The slave in perfect obedience neither offers nor reserves anything. His only obligation and concern, his only evaluation criteria, his only question and satisfaction is in knowing he obeyed. There is, perhaps, no responsibility more ominous than that of owning another person. The disturbances that result from a slave exercising any unordered judgment outside the realm of obedience can call into question the Master's competence both with himself and with the slave. Most Masters aren't able or prepared to interpret what is going on in any other way. It seems probable that what makes a man a good and successful Master is the ability to maintain a narrow focus on his slave's obedience, which gives him the freedom to do what he pleases-the benchmark of success being the improvement of the slave and their time together. When a Master senses any behavior that shows failure in either himself for his slave, it activates an internal sentry and causes him to question the health of the relationship. Furthermore, when a slave begins to "operate" on his own without instruction to do so, to entertain questions or to engage in behaviors outside the realm of obedience-the Master may not be able to protect his slave. Only a slave's obedience enables a Master to control and thereby protect a slave against the most damaging threat possible: the slave's thoughts. A Master needs only his common sense to protect against physical dangers. The emotional dangers born in a slave's mind can challenge the Master's authority and, therefore, the relationship itself. Absolute slavery can only be made manifest in absolute obedience. Only a partial or conditional slavery is made manifest to the extent that obedience is 'planned" and yes, even "felt." As would-be slaves come to understand the true nature of obedience, we learn the true nature of slavery, of slaving, of slave-ness. When obedience becomes automatic, instantaneous, complete and unconscious, then absolute slavery can begin to emerge in us. It is a mistake to proceed toward one's slavery with the belief that through more and more sophisticated thinking, a slave will become better and better. The opposite is true. Any process of thinking that is practiced during the development of slavery must lead to less and less 'thought process." A slave grows as the "thinking" alternatives diminish-until only the thought of obedience remains. The principles articulated in this series are designed to help move the slave-mind progressively toward that goal. Obedience After the principle of Identity, nothing is more important in the development of slavery than the principle of Obedience. Put simply, once we accept, embrace and support what we are inside ourselves as slaves, the next step is to learn how actually to be what we know we are. Since slaves do what selected others want us to do-that is, we obey-to slave successfully, we must first become accomplished at obedience itself. It is simple enough to say "... become accomplished at obedience itself," but becoming accomplished at obedience is like becoming accomplished at painting. After all, anyone can paint, and most of us have done so: A child finger-paints; a friend paints his living room; a student paints a street scene in Paris; Michael Angelo paints the Sistine chapel and summarizes the Christian experience in a single room. We could call all of these "accomplished," but our meaning would be different in each case. Likewise, anyone can obey and everyone has, does and will do so again until death overtakes us one day. But again, the meanings are different just as with the painters. When it comes to the obedience of those who are slaving, the meaning of "accomplished" might change depending on whom we are serving and why, how long the submission is intended to last, what is demanded of us, and our previous experience with the demands placed upon us. Or the meaning might change depending on how much time has passed since we last slaved; whether we have prior good experience with slaving; our physical, intellectual, spiritual, social and emotional resources; general life circumstances and many others. My point here is that our obedience does not exist in a vacuum-it must have a context. But in the "context" of serving the One we have chosen to give ourselves to, of serving "The" Master, our obedience can eventually become independent of all, or almost all, of these other things. I think it is safe to say that the usual goal for slaves who have given themselves to Him is that our obedience should become absolute, automatic, instinctive and immediate within the limitations of our bodies. For slaves, the quality of our obedience determines what can be enjoyed. It determines our self-esteem and pleasure; it connects us, gives us purpose and protects us. It validates. I have come to believe that obedience is the very spirit of slavery. It is the special charisma of slave creatures. Obedience is the super structural steel of our slave identity, and the spine of a slave's conviction. Obedience alone determines what is right and what is wrong; it frees a slave to be what only a slave can be-one whose will has been replaced by