@Marcus Aurelius I'm going camping tomorrow- Friday. I won't be able to check in during this window. I am interested in this challenge.
Day 11 as a Padawan. There should never be any expectation to never have the Big Bad Urge, like I had yesterday. I have meticulously planned out my habits and time to mitigate the urges as best as I can, but sometimes life just happens and you have to bear with it. I couldn't control having to get up at 5AM for work, a morning shift I usually don't do, on top of it being extremely warm at night so it was difficult for me to get to sleep. It was so warm that I was sweating and having anxiety that I wouldn't get any sleep. I was worried about being awfully tired all day through work that I was having a near panic attack over it. So I asked myself what can be done? I needed to calm down and cool down enough so that I wasn't incredibly warm and irritated in order to fall asleep, so I decided to meditate. I meditated until I felt my body cooling down and the feelings of irritation abated. Even though I probably only got four hours of sleep, I wasn't tired at work, but the difficulty came after when I was just lying down at home. Then the extreme feelings of tiredness set in, and I realized that feeling excessively tired is a trigger for me. I just tried to relax by watching a movie but it couldn't keep my attention and I started to doze off, then for not being very interested I was surfing on my phone which is not a good thing for me to be doing. Just surfing on my phone without a good cause, surfing from just feeling bored and having no real objective in mind is a trigger as well. The feelings of boredom and irritation started to rise once again and I was having triggering thoughts about a girl that I think was flirting with me at work. Whether the flirting part is true or not, these thoughts led to pornographic thoughts. At some point I realized that I needed to STOP! I am heading for disaster if this continues; I am not allowing this to happen. So I hopped in the cold shower and BRR! It's as if the cold water reset my brain and emotions; reinvigorating me and increasing my energy level. It was such a shock that I was laughing in the shower and couldn't breath because apparently it was so funny. The cold water forced me out of the subrational levels of thinking and propelled me mentally into the realm of clear and curious thinking. I stayed out of bed, got into my reading chair, put on calming music, lit some incense and finished my book that lights a fire in my heart and mind. I realized then and there that the PMO habit robs me of an intellectual fire because that fire of the mind, the higher energies, are fueled by the lower energies of animalistic urges in order to explore and conquer my life. It is literally a choice between LIVING life, or being lived by it just to supplicate the lower urges to be sexually satisfied all the time. If I satisfy those lower urges and give into their demands, then I will never have the life that I have been longing for.