The end of the first decade

It's been over 10 years since I began this online journal. Thinking back, I think I was just so happy to be living in an authentic way - expressing overtly what I had held in for so long - that it was pure delight to share the journey with any potential reader.

These days, it's rare that I suddenly am motivated to share my thoughts in this way, but I am still here; still happy to have the journal in an online forum for any like minded soul who happens to come across it.

Over a ten year span none of us is the same person. I am certainly not that giddy person I was at the outset ten years ago. Age tends to mellow most of us and once we get into our 60s there is a tendency for most of us to take the long term view. We know a few things by then. We've started to identify patterns in ourselves, in others, in our long term relationships, in the world at large. If inclined towards the positive, we are happy for each new day. We delight in a bunch of roses, a grand baby's smile, a good night sleep.

Personally, it's been a ten year journey more intense than I had bargained for, yet one that I had no alternative but to pursue. Good times led to confronting times. I started to see things, to feel things, and I had to understand.

I have done the most enormous amount of reading. Until several years ago, I was a keen literature buff, but now I can barely read a novel a month. I simply had to get to the bottom of behaviors and feelings and to work out what had become so confusing for me. I have a small library of psychology and spiritual books now, all very well read.

There were times along the way when I felt I may have no choice but to exit from the lives of a person, or two. I was changing, growing, learning. Their presence in my life, triggering in me intensely difficult feelings, seemed untenable.

But, I am a fighter, not a quitter, not to mention that these same folk, I loved. So, I went on, trying to understand them, what it was they were inducing in me; why the Universe had transpired to put us together; why the Universe had insisted I walk this incredibly painful path.

I would have made a bad Nun, but I am drawn to a contemplative life. There is no doubt about that. It began when I was very young and I got something out of being in a Church; something more than the rest of my life offered me. So it went all my life and yet the material world was what was there before me. Family life kept me busy and it was not until the children were grown up that I had a chance to explore my sense of the spiritual; something deeper.

In these ways, psychology and the spiritual merged for me. I learned about abuse - more emotional abuse than physical - and what that does to a child's mind. I learned how to be whole in myself, how to carve out boundaries, to self-love and to self-soothe. I learned to practice unconditional love at the same time as I held onto some private hopes that I'd see progress in others too. It's not an expectation but rather just a little bit of hope; a little bit of swaying on my part towards good outcomes.

The biggest change of all? The past is not important nor is tomorrow nearly as interesting to me as it once was. It's this moment that fascinates me; the breath, the sensations, the possibility that the thoughts that wander in and out of my mind will be intriguing to me but in no way weigh me down.

I am aware of unwanted thoughts - an angry or resentful thought, a sense of disappointment or frustration - at the same time I am observing having the thought. It passes. I rarely get stuck on the thought. The thought passes and I return to a sense of quiet contemplation.

When life it too busy for my sensibilities, and by that I mean too busy to effectively direct my attention as I like, I suffer. I once thought I'd like to have a writer's life but all those thoughts demanding the attention of going down onto the page would exhaust me.

Instead, I write, sort of, meditative scripts that I can share with others, though so far the best scripts are those that come up quite naturally; a written script perhaps but then put aside. I speak of space, of connectedness, of presence, the present moment, the senses, of letting go of identities and roles; of awareness, an open heart.

When living in the present moment, as I aspire to do, one notices most of the little flaws; the little impatiences and frustrations. One aspires to do and to be better without making it a big time ME project these days. We're not robots. We're not perfect. I don't beat myself up about what I notice but I do note it and hope I do better.

I've explored kinkiness and mental illness. Where an excessive need for control is found - either giving to or taking from - so too is often some level of mental illness. Coming to know that, I needed to explore my own damaged being and to heal.

Well now, completely at peace with my level of mental health - my level of self-love, my boundaries, my functioning and state of mind - kinkiness prevails. It is perfectly possible to have both. I am certain of this.

I love to experience my submissive soul - to be held down, to be spanked, to have to speak certain words of reverence; to be turned on by all of it. I still revel in it, whenever it comes my way.

