Share your Thoughts

Hello fapstronauts. I hope you are doing well in your practice of self-mastery.
Notes:
1. I am aware that this is a very long post and I couldn't express myself in a shorter post because this is more of a discussion than a report or a list of quick tips.
2. English isn't my first language so I apologize if my way of writing makes it difficult for you to read my post

So I have been on a nofap quest for 10 months now and my longest streaks have been 16 days, 18 days a month later, and 21 days a month after that. I know that it's not an easy challenge and that it takes a while, but I've obviously made many mistakes and have been hypocritical in my decision and practicing the techniques to dissolve the urges. But I want to focus on the only problem I have lately, which is doubt. Doubt kills! It's frustrating when someone says "a beautiful mind is a skeptical mind" or such things. No doubt, searching for the truth is the right thing. But accepting the truth is equally as important as the search. Some people make it a lifestyle or a habit to always see errors and never be content with what they are presented. I don't think there's anything beneficial to having a primarily skeptical mind. It doesn't feed your imagination, or help you develop a practical philosophy. All you're doing is throwing away concepts, ideas, facts, and observation endlessly. You can disagree with me but I'm trying to express my distaste for skepticism, doubt, and confusion. By the way I'm not a supersitious person. I am a pantheist if that will make my post more approachable.

To my experience (of reading), there are primarily 3 claims about fapping and not fapping. I believe we have established the fact that porn is simply harmful and it should be erased from our lives, unless someone's threatening us if we don't watch porn he'll kill us for some reason.

1. The common view/western medicine: masturbation is normal and healthy. It cures prostate cancer. Every animal does it so why shouldn't we? I've been doing it all my life and I'm normal. Nofappers are a bunch of cultists whose claims on PMO are backed up by broscience and the only explanation we have for their so called benefits is 'placebo effect'.
In my view, this group of people are very shallow when it comes to knowledge of PMO. Their view of the matter is clearly affected by the fact that PMO is a part of their lifestyle and they have forgotten or are unaware of the effects of PMO on them because they've been doing it for so long a time that they think it's part of life (a natural way of life). I've also noticed that people respond negatively and redicule nofap ideas, laugh, get a little angry if you keep telling them masturbation is unnatural...etc and they usually have nothing more to say on the matter other than this: masturbation is normal and healthy. Everyone does it. It's good for you and it cures prostate cancer. While everything that Gary Wilson and other experienced fapstronauts say is dismissed with a wave of the hand (does that expression make sense?)

2. These are the nofappers who have gone 40 or 90 days and say that nofap doesn't do much for you, the superpowers aren't real, and they are basically the same person. These people say that the biggest benefit nofap has is that you have more time and harddrive space, which is not little but you can do that by erasing large amounts of data on your computer and stop using some frequently used application and still masturbate the life force out of you.

3. And this is where I belong (or 70% of me, thanks to doubt and confusion). We say that masturbation is not a natural thing to do. You probably won't be harmed if you do one but that's not how it works. Once you do it wholeheartedly, you will set a pattern from there and develop a masturbation habit/addiction before you notice. We say that masturbation is done only by animals in captivity and those who are unable to find a mate. We say masturbation throws away precious sperm, that contains vital minerals. We believe there's some extent of truth in sexual transmutation of retained semen in the body. We think that a natural human being, as opposed to the zombiefied version of a human being as a result of addiction and PMO, does not masturbate or does it rarely. Wet dreams are the natural way of releasing excess or useless semen out of the body, if that is needed. Masturbation lowers dopamine levels significantly, and makes one less able or makes it for her/him impossible to enjoy "small things" ). Superpowers are natural qualities and innate powers of human beings. A fapstronut who believes in superpowers is merely an ex fapper who has made it out of the misery and sees his recovered confidence, focus, motivation, energy, libido, attractiveness to girls as superpowers because he's been living a large amount of his adult or just conscious (in the sense that they're not children anymore and do not operate mostly on instinct) life carrying the burden of PMO and being diminished by it. I won't mention spiritual benefits, as some of them are byproducts of the chain reaction that comes from abstinence and recovery from PMO habit, and some of them are more personal and don't occur in everyone. I am not a religious person, to those of you who might think I'm making things up and overly optimistic about nofap as a cultist is about her/his object of worship. I also have to say that some lifestyle changes are necessary if you are on nofap, such as meditation, awareness of thoughts and emotions, disciplined action, physical exercise, cold showers, social interaction, reading philosophical and self help books and/or novels, affirmations...etc. And while not everyone does all of these, you have to implement some of them into your life if you are to be a successful hard-mode Fapstronaut. In my view, nofap and these techniques go hand in hand, meaning that they are on the same side and the combination of them works like a chain reaction that helps you so much that you are amazed at their result and how you feel. Someone who does these will likely experience much more goosebumps, have vivid dreams and moments of ecstasy a lot more often than someone who doesn't do any or 10% of the techniques mentioned by nofappers. I agree that if you do only nofap you will be disappointed because your life is still heading the same direction as before, only slower or it has curved a little towards a more positive life. Even so, I believe that the benefits that come purely from nofap such as recovered libido, cured ED, interaction with women, and increased dopamine receptors, still happen. However, I don't want to separate between the benefits of nofap, and say, cold showers to see clear distinctions. As many of you have learned and may learn, good things go together. For example, a person who enjoys a sport is likely to develop skills in it, which in turn make her/him more confident when playing that sport, which in turn makes her/him enjoy it more and so on. It's not like you can be confident but be restless and never enjoy a thing. A confident human being is someone who is doing well the primary functions of a human being: self-development and being a skillful artist in the art of living. But I've said too much on this.

