Carl-Richard

Yes. If I set aside all my coping mechanisms that I use for avoiding that state and just sit, It literally feels like the energy is moving upwards. I've talked about this before that my mind can't think "useless thoughts". If my mind thinks a thought, it's either explicitly relevant to the situation, or it's an insight about an idea I need to pursue or a problem I need to solve, and when I do what I'm supposed to do, my mind pretty much shuts up. If I do what I'm not supposed to do, my mind will tell me about it. It's of course not empty all the time, because that is the state I'm trying to avoid. But it's floating just below that threshold all the time, and I'm trying to keep it there, just on the edge where I'm not too neurotic but also not too Zen. Within the last year, I feel I've managed to integrate that sub-threshold functioning into my daily life, as before, I was constantly dipping in and out. However, it consistently creeps up in novel situations where I have to be very present and alert, like in the meeting I had recently with my professor and other research assistants, or house parties. That's a bit annoying.

If you want to make it about me, I'm a very atypical case. The only reason I started masturbating again is because it keeps me from spontaneously going into states of no-mind (which scare me to death), and porn or sex is the only way I truly get horny, because my mind is so empty all the time. I can notice the organic build up of sexual energy throughout the week, but it gets transmuted very easily to spiritual energy if I don't release it, and that is why I release it. And the energy doesn't feel like horniness by itself, it just feels like heat. Fapping is just a tiny fraction of that story. I intentionally incorporated many unhealthy habits to help me avoid no-mind: posting on this forum, using things like snapchat, eating more frequent meals and more meat than I used to, overeating in every meal except breakfast, eating a fruit at the gym, tensing the left side of my abdomen, using suboptimal posture when standing or sitting. So I have a very good sense of what is healthy, but for me, becoming too healthy means there is no me. I would love to stop fapping, stop eating like a caveman and stop walking around like a beta male. That's what I want, and I can easily do that, but I can't. Now, when it comes to fapping for the typical young male, I believe fapping semi-regularly is more healthy than not. If you're not spontaneously transmuting sexual energy into spiritual energy, the type of emotional hell you're going to create by repressing your organic sexual energy is truly not healthy. As for your post, I only corrected the mistake you made when citing the study.

Do nothing technique.

Aye. Not much.

Well, if I hadn't fell down the stairs and gotten a hit of adrenaline, I don't think I would've remembered anything after blacking out. It was one of those curved stairs by a wall with a banister on one side, and my friends said I leaned over the banister at the top of the stairs and frontflipped down to the bottom of the stairs. All I felt was a weak jolt and a sudden coming back into consciousness. My first time drinking at 17, I blacked out in a similar fashion to what I wrote above, just not as dramatic. You'd think I already learned my lesson ?

People generally underestimate how much nurture matters. If your environment and culture is shit enough, you'll be born mentally retarded no matter your genes. Genes ("genotype") are always embodied in an environment and produce the "phenotype". You can't separate the two. If you look at cultural factors like the literacy obligation in Judaism, it's certainly the case that this affected the genetics of Jews. But does that mean that the literacy obligation was determined by genes? You have to look at what causes what and weigh each statement. It's obvious that when you look at differences in a diverse set of people, genes will be a big determining factor for the extremes, but when you look across ethnic groups, culture will generally be a bigger determining factor, because that is mainly what you're controlling for.

The last time I ever bought vodka, I legitimately think I caused irreparable damage to my brain It was bad. I was dressed like Walter White at a Halloween party in 2019, grew out a perfect replica of his goatee over the course of a month, and had bought an insane amount of vodka with the intention to share it with everyone at the party. Turns out the party had about 60 people cramped up in a house across three floors, and there wasn't enough room to sit down and chat with people. So I ended up walking around with a huge vodka bottle in my hand, from person to person, giving them vodka while I drank the same amount as them. For some reason, I forgot to keep count of how much I had to drink, and I was constantly showered with compliments for my outfit, so my energy levels became pretty unhinged (I was also on some kind of nofap streak lol). I ended up blacking out while being unable to walk or use my phone, and the moment it dawned on me was when I fell down some stairs and was knocked back into consciousness for a second. In that moment, I was like "oh fuck...". Not long after that, the police arrived because of a noise complaint, and I somehow managed to walk right past them, but I literally couldn't stand upright outside. My friend wanted me home and ordered me a cab, I was shoved into the cab, and then I literally teleported home while puking in the cab (rip 300 dollars). I couldn't even pay for the cab, named the wrong home address many times, and I emptied out the contents of my wallet all across the neighborhood, and I had to collect it from the neighbors the day after. I couldn't unlock the door to the house, because it had a very similar password to my moms house, and I must've either mixed them up or just dialed it wrong. I had to bang on the door like a gorilla to wake up my roommate so he could open (I got very desperate because it was cold and I was dehydrated as fuck and thought I was going to die). He was stunned lol. The entire week after that incident, I couldn't think straight, and I felt like absolute garbage. Yay, vodka

