I am looking for ancient wisdom as contemporary practitioners have all failed me. I have noticed that the current no fapers very often relapse and become self-loathing and hateful. Yet how is that that men in the past could become completely celibate without any desire for love? I want books by people who were able to reject not just but also love and desired to be love by women?
>Yet how is that that men in the past could become completely celibate without any desire for love?
ok but how do we know this for sure.
Newton wasn't known for his celibacy. I am talking about the Buddha, Jesus, Mahavira, and other bishops, priests, monks and sadhus who were known for it.
You don't think they struggled? Look at St Augustine's confessions. Even Jesus was tempted in the desert.
Yeah, but at some point they reached a position where they no longer got such desires. You can't say that about current celibates, atleast I don't know any. I want to know what they did different?
Some became hermits, others literally castrated themselves. You could argue that without internet and immediate access to porn it was easier but brothels were also big back then so idk.
Does castration even work after puberty, let alone a 30 year old lonely male. I am not just talking about masterbation but desires for love itself, do eunuchs stop wanting love?
You should watch Parsifal by Wagner and realize what happens to those who try to deny their desires by castrating themselves. This is what the antagonist (Kingslor) did.
Instead of denying your desires or indulging in them you need to integrate them and use them to grow spiritually and feel universal compassion. This is the message of Wagner's drama in a nutshell.
>>You should watch Parsifal by Wagner
Wagner was a bourgeois and product of the secular entanglement, so the average sex addict, and whatever he says is irrelevant for any spirituality
Everyone has been attracted to sex at one point in his life, unless you were born with asexuality. Blaming him for that is profoundly immature. Parsifal is the proof that Wagner at least was on the right track by the end of his life.
They were converting sexual energy into spiritual energy. This is a whole branch of inner alchemy, especially in China, but also in western traditions.
You can read this book it's about this very topic.
YOOOOOO THIS homie GOT A IQfy PASS EVERYBODY POINT AND LAUGH
I’ve known a few Catholic priests like this. not saying it’s the norm, but they still exist
29. With my sister
what does this mean????
>peevishness with my mother
>... with my sister
He punched her earlier too so it makes sense
You will fail
That is why I am asking for how to succeed?
Opium.
Does that really help? What does it do?
And then you'll get back on the horse and do better
start with The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis, it helped me at least.
nice breasts
cooming is reduced only once you are good at meditation. in the mean time the only solution is pragmatism. you fap between 15min/day and 15min/week and move on with your day not being infatuated with girls
>move on with your day not being infatuated with girls
This is the harder part. I once went 3 months without cooming but the desire to be loved by a woman never went away. I even stopped thinking about sex, but it only amplified the desire of love.
okay that's separate from sex. This stuff about wanting to be needed is normal but still unbecoming for spirituality. The way to kill this stuff is to be independent from well another human, and not materially. In buddhism this happens at stream entry, when the stream enterer officially becomes independent of the teacher for the spiritual path, but it becomes also independent from all the mundane stuff
There's really no conventional means beside the stick and the carrot. People love pleasure and hate suffering, so in order to stop clinging to a fantasy, you have to see all the downsides of this fantasy. All the nagging daily rut of a relationship.
Also the Un-reality of it : at the end of the day people don't really love each other. they spend time to avoid being alone. A relationship is a lot of compromise which is hard to let go when you tasted freedom.
So for instance, why would anybody love you. Why do you have to offer to a girl.
The method with the stick is grim because you are left with nothing, whereas with meditation, you fill celibacy with meditation and wisdom and access to truth. Plus in buddhism truth makes you stop clinging to stuff so it's inherently super peaceful.
That's just you.
No fricking way. 2d, vtubers, amsr wouldn't be a thing if that was true.
Avoid every trigger you can (you OP pic counts too)
Do Samatha-vipassana meditation everyday (The Mind Illuminated or With Each and Every Breath are good meditation manuals) for 1-1,5 hours a day, extend meditaion qualities to the rest of the day and be mindful.
The burden never gets lighter. You just get stronger.
You will never not want the feeling of orgasm, or of a woman's touch.
I remember going on about a six month fast from any sexual behavior, and figures in my nightmares would quite literally rape me. You can't escape the desire, but you may resist it. You can tell the devil to get thee hence, and when he finds no purchase in your heart, he'll move on to easier quarry. I wish you the best of luck in getting away from lust. Just remember, pornography is a form of warfare.
(picture related, succubis are real demons. so are incubi.)
What's the kid in the background supposed to represent.
Not sure, my guess is it is the artist as a witness to the corruption that lust brings, James Jean's work is very provocative in that sense, handling the awkwardness of youth in conjuction with the transition into adulthood, where one must gather and hold the secrets of lust with firm understanding. Perhaps it is a record of the tainting of his young mind. Often when traumatic events occur, one finds that the emotional maturity of the victim barely progresses further from the event, locked forever as a child. Hard to tell what it represents. What do you think?
Or you can lose T with age like I did. At almost 30 and all my burning desires are quite gone. Still there but not that potent
How about the desire for love?
Desire for love is different than the lust. Love is ever present; lust is ephemeral.
>Love is ever present
How to get rid of it?
You don't get rid of love. Love is the end goal. God is love, you are love
Never had that to begin with.
>At almost 30
This is not normal at all. You should seek help.
