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Articles: Prayer, hyponosis and BDSM |
Posted by
Arthegarn on Monday, November 15, 2010 - 09:24 AM PST
A long time ago, when I was a Catholic and I used to pray, I could hear God in my mind. It's not exactly that I heard It, of course, but I could sense God's replies to my questions and prayers. It was like as if, as I was verbalizing my emotions, giving them the shape of a thought by wording them or, at least as I was being conscious of what I felt and thought; I found God's answer inside me. My conversations with God consisted in a discovery, in the removal of a coat of doubt or fear or pain that covered an answer that had always been inside me. They were not, as I have been told that happens to other believers, like a dialog with an external entity. It was much more similar to the echo of a thought: I would make a thought and I felt how it "bounced" inside my mind and turned into a reply. But the prayer never got out of my head, it didn't have to cross the vast interstellar spaces to the edge of the Universe to find God there. When I was a Catholic and I used to pray, God was within me. I felt God in me, with me, as a travelling companion, as another organ of my body or another side of my personality; more than as some kind of universal and know-it-all referee.
Of course, I never really believed this literally...
I learnt how to hypnotise when I was 21(1) and it's one of the most important lessons I have learned in my life. I have always said (and I will say it again) that anyone who wishes to tread on the paths of magic, occultism, witchcraft or religion should learn hypnosis. There is nothing esoteric or arcane or magical about hypnosis, it's a scientific fact and its way of working is perfectly understood (the first serious studies on hypnosis are more than150 years old(2)) and it has surprising effects on conscience. It teaches you up to which point is the mind malleable, how (in general) you can't trust your own memories and, in certain states, not even your immediate perceptions. It is a rationalist cold shower to the enthusiasm experienced by anyone tinkering with the supernatural when something "works". When you make an astral journey and actually see your body from the outside, when you spend half an hour psalmodying in Hebrew inside Solomon's Seal and, finally, you see the gates of Hell before you; when you are desperate and pray and suddenly feel that God is actually there and that everything is going to be all right and your problems vanish miraculously(3)... Well, you are free to believe what you will, of course, but the most likely explanation for the event is that there is nothing supernatural on it and that you just self-hypnotised without knowing that (or how) you did it.
I was lucky to learn hypnosis so young. If I had not opposed naturalism and methodical scepticism to my own and undeniable personal experiences, who knows the kind of stuff I would be into by now.
But even so, as I once said, I am not Spock. No matter how many rational barriers and safety lockouts I imposed myself to avoid becoming a fanatic(4), no matter how much I despised Kumbayas and people of that sort, the fact was that i got a genuine benefit from something that I could honestly only call communication with God. If I was to be sincere with myself, and I asked whether that voice I heard inside me was God or was a product of my imagination I could not help to answer myself that it had to have a divine component. It didn't get as far as believing that I had a direct line to talk with God, but it did seem possible, even probable, to me, that God had designed the Universe, our minds and our brains so that, in some way that I was unable to explain, when we tried to communicate with God in the appropriate circumstances our thought, our prayer, produced some kind of "wave" that somehow interacted with the structure of Reality itself so it returned to us, "bounced back" to us, modified, resounding with the entire Universe, with something like the seed of the intuition of a reply. It might sound crazy (it likely does) but the way I saw it if there actually was a God and had the configuration I thought It did (an omnipotent, omnipresent entity existing outside space and time and that took an interest on us up to the point of loving us) it seemed to me that he would have done quite a blotch of a job with Creation if he had to intervene one time after the other with miracles and supernatural effects. No, the way I saw it a really good designed and executed Creation, an elegant Creation, had to include all answers within itself, and that implied and inscribed, natural mechanism to communicate with the Creator. From my point of view the timeless God that I believed in had created the Universe, past, present and future, as a perfect whole, in which design my questions and their answers were included to begin with. All that I had to do is place myself in the right circumstances to activate that natural, automated mechanism and I would establish a communication, which in itself was not supernatural, with God.
