power exchange-conditioning or natural response

The concept of power exchange is well know in the certain circles.  There you are defined or labeled by you power preference.  If you are aware of your preference you can find people who are compatible and great fun is had by all, or so I am told.  But what creates our preferences, is it our true nature or is it our conditioning.  I have long believed that it was our true nature but a startling realisation of another of my beliefs changed that.  I had found that my private submissive preferences were at odds with my public persona.  But as I sank deep into the dark place I realised that I had separated out all the different parts of me.  When they started to compete for space in my soul and my mind my brain froze and I could no longer carry on being the person I was, doing all the things I thought that I was juggling so easily.  I dropped all those chainsaws I had been juggling.  They all fell from the air and cut me totally into the different parts of me that wanted to be free of the conflict they had with each other.  My recovery has been largely about the joining up those parts of me.

What seemed to be at the core of all this was a power struggle.  I was so lost and all that was left of me was a breathing corpse.  The deepest layer of power that caused me to struggle with all others, was my deeply buried, and up until now unconscious, belief that it was the role of a woman to serve a man.  I thought I was open minded, I thought I was a feminist, I thought that I thought I was equal.  But buried under all the layers of other stuff was the core belief that I am there to serve men.  While I was fully aware of it on a sexual level, I have now identified it in so many other areas of my life.  Now that I recognise, it I can find it.  Have I been conditioned by my childhood experiences of what a womans role was, or is it my natural state?  I need to examine my responses, to recognise when I am doing the "I am your maid how may I serve you thing".  How many other complex power-exchanges are there for me to encounter.  Is all life about the struggle for power? And how do I recognise and hold onto my own power.  How do I know if it is nurture or nature? Well I shall meditate on this and when I have answered these questions that seem to be at the core of the human existence forever I shall write a book and make loads of money. :-)  

Sometimes it is just enough to know the questions because you need to have a question to find an answer. 

Believe in yourself.
Happy Thursday