Consensual spanking: archetypal pathway to sacred sexuality

 I am old.  Yeah it’s true.  I have repeated the daily rituals of life……...the proverbial practices needed to have life continue, called by Buddhist monks, “chop wood, carry water”,  so often that now, I awaken to face the mirror, the same mirror I viewed my reflection in as a boy, to see an old man staring back at me.  

My life while at times a repetitive grind of everyday existence, has been anything but boring.  There have been births of my children,  spectacular loves with women who gifted me with their respect and caring, even at times when I could not find my own self-respect.  Especially the love of my life-mates, sue and teresa. There have been heroic strivings through drugs, philosophies, religions, literature and psychology appreciation and study…...to find some way to answer existential questions like why, how, and even more poignantly perplexing at my stage of life, where am I headed?  Throughout the tedium, the peaks of joy, love, sensual satiation, victories, things that just felt so good, there has been pain.  There is an adage that if you love being part of the ecstasy of childbirth, don’t enter the birthing room, unless you can deal with agony and blood.

My life, with its peaks amidst its mundanity, has been, at least as frequently, punctuated by pain.  There have been medical crises during which I was in such agony that the maximum of the most potent opioids they dared give me, could not begin to give me relief.  There has been defeat.  There was the end of a love and family unit: divorce--which I barely survived.  

My greatest peaks, my joys, have been tangled and enmeshed, inseparably with pain.  I am not alone in this.

My earliest memories as a very small child featured sensual experienc that, for me, translated as a fascination with the experience of SPANKING, giving and receiving.

As I type that, I can imagine readers reacting at this point, “WHAAAAAT ????”  Where does that come from?  

“LOVE HURTS”

Throughout time, throughout human experience, it has been clear that there is no love without pain. Adults must learn to entwine the ecstasy of love with its inextricable companion, pain.  Over thousands of years human beings have made consensual spanking a means to not merely increase their erotic arousal and connection, but to deepen the depths of their love, and to mutually attain, share, and even give to others, the sacred.

Coming to terms with, then embracing, then delving into becoming proficient in the practice of adult consensual spanking over forty years, has been a central theme of my life.

Adult consensual spanking is a potent means to merge the sacred universe, within which medium we all float through our existance, and present reality.  Consensual spanking is so well documented, and so universally practiced, that our culture’s  collective unconscious responds to spanking as an archetype. Thus, it is thus a part of our inherent, inborn psychological and spiritual “infrastructure.”  It is perhaps a metaphor for this pain/pleasure paradox inherent in human made tangible as part of our sexuality.

By the way, when I refer to adult consensual spanking, I mean to include practices which have come to be called BDSM (i.e., bondage, discipline, and sadomasochism), DD or domestic discipline, Tantra, sacred sexuality, and there may be others I am not aware of.  Over the decades I have identified within the BDSM and DD communities.  I have witnessed endless attempts by some of those communities to state their community’s inherent superiority or “rightness” over the others.  All of us are like the blind men and the elephant.  Each is as “correct” as the perspective of our experience to date has afforded us.

I don’t support any community’s attempts for tribal superiority.  I now choose to identify as a lifelong practitioner of consensual spanking.  I know that soanking per se is not the sum total of BDSM practice. My own practice has incorporated knife play, bondage and restraint, flogging, caning, switching (both by striking with freshly cut tree branches or exchanging roles as Top, bottom, Dom, sub), disciplinary spanking, spanking therapy, mentoring novitate explorers and practitioners, recreational spanking (birthday spanking, initiation spanking, spanking sporting event wagers, competitve spanking), weight control disciplinary spanking, smoking cessation spanking, and I am sure others I’m forgetting.  I’ve played with and in front of others many times, and had the opportunity to witness and learn from others.  I’ve attended seminars on piss play, slapping, kicking, breath play, shibari bondage, suspension, creating “mind fucks”, and other things that so far I have no intention or aspiration to include in my life.  However, central to the practices of each of these communities, is adult consensual spanking. 

I’ve been through three days of Foundation for Shamanic Studies education along with teresa and sue (purportedly, I am “certified” to perform shamanic soul retrieval).  I have undergone my own soul retrieval with a Shaman I respect.  I am graduate degreed as a counseling psychologist.  These experiences lead me to feel some degree of awareness of sacredness and its role in our adult lives.

Through all of this, there is one central theme: Adult Consensual Spanking: a portal to the sacred, if practiced well enough, long enough, and with others you love.  I am grateful it is part of my/our life.  I believe it can add joy and ultimately sacredness to others, if they choose to embrace it to enrich their lives.

Tom the Heretic