120 Days of NoFap Monk Mode Phase 2

I started this current streak with NoFap Monk Mode given that I reset/relapsed many times whiles on Hard Mode/Soft Mode. As I am a Buddhist, I also included the 8 Precepts as part of Monk Mode. One thing in particular I do have to mention with haste is that I also did cue-exposure therapy which required me to expose myself to P briefly. I first came across this from Scandanavian Bob from YouTube and I did this method consistently for around 40 odd days if I remember correctly. I have to say it worked for me, but for those who are willing to try this I would encourage anyone to re-think and be honest about it instead of trying to use that as an excuse for P.

Even though I felt I completely rebooted, I still did not want to stop and wanted to continue. As I was about to move into a Buddhist monastery to live as a lay resident, I wanted to add more austerities to see where this NoFap streak will go. Currently I don’t miss P and even the thought of M seems unaesthetic, so reaching this goalpost can seem satisfactory enough for those who have had a history of addiction to PMO. However I was not going to settle for that, and wanted to see if I would be able to be fully celibate without having to rely on willpower. Yes this was the ideal that I set up even though it didn’t seem realistic. This is because I am convinced that sometimes we need to aim at the far distance to at least have some hope of landing in the middle – “If you reach for the stars, at least you will end up in Mars.”

First of all to give you all the good news, so far since I started my NoFap Monk Mode streak, I have been free of MO for an excess of another 120 days.

Success

• Completed an excess of 120 days without MO

But here is the bad news, I couldn’t keep up to the all the aspects of Monk Mode criteria which I setup for myself. Here are a list of items which I wanted to do on a daily basis / or whenever necessary.

Personal Minimum Standards Set For Phase 2 of Monk Mode

• Abstaining from M and O
• Avoid meals after lunch (as in no dinner) - fasting
• Writing daily reflections with template in my Brahmacharya/NoFap journal notebook
• Cue-exposure therapy – brief exposure to a trigger followed by reflection on encouraging statements (yes this requires brief exposure to P)
• Avoiding mobile phone
• Daily Wim Hof breathing cycles followed by cold shower
• 5 Tibetan Rites (and 6th Tibetan Rite if necessary)
• Avoiding the 8 breaks of Brahmacharya – Brahmacharya is a term used for spiritually oriented celibacy in Buddhism and other Indian religions
• 8 Precepts – a set of disciplines and minor austerities which are taken up by lay Buddhists on certain days
• Abstaining from sense pleasures and aversion towards stimuli felt by the sense organs – also an extension of Brahmacharya according to the way it defined in Buddhism
• Maintaining the Brahmavihara – Brahmavihara is collective term which involves feelings of loving-kindness, compassion, altruistic joy and equanimity

I will not be covering the last three points in this reflection because I think this won’t be relevant for fapstronauts outside of Buddhism. However I will am hoping to share these aspects in the Buddhist Fapstranauts group forum as well as in my personal journal for anyone is interested in reading on knowing about them.


Failures

• Did Wim Hoff breathing combined with cold showers for around 2 months and then fell out of it
• Even though meals are not given in the monastery afternoon, I still did eat allowable food (despite initially promising myself to avoid any solid food after lunch).
• Started using cellphone again
• Did not do cue-exposure therapy for many days (on the positive side this also meant that most days I did not have any kind of exposure for P)
• Couldn’t write daily reflections on my Brahmacharya/NoFap journal
• Did 5 Tibetan Rites for 2 months before falling out from it
• Couldn’t avoid all the 8 Breaks of Brahmacharya - such as thoughts of sex
• Broke some of the 8 Precepts – such as listening to music and watching videos for entertainment on some days
• Did engage in sense pleasures – as mentioned above in the earlier point
• There were at least one point in each day where I lost loving-kindness (such as getting impatient, irritated or even angry sometimes)
• Engaged in P-sub on certain days (such as listening to erotica audiobooks and looking up spiritually-oriented sexual literature)

However I am not disheartened given that I did manage to not MO. Also usually with cue-exposure therapy it can be usual for some to feel thrilled that they are having at least some exposure to P as a part of this. However on most days I never had the motivation to do cue-exposure therapy (including exposing myself to P). Also even on the days which I did cue-exposure therapy I was not particularly thrilled about it either. So this itself is an indication that I have successfully overcome my desire for P.

