Photo by the mysterious Steven CookMeet Erika Ginnis of Seattle...I found this a good read, and then some, about the profound and spiritual dynamic that can be found in D/s. It's long, but I thought very worth it!
Background
I've been an energy worker and spiritual teacher for more than 20 years, and been kinky for that long or longer, so I've had to make peace between these different aspects of myself. In the process, I've tried to explore and understand them as well as I can in the context of my own life.
To a large degree, this has had to be an oddly private quest — our culture has such a strong concept of separation between sexuality and spirituality that many people can't see that they're related at all. Kink is an especially forbidden aspect of sexual experience that is generally even more segregated and misunderstood.
I've had to accept that for now at least there are people in my world(s) who can't consider kink and spirituality as compatible, regardless of what I personally may have experienced. Information I might have to share in this area is of no help to someone who doesn't want to hear about sexuality at all, much less alternative sexuality. So I share with people who know me well, who are interested, or who come to me explicitly seeking information.
I've used my spiritual training to enhance my experience of kink and sexuality. Clearing energy, getting in contact with my own desires and preferences, and healing past hurts that have come from being alive and loving have all helped me see sex and it's expression as Divinely inspired and enacted.
When I came out as "kinky" and gave myself permission to explore that side of myself, my experiences with leather, fetish and kink opened up avenues to the Divine in ways I wouldn't have expected. One of the first was in the arena of "intense sensation" otherwise known as pain. This one, oddly enough, was more traditional, although still not accepted in many circles. Mainstream mystics across the centuries have used pain in ecstatic experience, and have used intense sensation to build altered states of consciousness.
There are many articles and books available on this subject, so I won't go into much detail about it here, other than to mention one recurring theme that was unavoidable when I was first exploring sensation play. What it looks like, and what it actually feels like, are so entirely different (almost opposite in fact) that I had to stop judging it in order to try it. My normal ways of perceiving were entirely obsolete in this area.
One comparable thing does come to mind although it is from an entirely different discipline. Ballet, if it is done well, looks beautiful and graceful and almost effortless. Yet if you have ever put on a pair of toe shoes (the ballet shoes dancers use to go on pointe) you know that what it looks like and what it feels like (before the endorphins kick in, that is) can be quite a bit different.
The reverse is then true when watching someone who has consented to be flogged. They writhe and groan as the leather whip is applied to their back, and watching them climb the rack you might think, "Oh my goodness that poor misguided soul, how horrible!" Later, though, you see the same person smiling and happily recounting the tale, and you realize that the external appearance just does not match the internal experience! I found this out in the deepest way when I became that person on the receiving end, and realized what fun I was having in spite of how badly it must look to an observer. Aside from whatever else the physical sensation aspect of kink has given me, it has made visceral for me the phrase "appearances can be deceiving," and that has proven eminently valuable in many areas of my life.
Dominance & Submission
It has to do with something referred to as "power exchange" or D&S. More specifically, I'd like to discuss how Dominance (being enacted by the person who is theoretically in charge) and Submission (being enacted by the person who has theoretically given up their power into the other persons keeping) can be sacred acts in oddly obvious ways.
Submission as a Sacred Act of Service
Service to the Divine/God/Goddess or Universal energy, is nothing new. Religions and spiritual groups have been based on it for centuries. Many people feel drawn to service very deeply. To view service as a sacred act is relatively easy — difficulty arises only when the context is sex or BDSM. Again, our culture has such strong taboos about sex that anything related to it becomes suspect.
My personal experience, and the experience of people I know and people I've talked with, is that the connection to Divinity through service is as strong within D&S as it is anywhere else. When you find yourself choosing to enter into a place of submission to another person, there is often a Universality to it than can be a little surprising.
I remember some of my early experiences of service in this form. I was not and had not normally been a very service-oriented person. I was not a big fan of either rules or authority. The idea of willingly giving up anything to another person was extremely difficult for me. I did it initially because it was so counter to my nature, and yet also unexpectedly appealing. It felt exciting and hot because it was a risk. I was going to be in someone else's "power."
What I discovered that I didn't expect was the extent to which submission is an internal experience. The real drama was in my own head. I had to struggle with my self, my mind, my beliefs, my self-concept. My head kept chattering away, it fought hard for dominance. Since this was a sexual experience for me, I had some motivation to quiet things down so I could have fun! I found that the same committee that held meetings in my brain and kept me from climaxing in the past was the same one holding court as I attempted to set aside doing things "my way" and be in service to someone else, even in this "play" environment. I remember thinking, "Damn! No one told me this would be a kind of meditation, how did this get so spiritual all of a sudden?"
That's not to say the other person had no effect on the experience — the other person always does. In fact I've found it essential that the person I am working with is someone who can truly take my power into their keeping in a conscious way, and have enough strength and skill to hold and play with it. Plus for me there has to be at least some feeling of affection, and love is even better, which is why I normally only go there in some kind of relationship. But it doesn't matter how good the Top/Dom is, if I can't find that place inside myself.