Modern men who consoom a diet high in internet culture and materialism have been led to believe the masculine essence is reduceable to a chemical excreted by a particular bodily gland. This mindset is part of the path that leads to destruction, and one should laugh at the idea that testosterone is a prerequisite for happiness and spiritual development. OP desires a life where he is completely liberated from the desire for love with a woman, both physical and in the Platonic sense. One must realise that our desire for union with a female is nothing more than an unconscious expression of our feeling of separateness from the Absolute One (God) and our desires for intimate love with a female are a result of our souls being made to incarnate bodies which were assigned genders. OP has noble intentions indeed and I wish him luck. I have slowly been coming to the conclusion that what OP desires is only possible through dedicating ones life fully and totally to the pursuit of Wisdom, Truth and Knowledge. Set yourself the goal of being autodidactic in an area of study into our ontological reality, poetry, art whatever and desire nothing else. Burn with passion for knowledge and wisdom.
how? same age as you but I get morning woods or random walk-boners all the time. if I abstain from jerking off for a couple days I immediately start getting wet dreams. I wouldn't want to lose it no matter how embarrassing it is.
Huh. I used to be like that 10 years ago. Not so much now.
From who?
Go to a doctor and get your T-levels checked. At your age it's not normal.
I'm in my 30s and I've literally never had a wet dream. even if I go weeks without ejaculating. What encourages having them? Do they release pent up desire to have sex or jerk off?
Bruh what an insane painting. Been looking at it since yesterday. Viscerally disgusting and almost bordering on bad taste but I think it works. Why the black hands I wonder?
Saved
It was easier in the past.
The average woman worked in a field all day, didn't have makeup, probably didn't bathe regularly, and was almost always completely covered below the neck. You might see a couple truly beautiful women a month, if that. There wasn't birth control, so every time you had sex it meant maybe making a baby. There weren't tests or cures for STDs either so that was always a risk, especially with promiscuous women.
The man also had a genuine, unironic full belief in his spirituality or religion of choice. Not the kind of weird postmodern half assed belief people have now, but like, "if I have sex before marriage I will burn in Hell for eternity".
They didn't have sex shoved in front of them every second of every day. You would have never seen this image you posted. Again, you would've only seen a couple truly beautiful women a month, and they'd be fully clothed. In the past a women dressed like this wouldn't have been allowed near these monks. They would probably have thrown stones at her if she tried to get close.
Rejecting love was probably even easier, because women were actually, literally moronic. Like couldn't read, couldn't write, had never been formally taught anything except how to thresh wheat and raise a kid. It'd be like having a dog, except worse because at least a dog loves you unconditionally.
And on top of all this, the men still abjured society and went to live on a mountain top just to get away from women.
>the average woman worked in a field all day, didn't have makeup, probably didn't bathe regularly, and was almost always completely covered below the neck.
>Rejecting love was probably even easier, because women were actually, literally moronic. Like couldn't read, couldn't write, had never been formally taught anything except how to thresh wheat and raise a kid.
You might find it suprising or even pathhetic. But that doesn't bother me, if the woman is genuinely kind and is in love with me, I don't want anything else other than being together, not even sex. And that is why this whole getting rid of the desire to be loved is proving to be difficult.
>woman is genuinely kind and is in love with me
lmao, nice one virgin zoomer, you have a lot to learn
Like he said, no one loves you unconditionally. You will learn the hard way.
Nice perspectives here.
Making a baby w/picrel because God commands it is far sexier than any instathot. Especially if she wasn't injured to modern feminist bullshit.
Otherwise, I agree. I just think we're downplaying how attractive women were back then
That's not a flattering photo, to be honest
That was the point.
Are there any books or passages specifically written for this?
What is the truth behind the 'lust' Buddha statue?
Fapping is a conditioned behaviour. You wouldn't have it if you never done it.
What about love?
What does love have to do with being a coomer degenerate?
How to get rid of desire and cravings of love?
>/x/
If that would work, I wouldn't post it on IQfy. But I'm willing to try anything. Do /x/ books really work?
if you are that desperate then why not find a girl from the third world?
>He's hiding his tent
lel, can't say I blame him
Nofap is a cult created by under 25s
These are the reading list of /x/'s semen retention threads, theres another by Atkinson about regeneration or something.
Presence of a woman with big boobies is an affront to the ascetic way of life, she should get a breast reduction surgery or else I'll curse her with eternal back pain
They didn't think much and just went cold turkey on desire
I have managed to go a few weeks without fapping or viewing pornography and the OP pic made me diamonds.This is a SFW board.
Nofap was started on reddit. People who watch cporn have more sex, it's been proven
>constantly pacifying your libido leads to having more sex
give me a break anon
Mishima wrote a story called The Priest Of Shiga Temple And His Love
It's about an ancient Buddhist monk who everyone respects who one day sees the Emperor's concubine and falls deeply in love with her, both romantically and sexually
I think Mishima found the idea of denial of the body to be funny and so that's why he wrote a sick story
>I think Mishima found the idea of denial of the body to be funny
All hedonistis do, especially women and homos. And there's no denial of the body it's just the body which is inherently a wrong basis to develop happiness.
So, does he get over his desires or does it end in a tragedy?
IIRC the concubine is religious so she feels bad but at the same time she feels proud that she managed to destroy the salvation of such a venerable man
They work together and eventually he is able to regain his Pure Land salvation and she becomes deeply religious
Nah she's a jezebel. She knows what she's doing when she's dressed like that.
