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WHAT IS THE SLAVE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS?

After you have done all the soul searching, asked all the questions, and satisfied yourself that you have always been slave, you finally decide that you are ready to accept slavery as your destiny and are ready to begin your development. What happens then?

The decision has to have been made after you have determined that you are fully egotistically developed. You must know that you can be financially independent, can support yourself without anyone else's help. You have to have experienced putting together successful relationships. You need to know that you can maintain your relationships with and responsibilities to your genetic family. You have to be in the best health that you can be, and know that you can maintain your health. You have to have control of your life, your profession, your social needs and be able to maintain healthy friendships. Until you have it all, you don't have it to give away.

No one is ready to develop their destiny until after they know they are individually capable of taking care of everything but their spiritual completion. Even spiritually, a man preparing to accept his destiny has to be able to understand the spiritual world. There isn't any destiny to accept if you don't have a belief in a spiritual life, and have some understanding of how that might work. Destiny is a spiritual path. If there is no spiritual world, then there is no destiny. If there is no destiny, then slavery can't exist, because it is a form of destiny.

NOW YOU'RE READY TO BEGIN. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

It means that you have committed yourself to obedience. Out of strength, not weakness, you have made a decision to accept the reality of your slavery. You are ready to be ordered into the circumstances and resulting experiences that will force you to fully prepare for your destiny.

It means that you have decided that you won't be able to anticipate the way your development will work. You understand that there is no development when you can anticipate everything that will happen. You want to be strengthened by the truth, and learn what it is like to live fully as a part of another. You understand the implications of "unqualified obedience".

There are several conditions that have to have been accepted to develop as a slave:

1. YOU MUST HAVE THE RIGHT TO END YOUR DEVELOPMENT.

A slave can't burn any bridges to start his slave development. Burned bridges remove options from a slave's life. The challenge of becoming slave is one of finding, then learning through experience that you have found the best possible options. Destroying other options undermine, and probably remove, the possibility of discovering the best possible option.

There is a common misunderstanding that accepting the best option in life can be the result of having no other options. When there is no other option, whatever you are doing feels like a "have to", something imperative, something against your will. You can't make the most serious decision in your life when you feel obligated to only one direction. Choosing the best direction has to include multiple alternatives which aren't chosen.

The fantasy of being kidnaped and forced against your will to become slave illustrates this common misunderstanding. Receiving slave development is an opportunity. If you are forced to undergo the opportunity, then it remains someone else's fault, you can resist like a spoiled brat all the way through the process, and end up with someone you can blame when it doesn't work out.

That is a common way to go through life. We often try to repeat the patterns that we have experienced, and then exercised throughout our life. That which we fear the most, is our strongest prayer. If we fear betrayal, then we subconsciously do everything possible to set up a betrayal so that we can feel that we were right about our fears and doubts.

The exercise of anyone else's will against you, is the greatest excuse that could ever be found for not taking responsibility for our lives. "It was all the dominant's fault", we want to declare. Leaving us free to say "I told you so." and to feel good about ourselves while we refuse every option that the Universe offers us.

Every day, a slave in development has to feel that he could easily leave the development process. There has to be financial, social, and other alternatives that are constantly available during every day of the growth.

A slave cannot continue his development for even one day and still make any progress when he feels that there might be even one other alternative that could be better. When his heart makes him want to explore the alternative, it is imperative that he do so. You can neither go through life nor through slave development constantly looking over your shoulder at what you think might be better. You have to know that what you are doing is the very best possible route. You have to know that there isn't anything to look over your shoulder for.

Becoming slave requires an internal commitment to achieve unqualified obedience. That doesn't come with any adjustments. It can't at the same time be unqualified and still be negotiable. It can't be unqualified, and yet in place only during convenient times. It can't be unqualified and be felt and experienced only in convenient places.

When you feel that you are pursuing the most direct route to your destiny, and are being developed with the highest integrity possible, for the highest purpose possible, without egotistic or selfish motivation, then you can develop as a slave. If your plan is to drag your feet through the whole process, then you are planning your failure. If your plan is go through the process because someone is forcing you to, you are planning your failure.

