We all seek pleasure. It comes in different forms: sex, passion, creativity, intimacy, friendship. Yes, we hang out with friends for the same reason we masturbate, that's why we say "It's been a pleasure to meet you."
The point of this exercise is to cultivate an inherent sense of pleasure to not have to rely on external sources like masturbation or social acception/people pleasing.
You will also cultivate qualities of the pleasure chakra/second chakra/sacral chakra/swadhisthana like: passion for life, increased energy, ability to deeper connect with people, empathy, tranquility. The muscles in your lower abdomin will relax which will benefit your lower back and bladder.
You can get to a point where by doing this chakra opening exercise you will be floored by the amount of pleasure, healing and motherly embrace you feel. Just like you can feel love emmenate from your chest as your natural state, you can feel pleasure emmenate from your lower abdomen.
You will probably have some resistance to surrendering to pleasure completely. This must be recognized as a dysfunction. Cutting yourself of from happiness is never a wise idea. An enlightened person is perfectly happy, that's the ideal. By saying this I do not mean to endorse masturbation, it wastes energy and sperm. It decreases the amount of pleasure that can be achieved through this exercise. Doing this exercise will give non of the negative side effects of masturbation. I also don't mean to demonize masturbation, it's just an ineffective way to feel pleasure. As you keep practicing this technique you will naturally lose interest for masturbation, no need to torture yourself with extreme abstinence.
This is in essence a tantric technique, used by serious yogis to reach enlightenment through the energetic path. This is the real deal, not just some side dish.
I recommend you do the technique for 30 minutes, or up to an hour, to feel it's full potential, but any time spent on it, even 5 minutes, is positive.
I recommend you take a nice shower before the technique. Water and cleanliness are subconsciously connected with swadhisthana.
Sit or lay down. Deeply relax. Imagine that you are having an orgasm. Produce the feeling in your whole body. Then isolate the feeling of pleasure you feel from it. Pleasure is not inherently sexual so decouple the pleasure from the sexual part of the orgasm. Don't make the energy flow out through the penis like it does during ejaculation. Expand that feeling you your whole body and radiate it from your body. Bathe in it. Surrender to it. Breath deeply and on every out breath feel a wave of pleasure wash over you starting in your lower abdomen and going out to your whole body. Visualize it if it helps. Make the area of origin the area that feels the most pleasurable, this will most likely be the somewhere between just above the hip bone on your stomach and above the first vertebrae in the lumbar spine. (This is the area of swadhisthana.) Dissolve any tension/contraction/blocked energy you feel into pleasure. This should make you feel tranquil. Just like an orgasm there shouldn't be any struggling, the relaxation should be complete. Dissolve yourself in it. Don't contract yourself into it.
Just this will take you far but there are additional alterations you can experiment with:
Infuse this pleasure with love. This will turn it to more of a healing embrace, which will make it even more healing. Imagine the archetype of the divine mother, an infinitely loving, infinitely wise mother(in no way connected to your material mother). She might take the form of a guru you like or I prefer an avatar made our of radiant, beautiful light, or maybe she is more ephemeral. She loves and embraces you completely, even in ways you are not currently capable of. Now, open up your sense of pleasure towards her. Open yourself up to her embrace. You can visualize her embracing you physically or witch radiant energy targeted at your swadhisthana. Listen to her say the things you wish you heard from your physical mother. "You are completely loved and embraced". "I love you unconditionally". Don't make her say these things. Open yourself up to her communication. Her actions cannot come from your ego, then they would not be coming from the divine mother. Your ego cannot be involved in her actions, that would ruin the purpose of summoning her. However you can ask her things and you will receive. If she ever acts in a way that is less than perfectly loving and wise than that is really coming from your ego and should not be taken as her words. Open yourself up to her to the full extent of your ability. Chant aloud or mentally the word KAM but draw it out along your breath. Feel it vibrate in your lower abdomen and creates pleasure. (This is called bija mantra.) Feel the pleasure emanating from the middle of your head(kutastha, middle of 3rd eye chakra) instead of swadhisthana. (This works since all chakras are reflected in 3rd eye chakra.) It opens the 3rd eye chakra simultaneously with swadhisthana. Do mula bandha(google it) to increase the intensity of the pleasure by increasing prana/energy/life force. If you have an overwhelming amount of energetic blockage, crying therapy could help to let it out. Open up you hip bone. Stretch your lower stomach. Visualize yourself in nurturing water. Water is subconsciously connected to swadhisthana. These are more like guidelines, don't be strict about them. Whatever works for you is the correct technique. Let your intuition guide you.
Similar techniques can be used for the other first 4 chakras: comfort for muladhara, joy for manipura, love for anahata.
For more information on the swadhisthana chakra, read the chapter in 'Wheels of Life' dedicated it. You can find a pdf of the book online. This will make you aware of the unhealthy mindsets and thought-patterns you have that are keeping this chakra closed.
For more information on techniques for healing chakras i recommend Tara Springett's book The Five-Minute Miracle. This technique is appropriated from her.
Good luck!

