An easy method for avoding relapsing

I also tried posting this on r/nofap and it got removed.

This is a method I've discovered and it saved me from relapsing many times. It is very simple and doesn't sound like much but you've got to try it and see it for yourself.

We all have our weak moments. When the urge is too strong and you've spent all your brain juice fighting it, you've spent all of your bullets and you're seconds away from relapsing, what do you do? At that moment if I told you that I've got a very easy job for you that only takes a minute and I'm going to give you 100 dollars if you do it right. Would you do it? Then this is your job for the next minute: focus on your hands like your life depended on it and make sure they stay absolutely still for the next minute. This doesn't take any energy or willpower. Even a monkey can do this. You don't fight the urge, you don't try to convince yourself, find arguments or anything else. Your job is keeping your hands absolutely still for a minute, that's it. This is your only focus. Sometimes it takes ten seconds sometimes it takes minute, if a minute isn't enough try it for another minute. If you do it right you'll realise the urge is gone and you're back in control in no time.

Overcoming Lust

The image of a naked, beautiful woman has an incredibly powerful effect on a boy's mind. This is the most powerful spell in the world. The boy is just powerless against this force. This spell binds the boy's mind, he is petrified. This is the situation nearly all young men in the world find themselves in. And nobody is talking about this. There is no guidance for young men, the world has failed young men.

Watching porn and masturbating has become something of a culture among boys. They feel left out if they don't do it. And most parents just don't want to deal with it and ignore it. They think the problem will go away if they don't acknowledge it. Some of them take an aggressive approach and shame the boy, punish the boy. This is not going to work either. The boy doesn't have the awareness, or life experience, in order to realize there is something wrong with watching porn and masturbating. He might have heard a priest say it is a sin, but for a boy this is not enough of an incentive. It just feels good and he is not hurting anyone, right?

I was that boy 20 years ago. For 20 years I've watched porn and masturbated multiple times a day. For more than 10,000 times I was that boy staring at the screen while that pornographic scene was being engraved into my mind. That rush of lust and adrenaline were running through my body, taking over my mind. It was a possession by lust. I'm speaking to young men: I was there 10,000 times. I've given into the urge every single time. I have done what you're doing, what you're delighting in for 20 years straight. 10,000 hours is more than one year of my life. Now what do I have to show for it? What did I get out of it? That is the question you are inevitably going to ask yourself. The answer to that question is this: Not only I have nothing to show for it, I've lost a great deal. I've lost my confidence. I've lost my motivation. I've lost my time and energy. I've lost opportunities for valuable relationships. I've lost the ability to see women as human beings. Those articles you find on the web talking about how porn and masturbation is healthy, they're not talking about these. They are paid articles funded by the porn industry. Don't believe them.

The priest says masturbation is a sin and you're going to hell for it. If you believe him, it's all good. But I didn't believe him and I'm guessing most young people don't believe him. Even if they do believe him they can always make up little lies and excuses. I'm going to propose a different sort of hell. I'm going to suggest hell is not physical place but a mental place. Hell is not a place with cooking pots and ovens but it's simply the state of suffering. And it's here, and now.

Most young men think they can get away with watching porn and masturbating. Even if they feel something is wrong, it's no big deal. They're making little excuses all the time: I don't have access to sex right now, I need some release, I'm stressed, depressed, I need a little something to keep up my morale etc. It's just endless stream of excuses your mind makes up in order to get that dopamine hit. It's just there, it's so easy. Two clicks and your mind is on fire. You're drawn to it, you delight in it. At that moment you think you're getting some sort of satisfaction out of it. It ends and you hit the bottom. Now you're an empty shell. There is just this buzzing feeling, numbing, lethargic feeling. Perhaps you were thinking you'd study after a quick fix but now you have no motivation, no focus, no drive. After that dopamine hit now everything has less meaning. I was telling myself it was okay because I didn't have a girlfriend and everyone else was doing it. What's the harm? When I got a girlfriend, to my surprise I realised I couldn't hold an erection during sex and even if could I couldn't have an orgasm. And this was the case for a lot of my friends. I'm observing this condition has been spreading among young men.

You don't believe the priest when he says you're going to hell. When you can't have sex with your wife or girlfriend, and you wish they'd go away so you could watch porn and masturbate in peace, because you have damaged the reward system in your brain to the point that you can only get off to a specific sort of extreme porn after opening 100 tabs on Pornhub and finding that perfect scene that gives you enough stimulus, just to feel agony, shame, emptiness and dissatisfaction afterwards: Is this not hell? Healthy young men are watching more and more extreme form of porn for years and years until they become alienated to their own body and develop a condition called autogynephilia, they start with crossdressing then lie about being transsexual, take hormones and have surgeries just to fulfill their fetish, a lot of them end up killing themselves. Is this not hell? Some of them are developing a furry fetish and start to behave like an animal, dress like an animal and cut off their limbs to resemble that animal. Is this not hell? What do you actually think you're going to achieve by reinforcing that habit? You are not going to a nice place, that's for sure.