In this way, I enter into the next ten years of this journal hopeful for a long life. I've got the living of this life, my life, by the throat now. I am happy and content; not without joy, not at all.

A spiritual journey

As a little girl I was sent to Sunday School. My grandmother was Catholic and my mother too, but my father saw that she had suffered within the Catholic Church, being of an anxious disposition, so it was determined my brother and I would be raised in his faith, Protestant.

My school was affiliated with a religious order and so each morning there was a prayer and a hymn, sanctuary doors were opened and closed. A Minister came into class a few days a week to speak of the Bible and of being Christian. He was very old and often dozed.

In the background my grandmother kept the Catholic faith in my life. She taught me about the rosary and she talked about Heaven and Hell. God being up in the sky watching all things, good and bad, was clear in my mind.

Everything from childhood has some sort of effect but what I am most aware of as an adult is that I love to be in churches. I love the service and the majesty of the whole thing. I like the spectacle and the way I feel in churches. I like to light a candle or watch others light a candle. I love the music and the architecture. I love being with people who think it right to pray.

There is a clinical psychologist on Utube that I follow and he talks of human beings being psycho-spiritual beings. We want there to be something bigger than us. I think that's what pulled me into religion as a child; what captivated me. It really is quite natural to want to be part of something bigger than yourself.

I don't any more but prior to the last couple of years I would pray to God, to keep my children safe mostly.

Twenty years ago when I had my final baby I began to do Pilates, to music. It was within this experience of movement and music that I started to feel some release from a post natal depression that had its grip on me. It makes sense really because as a young girl I loved dance, ballet. It was my escape. Within the discipline, the rigor and the music, I felt free.

Once I had been doing Pilates for some time I tried yoga and adored it. In the same building they were running meditation classes and this seemed like a suitable next step, the right time.

Meditation was far from easy for me but there were enough good moments to keep me coming back. The young woman did a wonderful job of guided meditations which I found very much to my liking. I took myself to stunning tanzanite caves where lurid things took place, and up mountains where I glided off into open space quite effortlessly.

A new teacher taught us candle gazing and to stay in our bodies. My mind was still floating about so the instruction that I must stay in my body was another breakthrough thought.

I learned about walking meditations. I  was beginning to not only be aware of the anxiety in my body but to be its witness.

One day whilst out shopping I ran into a woman who had stopped coming to the meditation group and she asked if I was still attending the group. I told her I was. She had a much better idea, she told me, a sacred sort of meditation space, a sanctuary where she experienced great peace.

As I recall it took me a few months to go to the Sanctuary, where I never ran into her. One would pay $10 downstairs and then go up the stairs. We'd leave our shoes and bag outside and take up a position. A candle set in a big bowl flickered light about the dimly lit room.

I didn't understand at that time how to sit on a cushion or to use a prayer bench, so I sat in a chair. It was very peaceful but I don't like chairs for long meditations really. Other than that issue I felt I was getting somewhere with the meditation. My mind was sometimes slowing down. Sometimes I wondered if I could stand it another moment, but I never left.

My inner world remained quite chaotic. So, one day, when I saw a notice for an 8 week meditation course, I signed up. Thinking back to it I was still pretty hopeless but I had glimmers of a peaceful mind. As well as that our discussions that dovetailed the meditation practice was giving me information about the mind/body connection. I was the only person to finish the course.

Meditation remains a great challenge for most people. The classes I originally took closed down, and the group that ran the Sanctuary was forced to close.

I fell into a hole until a good year later, I think, I went in search for an alternative. I found someone but too far from my home. The lucky break was that she informed me of where the woman who taught my 8 week class was running a meditation group close to my home.

I try very hard not to miss that weekly group session. It is a most eclectic group. There has been a bone surgeon and his wife, a woman who lost everything in a bushfire, an architect with cancer, a surgeon who has some dementia, a very old man who was a Lecturer of Philosophy, a woman who lost her daughter to cancer. Currently, there is a man of 40 something whose cancer has come back three times. We are just starting to get to know him and last week he spoke openly.

