Addiction And Doing Nothing For 2 Hours

[Kylir]

Hello fellow actualizers,

I am very new to the ideas and things that Leo is teaching. I've just started meditating and trying to do it 20 minutes a day. I often miss days. I'm also addicted to pornography and masterbation and have been for 23 years. I'm verbally abusive when angry and am controlling. These things have led my wife (of 11 years) to want to divorce me. We've been separated two months and things aren't looking good. I believe my negative traits originate from the same deep, underlying problem: feeling like I must do things all alone, by myself and that I am not enough, not capable of doing what I have to do. These feelings have originated from my inability to control and stop myself from masterbating and viewing porn and my childhood.

So I watched Leo's video on addiction where he suggests as a first step to breaking addiction is sitting in a room and doing nothing for a couple hours. I decided to try it out and see what would happen. I set an alarm on my phone for two hours and then I meditated the entire time in an empty room. I was expecting it to be rough, like cravings for porn would come up or negative feelings or that I would struggle with thoughts of recovery. But instead it was "easy". I just sat there and tried to do and focus on nothing. Thoughts would come into my mind and I was able to notice them, not get wrapped up in them, and let them go. Admittedly there were some instances where I did get caught up in something, typically it was thoughts about changing myself and my recovery from porn/anger, but I was able to get out of them without them going on for very long. I'd say my experience of sitting in an empty room for two hours was exactly how sitting in an empty room for two hours should be.

In light of my current problems, I was wondering if this meant something? Did I do the meditation wrong? Should I have been focusing my thoughts on an existential void and being in it? Or perhaps does this mean a weakening of the addiction? Or simply is the addiction still there and I am filling it with recovery now instead of porn and anger? I'm curious what you guys think of this.

Also, 5-6 months ago when my marriage started falling apart, which was a wake-up call for me, I hit therapy and recovery really hard. So hard that I feel like I may have replaced my addictions with a new addiction and obsession to recovery. Seeing therapists and talking to others feels good. All I want to do is think about, read, and talk to others about my problems. It is like I am trying to fill a unfillable void, as Leo talks about it. So for whatever reason, I have been sober from masterbation/porn/anger for this 5-6 months and it has been easy to stay sober. What are your thoughts on this?

Thanks!

[Corte]

Hey there Kylir, 

I'm sorry to hear about your current situation, hopefully things will work out the way that is best for you and your spouse. It sounds like your session of nothing went exactly as it should, and that is instrumental in continuing this work, to be able to sit in peace and be okay with that. However, I wanted to warn you it might be easy to become addicted to meditation. You might think this isn't bad because you're doing something good, but there are little traps you should be wary of. I think the most important is to not use meditation as an escape from life, but the opposite. It should connect you with life more, especially when you begin to flow with it and let it live through you. There really isn't a wrong way of meditation, you just need the right intentions. It's all about mindfulness and surrender to what is in the present moment. If you enjoyed the experience because you escaped from your problems for a little while, then this will not help you. If you enjoyed it because you found peace within yourself, and were perfectly content with life and without your addictions and attachments, now you're on to something! The first major step is already out of the way, and that is everything you wrote and understand about yourself in your post. Now you just need to follow through with the dedication and persistence needed to grow yourself, and your reality has no option but to improve to reflect this. Keep learning and moving forward, great things will come 

[charlie2dogs]

On 5/29/2016 at 6:28 PM, Kylir said:

Hello fellow actualizers,

I am very new to the ideas and things that Leo is teaching. I've just started meditating and trying to do it 20 minutes a day. I often miss days. I'm also addicted to pornography and masterbation and have been for 23 years. I'm verbally abusive when angry and am controlling. These things have led my wife (of 11 years) to want to divorce me. We've been separated two months and things aren't looking good. I believe my negative traits originate from the same deep, underlying problem: feeling like I must do things all alone, by myself and that I am not enough, not capable of doing what I have to do. These feelings have originated from my inability to control and stop myself from masterbating and viewing porn and my childhood.

So I watched Leo's video on addiction where he suggests as a first step to breaking addiction is sitting in a room and doing nothing for a couple hours. I decided to try it out and see what would happen. I set an alarm on my phone for two hours and then I meditated the entire time in an empty room. I was expecting it to be rough, like cravings for porn would come up or negative feelings or that I would struggle with thoughts of recovery. But instead it was "easy". I just sat there and tried to do and focus on nothing. Thoughts would come into my mind and I was able to notice them, not get wrapped up in them, and let them go. Admittedly there were some instances where I did get caught up in something, typically it was thoughts about changing myself and my recovery from porn/anger, but I was able to get out of them without them going on for very long. I'd say my experience of sitting in an empty room for two hours was exactly how sitting in an empty room for two hours should be.

In light of my current problems, I was wondering if this meant something? Did I do the meditation wrong? Should I have been focusing my thoughts on an existential void and being in it? Or perhaps does this mean a weakening of the addiction? Or simply is the addiction still there and I am filling it with recovery now instead of porn and anger? I'm curious what you guys think of this.

Also, 5-6 months ago when my marriage started falling apart, which was a wake-up call for me, I hit therapy and recovery really hard. So hard that I feel like I may have replaced my addictions with a new addiction and obsession to recovery. Seeing therapists and talking to others feels good. All I want to do is think about, read, and talk to others about my problems. It is like I am trying to fill a unfillable void, as Leo talks about it. So for whatever reason, I have been sober from masterbation/porn/anger for this 5-6 months and it has been easy to stay sober. What are your thoughts on this?