Is it okay to indulge in sexual desire without masterbation? Whenever I get horny, I look at women's nudes while gently rubbing my penis without stroking it for a minutes and then stop without masterbating or ejaculating. Is that bad?
well karmically it's not very good, but it's still way better than watching pron all day
So, you should quit cold turkey? But how do you control your thoughts?
It's less bad than fapping but you should still try and stop.How does this benefit you? you're driving yourself mad. just let go and move on
>How does this benefit you? you're driving yourself mad. just let go and move on
Sure. But the thoughts keep coming back, and they come back stronger.
Engaging in the activity that you described will encourage them to return stronger. Let them pass over you.
You think they will ever disappearing completely without me doing anything, as long as I reject them?
No but they will become easier to manage and so they will feel like they have weakened.
You have to transmute your sexually energy into something else or you’ll be stuck in a cycle of retaining and releasing.
I am trying really hard to be open-minded but isn't he just your regular sex pest cult leader?
You need God. No fap is simply negating or not doing something. You have to have a higher purpose leading your nofap. Serving and glorifying God has to be your purpose for this.
>GOD
>GOD
>GOD
Why do trad zoomers insist on converting without practising the bare minimum of what they preach?
1) I'm not a zoomer
2) The fact that I am a sinner and fail too has no relation to the fact that you need God
>you can't mention God unless you're sinless
lmao
No. They just sound superficial.
I have no idea what this thread is about.
I just dropped in to let you know that you're a homosexual for paying for paying for IQfy Pass.
Neurodiversity. Some persons brains are just wired in a way that they don't need love, affection, sexual activity. Other brains will require this at a high cost if not fulfilled. Simple as. By the way life is much easier if you accept fapping if you actually like it rather than self loathing. You can also have a relationship and fap from time to time. It's completely fine. But you should tell and talk about it with your gf so everyone's on the right side here.
religious people have an easier time not fapping somehow than the HECKING BASED atheist.
i jerked off after a month of nofap because i didnt care anymore
That's worse because they devote their will and fear to an nonentity. If they devote it to themselves maybe you could say they are superior.
My nuts fill up like my bowel and my bladder so I go to /gif/ and empty them
I end up thinking about sex much less this way
If I could never nut I'd be obsessed. Lies about how sex weakens you would be all I ever said.
>My nuts fill up like my bowel and my bladder
Science says otherwise.
Lifelong voluntary celibate, non-masturbator and porn free for 5 years.
I have never jerk offd or did anything similar in the last 5 years. I watched porn 3 times, but it made it even clearer how sad it is.
High testosterone levels, physically strong, good looking, before you ask. But I have to say that I was kinda predisposed to this kind of lifestyle, it was never hard for me.
Of course, I have a very serious spiritual practice in all those years, that led to the abandonment of meat, alcohol, masturbation, pornography, lying, swearing (reduced by 80%) and it all came naturally.
I think that a man that can't transmute his sexual energy should do his best to find a woman that's spiritual and loyal (hard to find).
>a woman that's spiritual and loyal (hard to find).
easy to find, most people are just crap at discerning valuable traits in friends, romantic parnters etc. largely cause they do not know what they looking for, they just want to end the agony of loneliness
The issue is complex, but most of the time the situation is as it follows: these deep topics, such as spiritual ascension, enlightenment, philosophy, pursued seriously, leave a man outside female company. Almost no women are interested in these topics.
Most of the people who end up in these things are either like that from their childhood or had a hard life or something difficult happen to them. I have to stress, when I say that someone is seriously devoted to enlightenment, it's the only important think in their life, everything else is secondary and I mean everything. So the choice comes - should I risk it all to try and maybe have a romantic relationship with a woman, that's almost doomed from the start and lose all my accumulation (having sex with a person of vastly lower spiritual level ruins a devoted practitioner, if he's not an expert Yogi, but that's black magic), or simply continue on my path?
Loneliness is the product of identifying with the false self, there's nobody there to be alone, it's just a thought-emotion, it really has no value, it's dependent origination, there's no substance to it.
Nice man. I'm good looking too and all, and i'm on a relationship and i've quit porn due to respect for the love i have for my girl. Porn is really really bad and satanic, and it kills your brain and your connection to God, and i meant it. For those struggling with intrusive thoughs: You have to understand that it's a literal demon using eletricity through your brain to trick your neuro-paths to go back to the porn addiction, it's an illusion, you're being used and eaten everytime you betray yourself. Your integrity and soul are precious, and woman know when you use porn, they can feel it. Seek the Bible, Read the New Testament. Jesus will clear your mind, I promise you. Good luck, Jesus will be forever by your side, don't forget this.
jesus is a israeli psyop, you're literally worshipping the devil
Hey, I'm the person you responded to. Quitting porn out of respect for someone else leaves the possibility of you going back to it if and/or when the relationship ends.
How it clicked for me - I already developed a sense of separation from the false self, so I was able to observe the ego/personality watching porn and jerking off and simply saw it as the most pathetic thing one person can do. I also imagined the angels (that was how I saw it at the time) and also my ancestors watching me and crying "he's doing it again". I sincerely prayed to God to give me strength to never do it again and I never did. It was one of the rare sincere prayers. Trust me, I never thought of jerking off once after that, but watching erotic or pornographic content comes up once in a while, when my practice weakens a bit.