So my main problem here is that having read 90 reports of guys who say nofap doesn't do a thing or the benefits are minor things. This in turn also makes me respect the first one and have many doubts about nofap and make me discouraged to continue abstaining. Doubt is killing me. I am even becoming obsessive over this to find the truth on the internet. These claims are so different from each other and I see all three of them every week or sometimes every day on different sites. Please share your thoughts on this and I want this to become a discussion so that things are made clearer for people with a similar problem as mine- doubtful people.

So what do you guys think? share as much knowledge as you can about masturbation and orgasm. I have left out porn because we all agree that it's simply bad in a non religious, and certainly in a non-supersitious way.

 

It WAS better. It's just that some people say nofap is nonsense and others say PMO has been the hidden thing that was ruining their lives until they realised it some 6 years later after their addiction. These completely different claims have affected my motivation to quit PMO

 

What about you? in which 'category' do you belong?

 

Exactly. I think it's because we've been on nofap for a while, we have slowly recovered the natural qualities/powers and because we're not fond of our past with PMO we've fogotten it, we are used to being almost normal again. And I have also noticed that because I feel so good compared to my past PMO self, when I relapse, the transition from human to zombie is very vivid and I suffer for hours and I am basically zombie again for several days.

 

Thank you Jatar and I agree with what you said!
Sometimes the mind wanders so far that you'll be convinced of silly things like " why shouldn't I be miserable instead of happy?" or "The great community of nofap, your favorite stoics, buddhists, philosophers, characters and friends and family, they are all poor souls who don't know a thing. Only negative thoughts are true". In times like these, you simply need the opinion of another person and to be told that simple action is the only thing required, not endless skepticism! I have progressed much in mindfulness, emotional stability and control, coming up with philosophical ideas and practicing them in real life and so on. The only thing that hinders me or partly kills my progress is PMO. PMO stands exactly as oppossite to meditation, exercise, focus...etc. When I PMO I even notice I can't take cold showers. And have you noticed how your internal temperature decreases after you PMO? I got sick only for two hours this winter ( I started taking cold showers this winter) and that was after a PMO session. I guess I don't need reports of other people or the ignorance of 80% of articles on the subject of masturbation on the web to tell me these things are illusions!
Thanks guys! Let me know if I can be of service to you

 

Thanks for your insightful comment. Porn is without a doubt one of the worst things you could find on the internet. I guess fantasies count as porn too right?

I agree! I always thought that these people who discredit or underrate nofap is because they have lost their sense of the difference between their PMO versions and their new versions, seeing as they've been on nofap journey for a long enough time to put their past selves behind them.
About the masturbation part, what about wet dreams? doesn't the fact that wet dreams exist and only happen if you have abstained from PMO, indicate that there IS actually a natural way for the body to release such sperm? I also read somewhere that less sperm is released during a wet dream than when you masturbate. I suppose you mean that if one wants to procreate, he must masturbate before so he can make certain that fresh sperm take part in the fertilization to come? if you agree, that still means that masturbation should not be a part of normal life.
Also, I don't think MO are very different from P, as they complement each other. I don't think if someone watches porn for 2 hours will have back pain, decreased energy, and have a weak memory. I think these result from the masturbation part. How else would we 'interact' with the porn we watch anyway? there's only masturbation!

 

can you clarify, fellow fapstronaut?!

I think PMO and alcohol addiction share similarities when one is addicted to either of them. But the case with PMO is worse, because there is ejaculation of sperm, objectification of women, loss of libido, lethargy, and things like that involved. Also, since the world WANTS you to PMO, you can do it anytime you want. But my doubts are gone now, I firmly believe that PMO should not remain in my life for any longer than it has. Inevitably when I have abstained for 90 days or so, I may never do it again.

 

It's all right brother! and I hope you benefited somehow from reading this thread.

Thank you dedman! I strongly believe 3 months without PMO beats even, say, having an extremely attractive girlfriend+a nice house+ a good career+ being a celebrity+ regular masturbation, because what does it matter if you have everything to enjoy, but have a small capacity to enjoy them? The path of PMO, negative thinking, egoic living, anxiety..etc are all the same and make you a lesser human being. I don't even consider the 3 months of abstinence a cost. The cost is the 7 years I have wasted abusing myself and having the internet tell me "it's healthy. do as many as you want". Since I have started nofap, so many things are clear to me now. Wheras before I was aware that PMO is indeed a harmful thing, I was in every way a zombiefied human being with no knowledge of why I was the way I was!
And my philosophy of life explicitly says no PMOing, because PMO sessions get in the way/ ruin/ hinder every progress I seem to make with meditation, physical exercise, development of emotional intelligence... and so on. I could talk about this for hours but I just want people on nofap to be certain that PMO helps with nothing and only harms! PMO ing I think is very much against what evolution has been doing for us. and it should be replaced by other things that go with the work of evolution. I think in a 100 years or so, we would have basically two types of human beings. One is the type that has always existed, and the other is the new one who are zombies that don't require viruses to be zombies, and require the aid of normal humans for procreation. The difference between regular masturbators and mostly-PMO-abstinent people will be most obvious in the coming 30-50 years.

 

Yeah! you develop an ability to see whether a guy has a PMO habit or not. But that's becoming more difficult because almost every guy I know is being drained by PMO. "empty stare" that's the best description. I think this is related to the some guys' report that their eyes get sort of glow. I see that in myself too but I'm still not sure. And yes I've had nights where I meditated for an hour then I PMO'ed and after that felt as if I was just being tested for my ability to endure hell. I still suggest you meditate because I can't see how we can be free from this habit without observing our minds. I don't do the lotus meditation but throughout the day I come back to the present moment and observe both the outside world and the inside.
I'll definitely read that article. Good luck to you too!