Even though I did aim for full celibacy, part of me was concerned as I felt I was losing all desire for sex including sexual attraction for women. So on some days I did engage in sexual fantasies to make sure I was not becoming asexual. I don’t know whether this was the flatline and if I interfered with my mind trying to program itself to something different. What I did know was that whenever I tried to fantasize I had to use a huge amount of effort to get myself to develop TUC (temptation, urge & craving). I also started engaging in P-sub and in my case this was erotica audiobooks. I found that given that I was not satisfying my sexual desire from pixels that my desire was trying to find a different outlet and this time it was in the form of erotica audiobooks narrated by female narrators. I do not deny that erotica audiobooks were enjoyable, however I did not find them addictive either. Whatever the urges I got they were not stable and went away within minutes without me having to do anything about it.

Safety Net
I did come up with a list of preventative methods as a safety net incase if a craving was to arise that could have been out of my control.

• Cold shower (+/- Wim Hof breathing in advance)
• Urge surfing
• 6th Tibetan Rite (only to be done when there is a sexual urge)

There were times I deliberately created TUC to see whether these methods work so that I could rely on them in case if I was to get TUC naturally in the future. Cold showers as well the 6th Tibetan Rite were successful on their own where they completely eliminated TUC. As for urge surfing I am still experimenting with this. So far I am doing urge surfing with guided audio, but I do hope to develop this skill without the need for this, so that in case if I am in the community with TUC, where I can’t do cold showers or the 6th Tibetan Rite, I can still rely on urge surfing. As for the 6th Tibetan Rite, to my understanding this can only work if one does the 5 Tibetan Rites as a daily practice at least once a day (which I didn’t do later on out of laziness).

Against the Gradient
I was taking supplements on a daily basis and some of these had aphrodisiac properties. I felt like I wasn’t being challenged so I wanted to maintain a celibacy vow against a gradient, and the aphrodisiacs were just about increasing my biological drive to exercise my willpower muscle. Here is the list of items I took daily (which includes aphrodisiacs as well as substances with aphrodisiac properties) – damiana, grapeseed complex, korean ginseng, siberian ginseng, pumpkin seed oil, aswagandha, maca root, stinging nettle root, horny goat weed, saw palmento, tribulus terrestris, fenugreek extract, gingko biloba, avena sativa extract, reservatrol, l-arginine, l-lysine, l-carnitine, taurine and d-aspartate.

Recently went for less than 2 weeks without them, and I felt not a big difference. I can still maintain my streak without MO regardless of whether I take these substances or whether I avoid them. I feel I am unaffected by them.

Sometimes I deliberately try to hold the bladder and delay going to the loo. Because I find that I am more likely to get TUC with a full bladder as opposed to an empty bladder. In the real world there are situations where we don’t always have a public toilet to relieve ourselves. But even in such circumstances it is important to be aware of urges and to skillfully let go of them.

Avoidance/Exposure Paradox
Even though I was staying in the Buddhist monastery as a resident, there were times when I had to give transport for monastics as well as lay residents to places such as clinics and airports. I found that I did feel aroused when I saw good looking women, or at least did develop some curiosity from a sexual point of view even when not tempted. I was questioning whether I was aroused because I stayed for sometime in the monastery where there are nuns and women who dont seem to focus on their figure that much. On the positive side, this means that now I am more likely to take interest with being turned on when looking at real women and I am less interested in on staring at a set of pixels on a screen. I felt that this was a healthy benefit that I received from NoFap. Even though as part of my long term goals is also to overcome this also.