For years I have meditated on a cushion; well three cushions these days. Various yoga poses have stretched out my thigh muscles, and I have wide open hips, so it's not uncomfortable at all, though it was until I made the necessary improvements to my body.

My spiritual practice is supported by reading gurus, spiritual healers and leaders. I'm too old to imagine that there is anyone on this Earth that is a perfect human being but certain people have much to teach us.
Pema Chodron is a favourite of mine but so too is Eckhart Tolle, and I have a soft spot for Ram Dass. But, I appreciate many leaders and writers. Rumi is great and I once bought a book whilst in Queensland which I think had a significant subliminal effect on me: Oshos' 'Meditation for Busy People.'  I keep a tumblr blog in large part devoted to the thoughts of such people that support my practice and the way I aim to live and to think/not think.

To refer back to the first few paragraphs of this post I don't think of an omnipotent God above the clouds any more. I think of God as being within me, within all of us. Either that Godliness is expressed or it isn't, but it resides inside, not outside.

I don't know, and who really cares, why I am the way I am. I came into the world quiet and noticing when all about me people were loud and unaware. People in my world seemed to be running on adrenaline when I wanted to find a peaceful place to simply read my book, or to think. I danced. I played the piano. I read. Such a young girl isn't suited to the loudness of her environment. I sought quiet places and experiences as relief from the noise and agitation.

I've blocked out a lot of memories, it seems. It doesn't matter . I do remember being upset, very upset and chaotic inside. This was before the spiritual journey began. I would take my extreme anger for a walk. One time I took it to a Step class and did my best to stay on the block. But, there reached a moment when I thought I might actually explode, or implode, and so I was forced to stop.

When experiencing extreme negative emotions I don't think exercise works. First, one must go to the cushion and deal with the upset. It's only very recently that I had the courage to go into the negative emotion and stay with it such that it transforms into peace. This was a huge breakthrough.

The woman who taught me in the 8 week program is now my dear, dear friend and very recently, just in the past few weeks, we have begun to confide in one another. I haven't declared 'I am a submissive' but I have explained, because she asked me gently to explain further a statement I uttered, that I  am attracted to a certain type of man and that this has caused issues for me in my life. We are both starting to fill in the dots as to what we share with one another over delicious and deliciously long lunches.

Shortly, I will attend a meditation retreat where we will meditate about 6 hours a day and be in silence for much of the time. It is sheer bliss for me.

I wonder if I can say what I have learned on this spiritual journey in a paragraph or two. Man, that's asking something.

Well, first of all, let me say that I have come to understand the mind/body connection. If someone like me is around difficult people, perhaps loud and reactive, perhaps needing or wanting my energy but not offering energy of their own to me, this can create chronic stress, which can lead to inflammation in the body which can lead to inflammatory disease.

This is why it is so important for a submissive who is struggling in her relationship with a partner to investigate what is really going on in her life. Her energetic fields may be so open that she suffers emotional pain, tending to ignore her body and its needs. So, I have learned that creating a calm mind and learning techniques to calm the Other as well as one's own mind is vital to health and emotional stability. Relying on the Other when the Other doesn't have the capacity, for whatever reason, to tend to you is a recipe for much unhappiness. Shoring up on your self esteem and self reliance is the key.

Spiritually, I have learned to be still. I have learned that when troubled to sit, just sit. Pema Chodron talks of this. I have learned to allow negative emotion and to transform negative emotion. I feel what I feel. I allow it without being distressed by it.

I have learned to accept. I am not responsible for anyone else, can't and shouldn't change them. Nor, do I need to save anyone. I offer myself, my best self, and that is enough. I have learned to be settled and calm. This is no-one's responsibility but my own. I can find my peace regardless of the outside forces that swirl around me.

Love isn't constant. Perhaps a parent's love for a child is constant but even then it ebbs and flows; is stronger at some times than others.

Romantic love has so much potential. Sacred love is something that I feel eludes me but remains my goal. As a relationship ages there is the possibility for love to grow in depth and for sex to take on a sacred nature. I had that for a time, but then it was gone and I was powerless to bring it back. Things got out of balance. Life isn't over until it is over and so I remain hopeful, but accepting of the limitations of my life as well. There are still chapters left to live.

