Hey!

Welcome Nick! I'd like to add a little to what you said, to delve into your topic just slightly deeper.

A self-actualizing human must surround himself and interact with that which promotes self-actualization. Like a pinball in a pinball machine, he scutters about in the machine gaining points here and there at normal rates. Every so often, depending on the pinball player, he lands on a "gold mine" and obtains scads of extra points. This is the peak experience. In my opinion, when I PMO, I land on the opposite of a "gold mine". I lose much of what I gained.

Aspiring towards my talents and skills moves them all forwards. I set myself up for peak experiences. Human brain has much more potential than we realize. Highly plastic. It has 100 billion neurons. It has the capability to form neural networks that are so strong it can perform highly complicated tasks in milliseconds. Can you tell me the square root of 703? There are people who can tell me this. Have you tried to play the violin, way up high notes, so high....sing sing...sing..way higher than the tallest building known to man (although the women know it). Beeeeeeee, veeeeeeeee, so high. With vibrato. It can negotiate the fingerboard of a violin with lightning speed. Like that Italian guy or whoever it was. The brain is unbelievable smart. Impossible smart!

Moreover, I think that when the human applies himself to genuine self-actualization, and invokes the name of God, he will be led to the promised land. He starts clicking around, he finds resources, things fall into his lap from the sky, from seemingly nowhere. He feels led to this, to that, and those leadings are super significant for his ultimate dream future. He's in congruence with the force of cosmic good. Vitality. Power. Motivation. Tony Robbins.

In NoFap we have learned that the brain can latch onto an arousal/reward system (e.g., PMO) and get so expert at PMO that it can't stop doing it. That's not very impressive, but even that shows cortical potential.

I just realized that you might be a neuroscientist. I just explained the most simple thing to a brilliant person.

Never mind.