That circumstance was the Prayer State.
The Prayer State is something hard to explain to who has never been there. The first thing that has to be said is that is, without the slightest doubt, an hypnotic state. You relax, you focus on yourself and God and look for It within you. Each believer has its procedure, there are myriads of things that can help: candles, the scent of wax or incense, an icon or a fixed point to which stare until your look wanders; smooth, simple, rythmic, repetitive music in bass tones; saffron colours, mantras, your own position... You focus on relaxing, you force yourself to relax and to somehow "get out of yourself", to stop thinkng about you (and in you) as an individual and dissolve in the rest of Creation, entering into communion with what surrounds you, looking for God inside you and in the beauty and harmony of the Universe. You seek God's love inside and outside you, convincing yourself that it is there, that it is perceptible, and then you suddenly find it. It's like a special density and warmth in the air that surrounds you, a feeling of absolute happiness, harmony, abandonment, bliss. In those moments nothing really matters and you behold God and humble yourself, grateful because It has a while to be with you, and all that you can think of is of thanking It for all It has created, to give It back some of the wonder that you feel, to make It happy. You know that no harm can come to you because, in the end, God is there and God will take care of everything and won't let anything bad happen to you. The future vanishes, all doubt and long-term associations disappear and all that remains is an endless trust, a radical abandonment of the ego in the hands of God and a vocation... no a compulsion of service that is absolute. Nothing matters, only God and the love that you share and the will to serve it because serving It you serve the Universe and, in the final term, yourself, and you realise how natural and logic that God-mortal relationship is and, once again, ypu wonder that God has a while to spend with you and, being God God, that It interests Itself on you, that It positioned Itself as objective for your life and, through that fact, given meaning to your existence.
At this point most of you will have realised where I am getting to. It's slave sub-space.
I remember when I became interested in D/s (through you shmengers and through Toy Dolls<o:p>, o tempora!) and I read about slave sub-space. It all seemed quite obvious to me: what was the slave sub-space, how you got in and out and what did you feel when you were inside. One of the reasons why as a trainer I am found wanting is that, to me, entering and leaving slave sub-space is extremely easy, (well, leaving is not that easy) and I tend to think that my slaves find it as easy as I do, with the same simplicity and intensity, when most of the time they don't even understand the concept. Many people (vanilla) is only able to understand (or conceive) the pleasure derived from the power of the Top, at the same time thinking that the Under must necessarily be sick. Having a chick to which at any time you can say "beg me to let you suck me until I come in your mouth" so that she will fall on her knees on the spot and start imploring has obvious advantages, but, who could like it to be hit or exhibited or commanded to do humillating stuff, even in public, and on top of it wilfully and happily, obey?
Of course, said people understand nothing. But if they have been reading this up to here and still don't understand the origin of the slave's satisfaction and up to where it can be gratifying to be put through tests and demands to deepen in that surrender, they wouldn't understand even if I were to be much more explicit...
All that vanilla, particularly the one that thinks that slaves must be sick out of their religion should remember the wonderful feeling of security, self-abandonment and liberation that comes with the Prayer State. Hagiography is full of similar examples, of raptures, of saints and martyrs enjoying the pain and ordeal not because they are sick but because they have the intimate, absolute certainty that this is the plan that God, the Lord, has for them. ¡They even thank God for the possibility to sacrifice their lives to It! And I'm not going to analyse the Bible in general, and the New Testament in particular, looking for that mechanism. Can anyone think of a sentence more worthy of the best of slaves than "I am the Lord's servant, may your word to me be fulfilled(6)"? Maybe something a little more explicit, such as "Not my will, but thine, be done.(5)"? Were Virgin Mary and Jesus Crist themselves sick when they chose to renounce they wills in aras the Lord's? Of course they were not!
Yeah, yeah, I know it's not the same thing. Which takes me to the point of this article.