that of another. Obedience provides the single-most important concern of a slave, and in this, it frees us from all other concerns. It is the overarching principle through which we and those we serve assess "right" and 'wrong." The slave asks himself only, "Did I obey?" If the answer is "yes," then he did everything he could or should do. If the answer The real "highs" of slavery occur when we are pushed out into the unknown by our Masters. There, only our obedience can sustain us. Any thought that arises outside of obedience risks our undoing. In this new circumstance. the "thinking" slave tries to "figure out" which thought should be exercised. and what is expected of him, and what will please and be acceptable to his Master, and what will make him look like he did right, and what will Master. More than the digging even, the slave's obedience was important, whether the rope was unearthed or not was unimportant. The slave explained to me that as the implications of this situation began to sink in to his slave-mind, a quiet calm filled him. The frustration and anger melted away into the sand like so much sea water vanishing into the beach. And into this calm. flooded a great joy. As he grew more joyous, a new earnestness took over the digging process. because the implications of the task had become clearer. I never did learn whether the rope was ever finally freed, but on that day. some important slave development took place as my slave brother came to make the best impression. By then, it is too late-the experience is lost. When slaves have a deep habit of entertaining such thoughts, it is impossible to turn them off selectively. and true submission evaporates. Obedience is the destination. All the foregoing and all that follows are merely intended to indicate a way to that destination, but none of it should be confused with the destination itself. To get the most out of it, obedience must be more than just following orders to the letter. Or, at least it can be more, depending on the spirit in which the slave executes the Master's orders. A slave's experience with obedience can also be diminished according to the spirit in which the order is executed. When a slave follows orders with grudging resentment, his mood will soon spiral downward into despair and depression, which will remind him of how he felt when he was Master less. Slaves who feel joy and bliss in surrender do so by obeying in a particular way-in a particular spirit-to optimize their experience of obedience. Obedience can become much more than just following orders. It is more when a slave sees a Master's order as an opportunity to demonstrate to him the sincerity of the slave's craving for surrender. It is more when he accepts that it is a privilege to brine the Master pleasure by obedience. In submission to his Master's will lies the slave's only hope for finding true bliss and for demonstrating his gratitude for the Master's attention and for expressing his respect and/or love for him at that moment. In fact, obedience becomes one of the primary means by which slaves express love for our Masters. One of my slave brothers tells a story of a time at the beach with his Master. The Master has a fondness for rope bondage and happened to notice a piece of rope that was partially buried in the sand near them. He ordered his slave to dig it from the sand, and so, the digging began. The slave tells me that the rope turned out to be long and buried deep. so the project developed into a bigger one than first met the eye. As the digging dragged on, the slave began to think the project pointless and to get frustrated and bored. He became angry when he saw that the rope was tangled into a piece of sail buried even deeper. He thought the job could not be completed at all. at least not by digging with his bare hands. The Master stood over the slave and watched in silent detachment. At last, frustrated and angry. the slave dug more furiously, hoping to bring the project to a speedy end. Nearing exhaustion, his hands sore from the abrasion of the sand, the slave continued to dig only to be obedient to his Master. The digging itself, he saw, was what mattered to the understand the gift that obedience could be-first to the Master and, through the Master's pleasure, for the slave as well. When a slave's orientation toward obedience has developed this particular clarity on the nature. meaning, value and opportunity that obedience can be, then obeying an order takes on a whole new meaning. From this point of view, A Master who wants nothing from us in terms of service withholds the gifts that obedience can offer to both people. On the other hand, the more demanding a Master happens to be, then the more chances there are to be nourished by acts of obedience. I suspect this is the reason that we often see slaves in search of a "demanding Master." A slave can use the demands of Master to remain centered on his slave identity, and the requirements of a more demanding Master will help with his need for frequent re-centering. (Note: You may wish to consult the discussion of the principle of identity in the last issue for more ideas on this re-centering