Within the House of Runo we have lessons that the slaves must complete as they advance up through the levels of Hor in Training to becoming and Elite Hor. Sometimes a girl completes a lesson so exceptionally that it must be preserved. What follow is an essay written by Fliss Fairport as slave owned by Master Eldin Stonecutter. Master Gorm Runo was so impressed by this essay that he asked it be included here.
Beginner Lesson #11
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Write an essay on what being a kajira means to you. This essay does not have a word count, please use however many words you feel you need to, to express your thoughts on what being kajira means. NC the essay and turn it to the Lessons Box!
[ K A J I R A ]
“Suddenly, the world I had scrutinised for so long was all around me, as if I had leaned forward and climbed into the television like Alice through the looking-glass. I had no idea just how deep the rabbit hole would go. ~ Simon Pegg
The idea of consensual slavery is not new to me. However, i didn’t ever think i would use ‘slave’ to describe myself. That, at the most basic, is ‘kajira’, she is slave. However, slavery, wholehearted, exquisite, beautiful slavery which seeks to please and honour and bring joy to the One she serves, is not basic.
It is not easy to be slave. It is not a decision to be taken lightly nor one to enter into without the steel to withstand the emotional roller-coaster, the descent into the rabbit hole, that it entails.
I choose to be kajira, i choose my slavery and that comes with a breadth of things i now need to embrace.
[ W H O L E S E L F ]
✤ Heart ✤ Mind ✤ Spirit ✤ Body ✤
“To be great, be whole;
Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you.
Be whole in everything. Put all you are
Into the smallest thing you do.
So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor
Because it blooms up above.”
― Fernando Pessoa
The pick and mix is one of the most exiting bits of a trip to the cinema. So much choice, all thrown into one over-sized, paper cup and, in the dark of the movie theatre, you never quite now what sweet you’re going to pull out. Consensual slavery, however, is not a pick-and-mix (although there’s plenty of dark mystery and excitement to make up for it). To be kajira, one offers everything to the Owner. Your thoughts, emotions, actions, hopes, body are all now His. On the plus side, you are released from the worry of editing who you present to be in order to be ‘acceptable’, or second guessing whether you are really truly wanted. You are owned. However, you retain responsibility to ensure that who you are and what you offer is now looked after and honed, to the best of your ability, in stewardship of His property.
A kajira needs to find love and confidence in herself, if only to find sufficient motivation to care for what is no longer hers to damage through neglect or self-condemnation. No amount of ownership or reassuring words will heal the wounds that everyone carries, not even the most powerful of Masters can fix a broken heart or a damaged ego. However, in trusting that ownership is complete, it is possible to practice disciplines of self-care that can heal and mend, that can recondition and make whole. If that trust in Ownership cannot be given, a girl will never be able to be the best for her Master; if she longs for a saviour to heal her wounds or save her from herself, the likelihood is she will be sorely disappointed and possibly even drag her Master down with her.
A kajira therefore needs to be ready to commit to self-improvement, to grow and flourish. Only then will the exquisite beauty she’s expected to project, inside and out, be able to manifest in her. How one flourishes is as unique as each kajira but neglecting any part of herself, her body, mind, heart or soul, will be to neglect her Owner’s property. It is not enough to be beautiful on a screen or to understand the philosophy of Gor, inside and out, if one neglects chores or body in RL. While, for many in an SL context, the Master-slave dynamic does not bridge the screen and it remains firmly between two avatars, the kajira still has a responsibility for the real person behind the keyboard, to communicate clearly with her Owner, to ensure that her availability online is supported by her self-care offline. This is no different where the dynamic shifts into RL.
[ T O T A L O B E D I E N C E ]
✤ Trust ✤ Submission ✤ Ownership ✤
Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”
― C.S. Lewis
Central to a kajira’s identity is the call for obedience; unquestioning, immediate obedience. The time for deciding whether you want to submit to that level passed once you entered into the dynamic you are now in. i am not role-playing being a kajira. i am not pretending that i had no choice and was brought against my will to Gor in order to be Owned by a cruel and barbaric Master (no matter what my profile and ‘journey to Gor’ says, nor how cruel and barbaric He might actually be).