At the meditation retreat I was on last year we were shown a movie about the life of Father Bede Griffiths. It is his thoughts on sacred love that stays with me. I continue to feel that allowing a woman to be entrenched in her femininity and the man in his masculinity can bring me the sort of relationship that would be the icing on the cake, for me. I am not sure that everyone wants, or can, go to a place of intense intimacy with another person, so we'll see what comes. We'll see if it is possible to create that sacred shared space.

I am eternally grateful for the lessons learned on this journey. Even on the most jam-packed and challenging days, I find time to sit quietly and focus on my breath; breathing in, noticing the gap and breathing out, noticing the gap. We are incredibly fortunate to be alive.

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.

Resolve

It has been the loveliest of summers. We've been at the holiday house little more than a week and yet it feels like we have been here all summer. If we open the front doors, and we do, we get lovely breezes from the water and we've not yet had a day that has made life uncomfortable. If it gets too hot we simply get in the old boat and fish out in the middle of the lake, which is much cooler, or we go for a swim in the lake.

We've had company with us the whole time. The last person left a mere hour ago. There has been barely any time to think let alone write, although I've let my mind wander as I've held a lure to catch fish, and caught some, I did!

I have done a little reading: Wayne Dyer's Your Sacred Self, and the novel The Dry. I love Dyer's positivism and the simple statements and suggestions he makes to turn thinking around. I'm smitten too by Jane Harper's ability to create atmosphere and character by using just the right verb. It's inspiring how easily writing can improve for the reader when the writer lets go of adverbs and concentrates on finding the right word to describe the action in the scene. If you are ever looking for a book to describe the Australian countryside in drought, look no futher.

I've not had time to write in this space but nor have I had something worth saying. I did try one day and the attempt is saved in drafts, but it so annoyed me how the writing was inspired by a feeling of anger and that's so last year, that feeling. I don't want that feeling to be part of my new year, so I abandoned it and waited for a feeling that did in fact have an invitation into my life.

Of course, I am going through a 'process' right now, a process that I understood at the outset had long term positives but would have some shaky moments. I'm working on getting closer towards the centre. I'm looking to abandon unhealthy codependence traits and becoming closer to the middle of the range, or to put it another way, a more healthy codependence. I have no goal to alter my innate functioning. That is, I take care of people. I care about people. I'm the follower. That's not going to change. I can't and don't want to will myself to suddenly desire a job at the top of the corporate ladder, for example. I don't seek power, or limelight, although between you and me, I happily daydream of attending (my own) book launch and soaking up my time on the stage!!

It's been lovely lately to note that as I ask for a bit of assistance here and there, or when people ask me what they can do to help, this all seems to flow better. I offer them a job, or ask if they would mind doing something for me, and that's all gone smoothly. It's made my life a dream in that I am no longer feeling that I am slogging through the work, and I no longer feel secretly resentful that they don't do more.

One of the biggest tests of this process that I am in is that the codependent will feel her sense of  inner loneliness return; those same sort of feelings that she felt as a child; the sort of feelings that contributed to making her a codependent desiring to dance with her polar opposite in the first place. For a long time, my sub-conscious held onto the feeling that any behaviour of the other was acceptable, so long as I kept the inner loneliness at bay. The feeling is that strong and frightening; must not be felt at any cost. It took a great deal of research and inner investigation to realize that I could withstand it; that I had to go to the heart of that feeling.

This process, this first part of it, at least, should be done with the aid of a therapist. However, I don't feel I can do that. I feel, and I am bucking the best psychological advice here, that I have to do this alone. Having said that, I do have advice via books and Utube talks that I refer to in order to bolster my resolve. Dyer's book noted above helps me right now. You don't have to fear a lack of approval, he says, because you have a comfort in your own skin that you are on your own spiritual path.