Also, what you call the soul or Buddha Nature or whatever, is completely untouchable, unchangeable, non-corruptible, timeless, formless, uncreated etc. and is not affected even a bit by the behavior of the mind-body complex, but what does happen is that your mind-body complex gets corrupted and that destroys the connection with that inner nature, it simply jams the signal. This is why a moral life is stressed.
And yes, it's not just Jesus, it's all the enlightened men and non-human entities that ever 'lived'. You call upon who you identify the most.
>but what does happen is that your mind-body complex gets corrupted and that destroys the connection with that inner nature
how does one reverse this?
You have to contemplate and find the reason for improper behavior, be it pornography, masturbation or whatever. It's essential to have one contemplational/Vipassana practice and one silent abiding/Samatha practice. I use Buddhist terms, but it doesn't matter which context do you practice in.
Also, you need to stay focused the entire day, as much as possible, observing your behavior, impulses, thoughts, so you stop being an automaton and make your own decisions, not be bullied and pushed around by the thoughts you don't control. Once you do that, there's inner clarity and distance from the mind-body complex and inner nature and wisdom shines through.
The heavier the 'sin' and longer it lasts, it's harder to get back to clarity. But I'll give you encouragement, when I jerk offd and watched porn, it was daily from when I was 8 years old to my mid 20s. That's a long time, but when I was convinced it's a highly damaging behavior I stopped cold turkey and never did it again. So there are no strict rules.
The conclusion is, without serious, daily, consistent (aim for 30 minutes after you wake up and before you go to bed, even 5 minutes will be hard in the beginning) spiritual practice no real progress is possible. You will be stuck in circles of self-deception, suffering, fighting constant urges, only clarity of the real nature of mind-body phenomena brings freedom.
thank you for your response. i do all of this already. i've been meditating on and off for the past 8 years, and following a strict daily practice for the past 9 months. i've moved mountains in repairing the damage, but i'm always looking out for something i'm missing. i fapped to porn daily from age 13 to early 30s, then i started to wake up and realize what i was doing. but rather than stop, i doubled down and chased harder sexual debauchery by living out porn in an IRL setting with partners. i'm 38 now and have spent the last year waking up to the ruin that my life has become.
my main problem was i wrestled with the admission that the behavior was destroying me. i was using sex to escape from responsibilities and difficult feelings, and understanding this was too much to bear. seeing what i had wasted (career, talents, social life, etc) drove me deeper into depression/addiction. i kept justifying it with "well if other people are indulging and they're still successful, why can't I? there must be a way." but the damage was done, and i was too good at distracting myself from the reality until it was too late.
>only clarity of the real nature of mind-body phenomena brings freedom
this is the way.
thanks for reading my blog.
tl:dr never goon
>Of course, I have a very serious spiritual practice in all those years, that led to the abandonment of meat, alcohol, masturbation, pornography, lying, swearing (reduced by 80%) and it all came naturally.
You follow Islam?
No, if I'd have to say what's closest to me, it's Yoga (as explained in the Yoga Sutras, and almost nothing else) and Buddhism, both Theravada and Tibetan, Tibetan is closer to me in essence, but culturally foreign. My practice is based on emptiness meditation and self-observation. I've also found a group called "Amrita Mandala" and they seem quite serious as well. I used some methods they offer and they solidified some of the insight. I do respect Sufism.
>I've also found a group called "Amrita Mandala" and they seem quite serious as well.
Is their awakening practice legit?
Why ask me brother? Just do it, it's not very hard. I told you that I did their practices (Guru Yoga, chanting) and it definitely solidified some of the insight I already developed.
Read their introductory books, they are free. It makes sense, their Guru is also a serious dude, who has a very balanced approach, but their path is Tantric. 2PF (two part formula) didn't do much for me, but I've already developed that kind of insight before.
Do you have any buddhist books on this particular topic?
Hey, no, unfortunately there are no good modern books that deal with contemporary issues and spirituality, such as pornography, cultural and economic war etc. Most Buddhists and Yogis are clueless about these things, many of them urged their followers to get the death shot ("covid 19 vaccine").
As for the spiritual practice, the best books I can recommend of the top of my head, from various traditions: In Search of the Miraculous, Yoga Sutras, Meher Baba's work (God speaks), Imitation of Christ (for devotional/Bhakti types), A Different Christianity, The Work (Rebecca Nottingham), Stages of Emptiness Meditation, Ivan Antic's works. Practice is the most important.
I plan on writing a book in the future that will tackle the topic of pursuing spiritual life in today's world, written by someone who's knowledgeable about many different topics. There probably are some new age books about it, but it's usually utter garbage. I still don't feel as a spiritual authority, despite having a lot of academic and practical experience, but a couple more years need to pass.
>>Hey, no, unfortunately there are no good modern books that deal with contemporary issues and spirituality, such as pornography, cultural and economic war etc. Most Buddhists and Yogis are clueless about these things
All those issues are not comportment. Hedonism has been the same for millennials. And the buddhists know hedonism up down and sideways, which is precisely why the 8 fold path still works today, and it will work again in 1000 years. That's the whole point of it.
>are not comportment.
are not contemporary
No, it's not the same at all. Buddha would not form a sangha at this time with his teachings, despite it being the path to freedom. We have such evils today, that they couldn't dream of. And it's not just hedonism we're fighting against, we're dealing with planned, serious, global propaganda and intentional deceit.