process.) Masters don't generally sit around saying to themselves, "My slave needs a spiritual experience of his servitude, so that means I should have him clean the bathroom." They more likely just want the damn toilet cleaned and don't want to do it themselves. and why should they unless it brings them pleasure? The Master where I live and serve finds that doing the laundry is relaxing and therapeutic for Him, so He insists on doing it Himself, the privilege of doing the laundry is denied to me. His call. of course. He also enjoys doing His own auto care, often including pumping the gas while I sit in the car. At those times, when I start feeling guilty and useless, I remind myself that the pleasure He takes in doing those things for Himself must come first. Having recognized this priority clearly, I obey Him by just sitting in the car and perhaps finding some other way to make myself useful. Fortunately. there are many other tasks from which He takes no pleasure; lawn and garden care, for example, hold no fascination for Him. but He does enjoy seeing the results of my field labor there. Masters don't usually care whether or not we slaves can alter our consciousness by cleaning toilets. Fortunately for slaves, we get to use Tidy Bowl and get high off the obedience whether it matters to Masters or not. Obedience Masters take pleasure in the service of slaves. They also can sometimes take pleasure in the struggles that slaves experience in our efforts to follow their orders. I have come to call this second sort of pleasure The Pleasure of our Predicament. It either case, it becomes the slave's obligation to himself to bend his total resourcefulness to the task of compliance once an order has been issued. When the Master in whose home I am currently permitted to serve and live wants His boots cleaned, I owe it to Him and to my slave identity to do the best possible job. When I think I have done so, I present the cleaned boots to Him and ask if they are satisfactorily clean. By doing so, I offer Him the opportunity to place me in a predicament in case He might enjoy that. His whim will determine what He does with my question. Easy-to-please Masters won't generally want cleaned boots fussed with anymore, but will move on to their next wish if there is one. Hard-to-please Masters may be genuinely picky or simply enjoy the predicament they may place us in. Some Masters enjoy the mental stress that the predicament generates in the slave. This is emotional sadism, and some Masters find great pleasure in it. A slave in this situation will fall into mental quicksand if he interprets his Master's continued demands for perfection as his dissatisfaction. If he says he is dissatisfied, that might be the truth, and it might be a predicament. A Master will sometimes lie when he plays with a slave just because it suits him to do so. His later behavior will reveal the truth about whether he is really satisfied or not. I just try to do the best work and wait to see how things will turn out. But slaves who are deeply into their surrender are often more difficult to put into such predicaments because, when we understand obedience more clearly, we realize that the emotional pain of the predicament is the Master's objective, not the completion of the impossible task (s). but more will be said about this in a future essay on the principles of pain processing (thanks to Mr. Joseph Bean for the phrase). All of the above remarks about obedience make some assumptions about the Master's motives for his orders. And the assumptions are important ones, especially in the early stages of establishing a meaningful connection with a Master. One of the general principles that seems to govern the behavior of most competent Masters during the early stages with a slave or a candidate slave may be expressed like this: "The Master may not injure a slave or, through action, allow a slave to come to unwanted harm."' Wise Masters who are serious about the Master/slave connection will generally try to do their best to support the development of the relationship in order to determine its real potential. They will have learned that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to accurately assess a candidate slave's potentials right away. First, they know, a certain level of trust must be established as a basis for further explorations. In the early stages, it is therefore important that Masters somehow make it clear to the candidate slave that he is safe enough to reveal himself and his capacity for surrender. Slaves worth having will not usually surrender to any interesting extent until they first feel that it is safe to do so. If a prospective Master's first order is for the candidate slave to run naked through the streets, and he really means it, then it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the candidate to take such a Master seriously-it is not safe for him to do so. A slave must come to trust that his submission will add to both their lives, rather than diminish the lives of either Master or slave. Until candidate slaves satisfy themselves on this point about prospective Masters, the slaves are best advised to withhold submission that involves any such risks. In functional Master/slave relationships, Masters must win the submission they desire and enjoy, and trust-building is one way they do that. Struggles with Obedience There arc some times when, obeying an order, I feel I am being pushed into drudgery. This happens at times when my slave identity has drifted off center.  