So I’m making this post mostly for men – to give you advice. But women can also share their thoughts if they want to, of course. I don't care.

What I’m going to write here is just what I’ve learned from my observation in life. I'm in my late twenties and I'm very ambitious as a person. I'm very hardworking and disciplined and all that. It took me years to develop these traits. Probably more like a decade tbh.
I think that as a man, you’re way better off (when you’re young) if you stay single and don’t chase girls. Girls are just a distraction in your life. Chances are they will make your life more miserable. Just like Nietzsche said: “Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.”

They will take away a lot of your free time – which is the one thing you need the most if you ever want to become successful, to get the things you want. And they will also take away your money most likely.

There are many areas in your life that you can start improving – health, finances, romance, family friends, career, spirituality, recreation etc. – and I think that’s it’s very, very hard to become successful in all of them. Usually, you will have to sacrifice a few of them. And the one worth sacrificing is chasing girls – or getting in a relationship with one rather. So, that’s the “romance” category.

The point here is that you should put all of your effort and time into developing yourself. Start exercising, start meditating, start developing useful skills, start educating yourself in different ways. Start doing these things as early as possible. These things will improve your life on so many levels. And they will give you some kind of purpose because you’ll have that sense of progression all the time.

Yes, it will take you years before you make all those things a habit. The majority of people are not willing to work so hard and sacrifice other things. There’s no shortcut to this. You’ll only realize that after a decade or so – why so few people do it. Because it’s fucking hard. Most people just want that short-term gratification, and they sacrifice the long term. You have to do the opposite and really be patient with your results.

I don’t care if I'm lacking in the “romance” department because I'm busy developing myself in other ways. When I observe people around me – family, friends, and pretty much everyone else – they’re all mediocre. They go all down the same path. They get a job, buy a car, they get in a relationship early in their lives. They’re not ambitious. No goals. They’re miserable or they become miserable sooner rather than later. They’re the last thing I want to become. So I'm not going down that path. They’re proof that my life won’t get better once I get a gf.

If you want to be happy in life, you don’t need another person in your life. You can be happy just by yourself. And don’t think I'm writing this because I can’t get a girl, or because they’re not interested in me. In fact, if I wanted a gf, I could get one in a sec. And the more I’ve worked on myself, the more chances I’ve had with them. I see through their bs in a sec. I don’t see them adding any value to my life. At least not at the moment. Maybe that will change in a couple of years.

Most people get in a relationship early in their lives. Why? Because it’s easy and it’s programmed in you. It’s something “you have to do”, otherwise you’re kind of weird. And if it wasn’t easy, we would all go extinct.

It might seem sad to you – the way I'm thinking about this – but that’s how it is. I simply think that there would be more cons than pros if I got in a relationship right now. I don’t care if I end up without a gf for the rest of my life tbh. I'm happy right now. I don’t need other people to make me happy. I’ve been meditating for a lot of years. I know what it takes to be happy.

You will also become a slave to your woman in a sense. You will work on her clock. She’s more in a hurry than you. She will want a family quicker than you. And then this will take even more time from you. The chances of you succeeding will decrease even further.

Anyway, if your main priority in life is to get a girlfriend, you’re doing it wrong. I'm not saying that you shouldn’t try to become better with girls and all that. Just don’t get in a relationship before you get your shit together. Focus on other things. Creating a lot of free time for yourself is the most important thing in your life. That’s how you can set yourself apart from other people. It’s so easy to stand out in this society. It’s really sad how no one wants to work on themselves. No purpose. No goals. Nothing.

And I'm not saying that there aren’t people out there that succeeded or will succeed in life despite having a gf. Of course, there are exceptions to everything. I'm just saying that the chances of you succeeding while in a relationship will drastically decrease. So it’s up to you what you want to do. I would rather sacrifice that regular sex for something way better for me in the long-term. You can always get a gf later. Even if that’s when you’re 35+.

I know this is a strange place to ask a question about investing but I trust this community and most people in the crypto realm are sketchy as hell. 

I’ve been starting to get into investing and personal finance the last couple months and reading some books, watching some videos etc about various investments and things of that sort. I set up a Roth, put $3000 into a Vanguard index fund, and mostly focusing on paying off school debt. 
 
Now that crypto is blowing up again I feel like I need to get educated on it so I don’t miss a big opportunity. But trying to research this stuff is so overwhelming, there’s a billion different people saying a billion different things and it seems nobody knows what the hell is actually going to happen with it. I obviously admit that I’m uneducated on it, but I just don’t understand how crypto is even an “investment”. Isn’t it just a medium of exchange? Why is it valued at what its at exactly? I don’t understand what’s driving it’s value besides people simply thinking it’s valuable for whatever reason and buying more and more of it. It seems empty. 
 
Should I commit some time to trying to understand it more? Where’s the best place to learn? I already learned my lesson when in 2017 I broke the #1 rule of investing (buy low, sell high.) I literally bought crypto at its peak, held for 3 years and eventually sold for a slight loss. I don’t want to make the same mistake.