Sex, Love And God.

Every once in a while, I feel like praying. I am tempted to put out a mat, kneel beside my bed or fold my hands in some kind of deliberation. I don't believe in gods, higher powers or really anything that requires a leap of faith, but it takes all of my sagacity to know that I am the type of person who should stay away from organised systems of faith, because I am and have been tempted. My interest in religion has nothing to do with God, I am attracted to systems that tell me how to behave, encourage penance and require from me accountability for my morality amongst other things. I am also attracted to ritual, denial of self, erasure of desire, feeling smaller or insignificant, discipline and conditions of belief that cannot be questioned. And in a very literary, but desirable sense, I also like the idea of a personal relationship with an unknown, faceless entity that only exists through my faith and only communicates with me through extant literature that is widely available, symbolism and cryptic messages delivered through the universe. I could have fun with that, which is part of why I know I shouldn't engage, I have very strong opinions in general, but I also have a particular brand of intellectual whimsy.

I heard this mathematician talking about why math people come up with things like infinity and she said, at one point: "It's what math people do, you tell me you need a way to add numbers so you can estimate the value of things you have and we are going to come in here and try to add shapes. Every single time. We know you "can't" add shapes, but we just want to see what happens if we could." That's the kind of intellectual whimsy that I am trying to elucidate, I don't have good cause to believe in the tenets of any god, but if it's a "*see what happens*" situation, I will go along, very dedicatedly and elaborately, with anything. I'm just playing a role but I get way too immersive with how I play my roles. I know we tend to think that if you are playing a role that is not being "real," but the difference between real and role is just how much you are willing to commit to this role. I'm a 100% commitment with everything. No one has ever had to have the "where is this going" conversation with me, because if we had a second date, I'm already completely committed and you will know it.

But God and religion are dangerous and so I have never asked them out. There can't be a first date because I suspect my whimsy will ensure there is a second and before you know it I will be living a forest, wearing only white and foraging for my meals. Okay, that is a bit far-fetched, I will need wifi. The problem is not that, the problem, really, is that I don't trust any existing systems of belief enough that I can take that leap of faith. I have seen, all my life, how religion really plays out in people's lives, morality and politics. I cannot extricate its practical reality from its sentiment. In its current form, religion seems to offer virtue, community and responsibility. I have no desire for virtue, I already have community and I don't want to be in the vanguard of propagating anything. It does not offer, however, what I appear to be seeking and that is an almost erotic thing, when I feel the desire to pray, it's like the desire to masturbate your soul.

In general, I see around me, a very social and political engagement in religion. Let's not discuss the political here, there is too much to say and it will cause nothing but deviation from the subject, but it is extremely relevant to why I cannot publically or comfortably engage with religion. The social engagement is either festivity, group prayer, communities centred around worship, propagation of social mores or religious recreation. My feelings about those things range from abhorrence to indifference. I feel a temptation to engage with faith outside of all of these factors. I used to think it's not possible for me to believe in god and in that I accept their existence as fact, it is actually not possible, but how much does that matter? The logic-centric argument against God, which makes a lot of sense, I agree, is often espoused by people just as illogical as their faith-bearing counterparts. I mean, just look at how all of us handle our emotions, it's not logical, we are clearly not meant to be purely logical, it seems almost anti-human to try. Alternately, if you view logic as nothing more than having a viable explanation for the things you do (which I would argue is more reason than logic but let's not split hairs in the process of splitting hairs), there are plenty of good reasons to believe in god. My sister believes because it makes her less neurotic. My mother believes because it satisfies her to know there is some force other than her that is making plans for her life and that is a relief to her. My grandmother believes because it allows her to engage with her community and socialise. These are all good reasons, as far as I can tell.

I realise I can believe too, if I just acknowledge that the fact of the existence of God does not matter so long as ascribe that role to an entity and choose to believe in it. I can choose to believe there is a creature that I place above myself because the "superiority" of God, it's not exactly a qualitative assesment right? It's role-based power, like teachers, your bosses or the Prime Minister, they aren't necessarily superior people, but they have the right to exert varying levels of control over you by virtue of the roles they take. I don't need god to be smarter, kinder or even more powerful than I am, I just want to worship something. I just want an entity to thank for things. To apologise to for my failings. To love, in a way that I can never tell is reciprocated. To view as bigger than I am, so I can revel in the comfort of insignificance. To hurt me, for reasons unknown to me. To give me joy, for causes I cannot estimate.

So, it's clear to everyone I am talking about power exchange right?

Because I am completely sure that if I wasn't kinky, I would be a religious freak. Emphasis on the freak. Masochism has nothing to do with this, no, it's the temptation to answer to a person who expects reverence for no good reason, dispenses cruelty at whim, holds me accountable for things, enables a system of amends and gratitude, possesses the ability to move me and remains always just far enough from me for me to really hold in my hands and take apart for meaning. Submitting to someone is a leap of faith, asking for pain is about need, asking to be controlled is something different, it's a system of belief. It manifests in ways so similar to a religious practise. There is control that is relished by the party being controlled. There is ritualism, if thay floats your boat, but it does mine. There is a system of accountability.  There is an pain and suffering. There is also joy and validation. There is peace and there is chaos. There is a subversion of self. I could go on forever, but it checks a lot of the boxes, is my point.

So when I feel the desire to pray, it's centred around the person I choose to whom I designate the role of God. I mean we can call it master, okay? I do, I think it would be a bit much, even for me, to be moaning: *God, may I come?* (Huh, although, that does happen a lot doesn't it?). I know in the community we look down upon this kind of blind faith and grandiosity, it's wise to do so, because we don't exactly want people to be viewing those with control as infallible bastions of honour. That is not what I do, though. To me the fact that roles like dominants aren't exactly qualitative assessments either is key to being able to practise this twisted system of faith. I mean sure we can make yet another one of those lists about who makes a "good dominant" but it's just so nebulous, you know? A patient person? They also make good submissives, I imagine. A fair person? What if fairness makes my cunt dry up like freshly washed clothes in North Indian summer? I foster no delusions about anything, my "master" is an occasionally cloddish, delightfully goofy, sometimes irrational, erratically compassionate, adequately intelligent, bald person whose decisions with regard to me have no bearing on any system I could ever understand, even though an elaborate system to govern my behaviour with regard to him does exist. His power doesn't come from laying us out to measure and seeing who is "superior". It's role-based. It comes from me choosing to worship him and past that choice I do not feel the desire to question whether he really "deserves" my worship. It's very similar to believing in God. You think you have good reasons, you may and you may never know if it was worth it to have faith.

But there is something magical to it.

I feel it when I am overcome with the desire to pray. It's not to ask for anything, I have nothing to ask for, I give myself things and what I cannot, I live without. It's to experience a space where I say words that go nowhere but into a contruct of my own creation, they fall on no ears, but they still serve a vital purpose, to me. A space where I can love but there is no expectation, no conventional reciprocity that is expected. A space where it's just fine for me to be smaller, it's fine to prostrate my insignificance in forms of posture-based communication that speaks so loudly it is almost embarassing. A space of pure emotion, of mindless devotion that does not stop to assess its own merits. A strange kind of intensity that lives only in my heart, that makes me smile when everything is going wrong and cry when everything is perfect. It's a personal system of faith, and because I am who I am, I have to have sex with it.