For the first few weeks into the process I think I was probably private and somewhat withdrawn. I think I may have felt that I needed to try as much as I could to concentrate on holding onto my resolve. I wanted to let cindi run free but at the same time I feared what might happen if I did. Like, cindi has no resolve. But, yesterday morning my husband pinned by arms to either side of me while I lay on the bed and bit at my nipple jewellery. I could feel her rise. She has a life of her own that little thing, and my body responded to the force. Oh yes, she was enjoying herself. She liked being taken and used.

I am, in moments, still a little shaky. There is no doubt about that. Rome was not built in a day and one doesn't heal overnight. However, I do feel abundantly healthy right now. Nature has played its part, the lifestyle here, but I do feel better able to calculate what is and is not acceptable; or more aptly, what I will and won't tolerate. cindi is alive, no doubt about it, but she's not so helpless that she can't look out for herself. That's the difference. She won't again choose to dismiss her gut reactions or to rationalize her physiological reactions.

The point, for those struggling to understand what I am on about here, is that the closer you get to the middle of the behavioral spectrum the less inclined you are to going to be to accept, and even desire, the behaviour of those on the highest end of the spectrum, someone operating from self-interest and using various manipulative strategies to get his own way. It's not going to stop you, if you have a disposition such as mine to enjoy interacting with a respectful and polite person who operates on the opposite side of the spectrum, the dominantly inclined. However, your heckles will rise when you are not being treated with respect and civility; kindness; care. A doll's disposition doesn't mean that the requirements of human interaction go out the window; quite the opposite, I would have thought. It's critical, in my experience, to feel a sense of safety in those situations. How else one can let go and be less?

The vulnerability remains. The resolve is well in place. I think that resolve could be equated to self-respect/self esteem. There is a place for ego. It's fine to 'let go', desired in fact, but it's also okay to let self-respect define the limits of that letting go. Anyone who rejects your request for respectful behaviour is simply trying to manipulate your mind.

Spirituality within power exchange

My immersion into spiritual practice and my overwhelming attraction to SM practices and power exchange relationships in general collided several years ago such that it is hard for me to separate one from the other. That this might mean something tangible to the reader, I give the following example of how the two worlds mingle in my mind.

In Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks he has a chapter on 'Relationships', and in that chapter he writes,

'When you get attached to objects, when you are using them to enhance your worth in your own eyes and in the eyes of others, concerns about things can easily take over your life. When there is self-identification with things you don't appreciate them for what they are because you are looking for yourself in them. When you appreciate an object for what it is, when you acknowledge its being without mental projection, you cannot not feel grateful for its existence. You may also sense that it is not really inanimate, that it only appears so to the senses. Physicists will confirm that on a molecular level it is indeed a pulsating field. Through selfless appreciation of the realm of things, the world around you will come alive in ways that you cannot even begin to comprehend with the mind.'

When I first read Tolle's words, and when I re-read them as I often do, they immediately resonated with me because of experiences I have had through a power exchange relationship. The world of the doll manifests itself in a very small and contained world and when the conditions are just right all egoic thought and concerns based on the real world drift away. The mind shuts right down and my experience is simply a physical one. I can feel the sensations of the body. I can feel arousal. On the great days, I can feel complete peace.

I can get to this sublime place through wearing a large butt plug which chokes thinking off, or I can get there through wearing a latex mask. They are quite different experiences, one not better than the other, but I've a particular partiality to the former experiences because I can maintain the connection with 'the other' better.

There have been experiences where 'bimbo' permeates me. She is inseparable to that never-changing  'I am' entity. There is no past or no future. There are no worries or thoughts; certainly no attachments to identity or worth or worldy possessions. Bimbo responds to direction, absolutely, but in the most special situations the feeling is light, warm and easy. It is understood that bimbo won't say very much because she has found herself in a world of comfort and grace; ease, peace and beauty.

I remember on one particular early morning she was in the country chatting oh so quietly on her computer. Not that much was being said because her world can often be simply peaceful with few words necessary. She was aware of the sun coming up to light the world; of the darkness making way for some light; the shapes of trees. More than anything she was aware of the stillness of this time and the stillness within her. Ever so quietly she found her attention drawn to the objects around her; a blue and white cup and a jug. She marvelled at the beauty of them as if she had never before seen a cup or a jug; the vibrancy of the colour; the very essence of these objects designed to do specific tasks. A sense of peace and pleasure welled up in her. She was living in this moment. Her cup runneth over.