Now ask yourself: what are you seeking? Are you seeking satisfaction? You think you're going to be satisfied after you fulfil that urge? Probably you've been doing this for years now, are you satisfied? How many more years until you're satisfied? 1? 10? 20? 50? How many naked bodies are enough until you're satisfied? 100? 1000? A million? A billion? Are you going to be satisfied after you've seen a billion naked women? Do you believe that's enough to satisfy you? Ask a smoker: how many more cigarettes until he's satisfied? 1000? A million? Ask Jeff Bezos how much more money until he's earned enough? 1 trillion? 100 trillion? I don't think there is enough money on earth to satisfy one man's greed, and there is not enough women on earth to satisfy one man's lust. If you're seeking satisfaction by fulfilling a desire, you're seeking the impossible. You'll realise this after indulging in a habit for years, you're not getting less desires by fulfilling them. Actually you're getting more desires. You've started with 2 cigarettes a day and now you're smoking two packs a day. You've started with mildly erotic pictures and now you're indulging in extreme fetishes. How did that go for you? Were you able to fulfill any of your desires?

I know what you're thinking because I was thinking like you not until too long ago. You're thinking, well, I feel like doing it and I haven't really experienced those extreme adverse effects so maybe there's something wrong with you, and those other guys. I'm consuming in moderation you know, I mean my life already sucks, can I get that at least? What else do I have? I've heard those, I've heard the excuse making machine a million times, I know every trick in that book. Perhaps you're saying, well if I don't masturbate I'll think about sex all the time and get erections all the time so I need to do it in order to get it out of my system. That's a good one, that lasted for a long time with me. Now what is wrong with these points? I'm going to dissect this form of thinking. I'm going into some deep deconstruction so buckle up.

We use these synonymously: I want this and I have this desire. Does this mean you're a free agent in control of your desires? Do you choose what you desire? Do you choose what you feel? Do you choose being who you are? If that's so, can you demonstrate it for me? Can you say for example: I'd like to be a hardworking, responsible person from now on. I'd like not to give in to my impulses from now on. I'd like not to have lustful thoughts anymore. I'd like to stop being lazy, stop being greedy, stop feeding my ego. I'd like not to feel angry anymore, I'd like not to feel this way with that person anymore. Does these work? Are you a different person now? Did your desires and feelings disappear when you wished them to? If not, how are they different from any natural force? How are they different from gravity? How is lust different from a fire burning your body? How is anger different from rain pouring down on you? Do rain and fire go away because you wish them to? No. Does lust disappear because you wish it to? No. Then how can you say it's you that desires while you have no control over your desires? Have you ever thought about that? If this is true, this means you've been deluding yourself for a very long time. If you are not in control of your desires and you can't help but feeding them, this means you're a slave. This is a hard pill to swallow but you'll realise it's true if you take time and contemplate.

The west is all about freedoms. You're free to do what you want, generally speaking. We use this term "freedom" to express our ability or inability to fulfil our desires. We use the term freedom synonymous with desire fulfilment. You have the freedom to pursue your desire. Do you have the freedom from having this desire? Freedom from craving? Freedom from the feeling of unsatisfactoriness after you fulfil your desire? Do you have the freedom to escape the consequences of fulfilling your desires? Do you have the freedom from meaninglessness, emptiness, stresfulness? Freedom from anxiety and depression? Do you have the freedom from hopelessness and despair? Then it's not much of a freedom is it? If you have no control over your desires and your only freedom is fulfilling them, then what freedom do you have other than the freedom to be a slave? You want this and that, you feel like this and that. That's a big one. "I feel this way about this thing". Did you choose to feel that way? Then it means nothing more than saying "gravity is pulling me down."

What does this mean now? You're thinking, "I don't have a free will then? Am I powerless? Do I have no choices?" This actually means you have more choices than you think and you can experience true freedom for the first time in your life. Freedom from suffering is the only form of freedom you can truly have. Now I must confess, none of these are my own discoveries, I've been rephrasing the teachings of Gautama Buddha. Now how do we become free from suffering? This endless cycle of craving and unsatisfactoriness is called a karmic cycle. And there is only one way to break a karmic cycle: through awareness. Awareness how and in which way? I'm going to describe it as plain as I can.

I explained that your feelings and desires are not really yours. The Buddha says your body and your thoughts are not really yours either. Have you heard what kind of crap your mind has been feeding you lately? Do you even listen to your thoughts? They are rubbish. You've listened to your thoughts all your life and where did they lead you? Are you content with life? Are you successful, living the dream? Getting A's, pushing your career, getting in shape, eating healthy, having that dream relationship? No? That could be because your mind has been feeding you bullshit all this time, undermining your potential all this time.