2. YOU CAN'T BECOME FINANCIALLY INVOLVED WITH YOUR OWNER.

When you have become financially dependent, co-dependent, or even inter-twined, you have lost the independence necessary to feel the required level of honesty. Being connected in a way that there is even an inconvenience to ending the current arrangement, places a cost on ending that arrangement.

When the arrangement is with your Owner to develop your slavery, you have killed the chance of becoming slave when you don't have the freedom to honestly express, to pursue other alternatives, or to go back to where you were before you began your development.

Making a financial exchange is a death knell to becoming slave. You don't then know whether it is the exchange that creates the interest in you, or whether it is you personally who is creating the interest. The reality of what is happening doesn't matter. What matters is that you can never know for sure when there is any reason to have a doubt. When you have exchanged anything of substantial value as a condition for beginning your development, you will never be clear, and never be sure, and never be slave.

If you want to get "married" then put all your resources into the same pot, and live accordingly. If you want to marry a Master, do the same thing. If you want to become slave, then retain your independence and your clarity. There is plenty of time left after you become slave, after you are BORN to have a relationship. Don't endanger your slavery by distracting and diverting your energy away from the core issue of becoming who you are. When you know first who you are, then what you do comes from an honest place with integrity, including any resulting relationships.

3. YOU MUST MAINTAIN A SEPARATE LIVING ARRANGEMENT FROM YOUR OWNER.

Being developed for and accepting your slavery is about your spiritual destiny. Finding the motivation, courage, conviction, strength, and internal resources to do only that for which you were created for the rest of your life is the biggest, most challenging process you will ever experience.

Becoming slave also requires experiences which cause you to doubt, and fight against the truth, your nature, the inevitability, and the seriousness of your life. You must have quiet time, private time, peaceful time to make this single most important decision of your life.

When you live with your Owner, you can't help but search for the opportunity to manipulate, criticize, and try to manage the process so that you can avoid the hard questions, the challenging experiences, and the life-giving lessons you need. When you don't have an independent living arrangement, then the Owner's living arrangement is yours, and you egotistically feel as though you must have some say in that arrangement.

If you want to be slave, plan on maintaining a separate household from the Owner. Once slave, then you will live where you are supposed to live. Your egotistic plans to put together the relationship that you can clearly identify as being a good one for you has nothing to do with your becoming slave. Get clear, do you want to become slave, or spend you time trying to implement your expectation of what a Master/slave relationship should be for you? But, don't try to do both, and don't delude yourself into thinking that you can.

4. YOU MUST BE EXPOSED TO THE PUBLIC.

Being honest doesn't mean stopping every person you know on the street and giving them your opinion of them. Telling ugly ladies that they look ugly to you will never strengthen your reputation for being honest.

Being honest, as gays, and as slaves, means being willing to let others know the truth. You don't have to shout the truth, you don't have to take out ad's, and you don't have to keep hammering at everyone you know about who you are just because they won't tell you to "shut up" as you keep going on and on about something they're not even interested in.

Being slave is about what you do for the Universe to influence the world. You are never going to be an influence if you are closeted, closed off, behind closed doors, or less than proud of who you are. That's not to say that you can't have some influence. Having some influence confirms you have reached the point of being egotistically developed. It is arrogant and incorrect, however, to feel that because you have influence now, that the influence is either adequate, or in the right direction to support your destiny. If you could know your destiny before inheriting it, there is no point to inheriting it.

The knowledge of who, and how to influence comes from being honest, having integrity, being only one person to all people. If you feel the necessity to be private, and alone in your slavery, and public only about the parts of your life that you are egotistically proud of, you aren't motivated to find your destiny. You can't have it both ways.

You can't have your destiny, and then determine if you like it. Destiny is a single path for each person, without any possibility of deviation. Without a complete commitment to following that path, you can never learn of the path. That's the way the world is designed. No one has any control over its design.

Therefore, many of the experiences necessary to achieve your slavery will have to do with being exposed publicly. There you can learn whether or not you really have pride in who you are, because that's the way your Creator made you, or whether you only give lip service to it.

When you are experienced publicly, you can learn that your expectation of how people will react is the single most influential determinant of how they will react. You will also learn that your expectation of how others react to you is the ceiling for the quality of their reaction. No one can ever react better to you than you do to yourself. If you find yourself apologizing for who you are, they will find doubt, and weakness there, and feel invited to attack it. Apology, like shame, is an invitation, not an excuse. It encourages criticism, and even provides the behavior that is attacked.