If God really exists, and if God's way of interacting with us and listening to our prayers and answering them has anything to do with what I have stated at the beginning, then D/s possibly becomes one of the most perversely unnatural acts that there can be. It's not only that the submissive becomes an idolater that worships the Master, as a matter of fact, the Master is usurping God's own place! BDSM would take a natural instrument designed to spiritually deepen the human being and turns it into a magnifier of bodily pleasures, a taboos and repressions solvent, a channel for the slave to make contact with his or her most secret (even for the slave) wishes and to make them come true without worrying for the consequences or anything besides the here and now, an instrument that the Master can use to satisfy more and more the slave and for the slave to deliver him/herself even more completely and with a greater passion. A sin like this one wouldn't have been thought of even by the Devil itself!
Most likely that is the reason it is sooooooooooo gooooooooooooood...
Arthegarn
PS: I must add that I sincerely doubt that God would give a rat's ass that we used that channel to increase our pleasure. After all... God already knew when creating it! A. ________________________________________ (1) To tell the whole truth, I think I began self-hypnotising without realising what was going on when I was about twelve, after reading on shugenja meditation in one of the Junior Woodchunks handbooks. Furthermore, I think that the first time I hypnotised somebody else I was around 14, but I insist I didn't know what I was doing, i only found out later when I started studying hypnosis. (2) V.gr. Janes Braids' "Neurohypnosis" (1841) or Albert Moll's "Hypnotism" (1859). That was around the time when Ignaz Semmelweis discovered, to his amazement, that washing his hands before assisting in childbirth drastically reduced child mortality. (3) Yeah, I have experienced all these things. (4) Lc. 1, 38 et. al. (5) Lc. 22, 42 et.al.
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Prayer, hyponosis and BDSM | Login/Create an account | 3 Comments |
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Re: Prayer, hyponosis and BDSM
by Schizo on Nov 17, 2010 - 10:12 AM
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I find this article intensely intriguing, for the twin reasons that A.) I myself have a long and intense history of Christian-based God-worship, and B.) I seem to be a very natural sub, often falling into sub space without even realizing that I've done it.
Of course, my experience of Christianity tend to be very different from Arthegarn's. The tradition that I was raised in was based mainly on the Northern Baptist church, (with a hint of Pentacostal thrown in.) The music was not hypnotic chants, but rousing choruses of "Are you washed in the Blood, in the soul-cleansing Blood of the Lamb?" and as for prayer - well, the best compliment you could get there was that you were a "real prayer warrior." It was not uncommon for veins to stand out and faces to turn red as we battled against "principalities and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world." Nothing very hypnotic about that! But I will say it was not without its own power - when I later started reading about Wiccan traditions and spell-casting, I came to realize that my church was really incredibly talented at gathering and focusing power. I just wish it could have been used to better purpose than trying to spiritually foist a Fundamentalist Right-Wing agenda on the rest of the world.
Looking back from my current position of an agnostic, I can say I did have some very real experiences - things that still feel valid even after dismissing my childhood faith as a sick, twisted, and bizarre perversion and power-trip of a few control-freaks, and the Christian faith in general as lacking in any real reason why I should pick it over any other faith, or better yet, no faith at all. These experiences were always at times when I was very solitary, usually outdoors, and simply releasing whatever intense emotion I happened to be feeling at the time (sadly, mostly very negative.) It was at these points that I feel I really tapped into something real, but whether it was internal or external, it is hard to say. Oddly enough, these were generally times when I was feeling the least submissive.
At this point of my spiritual development (some would call it regression), you might call me the very opposite of submissive. I have laid the burden of proof on whatever Deity cares to listen, and I am simply living my life the best I can. I have made an open announcement that, if I am terribly off the right path, and if anything out there is paying attention and cares enough to let me know, I am more than willing to be enlightened, but I simply can't play guessing games, and I would only be lying to myself to try. And I don't care to serve any Deity that would punish me for not lying to myself.
