Ebb and Flow

I was reading this thought-provoking post in a blog I just discovered called Tea and Oranges - highly recommended. In it, Tea discusses a sort of Zen moment and how the mental state it put her in reminded her of a submissive headspace. And, as you might expect from my terming it "thought-provoking," it provoked a whole lot of thoughts...

Though I'm not the kind of person who subscribes to any overt or codified belief-system, I've often found Taoist concepts very appealing and appropriate metaphors for the way I see myself fitting in the world. Even struggled through a nice translation of Chuangzi once. I'm sure I'm only the ten millionth person to use the analogy "Dom is to sub as yin is to yang" (or would that be yang is to yin? I get them confused sometimes...), but now that I'm deep into my first true D/s relationship, it has an unprecedented resonance for me.

The ebb and flow of energy between my k and I most definitely has that "complimentarity" that the yin/yang symbol represents: opposites that constantly shift, feeding from each other, providing for each other, forming a union greater than (and different from) the mere sum of its parts. I've talked here before about dominance feeling like the rain falling on the landscape, or like the sea against the shore, etc.

But there's something beyond that too. When I'm fully in the Dom headspace, I feel more truly myself than at other moments, and yet simultaneously I feel "beyond" myself. To some extent, it's like I'm inside k's mind, and to some extent it's like I'm inhabiting a space in which we aren't so individualized any more, and to some extent it's like being a process or an action, rather than being a person performing a process or an action.

I realize now that this is similar to ideas of the Tao: losing the self in the flow. I'm way over-simplifying of course, both Taoism and my D/s experience, but there's a kernel of truth in there. I certainly do feel more at harmony with the whole universe since making k mine, but I think that's more to do with being deliriously richly in love with her than to do with the D/s side of things. The sensations and ideas I'm talking about are particular to the world she and I create as we interact. I both push into her and draw from her, both encompass her and fill her. When I dominate and she submits, there is the sense of completing a circle - and though I am technically only half of that circle, I experience the whole somehow, and rise above it. And see how beautiful it is.

Not to be Mr. Cliche again, but I'm going to close with a bit of a poem by W.B. Yeats:

O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?