Your public experiences will teach you that you are an example, a model of how to live whether or not you want to be. We can't switch off and on when we are showing others how we feel people should live and act. Egotistically, most of us would like to believe that we can.

When in public, you have the opportunity to have the influence that you should have. Only when there, can there be real interaction. All the theoretical discussion that you have behind closed doors will never have the slightest effect. The "rubber hits the road" only when you are out in the public doing things. In life, you are either the observer or the observed. We can't be both because of human limitations in our resources.

What you do, and when you do it is your Owner's business. He takes orders. Where you end up being, and being seen, and are observed is the result of His orders. The purpose of His orders is to give potential slaves the opportunities needed to grow into, and qualify for their destinies. You can react either with resistance, or learn the most important lesson of all.

Nothing is any more important that learning that we are protected by our Creator only in truth. When we are being, living like, or pretending to be anyone other than who we really are, then we aren't in truth, and we are vulnerable to all the things our egos fear. Only when we accept the truth, without qualification, are we protected, even when we don't know how we could be.

The Universe protects IT's agenda, and preserves IT's investment. When in pursuit of destiny, we are in pursuit of the Universe's investment. In public, we learn that the Universe is present, IT is real, IT is constant, and IT is unrelenting in satisfying all of IT's obligations to us, as IT's creatures. In private, all the information about life will never be more than intellectual fodder, fun for the mind, and candy for the ego. In public, we learn the truth, how it works, and what we should do with it.

5. LIFE MUST BECOME INTEGRATED

The process of becoming slave is a progressive release of everything else except for our slavery. Before we begin slave development, our lives are very compartmentalized. We either intentionally, or unintentionally separate our entertainment from work, our gay friends from our business associates, and our family from our personal life. Over and over, every day in every way, we work to maintain that separation because we think that we have to and that it is in our best interest.

The Universe limits Itself by what we can egotistically achieve or perform. When IT takes responsibility, and IT always does when we let go of it, there is no need to spend our time and resources in being a different person for different people. The Universe has a plan that will allow us to be whole, to be one person, to have integrity. Only by totally, and really, releasing the responsibility will the Universe respond. So long as we hold any responsibility, or concern, or fear about the truth of who we are, the Universe won't manage our lives. IT will let us continue to perform the management of our lives out of the same fears, phobias, weaknesses, and limitations that we always have. The Universe won't fight us for control. Only when we accept our integrity, being only one person, will the Universe do ITs work.

Becoming slave is the process of slowly stepping into the real world of faith. The faith is that the Universe is there, and that IT will act only in our best interest. It would violate our common sense to let go of everything at once. So, we have to let go little by little.

Slaves are given Owners who set up the circumstances, and provide both the power and the impetus to let go. One decision, one step, one compartment at a time, we release our frightfully inadequate and frail ego's locked control over our lives. It is the Owner's job to make us uncomfortable enough to consider letting it go. When you do, the right things happen to confirm our faith and let it grow into a knowing, instead of being only faith.

Integrity demands letting go of the fears that prevent honesty. We don't lie because we think it's the wrong thing to do. We lie because we feel some justification for doing so. That justification is the result of our fears. The explanation for lying is always worded around what we fear would happen if the truth were either told or known. We fear everything, and anything that doesn't shed a positive egotistic light on us. Our fear is really of what others will think of us.

6. LIFE MUST BECOME LITERAL.

One of the ways that we get around the truth is by always reading between the lines, even when there is nothing between those lines. Or, by interpreting everything that was said in ways that it conforms to our prior expectation of what we think should have been said. Another trick is to consider everything an analogy, a story to explain some truth, rather than being the truth itself.

There is no limit to the ways that the ego keeps us from accepting the truth as literal, our orders as being literal, and our lives as being literal. When everything is literal, it is either black or white. The "gray area" is the only place where there is room for the ego to squirm and maneuver so that it can continue to do what it is doing now, and what it wants to do.

The purpose of all of life's experiences, and of achieving destiny, is to find moral certainty in every action, and in every moment. The ego rationalizes that so long as there is no black or white, and that only gray exists, then it can never be sure about what to do in any given moment. So long as it maintains that lie, there is no reason for ever trying to reach moral certainty.

