fopylo

That is quite beautiful. But let me be brutally honest. Why the fuck would I want to seek a relationship in order for me to add value? What is my gain? Doesn't it make more sense to seek a friendship/relationship because you can gain something from it? Otherwise why seek it if it doesn't add something to you?

@Leo Gura Of course, but it is problematic if I'm not clear about what I want to experience exactly, or rather, forgot what it is that I desire to experience.

In some way it seems kind of passive. What if I want to change my situation? Perhaps you didn't mean friendship but rather some kind of neutral connection (which isn't positive or negative)? It almost reminds me of the relationships I had with those labels as a child. I think I better understood content vs structure, thanks

@cetus That his hard. My whole life I've been contemplating if I'm even sane for thinking about this. I feel like I came here again because in my past live/s I couldn't complete my "mission" or whatever it was and now I came to finally achieve it (hopefully). Also my life is going in a direction which I've always imagined (emotionally and with experiences and images, kind of a story). Too many things in my life are working for my benefit, and it's as if some guy is shouting in my hear again and again that this life is working hard for me, so I gotta get going and take massive action towards the paradise that is awaiting for me. What does this mean? Please help me understand this, you have no idea how weird it is saying this

@Leo Gura Yeah but not just normal brain fog. This brain fog consists also of thoughts of insecurity and that my life, and this brain fog generally shakes my equanimity. If you just feel a little physical sensation up there then you haven't really experienced how it can ruin your life. And like you said, yours is probably as a result of aging. By the way I'm turning 19 soon. I don't think it has to do with my food but you might be right, I could change my diet and see (but in general I try to eat very healthy). And yeah man, you are special in this regard. As you've noticed, most people can't relate to your experience with jerking off. It is calling for research

Update: As I was walking my dog tonight I felt way more self aware outside. Like I felt more "here", I was very present. And this awareness wasn't focused on one aspect, but rather spread out. So like I was more aware of my body, my sense of self, vision, emotion and thoughts

@J K I'm not too keen about external negative motivation. Could be useful for some people some times but I had my fair share and personally it just makes things worse for me

@Leo Gura I really wonder why the effects it has on you are very different than to most people... I think some of it has to do with the fact that your mind was very clear and sharp in your teens, which in all honesty, is very rare. Most of the people trying to self-actualize/self-improve have experiences with some light mental illness and not a clear mind. I can probably get you on the mind part. If you never had brain fog in your teens then there's not much reason why you'd experience it after a fap. But as to your energy levels, this is very odd.. Are you sure you're in touch with your body and energy levels? It is quite proven that jerking off releases lot's of energy from your body. Basically when you no-fap your energy channels to your mind (a bigger portion, most of it) than to your genitals. And also, how can you ever know what's it's like having a brain fog and not a clear mind if you haven't experienced it?

@Leo Gura I'm really surprised that you say that jerking off enhances your ability to do self-actualization work. This is real super power you got there but certainly most people are not like that. You probably didn't experience much brain fog as a teenager, or some light mental illness. I think you should create a video (or blog video) talking about sex/porn/masturbation because people (like me) will always have questions about it related also to self-actualization work

@TurquoiseAngel Heard it from Ralph Smart. @hyruga I didn't hear good things about his book "The War of Art"

@TurquoiseAngel I hear you, but I approach it with the notion that I'll anyways not produce something high quality in 15 minutes, so why even put the effort? I feel sorta "beyond it" (of course it's my ego). But that doesn't say that I should do longer sessions because mentally it will destroy me (slight chance I'll go all in but feel super overwhelmed and resist it even more next time). I'm putting myself in a lose-lose situation, lying to myself from all directions in order to stay stuck where I am. This is insane how genius the ego can be

@Leo Gura Quite the opposite for me. When I'm on nofap then my mind stops thinking about sex, making my focus much better. Still doesn't make sense that you have more energy. It calms the body like you said

@Windappreciator Yeah, I do feel kinda calm. And I'm not taking action so it's a problem lol

@Eph75 Dude no no no, your replies are very great and there's nothing to say sorry for. I really want to thank you for continuing to help me understand this fundamental topic. You have no idea how much this means to me. I feel like I'm learning life from the beginning. Also, you're wise as fuck so that just makes it better. It really does take me a long time to digest what you write. Ohh so you mean that the "solution" is just to live normally, freely, and that the suffering comes from having those expectations and rules of needing friends? So like the goal is that we choose what experience we want to fill our reality with, without feeling any need for a certain outcome and expectation, and thus friendship is just a certain type of experience out of the infinite experiences you can choose? Correct me if I'm wrong Yeah, so having deep friendships like the example you gave is what I really want. It still feels like a need, but I also understand on the experiential level what you mean by being free and this certain approach to friendships. It's sort of like the friendships I had as a child. I didn't feel like I needed them (sometimes I would even leave them) but those were indeed one of my best friendships I've ever had. Many aspects of spirituality are playing in being a child, and those types of friendships is what I ultimately want for my future self (more like from now on). But I am still on the level that I have some rules about it and that I need them. Dude, I must have told you, I am a high-school senior just about to graduate from high school. The people in my school are people that I've known for 6-12 years, and after that we must go serve in the military and we will be all spread out. I feel like this thought overwhelms a bit and that's probably one of the reasons I am yearning for experiencing friendships like when I was a child. I want to exhaust the time left for experiencing that with some of those people. And how do I develop this higher awareness in my interpersonal relationships and how will it take effect in practicality? I also didn't quite understand the content vs structure ? So I guess you're saying that cutting ties because I'm not receiving the acceptance I feel I need - won't work (in making things better). I guess by 'deeper reasons' you mean it doesn't come from hate or from a reaction but rather a conscious decision. Man thanks again for putting the effort into your messages. I feel like I'm starting to understand better