Conclusion & Nofap Monk Mode Phase 3
This 2nd phase of NoFap Monk Mode is what I call a ‘successful failure’ because even though I refrained from MO I did not fulfill the rest of criteria that I promised myself. I did continue to feel a lot of benefits like improved confidence, improved erections, taking interest in real women. There is a lot I learned from this experience. However I cant call it a 100% success because the criteria I set up were too high beyond my reach (not that this attitude to a streak is undesirable).

I hope to finish phase 2 end of this month. From the beginning of May I will be moving onto Monk Mode Phase 3 where I will try to keep to the criteria that I promised as well as a few more additional criteria. I hope to do this between 3 to 5 months before taking the next step. I will continue to stay in the monastery long term because of the covid-19 crisis so this means that I dont even have a choice but to be celibate (which is a good thing). I will not be continuing on with cue-exposure therapy for this next phase of Monk Mode because even though cue-exposure therapy worked for me I still feel I need to spend a period of time where I abstain from P fully without any kind of exposure. I also hope to stop all P-sub which also means that I will not be researching any type of literature to do with sex whether that is for aesthetic or educational purposes. To put it in simple words, I will not be reading or looking up any material which is to do with spiritual sexuality or erotica. This current phase of Monk Mode has shown me that I am very resistant to exposure to most triggers, so I don’t need to experiment with that any further.

I also set up my new Brahmacharya/NoFap Monk Mode journal notebook for the upcoming phase 3 of Monk Mode. I already wrote the daily template leaving space on each page for descriptive reflections so this means when May starts I am good to go. I hope to write about this in more detail in my NoFap electronic journal.

 

I think it all depend on what you really want from NoFap. As for me I wanted two things from NoFap. The first is to reach the point where I can effortlessly maintain celibacy. The second is that if I fell short of celibacy, then to be sexually continent. This means to be able to transmute that energy and retain semen during sexual activity. For now I have been celibate for more than 230 days.

As for a way of life, I wouldn’t say that I am happier. I had a girlfriend two years ago and I was the happiest back then compared to other times in my life. However not all things that make us happier than PMO are always the best for us. It is easy to end up engaging in activities which we enjoy but which we don’t really need.

As for aesthetics, including art, music, literature they are beautiful ways of expressing love and talent. I do enjoy these aspects of life. Even in the Buddhist monastery there were days I did listen to music and erotica audiobooks (P-sub) even when I was not supposed to. I did enjoy these things. But I also realised that for the future since I am continuing to stay in the monastery, I wanted to use this opportunity to the maximum extent as I may not get this chance again. With this upcoming phase of Monk Mode I hope to spend more hours doing meditation. But in order to do that successfully, I have to let go of involvement with the sense fields especially the aspects that give pleasure. When the mind lets go of the senses then it is more inclined to reach profound deep states. This doesn’t mean that I have to be like this forever, but if I can give those things which I used to enjoy at the level of the senses temporarily, then once I reach a certain state in my meditation I can always come back to what I used to enjoy. Some who have gone into deep states in meditation, no longer feel the need to be in pursuit of sense pleasures because those deep states in meditation according to their experience were much more blissful than drugs, sex or any kind of aesthetic. Its all because of the meditation.

 

Very impressed with the goals you have set and the discipline you've described. I don't necessarily feel the need to follow many of the precepts you have (as I'm not Buddhist), but your dedication is admirable.

Thanks for sharing.

 

Thanks for the complements. Its just that I haven't done a proper dopamine fast within my reboot so far. So since dopamine fast does involve austerities I might as well apply what is most relevant to me in terms of what I believe.

But yeah of course this is not compulsory standard for those who want to do a dopamine fast.

I did fall short of many of the additional items, and this time I hope to get them straight. I feel I will come out of this as someone different. Matter of fact I am not even expecting results, I just want to see where it leads.

I fully agree with you it is not necessary. They are just additional standards with a view to experimenting. Also I am in a Buddhist monastery so some of the standards I set up as options are actually compulsory as a part of living here even as a lay resident who is not ordained.

I have got my notebook journal ready with templates to move on to phase 2 of Monk Mode.