There are no doubt a variety of ways to reach these peaceful moments in life, yet in my life the way towards them has often been to be led down a path where I may reach them. I have procured these peaceful moments through power exchange; perhaps not the ideal way to navigate a spiritual life, and yet many a monk has sought out help along the way.

I remain attached to people. It's not that I live through them but rather that it is still hard to imagine life without them. To date, I respond very naturally to the submissive role and thus yearn for the sort of dominance in my life where there is understanding of a spiritual life. My personal goal is to get to that spiritual dimension on my own at any time, if need be; to find respite and comfort in the 'I am' entity which never changes and to let all other worldly concerns and worries, identities or pride loosen and shake off. This is the life of the monk, the nun; those who wish to live as Buddha taught.

It cannot be denied that my interest in power exchange relationships began when the material I was reading aroused me to the core. It was entirely sexual. Every word I read at first was an aphrodisiac to my mind ready to take it all on. It didn't take on a spiritual dimension for me, something akin to subspace, until I quite simply experienced that spiritual dimension. This was the true gift. This was the opportunity I am so grateful to have seized with both hands and all my heart.

The spiritual side of submission

It works for some people to have a 'scene'; to put down their day-to-day persona for a time and let their submissive or dominant side take over. When the scene is over, they can smile and even laugh about it and return to their usual mode of communicating and operating.

I've had conversations like this with people and I tend to listen and not say too much because I don't really relate or seek this myself. I recognize that this is what they want and I respect their position, but it's not what I want at all. Neither position is more right than the other or 'better', it's just that when people talk like this I get this sinking feeling, because it doesn't feel enough to me.

To be clear, I do enjoy a 'scene'. I have these with my husband. He 'captures' me, usually unawares, and I'm his, to do with as he pleases. Naturally enough, I enjoy these situations and I am enriched by them.

Afterwards, not all the time but often enough, we return to our usual mode of operating immediately. Sometimes, there are some lovely add on moments and feelings,  a state of mind that extends beyond the scene. They are deeply felt experiences for me because I feel most myself when that 'bimbo' (small, contained, controlled and happy to be so) state of mind takes over my psyche and I can feel myself.

More and more, my spiritual (even religious) side of my being is connecting with my very strong and real desire to be taken over. There is a ritual of mine that aids me daily and in those moments I feel a sense of reverence, much as I do in moments in a Church. I'm aware that Man institutes religious practices but it doesn't prevent me from feeling deep peace inside a church; a fascination with sacred rituals such as sprinkling holy water on a coffin. I'm deep inside myself in those moments; connecting with some spring of life inside me that really longs to be tapped into. It is a sense of wanting to be 'taken over', under another's care and control, much as we understand on some level, if we are at all religious or spiritual, that we have no real control over what will be.

It occurred to me this morning that I so very much want to learn; more than ever before, in fact. If I were free to do so I'd go and seek out those who can teach me about the secrets of life; the wonders of the mind and belief; be in their presence; tap into their minds; learn. I do this already in my own way; read, absorb, take in the lessons they have to teach via their written words.

I have so much to be grateful for in my life. I can't complain. Yet, how blessed it would have been if I had understood and accepted myself for who I am so much earlier. How blessed it would have been to have been partnered with a man who quietly and unreservedly led me to a life wherein 'bimbo' was present constantly; a living and expressed entity that was supported day by day. I am loved, of this I am sure. Yet, I must admit I often don't feel cared for because it is 'the girl' who seems wanted.

Yet, bimbo leads. Bimbo insists on leading. Bimbo demands, every single day and there is nothing I can do about it.

