Masters and spirituality

Should a Master meditate and have a focus on spirituality, or is it only the slave? Here we will discuss the benefits of spirituality for the Master.

In my series of articles on submission and spirituality, I walk people through a series of steps one can take to increase connection between the slave and Master. But being a slave myself I wrote it from a slave point of view, and so had a number of Masters ask me if this would work for them.

I have given this some thought and I believe the answer is yes.

Being in more control of your responses

One thing that many people do not realise is how our thoughts and actions are driven from our emotions. We are subjected to our emotions and act because of them all the time.

So when we are feeling angry we might lash out at someone. It might be we walk out of one meeting and into another and take the anger out of that meeting, or we react shortly to something.

This is also true with alpha males – be it Masters, or general alpha males at work. One of the interesting dynamics that can sometimes exists with an alpha male personality is that they think they are in complete control, whereas in actual fact they can be some of the most emotionally volatile people in the room.

In a work setting you can see this sometimes in a room where most people are silent – or trying to placate one person. Or there is a lot of silent people rolling their eyes.

Of course I am generalising here and this is not true of all alpha males – but it is something that I have seen as a common pattern.

An example

Years ago I remember one incident at work where we had been asked to create a short presentation on whether we should look at deploying our product onto a new platform. It was quite clear to us that the answer was no, but we needed to present this decision to our unit’s managing director as he did not have the facts.

We had one person in the meeting (in a head role) whose job it would be do this. They became incredibly angry and coming up with all the reasons why we should not have to speak with the MD. There were 9 people in the meeting and most of us were silently waiting for this situation to play out. Eventually the anger subsided and the person then agreed to do it. It took over 40 minutes.

Now if you had asked that person – they would have felt they were in complete control of the meeting.

Whereas in fact they were subjected to their emotions.

What should happen instead?

Through meditation and mindfulness you can move to see your emotions and thoughts as object.

So for me, I can feel myself becoming angry, or stressed, hurt or sad, but because I now have my awareness I can then decide how I want to react.

So rather than feeling anger and acting impulsively – I can choose my actions.

Or most of the time I do. Mindfulness does not mean you become super human and there are still times I will act because of my emotion but they are now rather rare.

In fact I had a situation today where I felt myself getting angry due to a non issues at work – but I was able to become aware of the anger and then choose how to act.

What makes a better Master?

So what would make a better Master – one who is subjected to His emotions, or one that is able to understand He is angry (or some other emotion) and chooses how to respond?

Personally, for me, when you are subjected to your emotions, you are allowing your emotions to control you. And it is very hard for me now to serve someone who has so little control of his emotions. Especially when I can.

In fact in the dynamic of a Master/slave relationship I want to be giving up more control to Him, so He controls my emotions. But how can a Master do that when they cannot control their own?

I always find men who really do have this deeper awareness of themselves and are much more mindful deeply attractive.

But I know I am in control?

If you are a Master and are reading this, you might be thinking: of course I am in control.

In response I would would ask You think and ask: How do you really know?

Most people have no idea how much they are subjected to their own emotions and behaviour. They have no awareness of it. So how can you become aware of your emotions?

Mindfulness is the act of being aware of your thoughts and emotions. In the western world we are not trained to do this. There are a special few that can be mindful without training, but this is really rare – and you are probably not one of them.

So the act of mindfulness and meditation allows you to become aware of your emotions and thoughts, and through this have a deeper understanding of yourself, and from that to truly know if you are in control or not.

Increase connection with the slave

Mindfulness also leads to you becoming more aware of the body. So the Master can be more aware of the energy in it when Mastering, and therefore can connect with the slave better.

In an ideal world the Master should also be able to train and guide the slave to connect better from this energy perspective, and the only way they can do that is to understand it themselves first. And to understand this you need to go through the experience.

Reflection on practice

Meditation also gives you time to reflect. Both the thoughts in your mind, and the emotions you are feeling, but also in general.

Perhaps you use the time to reflect on training a slave, and how the training is going, and how you might change or adapt Your approach.

In summary

So if you are a Master I would fully recommend meditation and mindfulness simply as it gives you more control of yourself. But also as importantly, it allows you to increase the connection with a slave, and to be able to teach and guide the slave in this area.