Spirituality and BDSM

jrsygir1@aol.com 

For me BDSM Spirituality has several different facets. I have been aware of my spiritual path for many years, maybe as far back as high school, and i have been searching a long time for the meaning of it all. This search has led me to try out all different religions and philosophies and i would say i have adopted something of each of them along the way. A few years ago i found 12 step programs and was forced to deal with the concept of a higher power. For me that higher power became self-love, and every decision and action became a choice between self-love and self hate. When i found BDSM about 18 months ago. I was very aware that i wasn't drawn to it just for the orgasms or the spankings. That something else was touching me on the inside. Something was touching my soul. For me. I do what it is i do out of self-love. The gift of submission is a gift i give myself first. In fact everything i do in BDSM. Whether its Topping or Domming or bottoming or submitting, is a gift to ME. Everyone else gets to come along for the ride.

Another thing i have always searched for was a community, a family. Along the path i have found different families that filled different needs in me. My BDSM family is no different and i relate to them in a spiritual way. That is, i believe in personal responsibility and in respecting and acting out of love for them. The concept of safe sane and consensual, which we all know and accept as a very subjective concept, is part of that. Educating myself on safety is a spiritual activity because it keeps me and my partners safe. Educating newbies. Not indoctrinating them into my way of thinking, but giving them a basis of information to grow and learn from is a spiritual act. Being tolerant and nonjudgmental is a spiritual act. Practicing safe sex is a spiritual act. Honesty is a spiritual act. Hugging is a spiritual act.

The other facet of spirituality in BDSM, the one that Joseph Bean talks a lot about, is how the experience of what we know as Top and subspace, as flying, blissing out, how that is a way to experience the spirit of ourselves. It's more a mystical experience. Parallel to the experience of Buddhists who reach enlightenment, whirling dervishes, fasting and meditating, praying, acid dropping hippies, even athletes who get runners high etc.

These are altered states of consciousness that give us the opportunity to channel energy, push limits, and experience something outside of our normal physical selves. I have had this experience many times; childbirth being one of them. I went through natural unmedicated childbirth and used a combination of self-hypnosis and breathing techniques to do it and i remember the doctor during the first delivery, shaking my leg, telling me to wake up. She thought i was falling asleep between pushes. I was in "subspace" and didn't even know it. I had the sensation of floating down as if i were under water. I get that exact same sensation during any particularly intense SM scene. In fact during several "pain" scenes i have flashed on childbirth and remembered such silly details as minute as the pattern on the curtains in the window of the delivery room.

Another time i get this floaty feeling is when i go whale watching off Cape Cod. I float. It is a spiritual experience to me. My state of consciousness is different and i believe i could access something i normally can't. Someday, now that i am aware of this, i hope to do just that.

Every time i go into subspace i believe i have the opportunity to change myself, to reach something, and the Dom i have been with knows this and has used it to help me with better body image, to help me accept pleasure instead of feeling like i don't deserve it. It is as if at these moments i am open to life altering experiences that at this moment when i am stripped of my defenses. I can be healed. I can have a bit more of the block of self-hatred chipped away from me. I can join with another soul in a moment of mutual pleasure and respect and love and trust. That moment of joining is when i feel most alive. It makes the rest of my life feel like the dream. It's the reason i keep coming back.

The one thing i would disagree with as far as comments i have heard is the idea that you can't get to that place with casual SM partners. I can. When i touch someone. When i look into their eyes. I am in love with that person's humanity, their spirit. Even if i just met them, there is a connection. I recognize another human being, another soul. And i definitely can go deep and experience a lot of the same things i do when i am with someone i know better and have a relationship with. Maybe because i am oriented to the idea of self-love first, that i am here because i love me, as long as i love me i can love anyone else, regardless of who they are and what their imperfections are. I can be in love with that person at that moment in time. They can trust me not to hurt them and because of that trust, that connection, they will exchange power with me. This is the basis of D/s.

© 1999

This article is reprinted here with the explicit permission of the author. If you would like to share it with others, please link directly to this page or contact the author for permission. It is a violation of copyright law to distribute or reprint this piece without that permission, however you may include a short quote from it, not more than 20% of the total text. Please respect the integrity of this work.