I can tell when this has happened because feelings of resentment or a declining mood develop in my mind. After occasionally struggling with feelings like these when slaving, I finally began to realize that these feelings were really an alarm bell, and they should be interpreted as an indication that I have gotten off-center from slaving and its role in my life. Masters usually don't discover that such feelings are happening In slaves' heads, and most slaves are afraid to report them to Masters. Some slaves fear that those feelings will be misunderstood as meaning that they aren't really slaves at all, or that they think the Master's orders tire stupid and that, therefore, the Master is stupid. Others fear punishment. And still others fear that such feelings really do mean that they aren't "good" at slavery even though they want to be. And there are other fears that can silence some of us. If a given slave with these feelings is not a skilled actor, the Master may notice that the slave's performance of the assigned task is not enthusiastic enough to suit his taste. If he does notice that the slave is not doing a task very well, the Master will generally have one of the following responses: He may criticize the slave's efforts, he may issue corrective orders that clarify how he wants something done, he may become discouraged by the slave's performance and wonder if he is with the wrong slave, or be may tease the slave about his compliance- usually an indication that he is annoyed at some level. Masters almost never know what to do about correcting our feelings. This fact is not a criticism of Masters, it is merely a description of them that clearly distinguishes Master wiring from slave wiring. Most Masters just don't know what makes the slave mind tick. [See essay 2 in IL 7 for a much fuller discussion of this reality.] So, we have to fix these internal problems ourselves in almost all situations where they come up. When I have been able to notice these feelings-and I have to correctly identify them before I can do anything about them- ATTENTION Masters and slaves I have trained myself to initiate corrective action. Since I sometimes have a hard time knowing exactly what to pin my difficulty with obedience on, I try to cover all the bases. First, I take myself through the litanies I described in essay #4.1 already know this "dialogue" can help me to get my slave identity back on center. I recite the memorized dialogues within myself or out loud. I stick my face into one of his boots either literally or mentally-and inhale deeply, or I do the other things I wrote about before. This always refreshes me, whether my mood is dumpy about obedience or not. Next. I remind myself of all the things I discussed earlier about obedience-that my labor is an opportunity to meditate on selflessness, and all the rest. And I use the ritualized vocalization process that I also explained earlier. THE SECOND DIALOGUE: "What are you doing?" "I am at work." 'And why are you working?" "I work because there is joy to be found in my labor." "And how do you find it?" ~I find joy by reminding myself that my labor pleasures the 'v. Master." "And why is that important?" "It is important because when He is pleased, I am at peace. "So. you are generous?" "No. I am selfless. and that is different." "And how is it different?" "It is different in that the selfless servant receives through the pleasure of others, whereas the gifts of the generous are contaminated with pride." "I see. Is there more?" "There is always more. THE SECOND DIALOGUE ENDS HERE. AND THE SHORT FORM: "What are you doing?" 'I am at work." I do not pretend to be an expert on obedience, but I do know what works for me. If I had time and permission. I would trot off to the library and do some research on what has been written about the topic. I suspect that I would find a wealth of information on it. If the Master here detects that obedience problems are developing. I will most likely be sent to do this research. Since obedience has been one of the standard vows one takes in certain religious situations (such as the traditional wedding service and the covenants of nuns, priests and monks), and since that vow has been so troublesome for countless thousands down through history, I assume there has been much written about it by those who know that struggle from close and personal perspectives. If the tools I now use to stabilize my slave identity into comfortable and joyous obedience should ever fail me someday, I would beg permission to research the thinking of those wiser men and women in the hope that their words would offer me some fresh guidance. Without working tools, those who would be-must be-slaves will eventually encounter difficulty in their efforts to achieve perfect obedience.