The stages of enlightenment to slavery and service

From fantasising about slavery to successfully finding a Master to serve, there are a number of stages a person can find themselves going through. In this blog’s first joint article with slave sean we try to describe these stages.

1. Fantasise
2. Initial Meeting(s)
3. The Slave/Submissive Realisation
4. Experiencing the Reality of Slavery
5. Finding a Master
6. Enter into a Master/slave relationship
7. Fantasy vs. Reality – Maintaining the Master-Slave Relationship in the Face of ‘Real Life’
8. New Discoveries
9. Slavery as a Normal State of Being

In part 1 we detail the first 4 stages.

Fantasise

As with most things it starts with the fantasy. Perhaps it is something you have fantasized on your own since you were young (for me I was 3-4 years old). Or did you come across a book or website that opened this world to you (I remember finding the www.thedoghouse.org (now defunct) on the second day I had internet access and suddenly found that other people not only had the same fantasies as me, but actually lived them!).

In the fantasy stage the person fantasizes, masturbates, but never actually does anything real. I would include the many people on recon and other chat sites who never meet, but endless talk and wank on their computer.

Many people can spend their entire life in this phase.

In this phase some common emotions someone can experience are fear, shame, and rejection.

Fear

People may never move into the next phase as they are to scared to realise their fantasies. To take that next step is to much. Or perhaps it would bring about to much change to their life – perhaps they are married with a wife for example.

Here I would advise to have courage. Try and focus on the reasons why you might be scared. If you can identify them, you can then talk with people about those fears and how they might be overcome.

Shame and rejection

Other people may reject these feelings and fantasies. When they become too horny, or the feelings grow to much they give in. But after they have cum they feel guilty about what they have done.

Society – in all its glory – makes this lifestyle and these fantasies seem shameful and wrong –  and because of this many people can feel ashamed and try and push these feelings away…until they become to much again.

My advice here is to not listen to society. Slavery, BDSM and all the kinks are a part of us. To reject them is unhealthy. You would be amazed at how many people are into fetish, slavery and all the kinks. You are very much not alone.

Overcoming these fears and shame allows you to move to the next stage. For some this happens early – in my case when I was 19, a year after I had come out. For others it may be years or decades later. Some people view this as a second coming out, embracing not only gay man, but the slave / master / leatherman inside.

Initial Meeting(s)

This is when you start to live the fantasy. You now start to do, or to try to do, what you have so often masturbated about. This normally involves meeting someone. This can happen at someone’s house – maybe yours – or maybe a fetish club, or even a large fetish event such as Folsom.

How well these initial meetings go depend on a number of factors:

• Is the Master technically good
• Is the Master emotionally good
• How much has the slave has over fantasized
• How well the slave has communicated experience and expectations

Is the Master technically good

How do you know if the Master is technically any good? As you’ve had no experience it can be hard to figure out whether the Master is good or not.

What also does not help is that a Master may not be honest in what they experience they have or not. And sometimes because they are new, they themselves do not understand how much they may need to learn.

It does not mean that you cannot have a good experience with someone that does not know what they are doing. Most of my first experiences were with people who were relatively inexperienced and I enjoyed almost all of them.

But playing with someone inexperienced can lead to things going wrong. A good example of this is my experience with anal. It was the second time I played with someone and they shoved a long dildo down my arse. It was the first anal I ever did, and they did no prep on my arse at all, they just shoved it down there. I still remember screaming from the pain.

Then the 3rd and 4th people I played with also did not know how to train someone anally and caused lots of pain for me. After this I refused any anal for the next 7 years. I then met someone who had been through a similar experience and they offered to train me.

They taught me how to douche myself and then spent the next three hours playing with my arse with one finger. It was an amazing experience and opened the entire world of anal to me.

I hope these two experiences show the different between someone who knows what they are doing, and someone who does not.

Advice:

So when meeting up with someone for the first time check what experience they have. If you have no experience be honest about that and ask what experience they have in dealing with inexperienced people.

It is really easy to get caught up in what you want from a fantasy and forget you have no experience. Be honest about you inexperience, and spend time finding out how the Master/top will deal with that.

Also look at someone’s profile pictures. If they have many pictures of scenes they have done – as opposed to fantasy pics –  it also helps You to know that they do know what they are doing.

