Deep Kinky Thoughts
"The world is so full of suffering, and all of us suffer so greatly in body and spirit, that even the saints have difficulty understanding this. It is one of the most difficult tasks of the individuation process to accept sorrow and joy, pain and pleasure, God's anger and God's grace. The opposites - suffering and joy, pain and pleasure - are symbolically united in masochism. Thus life can be actually accepted, and even pain can be joyfully experienced. The masochist, in a remarkable and fantastic way, confronts and comes to terms with the greatests opposites of our existence."
- Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature, Eds. Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams
"The role of the dominant is more comparable to that of a priest in Christian tradition. That is to say a human among humans who guides the congregation, himself included, into a deeper submission to and reverence for that which is holy. The priest is a vessel of sanctity, the link between congregation and the divine; he himself possesses neither more nor less divinity than any other."
~ J. Mikael Togneri in Spirituality In Slavehood
"There are two kinds of strengths: the strength to lead, and the strength to follow; alternately put, the strength to control, and the strength to yield. There are two kinds of power: the power to strip away another's soul bare, and the power to stand naked."
-Yaldah Tovah