Humility

Taking a sailboat out for the day, or "day-sailing" as it is called, can be great fun. It seems day-sailing is the usual way that people develop an interest in sailing. Some day-sailors really do catch the sailing "bug," and their interest grows to the point where they may take classes, buy a boat and seek the company of others who also sail. Depending on location, sooner or later, these days sailors encounter what are called ""world-cruisers" people who take their sailboats across deep water to distant ports. When world-cruisers bring their boats into the marina. the day-sailors look up from their work or their drinks and, in a glance. instantly recognize the differences in the rigging required on deep-water boats, the specialized equipment and the way the world-cruisers move about on their crafts. And the stories they have to tell about their voyages are, of' course, different. Meeting the challenges of an ocean crossing is, after all, a different sort of experience than taking the boat out to enjoy the day light hours. None of this means to suggest that world-cruising is better than day-sailing. both have their dangers, rewards, challenges, excitements and costs. Some day- sailors will try their hands at world-cruising, but most of them won't for various reasons including, "Those people are crazy!" And many world-cruisers come to a day when they no longer wish a life on the high seas, and they return to day-sailing or give up sailing altogether. 

So what'? Similarly, slaving for an evening or a weekend now and then is a different experience than choosing to live life as a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week (24/7) slave in service to one or more Masters. Brief excursions out onto the Sea of Surrender are a very different matter than living out there full time. Doing a "scene" as a slave is worlds away from having an identity as a slave. For the former, slaving may be just one of many erotic delights; but for the latter, slaving is a destiny, a meditation, a way of life, a song one sings with each breath. As with sailing, additional skills are necessary if one is to survive and flourish as a 24/7 slave. Navigating the deeper waters of full-time submission is challenging. For those who choose to confine their slaving to occasional weekend encounters with various Masters. the need to submit coupled with a conditional obedience is usually enough to produce a good time and get one's "slave rocks" off for a while. But for those of us who have realized that slavery is at the very core of our erotic identities and that the decision to be a slave is the very best decision we can make for ourselves in life, the need to submit and conditional obedience are insufficient to the calling. Additional tools are needed.

One purpose of this series is to offer slaves a set of tools that can help make better slaves. Better slaves give better service. Better service means better Masters. and better Masters mean better experiences. Humility Humility is easy for some wannabe slaves and hard for others. Since we slaves are raised in the world of humans, we tend to take on the characteristics of humans. This includes ]learning to desire "credit," or recognition, for a job done well. We are taught that it is a good thing to be proud of who we are, our talents and abilities, and many other things as well. We learn that seeking attention through achievement of worthy goals is good, and so we do our best in the hope that someone will notice and reward our efforts with something we like': a smile, a touch, a medal, a paycheck, a promotion, a gift, a privilege and the like. Receiving these things reinforces the pattern of reward-seeking and encourages us to strive for more. The practice of humility-and it is a practice-is one of the things that can help make it possible to flourish as a full-, time slave. Among other things, slavery is about selflessness. Without the selflessness that comes with humility, those who would be slaves encounter all sorts of difficulty. When we are prideful. we can find ourselves competing with Masters for attention or  we might find ourselves manipulating people and situations in the hope of coming to a Master's attention. These are attempts to control. And control is the province of Masters, not slaves. 

Our attempts to control take us further away from the bliss of slavery, not toward it. At the home where I am currently permitted to live and serve. the lawn appears to be under my control. but only because the Master here wants it so. Through me. He controls the lawn. I am His instrument. When He praises the lawn, there is a temptation to take pride in my work there, but to do so would be falling into a trap. Pride and arrogance are the enemies of humility. It is the Master who makes the lawn beautiful; it is my good fortune to be provided a comfortable and beautiful place to slave. He has my gratitude for making the lawn the way it is. My labor is His because I am His. When we slave with a humble attitude. the gift of our service and pleasuring is uncontaminated with pride. The Masters we serve become the center of our universe. For this to happen, we must first take ourselves out of the center of our world to make room for the Masters around whom we need our lives to revolve. Without a clear understanding of humility and its role in our lives, the pure bliss of slavery can remain out of reach. perhaps permanently. Being humble (behaving with humility) is not the same as being weak, spineless, wimpy or the like. Indeed, humility requires great mental strength. It takes strength to overcome all the human training that teaches us to be proud, vain and self-important. As I have observed in an earlier essay, slavery requires bravery. 

Various Masters have told me that they don't have time for weak people in their lives. Masters have also mentioned that they often get more pleasure when mastering a strong slave-physically, mentally or both. The submission of a strong person means more. Having said all this, it is useful to mention "humiliation" because, in the English language, the words "humiliation" and "humility" appear, at first glance, to be more closely related to each other than is actually the case for our purposes here. Humility is the state of being humble in mind and spirit. It is the absence of pride and self-assertion. Notice that the word describes a condition that one's mind or spirit might be in. It is a noun and not a verb. There is no pain associated with humility. Humiliation. on the other hand. is either the act of lowering another person's pride or dignity. or the emotional pain of having one's pride or dignity lowered. This is a process. or the result of a process, which includes some kind of pain. Humiliation produces an injury to one's pride.

