combating addiction to porn

[salaam123]

I have a problem with watching porn and subsequently masturbation. The urge come about after every two weeks after previous falling. I reckon thats the time when my body has gathered enough sexual energy to start troubling my mind.

 

Every two weeks may not sound bad to some, but it is very troubling to me.

I hate it and it has been going on for years now and I have lost some of my hair too - I can feel the effect on my scalp afterwards for days.

 

I try to direct chi from lower dan tien to spine but it doesn't help. And it doesn't help that my energy body is completely messed up after my chi experimenting since ten years. My body doesn't store chi very much.

Edited December 30, 2019 by salaam123

[senseless virtue]

13 minutes ago, salaam123 said:

I try to direct chi from lower dan tien to spine but it doesn't help. And it doesn't help that my energy body is completely messed up after my chi experimenting since ten years. My body doesn't store chi very much.

 

Stop playing with energy! This especially is relevant since you confess feeling weak from malpractice no less and you don't even know what you are trying to accomplish.

 

There are many opinions about masturbation. Most seem to encourage it in moderation because it may have good health effects for the prostrate for example.

 

Porn is almost always bad for men's psychology. It encourages toxic masculinity of entitlement and objectification that degrades the feminine. Women are worth a lot more than what porn reduces them to.

Edited December 30, 2019 by virtue

[thelerner]

For most, chastity is hard and can lead to problems and/ or addiction.  Finding a disciplined schedule for release can lead to a more even keel. 

[salaam123]

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Edited April 26, 2020 by salaam123

[senseless virtue]

The issue with porn may be because you have a poor relationship with the women of your life. Your mother, grandmothers, and sisters.

 

Examine yourself how you have treated them. Going to them, sincerely prostrating and offering them your apologies for any grievance you might have given them is a wonderful way to ease your soul.

 

For your info, I too have apologized to both my own mother and grandmother for having viewed porn despite the fact that they had taught me morals for not to indulge with licentious behavior.

 

Appreciate the women of your life!

[thelerner]

There's cold showers and then there's the Wim Hof method.  A hard 10 week program that has challenging breath regime, ie long retention holds after fast breathing, resulting a mind/body hack where you come face to face with will power and mortality.  It involves cold adaption, increasingly longer cold showers.  Facing pain, the 2nd program starts pretty quickly w/ putting your hand in ice water for increasingly longer times.

 

Doing a hard program requiring daily discipline might act as a substitute for a bad habit.  The fact that the program involves cold showers is a plus.  Information is all over the place.  https://www.wimhofmethod.com/

It's doable but hard, with many internal and external lessons. 

Edited December 30, 2019 by thelerner

[liminal_luke]

3 hours ago, salaam123 said:

thanks for replys. I can't succumb even to just masturbation, because I view it as a sin. But let's not make this a discussion about whether its right or wrong.

 

Forgive me if I´m treading into an area where you don´t want to go salaam123, but I have an observation.  Often it´s the people who self-identify as addicted to porn or sex who are most sex-negative.  Who would think that the people who use porn the most are also the people who are most judgmental of porn use and masturbation?  Strange but true.  I think it´s possible that to really come to terms with your use of porn you´ll need to reexamine how you feel about sexuality in general.

[Earl Grey]

2 hours ago, thelerner said:

There's cold showers and then there's the Wim Hof method.  A hard 10 week program that has challenging breath regime, ie long retention holds after fast breathing, resulting a mind/body hack where you come face to face with will power and mortality.  It involves cold adaption, increasingly longer cold showers.  Facing pain, the 2nd program starts pretty quickly w/ putting your hand in ice water for increasingly longer times.

 

Doing a hard program requiring daily discipline might act as a substitute for a bad habit.  The fact that the program involves cold showers is a plus.  Information is all over the place.  https://www.wimhofmethod.com/

It's doable but hard, with many internal and external lessons. 

 

The problem with cold showers is that they increase libido!

[Earl Grey]

5 hours ago, virtue said:

 

Stop playing with energy! This especially is relevant since you confess feeling weak from malpractice no less and you don't even know what you are trying to accomplish.

 

There are many opinions about masturbation. Most seem to encourage it in moderation because it may have good health effects for the prostrate for example.