How about your body? Which body part do you identify with? The eye, the liver, the heart, the skin, the fat? Your body consists of the elements found in earth. It is essentially a bag of dirt. Do you identify with a bag of dirt? Now then, how is this helpful, how can you break out of this karmic cycle? I skipped a part. Your body is not only a bag of dirt but it is a conditioned bag of dirt. This means it can be conditioned: like a rock it can be sculpted, like a piece of wood it can be carved. It is a natural formation. This is the right view of seeing the body. It's not yours but it can be conditioned. It's the same with the mind, the same with the feelings. You can't control them but you can condition them with your own actions, you can build yourself from the ground up. This is freedom.

By now I'm hoping you've decided to quit this habit but you're maybe lacking the willpower. What do you exactly do about it? It's there, you can't just unsee it. Do you fight it? It takes a lot of willpower to fight lust, in the end you're defeated. What do you exactly do about it? Do you ignore it?  I'm going to ask you this then: what do you do about gravity? Do you fight it? Do you ignore it? Neither. You acknowledge it. You see it as it is. It is a natural phenomena. Just becasue gravity is pulling you down, it doesn't mean it's targeting you personally. You can beat yourself up because you fell to the ground, but it's not something personal: gravity is just this way. If you're careless, you fall to the ground and you suffer. It's the same thing with lust, if you're careless you'll suffer.

"There is no fire like lust; there is no grip like hatred; there is no net like delusion; there is no river like craving." These are the wise words of the Buddha.

We win this battle by realising that it's not a battle. This urge is too strong and your willpower is fading. What do you do? You don't have the power to fight it, do you have the power to not move your hands? Do you have the power to not look at that picture? Not moving your hands, not touching yourself doesn't take a lot of willpower. Focus on your hands now and don't move them. How much willpower did it take? Zero. So you can flip the table at any moment. When you flip the table it's not you who is fighting lust but it's lust who is fighting for your time and energy, now it's lust who is banging on the wall and failing. As long as you take the right approach, keep your focus on the right place, keep the right view, what's struggling and fading is not your willpower, it's lust. Lust is not very powerful if you don't feed it. You don't fight lust, you don't beat yourself up trying to resist it. You stop feeding it and it becomes tame. Keep feeding and it will consume you. This is how it works, just see it as it is. Lust is a condition, it arises depending on conditions and ceases depending on conditions. Lust arises when you look at the naked body of a beautiful woman. You don't have to feel guilty about it, you don't have to feel shame. You can't just will lust in and out of existence, but you can change the conditions so it doesn't arise. You change the naked body with an image of a rainbow and lust doesn't arise. You're in bed and fantasizing then lust arises. You go outside, walk for an hour, do some push ups, take a cold shower and surprise: lust is no longer there. Become aware of the conditions on which lust arises and ceases. When lust is bothering you, change the condition it's feeding on. You're thinking of this girl, how pretty she is, imagining her in various occasions, then lust arises. What do you do? You think of something else and it goes away.

You should realise it's not really about you, but it's a condition you've been feeding and making stronger. They say men think about sex every seven seconds. I used to think about it all the time. I thought it was normal. Scenes from porn were popping up in my mind all the time. I was mentally undressing the women around me all the time. It was just unending stream of pornographic images flooding my mind. If you've been watching porn for a long time you won't be able to make the connection easily. You'll think it's a part of being a man, having hormones. You feed your mind with more porn and maybe you get some moments of calmness, clarity until the monster is hungry again. You've been feeding the monster and making it stronger. This is how brain works. You indulge in a habit, you make that circuit stronger. A smoker needs to smoke every hour, otherwise he's miserable. I was a smoker and if I went more than 2 hours the craving was unbearable. In any kind of addiction you'll automatically think the longer you go without it the more miserable you're going to be. I haven't smoked in five years and according to that logic I should've been dead or in a mental asylum by now. But it doesn't work like that. I had very strong cravings when I was a smoker, I was miserable without a cigarette. I haven't had any desire to smoke in years now. This is how the mind works. You make a circuit stronger and it'll flood your system with cravings. You watch porn and masturbate, that circuit will flood your mind with pornographic images and cravings. You don't have to believe me, just try and see it for yourself. Your mind tells you that you'll feel more lustful, more miserable and you'll get more cravings if you don't watch porn and masturbate. I'm telling you that's not true. Your mind is feeding you crap. I'm speaking from experience: the longer you go without watching porn, the less cravings you'll get. I guarantee it. Stay away from porn, masturbation and other erotic media for 30 days, just to see if I'm lying or not, do it as a challenge. If you get more cravings in the end you can punch me in the face.

"A man may conquer a million men in battle but one who conquers himself is, indeed, the greatest of conquerors." These are the wise words of the Buddha.