Were it not for the presence of pride or dignity, no injury would be possible. By this reasoning. a slave in the state of humility is a person without pride or dignity and, therefore, can not be truly humiliated. Masters will sometimes do apparently humiliating things to slaves. both to plumb the depths of a slave's remaining pride and because they enjoy it. To slave well. you have to have a clear mind. Humility can become a daily tonic that helps clear the mind, making it more easily harnessed to the Master's will. But to use humility in this way, one must "take" the tonic of humility whenever the opportunity to do so presents itself. "Taking" the tonic of humility means cultivating it as a desirable state of mind. So how does one cultivate humility? I suppose there are many ways to cultivate humility. What seems to work for me. at least for now, is the following. I hope it will be helpful at least to some. The Cultivation of Humility For me, the cultivation of humility begins with careful observation of my external behavior and the internal motives for that behavior. I walk slightly behind the Master and just to His left. Why? Is it to trumpet my submission to the world and say, "Look at me; I'm a slave to this man- aren't I special?" or is it to honor Him?

When I am naked in the Master's home, is it because I am proud of my body and my nakedness; is it because I enjoy the exposure: or is it because He has ordered it so'? Since I am alone inside my mind. only I know the real answer. And if the answer is about me. then I am not coming from a humble place in my heart. but rather from an attention- seeking place in my ego. Anytime and every time my motives for my behavior are about me - my insecurities. my doubts. my neediness. my ego. my satisfaction. my vanity. my fear- then I am far from humility. To discover my distance from humility, I must first pay attention to what I do and why, and I must do this with the most fearless honesty I can muster within myself. I doubt that a slave can measure his closeness to humility, only his distance from it. Anyone who claims to be humble is not humble by the very definition of the word. Pride in one's humility is not humble-it is pride, and where pride is. there is no humility. Progress is the objective here. not perfection. 

The slave who is perfected in humility would not know it, for the conscious thought of perfection in one's self is prideful and, therefore, not humble. And yet, the first step is self-awareness. As those who have been following this series will have guessed by now, I am a great believer in the power of ritual. Perhaps this has something to do with my religious background. Whatever the source, it has been helpful for me to build into my daily life a series of rituals that are designed to help me become a less prideful and arrogant person and, hopefully, a better slave. Outside the dungeon, the Master here has little interest in ritual, and so these are rituals that I have imposed upon myself If to help me in my quest for humility. Of course. the Master might intervene in any of these rituals if He should choose to do so. For the most part. however. He looks upon them as me doing the internal work of slavery, and He does not concern Himself with them unless they annoy or distract Him in some way. All of these little rituals are informed by the same set of loose guidelines: Try not to attract attention. Try to put one's self last in situations where it is practical and unobtrusive to do so (always being last in line can attract attention too: sometimes, being in the middle of a line is less conspicuous). Try to leave the most comfortable accommodations free for others to enjoy; attend to the comfort of others first. Put the Master ahead of yourself unless He wishes otherwise. Try not to be "grand." arrogant or loud. Avoid activities that might generate pride. 

These are some of my humility rituals: I try not so sit down in public until the Master is seated and has indicated where He wants me to sit. When serving the Master food or drink. I try to serve Him first and completely before I attend to myself. When sleeping in a bed my place is the least convenient unless the Master orders otherwise. I try not to interrupt Him when He is speaking. I try to avoid angry. whiny petulant or insolent tones of voice when speaking to anyone. When removing the hair from my body. I try to have the Master in mind. When sitting in a chair. I try not to use the back to lean on unless He orders it to be so. When given a choice of chairs. I try to choose the least comfortable. unless doing so attracts undue attention. When entering a room. I try to do so unnoticed. I try to be deferential to His friends and business associates. I try to choose plates, glasses and silverware that are smaller than His, or I eat with my fingers. I walk behind Him and a bit to His left. I try to piss on into toilets, and only with my right knee on the floor. When with the Master, I try to pass through doorways behind Him unless He wishes otherwise. I try not to refer to Him as "my Master" because I do not own Him: He is "the one I serve." I try not to take credit for anything done well. When traveling alone on business, I unpack my luggage and place my clothing and such in the bottom drawers and the backs of the closets-the top drawers, the fronts of the closets, and the most convenient locations are left vacant. When using hallways or stairways alone, especially big ones, I try to avoid the center, When in place to sit or stand. I try not to eat all the food on my plate, even when I am hungry. 

One of the other paths to humility that is even more powerful than these ritual reinforcements is obedience, because to be truly obedient is a humbling thing. I have commented at length on obedience in the fifth essay and so I shall not repeat myself here. It is enough to say that humility is impossible. These rituals, along with my obedience and many other small things taken together, are the ways in which I try to practice humility. And still, I find pride, vanity and arrogance creeping into my mind from time to time. Sometimes I notice traces of improvement. They are not consistent, but I have he. My failures teach me more than my successes. and I continue to learn. So can you.