To reach these deceived people, you need to understand the deceit in detail, like the Buddha understood the problems of his times, which I stress again, were a joke compared to today. How many Arahats did Buddhism produce in the last 2 centuries and what global effect did it have?
stop talking
Someone post books?
You can either enter into the chase after sex/avoid sex dichotomy in which you will likely end up feeding the urge to do lustful things by your attempts to deny that urge, or you can go the schizo route and try to change your mental image of yourself until you are alienated from humankind and from life as a sexual being, a route which will most likely also cause you to lose social skills and relationships.
This is a very good explanation, but it's not the schizo route, it's the Buddha/Christ route. A temporary or permanent alienation is guaranteed if the practice is proper. A man aware of the self being false knows he's playing a role in a theatre play, for some it comes easy and they enjoy it and have fun in it, some want nothing to do with it.
But yes, it's essential to de-humanize in order to leave human urges behind.
Some good answers in this thread but this might be the best. Basically just remove all of your organs except the heart, or the eye of the heart. Become non-human without becoming sub-human. Anything less is an interactionism, and belongs to the great field of compromise. Every movement within this field is a movement within the parameters set up by the game. Discern a middle way between debauchery and denial
Ven Candā:"The Refined Bliss of Meditation" Day 2 - AM DhammaTalk & Guided Meditation 29.12.23
Nofap is just a subliminated version of a chastity BDSM fetish.
Prove me wrong.
NoFap is the natural outcome of the deep sexual frustration of the mutilated, circumcised American male. The israeli sexual neuroticism stems from the mutilated penis. The israelite has religion to explain his misfortune. But what does the American male have? Why was his penis cut? The American male has no way of explaining to himself why his penis is the way it is. It's no wonder then that NoFap is an American phenomenon, with its followers disproportionately consisting of men with circumcised penises.
Is the religion of the future just going to be American Tantrism? lol
I'm going to read this
>Project: Rethinking Satipaṭṭhāna
https://sitagu.org/cintita/satipatthana/
This project, initiated by Buddhhu Cintita of the Theravada Dhamma Society of Minnesota, is concerned with revisiting the satipaṭṭhāna teachings in order to develop a coherent understanding that is (1) optimally consistent with the early Buddhists texts (EBT), (2) viable in terms of modern cognitive science and (3) reflected in practice experience. Almost equal consideration is given to samādhi and the jhānas, in view of their critical role in the satipaṭṭhāna. The most current drafts of papers within the framework of this project are available here for download as pdf's.
When you've been hurt by enough bad relationships you'll stop wanting love. When you've banged enough rank prostitutes, you'll stop wanting sex. I was always too stupid to accept other people's words about the emptiness of such behavior, so I ended up finding out first hand. None of it lasts, and most of the time the pain and depression that follow are greater than the pleasure. You can't just read a book and get rid of such urges, just like that.
This is the most homosexual bullshit you could possibly do. Read Nietzsche, rejecting your life force like this is fricking gay. Flat out.
Nietzsche is a piece of shit atheist who desperately glorifies hedonism with his shitty vitalism, from his hate of religion
>Nietzsche
He misunderstood what Übermensch means.
Nietzsche is just a sad, pathetic man, to everyone with genuine spiritual insight. A wasted life of trying to explain a Luciferian "God of the Earth" ideal through intellect. A confused, sad man who ended his life as a lunatic.
Recovering degenerate here. At some point I realized my pornography and sex addiction is a conditioned stress response from early childhood. I went out of my way to remove all temptation from my life and did so quite successfully for a while. However, the more you insist on going cold turkey, the stronger the urge to degenratemaxx becomes. I swung back in a big way, going not only back to porn but straight into escorts and such. The degeneracy escalates. I'm not sure what the way out of this is. It seems to me that whenever I reach a state of clarity I'm reminded of what I am really like and what my past is like and any hope of "redemption" seems pointless. There is this perpetual fear of being an impostor for one thing and a fear of potential ego-destroying humiliation if I were to admit to the world what I'm actually like. I therefore I feel like I need to hide from the world forever. This is deeply engrained shame I guess. Shame relates to one's ego and narcissism, but I don't know where this trail of thought leads me. I sometimes wonder whether there's any point in fighting it. Why not just take the "left-hand path" and embrace the (sexual) chaos. Does this make sense?
I should add that my experience with escorts followed a long period of what I considered to be pretending I'm something I am not (by living celibate) and despite fighting the urge to the last minute, once it was over and done with, I felt an unexpected and profound spiritual release, in spite of or perhaps BECAUSE the sessions with the escorts were terrible and quite humiliating. I've had much better experiences since but. Those were moments of hitting "rock bottom" I suppose and in that sense it was a rest from having to fight myself. I was doing something that I previously thought I wouldn't and was confronted with the shadow I guess. A total thrill of having "given up" for once. I don't know if this makes any sense. All of this has left me quite puzzled.
You sound like you're still wrestling with the "ego" or the mind, and still identifying with your "personality". I'm hesitant to use terms like these on IQfy because it can quickly slide into a debate over semantics, so please try to understand what I'm saying in terms of the broad strokes.