Service

A few weeks back I was making dinner. I think I was waiting for the vegetables to finish roasting, or some such process as that and I decided to turn on the television and see if I could find something interesting for a few minutes. My attention was immediately grabbed by a old nun. I had entered the documentary at the moment they were explaining that this nun was once a famous Hollywood actress. She was a gorgeously feminine and refined young woman and there was footage of her with her beau; a man who was engaged to her and very, very much in love with her, as she was with him. They looked stunning together.

Shortly before their wedding he noticed a change in her demeanor and asked her what was wrong. It was at that point that she revealed that she couldn't let go of the idea in her head to join a group of nuns; that whilst she loved him she felt a burning need to serve God.

He was devastated and for a time they were estranged. However, they returned to one another. To this day, I think some forty years or more later, she is still a nun; in fact, she is the head nun (sorry, I'm sure I am using inaccurate words) and he still visits her regularly. He never married and he never found another woman to love the way he loved her, and so he returns to her on a regular basis to visit.

I happened to have been viewing towards the end of the documentary and I saw them embrace and say goodbye to one another on this particular day. He walked away from her as he must have done endless times before and for a brief moment sadness was registered on her face, but then she seemed to go inward again, cross herself and turn towards the big cross on the table in front of her;  to her service towards God. Her equilibrium was restored. She was serene.

A few minutes before this scene, a young nun came to see her to explain that she was still having moments of struggle. The struggle was apparent in the words she chose and in her evident sense of agitation. The old Nun assured her that all was in order; that she had made so much progress. She was doing well.

It all moved me deeply. These people deeply touched my soul.

Spiritual sexuality

I'm at the tail end of a subject that is particularly scholarly and philosophical and I've had a wonderful time. I know it all sounds so dry - Marxism, Feminism, Existentialism, Post-colonial theory and so on - but I've thoroughly enjoyed it really. We studied Haiku poetry the week before last. I took my downloaded lecture with me to the soccer field on the Saturday afternoon so that I could watch my youngest son play soccer while I browsed at the notes and there were glorious moments of all being right with my world - a brisk winter afternoon with a good dose of sun, the delight of the young men battling it out for a win, the ideas presented in one of the reading materials of "spiritual moments". I even went so far as to write my own Haiku poem, not especially brilliant but it expressed a strong sense of belonging to the city that I don't feel on a day by day basis. It was me having one of my blessed days when I feel extraordinarily happy within myself.

When I got to write up my response to the unit I think my spirituality did shine through the post. I had been moved and I didn't shy away from writing about that. Late in the discussion I heard from a man who said he had been very inspired by my post and he wanted to discuss with me "the meaning of life". Oh my goodness, you could hardly hold my fingers back from the keys! In fact, you could not hold my fingers back from the keys and I wrote him back a reply that I hope sustained him.

It's this spirituality that really inspires me to write here on my best days. It must sound hocus pocus  to those coming here always hopeful to find something salacious and meaty but for me it's often not about that. It's an impossible mission to try to explain how my true nature, when revealed and given free rein opens doors for me to a very spiritual place where I feel like...a young girl running free through the summer fields with no shoes on...like a spirit that has no body to hold it back...like the essence of me is making contact with that being that created me for a specific purpose.

The feeling floods my mind with something, perhaps endorphins. I am not au fait with the technicalities. All I can say is that it is like a release of some sort of chemical and I feel whole when before I felt empty.

I have known all this for some time now but of course life can rob someone of the opportunity to experience it day by day. This consciousness isn't available to me every day. I suppose it is the difference between knowing something on a conscious level and feeling something on a spiritual level. It goes some way to explaining why I love churches,certain pieces of classical music, choirs and meditation. I am always hopeful for one of those cathartic experiences when I feel completely at home with myself; completely natural and fulfilled.

I write this down because these moments can be fleeting. Perhaps tomorrow I couldn't remember or explain what I can write down today. I feel sure that there is more than what we see; the real world. I know it. My sexuality is a door to the other side; to a feeling of great contentment and sustenance. It is why, no matter how old I grow, my sexuality will remain my strongest ally.

(P.S. I wrote this yesterday and I was right. I don't think I could have written it this morning. It's the reason why if you want to be a writer you must take a notebook wherever you go!)