Last month Maximus selected Devil In The Details III – The Art of Mastery- A Mentoring Trilogy: Volume III “Sustainable Structure & Training” part of The Devil in the Details: the Art of Mastery
series by LT Morrison for our personal book club. We’ve read the other two books in the series, but this was by far our favorite and most useful to us. The other books were about the theory of M/s relationships, but this volume was about the application of these theories. It detailed contracts, training, rules, rituals, and protocols and offered examples of each through stories and actual documents used and developed by Morrison. This was something we’d been looking for and both Maximus and i highlighted a lot of this book for our discussion.

A lot has come out of our reading. First, Maximus has asked that i keep a binder to keep our Rules, Master Preferences, and Entertainment Journal. The rules section will hold Appendix 2 of our contract, which is our house rules, rituals, and protocols. i am also to go back through the historical archive of our contracts and rules and indicate the date of which each rule was taught to me. Master Preferences is my list of things i have learned about Maximus’ personal preferences, such as the fact that He hates olives and that the Seahawks are His favorite football team. The Entertainment Journal is a record of guests (vanilla and kink) we have hosted, what was served, what we wore, entertainment provided, which room they slept in, etc. In addition, i am to develop a system to track preferences of any and all of our guests in terms of allergies, special needs, favorite beverages, etc., so that i can be best prepared to best host them.

There are some changes to our contract and rules as well. i have pages of notes for additions, edits, alterations of our contract and rules that i will completing over the next several days. i will do them in stages and journal about each section and then update the Contract and Rules page after we have reviewed and signed. As is our norm, the rules we discussed and i verbally agreed to last night when we went over them go into effect immediately.

As always, discussion about our contract, rules, ritual, and protocol makes us feel just so connected. Going over what we’d read and how to improve our D/s relationship by applying the concepts introduced in this book took hours, but gave us a greater understanding and connection. To me, it gives some more framework in areas that we hadn’t thought about or had operated under but not codified.

Maximus loved the last section of the book with a parable of two wolves:

“Son, there is a battle that goes on inside us all. It is a battle between two wolves.”

“One is Evil. It is anger, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, and ego.

“The other wolf is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

His son thought about it, then asked.

“Which wolf wins, Dad?”

He smiled and look at this young man, so much like him.

“Son, it is always the one you feed.”

Going over our contract, rules, rituals, and protocols feeds our Good wolf. It never feels oppressive, controlling, or confining, it feels like an enhancement and strength. i’ve never gone away from a contract discussion with Maximus feeling upset or like i’ve been screwed–i always go away joyous, light, happy, and more connected.

Our Next Book

Our next book will be Master/slave Mastery: Updated handbook of concepts, approaches and practices by Robert J. Rubel, Ph.D. and M. Jen Fairfield. i’ve read this book already and requested to Maximus that we go over it together for our next book, which He agreed.

We will go over sections once a week, as we did with our last book, but i will reserve our review until we finish, unless there is something i need to journal about before the end.

Future Reading Material

i do have a running list of books for Our Book Club, but do you have any recommendations? i’d love to know what others have found helpful in M/s, D/s, protocol, ritual, BDSM, domestic discipline, etc. Please feel free to comment suggestions!