Thanks!

an addiction is something that you have allowed to take root within your consciousness.  so how do you get it out of your consciousness?  you first will have to understand what you are doing to yourself with this addiction, then let it go, release your grip on it, move your focus to something that is more constructive, more enjoyable, more peaceful,  you may have to force yourself to do this for a while,  until the desire has subsided,  gradually it will leave you,  if you stop giving it attention your desire for it will lessen, put your attention on other things, more important things, like understanding the reality of your own being.  as long as you hold it, it will hold you.

[Falk]

@Kylir

5-6 Month sober is good, i mean you do want to keep it that way for the rest of your life right? 

It is a good foundation to build on. Try to build and keep up a meditation habit. When you look back in 2-3years you will see it was worth it. 

If you wanna fix things you have to start inside... and you did. Stopping porn & doing therapy is a good start...

[abrakamowse]

On 5/29/2016 at 6:28 PM, Kylir said:

In light of my current problems, I was wondering if this meant something? Did I do the meditation wrong? Should I have been focusing my thoughts on an existential void and being in it? Or perhaps does this mean a weakening of the addiction? Or simply is the addiction still there and I am filling it with recovery now instead of porn and anger? I'm curious what you guys think of this.

Also, 5-6 months ago when my marriage started falling apart, which was a wake-up call for me, I hit therapy and recovery really hard. So hard that I feel like I may have replaced my addictions with a new addiction and obsession to recovery. Seeing therapists and talking to others feels good. All I want to do is think about, read, and talk to others about my problems. It is like I am trying to fill a unfillable void, as Leo talks about it. So for whatever reason, I have been sober from masterbation/porn/anger for this 5-6 months and it has been easy to stay sober. What are your thoughts on this?

Thanks!

About the meditation, you didn't do anything wrong. It was really good.

You won't notice changes, it's slow. But you will see that your thoughts will not dominate you as easily. If you continue practicing that and being in the "now", that means worrying about what you need to do at the moment without overthinking, you will see improvements. You will experience some liberation from thought.

About the therapist and your fear of trying to fill an unfillable void, don't worry. We all are doing that all the time, until we know ourselves better and we know who we are and what we are doing. That's called self-realization or enlightenment.

So, let it be. It's fear, just fear. It's nothing real. You experience fear and immediately you begin to think, and overthink. Just feel the fear as if you notice a thought, let it go and continue with whatever you think is Ok for you.

That's what I think about it, I hope it helps.

[Kylir]

You guys are awesome! Thank you so much for the kind words, the encouragement, and the really great thoughts. Really, it means a lot to me. Thank you very, very much!

I'm still going strong and I am still sober from porn, masterbation, and angry outbursts. I want this to last my entire life. It is wonderful. Although I am afraid it'll come back. I especially feel this way since I can't really point to something I am doing/feeling and say "that's what got rid of my addiction". I feel like I can't really even know if it is truly gone.

I still struggle with consistent meditation too, but I'm working on it. I pretty much just do it when I remember and the mood strikes me. I feel that I have spent so much time trying to understand myself on my own terms. I've learned a lot. It has been good. But I do feel like I need to do something to save my marriage. Like somehow showing these changes in me and the new understanding I have? Or maybe I ought to just be me and let God sort everything else out?

[abrakamowse]

If you know yourself, you can not go wrong. The problem is that because we can't see well reality we don't know who we really are. Our consciousness is mixed with thoughts, feelings, etc and we can't listen very well our real self, you can call it GOD if you want, some people call it the I AM, others nature, universe, etc. It's in fact our real self.

He will guide you, meditation is helpful in the sense that helps you not to give power to your thoughts. Silent meditation, just observing the thoughts and let them go it's pretty good.

It makes your brain (through repetition)  learn to ignore those thoughts that are not good for you, giving that power back to your core being.

Keep doing that, well done! I am happy to know you are doing better!!!

Edited June 14, 2016 by abrakamowse

[Azrael]

On 29.5.2016 at 0:28 AM, Kylir said:

What are your thoughts on this?

Seems like you're doing pretty good with your meditation. Just go on. A lot of sits may come easy, others come harder. It's a flowing process of struggles, fights, peace and integration with yourself that will slowly calm you in every little part of your being and provide the wisdom to naturally turn in the right direction.

And that doesn't always have to be that you change a whole lot of your life - yes this may come as well - but basically you see that every rule, definition and abstraction that you make out of yourself is basically a movie in a television next to a real world that just does it's thing. And as this distinction gets clearer and clearer you see that next to this TV you basically get hit with emotions to completely get involved in it and forget to see that it is just a fucking hallucination.

In that way you and we all are really the highest form of nature known to man. We are still it in every neurotic thing we get involved in. You are nature looking at yourself, having built this highly intelligent computer called brain to forget yourself and play a lifetime that you are not yourself, just because you want the experience of being lost. The whole rest of nature knows it is it. Look at the trees, the ground, animals. They all act spontaneously as it happens. We humans are able to play the other side, so we do.

Meditation let's you in on that in a first person experiential context. That's my my thought on this.