If the ego is still arguing for gray, it is still arguing for the impossibility to know order, to know the truth, and to know what must be done, or not done. A slave's general rule for life is "When there is a doubt, do nothing. When there is no doubt, act immediately." Gray says there will never be a time that we are without doubt, and therefore no moral responsibility can ever be taken for our actions.

We want to feel that we are victims in the world. If we feel incapable of ever achieving moral certainty, then we are arguing that we must remain victims. Some victimhood is very obvious and straight-forward. The more complex our thinking, the more complex our interpretation and implementation of victimhood.

So long as we remain victims, we remain without responsibility. So long as "I had no choice" is a believable explanation, we can do whatever we want to do, always and in any circumstance. That is a lie of the highest order. "I had no choice" really means that I wasn't motivated to doing anything different. Motivation is impossible to find if we don't believe in a literal life, where everything is either right or not, and that we can all achieve that knowledge and practice.

It is achievable, however, only after we become honest with ourselves about who we are. So long as we are lying about that, we can never know what is consistent with the truth of who we are.

It is the job of formalized religions, and students of ethics, and philosophers to accumulate the general rules of right and wrong. Some come very close to reflecting what is right or wrong. Some are accurate only for the pre-determined circumstances that are assumed in their discussion.

The ego would like to "reason" that it is capable of synthesizing, digesting, and understanding so completely all the formal rules of the world, and when they apply, that it would never have to submit to the indignity of letting us be who we really are. The ego can't fathom being that far out of control.

When we accept who we are, the rules as they apply to us specifically will be known. Without outside education or influence, exact right and wrong will be known to us. Almost all of what is right and wrong will be the same as the formal moral and ethical rule makers have proposed, because of the integrity of purpose those rule makers have. There will be differences, however, that are just as moral or immoral as those that are published, popular, and well known.

Note too, that they will be accurate only for ourselves. What we learn as being morally correct or incorrect can apply only to us, and never to anyone else. Where the current rule makers have stepped outside their bounds is in believing that what is true for them is true for everyone. It is not. Even though those rules serve a very good purpose by giving us guidelines while we qualify for our destiny, our destiny will replace them, and make them unnecessary.

We have to be literal thinkers. We have to know that we can't rationalize the right to ever do wrong. We have to have the clarity and courage to implement the truth we learn. Common sense will prevent us from accepting or implementing any code of behavior which allows a rationalization that it is OK to have errors, or that we can apply selectively.

Another purpose of the ego, is to rationalize that this whole thought about moral certainty is proper, and then add the caveat that it has the right to turn it off and on as it sees fit to accomplish its objectives. Until we know that we have made an immutable decision to never allow the possibility of moral wrong, we won't inherit the wisdom of the truth as it relates to us. We can't collect the information academically, then let the ego decide when it wants to accept it, or ignore it.

Becoming slave is a lot about fighting this one issue. Deciding, in obedience, to never have another moral failure for the rest of our lives is too much for the ego to accept. So, we spend a lot of time trying to argue out of it. The literal certainty is the result of complete, unqualified obedience. Qualify the obedience, and you qualify the literal certainty. Qualify the certainty and your qualify the chance of becoming slave.

7. INVITE EVERY EXPERIENCE.

The ego wants to control what it experiences, so that it can stay in control. The process of slave development is to not control it. When we stop controlling, we are accepting the truth that has always existed. That truth is that we don't really control anything. We delude ourselves into believing that, so that life is easier for us, and so we don't have to make the hard decisions about doing what we are supposed to be doing with our lives. So long as we control, we can argue to ourselves that it is all right to continue to pursue what we want to, instead of what was destined for us.

Accepting every experience, is the process of the SM. When we are exposed to the pressure of a device, we have a decision to make about inviting or resisting the experience. When we invite it, we learn that things happen, that we have experiences that we could never imagine. When we resist it, then we experience pain.

When we experience pain, then the ego has the chance to see if it can "process" what is happening. It thinks that either by allowing out-of-body, or by chanting, or by praying, or by some other method that it will be able to "handle" the pressure.

