Five Steps to Strength, Freedom and Happiness
an essay by Suzanne's slave T
Why isn’t everybody happy? Why do so
many people go through life feeling unfulfilled, incomplete?
What is necessary to achieve happiness?
It sometimes seems that part of it is luck:
the sun seems to shine on some, while others get the rain.
Yet we have the example of those we call saints in Christianity
(and their equivalents in Buddhism and other religions)
to show us that happiness is largely independent of rain,
shine, money, or talents. It lies within, where it is impregnable.
If we have it, nothing external can take it away from us.
Thus we find ourselves scrutinizing the inner
self to discover those special qualities that lead to happiness.
In olden days they were called virtues, like patience or
fortitude. In this essay, I offer my candidates for those
root qualities that help us achieve the successful life.
They group easily into two categories: Balance and Service.
You can think of Balance as ‘having your head on straight.’
It ensures you are ‘right’ with the world. The
other, Service, is necessary so that your achievement of
Balance bears fruit - it is love that is shared with others.
Qualities of Balance
Step 1. Balanced self-knowledge.
Any self-perception that is lopsided is a
problem. We need a true and balanced picture of who we are:
not all good, not all bad; not all-knowing, not ignorant.
We sometimes presume that such a balance comes naturally
- until a crisis, when we discover we’ve been wrong
about ourselves for quite some time. Balanced self-knowledge
must be worked for, practiced, and we invariably need someone
to help us: to be a mirror to reflect us to ourselves.
“’Know thyself,’ said the
Greeks: that means, surely, that we must learn to understand
ourselves, by concealing less and less of ourselves behind
a Persona, and ... repressing less and less of ourselves
into unconsciousness.” -- Seymour Spencer, Body vs.
Mind, Chapter II, Section IIA, p. 46.
Step 2. Balance of Structure and Spontaneity
Someone who has no structure in his life
- who is all spontaneity - is a bit scary and usually not
very useful. Yet someone who’s all structure misses
the best things in life! Again, getting the balance right
is so important. The balance of structure and spontaneity
is genuinely hard to achieve without guidance.
“If you are lucky, God will lead you
to a situation you cannot control, you cannot fix, or you
cannot even understand. At that point, true spirituality
begins.” -- Rev. Richard Rohr, ‘U.S. Catholic’
interview, Aug. 2005, p. 24.
Step 3. Balance of Critical and Non-judgmental
Attitudes.
Being critical yet non-judgmental takes the
internal balance outward, to our relationships with others.
Today it is politically correct to be non-judgmental; great.
But carried to extremes, it becomes ridiculous. Judgments
must be made; some things are better than others, and the
person without a critical faculty to enable him or her to
make these distinctions is an idiot.
Qualities of Service
Step 4. Loving others generously.
The greatest spiritual teaching - of Christ
and so many others - is to give our love unstintingly to
others. This is truly to be ‘as divine.’ The
essence of goodness is to rise above our own concerns, to
reach out lovingly to others.
“It is not how much you do, but how
much love you put into the doing and sharing with others
that is important.” Mother Teresa -A Simple Path,
p. 93
Step 5. Being Useful.
The practical sister of loving, we must be
useful. It is necessary to manifest that love - to serve
others in concrete ways.
It has been said that a successful marriage
is the result of each spouse going more than half way in
making the relationship work. This does not make them wimps
or doormats. This giving is not weakness, but generosity.
And where it is present, the odds are enormously in favor
of a successful relationship.
The Five Steps outlined above are about training
people to be successful in life - to be strong, free and
happy. There is much happiness in service: your life has
meaning ... you’re not just taking up space on this
planet ... you have contributed importantly to someone else’s
happiness.
The next essay will seek to show how the various
practices of Submission Training (a.k.a. BDSM) serve remarkably
well to advance a person in the Five Steps. How
Submission Training advances one in the Five Steps
Slave T's Other Essays:
World's Oldest Newbie
Submission
Training
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