I also suggest for first meetings not trying to do to much or to go too extreme. This is the start of a whole new world and there is lots of time to go extreme after you have built up some experience to know if you want to go extreme.

Is the Master emotionally good?

All people – be it tops, bottoms, Master, slaves –  have different personalities and maturity. Some people can be very immature and have very unstable personalities.

It is often good to try and find out what sort of person the Master is and how stable, or unstable they are.

When finding that first person ask questions, check how they would deal with things. How do they come across. If they come across as an angry, frustrated perhaps they are not the best choice for a first meeting.

Also try and be clear about your limits. As you have no experience you definitely have limits and a good Top should respect those. If a top tells you they will decide the limits they are probably best avoided until you have more experience.

Be careful. There are supposed tops and Masters who will tell you that you should not have limits and they will decide them, They also go as far as saying that you are not a real slave for stating you have them, and they may try and manipulate you in giving up your limits. When you have more experience you can decide whether you want to play with such as person. But for your first experience I would urge you to find someone else as you could end up in an unpleasant situation that puts you off playing again.

How much has the slave has over fantasized

Because of the internet it is now so much easier to find porn. Porn always skips over how a scene actually works in real life.

It also allows people to fantasise more and more.

As a result Masters and tops are finding that there are more and more slaves whose first experience will always be a disappointment as it will not live up to the fantasy. This is especially true as those first few times the slave will probably be very nervous and will be very aware and self conscious of what is going on.

Advice

Remember the reality can never live up to the fantasy. Especially at first when you will be much more nervous. If you are also inexperienced you may also need to build up experience to get to the right intensity.

Watching porn can mislead you into thinking what you are watching is the same as a true scene. Often they are very different.

How well has the slave has communicated experience and expectations

It can be very easy to pretend you know more that you do. But it is better to be honest. If you are someone with no experience, it is good to be honest about that.

Do not say you love bondage of all types and would loved to be in mummification for hours. Instead say that bondage turns you on and you would like to try it, and you have always wanted to be mummified and would like to try it.

Trust me – fantasising that you want to be mummified for hours upon hours is one thing, experiencing it is quite another.

A good Master will take responsibility for the slave, understanding the slaves limits and work with in them. But this can only work if the slave is honest about their experience.

And when communicating make sure to be clear that when you talk about something you mean the same thing. It is very easy for a term to mean different things for different people.

How much experience do you need?

One thing that may hinder people in first meetings is the lack of experience. Please do not worry about it. We have all been there. Be honest about it and find people who are happy to take beginners – there are many people who love to help beginners and see someone react to experiencing their fetishes for the first time.

The Slave/Submissive Realisation

There is a difference between being a sub and being a slave. It is a difference you do not even know exists at first. You may call yourself a slave or a sub, but you might not really understand the difference. And then one day you start to understand.

For me slavery is about service, it is about meeting your own needs by meeting them for someone else – the Master. What they like, want and need become your guiding stars.

A session turns more into giving the Master what He wants. Your cumming or not cumming is immaterial to your enjoyment of the scene. Connection, emotion all turn more important. Having an ongoing relationship and connection turns much more important.

A sub likes to be the bottom in a power dynamic, but they will want to have their needs and wants met and will expect these to be taken into account. What the sub needs is as important as what the top needs.  A sub may have one relationship or may have many, there are no restrictions for the sub.

A nice summary is that a slave serves unconditionally, whereas a sub serves conditionally.

My realisation was heading with a Master to a weekend away somewhere in the countryside. I was the only slave there. Everyone else was subs (and although they were all bottom, only one was comfortable enough saying they were a bottom).

For me slavery was such a natural part of me, it was a real surprise to see how for many people the session or scene was based on what they wanted or needed.

Understanding this difference is the start of a journey to slavery. But it is also the start of realising that you are very different to the rest of the S&M scene. There are very few slaves, but many subs. You also find that many people on the scene are not interesting in connection. In fact the attraction of S&M for a lot of people is to have sex that does not have any connections or responsibility.

You are looking for something that is not common, and hard to find.

For me I was comfortable identifying myself as a slave from the start. Years later after I came out of a very abusive Master / slave relationship that was incredible traumatic for me, I had a revelation that all of this time I had being playing with masters and tops, rather than a Master (with a capital M).

The difference being that a master or top does not really want a Master / slave connection. They want to play at it during a scene, but not as a lifestyle. Whereas a Master wants to have a relationship with a slave and to truly own, dominate and connect with them, crafting the slave to their needs, and helping that slave to become the best they can be.

