From Celibacy Blog
Celibacy has been one of the greatest influences in my life and one of the biggest challenges. As my experience with celibacy has evolved, and as I get older, my mindset on it has changed. As time passes, and as I mature about the topic, I feel that I have developed a greater, more rounded knowledge of it, especially as it pertains to my personal experience. I write this piece in the hopes that it may help others in their efforts to find some bit of clarity in what may seem a very difficult terrain to navigate.
For me, I feel that sex is a tool used by the “body-mind” to self regulate itself. It works to bring a state of homeostasis to the body-mind system when it is under a sense of felt stress. The problem is that life can be highly stressful, fearful, and anxiety provoking. For me, after sex, I would get a flood of relief from my stressful symptoms. And so, therein lies the trap. And this is a strong basis for a habit pattern to entrench itself into the body-mind system.
For me, my maturity as an adult in the world had become stilted, because in reaction to most or all stressful events, I was self soothing the stress away, instead of facing each situation. Challenges are there as a medium to help us grow and develop as a result of facing each challenge. By not facing the challenges in my life, it only accentuated the degree to which I felt anxious, fearful and stressed.
Eventually you have to face yourself and see how your behaviour is affecting your life outcomes and when I did, it was the start of this journey toward celibacy. Luckily for me I found Richard Rose’s books around this time which helped me greatly and inspried me to keep on it. I learned the technique of “turning the inner head” from Art Ticknor. This can be applied to any unwanted, random thoughts, external stimulii, not just in the sexual realm. The big key, for me, to becoming “chaste” to the highest degree of chastity to which I have achieved, was to make the committment to become a lifetime celibate. That seemed to really shut some inner door and that is when I really started to get results, where I could “turn the inner head at will” easily.
I still get nocturnal emmissions and I believe this is still an overlay that occurs during the unconscious hours of nighttime to regulate the body and bring it back to homeostasis from a heightened state of anxiety or tension. So I am very watchful of this process because I feel as a spiritual seeker I need to be able to hold all the tensions in my life to be able to process them properly and consciously. I feel the most important part of the spiritual path is to be able to “carry tension”. Dissipation is the enemy to the spiritual seeker. So I feel that working on what health experts call “sleep hygiene” is also an important aspect of celibacy and striving to become celibate in the truest sense; to capitalise the most from its benefits.
Previously I have written about one stage in my practice of celibacy. The current post is how I see things now.
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