Once I finally could find that place of surrender within me, to just give it the fuck up and let down my guard, it got way better and more fun. Then something else happened. From that place of stillness I woke up within my self and realized that this all reminded me of worship somehow, and that I could see the Divine expressing as the person I had chosen to serve and that, on some level, this was also about me and my concept of God/dess.
Submission was connected to a place deep within me that was very hidden and protected — it had to do with trust or the lack of it. It had to do with letting go of control for one moment. In giving up that constant responsibility and iron-fisted control, there opened up a way to get back in touch with the trust that says we can rely on the Universe and on another person. I was able to re-enter a childlike state of grace (be like a little child), which may sound sacrilegious to some but which is actually a deeply important ground of our spirituality — that pre-verbal place of being cared for that we so want/need and often never get.
Even though I would never have expected it beforehand, given my preconceived notions of submission in this context, I found an incredible freedom in letting go. In many ways you are allowing yourself to be the center of the universe, getting all that focus of attention from the person who is in the role of Dominant.
Paradox abounds. I found that in submission/service there is actually great power, a wellspring of strength that can be tapped by giving up the struggle and letting oneself be of service. The person who is being submissive is actually empowered — it's as if by surrendering, the whole is then given to you. If that isn't spiritual in nature, I don't know what is! Plus orgasms get way better too...
I have expanded the service aspects of my life a great deal over the years, in part because of what I learned from my kinky experiences of it. These days, one of my ongoing prayers/inner meditations at any moment is to ask, "Help me to be of service". I have found huge value in it, and it has opened me to aspects of receptivity for all manner of good things that were blocked for years.
Power
I've often been asked, "Who really has the power in a scene?"
It's an interesting question. There are some that say that the submissive is the one holding the power. As a submissive you are giving over your power for that period of time but in that act of giving you put yourself in a very receptive place, and can draw from it immense strength.
As the dominant, though, you're the one driving and controlling the other person's experience to some extent. You're calling the shots. If it's your hand holding someone down, then you do have the power, right? Okay, but what if that other person really, really wants you to hold them down? Are you just serving them by doing it?
The point I'm trying to make is that the direction of service is often a matter of opinion, and it depends on what angle you look at it from. I remember hearing someone say once, "It's called power exchange, not power give-away." Exchange gives both people power.
Dominance is Responsibility
To be dominant is to be willing to take on responsibility for running things, for being a steward of someone else's experience and reality. Acting as the Dominant or Top in the situation does bring a different perspective on the whole adventure.
Before I had any real experience, I only had my fantasies to go on, where I was effortlessly in total control and everything always went flawlessly. I didn't understand until I had first-hand experience that it's also work and takes a lot of focused attention! If you're doing a sensation scene, it can even be quite physically demanding (especially if you're wearing fetish shoes), and it's always emotionally demanding, because you're the one directing the scene, sensation, and experience.
With control and power comes enormous responsibility. As the Top, you're the person who can and must respond to the situation. The responsibility of control also places a Divine mantle on your shoulders, and oddly enough, it is also the mantle of service. It may not always be clear from the outside, but the person acting upon the Bottom/submissive is giving a great deal. Providing that attention, time and focus is an act of service, and the blurs lines between giving and taking.
Another aspect of being in control, which touches clearly on connection with the Divine, has to do with cherishing the person you are with. Being present to the risks they are willing to take for you, how open they are willing to make themselves and how much they offer in sacrifice is an act of seeing the God/dess in the other person. This accords with the Latin roots of the word sacrifice itself, which literally meant to make or offer something sacred. As your Bottom offers up their body and emotions to you, it can definitely feel as if they're enacting a sacred rite.
To be served also has it's own challenges when you are really present to what's happening. On some level you must accept your own sacred nature to know that you are worthy to receive a gift of such magnitude. This is a lovely thing, but requires internal work. I know when I agree to let someone give themself to me at a deep level, I have to be mentally prepared and willing to be present to accept it or I risk missing the richness of the experience or trivializing it.
Of course, all this "work" happens in a context that's really hot and sexy. There's a vibration and connection of sexual energy in such play that's breath-taking and that actually alters consciousness. I've had the experience of feeling as if I'm weaving the energy coming up from a person as if it were silken cords. I love providing a container for the bottom, keeping the environment from infringing on what we're doing and holding the space for the experience I'm trying to create for them.
The Primal Rush of Dancing with your "Demons"
As a Top, you often feel a "rush" as someone gifts you with their power. At the same time, you come face to face with your own inner demons and desires, in a situation where you have permission to do as you will. Being present in that situation, being able to follow the currents of the other person's emotions and experience, to sense what they fear and want, while also staying true to your own intention — not only can you build trust with the person you're in charge of, you can also learn to trust yourself. It's very intense.