When a man is a slave he doesn't have to "handle" what is going on. The pressure takes him where he needs to go, and there, discovers the truth. The only reason to "handle" anything is to avoid the truth, avoid having to experience the truth, and avoid reacting honestly to what happens in the experience.

SM is a small representation of life. When slave, SM is a true and honest part of the nutrition by which your live. What is experienced in that short period of time is representative of life in general. The pressure of the SM is like the chronic reality of life. Just like life is affected by our acceptance or our rejection of it, so is the SM. When we learn that something lives inside us that is capable of using everything we experience, without any control or influence from us, then we learn the same thing about life.

Life doesn't allow us to choose which experiences we will have. There is no reason to. When we have faith, we know that there is a constant wisdom which guides and creates all those experiences. It is foolish to see that wisdom as anything other than superior to our own meager understanding of things. So, if the superior wisdom presents an experience, what is the advantage of our inferior egotistic conscious wisdom fighting it?

8. LIFE FOR A SLAVE IS ABOUT OBEDIENCE.

A slave was created from the ground up to obey. When he obeys then he can inherit his purpose, the experiences, and all the wisdom needed to lead a great and creative life that is filled with happiness.

Let a slave's life be filled with any motivation other than obedience, and he pays the price for the egotistic indulgence. There is no free lunch, and there is no free egotistic indulgence of any sort in the real world. When you honor your wants and needs, your assessment of what you think should and shouldn't happen, when you decide what should be easy and hard, or how much effort should be put into anything, then you are artificially trying to pump up your ego again.

Obedience is where peace is found. Obedience is where your brilliance and purity is found. Obedience is where your integrity is found. You can't have the results of obedience without being obedient. Most try to understand obedience, and then act as though they don't actually have to obey, because they understand so well how to.

That is foolish, but typical egotistic reasoning. It is reasoning that continues to try to tell the slave that so long as there is something he doesn't understand, there is an excuse for not achieving the best things in life, and that understanding is the solution to everything. It isn't what you understand. It is only what you do that is important.

It is when we quit understanding, and only pay attention to our obedience, that life begins to change, to become the miracle that we are destined to inherit. Nothing is more important than obedience. Nothing teaches more lessons than growing toward becoming more and more obedient.

Obedience is the Universe's trust in Its creature. Obedience is the distinguishing mark of the destined slave. Obedience is the hallmark and fiber of a slave. Obedience is what and who a slave is. When he knows obedience, then he is qualified to love, to respect, to serve, to teach, and to make a difference. Until then, he is still in training.

WHAT SPECIFICALLY CONSTITUTES TRAINING?

When a slave is developing, he is exposed to "sessions" which are formal time to expand, through SM, the slave's growth. Those sessions have to include time to change the focus from the habitual, noisy outside world, time to experience the SM, the time to be honest about the experience, then time to sleep on it, and to debrief what has been experienced to gain the maximum value from the experience. That takes a minimum of 16 hours.

Sometimes the experience is one on one, and sometimes it is with brothers. The challenge of developing a slave is in providing experiences which can't be controlled. The diversity, in location, circumstance, attendance, number of men, and any other variable helps provide an experience which isn't as expected nor anticipated. When there is more "surprise" there is more to learn, more adventure, and less control.

Slaves need an opportunity to live as, be treated as, and be interacted with as slaves. The public exposure is sometimes that occasion. Sometimes it is by providing the environment in which others can learn. Whenever slaves assist at Butchmanns, or serve dinner at PS/LOD, or serve at the annual Black Party, they are being who they are. There is no substitute for being in an environment where slavery is not only accepted, but respected. There is also no substitute for what can be learned there. What is learned is never what is expected to be learned. If fact, it has to be what isn't expected, to have any educational content.

Slaves need the opportunity to be a part of larger events like Folsom Street Fair, or the 15 Club in San Francisco. There, again, in a new environment, there is energy and focus that can't be controlled, nor anticipated. The newness, the openness, the exposure creates another difference that makes a difference.

Slaves need to be found in public places doing non-slave events like a Gay Men's Chorus, or a movie, or dinner, or entertaining someone from out of town. When in an average world with those who live in an average world, the practice of integrity and pride in who you are is available. A slave learns that he has something to teach even those he would least suspect could learn from him.

