Preparation for the upcoming AASECT conference (in two days!!) and as part of my work for Princess Kali's Kink Leaders program, I've been reading Lee Harrington's Sacred Kink. As a goddess-type, I've always been interested in spirituality, ritual, and meaning, and while I LOVE to get off, I'm more deeply drawn to the profound aspects of sexuality than just the juicy ones. In fact, I've always been one to challenge myself and push myself HARD. In the negative sense, I can be an obsessive perfectionist--nothing is ever good enough, especially my own work. In the best sense--when I am operating out of a place of bravery, strength, and wholeness--I am intuitive, strong, wise, and fucking intense. I LOVE competition, and I love pushing myself, and others, past perceived limits. On a daily basis, I push myself at just about everything I do, from running faster and lifting heavier at the gym, to challenging myself to write daily--even when I don't want to, and even when it hurts (Noticed more posts lately? I committed to a 365 write every day project!).
Furthermore, I push myself to do the best I can academically, and I expect the same of those around me--both fellow students, professors, and classmates. I just love the feeling of being challenged--of being asked to do more than I thought I could do, and then proving to myself that I am stronger than I realized. As a result of this attraction to challenge, I have a tendency to challenge those around me--whether it is the person on the treadmill next to me at the gym (I have been known for screaming "You can do it!!" at the top of my lungs when it looks like someone is about to give up), or pushing sexual and romantic partners past their boundaries. I am learning when it is good to push, and when it is good to step back. My husband is an introvert, and requires time and space to think through issues when I've brought them up. I've had to learn to wait for an answer, and allow him time to percolate, even though this can be excruciatingly hard for me. I am attracted to Kink/BDSM as a negotiated space to both give and receive these sorts of challenges.
And that's where the Ordeal Path comes in. Lee Harrington describes the ordeal path as "that which shakes you out of your comfort zone. By using purposeful and intentional pain, challenges, or endurance, an individual is pushed past or through their perceived limits. Whether the ordeal is mental, physical, spiritual, or psychological, you come out of the working changed or transformed, opened up to a world beyond those limits." (Sacred Kink, pp. 74). On my own journey, I didn't become brave by being fearless. In fact, I have many opportunities for courage because I am a fearful person. I have struggled with insecurity, jealousy, nerves, anxiety, and such things for most of my life. I have a terrible fear of heights, and in fact, one summer at camp I attempted the Ropes Course, and ended up clinging to a tree, wet with tears, for most of the day. When I finally forced myself to go on, despite the fear, and perhaps because of it, and finished the course, I was insanely proud of myself. I ended up winning the "Lion Heart" award at the end of the summer for that snot covered, tear drenched moment, and it wasn't cause I was the bravest kid on the ropes--it was because I was the scardy-est.
Another such moment was when I decided to embrace the polyamorous lifestyle--not because it was my true nature--but rather because it scared the fuck out of me. I'd struggled with deep, intense jealousy in all my previous relationships, and had become quite the serial monogamist as a result, and I hated the way my fear and hatred of other women consumed me. I didn't want to feel worthless, and not-good-enough, and so I figured what the hell, I love the concept of learning to love multiple people, and allowing my partner the freedom to love whoever he loves, even if it's not me, or even if it's other men or women who are different than me. I think that's the point--that no one person, or thing can EVER meet all your needs (in fact, I think that's where our longing for the Divine comes in), and that it is natural, okay, and good to allow different people to fill different roles in one's life. At the moment, my husband is being challenged to expand his heart and his mind as I engage in relationships with other partners who in some ways, threaten and scare him. I've watched him sit with his jealousy and confront his fear, and it has been a difficult, but fulfilling journey for the two of us to take together. I know that I too, in turn, will have to wait and watch when he takes on other partners, some of whom (I guarantee) will trigger jealousy and anxiety in me. And at that time, I will have the choice to embrace and get to know my fears and jealousies and see what is really behind them. It will be an opportunity to grow and get to know who I really am, behind the veneer.
As far as the actual BDSM tools of ordeal are concerned, from the hooks, whips, knives, needles, fire, and so on, I'm not sure how much of that is really for me. I have grown to love my monthly bikini waxes (mmm hot wax and intense pain, and then a deliciously smooth mons pubis), and I do enjoy such things as being disciplined and spanked until I cry. I would be interested in suspension, and different acts of endurance. I would also be interested in learning about different acts that appeal to my partners or clients. For me, though, it is much more about the mental and spiritual challenges, like having the courage to write in this blog daily, or being humiliated and spanked and mentally aroused in the bedroom. I want someone who can engage my mind, and not just my body.
But then again, the experience of giving birth is an incredible example of a transformative ordeal experience. I gave birth naturally, without drugs, and it was by far, the most incredible spiritual, sexual, and physical experience of my life to date. The waves of contractions, the deep, buzzing pain, the way the world beyond my body faded away and I was surrounded by love and safety. The moans and groans that escaped out of my mouth without permission because there was no other way that merged into a wild song, all shaped the power of that moment. I did not even experience the birth as pain, but rather as something that I was meant to do. I wasn't being cut or ripped or beaten, but instead, opening up to the release the life within me--the life that I'd grown! And in the middle of it all, I was given a vision. As a hummed and moaned and swayed in rhythm, I was transported to a hilltop with long, swaying grass. I stood beside the goddess Artemis, and I was a goddess beside her, part of the earth and all of life itself. I let out a shrieking war cry as we both stretched back the taut strings of our arrows.
I would not be surprised if my tastes change in terms of these BDSM practices, and if, as I experience one sensation and type of play after another, I become clearer on my strengths, my limits, and my gifts, and how to move through and beyond them into the next challenge of the Goddess. Oh Inanna, oh Erishkigal, bless me and mark me, and show me your ways.
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