Spirituality and Slavery – SJP

Or does it? Have your spiritual beliefs made it difficult to balance your slavery? Or is it a natural extension? Is your spirituality separate from your submission? Or does it play a part?

Time for another submissive journal prompt.

My slavery and my spirituality are… complimentary.  Or they are the same thing.  Or, perhaps, my spirituality is all of what exists and so inevitably encompasses my slavery?  But that’s kind of a cop out, so I’ll focus on the way that my slavery is a practice of my spirituality.

I am a Buddhist, as in, I explore life through the questions and lessons proposed by the Buddha.  I wrote once about saying “Yes, Sir,” when Sir makes a command.  A teaching of Buddhism is that resisting what is leads to suffering.

I could make a literal comparison here – resisting Sir leads to suffering.  But I have a much deeper comparison.  When Sir decides something, even if, especially if, I don’t like it, I have a choice.  A Buddhist choice.  I can resist, even if only internally, or I can accept what is.

Sometimes I resist.  Sometimes he tells me something and I physically obey, but internally I nurse resentment or anger or cling to that other choice I’d rather have made.  And that inevitably results in me spending minutes, or hours, miserable.  Wrapped up in my thinking, in how unfair it is, in how angry I am, in how much I would rather be doing that other thing…

Other times I… let go.  I make the choice, inside of myself, to accept Sir’s command, to make it my new reality, and to let go of the other option.  It is a conscious and difficult mental exercise to do this.  But when I do it, I feel peaceful.  I am able to function.  I am able to be present in my life and my task (instead of living inside of my head full of “what ifs” and unhappiness).

Ironically, often these conflicts arise when Sir gives a command of “do this FIRST” and doesn’t even deny me the thing I want.  He doesn’t often fully deny me things I want, but often prioritizes them, or sometimes compromises, but there is rarely a full refusal.  So when he says, “Yeah, you can play another game on your phone, after you do the dishes,” I can go resentful to the kitchen, hating the dishes, and… I end up doing them so much more slowly.  I end up getting distracted by other things, standing around, moving slowly – because I’m caught up in anger and resentment and end up postponing my preferred activity even more through my own mental resistance.

However when he gives that same command, “Dishes, then game,” and I am able to apply that mental discipline of truly accepting what is… accepting this is my reality for the moment, then I actually work quite efficiently.  I don’t spend time in the kitchen glaring at cupboards or scuffing my feet or looking for ways to avoid doing dishes (playing with the dish brush, cleaning the soap dispenser, looking for snacks…) and I simply… do the dishes.  And, in fact, the act of doing the dishes itself is a simple and satisfying activity.  It is peaceful, it is calm, it is almost meditative because my mind is restful.  And then, I get to play my game.

Of course this is only one aspect of Buddhism and a simplification of that aspect.  But also such a core aspect of… my life… and my submission… as life.