My story is almost the same as yours, but instead of prostitutes, I pursued extreme sexual indulgence with frick buddies and girlfriends. But you nailed it in your 2nd sentence, our behavior was a conditioned stress response, an escape to hide from difficult feelings that we didn't have the faculty to deal with in childhood. The bad news is we programmed ourselves with this destructive behavior when our brains were at their most impressionable. As someone who is further along the road to "recovery" that you also seem to be on, what I've learned is we have over-identified with this story. You have to drop this. It took me years of consistent meditation and contemplation, and I'm not claiming to be a master at it, but in short, don't take yourself too seriously. Also, because you did X and Y, doesn't mean Z. The shame that I carried around for years, albeit still there, is more of a background noise instead of being the main music. Yes we did some awful things to ourselves, but be a man. Own it, and more so, be proud of it. We defiled ourselves, but did we die? Don't be jealous of the "pure" people that never battled the debauchery we did, they could never handle this weight, this struggle. We did the best we could at the time. Our current standing of awareness is an invaluable tool now, that most people never even get a glimpse of.
Forgive yourself. Forgiveness is not a one-time event that is done, it's an on-going surrender. Everytime you start to over-identify with this narrative you've constructed, remind yourself that you're taking it all way too seriously and to just drop it. As
puts it so eloquently lol, don't turn it into a 6-hour long Italian opera. It's not that epic. We just made some mistakes and later realized it, but any effort to try to "undo" them is moronic.
>There is this perpetual fear of being an impostor for one thing and a fear of potential ego-destroying humiliation if I were to admit to the world what I'm actually like. I therefore I feel like I need to hide from the world forever. This is deeply engrained shame I guess.
All of this makes sense, but you're still clinging to this narrative too strongly. You're not an imposter, you're trying to better yourself. That's admirable. Think in terms of buddhism, or a dog that adores you. They'd just say "ok, enough, stop carrying this story". It's good we feel shame, it means we're not mindless Black folk, so practice compassion for yourself. Understand the experience, the journey of a traumatic childhood, reaching for your goon stick as an escape, it's only understandable. Focus on what you want in your life, not on what you don't. Love yourself.
I haven't had sex since the last kalpa but it's weird how my own struggle staying chaste in solitude resonates with this anon. He's right that the final obstacle to breaking this cycle is the narrativization of it. That's when you know you have made real progress because you've moved on from the constant oscillation between indulgence and denial and discerned what it means to not be moved by these impulses in the first place. I remember relapsing once and actually gaining energy. I'd 'violated' myself and my vows, but I was able to observe the violation in the act, and suddenly it all stopped feeling so dramatic. Torturing myself over masturbation and my own habitual mental weakness just suddenly felt ridiculous, that it had always been kind of ridiculous and a sign of a small mind. I was able to not care about relapsing while still never wanting to relapse again. I did not have a traumatic childhood but I did always feel ugly, inferior around other people, and expressing myself as a sexual being in any level felt indecent. The enemy is the ego cathexis which sent you tumbling down this spiral
much better said than my wall if text
>sign of a small mind
I think we weren't objective enough yet, and were still thinking we are the mind. now days i watch myself and most of the time I'm laughing at how absurd and moronic all my thoughts and mind-made stories are. I'm absolutely ridiculous, I'm the greatest comedian
Same, objectivity is it. Objectivity is such a loaded word these days but that's it is, developing a greater and more masculine objectivity about who you are and where you stand. People who haven't even walked this path think that since enlightened beings don't have neurotic hang-ups about sexuality that an enlightened being wouldn't "care" about releasing once in awhile, but the point is to not care and still abstain. The objective is to not deny the movement, but to be unmoved, and that only comes with a stilling of the cathexis. The ego is resourceful, if you deny it one feeding-ground, it will make a new feeding-ground of the denial. The neophyte confuses indifference with a free license to indulge. Anyways just wanted to contribute because anons itt have been saying good stuff
>The objective is to not deny the movement, but to be unmoved, and that only comes with a stilling of the cathexis. The ego is resourceful, if you deny it one feeding-ground, it will make a new feeding-ground of the denial. The neophyte confuses indifference with a free license to indulge.
well said again. the paradox of it all is fascinating to me, albeit dangerous to not get too wrapped up in over thinking, which we all know leads nowhere.
Thanks for the insightful response. A lot to ponder here so I saved a screenshot
Some thoughts:
>instead of prostitutes, I pursued extreme sexual indulgence with frick buddies and girlfriends
yeah same and the sexual deviance escalated with "civilian" women too
>Everytime you start to over-identify with this narrative you've constructed, remind yourself that you're taking it all way too seriously
Yes this makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. I think it was Weininger (who I've not read at any length) who said that men have a desire to place their life in the context of some coherent narrative. I do sometimes feel like life is an RPG but I fricked up really early on and now I'm stuck with this defective character, because of XYZ that I did, therefore any further effort to improve or resist is moot, I will always be a degenerate (or so the voice goes). There's this intense desire to censor parts of my life to not only myself but to the outside world in particular. Really wish I'd get rid of this compulsion. The beauty of the external world is spoiled for me because the observing "I" is not to my liking
>forgive yourself
I actually think on this front I've made progress. It's precisely why despite falling into a prostitutemaxxing binge I was able to just say well, frick it. It happened for a reason. Behold, the man!
It seems the final frontier is being able to just be up front to OTHER people about all the gory details of my life. This is a cause of great anxiety.
>You're not an imposter, you're trying to better yourself. That's admirable. Think in terms of buddhism, or a dog that adores you. They'd just say "ok, enough, stop carrying this story".