There are stages between what I have detailed. For example: You can have a master who wants a slave for a longer period – lets say 1-2 years, but the slave does not live with the Master and visits at a regular point. But it is not the most important relationship for the Master, and may be not for the slave either. 

Since I have realised this I have been trying to find a Master, but struggle. There are not many, just like there are few true slaves.

As time has gone on, I have occasionally met a true slave and both me and them have tried to stay in touch as we find it so strange – and amazing – to finally find someone that thinks, feels and wants to the same as we do.

Experiencing the Reality of Slavery

At this stage you are trying to find the Master, to truly live the lifestyle of Master and slavery. But there is a difference from the fantasy of it and the reality.

Just like in the first phase you have many fantasies of what would it actually be like to have a relationship with a Master, maybe to live with them, but the reality is very different.

I have noticed three main differences myself:

1. The difference between a fantasy and a relationship
2. New behaviours that come from really giving yourself to someone – including a true lowering of ego
3. In extreme serving: mental strength

Not all of these have to happen, and it depends on the relationship between the Master and slave.

The difference between a fantasy and a relationship

One of the larger differences here is that it can be much more boring. In a session, or in an weekend it can be very intense. But if you widen this to day upon day, and weeks upon weeks then it has to turn into the normality of life.  Making dinner, cleaning, doing odd jobs, being very stressed from work, many things that have nothing to do with sex or the intensity of a session.

These of course still happen but between all that is the normality of life. But when we fantasise about 24/7 we think about the intensity, and the extremes.

New behaviours that come from really giving yourself to someone – including a true lowering of ego

I have found that as I have started to look for a full time Master certain things have become more important for me. Some of these have been:

• Worshipping the Master: His body, or his feet or his boots – sometimes for hours
• Begging: understanding why begging is so important
• Giving up some of your desires and wants for the Masters to make him happy.

There can be more things than this, and they may not be true for all Master / slave relationships, but they do start to become more important for me.

I had one Master who loved me to worship his boots for hours. This is not something that would happen in a short session, but it happens as part of a Master /slave relationship.

I have also found that lowering my ego has also been very important. This is where begging comes in, but there are also many other behaviours that can come as part of this. Protocol for example, or caging.

These can be very difficult and hard as the Master is lowering your ego and at a certain point you will fight this.

In extreme cases: mental strength

This is not the case with all relationships, but I have found when captivity and caging and very heavy control is part of the relationship, that the slave himself needs to be resilient and be strong.

An example of this is caging. Caging as part of a session is a fun scene. Being caged when not in use over days is very extreme control. There is nothing to do but sit and patiently wait for the Master.

When you are in that situation you bring all of yourself in there – including all of your issues. There is no way to distract yourself, so there is nothing to do other than what is in your mind.

This means that if you have lots of issues that you have been avoiding you now have nothing to stop yourself from thinking about them.

I once had this situation. After I had come out of a relationship with a very manipulating Master who had damaged me (who I had mentioned further up), I went through the typical stages of shock and denial. A couple of months later I was serving a Master in Berlin who kept me for the most part caged or in intense painful bondage. After months of distracting myself from what I had been through I was now in a situation where I could not avoid facing what had happened to me. It led to a awful time, and I ended up requesting the Master if we could finish the scene early. He was good enough to allow them to happen as He could see I was so distressed (and could not provide good service)

Go forward 3 years and I felt ready to put myself back in such an extreme situation. But this time I meditate and know how myself very well. I now cope with such extreme situations much better and impressed both Masters I have served that required such extreme control – though I still have a long way to go in this area.

Because of this any slave that is looking for this sort of extreme control needs to make sure that they themselves are strong in mind and know themselves. They need to have the strength to face that themselves and what the Master may put the slave through.

Now this is not something that happens in every Master / slave relationship. But some do, and it is worth knowing that the fantasy of extreme control and captivity is very different to the reality, and the slave needs to realise they will face themselves in such a situation.

As an aside I must admit I can now find a regular caging a very useful exercise to do. A few days in a cage can lead me to understand facts and things about myself that I would otherwise miss in the busy frantic western society I live in, and leads to some interesting insights. Two years ago the insight was how much I loved the Master I was serving and realising I was going to move to Berlin.