I have chosen to be kajira, when that choice happened i am not sure, but in choosing to be a kajira, i am now expected to be obedient. This comes with trust. Trust that my Master will not ask me to do what will damage His property, detrimentally impact RL or push beyond what i am able to obey. I trust, when He releases me to serve another, that the honour among Gorean men that *He* trusts, will equally keep me safe from real harm.
I wear a collar. It was not a collar that was fastened around my neck against my will, though i may have been somewhat dazed by the intensity of the whirlwind, force of nature that is my Master. His collar of Ownership is an outward symbol of our invisible dynamic. So, as kajira, i submit. I submit to His owning, Body, Mind and Heart, with second dibs on my Soul. I acknowledge His right to control me, to make demands on me, to order me and to be generally bossy and i submit to the expectation that i will be unquestioningly and immediately* obedient.
As an owned slave, submitting to the will of her Owner, i own nothing, not even my name, and i may decide nothing. I am fortunate in my ability to trust the Man who owns me. I know that, in giving Him control, i am in excellent hands.
*unless it amuses Him for me to be a little defiant, on the right side of the line.
[ A T T I T U D E ]
✤ Service ✤ Acceptance ✤ Love ✤
“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.” — John Lennon
Consensual non-consent is definitely a part of the dynamic i share with my Master. We will roleplay for fun and frolics with monsters and beasts and tentacles…because it is fun, because it brings Him pleasure and makes Him laugh and growly. However, though i will defy Him and say ‘no’ to Him, my attitude must always be one of pleasing alertness.
i watch my Master. i listen to His tone, His stories, His expectations and i flex and react according to His need. my own wants and desires come second to what is pleasing to Him. One of the main reason Gor makes sense to my slave-heart is that it accepts and encourages my innate yearning to please
It is important i say, at this point, that i believe i am very fortunate, that my Owner wants me to be totally honest and unedited, to share what i hope for and what i desire. He is very present and engaged and demands the same of me. This is not always the case for a Master/slave dynamic and RL does not always allow His level of attention and care. So, while He is in charge, His needs and wants are my priority and i seek to be pleasing to Him, i do so with total security that my needs and hopes are never disregarded, as long as i am open and articulate them.
The attitude then, as kajira, is key. A kajira must strive for excellence, to be the best version of herself she can be. Ironically, in an essay full of ‘i’ statements’ i do try to ensure there is no ‘i’ in slave (that wouldn’t have worked if if i had written ‘kajira’!). Masters deserve the best a girl can offer. He is honoured in our striving to improve dance or creative writing skills, or when i work on His homestead to make it a gloriously beautiful place with places to play and sit and inhabit. i honour Him when i work hard to overcome my inclination to hide my less-than-perfect bits and am raw and open and vulnerable. i honour Him when i am alert to His needs and wants, when i am pleasing without His ordering it, when i obey, even if it is difficult. i honour Him when i take myself for a walk in RL or remember to pack my lunch.
I wear a brand. The brand is an outward sign of this inner attitude, the attitude of attentive desire to please.
[ R E V E R E N C E ]
✤ Adoration ✤ Respect ✤ Honour ✤
“That love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. But they don’t know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who’ve never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt, and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you’ve felt what it means to love as you and I know it – the total passion for the total height – you’re incapable of anything less.” — Ayn Rand
A kajira is not obligated to love every Master that she serves. She does not have to fall head-over-heals in order to bring her best to her service. However, to allow love and reverence to rise up in her, to drive her steps, the touch of her hand, the roll of hip and neck, then she soars in her submission. It is not dependent on being made to feel loved, it is a state of mind that acknowledges that she is made to offer pleasing, loving worship of the men she offers service to.
As i’ve already said, in being my best, i bring honour to my Master, so too, in allowing love and reverence to work their way through my self-perception and my actions, these light-forces become the pull that feeds attentiveness and the desire to rise above the self-centered ‘i’, the self-serving ego and they force out the darknesses, the petty jealousies and resentments that have no place in a kajira’s heart.
