BDSM & Spirituality

by Crimson Lord

Spirituality....is something that can be as equally complex as it can be simple, but it's like anything you seek to understand, you can either accept it simply for what it is, or you can analyze  it....pull it apart and try and see where it comes from and why it works. I have tried to contain my thoughts on how BDSM has contributed to my spirituality, my psyche. Bit like trying to condense the works of William Shakespeare into 4 sentences.

How does one even define spirituality? Each has their own interpretation of the word. Or what is directly related to it. Spirituality: The quality or fact of being spiritual. Pretty open definition. So how do you select the ingredients? Religion, Morality, Faith, Mythology, Passion, Self Enlightenment, Philosophy, Creativity, Life Experience, Sensuality, Mysticism, Psychology, Sexuality? It is a never ending list as is the search for the meaning of it all? The reason why, or why not? I have been accused of seeking spiritual insight by the use of emotional and or physical extremes. But just what is an extreme. How can one love or live too much. What is used as a scale? I think one often stands on the line that divides sane and insane. Normal from abnormal. We each have our own little pool of madness into which we can dip a toe if we wish.

"For me it is highly spiritual, in as much as I am allowed to be just who I am, that to me is what the higher form of spirituality is all about. I have also found it a terrific growth tool. I have overcome much fear that stunted who I really was, my relationship with my Master is a moving one, I find that BDSM stops the waters of a relationship becoming stagnate, because it pushes you always to make changes on many different levels. For me it is about evolving freely in mind, body and spirit to reach for your bliss together. BDSM takes you much further into each others psyche than I personally believe any vanilla relationship could. BDSM has taught me as a submissive, what the truth is about real trust, giving myself completely, letting go, and having true faith. To me in one word BDSM = FREEDOM" (anon submissive)

BDSM was an awakening, I liken it to, I was dead, I became alive.

It was a lazy wet Sunday afternoon, a day like any other that gave no indication of what was to unfold. Eyes meeting across a crowded bar and locking. Mesmerized, a snake and its prey, but who was the snake and who was the prey? Where did one start and one end? All my senses came to life in a split second. I was engulfed in a overpowering, all consuming passion. For the first time ever I truly idolized a woman. We were sharing an intimacy of such depth it was beyond orgasm. I had reached into my chest, torn my heart from it resting place and handed it to her. At that point her lover took her head between his hands, turning her from my gaze and kissed her full on the mouth. The sense of loss was so overwhelming I rose and walked from the room. I would never be able to love another. Cursed to roam the earth in search of this feeling. This sense of utter completeness.

I became an exile surrounded by family and friends, hiding, in mourning, grieving a loss. A loss? A feeling of love so intense. Had it ever existed? Except for that eternity, which boiled down in essence to few seconds in a smoky, noisy bar. We had spoken soul to soul. It made no sense to me. I left for Europe a month later. Nothing planned, I sold all I owned and bought a ticket on a whim. The thought of our lives crossing, in this small town, was too great to face. Somewhere in the back of my mind sprung the thought: a pilgrimage to the land of my birth would cleanse me. By distance I would deaden the emptiness.

From the moment of arrival I lived to excess, mentally, physically and emotionally cloaked in anonymity. A chance meeting, BDSM enlighten in the hands of an older, wiser and vastly experienced submissive followed. But it was detached. It satisfied some base need within me but it didn't fulfill. Under her guidance I visited areas of my psyche yet untapped. She played with no limitations other than those set within the realms of sanity. Inhibitions dropped, all feelings of restriction went. Checks, balances, expectations and social morality firmly placed by a severe religious upbringing fell away. Nothing was now taboo. Nothing existed that couldn't be experienced. The only sin being not to. The past began to fade and this driven obsession to experience replaced it. But as in all things obsessive, with no balance, it burnt itself out. Out of control, with none in my life, I was swept along in a sea of perverse carnality given over to animality. I had become a spiritual atheist.

Standing along in the wilderness of Scotland watching the northern lights a sense of spiritualism was rekindled in me. I realized I was running from me. The thing that scared me most was me. An acceptance of self. The fear if I accepted me then I would have to actually love me. There was that word again "love". A time passed where I experimented with all sorts of things ending in "ism". I devoured books like a man possessed. But is wasn't until I was in the sand hills of Karnac that the realization came that what I was seeking was already a part of my past. That I was path to spiritual rejuvenation.

I returned to Australia with a new acceptance of my family and my roots. I was feeling okay within myself, I had decided I liked me and I had control. I was standing against the bar as she passed. She stopped looked, really looked, through me, to the very core and said "You are the one for me", turned and walked away. It was as if time had just stalled and then restarted with a bump. I walked to the door and there she was sitting on the back of my bike. We didn't speak another word. We went on a sexual binge for three weeks, rarely if ever leaving the room, unwashed except by the sweat of our bodies. We discussed every minute detail of our pasts. For hours on end we just looked at one another. We explored one another's bodies questioning every mark, scar, freckle. Time for us had disappeared.

Then one morning she got out of bed walked to the window, slid it up, parted her lips and pissed out over the window sill into the garden below. I couldn't take my eyes off her, standing there nude, pissing as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. As that golden stream cut through the air it extinguished the need to hide anything from one another. It ended the wasted time between us. There was nothing we couldn't say, feel, do. Nothing could ever be obscene with such a love. Everything we did becomes a sacrament. This one act opened the way for all that followed, we had passed through the Rubicon.

It has nothing to do with religion. It isn't about God, or a Higher Power, or the existence or non-existence of a omnipotent power. It is about arrival at a point of knowing, an inner peace. An acceptance of self. Who or what we are. No longer searching for the reason why or why not. We are the reason. We are the spirituality.

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