Gratitude and Ego in the Ascetic Slave

A while back, at a munch I was hosting, Mistress offered me permission to sit on a park bench: “You may sit.” 

“Thank you, Mistress.” And I did.

Generally, for us, this interaction was and is routine. I’m not allowed to sit on furniture or ask to, utilizing my General Kneeling Position instead, maybe asking later (in the proper format) for permission to shift to something more like sitting. Since we were in sight of (but out of earshot of) vanillas, and kneeling wasn’t appropriate, she generously relieved me of standing for the next few hours by offering me permission to sit down.

A Dom-leaning friend commented, “The life of a slave is enlightening sometimes.” They pointed out my gratitude for sitting down. “I don’t have that kind of gratitude. I think I’d be happier if I did.”

Gratitude is indeed one of the key things I set out to cultivate when I went down the path of ascetic slavery. Some think the endgame of asceticism is numbness or discomfort, but I personally disagree. The goal is still to be happy. It is learning how to cultivate happiness from within, regardless of external happenings. It is learning to be capable of being just as happy with less, and therefore better able to appreciate the occasional luxury, instead of dismissing it as mundane. I have learned to be genuinely happy kneeling on a hard floor (no matter how many people insist it must be uncomfortable), and I’m grateful for sitting on a park bench, as mundane as it seems to most, which makes me happier overall—as our friend pointed out. 

There is a shadow side to this: ego. When you shift your worldview to happiness coming purely from within, you experience a reduced need for external pleasures. Once I became happy sleeping on the floor every night, and started to view the bed as an occasional luxury (when Mistress granted it), anyone complaining about their mattress quality admittedly began sounding like the titular character of “The Princess and the Pea”, and they started to regard me as “enlightened”. 

There is a very real power in needing less to be happy—there’s far less for others to dangle in front of you or threaten to take away. I frequently come across mundanities of my daily life—like sleeping on the floor—as punishment ideas. On the flip side, I’m happy on the floor, and I’m not much motivated by the reward of sleeping in the bed. This means that someone seeking to control me—say, Mistress—has to turn to something bigger (like my deep drive to submit), forging a more powerful bond.

How do you cultivate gratitude without the ego, then? 

I think step one is, in fact, cultivating that genuine internal happiness (and gratitude). It can be tempting to take a shortcut and simply repress discomfort, creating a stoic facade—and this is, I think, where a lot of people stop with asceticism and Stoicism both—but fail to embrace the full philosophy of internal control. Too much repression breeds resentment, the desire for a win. The internal cultivation of true happiness takes real time and practice.

For me, grounding and mindfulness exercises helped me notice the things I would then make a point of being grateful for. 

My slave/philosophical journal helped prompt me on this as well (I include a gratitude log), and it helped me with another key element—reconnecting with why I chose ascetic slavery to begin with (being pleasant, low maintenance property—not a competitive and resentful equal). I’m not here to compete; I’m a slave; I am meant to surrender and lose. If the point is focusing on what I can control (my internal world), I can only compete with myself, and humbly remember where I started, and how far I have left to go. 

I also found a strong correlation between two logs in my daily journal: gratitude and something I was proud of from that day. It reminded me of how often the part of my day I felt most grateful for was the result of me taking actions I was proud of, and also how often what I was most proud of was achieved with some kind of help to be grateful for (and to humbly accept). 

Ascetic slavery can also open you up to some unique ego hits. No one thinks anything of the average person’s indulgences—sleeping in a bed or wearing more than one outfit or not getting beaten first thing every morning. But my choices—adding a pillow to my sleep setup on the floor, asking permission to mix up my slave uniform for a special occasion or to sleep in peacefully when I’m sick, not having to speak only when spoken to when there’s a vanilla person around—attract extra attention, curiosity, and sometimes critique—because of the very specific path I chose. This can result in a feeling of pressure, shame, and imposter syndrome, even though I must ultimately aim to let go of the ego that drives those things. 

There is definitely a balancing act—a functional sense of self esteem, but not a lofty ego, and gratitude—all of which can be cultivated in ascetic slavery.