March 18, 2008

Obedience is not difficult

Ok that is something of a trick statement. The fact is being a slave and being obedient is not something that should be a day to day struggle. The problem is for us to overcome our previous programming to make obeying second nature.

How our brain has been trained

Our brain has been trained to make decisions all day long. When making these decisions often the criteria is based on our head making judgments in what is best. Whether what is best for me or what is the best way to go about this. The end results of this process is over time we have become experts in our own mind in what, how and when on everything that goes on in our lives.

I know for myself and many slaves or would be slaves this is often where difficulties appear when we start serving on a severe level. We have to start dealing with many day to day things and situations that come from another person in guidelines, direct orders and timetables. The struggle with obedience comes from having to often deal with the fact that their brain has done the judgment of what is best when making these decisions and that can often, even if it is minimal in impact, conflict with how our brain processes the same thing.

Part of human frailty is we are prone to constant judgments of right and wrong. So often when our owner’s orders conflict with how we have normally done we can fail to recognize it as just being different but can be prone to judge it as wrong. Let me give a very tame example as not to color the discussion, a slave might have always in the past put the orange juice in a certain place in the refrigerator but now their owner wants it in another place and the slave mind starts thinking how stupid is the new place and can they not realize how easier it would be if it was left where I have always put it. Then to start to rationalize a slave might be disobedient and keep it in the same place because they are the one to get it out of the refrigerator anyway.

I clearly want to obey my owner how come I cannot change my thoughts so easily

I believe we have three levels of desires that affect decision making in our day to day actions:

1) Long term: These are desires we have made decisions for ourselves that we make effort accomplishing over long stretches. Example like what career to have, if a person decides to become a doctor they have then made the decision of how hard they will study, understand most of their twenties will be used for this and other things.

2) Intermediate: These are decisions we make for desires that affect things we do but on a shorter nature, like weeks and days. Example like having friends over for dinner in four days, we have now made a decision to clean our house, go grocery shopping and other things in the days to come until the dinner.

3) Short term: These are desires of the moment. Example, do I want to watch this program or that program. They are in the moment decisions that have no affect on the intermediate and long term desires you have.

Most people who are “bad” decision makers are not that they cannot make good decisions in a vacuum but they make decisions with the wrong filter process. So instead of filtering from long, intermediate to short they often start with short term only to find out that screwed up intermediate and sometimes long term.

So what has this have to do with slaves struggling with obedience?

Because as slaves we have pretty much given over our short term decision making and often struggle early on with this very fact.

Look at it this way from a slave/relationship standpoint in the stages of desires:

1) Long term – We want to be in a healthy and loving relationship that is power exchange based.
2) Intermediate – We want to see, hear and experience our owner being happy and enjoying pleasure of using us how they want and we have agreed to. We want to receive their love back in ways we ourselves like to receive love back. We obey our owner to show our commitment to them and the dynamic.
3) Short term – We follow our orders and rules in order to avoid punishment. We do things even if we do not like doing them by using our feelings for our owner and this often represents our devotion to him.

Most of the time we struggle with obeying is because we have focused too hard on short term decision issues while ignoring or failing to connect these very decisions have a major impact on the intermediate and long term desires which are exponentially more important to us.

What can be done to retrain our minds?

In the end time and effort will usually win out. But in moments where we struggle, have doubt or start to have angry or negative feelings about what is being asked of us there are some easy things to do.

1) Ask yourself what difference does it make? It is simply astonishing how many decisions we make based on preferences or in the moment desires that have actual no impact in our lives. Does it really make a difference if you fix dinner a different way? Does it matter if you prefer to put away the laundry before you do something else?

2) Ask yourself are you obsessing over the short term and ignoring the intermediate and long term desires. If he orders you to wear shoes that make your feet hurt. Do you think just about that or think if it makes him happy and he is taking me out to dinner and who knows what else what is the big deal of a few hours of my feet hurting? If he wants you to primarily where dresses but you have traditionally worn pants. Is taking the time to get adjusted to the difference too much trouble for you when in the intermediate and long term it will be nicer for him and eventually you will adjust?

3) Concentrate on thinking I enjoy and need his love and acts of love and love him very much. I may not like or even hate doing this but doing this will show him my love and devotion to him which is a very important act of love he needs.

Conclusion

On the mundane items of life obeying often is about focusing on ignoring our short term thoughts and judgments. The more demanding things that we struggle on the better we focus and obey the more we show our devotion and love for our owner. Anyone can do things they do not mind when they want to do them. To do things, do things a different way and things when another wants not our preference is where we build the foundation that makes our long term desires happen.

Obedience is not hard if we learn to stop judging what needs not be judged. We stop worrying about single moments and focus on the bigger picture. If we do that, obedience not only becomes easier it can become bliss.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi lin

This is a excellent post. Your analysis is most heplful.

love

AKM