Spiritual Aspects, Part 5: Fully Exploring the Known (5)

I can't believe I took two days off from posting here. I feel like a failure LOL.

Anyway, I left off talking about talking vs. doing/perceiving. And how difficult it is for anyone to just do and feel without obsessively exploring what those feelings and actions mean.

The most effective way is another one of those "tricks that's not really a trick." And it is as simple and as complicated as this:

Acting as if.

At the somplest level, it's just what it says. Not planning to be/do a certain thing, a certain way, but simply "pretending," if you will, that the desired state of affiars already exists and acting accordingly.

That this works is truly a mystical thing. There is no rational explanation for it.

We are geared to thinking from the bottom up, usually. Let's say the goal, in broad strategic terms, is to "be a better submissive." (Let's assume for the moment that what that actually means has been defined for the person by his or her Master/Mistress.) Most people would have one of two ways of proceeding:

1. One type of person would think about (perhaps even write down) all the things that make up "a better subnmissive" and then think about how to go about achieving them. Essentially a "to-do list" approach.

2. The other type of person is going to be completely befuddled by the sheer magnitude of the task and probably not achieve much unless very clear and specific direction is supplied every step of the way by the Dom/me.

I chose a somewhat bad example becasue no task for a submissive should ever be left at such a broad strategic level, but it turns out that the submissives in group #2 are perhaps actually closer to achieving the goal without even knowing it.

That's because neither apporach works as well as acting as if. That is, the only way to proceed is to essentially lie to one's self, if one needs to use that word. One assumes that one is alreasy a "better submissive," and if one is faithful to it, one's actions fall into line, by a process so subtle that the effects will be startling when one stops and looks back after some time has passed. The reason I say that the #2 type submissives above are closer is because they are more likely to accept the command to "act as if" with less questioning, and thus it will be more effective, especially in the short term.

I fully ackonowledge how ridiculous this concept might sound. It is lying to one's self, in a way. It denies reality. To those concerns, I offer the following:

It is lying to the shell. It is denying the primacy of the shell.

The reason that the to-do list approach achieves only limited success is that the very process of making a list, of taking that inventory, feeds the shell, which, while it is the source of the potential to improve, is also the source of the problem. One's "list," one's approach, can't help but reflect some of the things that the list is trying to correct.

What acting as if does, if applied consistently and faithfully is to break that reflexive cycle of reinforcing the shell. But it is very difficult; becasue it is a "trick," a trick one's plays on one's self, divorcing one's self from that knowledge is a constant struggle. But over time the shell becomes more flexible and fluid, allowing for the Dom/me to more easily guide the process of exploring, and eventually, cracking the shell. At a certain point the exploration of the known is essentially complete; one comes to the realization that what has known and taken for granted all one's life is the actually an order that we, through our own "magical" powers, have imposed on what is actually complete chaos. That what we "are" is something that we have woven from incomprehenisble raw materials and as such is as potentially fluid and magical as those raw materials. And, even more amazingly, it is an order that we all have somehow come to agree on. This is a profound, devastating revelation; I know that My words here can't possibly do it justice.

At that point, (actually it's not quite so sequential, things are happening on multiple tracks simultaneously) one can approach the unknown with the proper bearing and respect, more prepared for what lies there.