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A recent question posed on a listserve I subscribe to provided an opportunity for me to take an inventory of my life journey this past year:

"Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go.
Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old ( Read more... )

It’s a habit of yours to walk slowly
You hold a grudge for years
With such heaviness, how can you be modest?
With such attachments, do you expect to arrive anywhere?
-Rumi

For the past several years, I have been struggling with the desire to be with a master who meets most of my “needs” as I saw them. In some respects, this “needs” determination ( Read more... )

The river that flows in you also flows in me.
-Kabir

I am an enrolled student in pursuit of the degree of Life. It is a futile degree, for there is no end-point in the courses I will need to take and the schools I will attend. However, for this year, I am enrolled in the study of Zen and the Art of Mastery and slavery. I have four textbooks at the ( Read more... )

Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.
(Leonardo da Vinci)

I have self-exiled for the next few months as ( Read more... )

Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.
- Brian Adams

It has been fifteen days since the Owner last signed in ( Read more... )

If there is one thing worse than being an ugly duckling in a house of swans, it's having the swans pretend there's no difference. --Teena Booth, Falling From Fire

I have succumbed to their message. As an active participant in this culture, living in the world of constant media with the incessant bombardment of advertisements for looking prettier ( Read more... )

Last night, I slept with my cuffed hands chained behind my back.

Actually, I didn't sleep a lot. Physically, there was no discomfort, yet mentally I found myself struggling with the bonds.

I came to the realization that while I envision myself as this perfect submissive, thrilling in the continual tests and controls imposed upon me, the fact of ( Read more... )

Touching is yet another way of embracing that which is unconscious.

As my hands were touching her familiar body this morning, massaging each sinewy muscle, becoming intimate with every dip and curve, noting the scars of childbirth, noting the stretch marks acquired with the passing years, I knew quite clearly with a lightning flash of ( Read more... )

..of agendas.

Realization dawns on Monday morning as I awake from the weekend. The key to finding joy as a slave is to abandon all the internal expectations and desires. That is also the challenge.

When a slave has agendas it is impossible to achieve contentment. The slave has an internal yardstick of measurement that can never be met by any ( Read more... )