At least, this does not look on the surface to be submissiveness, but in reality, for one who has been raised and brainwashed in the ways I have, this takes the deepest of all possible trust. Deep inside me, there will always be a part of me that still believes there is a Deity as Arthegarn describes it - "an omnipotent, omnipresent entity existing outside space and time and that took an interest on us up to the point of loving us." And, being that kind of Deity, it knows me, my motives, and my needs, and if it is not communicating with me its disapproval, then it must approve of my approach and my actions. Maybe it is even proud of me for being able to shake off the chains of abuse and dishonesty that held me down for so many years. Maybe it knows I am better off doing this without constant reassurance - that I will be stronger and more beautiful as a result. So, in actuality, I (or at least the part of me that still believes in this being) am sinking down into the deepest subspace, where I can explore my greatest fear (and thus my greatest fantasy) of being this strong and this independent.
Or maybe this is just a mental trick I play on myself to give myself the sense of security I need to free myself from those childhood chains and make my life decisions for myself.
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Re: Prayer, hyponosis and BDSM
by Rogue (Rogue@skew.org)
on Jan 11, 2012 - 03:02 PM
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Okay, where to start with this one? I find this interesting and amusing because I approached this from exactly the opposite direction, the left hand path. I rejected God from a very young age, probably around seven years old, having read the Bible prior and having had issues with the internal inconsistencies and other problems (like, why were Adam and Eve guilty of the sin of temptation when the thing that tempted them was itself the knowledge of sin?). I decided that if God did not want me to have the tree of life or the tree of knowledge, then God was my enemy because all I want is knowledge and life. I started by seeking witchcraft and other things that were forbidden by this God, because I suspected that he forbade them because they were good and would give me power to equal his, he was basically looking out for job security. I then rejected the idea and presence of God entirely, and just sought knowledge for its own sake, in any shape or form, regardless of how that might change my perception or worldview. That led to ceremonial magic, ritual, psychology/hypnosis/NLP, etc, as I strove to understand the mind as much as possible and exercise as much control over my own mind as possible and, when necessary, those of others.
One concept that I kept though was, that I never knew everything, was never an expert at anything because not only could I not know everything about a topic, I could not know how much there was to know about a topic enough to know if I had most of the knowledge on it or not. That, plus continuing search for any and all knowledge, has served me rather well, at least in that it got me to my present state. I went through the trance states of ritual magic, dissected them, analysed them, and came to more or less the same conclusion that you seem to have reached, with minor differences. People do seem to have an inborn need to derive security from leadership, be that religious or parental or bdsm or whatever. People find peace when they are secure, the wild crazy eyes of the Pentecostals and the snake handlers, the dance of the Dervish. Often security comes with a loss of self. So, it satisfies the need for security to have a higher authority, but also satisfies temporarily the feeling of aloneness that is prevalent, that by being dominated by a thing you are also connected to it, as in Stockholm Syndrome. So, connectedness and safety/security are served by religion and bdsm and other forms of altered mental states.
Now let us loop over the other side, to that which is there when nothing else is there. You could consider prayer to be contact with god, or rejecting god, communing with subconscious, or integrate the two and learn that god is the subconscious, or the other way round, primitive attempts at describing the subconscious have resulted in the creation of religions. So god then, does exist and does not exist, god is not possible and does not exist as so many mainstream religious people consider him to exist, not because there is no thing that behaves like god, but because that thing is not a consciousness separate from the individual. It is part of each individual, and possibly that part of each individual is connected to that part of other individuals at least at certain times. I will not presume to know overmuch about these things, besides what I have experienced. Suffice it to say, I walked the path that Arthegarn walked but in the opposite direction, and came back to the other side wherein god exists but is not god. I believe this is what the alchemists and others, philosophers and such, have been trying to explain but could not for fear of the dogmatic backlash.
Things like magic, we cannot rule out, because we cannot detect it with any provable method or machine like electromagnetism or other known forces. We cannot disprove it, therefore we must allow its possibility. There are anomalous anecdotes and incidents, including some experiments run during the Cold War especially, that give hints that there is more to life, the u
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