[ S E R V I C E ]
✤ Openness ✤ Attentiveness ✤ Pleasure ✤
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” — Mahatma Gandhi
A kajira, whatever role she is trained for, whatever her Master might order of her, is called to service. Attentiveness and desire to please obviously play a part in that, as does the striving for excellence and alertness to the whims and desires of those she serves.
Service is effortful; paying attention to external information, be they orders or the environment, slight changes in mood or the long-term gathering of information to inform your service, to serve is to take time and shape what you offer to the preferences of those you serve. It is evident when this time and effort has been taken, for example, knowing how a Master likes His paga, because you have asked and retained the information (even if it is in a notecard because your memory is notoriously bad), matters, details matter.
It is a kajira’s responsibility to be alert, ready and flexible, to gather information, to learn skills to please and entertain, to add to the community in which her Owner resides and spends time. It is not enough to have a beautiful avatar if, in turn, you don’t seek a variety of ways to offer service. This is how we are pleasing and how our beauty extends beyond the superficial, surface level of our pixels.
[ S L A V E H E A T ]
✤ Lust ✤ Joy ✤ Surrender ✤
“I’m not in search of sanctity, sacredness, purity; these things are found after this life, not in this life; but in this life I search to be completely human: to feel, to give, to take, to laugh, to get lost, to be found, to dance, to love and to lust, to be so human.”
— C. JoyBell C.
i was very much a product of middle-class, British, protestant puritanism. Sex has been a source of angst and fear, need and want, confusion and confliction…and yet, it has been how i express love, feel connected enjoy and embrace my body, in all its imperfections and beauties. The journey of becoming kajira, and the self-awareness and exploration that has come with it, has thrown off the last vestiges of other’s expectations and allowed the primal, sexual beast to joyously spring free, without guilt, restraint or fear.
I have handed my lusts and desires over to my Master and it is pleasing to Him that these needs drive my actions and rock my hips. It is pleasing to Him that i serve with passion and bring heat to the simplest tasks. I do not need to fear others expectations and perceptions because i serve my Master.
In being released, i can now beg for the touches and attentions of a Master and as a kajira i accept their right to give or not, according to Their will. It has been a liberating realisation that *all* that i am, every aspect of who i am, creative, silly, primal, sexual, needy, inquisitive, intellectual can be used in some way to bring service and pleasure to the Free that i serve and the Owner who has claimed me.
[ C O M M U N I T Y ]
✤ Gor ✤ Support ✤ Engagement ✤
“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”
— Mitch Albom
One of the greatest joys in being kajira is that it is not in isolation. my Owner enjoys to spend time alone with me, as happy to beat me (for now) at Zar as He is making use of my slave-heat slickened body. However, the transition from ‘submissive’ to ‘kajira’ has happened in community. Being surrounded by the beauty of other’s service, the trustworthy honour of Gorean men, the joy of sisterhood that has come with finding people with the same heart that burns in me has been transformational, It has shaped how i understand what i have to offer, the context of my Master’s expectations and the acceptance and embracing of both.
Service then, is not only to the Free, in whom i have found friendship and support, but also to the kajira who walk ahead of me and those who will come after. As my depth of submission and love grow, so too does my desire to edify and support my slave sisters, to contribute to the community in which i have flourished to ensure others may too. My responsibility to myself, my wholeness and wellbeing, becomes doubly important, not ‘just’ as Master’s property, but as His property engaging in community with other people.
[ F U L L Y A L I V E ]
“Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.”
— Eckhart Tolle
To be kajira is to spring forth from the restrictions of societal expectations and surrender to the whirling pull of another’s Mastery. It is to serve, effort-fully, with unrestrained fire and heart, allowing love and reverence to push out anything that might hold you back. It is to embrace all that you have to offer and refine it, appreciating and celebrating your gifts so that they might bring joy and pleasure to the Free. It is to pursue wholeness and health because you are now the steward of someone else’s property. It is about being attentive, alert and flexible to the needs and wants of your Owner and the Free they wish you to serve.
It is acceptance, acceptance that this is who you are and where you belong so that you can live your very best life in service of those who would claim it.
Fliss Fairport | March 2020