@Windappreciator I have a very great ambition to become a musician and sometimes I get huge waves of inspiration and callings that this might be the thing that I should focus my life on (or at least a very great hobby for sure). I want to start creating because I feel like music has always been a part of my life, and life always showed me in indirect ways why I'm meant for it (my inspiration, my perfect pitch, synesthesia, get emotional, go deep into it's magic). The "negative" motivation is because I have resistance to it from the reasons I mentioned above

@Leo Gura That literally doesn't make sense. You must be getting it from something other than jerking off. @Harlen Kelly And also I am doing regular exercise and I can tell you that jerking off makes me feel slightly weaker. In fact, doing nofap has made me way more energetic and powerful in the gym, makes me more grounded and it's easier to focus on self actualization work

Actually I'm living in my parents house, soon finishing high-school. I don't really fear being away from them. I really believe that cutting ties with them is the best solution for me. Maybe not that harshly but at least to stay far from them as I feel they are limiting my growth. (obviously it is me who is limiting my growth but they are a great handicap and with my current development level I need to change some externals to influence the external)

So when I try practicing being more conscious of my feelings in my day to day I tend to realize that I'm way better at recognizing fear and "lower" feelings like sadness, anger, frustration. But then once I express it (say on a journal) then I get stuck, because what now? A new feeling is supposed to enter right? A higher one on the emotional scale I believe. Consciously or subconsciously I don't put my focus on higher feelings really, to be conscious of them. I believe most of it is because it was way more important for me to get out of the binds of fear and "negative" emotions, and so I'm only used to put my focus on it and so I don't have much experience outside of it. Also, a good piece of my identity is still defined by those emotions, and so letting go of these emotions and welcoming the higher ones are a bit threatening, but I know they will be liberating. The way I recognized it was because I'm doing this exercise Leo gave of mindfulness of thoughts and I've realized that most of the thoughts I wrote were from the lower emotions. I didn't consider the higher emotions like contentment, passion, boredom. Because honestly, the lower ones are easier. I think it also depends on your average state of being.

@Arcangelo Yeah man this was the whole purpose of this - to test them. But those kids are still gonna be kinda friendly to me at school, and it's not as if we had some fight or something.

@Eph75 Could you please clarify? I'm still trying to figure out what is the solution you are suggesting. You said some very important deep stuff but I'm not managing to connect the dots of how I apply it to friendships, because you talk about detachment and becoming aware but it's hard for me to play it in my head how this will work. I've been practicing mindfulness and a lot of meditation and I might be slightly more stable, but there's still something in me that says that just fulfilling others' needs and not getting shit back would not be such a great idea (even if it means loving myself more). I'm saying this sentence from experience. I've done mindfulness practices and self love, felt more whole inside, but this situation just felt weird and not human to me. I don't want to live my life with no friends and to deceptively excuse myself out of making friends by telling myself that detachment is the solution

@OmniYoga Dude I'm still a virgin and far from losing it lol

So I've been doing a bit of Leo's exercise to write down 50 thoughts for the next week (been writing about 30 now) and I've stumbled on some things. When I have a thought which is more detailed I want to write it down and use it for my practice, but I'm not next to my journal. So I kinda try to hold on to this thought and feeling, and then by the time I get to my notebook it doesn't feel quite natural. I've subconsciously been suppressing other recurring thoughts in this time period, and also I am trying to recall an emotion I had a few moments ago, which is out of the present moment. Also when writing down the expression I have some images in my mind which I'm planning on describing, but as I'm writing the expression the images change and I didn't plan it and I still try and write the images I had, and then my mind hurts a bit from thinking and concentrating. So what should I do? Should I just write right away as things flow? The problem is that I don't have detailed thoughts while next to the notebook, it usually happens when I'm busy doing something. It's almost as if recalling a memory (thought) is like trying to monitor the present thinking. I can't exactly write down the present stream of expression, content of thought, images and feelings all together, because as I'm starting with writing the expression then everything else I mentioned is starting to shift into other forms and then I get a written down description of something that never existed in the first place. Oh and by the way, this exercise made me be in my head and less mindful than usual, it felt quite bad at the gym talking to people and I was in my head so much. How do you go about it? I would like to hear

Totally relate

Yeah I get that "loving everything" sometimes. I would describe it as the joy of just experiencing vs. escaping and thus not fully experiencing. Experiencing in and of itself is quite liberating, simply being. I would redefine your word "suffering" for more like things which cause you certain low emotions (which doesn't mean bad). And once you're cool with it then it is not suffering, for you at least, from your experience. Don't relate it to others' experience and say that their meaning of suffering (or suffering you once experienced) isn't suffering for you, right now, but you enjoy it and therefore believe to enjoy suffering. I also sometimes look back at the things which caused me suffering and now I'm more cool with them, but it isn't suffering anymore. You might not be suffering right now something serious

@iceprincess I just don't want to neglect Maslow's Hierarchy as well as my authentic desires and my unfound objective. Sometimes I do contemplate but it ends quick because I still fear of missing out and going all in on the wrong things.