 

Porn is almost always bad for men's psychology. It encourages toxic masculinity of entitlement and objectification that degrades the feminine. Women are worth a lot more than what porn reduces them to.

 

Except that the causality of toxic masculinity and porn is still arguable, as I know men who love porn and are gentlemen and women who watched a lot more porn than they did since college--and even went on to make a few videos themselves. 

 

The real issue to me is his relationship with himself and so far don't know what his energetic practice is, but generally speaking, the emotions and the energy are the worse issue than the porn itself.

[Earl Grey]

On 12/31/2019 at 10:59 AM, GSmaster said:

 

That's like "computer games causing brutality and aggressive behavior"

Yes, what they found in some studies I came across years ago as well was that it (porn) actually made people LESS interested in sex or relationships. If I find it I’ll edit into this.

Edited January 3, 2020 by Earl Grey

[Apech]

14 hours ago, salaam123 said:

thanks for replys. I can't succumb even to just masturbation, because I view it as a sin. But let's not make this a discussion about whether its right or wrong.

 

Before I masturbated(although without porn the urge came more often) just so I wouldn't have to watch porn(porn is worse for me than just masturbation) but I can't even do that anymore, theres always the urge for porn. 

 

 

Ok first of all what do you understand by 'sin'.  The word is usually given to mean 'missing your aim' and comes from archery.  So perhaps you mean you have a standard of behaviour that you aspire to but that you can't achieve (?).  You don't say how old you are or what your state of health is - but obviously it is normal for people to have sexual urges.  Sexual energy is very powerful and actually, any sexual activity (including sex with a partner) can screw up your energy - the energy is powerful and yet we carry a lot of emotional baggage relating to it (probably mostly from the energy field / chemistry at our own conception - in other words our parents sexual chemistry - not for picturing in the mind tho' ha ha).  So it's kind of like playing with fire.  However not many people achieve comfortability with celibacy and so you have to manage your sex life one way or another.

 

People talk a lot about the problem with porn in terms of exploitation and so on - which I am sure is valid - but I think the worst thing (which includes any kind of projection) is that extends and solidifies the subject/object division, whereby your level of energy excitation is dependent on an image on a screen or whatever - so you are in the very act making yourself more divided or alienated from your own nature.  If you think of qi as a sentient energy, self luminous and able to project images reflecting its own nature - then the urge for porn is really a misplaced wanting for the base energy and its own formal presentations to meet in a kind of perfect union - which is impossible if the level of objectification is high.  The energy needs to rest in itself to realise its non-dual nature - which it can't when over stimulated.

 

Habits like this tend to create neural loops which through inertia self-perpetuate.  I think you have two options - one is just to try to limit its use to a manageable level while increasing practice levels so that as your practice gets stronger it basically squeezes out the porn addiction, or make a strategic decision to cut it out entirely (but you have to plan this to change other patterns in your life which might give rise to it - e.g. dump your computer, or change where you live, reorder your routines and so on).  make a list of the triggers which might exist, including situations you find yourself in and work to avoid them.

 

 

[rideforever]

Best bet is to have sex in a relationship. What are the barriers to doing that ? Work on that, then plug it in.

Porn is not sexuality, it is an abuse of the sexual function ... it's fine occasionally but if this how you use your sexual function it isn't.

Sugar is not food, it is an abuse of your ... metabolism, it's fine occasionally but if this is how you use your digestion it isn't.

This society has "sugar" thoughts rather than real intelligence, "sugar" feelings rather than something real ... and so on.

Cheap exciting but ultimately degenerative.

 

The idea that porn is sin ... the good part of it is that you wish to use your functions to their full potential ... the bad part is lots of negative feelings that aren't helping.

[salaam123]

I hoped that someone here might have had knowledge on how to store sexual energy so I wouldn't have to consume it. A chi kung exercise, visualization, etc.

 

Edited January 1, 2020 by salaam123

[thelerner]

7 hours ago, salaam123 said:

I hoped that someone here might have had knowledge on how to store sexual energy so I wouldn't have to consume it. A chi kung exercise, visualization, etc.

 

  Its my impression that transmuting and transforming sexual energy is pretty high level skill on a long term traditional practice.  Many pre-requisites and no simple solutions.