Psychiatric diagnoses exist for the purposes of helping people with their problems. Without psychiatric diagnoses, we have no way to systematize which treatments should be used in which cases. If you want professional help, there is no way around it. The reason people take psychiatric diagnoses so seriously is because they're associated with real problems. That doesn't excuse the stigma, but it partially explains it.

Cute mouse ?

I don't think so. That means you misunderstood what the work is about. What is the teaching doing in your mind and not your body? You didn't master riding the bike, only read a lot about biking. It's about implicit learning, inarticulate wisdom, integration.

@StarStruck Save that one somewhere

No he didn't lol. His Red is dominant, but he also has strong Orange and Blue: male-only polygamy, "escape the Matrix", "build an empire of strong men".

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/1874574?utm_source=Silverchair Information Systems&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=JAMAPsychiatry:OnlineFirst05/28/2014#Discussion It's not a longitudinal study, so you can't say anything about causality, so the statement "porn causes decay in the grey matter in the brain" is misleading. The study only shows a correlation between porn consumption and grey matter volume. Maybe it's the other way around; that low grey matter volume causes increased porn consumption. That correlation is also not very strong (r = -0.432). A strong correlation is generally in the range of r = +- 0.50-1.00. Also, there were very few under-1hr watchers in the study (only 11 people). I consider myself in the 30 minute to 1hr range, so the results of the study aren't very specific to me. Besides, the 0 hr watchers alone (only 3 people btw) covered half the range of the values provided.

@Oeaohoo You actually agree with me kinda

Where? LOL. Have you visited Catholic.com? Nofap forums: the pinnacle of scientific inquiry.

@Bobby_2021 I just think you're dealing way too much in hypotheticals and not any actual data.

When I give the conservative 1-hour prescription, I do that because that is what worked for me leading up to my fully spontaenous sober awakenings (i.e. experiencing no-mind while actively engaging in mind-related activities). However, it's a bit misleading, because I was also completely obsessed with spirituality 24/7. In a way, my entire day was a meditation. The other reason is that irregular and unstructured practice, e.g. walking down the street and thinking "ugghh, I'm lost in thought! I need to become present!", is just neurotic behavior and attachment. An enlightened person does not do that. You're conditioning non-enlightened behavioral patterns by doing that. On the other hand, what you suggested in one of your most recent threads, of creating a structured program for how you should meditate x minutes after finishing a daily activity, is completely ok in my book. The third reason is that I noticed that the 45 - 60 minute mark is usually where the most progress is being made, and it's like you hit a peak and then a subtle plateau. That is also when your body starts to ache, so the meditation becomes more about focusing through the pain rather than relaxing into the breath, which can be a valid practice, but it's a bit taxing on the body, so you start running into trade-offs.

You're the one who is incessantly insisting that there are serious downsides to it. Why are you asking me about what those are? ?

Idk. You tell me. You're the porn inquisitor.

I think that's a bit dramatic. Smoking a pack a day vs. watching porn twice a week are not at all in the same ballpark. I like toasted bread. Toasting it is nothing but harmful. I only do it for taste. It's a trade-off I'm willing to accept.

Look at the channel that posted it.

Nothing in life is fully harmless.

Like the literacy obligation in Judaism?

I don't need advice. I have zero problems with brain fog or energy.

I didn't get that impression. Leo looks like he had a pretty wild psychedelic trip. DP/DR is pretty different territory.