Thanks anon. This was good to read.
This deep contradiction you're feeling is the engine of a kind of genius. Maybe not poofy artistic or mathematical genius, but certainly spiritual genius. I resonate with you're going through. Not a Bible thumper but the story of St. Mary has always been inspiring to me
I've heard of this. I suppose this is what they mean by "tyranny of consistency" Any inconsistency in the narrative that I have of myself is experienced as pain and hypocrisy. To make artistic use of these contradictions this tyranny is what needs to be overcome. Perhaps then some fruitful possibilities will emerge.
Kinda what was mentioned here
>Don't be jealous of the "pure" people that never battled the debauchery we did, they could never handle this weight, this struggle. We did the best we could at the time. Our current standing of awareness is an invaluable tool now, that most people never even get a glimpse of.
>sexual deviance escalated with "civilian" women too
part of my awakening was suddenly becoming aware in the middle of a goon sesh with a woman, looking down on myself, and asking "is this really what I want to do?" and then looking at her in all her beauty and grace that i was defiling, and asking the same thing again.
>I will always be a degenerate
or we can be reformed degenerates that woke up. it's our choice.
>There's this intense desire to censor parts of my life to not only myself but to the outside world in particular. Really wish I'd get rid of this compulsion.
>It seems the final frontier is being able to just be up front to OTHER people about all the gory details of my life.
IMO i would not divulge the details or even the summary of your story to anyone. people aren't emotional dumping grounds. no one needs to know. unless you're HIV+ and you have a girlfriend, she doesn't need to know shit. maybe if you're in a serious relationship and there's deep emotional trust and she's understanding and it's relative to the context of a discussion, i would talk about it then. but repeating the narrative to people just reinforces it in your mind, and invites lots of judgement on their end. it's not important. leave it in the past.
>The beauty of the external world is spoiled for me because the observing "I" is not to my liking
it's not spoiled, it's yours for the taking. I don't like myself a lot of the time, but then i remind myself that is irrelevant to deserving what i want, and that's just another ego trap.
>despite falling into a prostitutemaxxing binge I was able to just say well, frick it. It happened for a reason.
it did. it brought you here, to this point, to help your understanding of yourself and others.
>IMO i would not divulge the details or even the summary of your story to anyone. people aren't emotional dumping grounds. no one needs to know.
I feel the same way. The totality of the whole will remain pretty much incomprehensible to other people anyway. But I'm in a relationship now, with a religious girl of all people (again, life makes no sense) so I need to navigate this with some sense. Having more or less forgiven myself, I don't even feel the need to explain all too much, but it's inevitable people pry into your life. Should she meet anybody from my previous life, they will give her a totally different, perhaps too unsavory version of me, and poof, I lose whatever "control" I think I have over how I am perceived. The chance of this actually happening is practically speaking very low, but regardless the emotional fears sometimes don't yield to reason. I'm not sure where this immense fear of being put "on trial" in public stems from. It's not like I'm running for president.
>they will give her a totally different, perhaps too unsavory version of me, and poof, I lose whatever "control" I think I have over how I am perceived.
on the contrary, it could add to the mysteriousness of your complexity. she knows you now, in the present, and then information is revealed about your past that demonstrates a dynamic and tumultuous life.....she'll probably get turned on x100. whenever girlfriends found out contradicting things about me they would literally get wet. all women adore twists. also, women in love are incredibly forgiving if you're sincere and remorseful without being weak.
Heh. Yeah I suppose so
Since we are on this topic, have you read anything in particular that has helped you in your own journey? Or did you arrive at these conclusions through lived experience?
I've been studying Buddhism and stoicism for 10+ years, so just keep on your spiritual development and read what you're drawn to. like
said, hedonism has been pursued by men since the dawn of time, and no one gets it like the buddhists do IMO
specifically about sexuality:
>The Practice of Brahmacharya by Sivananda
repetitive but makes a clear point for celibacy. i don't necessarily think it should be adhered to 100% but the philosophy is sound
>Bliss of the Celibate by Julian Lee
christianity and dharma viewed through the lense of celibacy. again, repetitive, but points to a lot of historical references advocating chastity.
both books preach completely abstaining from cooming unless for procreation.
I'll check these out. I'm reading Libido Dominandi at the moment. Take care and thanks for posting.
I remember thinking the coom fever is my true nature when it'd hit after weeks of restraint. How does a man keep breaking promises to his spirit like this. is he incapable of being sincere with himself? Is there something fundamentally dishonest about my thoughts and feelings that I can never be trusted to stay the course? That's always been the most demoralizing thing. Getting a rush of resolve and then reminding yourself how it turned out last time. I know the release you're talking about, but it's a pale and conditioned shadow of the real thing, which is release from the desire as opposed to the release of the desire. I think the only language people like us can understand is excess, and frying these circuits to death instead of starving them.
promises don't work, that's kind of the point of the buddha. You need 1. the user manual and 2/ the resolve
if you have no idea what to do to reach the goal, you'll never get anywhere, even though you may be super resolute.
>the user manual
Which is?
the 8fold path, especially meditation like
>Visuddhimagga as a book
>How does a man keep breaking promises to his spirit like this. is he incapable of being sincere with himself?
I had the same sort of thoughts. A sense of broken promises to one's self and the resulting loss of will in general.
>I think the only language people like us can understand is excess, and frying these circuits to death instead of starving them.