Playing in this way can connect us with a variety of archetypical forces within in us, some rather primal. There's an animal aspect of myself that I often come in contact with when I Top.
In a state of suspension between very different aspects of myself, I can balance between them, feeling things yet also being an observer, playing with the emotions right up to the edge of acting on them and back again. I have had more than one experience of being poised above someone with my mouth close to their ear, breathing hot breath onto them and inhaling their scent. I am side by side with the part that wants to sink my teeth deep into the neck of my "victim". I can imagine my teeth being sharp and pointed, making their way through their soft skin. And they sense my desire!
Rather than run from this thing that we might want to call a "shadow" I can be right with it and let those feelings run through me and create an intense energetic charge which we both (my partner and I) can feel. It is amazingly arousing. I sink into the permission to want this thing on some level, feel that intoxicating blood lust, and use it as part of the scene, part of the sex. I may even, and often have, talked about it as it happens, even growl near the spot I would take, to give them chills.
This exists simultaneously with all the other aspects of me as a Top, many of which want to heal and protect. It is a complex mix, and one that I believe exists in all of us below the surface, more than we are generally aware. Being able to contact it consciously in a scene is powerful and invigorating.
It's also strangely calming, perhaps in part because I am being with myself in a more complete way at that moment. I'm not spending any energy at all trying to cover up my more animal aspects, nor am I fighting with them or judging them. This is just who I am. In all reality it would be such a mess to take that big bite that I don't actually have to worry about doing it. But by acknowledging the base-line desire, I give off waves of passion that my partner can feel, and they are completely real.
This type of scene brings about a shifting of power both externally and internally. My partner has gifted me with their body and their submission and so there is an exchange of power in that way. When the energy is high enough I have even felt that moment when my bottom would have willingly given me their neck in the extreme. Then there is also a shifting of power and energy internal to me — in some way I am topping myself, being ultimately in control at that internal level so that I don't go past my limits or theirs even if at that moment we both want to.
Looking at this same kind of experience from the other side is equally intense. I have been the bottom/submissive at times when I can feel my Top/Dom's animal nature, or deep shadow-self invoked. I have felt the waves of energy and fought to keep myself above the water level enough to keep breathing, as my own desire threatened to overwhelm me.
Again I come back to something about God in all this. I have on a few occasions found myself in a place of such surrender that in that moment I made peace if it were to take place that my life were to end. I was a willing sacrifice myself to the ecstasy. This sounds kind of extreme when I write it down, and I don't want to give the wrong impression — it wasn't a death wish at all. I intend to live a long and healthy life! It was more of a place of being in deep communion with the God/Goddess of my understanding and being willing to come if she called. I knew that ultimately this person was an expression of her, and if this went to the place of death then let her will be done.
I've never jumped out of a plane or rock climbed or done many of the things that people do to confront their mortality, so I don't know if what I felt is similar. I just know that inside my passion and my fear and my desire at such a moment, there's a calm place of acceptance, and the knowledge that it is truly only between me and God in any given moment of my life.
Scenes of this sort were always only with a partner I was in relationship with, and so perhaps I was only fooling myself, but there is something very real that happens at the end of a very sharp knife, and no matter what you think you know about the other person, there is some part of you that has to surrender to the fact that if you're wrong, or something unknowable happens in that moment, then there you are. This surrender is a very freeing place.
Different sides of the same coin
From either perspective, top or bottom, play continues to have aspects of giving and receiving: sensation, power, will, pain, pleasure, orgasm. It can be seen as two sides of the same coin.
The Top gives time and attention; the creativity that goes into constructing an experience and a journey and a space where the bottom can let down their guard; and the energy, focus, and direction required to undertake all that responsibility; and gives love.
The Top receives time and attention; energy from the bottom; favors and tasks completed; sexual thrill; satisfaction from creation and from being in charge; a sense of strength from holding the mental and spiritual space; and receives love.
The Bottom gives time and attention; experience of being of service to the top; gives up power into safekeeping; gives up control; gives their body and sensations; gives of self and does the tasks set out by the dominant; and gives love.
The Bottom receives time and attention; energy from the top; freedom from responsibility; sexual thrill; satisfaction from serving and pleasing; a sense of own strength from accomplishing and enduring; and receives love.
There are those that say that any path can be a path to enlightenment. If that's true, one can find nirvana doing the dishes... well, perhaps that's not so far from the truth. Sexuality and kink are gateways to internal and external experience that can be enlightening and transcendent. It's an odd synthesis of work and play that can provide spiritual insights while being hot, sexy and fun, all at the same time. Hmmm, wonder why I like it? Guess I will have to keep gathering data a while longer to find out.
Copyright (c) 2004 by Erika Ginnis
This story may be copied freely and re-used provided that its authorship is clearly attributed to Erika Ginnis.
