Ponderings on a Purity of Submission

What is this submission thing ?  What does it actually mean ?

Not so long ago I woke up in the middle of the night with my mind whirling like a tornado as it latched on to these questions.  Sometimes hypnosis is very subtle in the way it can work on the mind.  This was a less than subtle mental prod induced by a hypnosis session earlier in the evening.

I rarely remember much about an hypnosis session apart from being left with mood impressions.  For this session I know the focus was on deepening my submissiveness and submission, even if I can’t remember much beyond that.  That amnesia of the conscious is in contrast to the activity of the sub-conscious which triggered these thoughts for the conscious mind to focus on – even if it was in the middle of the night.

I’ve been an evolving submissive for all my life and actively acknowledging the fact for over 20 years.  Experience creates understanding and new experience has to evolve that understanding.

I can get quite particular on the precise meaning of words.  D/s tends to use the words submission and service interchangeably.  In my own mind these are two distinct concepts.  It’s like fingernails down a blackboard when I see someone post “I submitted to my mistress yesterday”.  If they’d used ‘served’, I might reluctantly buy it.  What I find wrong in that statement is that, to me, it implies that their submission is arbitrary, it’s active only when they want it to be, active for a few hours once in a while.

Am I nit-picking ?  In some respects yes, but I’ve encountered many subs who define submission as only when they are in the presence of a domme – online or real life.

For me, submission just is.  I can only offer it to one person and having done so it’s not dependent on arbitrary factors.  I can’t decide that I’ll be submissive between 2 til 4 on Thursdays, they have my submission at all times whether there is contact or not.  They don’t need to demand I switch it on.  It’s more the case that I can’t switch it off.

To serve someone does not have to mean that you are submissive to them, or at least not under my personal definitions.  Sure, one might consider that you serve a domme in a session and that you submit to them whilst you do.  To me, that’s a consciously temporary act.

I’m in danger here of talking about a purity of submission that may not actually exist.  Yet, this may be where I’m heading, not just in this post, but in a real exploration of submission.

When considering the meaning of words one might consider submission as also meaning subjugation or suppression.  That, to exercise my submission means that the other person must exercise some form of subjugation or suppression.  That’s zero-sum thinking and I know that’s how many do see the scale of power in D/s.

I realise that I’ve had some mental blocks associated with this line of thinking.  The hypnosis session that set off all that thinking may have started to remove those blocks.

I have a similar word problem with the terms submissive and slave.  To me there’s an important semantic difference between the two that seems to be generally missed as these words are also used interchangeably.  I have no ambition to be a slave.  To me that means giving up free will, or worse, having it taken away.  It means a loss or deconstruction of the personality that I couldn’t countenance.

Those mental blocks turn on the interpretation of whether submission entails subjugation and suppression.  The words invoke the idea of an inevitable path from being a submissive to being a slave.  A path I could not follow.

What’s new from that last hypnosis session is the full realisation that there are no hidden agendas or tricks (at least in regard to hypnosis, dommely humour and surprise are a mainstay of her CP).  She wants my submission as deep as it will go, to the extent that I ache with it.  Yet she has no apparent need to make me a slave, nor subjugate, nor suppress.  In the same way I can explore a purity of submission, she can explore a purity of dominance.

I’ve recently come to understand that at its core her hypnosis is about liberation and freedom.  Whilst it can generally be thought to apply to melody, the whole me makes no distinctions.  Everything is geared to me making my own choices without the more common domme approach to narrow down choices, apply nudges and guide one to the ‘right’ decisions.

I find this to be remarkably stunning and quite unique.

This is still a very abstract concept at the moment yet I see it opening up wide boulevards of potential for a level of submission I would have thought impossible.  This is more than a zero-sum game.

There’s a lot of evolving to do on this chain of thought as well as under future hypnosis.  This will probably turn in to a series of posts.