Slaves need to put what they have already learned to work, helping others decide if they are slave, or to answer their questions. Sometimes we really don't understand our lessons until we try to teach them to someone else. Every opportunity to explain to anyone else who will listen what it is we think we already know is very beneficial, particularly for the one who thinks he knows.

Finally, anything else that the slave would never suspect would furnish him with growth has to be experienced. It might be an experience in church. There might be a family event which forces the growth. There could be something that the slave has done for years, but never before as slave. Repeating the experience with a new awareness provides a lesson that otherwise couldn't be learned.

The ego would like to think that it can control where the learning occurs. And, it tries to control every circumstance in which it ends up being so that there are a minimum of circumstances that aren't controlled. As always, anything the ego wins at, causes any person of destiny to lose.

Some experiences are to teach the perfectionists among us the difference between obeying and always being right. Not the same thing. But, it takes an occasion to understand that as perfectionists we do as little as possible that is new or different because in anything new there is the opportunity of making a mistake. Making a mistake is the worst fate that any perfectionist could experience.

Ultimately, being slave is experiencing whatever your Creator wants you to experience. That takes faith, and it takes trust, and it takes belief in the value of everything that the Universe has made. When we move from "lip service" faith, to putting our physical and moral lives on the line for what we believe, we act and react differently. Accepting our destiny is moving the impact of everything we think, say, or do way up the scale. People of destiny can't hide from the impact of their actions. Being BORN is to stop spending all your time wanting to.

Finding your destiny is serious business. When that business is about becoming slave, because that's the destiny you have been created with, there are a lot of people involved in helping you achieve that destiny.

What happens during slave development is exactly what needs to happen to satisfy that serious business. Every belief has to be sacrificed so that you can experience the truth without the constraint that current belief causes. After achieving the willingness to let go of every belief, then you must have every experience necessary to confirm the new set of beliefs.

Since the new beliefs are acquired through experience, they are held with deeper and more passionate force. That passion will make the slave effective in the execution of his destiny. Anything less and he is simply imitating life, instead of living it.

Expect anything that you can't expect nor anticipate. Expect it to be different from what you have heard others have gone through. Expect it to be unique to you, and to be designed to provide only your destiny. Anything less, and you end up with nothing more than the ego you started out with.

The process of accepting destiny is very similar to that of becoming airborne as a pilot. On the ground there are certain laws of physics at work. As soon as the aircraft has left the ground virtually everything changes.

When an aircraft is on the ground it can be steered by turning the wheels. There is no vertical freedom, everything must be accomplished in a two-dimensional plane. Most important, just like being in a car, when everything else fails you can simply step on the brakes and everything will come to a halt in a matter of seconds.

Once airborne, however, not only is maneuvering accomplished in a two dimensional plane, but also up and down. Other aircraft have to be avoided in three dimensions, and turning is a matter of setting up an arc against the air that produces the turn. Most different, however, is that there are no brakes.

In a plane, if something happens, if things get out of control, it could be a portion of an hour, compared to seconds on the ground, before things can be brought to a halt. A landing site must be selected. If there is no power, there is no second chance to land. The site and the approach must be carefully calculated because there is no room for mistakes. Everything is in terms of doing the right thing next, instead of simply applying the brakes to make everything stop.

When we accept our destiny, life becomes about determining what comes next. The option to stop, to hold back, to resist is gone. Knowing the spiritual world, trusting IT, and the wisdom and instincts which come from IT is the information on which we must depend for the next action. We have to trust, and don't have time to analyze, to figure out, to understand, or to create an image. What is happening is all that is happening.

The challenge is being self honest enough that we can see without bias the truth in every situation. Then, it is knowing there is no negative, black spot on our soul that could motivate us to take action for the wrong reason or purpose.

If any of the conditions are missing, then we crash, just like when in the air. The ego tells us that we can always apply the brakes. In real life there are no brakes. It is only after the brakes have been applied that we have time to "think about things". Without brakes there is no such time. Thinking about things is a luxury which the ego enjoys, but has nothing to do with living. It is egotistic entertainment. Understanding serves its purpose only in helping others. Our own life isn't the result of understanding. It is the result of not understanding. It is the result of obeying.

A slave's life is the result of having experienced the truth, accepted living accordingly, and practicing the truth experienced in obedience. So it is with every person of destiny. Getting there is what happens during slave development.

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