Part of the "logic" for me was what I think you speak of here: I figured if I degenratemaxx to the maxx and frick every hooker on the planet I'll exhaust that itch but it's still there lol Likewise I seem to think it's black and white and my only option now is to become a monk (extreme thinking)
>frick every hooker on the planet I'll exhaust that itch
you'll never satisfy it. that's part of the trap of lust. it just gets hungrier and hungrier. and you're right, devout monk mode is just the opposite extreme. neither path will lead anywhere good. I think one needs to take pages from both books of extremes and apply them judiciously. talk to the couch potatoes, talk to the gym rats injecting steroids, form a middle path.
What an utterly pathetic thread. holy shit you gays are so histrionic and take this shit way too seriously
There's more to life than jerking off, but now and then it's fine as a release
If you avoid jerking off, you will become frustrated, sexually and emotionally. Likely if you just spent the 15 or so minutes it takes you wouldn't be thinking about it right now, writing page long posts about your super deep heroic struggle to not touch your dick lol, and could move on to focusing on actually interesting topics
There's really not much more to say.
>If you avoid jerking off, you will become frustrated, sexually and emotionally.
Meditate.
>Buddhists use karmic healing against California city's anti-Asian legacy
https://apnews.com/article/buddhist-ritual-karmic-healing-antiasian-hate-b77f2efa55ad8c9f955457157b46e3c8
Why are californians so anti-asian and therefore anti-buddhism?
>On Saturday, the group of Buddhists gathered for the pilgrimage, an event they titled “May We Gather.” It was intentionally scheduled on the third anniversary of the Atlanta mass shooting when a white gunman targeted female employees at Asian American massage parlors because he saw them as “sources of temptation.” Six of the eight victims were women of Asian descent.
>Gets aroused them
>So he decides to kill them
What?
If you see Mara, kill him
The Buddhists (as well as contemporary sramanas and yogis) accomplished this through deep meditation, or jhana. Cosmologically, this world is divided into the plane of sense desire, plane of form, and plane of no-form. Jhana is any state of mind beyond sense-desire, a human enters it by meditating and the brahma-gods abide in it naturally. You can search up "jhana" for more—I recommend the book Visuddhimagga—but the gist of it is that you enter a deep state of absorption on a single object such as the breath, a color, an element, etc. First jhana is the mind that still has discursive thought but is secluded from sensual thinking; higher jhanas are progressively purified of discursive thought and other attributes, the idea being that total purity is nirvana. But anyway, the ancient monks who did jhana found this non-sensual state of mind so blissful and exalted that they simply lost interest in coarser sensual desires. So yeah, meditate with the aim of generating absorption; generating insight (into impermanence, suffering, etc.) is also important in the big picture, but for your goal, jhana is easier and more effective. So in that regard you might prefer to avoid anything that emphasizes vipassana, since that will take much more time and energy to cause the same disenchantment with sensuality.
I've mentioned this in another thread, but I'll share it here. The sensual realm isn't just humans, it includes animals, gods, ghosts, etc. There is a sort of spectrum of decreasing sensuality as you approach the form realms I mentioned. Down here we humans make love by bodily penetration and emission of fluid. The gods who live on Earth (catumaharajika and tavatimsa devas) also penetrate, but only emit wind. Higher up are yama devas, who only embrace to make love; higher still are tusita devas, who make love merely by holding hands (insert handholding-how-lewd meme here). Still higher are the nimmanarati devas, who make love merely by smiling at each other. And finally, at the summit of sensual existence, the paranimmitavasavatti devas need only look into their lovers' eyes for pleasure. The next step up is the realm of form, where as I mentioned the brahmas abide in jhana, totally uninterested in sensuality. So that gives a subtler picture of the path of purification if first jhana seems like a huge leap, you can contemplate this scheme of cosmology to remember that there are many beings who are progressively less sensual as they move up the cosmic hierarchy; it's not a black-and-white division of horny earthlings and chaste angels.
That was a bit rambly but I hope it helps someone.
>Visuddhimagga
Thanks.
Earthly gods emit "wind" = gas humans emit liquids, do hell-beings expel solids during sex? Probably instead of penetration they consume parts of each other. Very interesting hierarchy. Sexuality becoming more and more refined up the ladder until it winks out completely
Ah, you're looking for explicitly gay literature with gnostic enlightenment.
Look no further:
The Place of Dead Roads BY William S. Burroughs
>you're looking for explicitly gay literature
Why do you feel emasculated at the sheer thought of some guy not touching himself?
The Buddha doesn't talk much about masturbation. There is no mention of it being bad for the laity
Masturbation probably wasn't nearly as prominent in his time. Anyone with the leisure for it had access to women, hell even the lower castes probably didn't have trouble getting actual pussy. The precept against sexual misconduct forbids rape, incest, and adultery because that's what happened more often back then. I don't know if the Buddha would have forbade fapping if he taught today, but at the very least I think he'd discourage it for laymen.
It's caged animal behavior so it won't come up until you have monks living in purpose-made buildings; there's definitely regulation of sexual behaviors in the vinaya/monastic codes, but laypeople generally don't read those and in any thread on Buddhism rec's will overwhelming be for the sutras or scholary secondary lit
homies in this thread be like if I resent half the population on earth (the half I'm not a part of btw) then I will become enlightened lmao
>resent
Nice attempt to misrepresent what's being said.