Don’t indulge them.
It’s not hard. I have had minor fetish-like feelings on occasion, but I don’t make a lifestyle out of it. Once it becomes an identity and a habit, as well as something believed to be morally acceptable, it simply becomes harder to overcome. It goes from being an illegitimate occasional feeling that one wants to change, to a legitimate identity that resists change (as all identities do). Why on Earth would anybody want that?
One of my spiritual goals is to be liberated from as many vital formations as circumstance/God allows*. Creating yet more vital formations only does more harm. That in itself is a good enough reason to avoid indulging fetishes and kinks.
I suppose those who want to be enslaved will continue to be, for some time. But eventually God will bless everybody, since we are all in His constant embrace anyway: “… whoso will turn to Me, Though they be born from the very womb of Sin… all Plant foot upon the highest path.” — Bhagavad Gita, Chapter IX.
*Vital formation are emotional, and also somewhat bodily, formations that a person gets caught in, leading them to react emotionally with a certain level of automation. The Buddha recognized this problem, but his solution was for us to free ourselves completely from all worldly formations, which certainly works but IMO is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
[Via http://faithfullyagnostic.wordpress.com]
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