 

Instead of chi gung and the like, you may want to look at modern cognitive behavioral therapies.  I'm reading The Liberated Mind, and its all about decreasing the power of thought patterns.  Not fighting them, but being able to have the thought and notice it then ignore it. 

 

Course sex is more then a thought, its a deep biological urge.  Still you've tied the thought to a specific act.  Cognitive Behavioral theory would have you, not fight or flee, but see it and keep going, do something else. 

Edited January 2, 2020 by thelerner

[Earl Grey]

5 minutes ago, thelerner said:

  Its my impression that transmuting and transforming sexual energy is pretty high level skill on a long term traditional practice.  Many pre-requisites and no simple solutions.

 

Yes, many pre-requisites, and transmuting the energy is a simple skill, but addressing the desire itself is another issue altogether. Desire is okay, unhealthy desire is not. 

 

Some of my practices make me a horny little devil, but by the same token, they curb my libido and I can go between abstaining for months easily or being this way.

[Walker]

There was good info shared in this version of this perennial topic last summer.

 

Good luck.

[Rara]

On 31/12/2019 at 3:01 AM, GSmaster said:

 

Ofcourse it is a sin, also going toilet is a sin, and enlightened beings should never be taking a dump.

 

 

Whut? Lol

[Rara]

Take the Daoist approach...

 

Don't let the devil know you're quitting

 

Some good advice above about utilising the energy in real relationships. If that's not sustainable or practical (having no partner messes that all up) work on replacing that time with something radically different.

 

Sometimes you just end up doing something else and suddenly, you wake up the next day and realise that those urges didn't show up.

 

Disclaimer, I'm not perfect, nor celibate (although I have done phases of celibacy before) but I have a good go, so I believe your mind is in the right place. But if you just have to blow your load, don't kick yourself. Just pick up again where you left off. No one's gonna strike you down if you mess up, and you know in yourself that you can get yourself back on the right path in no time.

[Rara]

On 31/12/2019 at 11:19 AM, Apech said:

Sexual energy is very powerful and actually, any sexual activity (including sex with a partner) can screw up your energy - the energy is powerful and yet we carry a lot of emotional baggage relating to it (probably mostly from the energy field / chemistry at our own conception - in other words our parents sexual chemistry - not for picturing in the mind tho' ha ha).  So it's kind of like playing with fire.  However not many people achieve comfortability with celibacy and so you have to manage your sex life one way or another.

 

In addition to my last post, this is important. It's damn hard to get right....

 

...either you work into the right kind of relationship and the sexual practice is harmonious - when is that likely to happen? But we can set principles up within ourselves to attract that kind of relationship.

 

That vs. Celibacy: Means well, can be torture especially if one flogs one's self.

 

What ever you do, make the choice that does you the least amount of internal damage.

[Rara]

4 minutes ago, GSmaster said:

 

Same logic

 

Got it! Fairs

[Rara]

On 31/12/2019 at 4:23 AM, Earl Grey said:

Yes, what they found in some studies I came across years ago as well was that it actually made people LESS interested in sex or relationships. If I find it I’ll edit into this.

 

What, playing computer games?

[Earl Grey]

5 hours ago, Rara said:

 

What, playing computer games?

no, porn itself, as stated. “It” is the article and study.

[Earl Grey]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/love-and-sex-in-the-digital-age/201401/is-male-porn-use-ruining-sex

 

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170508-the-many-reasons-that-people-are-having-less-sex

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex-recession/573949/

 

Even with more porn, people are having less sex and intimacy is decreasing. 

 

The real issue isn't porn itself--it only exaggerates the existing problems. 

[Rara]

5 hours ago, Earl Grey said:

no, porn itself, as stated. “It” is the article and study.

 

Ah yes, sorry. I was reading the thread back to front and got confused. My bad.

[Earl Grey]

5 minutes ago, Rara said:

 

Ah yes, sorry. I was reading the thread back to front and got confused. My bad.

It is also a big problem in Japan, which is interesting given it has a vibrant pornography industry and many people are consuming it there, not just their global exports market.

 

 

 

The number one complaint we heard from women in Japan was that their boyfriends didn’t like sex. Many of my friends who hear this of course are happy to volunteer themselves for a good cause of addressing the emotional and physical health epidemic faced by these deprived people.