animated blob on a white screen, or any other new age thing. We just need some big laminated number grids and some colored coins for now  so that we can get this concept honed down. Understanding numbers and getting excited about them, it seems to me, is motivation enough for these children without distracting bibs and bobs that tend to make them think that the bibs and bobs are the point. If I could praise them for a job well done, it would be wonderful, hopefully for them and for me.

Of course, my comments above are the classic trap for someone interacting with someone else. I am wanting them to be different to who they are right now, with the best of intentions, but with a lack of appreciation for the reality of the situation.

If you 'get' something, or if you want something badly, it's tough to be aware of the fact that the other does not get it, or perhaps that they are not willing to give it to you. It's tough to say 'oh well, you know, it's their particular journey that they are on, and maybe it's a rather slow and laborious journey and maybe they'll never make it to the finish line, but that has to be respected. They are in your life because you are learning lessons from them.' They may be good and worthwhile thoughts but that doesn't make it easy.

David liked to keep me grounded. He would say things to me like, 'How long can anyone contemplate their navel?' In other words, he was all for moving forward, for having expectations and for making changes. He didn't hurry me, or other girls; not at all. However, he didn't think I should get too lost in spiritual, or obsessive thought either. Life had taught him lessons and he saw no harm in other people learning their lessons too. He saw no issue with going after what I wanted, with recognition that people often don't co-operate with what we want. He had no issues with my high standards, having high standards himself, and he expected people to rise to be their best selves. If you didn't shine your shoes he wasn't going to look kindly down on you for that. Put it that way.

I get a great deal of comfort from the writings of people who have evolved to a higher consciousness. Greg Corwin, someone I follow on tumblr put up a document with a free download this morning and in it he has written this:

"To surrender is to relax fully, deeply. It is to empty yourself fully. It is to let yourself collapse into your self. It is to expose your rawness, to stand naked amongst the clothed. It is to leave yourself behind. It is a free fall into cradling arms. It is to die and be reborn over and over again until there is less and less of you left,until you are gone." 

As a meditator and a reader of spiritual leaders I relate to these words and they bring me much succor, but I also relate to them from a kinky point of view, for the simple reason that my spirituality and kinkiness find expression in similar and related ways. So, I try with all my might to express my understanding of these words in ways that are available to me, at the same time as I pine for those ways that are rarely available to me.


In spite of the fact that my desires and needs have been expressed many times, expression of my nature is rarely offered to me by the Other. This makes spiritual expression that I can do alone doubly important.

Greg made the point in his little free book that we should go beyond romantic love when we think of Love and think of Love as self generating.

"Go to Love's source in your chest and live in Love. Soften to Love's origin within you and return your wandering mind again and again to that warm, full place and let that Love radiate out and fill all."

Spiritual disciplines provide us with a guide for living a good life. Submissive personalities like myself who stride to be their best selves and to radiate love up there in their higher consciousness spend considerable time developing greater patience; deeper love within themselves for others; tolerance for the Other and others generally. We blame ourselves when things don't go right. If only we had wanted less; expected less.

The truth, however, and I think must be factored into the equation, is that we can emotionally walk over broken glass to make things right for fear that we  didn't do all that we could possibly do; that a saint would have done. It doesn't too often occur to the likes of us that the Other isn't necessarily putting in anywhere close to the same amount of effort; that perhaps we deserve more than we get.

We grow and evolve in life at our own personal rate. Perhaps it is rare that we grow together at the same pace. Perhaps, at the end of the day, we must accept that whilst everything external changes, it is our inner identity that remains the same regardless of the passing years; bliss, peace and silence is abundantly available to those who travel inwards to that core identity. I'm grateful, in the absence of being granted more kinky expression of my identity, to have the skills to return home.